City Called Heaven

Looking to Lent

2012-01-31T20:46:00.004-05:00

It will soon be Lent. And again the Church will try to understand what it means to turn towards the cross. And people, touched by Christ, will try to walk the Jesus Way.

You might not get this immediately, given the way Lent focuses on our legacy of sin, and in accurately knowing where we are now.

But the season of Lent is inherently forward-looking.

“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”
Anne Lamott

In Lent we look back not out of nostalgia, nor out of obsessive fixation. And we focus on where we really are not out of excess narcissism, nor to wallow in shame. We simply need to get our bearings. And we look ahead to the cross, because of the way it reveals not just the old ills, but the new life God is always bringing forth.

Picture: Release, by Random Cathy .

Does Mitt Romney have another tax problem?

2012-01-24T19:06:00.011-05:00

Overlooked in the news over the large size of Governor Romney's income and small size of his tax bill is the issue of his faith, expressed in donations to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church).

Mr. Romney has served as a Mormon bishop (head of a local congregation) and as a stake president (head of a regional group of congregations, equivalent to a diocese). His faithful church membership has been part of his public resume.

Yet the tax returns reveal an interesting anomaly. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints practices a tithe as a requirement of its members. A Biblical tithe is usually thought of as 10% of income. While there is some debate within the LDS church as to what constitutes a tithe,* official church policy sets the tithe at 10% of gross income. "...[T]he simplest statement we know of is that statement of the Lord himself that the members of the Church should pay one-tenth of all their interest annually, which is understood to mean income" (March 19, 1970 letter from the First Presidency to presidents of stakes and missions, bishops of wards, and presidents of branches in answer to the question, "What is a proper tithe?").

Looking at Mr. Romney's 2010 returns (as summarized by the Washington Post's "Tale of the 1040s"), Mr. Romney seems to have underpaid his tithe to his church. With a 2010 gross income of $21,661,344, Mr. Romney gave charitable donations of $2,983,974 (13.8%), including $1,525,000 to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (7%). Donations to other charitable institutions, while commendable, do not help to fulfill one's religious obligation to tithe to the church.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in addition to defining the tithe, also recognizes that it is a gift, and offering, and a spiritual matter. Thus, the letter which defines the tithe as 10% of income also goes on to say "We feel that every member of the Church should be entitled to make his own decision as to what he thinks he owes the Lord, and to make payment accordingly." This is an honest recognition that tithing is hard. Choosing to give a large portion of your income is a sacrifice, and cannot be compelled of someone else. It requires generosity, but also commitment, and work.

I am not a student of Mormon faith and practice, so I am open to correction on this point, but it appears that Mr. Romney's tax returns reveal that his giving to his church comes up 30% short of what the church expects.

I wonder if any Mormons - whether in the one percent or the ninety-nine - who pay the full tithe have noticed this.

* Some argue that the 10% tithe only applies to "surplus" income, or income in excess of basic needs. Others debate whether the tithe is applied to gross or after tax income. Official church policy is 10% of gross income.

Photo credits:
Mitt Romney official portrait, public domain
Salt Lake Temple, Utah - Sept 2004, taken by Diluff.

Eucharistic prayer - Epiphany

2012-01-08T09:11:00.010-05:00

Blessed are you, O God, giver of all good things. You bring forth order from chaos, abundance from scarcity. Your kingdom overflows with gifts. In Melchizedek, you gave bread and wine as a sign of your kingdom of peace. You gave children to Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Tamar, Ruth, and Hannah, blessing them and fulfilling your promise. Gifts dedicated your Tabernacle. You open the hearts of the righteous, freely scattering gifts to the poor. You gave seers of old the gift of prophecy, and let them see the coming of the Messiah. You led kings from the East to come and worship your gift to the world, God in human flesh.

On the night he was handed over to death, our Lord Jesus took bread, and gave thanks; broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take and eat; this is my body, given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.

Again, after supper, he took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it for all to drink, saying: This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin. Do this for the remembrance of me.

Remembering, therefore, his coming in humble circumstances, his ministry of healing and forgiveness, his death and resurrection, we await the day when he comes again in glory. Come, Lord Jesus.

