Tag Archives: Revised Common Lectionary

Bodies: A Sermon (Last Sunday after the Epiphany, 2/11/2024)

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Readings

Have you noticed that the story of Jesus could easily be summarized as the story of what happens to Jesus’ body? He is born; he is baptized; he is crucified; he is raised from the dead; he is caught up to sit at God’s right hand. And here, in today’s reading, his body undergoes metamorphosis. It’s as though the star that guided the magi (whose arrival we celebrate at the Feast of the Epiphany) takes up residence in Jesus (whose transfiguration we celebrate on the last of the Sundays after that Epiphany before entering Lent). And when the focus isn’t on Jesus’ body, it’s on Jesus doing things to other peoples’ bodies: healing them, casting out demons, teaching some to follow him around and do what he does.

This is particularly true of Mark’s Gospel, the backbone of this year’s Gospel readings. In Mark Jesus doesn’t talk much. Jesus talks more in Matthew and Luke, and a great deal in John, but even in John we might wonder if his body isn’t still center stage.

William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 20th Century, used to say that Christianity was the most materialistic of the great world religions. Because it’s not just Jesus’ story: the Bible starts with God creating a material world and exclaiming “good,” “good,” “all very good.” Jesus sends us out to preach and pour water over (or dunk) those who respond to our preaching, and gives his very Body and Blood to us repeatedly in the Holy Eucharist. All this, note, so that extraordinary things can happen in our bodies.

In the second reading we heard Paul talking about the light of the creation, the light of the transfiguration in us: “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” Had we extended the reading one more verse we would have heard what this light does in our bodies. “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

So in Catholic Christianity—of which Anglicanism is an expression—we take this very seriously. Our spirituality is a spirituality of the body. The body is not a problem; the body is not something to be transcended; it is a privileged place in which God encounters us and we respond to God in this combination of death and life. Very briefly, our spirituality contrasts with two other widespread Christian families of spiritualities. The first family focuses on the mind: the point is to know stuff, to have—in some forms of this spirituality—the Right Theology. (As though the devil hadn’t ingested more right theology than we’ll ever learn.) The mind’s important—no question—but in service to our other dimensions.

The second family focuses on the emotions—in a wide variety of ways. The point of worship may be to have a particular emotional experience. One may judge the genuineness of one’s Christian identity be the quality of one’s emotional responses, whether at the point of conversion, or subsequently. Or one may make one’s emotional response the compass of one’s decision making: I do what feels right; I don’t do what feels wrong. I don’t do what I would otherwise think is right if it feels inauthentic.

To all of which a spirituality of the body responds: let my body follow Jesus’ body, and surprisingly often the mind and or the emotions will fall into line. The path to understanding is often obedience. The path to healthy emotional responses is often obedience. I’m faced with a neighbor I don’t love. Rather than wait for the emotion of love to kick in, I act (my body acts) in a loving manner, and a surprising number of times the emotion sorts itself out.

This Catholic spirituality of the body shapes what we do on Sundays in the most basic of ways. Start with architecture: as soon as Christians were free to design their own worship spaces, they designed them along the lines of a temple, a building in which God was resident. When the Sacrament is reserved, God is resident. In 16th Century Europe most of those who broke with Catholic spirituality designed their worship spaces as academic lecture halls, and their clergy dressed in academic gowns. This was “Right Theology” to the Nth degree. Late in the 20th Century a new design emerged: the worship space as talk show studio.

In the Catholic tradition our worship space is a place where God is present, not only in fulfillment of the promise “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20 RSV) –common to all the Christian traditions—but in the Sacrament. So we do things with our bodies here that we don’t do elsewhere: we kneel, we bow, we genuflect. Our minds and our emotions—who knows where they are some days—but at least our bodies can be here to celebrate the off-the-charts goodness of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

We do weird things with our bodies in here to prepare ourselves to weird things with our bodies out there, to engage in random, unprovoked acts of kindness for the sheer heaven of it. Some team wins the Superbowl and their fans erupt into the streets. Each Sunday we celebrate the final score: Jesus 1, Death 0 and receive the very life of Jesus into our bodies so we can take that into the streets.

The Holy Eucharist is the fulcrum of our life. What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas; what happens here is designed not to stay here. Here our bodies acknowledge that God is God and we aren’t God. We hear again of this God’s generosity to us. We share “the peace of the Lord” with those who are like us and those not like us. We come together to a common table: there is enough food for everyone, there is enough room for everyone. The whole world’s going to look like this some day; today it’s here and in every place of Christian worship, and our privilege is to take it all in, and then take it all out into the streets.

“For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.… always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

“Set us free” (5th Sunday after the Epiphany)

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Readings

A few minutes ago we prayed “Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ.” It turns out that asking how God answers this prayer is a useful entry into our readings.

Our first reading comes from that part of the Book of Isaiah that assumes the people exiled in Babylon. The glad good news: God is about to set the people free to return to their land. But, as today’s text makes clear, the people after decades of Babylonian captivity doubt both God’s power and God’s will to save them.

God’s power: Isaiah seeks to rekindled their imaginations. The scale and splendor of the heavens: that’s all the work of our God, putting on a show every night that would have left Cecil B. DeMille bright green with envy. This God will have no trouble bringing Israel home. Well, today too much light pollution to see what Isaiah’s audience was able to see every night. But we have the work of the physicists, whose attention to the fine tuning of our universe so that there is—Isaiah’s words—”a tent to live in,” leads some to conclude that the only way to avoid acknowledging the Creator is to posit an infinite number of universes, we being in the happy position of living in the one in which life is possible.

God’s will to save: Isaiah will focus on that in the following chapters.

Meanwhile, toward the end:

He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

How does Isaiah describe those who respond appropriately? “Those who wait for the Lord.” That’s interesting: after celebrating God’s power at work now, what is there to wait for? To extend Isaiah’s language, we could contrast God as Creator and God as Savior, the God whose blessing sustains this fertile world, the God whose saving puts things right. And there’s waiting in both: the farmer waits for the rain; the people (here) wait for release.

“Wait for the Lord” here is pretty much hope in the Lord. And it’s that hope as much as anything that gives the power the text celebrates. In the pony rides in my childhood, the ponies always picked up the pace once the stables were in sight. And hope plays no small part in the NFL games we’ve been watching through the season.

