A Prayer for Epiphany

O God, you led your people through the wilderness by fire and cloud and wise men to the Christ child by a star. With the new year but a few days old, we ask your guidance. Go before us into unknown territory; grant us your holy presence as we journey. When there is darkness, shine your light. When we know fear, grant us the comfort and courage of your Spirit. Arm us with all Christ-like graces so we may be your faithful people throughout this year.

We pray for all whose prospects are bleak in this new year. We ask your merciful care for the homeless and hungry, the victim of violence and the refugee from war, the imprisoned and the oppressed. Do justice for those who are trodden down by the cruel heel of evil people and regimes; give voice to those whose cries are silenced by fear and ignorance. Grant relief to persons who labor under heavy loads, who face great problems or who long to be made well and whole again. Let each and all of us, as we have opportunity, be channels of your love and justice. Cause us to proclaim boldly your manifold wisdom and gracious purpose to all who long for good news and your warning of judgment to those who ignore your word.

Thanks be to you for the rich and precious gift of your Son, Jesus the Christ, in whom your plan is revealed. Give to your church in this community and in every place and time a deep sense of oneness with him as we live our lives in your service; through Christ our Lord, made known to all nations, reigning in power, coming in glory. Amen.

 

Kingdom Seeds

Please read Mark 4:26-34, the gospel for June 13, 2021, the third Sunday after Pentecost.

The renowned Presbyterian author Frederick Buechner was converted while living in New York City. The church where the famous preacher George Buttrick was pastor happened to be on the same block as Buechner’s apartment. In his biography The Sacred Journey, the writer recounts how he went to church because he had heard of the preacher and “I had nothing all that much better to do with my lonely Sundays.” He kept going back and heard sermon after sermon, drawn by Buttrick’s eloquence and surprising turn of phrase, yes, but more than that, by “whatever it was that his sermons came from and whatever it was in me that they touched so deeply.”

And then there came one particular sermon with a phrase that does not appear in the published manuscript. Buttrick came up with it and ad-libbed at the last moment. Christ is crowned in the hearts of people, the preacher observed, “‘among confession, and tears, and great laughter.” “It was the phrase great laughter that did it, did whatever it was that I believe must have been hiddenly in the doing all the years of my journey up till then.” And, Buechner writes, “…on just such foolish, tenuous, holy threads as that, I suppose, hang the destinies of us all” (108-109).

Imagine: something we just throw out and then maybe forget about—a chance word, a random act of kindness, a germ of an idea—grows and produces faith, hope, and love in someone’s life. We don’t know how. We may not do anything else but that little thing. But God is at work.

The hymn writer put it well: “We plow the fields and scatter the good seed on the land, but it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand. God sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain, the breezes and the sunshine, and soft, refreshing rain.” And the famous musical adds the conclusion: “So thank the Lord, O thank the Lord, for all his love” (Matthias Claudius, 1782; Stephen Schwartz, 1971).

The seeds we sow in humility grow in secret. Let all of us be encouraged, then, and not discount the value of even the smallest caring, compassionate deed, the briefest word of friendship or advocacy. For when we wake up tomorrow or the next day, there will be a harvest sent from the good hand of God.

 

Easter Everywhere

The Great 50 Days of the Easter season continue (through Pentecost, May 23). The text for this post is Isaiah 65:17-25, appointed in the daily lectionary for May 5. The complete daily lectionary may be found here: https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/daily.php?year=B. We are in Year B right now. Year C begins this year on November 25 and is found here: https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/daily.php?year=C. Year A will follow in 2022 on November 24: https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/daily.php?year=A. Then the cycle repeats.

The great classic Christian author C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Be sure it is not for nothing that the Landlord has knit our hearts so closely to time and place—to one friend rather than another and one shire more than all the land” (Pilgrim’s Regress). This is the way God has made us. We are here or there, but not everywhere. And our particularity, our embodiment, as Lewis observed, is not random or without purpose. It’s part and parcel of what it means to be human. We are our bodies as much as we are our spirits.

Places, then, become very important to us. It may be a physical structure or a natural setting, but a place can sustain our souls or take us to the brink of despair. It can almost literally wrap itself around us like loving arms and remind us of God’s presence or the joys of family. Or it can be so full of pain that we cannot bear to set foot in it unless it be somehow transformed to take on new significance.

It is not true that one place is the same as another. How many houses will a couple look at before they find the one that feels like home? What smiles does a restaurant or a theater or a park bring, when we recall a first date or a proposal, a special anniversary or simply an afternoon of fun and freedom from demands? How much does a church building mean because a child was baptized, confirmed or married in it? And how much pain is there in the same building because it brings back memories of a loved one who no longer is with us or the failed promises of a God we depended on? There are some places we want to go back to again and again. As for others—for one reason or another, we will never return.

Jerusalem had been a special place for the people of God. It was the center of commerce, at one time the capital of an empire, the crossroads of the world. But most of all it was a sacred city, where God had made his name to dwell in the Temple. Then all that was gone, swept away by an invading army. What remained was only a painful reminder of what had been.

A generation later, when world politics changed and the Middle East was under new management, many of the Jews who had been carried off from their homeland and their beloved city returned. But they faced a daunting task. They had to rebuild both their buildings and their dreams. This place, once so full of life, had to give them sustenance again.