By your Spirit bless us and this meal, that it feed our hunger for justice and fill us with your love, your wisdom, your transforming power for good. Come, Holy Spirit.

Bless your people and pour out upon us spiritual gifts, that your Church may ever live in your Promise and sing your praise, Source of life, Redeemer of the world, Spirit of grace and truth, now and forever. Amen.

Top: "Gift to the Magi" by Richard Jesse Watson.

Eucharistic prayer - Baptism of Jesus

2012-01-02T14:00:00.009-05:00

Blessed are you, O holy God, Light and Life of the world. In the beginning, your voice flew over the mighty waters. You separated the waters and made the dry land, and brought forth life throughout creation. You led your people Israel through the sea and out of bondage, and through the river Jordan into the land of promise. You brought forth streams of water in the wilderness, and commanded your children to wash in the water for purification and for healing. You have given prophets and seers visions of the river flowing from the heavenly temple as balm and blessing. You sent your prophet John to prepare the way of the Lord, proclaiming a baptism of repentance. And in Jesus, you stepped into the raging waters, identifying with the penitent, and extending your hand of salvation.

In the night before his trial and death, our Lord Jesus took bread, and gave thanks; broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take and eat; this is my body, given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.

Again, after supper, he took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it for all to drink, saying: This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin. Do this for the remembrance of me.

Remembering, therefore, his incarnation in human flesh, his love of those in need and his prayer for his disciples, his dying and rising, we await the day when all creation rejoices in his Light. Come, Lord Jesus.

By your Spirit bless us and this meal, that it be for us the gift of faith, nourishing and strengthening us to plunge into service in your kingdom. Come, Holy Spirit.

Welcome into your kingdom all who call upon your name, beloved children of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to whom be all glory and honor and praise, now and forevermore. Amen.

Modern Coptic icon of the Baptism of Jesus Christ, from St-Takla.org. Note the way Jesus' immersion in the river is depicted as a foreshadowing of the shroud which wrapped him at death, echoing the way theology talks about baptism as the drowning of the old Adam and the death of sin.

Chain of blessing

2011-12-31T00:29:00.010-05:00

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the Israelites: You shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. So they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them (Numbers 6:22-27).

Every day for the past 3,000+ years, these words of blessing have been spoken to the people of Israel. This "priestly blessing," named as such because it was given to Aaron and his sons, the hereditary priesthood of Tabernacle and Temple, has echoed through the ages, in that lineage, and adopted by the presiding ministers of the Christian Church.*

The photo above is contemporary, taken yesterday. "A descendant of the priestly caste pronounces the High Priest Aharon's blessing at the Western Wall," 70,000 attend Priestly Blessing at Western Wall, Jerusalem World News, 12/31/11.

They are said so often, it may take some effort to hear them.

In their Biblical context, they come at the end of several chapters of instruction for organizing the priestly class, the Levites and the sons of Kohath. Even after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, we see these kohanim still (in the surname Cohen).

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* The blessing has even made its way into popular culture. In the TV series Star Trek, Mr. Spock's Vulcan greeting of "Live long and prosper" might be seen as a simplified and secular version of the priestly blessing. Especially as the original actor in the role, Leonard Nimoy mirrored the gesture of the kohanim from his childhood synagogue.

With us is God

2011-12-23T11:59:00.004-05:00

Gracious God, born of Mary and ever-coming into the world, this Christmas may we receive the grace to adore you. May we worship your glory in humble places. May we honor you with fine gifts for those in low estate. And may we, with shepherds and angels, sing praise to God Most High, God Most Near, God Most Holy, God Most Merciful, Jesus Christ our savior, our brother, our king. Amen.

Joy to the World

2011-12-18T23:36:00.010-05:00

A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together...” (Isaiah 40:3b-5a).

Three weeks ago the season of Advent began with the reading of these words of prophecy. Isaiah knew that there are so many obstacles between us and God, between the world we have and the world God is bringing into being.

As Advent proceeds, we are asked to be attentive to the ways that God is working in the world, perhaps even look to and minister in the “rough places” as precisely the places where God's glory is being revealed.

The Hudson County Correctional Center (pictured above) is tucked into one of those corners of the County that pass for “wilderness,” surrounded by tangles of concertina wire. If your loved one is inside, it's difficult to visit - and many of those incarcerated do not get visitors.