Today’s psalm: it overlaps to a fair degree with Isaiah. Noteworthy here is the last full verse we read:

But the Lord has pleasure in those who fear him, *
in those who await his gracious favor.

Here the psalmist pairs fearing the Lord (“fear” often shorthand for our proper stance vis à vis God) and waiting for God’s action.

Returning to our collect, in Isaiah and the psalm, God setting us free, giving us liberty, may be first about awakening our hope. That’s not all it is, but for Isaiah’s audience that’s where it had to start.

Today’s Gospel: it’s part three of Mark’s portrait of that long day in Capernaum: calling the disciples, teaching and exorcising in the synagogue, healing Peter’s mother-in-law, caring for the crowd that assembled around the house at Sabbath’s end, snatching time for prayer before heading off. After our earlier readings—and in the text itself—there’s joy: all that waiting has not been in vain.

At the same time, notice the disconnect Mark’s pointing of the camera represents. Isaiah pointed us to the heavens, but here we’re in a corner of Roman-infested Galilee. The psalm’s focus was on Jerusalem, and here we’re very far from Jerusalem. (The Jerusalemites had about the same opinion of Galilee as New Yorkers have of the Midwest.) It would have been so easy to write off anything happening in Galilee. And that’s the tricky part about hope. Hope can go bad if it clutches its idea of how fulfillment should happen too tightly.

God setting us free, giving us liberty: it’s also about allowing for surprise, the fulfillment of our hopes in ways we didn’t expect. That was the tragedy of many of the Pharisees: they had hope in spades. But when it was fulfilled: “Give us Barabbas.”

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians looks like the odd man out. He’s still working that meat offered to idols question, now using his own conduct as an example. There were many ways of being what we might call an influencer. You could charge high prices for your services and hang with the beautiful people like the sophists. You could drool down your beard and leave no social convention unbroken like the cynics. What are Paul the Pharisee’s choices?

There’s no direct line from any of the other readings to Paul. But if we pull back the camera a little…

The same Isaiah who pictured God in majesty above the celestial court gave us this:

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

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

And of that same Jesus, the sovereign protagonist in today’s reading, Paul will write in Philippians:

6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness. (Phil. 2:6-7a)

God does power and authority not by insisting on privilege, but by—in our language—moving way outside God’s comfort zone. And that’s Paul’s model: “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.”

God setting us free, giving us liberty: for Paul, it’s about freedom to act divinely, moving outside his comfort zone for the sake of others. And that’s, of course, the conduct he’s encouraging his hearers to adopt. That’s how Paul’s hope expresses itself, not in the anxious defense of his privileges (immaculate Hebrew pedigree, Roman citizen, advanced studies), but moving outside his comfort zone to stand in solidarity with all for whom Christ died.

“Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life…” What’s the answer to that prayer look like? From today’s lessons: that journey from Babylon to Jerusalem, or, in the words of our Eucharistic Prayer, “bring us to that heavenly country.” That’s the endgame. Meanwhile, as with Isaiah’s audience, it’s about awakening hope, so that when freedom comes we won’t be too busy distracting ourselves to notice. Set us free with a hope that doesn’t betray us by locking God into a script so narrow that no surprise is possible (the temptation of the Pharisees). Set us free to express our hope not in clinging to privilege, but, with Paul, in moving outside our comfort zone.

“Grant us your peace” (4th after the Epiphany)

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Readings

In this morning’s collect we prayed “in our time grant us your peace.” What are we praying for? What would an answer to this prayer look like? In John’s account of the last supper we hear Jesus say “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” (14:27a). “Not as the world gives:” I wonder if that warning lies behind Paul’s “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Phil. 4:7), language picked up in the blessing at the close of the Mass. When we pray for peace, what are we praying for? Let’s work that question as we go through today’s readings.

The Deuteronomy reading, part of one of the many paragraphs in the book dealing with life in the land the people are about to enter. Rather than consult soothsayers, necromancers, sorcerers, etc. the people are to listen to the prophets the Lord raises up. When there is need, the Lord will not be silent; the Lord will speak. That confidence that the Lord will not be silent may be part of the peace for which we pray. Of course, whether we will like what the Lord says through the prophet is a different question. That’s the issue lying just under the surface of our Gospel reading. ““What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Too often that’s the question thrown at the Lord’s prophets not by unclean spirits, but by the Lord’s own people.

Our reading from Paul’s letter. The Corinthians had asked about food sacrificed to idols. In Corinth, as in most cities in the Empire, there would be multiple temples, many of which sacrificed animals in worship of their god, whose meat would be consumed either by those present in the temple or sold to the general public. That the Corinthians asked about this and from Paul’s response it’s clear that the question was disputed. The Corinthians were probably hoping for a simple yes/no answer; what they got was three chapter’s worth of reflection that mostly threw the problem back in their laps. (Quick moral: if our formula for peace is “Just tell us what to do”…) We hear part of Paul’s reflection this week, part next week.

Paul starts by contrasting knowledge and love: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” Yes, knowing that these gods aren’t real you can make a case for pigging out. But what of the fellow Christian who sees you in the temple and concludes that maybe it’s OK to combine worshipping Jesus with Jupiter, Apollo, etc. That’s where love needs to kick in, otherwise “by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed.”

There are a couple of points to tease out here. First, the peace for which we pray isn’t a matter of peace in my heart, never mind what’s happening in my neighbor’s heart.

Second, if we contemplate arguments in the church, past or present, they’re mostly about competing claims to knowledge. When the language of rights is introduced, my knowledge gives me the right to do X: game, set, match. This is, of course, the way arguments go outside the church. From Paul’s perspective the tragedy is that the church rarely offers a different way of holding together knowledge and love. “In our time grant us your peace.” After reading Paul we’re thrown back on Jesus’ “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and acknowledge—hopefully—how much we need to learn. “Grant us your peace” and “teach us to be peacemakers” may be two sides of the same coin.

Our reading from Mark continues the Epiphany revelation/manifestation theme. Still drawing from the first chapter of Mark, we encounter Jesus, “the Holy One of God,” against whom the unclean spirits are powerless. Jesus’ power: that’s good news, and part of the foundation of the peace for which we pray. Unclean spirits: an issue in many other parts of the world, not so much here. Here, between drugs and Madison Avenue unclean spirits might be overkill.