It is with that need in mind that the prophet writes. His promise is glorious, the kind only God can fulfill. Jerusalem will once again be a joy. And it would have the qualities that make people feel at home. Safety, so nobody is going to come sneaking in your home at night to rob you of your goods or even your life. No terror stalks the streets to threaten your children. Continuity, so you can count on being somewhere long enough really to know it, appreciate it, feel settled in it, where your children can make friends and find meaningful work. And you can live a long, happy life. There, too, will be meaning, hope, joy, all those things that move life beyond survival—like art and music and service and worship—so you can celebrate life, know a fresh perspective, anticipate a future even better than the present.

I know what you’re saying: there is no place like that, and there never has been. At least not consistently. True. Not right now. But we know one day there will be. How? Because God promised it, and he always keeps his promises. I realize that’s a claim that may go against our experience. But it’s nevertheless the witness of Scripture, even if the way to resurrection leads through suffering. We also know there will be a place like the prophet envisioned because God has already started making it happen. He raised Jesus from the dead, and in doing that, God turned the grave from a place of weeping and longing to one of joy, a passage into new life beyond our imagining.

Even now we catch glimpses of God’s resurrection promise. Those places we live our lives can become and are Easter places, that lift us up, inspire us, bring us new hope. They are places of profound experience.

It may be that our Easter place is one of majesty. We think immediately perhaps of the Grand Canyon or Denali National Park, Yellowstone or some other natural wonder. But so might our place of majesty be our backyard with the full moon shining down or the sun rising in glory.

But our Easter place could also be one of memory. As Flannery O’Connor said, sometimes “nothing outside you can give you any place… In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.” Then it is we take a journey into our own interior, reflecting on days gone by, lessons taught by loved ones no longer physically with us, old friends whose laughter cheered us, successes that emboldened us to achieve even more. We may be decorating a parent’s or a child’s grave, touching a veteran’s memorial, looking at photos, handling some family artifact, recalling what happened on a particular day years ago. Memories like that can be painful, but they can also be empowering, reminders that despite some present difficult situation, things were not always this way. We draw strength from the example of others. We recall the blessings of God, the providence of God that lifted us up, and we experience the new life God bestows in the resurrected Christ. We claim our baptism, the sacrament by which we are made one with our Lord in his defeat of death.

But if our Easter place can be one of majesty and one of memory, so could it be one of mission. St. Augustine observed: “Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.” By God’s providence, people come into our lives who need our help, and in helping them, we are made new. How often have you or I realized that in doing mission, giving care, we are actually ministered to more than the hungry or the sick or the despairing person? That’s because we are encountering Jesus in them, and he is imparting his life to us by our service to him. As the hymn reminds us: “Across this wide world, we shall always find those who are crying with no peace of mind. But when we help them or when we feed them, we belong to God. We belong to God” (“When We Are Living”).

Easter reminds us we do indeed belong to God, and God will not give up what is his. Not his only Son in the grave. Not his children in any place or time. In his powerful love and providence, he can make all our places Easter places. Easter can be, and is, everywhere. Jerusalem the destroyed became again Jerusalem the blessed. The tomb, once full of death, is now gloriously empty. So even our places of pain, places of betrayal, places of death—all can become Easter places. They can have new meaning and be full of new possibility because God has conquered death, because God has made it so, because God is everywhere, bringing joy, fulfilling dreams, granting life. Because there was a morning long ago when some women heard amazing news: “He is not here; he is risen.”

Thanks be to God.

 

How to Read the Bible

Please read Luke 24:36b-48, the gospel for the third Sunday of Easter, April 18, 2021.

Say you’re a Christian (of any stripe, anywhere on the ideological and theological spectrum) who wants to interpret the Bible faithfully and well. Where do you go for help? Of course, there are numerous resources out there, both printed and online (such as http://www.textweek.com/scripture.htm ), to which you could turn. But in keeping with the old principle of “Scripture interprets Scripture,” let me recommend one in particular, namely, the gospel story from Luke I’ve asked you to read.

In that passage, we notice first and foremost that Jesus is the key to interpreting Scripture. The story in Luke makes clear that the risen Messiah is one and the same as the executed Jesus who had walked with and taught the disciples. The author has Jesus show them his hands and feet and invite them to touch him, to feel flesh and bone, confirming that’s he’s real. He eats a piece of fish, for more proof. The intended point is that there can be no doubt that the One who rose is the Jesus who suffered and died. And it is this Jesus who is the center and norm of, the key to, the whole Bible.

When we read the Bible, then, we have to measure the text against what we know of God’s will and way in Jesus. He is the One who included all sorts of people as his disciples, and he and his men went against cultural conventions by traveling with unrelated women, who provided financial support from their own funds. He made a hated foreigner an example of neighborliness when he told the story of the good Samaritan. He insisted that love was more important than following rituals and regulations when he accepted the care of a woman from the streets at a feast. He ate with sinners and collaborators as well as with the good folk of the day. And this Jesus who is the key to the Bible was crucified. He didn’t just die or get run through with a spear. He was put to death in a way reserved for political troublemakers, which showed the might of the Roman Empire to anybody passing by and served as a warning of the consequences for speaking or acting against Rome. He was executed that way because he proclaimed the kingdom of God, a different manner of living than that favored either by the Roman governor or by the elite religious leaders.