For each of the past 13 Christmas seasons, I have had the good fortune to be in jail - too briefly - to sing Christmas music, to read some of the great words from Isaiah, Matthew, and Luke, and to hear (and sometimes give) a sermon for the occasion.

Make no mistake about it - jails and prisons are oppressive. Yet each year I am moved by what happens inside. From a choral standpoint, the audiences are some of the most appreciative I have ever sung before. But even more, it is the joy and hope – sometimes mixed with sorrow and desperation – that the inmates show forth, and that I hear when God breaks into this place. The lessons seem to mean more when read in the wilderness, when shared among disreputable shepherds in the lonely fields.

Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they burst out in exuberant welcome. And all because some church folk managed to find their way into a place where “respectable” folk don’t go, not because we’re so special, but because the people we’re visiting are, and the good news we carried in – or discovered once we’re there! - is contagious. Sometimes it even happens to the guards!

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let all their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy.
This year, because the jail changed its policy and no longer holds large services, we were escorted into three of the pods (dormitories) which house women inmates. We gave a shortened version of the usual program, and, like usual, we had brief conversation time. Please remember in your prayers Alicia, and Kimberly, and Mary, and the quiet smiling young woman whose name I didn‘t get who will be deported this week, and the woman who couldn’t stop crying because she was afraid and away from home with no prospect of returning soon. Remember them and all their brothers and sisters awaiting the day of release.

When I first started going, I found the sound of doors locking behind us unsettling. Now I’m more bothered by the fact that we have to leave so soon, leaving behind those with sentences still to serve. But this year, unaccountably, the gospel broke among us singers.

As we were leaving the second pod, waiting for transport to another floor, someone started singing the Christmas spiritual “Amen,” and the calls of “See the little baby,” and “lying in a manger” and the “A-A-Amen” responses rang off the hard tile walls and in the stairwell, and I like to think we caused a little consternation, or maybe it was just the walls themselves echoing the song “Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king, peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinner reconciled” as we, a little more reconciled than when we started, made our way home.

And may it be so for Alicia, and Kimberly, and Mary, and all who wait for the glory of the Lord to be revealed. Amen.

Prayer for healing

2011-12-10T01:12:00.005-05:00

Healer of our every ill,
Light of each tomorrow,
give us peace beyond our fear,
and hope beyond our sorrow.

Great God, your very life is healing for illness, for sorrow, for that which is broken. Lay your hand upon us, that we might be made whole, renewed in life, upheld by your Spirit, and possessed by your love.

Bless all those engaged in the ministry of healing, and help our hospitals, clinics, doctors, nurses, aides, therapists, chaplains, and health care administrators be enablers of healing for people and communities. We ask in the name of the great physician, the One whose ministry heals the sick and the world itself, Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen.

"Healer of our every ill" verse by Marty Haugen, (c) 1987, GIA Publications, Inc. "Flower Mandala" by Carole Devereux.

"Black" Friday prayer

2011-11-25T13:05:00.002-05:00

Generous God, we come before you knowing that every Friday is a bleak Friday when we remember your crucifixion, each injustice, every evil in this world. And yet we rejoice, knowing that each Sunday - in fact every day - is a resurrection day when we celebrate your gift of new life to the world. Help us to trust that your providence is enough, and that each day may bring bread for all who hunger.

Grant that we, like your faithful disciples in every age, might know the power of resurrection in the midst of this world. And enable us to be witnesses to your glory, sharing the good news of freedom from bondage to debt, bondage to lusts, bondage to fear, bondage to any desire other than for good, in Jesus name. Amen.

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-24T13:34:00.006-05:00

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

The Apostle Paul does not urge us to give thanks for everything, but simply observes that we are created with an orientation towards thankfulness, and that in every circumstance there is something that we can be grateful for.

Being thankful, dwelling in thankfulness, is good for us, and is a holy place to be. For what are you thankful today?

