Saturday, March 16, 2024

The Voice Is For You Lent 5B

 The Voice Is for You

Previously in John Chapter 12: Six days before the Passover, Jesus spent time in Bethany with Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead, and the sisters Martha and Mary. A crowd had gathered because of Lazarus, and some Judeans from the Temple began a plot to kill both Jesus and Lazarus because of their popularity. The next day, Jesus entered Jerusalem with great pomp and circumstance, when suddenly, out of the great crowd, some foreigners, Greeks, gentiles, show up for the Passover festival. They say to Philip, “We wish to see Jesus.” Philip runs to Andrew and says “Hey, there are all these Greeks who want to see Jesus! What should we do?” [i] 

The two of them run off to tell Jesus that foreigners are at the gates looking for him. Jesus says, in effect, if anyone wants to see me, really really see me, then stick around. You’ll have to deal with my death at the hands of Rome to really really see me. Are they ready for that? Are you ready for that? Begging the question: Are we ready for that? 

He then says it is necessary. It’s like a grain of wheat dying in the ground and then coming to life to bear much fruit. A metaphor of dying to life in this world to gain a life in the world as God imagines it can be. “Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” [ii] 

Then, quoting Psalm 6 Jesus says, “Now my soul is troubled! What should I say? Father, save me from this hour. No, this is why I am here now. Father, glorify thy name!” The English translation is timid. His heart is not “troubled.” The text says, “My very being is struck with terror!” As well it should be. Then comes a big noise! Some thought it was thunder, so it must have been loud. Some thought it looked as if Jesus was talking to someone, but there was no one there. Must be angels, some surmise. It was the voice from heaven. The same voice he heard at his baptism that said, “You are my beloved. I am well pleased with you.” The same voice from the cloud on the mountain top with Peter, James and John and Jesus that said, “This is my beloved, listen to him.” Are we listening yet? 

Now when Jesus says, “Father, glorify thy name,” the voice returns and says, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” It was just thunder. Now he’s talking to himself. It sounds as if he’s lost it. Should we even think of letting the foreigners see him like this? Out of the confusion, Jesus announces, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine.” That means for our sake, not his. This voice that keeps coming around is for us, not for Jesus. Which makes perfect sense. He knows the voice. The voice knows him. He has always heard his Father’s voice. Jesus comes to urge us to listen to his Father’s voice. To listen for the voice of God! 

The question is: Are we listening? Are we listening for the voice of God? It may surprise us to learn that to this very day, not just in the olden days, but today 90% of the peoples of the world regularly hear such voices? That we modern Westerners are the minority, the anomaly, as those people who do not regularly access this kind of communication with God and Spirits. The question is quite naturally, why not us? Most people say we are too busy to be listening, or think we are too sophisticated to hear voices, or think you have to be crazy or mentally ill to hear such voices. Someone has suggested that maybe it is because we are too grown up. Someone else has pointed out that most other cultures do not make such a big deal about needing to grow up. After all, it was Jesus who says we are to come to God’s kingdom like children! 

Of course, it may be that we don’t want to hear anything about having to watch him die, watch him be tortured and executed, the victim of state sanctioned capital punishment? Oh sure, dress it up as being like a grain of wheat, call it what you may, but that is what it is: state sanctioned public execution. In all the debate on capital punishment in our country, how often are we asked to reflect upon what it means that the one who calls us to “follow him” is himself the victim of state sanctioned capital punishment? The same voice that says we are to “love our enemies, “and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” [iii] This he says just after those liberal talking points called The Beatitudes in his Sermon on the Mount. Are we still listening? 

Listening to his Father’s voice that says, “You are my beloved. I am well pleased with you. I have glorified my name and I will glorify it again.” We are left feeling that for God’s name to be glorified, we need to be listening to God’s voice and learn how to become part of the world’s glorifying process. Holy week, and all it portends, is dark and scary, and lays bare just how uncivilized we really can are. In Sunday School we rarely hear anything about this voice and its being for us. We typically do not spend much time on how to listen for this voice. Yet, Jesus says it is for us. And that suggests that we play a crucial role in the process of the world’s glorification. 

The creeds do not appear to discuss listening for this voice. The catechism does not seem to discuss it. Yet, there it is. “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.” Seems as if we best get listening to hear what this voice says. Nothing less than the glorification and future of the whole world is at stake according to what Jesus says.

 I think that what Jesus is saying, is that those of us, who like the foreigners want to see Jesus, are the very people to whom others come expecting to see Jesus. In us. In what we say and what we do. In his book, By Grace Transformed, the late Gordon Cosby of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., discusses just how it is others “hear the voice” and come to see Jesus. Gordon puts it this way:

Every single one of us is significant to somebody else. The people to whom we are significant will catch this thing from us if they know that we are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, absolutely devoted and loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ. But the trouble is that, in those moments we think of as off moments, others decide whether or not we are truly committed. The times a person says, “I must talk to you,” or, when we are weeding the garden. Or, working in an office. Grading a road. Nailing on a molding or painting a room. Cooking a meal. Speaking to a child. These are the times and places where the other person decides who we really are. There can be no “off moments” for Christians if our faith and its vitality are to be contagious. [iv] 

That is, the glorification of God’s name comes in our most mundane moments. Jesus leaves it up to us to glorify God’s name. To do that we need to listen for The Voice. The Voice that is for our sake, not for his. The Voice speaks to us so that we might know just how Beloved we are. And just how important we are to join with Jesus in re-creating the world in the image of God. For it will be in listening to the voice and following Jesus that we will come to know how pleased God is with us. Once we hear this voice, know the voice, and become those people the voice calls us to be, others will come to see Jesus in all that we say and all that we do. And this is Good News! Amen.