But back to the text. All this, notice, occurs in a synagogue. Had Jesus not shown up, it would probably have been a peaceful gathering. Jesus shows up, perhaps thinking this a good way to answer the “grant us your peace” prayer.

Now by this time you may be wondering whether this “peace” has any positive content. Well, yes. It assumes and nurtures relationship, both vertically (Deuteronomy) and horizontally (Corinthians). It understands that we’re works in progress (Corinthians) and that that’s OK. It assumes and nurtures trust, and therefore courage, so that Jesus can say just hours before his arrest “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (Jn. 14:27). With this peace Jesus finds a storm in the middle of the Sea of Galilee a good moment for a nap. I could use some of that peace.

“In our time grant us your peace.” And after today’s readings we might add some additional prayers. From Deuteronomy: “And grant us ears to hear what you have to say to us.” From Corinthians: “And teach us to be peacemakers.” From Mark: “And save us from confusing peace and tranquility.”

William Percy, author of today’s offertory hymn (#661) nailed it: “The peace of God, it is no peace, / but strife closed in the sod. / Yet let us pray for but one thing— / the marvelous peace of God.”

On hearing “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” 2,000 years later (3rd Sunday after the Epiphany)

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Readings

There’s a strong sense of urgency that drives Mark’s story. No time for the genealogies that appear in Matthew and Luke, or for John’s evocative meditation on the Word that was God and became flesh. At Jesus’ baptism Jesus sees the heavens “torn apart.” Immediately after the baptism the Spirit drives him into the wilderness, but Mark doesn’t slow down to describe the temptation there. No. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” How near? Near enough that Simon, Andrew, James, and John are to drop what they’re doing and follow.

One can get—and I assume you’ve heard—many good sermons based on these verses. They capture a profound truth: Jesus’ call to follow is powerful and non-negotiable. That’s reflected in our baptismal rite and in our Eucharistic prayers. We pray “Unite us to your Son in his sacrifice” (Prayer B), giving Jesus each week a blank check.

Nevertheless, the events Mark describes were some twenty centuries ago. How does that affect how we hear the text? “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near:” this is the language of apocalyptic, a mindset that we meet occasionally in the Old Testament and frequently in the New Testament. There are two worlds: this world and the world to come. In this world God’s rule is—at best—contested. In Luke’s account of the temptation, the devil, having shown Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, says: “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please” (Lk. 4:6). In the world to come God’s rule will be uncontested. The transition from this world to the world to come will not be smooth, and the sooner that transition happens, the better. So at the end of his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes “Maranatha!” (“Come, Lord!”).

Jesus, notice, didn’t buy into the apocalyptic mindset uncritically. John the Baptist (probably enthusiastically): “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 3:10). Jesus: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:43-44). Regarding the “how near” question, Jesus warns “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mk. 13:32). Apocalyptic writers—I’m thinking of various books that didn’t make it into our Bible—often tried to sneak a glance at the Father’s desk calendar. Apocalyptic, we might say, is one of Jesus’ languages, but not his only language.

Paul, frankly, might have paid more attention to that “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” The advice he gives to the Corinthians assumes that the day/hour is imminent enough that long-term planning should be put on hold. Despite that, there’s much of value in this chapter, and since this is the only Sunday we hear any of this chapter, let me notice some of that “much of value.”

Toward the beginning of the chapter: “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (1 Cor. 7:3-4). That’s a vision of mutuality that in most times and places we’re far from putting into practice. And it’s worth noticing that in the entire chapter there’s not a word about procreation. So any claim that sex in marriage is justified only if in obedience to “be fruitful and multiply” has to rely on someone other than St. Paul (or the rest of the authors of Scripture, for that matter).

A bit later in the chapter: “But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind” (1 Cor. 7:7). That is, to live as a celibate is a gift; to live as a married person is a gift. Each gift, each calling, has its proper integrity, its proper value. Paul, a celibate, prefers his gift, but manages to refrain from declaring it objectively superior.

Nevertheless, there’s that “the appointed time has grown short…  For the present form of this world is passing away.” Two thousand years later, what do we do with that? We find one possible response in the second letter attributed to Peter: “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:8-9). It would be silly to argue with that, and, in fact, our first reading reminds us of one way this plays out. Jonah preaches in Nineveh, capital of a paradigmatically wicked empire, and the capital repents. So “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.” That business of forgiving seventy-seven times (Mt 18:22): is that how God operates?

If the argument in 2nd Peter works for you, go with it. Some days it works for me; other days, not so much. The argument assumes that the delay is a problem, and within the apocalyptic mindset it is: the sooner the transition from this world to the world to come, the better. But this is not the only mindset or language with which Scripture works.

Here’s something from the Wisdom of Solomon, one of the books in our canon prior to the Reformation:

21 For it is always in your power to show great strength,
and who can withstand the might of your arm?
22 Because the whole world before you is like a speck that tips the scales,
and like a drop of morning dew that falls on the ground.
23 But you are merciful to all, for you can do all things,
and you overlook people’s sins, so that they may repent.
24 For you love all things that exist,
and detest none of the things that you have made,
for you would not have made anything if you had hated it.
25 How would anything have endured if you had not willed it?
Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved?
26 You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.
12:1 For your immortal spirit is in all things.
2 Therefore you correct little by little those who trespass,
and you remind and warn them of the things through which they sin,
so that they may be freed from wickedness and put their trust in you, O Lord. (Wis. 11:21-12:2)

In our baptismal rite we pray that God will give the newly baptized “the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” The author of the Wisdom of Solomon might want us to recognize in that joy and wonder a dim reflection of God’s own joy and wonder. So that’s another way of thinking about being two thousand years out from today’s Gospel.

Our we might recall that text from Isaiah we heard in the third week of Advent:

61:1 The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
…
3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion…
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.
4 They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations. (Isa. 61:1-4)

Starting from this text, two thousand years because we “oaks of righteousness” have been given a big project. The Jesus to whom we call “Maranatha” is also the one who said “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). The God who was happy to give the Colorado River millions of years to create the Grand Canyon is happy to give us time.