I am fortunate to be blessed with many things. I am grateful for fulfilling work – even in the midst of aggravation! I am grateful for the generosity of others which is helping to feed so many people today. And I am thankful that today is a day of rest for me. I am glad to finally have a nice car to replace the one destroyed by a drunk driver in June, and still thankful that no one was hurt in that incident. And especially grateful that this has carried me to visit my Dad, who is still living and enjoying life, and soon to see other family members gathered together.

I am grateful that God has given us a world full of blessing, challenged that there is still so much to do, and awed at the privilege to be a part of so much wonder.

May God bless and keep you this day and forevermore.

Remembering Kennedy

2011-11-22T08:01:00.005-05:00

Today marks the 52nd anniversary of the killing of John F. Kennedy, President.

Since his death, we have learned some of the back story of his complicated life. Without the chance to complete his term as President - and a full life of public service - we are left with a story of promise and potential not fully realized. So it becomes easy to imagine a flawed Presidency, or an idealized one. And that has probably distracted attention from this American hero, who was elected based in large part on the strength of his character.

Our polis, our civic life has suffered from this traumatic loss. While not my favorite talking head, Chris Matthews' writing on Kennedy is worth reading, and his new book Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, provides a good look at a leader whose loss we justly mourn.

The 9-Percent

2011-11-21T20:31:00.005-05:00

"Approval of Congress Matches Record Low," Allison Kopiciki, NY Times Caucus blog, 9/16/11. "Congress faces historically low approval ratings as it wades into the debate over the $447 billion jobs package proposed by President Obama, with just 12 percent of Americans now approving of the way Congress is handling its job, matching its all-time low... Only 6 percent of registered voters say that most members of Congress have earned re-election, while 84 percent say it’s time to give someone new a chance, a historic low for the New York Times/CBS poll. Dissatisfaction with Congress runs deep across both parties, with more than 8 in 10 of both Republicans and Democrats saying it’s time to elect new representatives" (emphasis added).

I would like to know where they found the 9% who approve? People who have been comatose for the past six years? Clones of Grover Norquist, ideologically ecstatic that government has now ceased to function?

First Congress punted the job of fiscal reform to the "super committee," and now the "super committee," has gone exactly...nowhere. We have a failure of leadership. And that is not on Congress, but reflects the delusions and divisions in society - and our willingness to elect the same failed representatives again and again and again.

In New Jersey we just elected our state legislature. Despite a small number who were challenged by redistricting, NO incumbents failed to be reelected, not one. Something is wrong with that picture.

Halloween

2011-10-31T11:11:00.004-04:00

For about as long as humans have been human, we have wondered, feared, and hoped about the souls of our companions who die. Both out of love for those we've lost, and out of fear for what might happen to us, we have felt it important to "put the dead in their place," to make sure they are not wandering the earth causing trouble.

Perhaps it's no problem that we are no longer quite so supertitious in this direction. But there's something missing when Halloween has become just an occasion for dress-up and excess.

Ghosts still wander the earth - in reality, or in metaphor. We do well to respect what they still have to say to us, what we need to do to help assure peace in their passing. In the Western Church, we will remember the departed tomorrow, on All Saints' Day. But tonight, for all the fun there may be in a Fall Carnaval, I hope we do not neglect the spirits that are just out of sight.

Growing faith

2011-10-31T00:13:00.002-04:00

We were asked a question today in church: "How do we grow in faith"?

Does the grass know how it grows? It is a mystery.

Good soil, water, and sunlight help - but are no guarantee. We know people with seemingly all the resources, but no results. And, while hardship can stunt growth, new life can unaccountably spring up in the most adverse circumstances.

Whenever it happens, growth in faith, faith itself, is always a gift.

If there is one thing that helps the most... it is the example of others' fathfulness, others' hope, others' love. We see that so clearly in Jesus - but also in so many others. That is the best kind of soil.

God's commandments

2011-10-21T22:22:00.002-04:00

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: "Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." And then the Lord gave ten commandments for the people to follow. Leviticus 19:1-2

Over the years, the commandments have picked up a bad reputation with some, fueled by those who would impose them on others, or who seem to delight in punishing lawbreakers. But the text does not show the commandments given by these lesser authorities, but by God.

And you might simply take them as guidelines for good behavior. We don't need a heavenly enforcer to know that killing, stealing, jealousy, failure to rest, and disrespect to others eventually leads to bad results. Violate them and you violate the conditions of personal and social health, to your peril.