[i] John 12:20-33

[ii] John 12:25

[iii] Matthew 5:43-48

[iv] Cosby, N.Gordon, Transformed by Grace (Crossroad, NYC:1999]) p.10

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Serpents and Eternal Life Lent 4B

 

Serpents and Eternal Life

Jesus says to Nicodemus who comes to find out who Jesus is, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Adding the all too familiar sports stadium staple, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” [i]  In an astonishing analogy, Jesus self-identifies himself with “the serpent.” The people escaping Egypt were bad-mouthing Moses and God, thus separating themselves from the love of the God who had engineered their escape from slavery. To teach them a lesson, God releases some serpents, which, if they nip you on the heel, you die. Learning their lesson, they repent. “We have sinned…please pray for the Lord to take the serpents away.” The Book of Common Prayer defines sin as all desires and actions that separate us from the love of God. [ii] Note: no one accuses them of sin. They know it and renounce it themselves. 

The Lord of the Passover and Exodus instructs Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it high on a pole, so that when the people who have been bitten look up to the serpent, they are healed. And restored to a life with God once again. The people look up to the serpent and live. [iii]  This all may strike us as bizarre. But there is ample evidence from the Bronze Age (3300-1200 BCE) of bronze serpents as cult objects throughout the world of the Bible. Especially in Egypt, where a single serpent on a pole, the Rod of Asclepius, which in both Greek and Egyptian mythology was a deity identified with healing. 

We might note that paradoxically, God saves the people from their affliction by inviting them to gaze on the very image of their affliction. The suggestion seems to be that a problem cannot be solved unless we face it and accepted for what it is. Perhaps God is offering a hard but life-giving lesson to God’s beloved people as they suffer in the wilderness: There is no way around. The only way out is through. Lent is a time set aside to remind us of this most important lesson. 

Jesus seems to say, “When I am lifted high upon a Roman cross, I am like the bronze-serpent Moses lifted up in the wilderness, which represents our God’s steadfast love and forgiveness, and desire to relent from punishment. God so loves the world that God gives his only Son, not to condemn the world but to save all who renounce all their desires and actions that separate themselves from the love God.” 

The very heart of John 3:16 tells us that God loves and God gives. What God loves is the world, the cosmos, all creation and everyone and everything therein. God does not love only the church. God does not love only Americans. God does not love only white people. God calls us to love our neighbors, whomever they are and from wherever they come. 

Jesus and Nicodemus both know that in the beginning, it says we are created, male and female, in the image of God. [iv] God’s image from the very beginning is to love and to give. We, therefore, have been placed here on this fragile Earth our island home to love and to give. To be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abound in steadfast love, and to relent from punishing – as we hear that God does in the episode with the serpents in Numbers. This is what I understand Jesus means by his astonishing self-identification with the bronze-serpent of Moses. Jesus enters into a world of people that through word and action repeatedly separate themselves from God’s love and God’s forgiveness. It’s a world filled with anger and derision toward others – especially those others who are in any way unlike ourselves, unlike our tribe, unlike our country, unlike me. 

Each Sunday in Lent we begin by saying, “Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ says! Love God with your whole self, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus does not make this up. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” And Deuteronomy 10: 19, “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And Leviticus 19:34, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” That is, the Great Commandment and the Second that is like unto it, come from Torah, the first five books of the Bible. To be made in the image of God, is to embody God’s love and God’s infinite capacity to give to others, all others, even, as in Numbers, when they are speaking against God and you. Especially when they are speaking against God and you. 

Look at the bronze serpent and live. Look at Jesus on the cross and have eternal life. Which is not simply a long life, or even life after death, but rather a character of one’s life here and now that embodies being made in the likeness of a God who loves and who gives – who gives everything that we might live. That we might have life eternal. Life lived with God never ends. 