So: cry “Maranatha,” nurture that joy and wonder in God’s works, build up the ancient ruins? It’s not a matter of choosing one of these mindsets or orientations; each has deep roots in Scripture. Each can provide a necessary corrective to the others. What blend is appropriate to any particular time and place depends on our context, our reading of the “signs of the times.” In the parish we won’t all blend them in the same way, which can be a source of strength if we listen carefully to each other. But by God’s grace we’ll continue to work at finding a faithful blend as we together respond to Paul’s encouragement: “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5:10).

“Know me…lead me”: A Meditation on Ps 139 (2nd after the Epiphany)

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Readings; Psalm 139

A curious set of readings! The Gospel: the calling of Nathael, picking up in a general way the Epiphany theme. The calling of Samuel: probably chosen as an Old Testament parallel to the Gospel. The reading from 1 Corinthians: well, it looks like the Lectionary editors wanted to put these chapters somewhere, and ended up distributing them in all three years of the Epiphany season. As for the psalm, the editors probably chose part of it for the theme of divine knowledge present both there and in the Gospel. We read all of it this morning, because in its entirety it’s worth a sermon. So, please open the BCP to pages 794-795.

What sort of psalm is it? The requests starting in v.18 suggest an individual petition. We find vv.18-21 uncomfortable enough that the Sunday Lectionary always omits them. The Psalter itself seems to work more on the principle articulated by John Chapman: “Pray as you can; don’t pray as you can’t.” If vv.18-21 are in my heart, the Psalter thinks it’s better to get them out there on my lips so God and I can deal with them together.

What of vv.1-17? They’re some sort of lead-in to vv.18-23: you, Lord, with your wonderful knowledge, are well-positioned to respond to the requests. But vv.1-17 really look like they’ve taken on a life of their own past any narrow rhetorical use, exploring this wonderful knowledge in surprising ways. So let’s start there.

Verses 1-5, addressed—like the whole psalm—to God, put God’s knowledge center-stage. What isn’t clear from these verses is whether the speaker is celebrating or complaining. Governments these days are getting better at surveillance, a trend Orwell worried about in his book 1984. We’re all over the map in our responses to this, but what when God’s surveillance capacities dwarf them all? What does God do with all this knowledge? The speaker/the poet hasn’t tipped his/her hand.

Verses 6-11 and 12-17 explore the theme in space and time. Space: wherever I go, you’re there. And in the middle of vv.6-11 the first clue as to what God is doing with this knowledge:

Even there your hand will lead me
and your right hand hold me fast.

“Lead…hold me fast.” God’s using knowledge for the speaker’s good, and is not about to let go. We might think of Jesus’ words in John: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand” (10:27-28). “If I climb up to heaven, you are there; / if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.” That’s something to hang onto.

Moving from the abstract darkness of v.11 to the darkness of the womb, the speaker describes God’s knowledge and involvement from their beginning: “you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” “I will thank you because I am marvelously made” or, as Alter translates it, “for fearsomely I am set apart.” That’s not an affirmation reserved for Olympic athletes; the Psalter invites us to echo it, to claim it, even while dealing with demanding limitations. And if we claim it for ourselves, we claim it for our neighbor, also when (thinking of our southern border) it’s inconvenient to do so.

Returning to the petitions starting in v.18: obviously Jesus’ teaching (commands!) and example expand our prayer options regarding the enemy. To the degree that we’ve let Jesus mess with our imagination, what do we do with these verses? The desert fathers probably got it right, understanding the enemy as—to use the language of our baptismal service—the “sinful desires that draw you from the love of God.” With care, a certain ruthlessness is indicated: “And if thy right hand offend thee…” (Matt 5:30).

What of vv.22-23? The speaker is self-aware enough to understand that this divine scrutiny is still needed, self-aware to know that “whether there be any wickedness in me” is an open question. (There is perhaps a gentle irony in this coming right after the imprecations of vv.18-21.) “Search… know… try… look well” “and lead me in the way that is everlasting.”

That final request is perhaps the most interesting line in the psalm. We might wonder why it’s necessary: the speaker surely has Moses’ law. As Joseph said to his brothers, “Do this and you will live” (Gen. 42:18). And here we might recall Psalm 19, back on p.607. Immediately after exuberant praise of the law (vv.7-11), we encounter “Who can tell how often he offends? / cleanse me from my secret faults.” The law is necessary, but—given our limited self-knowledge and our recurrent desire for self-deception—not sufficient. “Cleanse me!” Or, in today’s psalm’s language, “lead me.”

OK, and how does God do that? Scripture’s counter-question might be: Is there any means God doesn’t use? Joseph’s dreams, that angel-in-disguise who guided Tobias, Balaam’s ass, John the Baptist (Whose head do I want on a platter this week?)… There’s that lovely line from Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack… in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” There’s profound divine humility here, our God being happy to use the smallest crack. But it does require at least some part of us to be listening, to be awake.

John, author of today’s Gospel, incorporates this appreciation for divine knowledge in his portrait of Jesus. When Jesus is surrounded by an enthusiastic but unreliable crowd John tells us “But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone” (Jn. 2:24-25). Recall too the Samaritan woman’s testimony: “He told me everything I have ever done” (Jn. 4:39). So, in today’s reading, Nathanel: “Where did you get to know me?” (Jn. 1:48)

And if we return to the question of what God/Jesus does with this knowledge, with Jesus’ leading: “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Nor does this seeing leave Nathanel/us unchanged. Paul, writing to those exasperating Corinthians, some of his least promising hearers: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).

The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost: A Sermon

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Readings (Track 1)

How does change happen?

Change is at the core of our Eucharists. In the Great Thanksgiving the celebrant prays:

“Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him. Sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace…”

The change in the bread and wine: that’s the simple part. The change in us (“sanctify us”)—how does that work? One of the images Scripture uses is that of potter and clay. From Isaiah we hear “Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand” (64:8). And texts in the Wisdom of Solomon (15:7), Sirach (33:13), and Paul highlight the potter’s freedom to do with the clay as he wills. From Romans: “Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?” (9:21). The meditation in today’s psalm runs along parallel lines: “For you yourself created my inmost parts; / you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

From the way Paul uses the image in Romans we might conclude that we have as little to do with the change in us as we have in the change in the bread and wine. Which is why we need Jeremiah. If we listen to what Jeremiah is saying—as opposed to what we assume he’s saying—what we hear is that the potter is responsive to what the clay does.