But look back to the way God gives the commandments: not to keep people in line, but out of God's desire that we share in the holiness, the righteousness, the goodness that is God's very nature. "You shall be holy..." God wants us to imitate the goodness that is God's desire for us.

That's freeing, compared to the endless chain of bad stuff that follows from going counter to the Way given by God.

Prayer for peace

2011-10-07T10:41:00.003-04:00

This day marks the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, our nation's longest war.

Afghanistan War Children, photographer unknown
O God, war rends your creation and multiplies suffering and poverty. Let us cry out in response to war's devastation. Be with all affected by warfare: those who wage it, those caught in its crossfire, and those who fund and enable it. Call forth peacemakers and healers, that the wounds of war and the ills which provoke war might be the subject of your care, your healing, your transformation. Help us to see the many victims of war: the precious lives killed, the beautiful bodies maimed, the spirits afflicted by violence committed, inflicted upon, and witnessed. Have mercy, and heal us.

O God, it is your will to hold both heaven and earth in a single peace. Let the design of your great love shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows, and give peace to your church, peace among nations, peace in our homes, and peace in our hearts; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The second paragraph is from Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p.72.

Friday prayer

2011-09-30T09:02:00.003-04:00

From despair and hopelessness: save us, Lord.
From denial and paralysis: save us, Lord.
From indifference and fear: save us, Lord.
From captivity to sin and thrall to death: save us, Lord.

In mercy you came to dwell among us, sharing bread and breath, dining with sinners, forgiving enemies, and caring for creation with the power of God's own love. Hear us now, and heal us from the sin that has twisted us, that we might be upright with you and with one another, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Lloyd Gold

2011-09-24T01:21:00.015-04:00

Lloyd Gold died last Friday. Maybe you knew him, or someone like him.

At his funeral, one of his friends observed that Lloyd was “not normal.” And thank God for that. You might have expected to see him in the pages of Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor, the final gone-astray scion of a once grand Southern family. Instead, Lloyd was a fixture of Hoboken and Jersey City street life for the past 20+ years.

His funeral was in the basement of a funeral parlor in Newark. They were going to “throw him away,” until a long-time friend stepped in to make sure that Lloyd was buried right. I don’t know that Lloyd would have cared that much, but it was good for the nine people who came to see him off.

He looked pretty good, considering he was dead, wearing his only suit jacket, his hair trimmed. Lloyd loved his jewelry, but all of it had been stolen before a friend came to pack up his things. So he went out wearing just a tiny shamrock pin, a gift he’d once given, now given back, and a necklace of shiny blue stars.

He would certainly have appreciated the fresh-faced young priest who came from Grace to ensure that the Church Episcopal took note of his passing, to recall the walk through the valley of the shadow of death and pray the great prayer of commendation: “Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Lloyd. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming.”

Lloyd was not the easiest person to get along with. You might quaintly call him pixilated, but he suffered from mental illness. That, plus his fondness for a drink or several, and his outrage at injustices of all sorts led him into trouble and broke many relationships. In his last 20 years, he was homeless much more often than not.

But Lloyd’s life was filled with grace. He could not always get himself together, but he gave freely and generously to others. One of the folks who stuck with him the longest told how, when he was sick, Lloyd would bring him a cup of tea or soup. If he was hospitalized, Lloyd would always find a way to visit. “Most ‘normal’ people don’t do that.” Reminds me of Jesus.

And Lloyd did that a lot, in crazy ways, which should not be that surprising given that God long ago chose to reveal the sacred through the foolish things of the world. Lloyd often appeared as a holy fool, flamboyantly bedecked in his beloved costume jewelry. My favorite Lloyd story is from my wife Lisa, who would talk with him when he came into Hoboken Antiques, mostly to browse the dollar costume jewelry bin.

Now, Lloyd being homeless and a little “out there” made her a bit uneasy with his visits. On this day, as they talked, he told her that there was a big celebration at All Saints (the Episcopal Church up the street where Lloyd was a sporadic member), and invited her to come. “The Bishop is coming,” he said. “There'll be refreshments.” She said she had to get home and do her homework. “No, really, you should come, it’s a special celebration!”