Ilia Delio, a Franciscan nun and scholar, tells us that Clare of Assisi, an early follower of Francis, “was known as ‘the mirror saint’ because she drew her spiritual insights from her deep reflection on the cross of Jesus Christ. She wrote to her friend, Agnes of Prague, princess and daughter of King Wenceslas, that the cross reflects your true image. ‘Gaze on this cross every day,’ she admonishes Agnes, ‘and study your face within it, so that you may be adorned with virtues within and without.’” Delio then asks, “Does your face reflect what is in your heart. When the image of who we are reflects what we are; when our face expresses what fills the heart, then we image Christ, the image of love incarnate – God’s agape love.” [v] 

Jesus self-identifies with the bronze serpent as an agent of healing. Jesus self-identifies with all people in this world who suffer. [vi] Jesus self-identifies with all those whose lives seem to be lived day after day on a cross of separation, deception, and all the brokenness of the world. His astonishing self-identification with the bronze serpent and the cross stands as symbols of his love of God and love of Neighbor. He gives his life for the world. The whole world. Not for the church, not just for Christians, but for the whole world, everyone and everything therein. Lent, Good Friday, and Easter, all call us to reflect on the man on the cross as a reminder of just who we are created to be: images, icons, of a God who loves and who gives for the life of the world. As we look upon Jesus on the Cross, we are to see ourselves: agents of love, forgiveness, and healing for a broken world of broken people. There can be nothing more astonishing than this! Imagine what the world could be like were we to live into the astonishment of Jesus. This would truly be eternal life, here and now, and for ever and ever. Amen.


[i] John 3:14-21

[ii] Book of Common Prayer, p.302

[iii] Numbers 21:4-9

[iv] Genesis 1:26

[v] Delio, Ilia, The Primacy of Love (Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 2022) p. 49-50

[vi] Matthew 25: 31-46

Saturday, March 2, 2024

No Catfish Messiah! Lent 3B

 No Catfish Messiah!  

Listening to the wild and wooly Rondo-Burleske of the Mahler Ninth Symphony while pondering this episode of Jesus driving out the animals for the Passover sacrifices and overturning the tables of the currency exchange in the Temple, [i] three things suddenly came to mind: 1) when I make my epic movie about Jesus, Mahler’s Rondo-Burleske will be the soundtrack for this violent scene in the outer Temple precincts; and 2) Rabbi Edwin Friedman’s Fable of the catfish. Catfish patrol fishtanks to clean up the mess all the other fish make, literally consuming their excrement. One day, however, the catfish goes on strike. The water in the tank gets cloudy, messy and disgusting. All the fish complain. “Do something about all this, Catfish!” “I’ve had it with cleaning up your messes! Clean up your own messes!” the catfish says. [ii] 

And finally, 3) it seems that Jesus, in this violent prophetic gesture, makes the same point as to what a messiah’s job really is: to lead all of us in ways to clean up our own messes! His action is similar to Ezekiel’s public demonstration, some 700 years before Jesus, eating ritually impure, and disgusting, barley cakes baked on human dung to get the people’s attention to the impending destruction of Jerusalem and Exile to Babylon as a result of their continuing inattention to God’s true desires. [iii] Desires which were expressed at least eight centuries before Christ by Hosea, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings;” [iv] and Isaiah, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.” [v] God’s appetites evidently had changed significantly, as that other eighth century prophet Micah sums it up:

“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of

rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord 

require of you but to do justice and to love kindness 

and to walk humbly with your God? [vi] 

Suffice it to say, Jesus takes it upon himself to make the point that the Lord God of the Exodus, the Exile and the current Roman Occupation has had enough ritual bar-b-que to last for all eternity, and would rather have us simply be kind to one another, fight for justice for those who are oppressed, and to humble ourselves walking in God’s way instead of our own way believing that we know everything there is to know about God, Jesus and Life itself. Living, as we do, in what will one day be looked back upon as the most hubris-ridden period in human history, we can honestly say that after 2000 more years of ignoring what God really desires, we still need to learn the lessons this outburst by Jesus has tried to place squarely in front of us. No catfish messiah, he! Time to stop thinking someone besides us will do the heavy lifting! 

Although Peter, at Caesarea Philippi, seemed to correctly identified Jesus as the Christos, the Christ, God’s anointed messiah, he still believed that that meant that Jesus, on his own, would turn the world right-side-up again dispensing with all of our sinfulness, and remaking the world as God dreamed it to be: devoid our perverted understandings of “free will” as human arrogance that wants everything “go my way, which everyone must accept as their way, or take the highway;” rather, God dreams of “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky,” as was so often expressed by the African-American mystic, Howard Thurman. [vii] 

Like Ezekiel before him, Jesus knows the Roman occupation, and the Zealots’s attempts at insurrection against the Empire, will not end well. And like Ezekiel before him, it will not be long before once again there will be no Temple where God’s name can dwell and sacrifices made. The lessons of Isaiah, Hosea and Micah will come to pass, but not without greater violence than shooing some animals away and turning over the currency exchange where one changes coins of the Empire for coins acceptable for offering in the Temple – coins with the emperor’s face declaring that “Caesar is God” cannot be used. The time is now, Jesus seems to be saying in this prophetic outburst, to honor God’s true desire of shalom, peace and justice, for all people, respecting the dignity of every human being as God’s beloved. Seeking and Serving Christ in all persons; loving our neighbor as ourselves. The hardest work of all, of course, is loving one’s self. 