What does it mean to read the Bible through the lens of this Jesus, his teaching, his actions, his way of death? One commentator observes: “The second insistence in Jesus’ unusual presentation of himself to the disciples is that the risen Christ is the Jesus who died. This identification is critical, not just for theology but also for defining the nature of the Christian life. If the Jesus who died belongs to the historical past but the one disciples now follow is the eternal Christ, then the Christian life can take on forms of spirituality that are without suffering for others, without a cross, without any engagement of issues of life in this world, all the while expressing devotion to a living, spiritual Christ. The Gospels say no to such a definition of discipleship…This is Luke’s point here: ‘See my hands and my feet’ … is Christ’s word to the church. Easter is forever joined to Good Friday, and to follow the risen Christ is to follow the one who bore the cross” (Fred Craddock, Luke: 290). So when we read the Bible, we need to do so in light of the ultimate revelation of God in One who displayed such self-giving love.

Next, to understand the scriptures we need an interpreter with a can opener or maybe a crowbar to open our minds. Luke says our Lord “opened their minds to understand.” The disciples could be and were just as closed-minded and clueless as any of us.

I can think of a number of reasons for closing our minds. One is fear. We’re afraid that if we listen to anything new, our world will be upset. Our routine that comforts us will be disrupted. We’ll find out that what we have been taught maybe “ain’t necessarily so.” The neat structure we have made will come tumbling down.

I remember vividly an incident in a Sunday school class when I was a teenager. (I’m retired now, so you can see what a strong memory this is!) The teacher was describing crucifixion. He said that the Romans put the spikes through the wrists of their victims. Immediately, Dan, the pastor of my church, spoke up, clearly disturbed. “What does that do to the authority of Scripture?” he asked. “My Bible says ‘his hands.’” For Dan, changing or challenging one detail would mean that nothing in the Bible was true!

Another reason we close our minds is lack of imagination. Quite often imagination is equated with make-believe, childish pretending, something that isn’t real. We don’t trust it. Imagination is something sensible people don’t approve of. It’s the land where anything is possible, like flying motorcycles or beaming up to a starship, with no boundaries. And we know such things can’t be done. But imagination keeps on asking “What if?” and “Why not?” and “Who says?” It’s thinking outside the box, longing for a different life.

We might say imagination is a luxury in the face of the harsh realities of life. But on the other hand, aren’t people imaginative who know how to “make do,” figure out alternative methods, jury rig with skill? “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and invention is an imaginative practice. We need not distrust imagination and close our minds to possibility; it can be eminently practical, helping us find solutions where there were none before.

A third reason is joyous incredulity. “In their joy they were disbelieving and… wondering,” says Luke. If there’s a good reason to close our minds, this is it. Something is too wonderful to be true! Someone thought lost or dead is found alive and well. A declaration of love, especially for someone with low self-esteem, is met by “You love me?” We suffer from a terrible illness, but then find we’re free of it. It seems like a miracle, and maybe it is. We ask “How can this be?” We declare “This can’t be happening; I’m overwhelmed” or “I’m so happy I don’t know what to say.” The hymn writer put this kind of wonder to music in the famous gospel song: “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood?…’Tis mystery all!” (Charles Wesley) This is that rare case where something that seems too good to be true really is true.

Who is our interpreter whose task is to pry open our closed mental lids? He or she might be the translator who takes a fresh approach to an old passage, capturing the sense of the Greek or Hebrew in a way we have never heard that opens up a new world of meaning. Maybe our guide will be someone who reads a passage in a vastly different way, looking through the lens of another culture or class or political viewpoint or seeing it from the perspective of great sickness or tragedy. It could be we ourselves, as we go through different stages of life, and a passage that meant little at a younger age now begins to make sense with a few more miles or many under our feet. But the final interpreter is the Holy Spirit, given us by the crucified and risen Christ. It is that Spirit who will calm our fears, comfort us in our worry, expand our imagination, and turn our disbelieving joyful doubt into blazing, fierce, and still joyful confidence.

So Jesus is the key to Scripture. We become open to its message with the help of an interpreter. And finally, our understanding of the Bible is ongoing. It’s an unfinished conversation. Resurrection keeps happening as we embody the truth, as we “inhabit the truth,” as someone has put it. The late Catholic theologian Karl Rahner was right. “Holy Scripture,” he said, “is not just another book. Generally we can read a book through once and lay it aside…. But [the Bible] is the word of God himself, the word of the God who condescended his own infinity and incomprehensibility to communicate and share himself in human words. That is why we can never ‘finish’ the Bible and lay it aside” (The Practice of Faith: 101).