Eventually she said “Bye, Lloyd” as he went out. She heard the door shut and went back to her schoolwork, but about ten seconds later she heard the bells ring. The door was opening and Lloyd was coming back. “Don't forget about the celebration!”

The church was in the opposite direction from home, but that evening Lisa had to go uptown to look for a book for her class, and as she came back downtown she noticed that the church was lit up and the doors were open. She knew there was a party going on, said to herself, “Oh, alright,” accepted Lloyd’s invitation, and walked in the door. And into the Eucharist.

She doesn't remember seeing Lloyd there that night. He had gone on to other things. But it struck her the way it never had before that Jesus' communion meal is a celebration. And she remembers the light in the sanctuary was very beautiful, a transfiguration light.

And that’s the way it often was with Lloyd. He invited people into something bigger than they were expecting. Sometimes more troublesome. But if you had the eyes to see, it was often strangely beautiful, caring, and out of the ordinary.

I have no doubts about Lloyd’s deliverance. Love and grace shone through his life. I’d say “God bless you, Lloyd,” but I know God has. And we have been blessed by and through him. Rest in peace.

Lloyd Gold
March 8, 1951 - September 16, 2011

“Resurrection Tulips”
Lloyd Gold, 2011

There can be no doubt

2011-09-20T23:35:00.000-04:00

LAST MINUTE UPDATE: In less than 90 minutes, the state of Georgia is scheduled to execute someone whose guilt is very much in doubt. Any hope for intervention rests in the hands of Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm and Judge Penny Freesemann. Please sign the petition asking them to stop what can never be reversed: an execution.

The United States of America continues to kill people, as the State of Georgia plans to do tomorrow to Troy Davis. Mr. Davis was convicted of murdering a Georgia police officer, Mark Allen Macphail, in 1991.

Since then, the case against him has collapsed, and a new trial would certainly fall well short of reasonable doubt. (See Amnesty International for a summary.)

I do not know if Troy Davis is guilty or innocent. And that is a problem.

I believe we should not be in the execution business at all. But we certainly can't be killing people when guilt is not certain.

Troy Davis has said "They can take my body but not my spirit, because I have given my spirit to God."

Criminal justice is not principally about the criminal. It is about all of us, and strives to restore the body to health.

It probably will not stop the State of Georgia from killing Troy Davis. But please speak up. Call the District Attorney of Chatham County (912-652-7308), and ask him to intervene. And when you can't get through (their phone may be off the hook), send your message at districtattorney.chathamcounty.org/Home/ContactUs.aspx.

You may also wish to keep faith by talking with others about justice, life, and death, and by fasting on Wednesday evening. And please mark the 7 o’clock hour Eastern time - the time of Troy’s scheduled execution — as a moment to offer prayer.

Thank you.

Almighty God, let your justice rule. Spare the lives of the innocent and the guilty, and work your way in the hearts of every human being, that each may turn from destruction and towards the light of righteousness. Restrain us from the impulse to kill. Be with each of us who lies under the threat of death, and open to us the way of truth, of hope, and of life. Amen.

Dag Hammarskjöld - I am the vessel

2011-09-18T01:19:00.000-04:00

Dag Hammarskjöld (July 29, 1905 - September 18, 1961) was descended from a family line of Swedish knights. The youngest son of the Prime Minister of Sweden, Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, a member of the Hague Tribunal and the Nobel Foundation, he was raised in an atmosphere steeped in an ethic of public service.

An outstanding student, he excelled in his studies, particularly in the Humanities and linguistics. He became known as a talented poet and translator of poetry, particularly the poems of Emily Dickinson; an art and music historian; and in his later years, as a theologian. He was also an athlete: a gymnast, a skier, and a mountaineer. But his main interest was political economy. He earned a law degree and a doctorate in economics from Uppsala University and taught economics, then entered public service. Working for Sweden’s financial health in the years of the Great Depression, and for Swedish foreign policy, he helped to preserve Sweden’s neutrality as so much of Europe fell under the Nazi regime, and gained expertise in international affairs.