All four gospels recount a version of this episode. Mark, Matthew and Luke, however, place near the end of the story just before the showdown with Pilate. This would suggest that this outburst, which interrupts the commerce of the week-long Passover festival, would displease the folks back in Rome are skimming the cash offerings for themselves! As trues as this may be, John instead places this at the outset of the story to make sure the listener understands: Jesus is God’s Beloved Son; The Temple is God’s House; once The Temple is gone (which it was as John’s community was writing this down), God’s presence will heretofore reside in person of Christ. Therefore, it is important to follow this Jesus who walks humbly with God, seeking justice for all people, and exemplifying what it means to be kind to one another; to be friendly people beneath a friendly sky! And to clean up our own messes! 

This seems to be why he is talking about rebuilding the “temple”. “But he was speaking of the temple of his body.” [viii] He looks forward to Good Friday and Easter, as we do in Lent. And back to the world as envisioned by the prophets nearly 3,000 years ago, where there is no place and no need for animal, grain, oil and wine sacrifices, but a never-ending need for justice, peace and humility; for kindness; for shalom, peace, understood as all of us working together to meet the very real human needs of all people, all creatures, and creation itself. No messiah, no single figure, no one anointed by God, will ever be the catfish for our fish-tank. Every time Jesus says, “Follow me,” he invites us to clean up our own messes with justice, kindness and humility. This is God’s Dream for us all: A friendly world, of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky! We are given “free will” so that working together we might one day make God’s dream come true.


[i] John 2:13-22

[ii] Friedman, Edwin, Friedman’s Fables, (Guilford Press, NYC: 1991)

[iii] Ezekiel 4:9-15 “12 You shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.”

[iv] Hosea 6:6

[v] Isaiah 1:11

[vi] Micah 6:6-8

[vii] Dozier, Verna, The Dream of God, (Cowley Publications, Boston: 1991) p.31

[viii] John 2:22

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Do We Understand The Bible? Lent 2B

 Do We Understand The Bible?    2B

Let’s back up a bit. Jesus and his disciples are near Caesarea Philippi. It is as far north as he is recorded to have traveled. It was an ancient Roman and Greek city known for its revelations by the God Pan. It is a lush region at the base of Mt. Hermon, and the headwaters of the Sea of Galilee and the River Jordan. It’s here, about as far away from Jerusalem as one can get, in a land of revelations, that Jesus asks the central question in Mark, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter alone answers, “You are the Christos, the anointed, God’s messiah.” And Jesus scolds them to speak to no one about him. This may strike us as odd. But that’s not all. He teaches them that it is necessary that the son of adam [man] suffer many things, be rejected by the Judeans and Romans in power in Jerusalem, and be killed, and after three days rise. He says this all plainly. [i] 

Then Peter begins to scold him. Jesus, turns and sees the rest of the disciples, and scolds Peter. “Get behind me, you satan. You don’t judge things the way God does, but the way people do.” Ouch! We remember the satan is not a guy with a pitch fork and horns. In Hebrew culture and literature, it is someone sent by God to be sure everyone understands. To test people’s faith. In this case, however, it is the tester who does not understand at all.  

This is the heart of the Good News, the evangelion, that Mark is proclaiming. This episode is dead center in Mark’s gospel. Set in this historic region of revelations, this truly deserves to be called, Breaking News! Jesus is revealed for who he is, the Christ, and reveals the rest of the story. Peter does not yet understand who this Christ, this messiah, really is. Begging the question: Does the Church really know who Jesus is? Do we really understand who Jesus is? 

As I pondered all of this, along comes this on Facebook by a Pastor named Brian Zahnd:

"I have a problem with the Bible. Here’s my problem…I’m an ancient Egyptian. I’m a comfortable Babylonian. I’m a Roman in his villa.

“That’s my problem. See, I’m trying to read the Bible for all it’s worth, but I’m not a Hebrew slave suffering in Egypt. I’m not a conquered Judean deported to Babylon. I’m not a first century Jew living under Roman occupation.

“I’m a citizen of a superpower. I was born among the conquerors. I live in the empire. But I want to read the Bible and think it’s talking to me. This is a problem. One of the most remarkable things about the Bible is that in it we find the narrative told from the perspective of the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, the conquered, the occupied, the defeated. This is what makes it prophetic. We know that history is written by the winners. This is true — except in the case of the Bible it’s the opposite! This is the subversive genius of the Hebrew prophets. They wrote from a bottom-up perspective.

“Imagine a history of colonial America written by Cherokee Indians and African slaves. That would be a different way of telling the story! And that’s what the Bible does. It’s the story of Egypt told by the slaves. The story of Babylon told by the exiles. The story of Rome told by the occupied. What about those brief moments when Israel appeared to be on top? In those cases, the prophets told Israel’s story from the perspective of the peasant poor as a critique of the royal elite. Like when Amos denounced the wives of the Israelite aristocracy as ‘the fat cows of Bashan.’

“Every story is told from a vantage point; it has a bias. The bias of the Bible is from the vantage point of the underclass. But what happens if we lose sight of the prophetically subversive vantage point of the Bible? What happens if those on top read themselves into the story, not as imperial Egyptians, Babylonians, and Romans, but as the Israelites? That’s when you get the bizarre phenomenon of the elite and entitled using the Bible to endorse their dominance as God’s will. This is Roman Christianity after Constantine. This is Christendom on crusade. This is colonists seeing America as their promised land and the native inhabitants as Canaanites to be conquered. This is the whole history of European colonialism. This is Jim Crow. This is the American prosperity gospel. This is the domestication of Scripture. This is making the Bible dance a jig for our own amusement.