Fresh comprehension and new interpretations grow out of our experiences, starting right at our front door in our “Jerusalem.” It’s going out in mission, being witnesses, that shows us the meaning of the Bible for real life. As we proclaim both the living Word (Jesus) and the written word (the Bible, which witnesses to the living Word), we discover anew what Scripture means in our own context. When we confront a question no one posed before, when an issue arises that we have never addressed, when we can’t find the answer from a particular verse, what do we do? If we trust in the Spirit’s leading, we see all of that as a way that God is leading us into truth, working new life right in our midst. As Albert Schweitzer famously said: “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”

The Bible interpreted through the lens of Jesus is a guide and tool for enlightenment, inclusion, and justice, not a weapon for exclusion, hatred, and condemnation. A plowshare, not a sword. It tells us how God reaches out in love to the whole world, especially those who are left out and looked down on. Such a Bible insists we open ourselves to new truth that God may show us. It tells us not to be afraid and reminds us that our mission is to begin in our Jerusalem and go tell the good news of the risen Christ. Its message is one of faith, hope, and love, filling us with joy, so we may go on our journeys with confidence and grace.

 

 

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I, Thirst

Please read John 19:28 (KJV), part of the gospel appointed for Good Friday, April 2, 2021.

“I thirst.” It’s the refrain of the biblical poets, who have found in the longing for water a powerful image of another human need, namely, the anguish of the soul seeking God. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God,” wrote the poet of Psalm 42 in the depths of depression. (Watch and listen to a gorgeously sung and arranged version of Psalm 42:1 here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TMrJywhcV4.) “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God?” “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” (This is from Psalm 63; hear a wonderful version of the poem by the ‘80s band Second Chapter of Acts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngRGFdvRV0s.) “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? My strength is dried up like a potsherd; my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.”

“I thirst.” It’s our cry, for we’ve eaten the salty bread of a consumer culture. We’ve taken the sour wine offered by advertisers. We keep wanting what we don’t need, and our thirst grows. As Frederick Buechner once reminded us: “Lust is the craving for salt of a man dying of thirst.” It’s our cry, for we long for something fulfilling to which we may give our lives. We’ve heard of a fountain that gushes with the water of many blessings, and like the woman at the well (John 4), we want a drink.

“I thirst.” It’s the plea of Jesus to his tormentors. How ironic that the One who promised living water should now be parched himself! But that’s what it took to fulfill his mission. He embodies all it is to be human, and that includes our thirst, both physical and spiritual.

As our priest, he takes upon himself all our longings, our thirsty searching, our futile efforts to assuage this yearning. In what John Calvin called “the wonderful exchange,” Jesus gives to us all the water we need. Which is to say, he brings us to God, who makes streams in the desert.

As our prophet, our Lord bids us hear in his cry the plea of those who literally long for water, the essential element of life. We show compassion to the wronged and the despised. A simple act, but deeply meaningful. Who knows what return we may see from it?

As our sovereign, Jesus shows us that power is not about getting and having, but rather having the courage to make oneself vulnerable even to the point of being without the most basic of resources, like water, on behalf of others.

Because Jesus so gave himself, hanging thirsty on a cruel cross, we find our own longings met. John Newton, who penned ”Amazing Grace,” reminds us of as much in a hymn sung from time to time in churches. It celebrates the city of God, of which glorious things are spoken. One of the wonders of the place is its abundant water supply. Newton wrote “See, the streams of living waters, springing from eternal love, well supply thy sons and daughters and all fear of want remove." The question he raises then is one which we do well to consider today: “Who can faint while such a river ever flows their thirst to assuage?” For we may be assured of that “grace…which like the Lord the giver, never fails from age to age” (“Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, 1779).

“I thirst,” said Jesus. Yes, Lord; I know. So do I. Thanks for reminding me. And more than that, thanks for the drink.

 

April Fool

The title and theme of this post was inspired by Noel Paul Stookey’s song “April Fool.” Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdydgvlwNKc. The sound is not the best, so go here for lyrics: https://www.noelpaulstookey.com/06-07.html.

“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong… “ (1 Corinthians 1:27).

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Fool! Listen to him prattle on! “Love your enemies and pray for those who despitefully use you. Do not resist the evildoer. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. Blessed are you when people revile and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely.”

Fool! Doesn’t he know people will simply take advantage of such weakness? They’re like predators ganging up on a wounded animal. Just wait till you’re down, then strike! Don’t resist? Forget that! Put up a fight. Show them what you’re made of. Get back at those who hurt you. Who is he kidding? Don’t resist?

Fool! Look at him helping people who couldn’t possibly do anything for him. Couldn’t pay him back, couldn’t provide in-kind service, couldn’t even invite him into their home, if they had a home, for a decent meal. Fool! What does he expect to gain by helping the poor and hanging around with outcasts and political subversives and rednecks? And don’t even talk to me about how he touches those with bad diseases or lets a prostitute touch him. Holy man, indeed! Fool!

You don’t get ahead in this world by hanging around those who can’t do favors for you, put you in touch with the right people in business, the arts, government, religion, the military. You won’t have any fine meals or get invited to the best resorts and the important parties. Fool!

Fool! Picking those guys for disciples! I mean what was he thinking! Not an educated or powerful one in the bunch. And some of them have highly questionable reputations: Matthew works for the occupation government. Judas and Simon are terrorists, trained killers. The rest? Common workers. What does he expect to do with that bunch wandering around the country like that?

A wise man would set up an office and start making his voice heard. He would gather around himself scholars, political leaders, bankers, military officials, an entourage and staff that could help him meet people and influence policy. And most importantly, bankroll his effort.