“At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.”

When it comes to change in us, our choices matter.

That, of course, is what drives Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading. Hyperbole is one of Jesus’ favorite rhetorical tools, and here, in the style of Moses’ final speeches in Deuteronomy, he lays out the either-or: disciple or not, life or death: your choice. And sometimes we need that sort of wake-up call.

But most of the time, I’d guess, we need something other than the sledgehammer—which brings us to our reading from Philemon.

I recalled this letter a few weeks back. Philemon’s slave Onesimus had run away, ran into Paul, and become a Christian. Paul is sending Onesimus back with this letter, in which he appeals to Philemon to receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” “Welcome him as you would welcome me.”

The stakes are high for everyone. Onesimus: the owner’s free to do whatever he wants with his property, so returning to your owner might look like a monumentally bad idea. Philemon: he’s a Christian, but one look at Onesimus may be enough for him to revert to business as usual. Paul: Paul can write inspiring letters: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:27-28). When push comes to shove, is that true?

The stakes are high, which makes Paul’s approach all the more surprising. In much of our experience, the higher the stakes, the greater the coercion. Come April 15, Washington does not appeal to me to file my tax return. And it’s easy to take the absence of coercion as evidence that the issue isn’t important. For the state that’s often true; for Paul—or God, for that matter—no. Paul values Philemon’s freedom—God values our freedom—too highly to coerce, even when the stakes are high. (Not that Paul won’t get pretty close to that line, even while trying not to cross it!)

So Paul points toward the desired outcome: that Philemon receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” “Welcome him as you would welcome me.” “Knowing that you will do even more than I say.” But Paul leaves the details—all the crucial details—in Philemon’s hands.

How does change happen? Paul’s letter to Philemon is an important model. The safe thing would have been for Paul to keep Onesimus away from Philemon. Paul—and Onesimus—choose to give this slave-owner Philemon the opportunity to contribute to this “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” business.

Let me take the “so what?” in two different directions.

Paul’s encouragement to Philemon to let his Christian identity shape his conduct: who knows what that might inspire if we stay awake? My home parish, St. Dunstan’s, aware that the church sits on property previously belonging to the Ho-Chunk, put together a Land Acknowledgement Task Force a while back, which concluded that simply saying “Sorry ‘bout that” was insufficient. So, starting this year, there’s a $4,000 line item in the annual budget—under building, not outreach—to go to the Ho-Chunk. It’s a step.

The way Paul appeals to Philemon is probably a helpful model for us as we interact with each other regarding the important stuff. Paul really cares what Philemon decides. He’s not shy about appealing to their shared history. But he wants Philemon’s decision to be free, not coerced. You could do worse than read Philemon together with your new rector!

The psalmist prayed “I will thank you because I am marvelously made; / your works are wonderful, and I know it well.” Philemon, Onesimus, Paul, you, me: all marvelously made, all terribly vulnerable. And our ever-hopeful God sends us together into the coming week.

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost: A Sermon

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Readings (Track 1); Gospel: Luke 13:22-30

Well, that was a cheerful Gospel! They say that sermons are supposed to have good news. I suppose that the good news in this one is that if we periodically experience the Christian life as quite challenging, that’s not because we’re doing it wrong.

“Will only a few be saved?” That was one of the hot questions in Jesus’ time, the sort one might use to size up new teachers. Who’s included in God’s coming Kingdom? It’s a sort of multiple-choice question: the very faithful Jews, all the Jews except the notorious sinners, all the Jews, all the Jews & the very virtuous Gentiles? This isn’t so much a question about life after death, as about who participates when God’s Kingdom is established on this earth.

Jesus’ answer is “None of the above.” Jesus offers a number of quite troubling images: a narrow door, an unsuccessful interview with the house’s owner, other people streaming in from all the compass points. More importantly, he shifts the question from a conversation about “them” to an exhortation to the crowd: “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.”

Today we talk about the Church as wide and inclusive. That’s in Jesus’ answer too: “Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.” But to talk of wideness and inclusivity alone is perhaps not the whole story.

Back to our text, it’s not hard to place this interchange within Jesus’ ministry. Like John the Baptist, Jesus warns the Jewish audience not to presume on their Jewishness. So, we non-Jews can devote the rest of this homily to feeling superior? Nope. The repeated warnings in the Epistle to the Hebrews remind us that going on autopilot is even more dangerous for us: “if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven!”

So, if “Strive to enter through the narrow door” is also directed to us, what’s it mean? What response is it calling for?

“The narrow door” is—obviously—a metaphor. In Luke’s Gospel it seems to point towards the Great Commandment and Jesus himself.

The Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God —that is, Yahweh— with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” So much for all the other gods that diminish our humanity! So much for the multitude of temptations to love our neighbors less than ourselves or end up loving ourselves less than we’d love even a pet. “Strive to enter through the narrow door” and “strive to live humanely” may turn out to be the same exhortation.

It’s worth noticing that this strive-to-enter-through-the-narrow-door exhortation is one that Jesus has already applied to himself. Jesus is making his way to the death that awaits him in Jerusalem. This is what loving God and loving his neighbor mean for Jesus in this situation. Doors usually involve four pieces of wood; Jesus’ narrow door is constructed of two.

But the narrow door is also about Jesus himself. It’s sometimes said that Jesus preached the Kingdom of God and that the Early Church preached Jesus. And that’s half of the truth. The other half? Jesus’ words and actions implied a unique role for Jesus in the Kingdom: the anointed / the Messiah / the Christ. “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” The Gospel of John comes at it differently: how are we supposed to love God (so the Great Commandment) if we don’t know God? Jesus makes God known. Jesus is the reality check on our images of God.

For the Gospels, the Great Commandment and Jesus are not two separate doors but one and the same door. For this reason, from the beginning, the Church has engaged in mission, so that there are places like Holy Cross very far from Jerusalem, with none of us looking particularly Jewish.

“Strive… For many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.” Turning our attention from ‘the narrow door’ to the trying-and-not-being-able part, what’s that about?