“As Jesus preached the arrival of the kingdom of God, he would frequently emphasize the revolutionary character of God’s reign by saying things like, ‘the last will be first and the first last.’ How does Jesus’ first-last aphorism strike you? I don’t know about you, but it makes this modern day Roman a bit nervous.

“Imagine this: A powerful charismatic figure arrives on the world scene and amasses a great following by announcing the arrival of a new arrangement of the world where those at the bottom are to be promoted, and those on top are to have their lifestyle “restructured.” How do people receive this? I can imagine the Bangladeshis saying, “When do we start?!” and the Americans saying, “Hold on now, let’s not get carried away!” [ii] 

As I read this from Pastor Brian Zahnd I said, Wow! Who is this guy? This is brilliant! Can we see the problem here? Do we begin to understand? Do we understand who Jesus is? Do we even know who we are? We are Peter. Peter the satan. Hold on there, Jesus, he says. Let’s not get carried away. We want a Christ, a messiah, who can vanquish these Romans and deliver us from this Exile-at-Home we have suffered for generations now. A messiah who can make all our problems go away. Not a messiah hanging on a Roman cross! 

Then what do we hear as Jesus concludes, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?” There’s some more upside-down, right-side-up thoughts to ponder. 

Meanwhile, there is this: according to news accounts, we live in a time where in many churches across the land, people are chastising their preachers and pastors for talking about The Beatitudes. Calling them “liberal talking -points,” and saying “they’re too weak.” This is no time for humility, they say. How dare Jesus say the meek shall inherit the earth! And Jesus wept. 

Lent is a time to “meditate on God’s Word,” and begin to see just where we truly fit into Mark’s story of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Pastor Zahnd correctly suggests we need to see ourselves as Pharaoh, as Nebuchadnezzar, and Caesar. And we need to hear Jesus calling us to lift up the meek, the poor, the humble, and those who mourn. The last will be first, and the first will be last, he says. Perhaps we need to stand on our heads as we try to read The Bible right-side-up! It’s a good thing we have forty days to begin to sort this out before launching ourselves into Easter and Pentecost. With God’s grace and God’s Spirit, we may begin to understand. We know that eventually Peter did. There’s hope for us yet to begin to read the Bible right. 

[i] Mark 8:27-38

[ii] https://brianzahnd.com/2014/02/problem-bible/  by Pastor & Author, Brian Zahnd

Saturday, February 17, 2024

The Hokey Pokey Is What It's All About Lent 1B

The Hokey Pokey Is What It’s All About!

I remember being in awe as Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel explained that the manuscript that became his book Night began as a one-thousand-page memoir of his time in the Auschwitz camps as a teenager. He edited it down to a mere 120 pages so that it might be a bare-bones, metaphysical and existential account with no elaboration of the horrors he and some 12 million people experienced at the hands of Nazi Germany, including six million European Jews. 

Among the four gospel accounts of Jesus the Christ, Mark, long understood as the earliest of the four, stands as a similar bare bones existential account: a mere six short sentences sum up his baptism by John, his hearing the voice from heaven and an experience of the Spirit of God, the same Spirit drives him into an extended time of testing in the wilderness, and the beginning of his public ministry. His time in the wilderness in Mark consists of only two short declarative sentences, with no details of what his “testing” by “Satan” consisted of. [i] 

If one brackets out the familiar accounts in Matthew and Luke, which are nearly identical and all too familiar, one might be able to imagine this testing as a sign of an internal struggle to make sense of what the Spirit and Voice had told him: that he is God’s beloved Son, and that the God of his ancestors Sarah and Abraham, Rebecca and Isaac, Rachel, Leah and Jacob is well pleased with him. Too many years of Sunday School, too many years of sermons, too many annual publications around Christmas and Easter time purporting to tell “the real story” of Jesus the Christ, make it difficult to imagine anything other than what others have told us about the man from Nazareth in Galilee as he is in the wilderness. 

Only Mark leaves us to sort it out ourselves. We might ask ourselves, why? Why no details about a time away from everyone and everything else in a place with no resources but himself and the presence of God as angels, and some sort of wild beasts? And of course, the Satan, who throughout the Hebrew scriptures is portrayed as an agent of God’s to test people’s faith. 

Is it possible that after hearing the voice from heaven, that the one who would later by called the Christ, God’s anointed one, himself has some questions about just what on earth all this means? 

The immediate outcome of this extended stay in a wilderness is his confidence to proclaim the closeness of God’s “kingdom,” and the need of everyone, all the time, to “repent and believe the good news.” It is a trademark of Mark’s spare, bare-bones account to suggest in the very first sentence of chapter 1 that this Jesus who joined in John’s ritual bathing in the River Jordan is himself, his very self, the good news that he proclaims! And that Mark intends only to reveal “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Which, similar to John’s account decades later, indicates that there is no ending to the story – at least not until God’s kingdom of Shalom covers the entire face of the Earth. 