Fool! Angering those in charge of the religious life of the nation. You don’t just go into the church and start turning over tables and throwing things around and whip the staff! You can’t call the respected leaders names like “hypocrites” and “blind guides of the blind.” Or tell them that they’re the ones who need God’s help and not the poor slobs you hang around with. Fool!

You have to be subtle. Negotiate. Serve on a committee. Write some articles in a peer-reviewed journal or a blog where people can respond. Get to know the leaders. They’re really not so bad when you try to understand and appreciate them, give them a few strokes of ego. They just have a different opinion of how things ought to be done, another and may I say, time-honored perspective on how and with whom God works.

Fool! Look at him there, not giving any defense before that powerful official. Just standing there. Taking the abuse. Refusing to put up a fight, to argue, to do anything that might save him to teach and lead another day.

You can’t do that and expect to get away with your life. You need a lawyer, somebody that can plea bargain, make the case for you. What’s the saying: “Only a fool has himself for a client?” That’s surely the case here!

Fool! Look at him on the cross on this April day. April fool, I guess he is. “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” Say what? Of course they know what they’re doing! They’ve been planning this for years. What kind of fool is he, forgiving those who are killing him?

Fools! Look at them posting a guard at the tomb. What good are swords and spears and crosses and stone doors against the power of God?

Fools.

 

Hero for a Day

Please read John 12:12-16, one of the gospel lessons appointed for Palm Sunday, March 28, 2021.

“Humanity is fickle,” a poet once wrote. “They may dress for a morning coronation and never feel the need to change clothes to attend an execution in the afternoon. So Triumphal Sundays and Good Fridays always fit comfortably into the same April week” (Calvin Miller, The Singer).

And that’s how things would turn out. The clamoring horde who went out to greet Jesus as he entered Jerusalem had heard he had done something beyond belief:  a man had been raised from the dead! Surely anyone who could defeat the most feared enemy of humankind could drive out the forces of Rome. So man, woman, child shouted as loudly as they could: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel.”

The cries of the crowd came from Psalm 118, in which the victorious king is welcomed back home. Yahweh the Great Warrior has helped him defeat the foe and saved the man from death. The nation of Israel, the stone the builders rejected, is now shown to be the key element in all human plans. That means the ruler gets bragging rights.

The military background of the psalm was not forgotten by the multitudes who greeted Jesus. Perhaps this one, this Jesus, would return sovereignty to Israel.

But it’s the palms that really give away what the crowd is thinking. In at least the back of the popular mind was the 200 year-old story of the Maccabean revolt. In 167 BC, the evil king Antiochus Epiphanes IV set up an altar to the Greek high god Zeus in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Then he sacrificed a pig on it, an animal at the same time sacred to a pagan god and an affront to the kosher regulations of the Jews. To make matters worse, he wouldn’t permit the Jews to practice their religion. Everybody had to follow Greek customs, and those who didn’t were punished severely, even killed.

A man named Matthias and his five sons resisted. They began a guerilla war against Antiochus, and in three years, Matthias and his army had reclaimed the Temple. His son Judas Maccabeus, known as “the Hammer,” cleansed and rededicated the sanctuary. The fighting went on for twenty more years until Simon Maccabeus achieved a diplomatic settlement. In the history of the war there is this note about the celebration of Jewish independence: “…the Jews entered [Jerusalem] with praise and palm branches, and with harps and cymbals and stringed instruments, and with hymns and songs, because a great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel” (1 Maccabees 13:51).

So waving palms was a way of greeting Jesus as a great military leader, a nationalist hero. Someone once explained it this way: “What do the palms say? They say: We are tired of being kicked around, hungry to be Number One again, ready to strut our stuff once more. Here’s our agenda, and you look just like the man we need. Welcome, warrior king! Hail, conquering hero!” (Byron Rohrig, “What Do the Palms Say?” The Christian Century, March 9, 1988: 237).

Jesus was thrilled by their praise, right? Not at all. Hoping they would get the point, he found a donkey and sat on it. A lowly burro. A king ready for war would come down the street on a prancing horse with his entourage in tow. One seeking peace arrived on a donkey. Jesus’ kingdom would not come by armed revolt, but by the suffering of his own death.

Our Lord intended to make peace and justice more than merely dreams in the hearts and minds of the hurting and downtrodden. The author of the gospel wants us to see this scene as the fulfillment of two prophecies. One is from Zechariah. The other is taken from Zephaniah. Even if you’ve never heard of them, I suspect you’ll be thrilled by their message. They told of a time when there would he no more fear or hopelessness. There would instead be joy and singing, for God would take delight in his people. Those who had been shamed and excluded would be proud again and in the limelight. That, says John, is the sort of kingdom Jesus was promising to the crowd.

Once his intentions became clear, Jesus was a hero for only a day. The crowd dressed for coronation turned against Jesus. Their shouts of praise turned into jeers. Their festive garments became fouled with the blood of their would-be ruler.