First, “strive” is rather like the verb we met last week in Heb 12: “run with perseverance.” Athletic and military metaphors are frequent in the New Testament; this is a world in which the virtues of the soldier and the athlete are needed.

“And will not be able” recalls another text from Luke: “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” And for “wealth” we could substitute any number of other gods.

Recall the traditional way to catch a monkey. Take a coconut and make a hole in it, just large enough for the monkey’s hand. Tie the coconut down, and put a sweet inside. The monkey smells the sweet, puts his hand into the coconut, grabs the sweet and the hole is too small for the fist to come out. The monkey will do anything except let go of the sweet. So you can wait till it falls asleep, goes unconscious from exhaustion or simply walk up & throw a net over it.

The sweet: for us humans it may be an addiction, or an exaggerated need for survival or security, affection or esteem, power or control. All of these can fatally get in the way of our loving God and our neighbor. They can warp our perception of our surroundings, so that we see others simply as competitors, and make us vulnerable to leaders who play on our fears.

We really want God’s Kingdom; we really want that sweet, whatever it is.

Recognizing that we’re holding onto the sweets —we typically discover a whole series— letting go of them, more single-heartedly loving God and our neighbor: all these are different ways of talking about the same life-time project. For this we are baptized and come to this communion rail. For this we rely on each other’s prayers and Jesus’ intercession. For this we make use of the means of grace: prayer, Scripture, the neighbor who doesn’t tell us what we want to hear. Jesus is our door.

Our culture encourages us to see ourselves as free. Scripture tends to see freedom as something we achieve, like the freedom to play a musical instrument well, or the freedom to speak another language well. So, to circle back to today’s psalm, if we pray it with today’s gospel as background the focus does shift:

Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked, *
from the clutches of the evildoer and the oppressor.

Looking down at the clutched hand… I really want that sweet; I really want freedom. Sweet Jesus, have mercy.

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost: A Sermon

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Readings (Track 1)

Last week, looking at the Colossians reading, I said “And that’s the question for us: Jesus as the solution to my ‘spiritual’ needs, or Jesus as the victor/healer in relation to all that ails our world?” That set up Jesus’ conversation with Martha and listening carefully to Jesus.

But if we stay with Colossians, what more might it want to say about “Jesus as the victor/healer in relation to all that ails our world” now?

Of course, “Jesus as the victor/healer in relation to all that ails our world” does sounds unbelievable, which is why Abraham and Sarah pop up so frequently in the New Testament. Well past the childbearing window, the Lord says “I will make of you a great nation” and they head for that new land, and hang in until they’re changing diapers. “Sounds unbelievable” is familiar territory for us people of faith.

But back to Jesus as healer/victor. How does societal healing, or, more broadly, societal change happen?

That’s the key question for organizations like World Vision, the relief & development agency where I worked for a couple decades. How, for example, to introduce a promising agricultural innovation? What you usually need is a few farmers willing to try it. If it works, it sells itself. The neighbors have been watching, now they want it too.

This is the strategy behind God’s calling Abraham/Israel. Here’s Moses in Deuteronomy:

“See…I now teach you statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’” (4:5-6)

And it remains the strategy with the renewal of the Israel project in Jesus’ followers. Here’s Paul in Ephesians: “and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (3:9-10). This is why the New Testament gives little attention to evangelism and a great deal of attention to the quality of life in the emerging congregations.

Quality of life. That would take a lot of unpacking. Here, let’s focus on what Paul is doing in Colossians. Last week Paul spoke of thrones, dominions, rulers and powers. He’s speaking of civil authorities, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg, for he’s also speaking of the customs, institutions, mental frameworks, that pretend to rule his hearer’s lives. Adjust the vocabulary a little and it all sounds very familiar: how many dimensions of our lives get ruled by “that’s just the way things are!” Take the economy for example. No one controls it. It has its priests (the economists). Sometimes it’s healthy. Sometimes it’s sick. Sometimes it demands sacrifices. Paul: the congregation is the place where the defeat of these powers is visible. Jew and Greek? One in Christ. Slave and free? One in Christ. Male and female? One in Christ.

That’s hardly easy. As in most agricultural test plots, we’re not dealing with virgin land, but with land that’s been badly treated. So Jesus’ life-giving death and resurrection needs to play out again and again in Jesus’ followers. This is, I think, what Paul was talking about in last week’s reading: “in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body.” Our baptism sets us up for this, as Paul reminds us in today’s reading: “when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”

The New Testament scholar Gerhard Lohfink writes:

Sin does not just vanish in the air, even when it is forgiven, because sin does not end with the sinner. It has consequences. It always has a social dimension. Every sin embeds itself in human community, corrupts a part of the world, and creates a damaged environment.

So the consequences of sin have to be worked off, and human beings cannot do so of themselves any more than they can absolve themselves. Genuine “working off” of guilt is only possible on a basis that God himself must create. And God has created such a base in his people, and in Jesus he has renewed and perfected it.

Lohfink continues, quoting from Dag Hammarskjöld’s diary:

Easter, 1960. Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who “forgives” you—out of love—takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.

The price you must pay for your own liberation through another’s sacrifice is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences to yourself.[1]

“Jesus as the victor/healer in relation to all that ails our world” now? Yes, as Jesus empowers his followers to continue his costly healing/forgiving work, to continue to show in their common life that the powers don’t get the last word.

Showing in their common life that the powers don’t get the last word: that’s a long-term project. The powers don’t get the last word; “that’s just the way it is” doesn’t get the last word. A few random examples: In the 4th Century, Basil in Caesarea established the first hospital with inpatient facilities, professional medical staff, and free care for the poor.[2] In the Middle Ages—as I recalled last week—water and wind power took the place of forced human labor. In recent centuries Genesis’ declaration that all humanity—not just the elites—bear God’s image began to be heard in new ways, and voting rights slowly expanded. So today governments claim legitimacy based on the people’s continued consent—however flimsy that claim. Quite breathtaking, really, what Jesus has accomplished through the Church.