After forty days, which is meant to denote something like longer than a Lunar Cycle, more than a month, Jesus calls on everyone to change their minds – metanoia – and turn, or re-turn to God and God’s way of Shalom. Further, Mark’s choice of the Greek metanoia, as opposed to the more definite Koine Greek word for full and total conversion, epistrophe, suggests that this repentance this Beloved Son of God calls us to is not a once-and-done affair, as depicted in the epic Burt Lancaster film, Elmer Gantry – nor as often depicted in endless televangelist shows or tent revivals – but rather is an ongoing process of conversion in most of our lives, as the still popular Shaker song has it: “To turn, turn will be our delight / Till by turning, turning we come round right.” [ii] It seems part of the human condition that we continually need to turn and re-turn to God and God’s way of Shalom: justice and peace for all people, respecting the dignity of every human being. Like the Hokey Pokey, we need to turn ourselves about. 

Very few of us can take more than a month away from everyone and everything to get this turning back to God and God’s way “just right” as Jesus appears to do. Repentance, then, is an ongoing, often never-ending, process in which we mean to never look back, but…inevitably we stray from the path, re-turn to bad habits, creating the need to “turn, turn, turn, turn again” until we “come round right” once again. Repentance is characterized as a coming to our senses and once again grounding ourselves in the presence of God – or for Christians, to see ourselves once again grounded in the promised presence of Christ “until the end of the age!” [iii] 

That is, it’s OK for us all to go astray. There are few, if any, of us who do not! One imagines this testing going on with God’s own administrator of Godly SAT’s, Satan, is based as much on our own doubts about our own belovedness as it may be in any direct questioning of our faith by God’s own tester. It was the great 20th century theologian, Paul Tilich, who suggested that doubt is not the absence of faith, but rather is an essential element of faith. Frederick Buechner says it best: “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” [iv] 

It ought to be noted, this ritual to turn back to God is depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, or Torah. The word is shuv (pronounced shoove) – which can mean to turn from one place or direction toward another, or to re-turn to one’s beginnings. Thus, in Genesis 3:19 Adam is told by YHWH in the garden, as we were just reminded on Ash Wednesday, that ultimately, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return ( shuv ) to the ground ( a damah ), since from it you were taken ; for dust ( a damah ) you are and to dust ( a damah ) you will return ( shuv ).” 

As we were also reminded on Ash Wednesday, our God is an awesome God since the repeated description of God in Torah, the scriptures of Jesus, is often repeated: “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.” [v] There it is again! We are to shuv, shuv, shuv, turn, turn and re-turn to the Lord our God because our God is not finished with us yet! 

Lent is that time of year for us all to find ways to shuv, to turn, to re-turn to the Lord our God whose Good News IS Jesus the Christ, God’s beloved Son! In his life, death and resurrection, the Christ shows us how to shuv, shuv, shuv until we come down right! And since he promises to be with us to the end of the age, we have lots of time to get it just right! And that is Good News for us all!


[i] Mark 1:9-15

[ii] Simple Gifts, a Shaker song written and composed in 1848, generally attributed to Elder Joseph Brackett from Alfred Shaker Village.

[iii] Matthew 28:20b

[iv] Buechner, Frederick, Wishful Thinking: a theological ABC (Harper & Row, New York:1973) p. 20

[v] Joel 2:12-14


Saturday, February 10, 2024

Death and Transfiguration

 Death and Transfiguration

This episode in Mark’s gospel is singularly the most mysterious episode in the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God: Jesus is Transfigured – has become blindingly white light – and is seen by three disciples speaking to Moses and the prophet Elijah. [i] 

The text in Mark begins, “Six days later….” Six days later than what? Then when Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter answered, correctly, “You are the Christ!” Then Jesus told them that he would suffer many things, be rejected, killed, and after three days he would rise again. And he followed that by saying those who want to become a follower of his must pick up their cross “and follow me.” Peter objects strenuously and is told to be quiet and get with the program. 

Six days later is also another way of saying, “On the seventh day…” which for the Bible means much more than just “a week later.” God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the Seventh. The seventh day is ordained in the Ten Commandments as a day of Sabbath rest. Sabbath rest is meant to take us out of the tedium of our day-to-day activities and thoughts and use the time to remember and experience the presence of God in all things, in all places, at all times. 

Then there’s the location on a mountain. Mountains have long been considered “thin places,” higher in altitude, thinner in air, and closer to God. Moses sat atop Mount Sinai for six days, and on the seventh day God spoke to him. And Elijah wanted to see God, hid in a crevice as God passed by. After much thunder and violence, he heard a still, small voice, a sigh, and knew at once that YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was there nearby. Moses and Elijah were experienced mountaineers who both were known to have spoken directly to God. 