What would you and I have done or said or felt? What is it we want from Jesus? I mean really, not the answer we know we’re supposed to give about salvation and joy and all the rest. Maybe there are questions you want him to answer. Or some favor I would like done. Maybe we long for more excitement and reward in our career or the assurance that our kids are going to turn out OK. Perhaps we would ask for an easy death or a life without pain. Our requests might even be more in the vein of those who lined the street those long years ago. We would like our team or nation or organization or church to be Number One and be acknowledged as such by everybody.

As we enter Holy Week, we might ask ourselves what we do when our faith disappoints us or doesn’t give us what we want. When the institutional church doesn’t measure up to our expectations or represent Christ. When God seems to have something else in mind for us than what we had planned. Do we walk away, grumbling? Do we add our voices to the angry Good Friday mob, which used to be the cheering Palm Sunday crowd? Or do we wrestle and fight and pray and try to make sense of it all? Or if we can’t make sense, then trust that God knows what’s going on?

The last option is the hardest. We may feel much like the disciples, standing there watching and not really understanding, somehow not quite grasping that if faith is a gift it is also demand and that on the road to glory looms a cross.

But one day the disciples did understand. They were so filled with resurrection power that they could face with confidence even the pain that came their way. They could remain loyal to their Lord as their hero not just for a day, but for thousands of days, a lifetime.

We too can be so transformed that we can accompany Jesus in popularity and disfavor, in joy and in pain. We can even follow our Lord when Triumphal Sundays turn into Crucifixion Fridays, and the cheering stops.

 

St. Patrick

The man we know as St. Patrick was born in Scotland in 389 AD to Roman parents whose names were Calpurnius and Conchessa. His real name was Maewyn; he took the name Patrick when he became a priest. But that was later.

When he was about 16, he was kidnapped by pirates and taken to Ireland as a slave, where he herded sheep. He was held captive for six years and learned the Irish language. He eventually escaped, reunited with his parents for a time, then went to France where he became a priest.

In a dream, Patrick said, the people of Ireland called out to him to come and help them. So he went back. He had great success converting people to Christianity, though he was not the first to bring that faith to Ireland. There were already Christians there.

He died on March 17, 461, and that’s why his day is on that date.

One of his famous prayers is called “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” because in it he asked Jesus to keep him and his helpers safe in their travels. Here is the text:

May the strength of God pilot us.
May the power of God preserve us.
May the wisdom of God instruct us.
May the hand of God protect us.
May the way of God direct us.
May the shield of God defend us.
May the host of God guard us against the snares of evil
and the temptations of the world.
May Christ be with us,
Christ before us,
Christ in us,
Christ over us.
May your salvation, O Lord,
be always ours this day and forevermore. Amen.

 

Snake on a Stick

Please read Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-21, appointed for the 4th Sunday in Lent, March 14, 2021.

An old “Saturday Night Live” skit was about a family called the Whiners. Whatever the situation or the subject, they never spoke unless they whined. If they had a dachshund, I suppose it would have been a whiner wiener.

No doubt we encounter the ancestors of the Whiners in the reading from Numbers. Fresh from a great military victory and on their way to the Promised Land, the people of Israel can still do nothing but complain. They are impatient as little kids on a long trip. You know: “Mommy, are we there yet?” What, did they think escaping slavery and building a new life and a new nation would be easy or quick? They blame Moses for bringing them out into the wilderness, as if the great leader could have forced hundreds of thousands of Israelites to follow him into the desert! Certainly it could not be their responsibility or choice to be there! And then they whine about the food. In one breath, they claim there isn’t any food or water; then in the next, they contradict themselves and say that the food is terrible!

Their complaining doesn’t improve the menu one bit. Nor does it make Canaan any closer. Instead, the people are stricken with deadly snakes that bite and kill many of them. These are not just any snakes, by the way. The same word—“seraph”—is used here as in the description of the serpent beings that Isaiah encountered in the Temple (Isaiah 6:1ff). They are the servants of God, sent to judge the people for their faithlessness and their murmuring.

This rather drastic measure taken by God grabs the attention of this ungrateful, impatient bunch. Now those that aren’t face down in the dirt come to Moses, all of a sudden their friend again, to ask that he do something, like praying, that will take away the serpents. Being the gracious leader he was, Moses agrees, and God tells him what to do. The cure is to put a bronze snake on a stick and bid the people to look on it. The afflicting agent is also relief. That’s not so surprising, is it? Before the advent of mRNA technology, that was the exclusive way we manufactured vaccines.

It’s an odd story, not an easy one to hear or interpret. But let me suggest that this is a tale for one thing about the deadliness of self-indulgence, the toxicity of arrogance. It is about what results from a loss of focus, a dearth of gratitude, a constant preoccupation with trivialities, and the attitude that success and power equal the right always to get what we want. It is a tale not about folk long ago, but about you and me today, this moment.

This neglected account from Numbers may be so ignored because it tells too much truth and hits too close to home. It’s like looking in the mirror and seeing our families, our church, our work, ourselves. It reminds us how quick we are to criticize, and how slow to praise. How we rush to judge the intentions and competency of others, but delay as long as possible turning the harsh spotlight on ourselves. It wants us to realize that what we are is helpless and hurting, face down in the dirt like a snake, when we want to see ourselves as good and right and worthy. This little text won’t let us off the hook; it tells us how sinful and petty and shallow and loud-mouthed we are. It’s a story about the deadly poisons that infect and destroy us when we are intent on getting what we want when we want it, which is right now. It’s about losing sight of the goal in order to have short-term satisfaction. But mostly, it’s about forgetting the God who will get us to the Promised Land.