Our story, of course, is not one of unbroken progress. God values our freedom, so things can go forward, backward, or sideways. We now have—God help us—for-profit hospitals. So Abraham and Sarah remain crucial as pioneers in trust. And speaking of Abraham, in God’s generosity loss doesn’t get the last word. The rabbis noticed that poor ram caught in the thicket that Abraham sacrificed instead of Isaac; Rabbi Hanina ben Dossa said this:

“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 Mount Sinai and the larger one will resound one day, announcing the coming of the Messiah.”[3]

Our Colossians reading started with “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him.” Continue: there’s a world out there badly needing healing, badly needing transformation. What might Jesus be seeking to do through us?

[1] Jesus of Nazareth pp 255-256.

[2] Cf. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lostinaoneacrewood/2020/01/03/basiliad-basil-of-caesarea-social-justice-worlds-first-hospital/.

[3] Wiesel Messengers of God 101.

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost: A Sermon

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Readings (Track 1)

How to enter into today’s readings? The psalm’s an entry point: it’s a rare day when some news story doesn’t have us more or less echoing the psalm’s opening: “You tyrant, why do you boast of wickedness / against the godly all day long? / You plot ruin; / your tongue is like a sharpened razor, / O worker of deception.” And it’s easy to echo the psalm’s wish (“Oh, that God would demolish you utterly…”).

There’s much of value in that psalm, but it shares with other psalms a weakness that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn identified in the Gulag Archipelago: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

It took some time, but the Old Testament writers figured this out as well. As a corrective to psalms like today’s psalm, Psalm 143 has: “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, / for no one living is righteous before you.”

But where does that leave us, still living in the world portrayed by the psalmist, in which evil is often loved more than good, lying more that speaking the truth, or the world portrayed by the prophet in which the poor and needy are usually not on a level playing field, doing the work that no one else wants to do? How do we deal with this world? “Oh, that God would demolish you utterly…” In a democracy that translates into some combination of (1) how to get more votes than you and (2) how to make it difficult for you to vote. Is that what we’re stuck with?

The recipients of Paul’s letter were no strangers to this world, and how to respond to it is the question that runs through the letter. The letter isn’t easy reading, regularly using vocabulary that’s unfamiliar. “Rulers and authorities” we can guess at, but in today’s reading we meet thrones, dominions, rulers and powers, and in next week’s reading we encounter the “elemental spirits of the universe.” Twenty centuries distant, the details escape us, but in broad outline it’s reasonably clear. The vocabulary reflects what we might call their current political science: the world is driven by innumerable agents straddling the spiritual/material divide, and before whom the individual is pretty much helpless. Paul’s opponents are arguing that while Jesus deals with some issues, other issues, not so much. We need to map out this world, figure out who’s who, and get some of these agents/angels—preferably with brass knuckles—as our patrons.

Nonsense, Paul thunders. First, God has responded to prayers like our psalm in a very unexpected way: “and through him [Jesus] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” This is not about God blessing the status quo, getting us all singing Kumbaya together. As we’ll hear in next week’s reading “[God] disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in [the cross]” (2:15).

Second, it’s not simply that Jesus is the one who reconciles. Jesus is the one through whom everything hangs together in the first place: “for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers– all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Not an easy sell, then or now: This One on the cross: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer?

Third, Paul’s own experience (“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.”) makes it clear that the cross is not confined to Jesus’ past, but is integral to how God is continuing to heal the world through Jesus’ disciples.

So the Colossians, buried with Jesus by baptism into death, so that they might walk in newness of life (cf. Rom. 6:4), have a choice. Framing the question in our terms, Jesus the answer to their spiritual needs, but only marginally relevant to their world’s economic, political, social challenges or Jesus as the cornerstone of a new world that God’s birthing in their midst? And that’s the question for us: Jesus as the solution to my “spiritual” needs, or Jesus as the victor/healer in relation to all that ails our world?

Our imaginations need some work. Which brings us to our Gospel, to Martha and Mary, no strangers to the world of the prophets and psalms. Our short Gospel holds up Mary’s response as worth noticing—and emulating. Mary: “who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.”

It’s a surprising story, because Luke puts it right after Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. With Jesus’ “Go and do likewise” ringing in our ears, doesn’t Martha have a slam-dunk case? She’s the one responding to her perception of her guests’ needs.

We could wonder about Martha’s perceptions, about the sometimes large gap between what’s actually needed, and what custom/role definition/”what will people say” dictate. But I’d guess that Luke’s focus is more on the importance of hearing the word as emphasized elsewhere in the Gospel, e.g., “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (8:21; cf. 11:28).

Mary, “who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.” I wonder: do we ever reach the point at which we’ve heard all we need to hear? It’s easy to assume that (though we’d never say it), and our practices don’t help us here. We’re used to referring to ourselves as Christians or Episcopalians, which can imply a settled identity. We have various curricula for Confirmation, but learning after that tends to be treated as optional. What if we paid more attention to that prayer at Baptism: “Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works”? That prayer implies ongoing learning, continuing to listen to Jesus.

A few Sundays ago in a different context I recalled Stephen Covey on listening. “’Seek first to understand’ involves a very deep shift in paradigm. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They’re either speaking or preparing to speak.”[1] Listening with the intent to reply—speaking from personal experience it’s easy for that to kick in particularly when it’s Jesus speaking.

We could still be in the early stages of discovering what listening to Jesus might unlock. Two examples before I close.

Lynn White Jr., a professor of medieval history, gave a lot of attention to the technological developments in that period in Europe, e.g., the windmill. He writes: “The chief glory of the later Middle Ages was not its cathedrals or its epics or its scholasticism: it was the building for the first time in history of a complex civilization which rested not on the backs of sweating slaves or coolies [those folk at the bottom that Amos talked about] but primary on non-human power.” The Greeks and Romans had the science, but why bother with so many slaves available? The monks had been listening to Jesus, or, as White puts it, “The labor-saving power-machines of the later Middle Ages were produced by the implicit theological assumption of the infinite worth of even the most degraded human personality, by an instinctive repugnance towards subjecting any man to a monotonous drudgery which seems less than human in that it requires the exercise neither of intelligence nor of choice.”[2]

A second example. Einstein said something like “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” But too often “the same thinking” is the order of the day, and we’re told that it’s either this or that. Then along comes Jesus, who regularly come at problems diagonally:

“Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” And Jesus starts doodling on the ground—resulting in all the accusers making a hasty exit.

“Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” And Jesus asks whose head is on the coin, how the inscription reads.