Curiously, the Bible offers no narrative account of either of them dying – Moses literally just disappears from the narrative, and Elijah, as we read in 2 Kings, flies off in his chariot of fire into the wild blue yonder we know not where! [ii] Both are believed to have the capacity to return to planet Earth. Therefore, who better to be seen with Jesus on a mountain top than Moses and Elijah – the Law and the Prophets. The text tells us they are talking to Jesus who suddenly appears to be radioactive, blindingly bright. His appearance, the location and the presence of Moses and Elijah suggests that the two visitors are once again talking to God. 

Try to imagine for a moment viewing this scene. At the very least, it would leave us breathless, even speech less. Not Peter!  Peter decides to get in on the conversation. He calls Jesus “Rabbi,” and offers to set up three dwellings, or three booths. Why booths? Could it be because that is how the people Moses led lived in the wilderness for forty years? It has been suggested by some that Peter wants to turn this into an extended mountaintop campout retreat. The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ the Son of God will be held over for one more week with cameo appearances from Moses and Elijah! In a rare moment of candor, the text tells us Peter has no idea what he’s talking about because he and the others are terrified. Which Moses and Elijah would agree is the proper response to a direct encounter with God. Which seems to be the meaning of this entire episode: if you want to know who Jesus is, to be in his bright white presence is to be as if you are in the presence of God.

Then comes thick darkness. And a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” We, the listeners have heard this voice before when Jesus heard it at his baptism by John, who by the way, dresses a lot like Elijah. That voice was addressed to Jesus alone. This time it is addressed to Peter, James and John, and of course every one of us. The voice comes with a new commandment: Listen to him! 

One suspects the first reaction from Peter to this voice will be, “Whoever Jesus is, he’s no ordinary rabbi chatting it up with Moses and Elijah! He’s God’s Son. God’s Beloved!” No doubt, followed by, “What does this all mean?” 

Mark is anything but subtle in his purpose of telling us these stories. He begins the Gospel, “The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. A few verses later, a voice tells Jesus standing in the River Jordan, “You are my Son, my Beloved.” Midway through the Gospel Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” After several failed attempts, Peter blurts out, “You are the Christos, the Anointed, the Christ Messiah of God.”  But as we know, as in this story of  Transfiguration, Peter once again has no idea what he is talking about. Six days later the voice from the baptism returns in the midst of this terrifying mystical experience to remind one and all, this is the Son of God, God’s Beloved. And in case we were to forget who he is, as the story now turns us toward Jerusalem, the final words that are spoken at the foot of the cross by none other than a Roman Centurion who proclaims, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” [iii] 

We should not forget this all happens on the Sabbath – a time to stop all else that we are doing to listen to God. To remember who we are and whose we are. To ponder a text like this one in which truly astonishing things are going on. And then remember, amidst all the other hub-bub and the endless fire-hose-like stream of events, information, disinformation all aimed at getting and maintaining our attention, if we were to simply stop, and “listen to him,” we will see more astonishing things than this going on all around us every day. If only we take the time out. 

Perhaps this story is meant to remind us of the most astonishing truth of all: by water and the holy spirit we have been incorporated into the body of Christ in our baptism, which, we are told, is a bond that is indissoluble. [iv] We are Christ’s own forever. When we take time out to listen to him, he tells us, “You are my beloved; I am well pleased with you!” I am always with you. Our God is not far off. We are those people who know who Jesus is. Truly he is the Son of God, who promises to be with us always, to the end of the age. And for this we give thanks!   Amen. 

PS On the way down from the mountain, Jesus “ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” Could it be because he wants everyone to have a chance to see him for who he really is for themselves?


[i] Mark 9:2-9

[ii] 2 Kings 2:1-12

[iii] Mark 15:39

[iv] Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p.298

Saturday, February 3, 2024

The Gospel of The Old Ones Presentation/Candlemas 2024

 

The Gospel of The Old Ones   

There are days when it seems easy to imagine the end of the world. Whether it comes from a nuclear holocaust or a super-heated climate crisis; whether it be from the collapse of republican democracy or the advent of a fascistic dictatorship; whether it comes from an asteroid crashing into our planet or the outbreak of civil wars throughout this fragile earth, our island home; whether it be random acts of gun violence or a gradual stripping of individual rights, first for one group, then another, and another; from another pandemic or the simple lack of a well vaccinated population. If we do not imagine these apocalyptic events on our own, there are entire industries devoted to injecting all kinds of fears into our day-to-day existence, whether those fears are from the right or the left; from red or blue ideologies; from fear of education, fear of science, fear of modern medicine, fear of genetically modified foods. There seem to be no end to the kinds of fear entering our lives through radio and television; through social media platforms; through endless conspiracy theories; through cult-like ideologies. 

On good days, we try to keep our heads down to somehow believe we can screen all these fears out and power our way through an equally endless series of tasks and responsibilities we believe we must attend to lest life itself come crashing to a halt. We try to avoid or ignore interruptions of what passes as our necessary “routines.” It becomes more and more rare to allow ourselves to take time-out, take sabbath time, time to look at the sky, let alone time to sit in silent meditation and contemplation. To give ourselves space and time to just breathe and wait. 