So, this text is about the deadly consequences of toxic arrogance. But another thing I suggest is going on here is a warning about the hurtfulness of blaming. As I said earlier, the people blamed Moses for leading them into the wilderness. The authors also note that in doing so the Israelites “spoke against God.” So they also blamed God. Apparently, Moses dragged all these folk with their families, animals, and possessions out of bed one night, giving them no choice but to come with him into the desert on this trek to Canaan! And he was supposed to anticipate every contingency, everything that could go wrong, and know where all the oases were. Don’t look at me, somebody would say; I just saw a line and got in it.

There is little you or I can do about some of the circumstances of our lives. We can’t choose to whom we were born or make them be good parents. Sometimes leaders at whatever level make decisions that are bad, and we had no direct input. A chain of events started way off somewhere impacts our lives in ways we could never imagine. A disease strikes out of nowhere, and soon we are bereft of our loved one with no time to prepare.

But there are other times when the choices we made got us into the fix we’re in. There is no one to blame, except of course ourselves. But consider how useless blaming anyone is, how hurtful to our prospects of living a full life, how it poisons our memories. As long as we blame, we remain tethered by painful remembrance to the past. We are not free to live into the future; instead, we are forever looking in the rearview mirror, afraid somebody else is going to crash into us, we might say. We stunt our own growth into maturity, because we are reactionary victims, not proactive agents of change in our lives.

But if this text is about the toxicity of arrogance and the hurtfulness of blaming, it is also about how we can be healed when we are face down in the dirt of our sin and shame. We learn first that we need to admit our sin. That was what people were doing when they looked on the bronze snake on a stick. They were saying “I need help. I can’t make myself well.” And that’s the crucial step in change, in being cleansed of the poison that courses through our veins. To say “I’m toxic. My words are poison, my actions are venomous, my thoughts are deadly.” Less dramatic language was suggested by a young woman who wrote in a church newsletter in the midst of a terrible church conflict: “Taking personal responsibility for our actions and wrongdoings is imperative. The words, ‘I’m sorry, I was wrong’ are sometimes all that is needed to make amends.” Part of saying “I’m sorry” is admitting we can’t make it on our own, that we need help.

So next, let us redirect our faces up from the dirt of our own demands to gaze on the icon of God’s care. We can use for creative and imaginative service the energy and resources we have devoted to getting our own way or being impatient or blaming or unforgiving, whatever our sin. That turns the source of our malaise into the key to a cure. Pain becomes redemptive, discipline a blessing—a severe mercy, as C.S. Lewis put it.

And let us avail ourselves of the means of grace. God has given us so many ways to be healed. The sacraments. The Scriptures. Prayer. The practice of community. Service and accountability to others. Acts 2:42, a key verse of Scripture for me, summarizes: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” These are God’s gifts today as the serpent was of old, offered corporately and individually, with and by leaders or accessed on our own as priestly believers.

But finally, and most of all, we look upon the One lifted on a cross like a snake on a stick, and we see in him our true humanity. We find in his dying form the demonstration of the amazing depth of God’s love and the possibilities for dedicated human service. God’s purpose is not to condemn, but to save. And such salvation comes when we look up, reaching beyond ourselves, so we may be healed and live.

 

The Gospel as Oxymoron

Please read 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, an expansion of the epistle for this Sunday, March 7, 2021, the third in Lent.

“Oxymoron” (plural “oxymora”) comes from Greek “oxy,” which means “acute,” “sharp,” “pointed” and “moros,” translated as “foolish” or “silly.” An oxymoron, then, is an expression that’s really silly, utterly ridiculous. It’s a combination of words that shouldn’t and can’t belong together. Under the Law of Non-Contradiction, what Aristotle called “the most certain of all principles,” the same attribute can’t belong and not belong at the same time to the same subject and in the same way. For example, something can’t be dull and sharp, possible and impossible, soft and hard all at once.

Yet we talk about “thunderous silence,” “sweet sorrow,” and “love-hate relationships.” Some people are “passive-aggressive.” You or I might have “frenemies.” We human beings have experiences that can’t always be explained by logic.

For Paul, the gospel is an oxymoron. He points those who seek wisdom to the cross, which confounds all our criteria. The divine answer, the word of Christ crucified, in St. Augustine’s words, “purges the human mind.” It rids us of any preconceptions of or restrictions on what God can, may or will do. It reminds us that God doesn’t act according to the rules made up in our religions by theologians. (As the saying goes, “In the Bible, God does things theologians would never approve of.”) Christ crucified points us to the radical sovereignty and freedom of God, who saves what the world throws away, values what it considers worthless, and embraces vulnerability while the world obsesses over security and borders.

Consider for a moment how utterly preposterous, off-the-scale silly, Paul’s preaching sounds. That may be hard to do, since we’ve probably heard this text and the gospel in general over and over. But put yourself, as will I, in the place of the first hearers, in a house church in Corinth around 54 CE. After the opening chapter is read, there are murmurs all through the little congregation. “What’s he talking about?” someone whispers to his neighbor. “The cross is the wisdom and power of God? Is he serious?”