“And who is my neighbor?” Well, we heard Jesus’ non-answer to that question last Sunday!

At the simplest level, whether in an election year or not, we need Jesus’ diagonal thinking. We need Jesus to get us out of our mental ruts. At the less simple levels, we need the life of the crucified and resurrected Jesus in us and for that we’ll come to the altar in a few minutes.

Jesus, through whom all things were created, in whom all things hold together: what might listening more closely to Jesus today produce? Sounds like that’s worth finding out.

[1] Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

[2] “Technology and invention in the Middle Ages,” reprinted in Medieval Religion and Technology.

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany: A Sermon

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Readings

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

Let’s start with Paul on Jesus’ resurrection from our second reading. “If Christ has not been raised…” What’s at issue here? Paul gives multiple answers to the question; here’s one of them: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (v. 32). If Christ has not been raised this [our presence in this Mass] requires a special kind of stupid. Another answer implicit in the text: If Christ has not been raised, then this world doesn’t matter. It’s disposable. But Christ raised—that’s God’s strongest statement that this world matters, that this world has a future.

The Gospel describes that future. Jesus’ words are surprising, by many accounts nonsense. No one wants to be poor, hungry, etc., and those who are poor, hungry, etc. are not obviously blessed or happy. So the verb tenses are important: “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” This future is not simply a continuation of the present. And perhaps a better translation than ‘blessed’ or ‘happy’ is ‘fortunate’: as in you’ve got the winning lottery ticket.

But wait! How can Jesus be pronouncing the poor etc. fortunate and the rich etc. unfortunate? How, for that matter, could his mother sing “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, / and lifted up the lowly; / he has filled the hungry with good things, / and sent the rich away empty” (Lk. 1:52-53)? Here we need to pull the camera back, say, to Psalm 82. It’s short; I’ll read it.

1 God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
2 “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?
3 Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk around in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6 I say, “You are gods,
children of the Most High, all of you;
7 nevertheless, you shall die like mortals,
 and fall like any prince.”
8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth;
for all the nations belong to you!

Within Holy Scripture this vision is an uncontested portrait of our world. Our world is usually unjust. While there are exceptions, the wicked, sinners, and scornful of Psalm 1 usually play an outsized role in making and interpreting our laws. The Golden Rule: those with the gold rule. So Jesus, with only some hyperbole, declares the poor, hungry, etc. fortunate and the rich, full, etc. unfortunate, because usually the poor are poor because of injustice and the rich are rich because of injustice.

Within Holy Scripture the benchmark for justice is the law of Moses, that law that this morning’s psalm celebrated. And there it’s clear that justice is both about how wealth is acquired and how wealth is stewarded. Acquired: only one set of weights and measures in the marketplace. Stewarded: “my” wealth is what I hold in trust for the community. Harvests are to be incomplete, so the poor have something to glean. In Deuteronomy all debts are cancelled every seven years. In Leviticus every fifty years there’s a Jubilee in which all return to their original tribal inheritance. Justice means nobody stays poor—or rich—indefinitely. [NB: this vision of justice aligns with the Native American critique of European society in the early dialogues, for which see Graeber & Wengrow The Dawn of Everything.]

Of course other factors influence where wealth or poverty cluster. Proverbs talks a lot about diligence and sloth, wise and foolish decisions. The larger environment plays a role, all those things over which we have no control: droughts, locusts, armies passing through. But when the Bible pulls back for the big picture (like Psalm 82, Mary’s Song, the Beatitudes), injustice is centerstage.

The poor, hungry, etc. of the Beatitudes are fortunate because God will respond to the prayer at Psalm 82’s end: “Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you!”

How do we respond to these texts? Before moving to our other readings, three observations. First, between Psalm 82 and the Beatitudes, to the degree that I’m rich, full, etc. it’s sheer folly to assume that that’s simply the result of my virtue. On the personal level, that might be. On the corporate level, no way. So one of our confessions speaks of “the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” We live on stolen land, our consumer goods are cheap because we’re happy to get them from countries that discourage trade unions—or use slave labor. Should we wish to move from confession to amendment of life, there’s plenty to keep us occupied.

Second, the two verses immediately following today’s Gospel reading: “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” So understandable as it might be, our response to the Beatitudes is not to take up the sword, to set ourselves up as judges.

Third, the poor, the hungry, etc. need to wait until Jesus’ return? Absolutely not. Jesus’ vision is that his church be the sphere in which his words are experienced to be true. Recall Jesus’ words to Peter: “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age– houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions– and in the age to come eternal life” (Mk. 10:29-30). But from the start we’ve tended to downsize that vision, so Jesus’ brother James has to write:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (2:14-17)

[In other words, we’re used to hearing James’ words as an argument with Paul re the roles of faith and works. Perhaps equally at issue: whether the church incarnates Jesus’ communal vision, or is simply a group of folk each pursuing their individual salvation.] What’s the church for? (What’s faith for?) The Beatitudes can do wonders for our imagination.

Turning to Jeremiah and Psalm 1, we might hear that image of the tree planted by water as a strategy for life in the world as described both by Psalm 82 and by Jesus’ Beatitudes. It’s an unjust world, and God’s addressing that, but it’s not a quick fix. God’s playing a long game, and the image of the tree planted by water urges us to likewise play a long game. That can be hard. The trust on which Jeremiah focuses is the trust that God’s timetable is preferable to ours. (And, parenthetically, like Jeremiah we’re free to repeatedly bend God’s ear about that—as long as we’re willing to listen to how God might respond.)

Did you notice the chorus in today’s readings? Jeremiah: How fortunate/blessed/happy those who trust in the Lord. The Psalm: How fortunate/blessed/happy those who delight in the law of the Lord. Jesus: How fortunate/blessed/happy the poor. Why (bottom line)? God raised Christ from the dead. God has plenty of skin in the game, and, shifting the image, God regularly invites us to share His Body and Blood so that we play that game well.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.” Blessed are we as we continue to examine ourselves and make the choices that position us to together hear Jesus’ words as good news, to together experience Jesus’ words as good news.

Rise up, O God, judge the earth;
for all the nations belong to you!

Our God is responding to that prayer today, and invites us to join in that response today. We’ll let Isaiah take us out:

For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field—all us trees of the field—shall clap their hands. (55:12).