The world into which God chose to arrive as one of us, a vulnerable child, a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes that also look strikingly like a funeral shroud, was a world full of the loss and fears of an occupied people. The child is just one among millions born into this world that seems hell-bent to destroy itself. When Luke wrote this account some 80 years after the child’s birth, Jerusalem and its Temple again lay in ruins, and factions of people were struggling, often against one another, to find a way forward. It seemed like the world had come to an end. Luke writes that forty days after the birth of this baby boy, the baby’s unwed young mother goes to the Temple in Jerusalem for her own traditional ritual purification by the priests, and to present this boy-child to God the giver of all good things. [i] She and the older gentleman with her no doubt saw nothing extraordinary in observing these generations-long rituals of their people. For her purification she is to offer a lamb for sacrifice. But for those who could not afford an unblemished lamb, a pair of turtle doves or pigeons would do. One imagines in the hard-times of the Roman military occupation which sought to extract all possible resources out of the country to send back home to Rome, the seat of Caesar’s Empire, that all most people could afford were the birds. No doubt Mary had hoped they could make their offering quickly and unnoticed so they might turn around and head right back home to Nazareth. It was not to be. 

Enter the Old Ones. Simeon and Anna were unique among their septuagenarian peers. They had taken time out of life to stand and wait outside the Temple. Waiting to see what God might do this time. After all, their ancestors had escaped a life of slave-labor in Egypt, a forty-year testing period in the wilderness, and the destruction of the first temple followed by 40-plus years exile in Babylon. Each time the Lord had saved them from the fear and danger surrounding them on all sides. Simeon had avoided joining with the zealots who repeatedly tried to oust the Romans by violent force. He had stayed out of the debates between Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes as to what kind of life would evoke a response from the Almighty. Taking a path of non-violent resistance, Simeon had been visited by the same Holy Spirit who had announced that Mary would have a child. This Spirit had promised Simeon that he would not die before getting to see the Lord’s Anointed One. Ever since, Simeon had been waiting for a glimpse of a new and better future. The old woman, Anna, had been married, but has long been widowed. She too, like the old man, spent day and night at the Temple where she saw the endless stream of pilgrims come and go. She could see how some of the Temple priests would collaborate with the occupation and corrupt the life of their people. She had seen many babies, many such rituals, as she waited and prayed year after year after year to see what God might do. 

Just one look at this child and Simeon and Anna knew they were looking at the future – and they somehow sensed that the future starts now! What did Mary think as the old man grabbed the child from her arms to get a better look and begin singing? Or, why her old man, Joseph did nothing. Then Anna begins to tell everyone that this child is the One to redeem Israel. What did Simeon and Anna see? They probably saw nothing - and everything! [ii] They saw a family of humble means and demeanor, a young and tender mother and her awkward aging old man – the essence of simplicity. They seemed the kind of people who sadly would ordinarily leave no lasting impression whatsoever. Simeon and Anna knew this was God’s next intervention. 

Yes, Anna and Simeon had seen plenty of people come and go from the Temple. What they had not seen was the simple truth these ancient rituals of presentation and purification proclaimed. Until now. Looking at the infant Christ, it all comes together. Something like light emanates directly from him into them. And in its simplicity and plainness, this family represents all that it means to be human. As Sam Portaro writes, “They had neither the arrogance that pretends to greatness, nor the brooding hostility that hates the human condition. They were neither better or worse than any of God’s creatures, and they came to make an offering. Even they had no idea what an offering it would be…Simeon, who had seen all the world has to offer, and Anna who had seen all that the human soul seeks, took one look at the child and saw the truth…These eyes that had seen it all, for the first time saw all that God desired, and it was a little child.” [iii] 

Simeon and Anna do not only see the future of the world. They see new meaning for their lives, and the lives of all people everywhere. They see love personified in a little child. Their hearts were filled with love! Their lives had been fulfilled. God’s promises to them had come true as they waited patiently upon the Lord. They could now leave this world in peace. They saw at the end of long and very full lives, in the blessedness of life’s wisdom and God’s grace, that God requires far less than we may think; only what we already are. [iv] 

Pema Chodron, that beloved Buddhist nun, writes, “Things happen to us all the time that open up the space. This spaciousness, this wide-open, unbiased, unprejudiced space, is inexpressibly and fundamentally good and sound. It’s like the sky. Whenever you’re in a hot spot or feeling uncomfortable, whenever you’re caught up and don’t know what to do, you can find someplace where you can go and look at the sky and experience freshness, free of hope and fear, free of bias and prejudice, just completely open. And this is accessible to us all the time. Space permeates everything, every moment of our lives.” [v] That’s what happened that day in the Temple forty days after the Christ child’s birth.  Look to the sky and we can see it, feel it and be it. Just take the time to stop everything and look up and remember the old man and the old woman. God requires far less than we may think; only what we already are.    Amen.


[i] Luke 2:21-39

[ii] Portaro, Sam, Brightest and Best (Cowley Press, Boston: 2001) p,40-41

[iii] Ibid Portaro

[iv] Ibid Portaro

[v] Chodron, Pema, The Pocket Pema Chodron (Shambala Press, Boston: 2008) p.70