People in the first century were familiar with crosses and who ended up on them: the off-scouring of humanity; people stupid enough to criticize the Empire out loud; criminals. Decent, law-abiding people were not hung up to die a slow death of exposure, dehydration, blood loss, and ultimately, suffocation. The root of the word “crucifixion” is the Latin “crucio,” which meant “to torture.” As if the physical abuse and trauma were not bad enough, Jesus was spat upon, mocked, scorned. He was made into a joke by soldiers and civilians alike and made to carry the crossbeam of his own instrument of execution through the streets. Yet Paul insists that what is despised and lowly is chosen and used by God to bring down the high and mighty. Jesus hung on a cross, wounded and bleeding, thirsty and in pain. Surely anyone in any century would call that “weakness.” Paul says it’s power! Jesus had the opportunity to defend himself against false charges, but he didn’t. He could have been king, hailed by adoring crowds as a conquering hero, but he chose a crown of thorns over one of gold or jewels or laurel. He followed the hard path of suffering and death. Surely we would call what Jesus did “foolishness.” The sacrifice of such a good man who had done nothing wrong seems absurd, but Paul terms it “wisdom.”

How else but with oxymora could we even attempt to describe the ineffable, whose reality is beyond words? What other way could we experience the unknowable? The cross confronts us with the awesome sovereignty of God, who acts to save both Jew and Gentile, and create from them one new community. The God the apostle celebrates is radically free to call out a people for himself from those the world sees as worthless, foolish, and weak. No doubt with dripping sarcasm, Paul reminds the Corinthians, who are in love with their spiritual gifts, boastful about their insights, that God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. Our vocabularies, our logic, fail us when faced with such a gospel. Our proclamation must lapse into silly contradictions like “powerful weakness,” because words cannot reach the depths, bear the gravitas of what happened that Friday on a skull-shaped hill.

When Paul bids us to believe the foolish word of the cross, he’s not asking us to suspend reason or become anti-intellectual. He wouldn’t deny that the wise, the debaters, the scribes do indeed know something significant and worthwhile. That’s important to hear, since on the surface he seems to be promoting the ever-present kind of Christianity which tells us not to think or ask questions, but only believe what someone in the pulpit or otherwise in authority tells you the Bible says. On that reading, the apostle would actually give ammunition to those skeptics who claim that thinking and Christianity are mutually exclusive, that no reasonable person could affirm such ridiculous notions as resurrection or miracles or the existence of God. But if we understand him that way, we’ve got it wrong.

Nor when Paul criticizes those seeking signs is he denying the value of what we now call “science.” Those who insist on signs say the only truth worth believing is confirmed by touch, taste, quantification, measurement. It must be observable, repeatable, and the basis of an hypothesis. That is one very important sort of truth. We would not have the medicine, technology, communication, and freedom from superstition of our day without it. Science must be honored and taken seriously, and not dismissed because the opinions and prejudices of some religious people don’t happen to coincide with the evidence and facts it offers.

But this gospel of the foolish power of the cross calls us to another kind, a deeper level, of truth—the sort that sends tingles down our spines when we hear it. It’s truth revealed not by experimentation in a lab, by measurements in the field or searching through a telescope, but in the deep recesses of the human heart which only the Spirit of God can reach and touch.

When Paul criticizes the desire for wisdom or the seeking of signs, he has in mind those times and ways such pursuits are marked by arrogant assumptions that human reason is ultimate, and that there is no deeper, more profound wisdom; that there is no greater power than that which human officials and generals exercise through their pens and weapons; that there is no other way of honor than narcissistic exaltation of oneself while putting others down. This is the sort of “wisdom” that wants to disconnect from relationships with other people and indeed from the Source of life itself. The Greeks had a word for such an attitude, which has come over into English. It’s “hubris,” over-weaning pride. It’s on full display whenever we deny any accountability for our actions. It’s profoundly evident when we see ourselves as deserving ultimate loyalty, while God’s claim is arrogantly dismissed and responsibility to and for neighbors is rejected.

But the word of the cross judges all human claims to superior status due to knowledge, power, wealth or spirituality. The cross challenges us to believe that in weakness there is power, in suffering there is exaltation, and in foolishness there is wisdom. Christ crucified calls us to imagine and work for a world where oxymora make perfect sense, because they contain a deeper truth, a concealed point.

We are and can be people who dare to proclaim the oxymoronic message of a crucified Savior who is the power and presence and wisdom of God. We might look and sound like fools to the world, but to God we are people who see things as they are, who know the truth dismissed by those who believe they are the ones in control. But we don’t boast of our knowledge or parade our power. We proclaim the wisdom of God, which theologian Paul Tillich once summarized in a sermon. “Our final wisdom,” he observed, “is to accept our foolishness and to look at the place in history in which wisdom itself appeared in the garb of utter foolishness, the Cross of Christ. Here the wisdom that is eternally with God, that is present in the universe, and that loves [humanity], appears in fullness. And in those who look at it and receive it, faith and wisdom become one” (“On Wisdom,” The Eternal Now: 172).