In 1949, he began to represent Sweden as a delegate to the brand-new United Nations. In 1953, he was elected Secretary General, receiving 57 votes out of 60; and he was re-elected to this post in 1957.
Hammarskjöld was widely regarded for helping to shape the United Nations into an independent international organization, patiently working to confirm the United Nations for the people who worked there, as a place set apart from narrowly conceived national interests. As Secretary General, one of his first diplomatic achievements was to negotiate the release of American prisoners of war held by China during the Korean War.

Practicing what he called “preventive diplomacy” he worked to ease the Suez Canal crisis in 1956 and address the situation in Palestine,

and to negotiate the post-colonial politics of Southeast Asia in the years after the Japanese invasions of WWII and before the U.S. interventions in Viet Nam. But Africa was to draw his attention most intensely. Many parts of Africa were coming out of colonial rule to national independence, with widely varying degrees of effectiveness and benefit to their citizens. While the old colonial systems were receding, the idea of Africa as a source of natural resources to be despoiled and exploited by powers on other continents, without much regard for the well-being of the local citizens, had not gone away. Africa, especially the Congo region, became the pawn of a post-colonial ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the old colonial interests of Belgium and England added to the competition.

Dag Hammarskjöld was resolved to work for the benefit and development of Africa. He was convinced that the emerging countries there have an important mission to fulfill in the community of nations, and strove who help them develop their future. As he expressly said, he believed that the next decades must belong to Africa or to the atom bomb.

His advocacy for the United Nations as an independent entity, and for the development and self-determination of small nations, angered many of the world’s most powerful countries. At one point, the Soviet Union insisted that Hammarskjold resign as Secretary General. And while he was supported by President Kennedy, he made many elements of the U.S. Government furious when he refused to allow a McCarthy-era FBI raid inside the United Nations.

In 1961, the political situation in the Congo rose to a boiling point after the election of the nationalist, Patrice Lumumba, as President of the new Republic of the Congo. The Belgian colonial regime had been brutal, spawning the first modern human rights campaign to oppose its abuses. It left the newly-independent Congo ill-prepared for self-government. The province of Katanga, with the backing of Belgian colonial interests, declared independence from the Congo. Lumumba threatened to appeal to the Soviet Union for assistance.

On September 14 a coup d’etat headed by Colonel Joseph Mobutu, who would later become infamous as the dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, arrested and imprisoned Lumumba. In January of 1961, he was assassinated under mysterious circumstances.

In 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld traveled to the Congo repeatedly in order to help negotiate some settlement of their conflict over national self-determination. (In the photo at left he is shown inspecting UN troops in the Congo on one of those visits). He was determined to help the people of the Congo decide what they wanted for themselves, without the manipulation of the great powers; and sent in one of the first major UN peace-keeping operations to prevent one side in the conflict from trying to obliterate the other, as happened three decades later in Rwanda.

On his way to broker a cease-fire agreement between the Republic of the Congo and Katanga State, in the early morning of September 18, 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash at the border of the Congo and Northern Rhodesia, now known as Zambia. When he died, many speculated that Hammarskjöld had been assassinated, in order to keep the U.N. from bringing the central government of the Congo and the mineral-rich Katanga Province from coming back together.

He was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961.

In the mid-1970’s, the United States Senate convened the “Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations With Respect To Intelligence Activities,” also known as the “Church Committee” because it was led by Senator Frank Church. Investigating the misuse of United States intelligence resources over three decades, part of the findings of the Church Committee included a 1975 report titled: “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders.” One of its conclusions was that there was some CIA knowledge, and activity, in the deaths of both Patrice Lumumba and Dag Hammarskjöld.

It was not till the 1963 publication of his personal journal, titled “Markings,” that the depth of his Christian faith and how much of a relationship he lived out between this faith and his active spirituality within the diplomatic world became understood. Dag Hammarskjöld himself called this journal: “a sort of ‘White Book’ (a diplomatic briefing) concerning my negotiations with myself - and with God.”

In the acceptance speech for the posthumous awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, Rolf Edberg, the Swedish Ambassador to Norway, shared some reflections about Dag Hammarskjöld. He spoke of how: “Time and again, Hammarskjöld referred to the indissoluble connection between peace and human rights. Tolerance, protection by law, equal political rights, and equal economic opportunities for all citizens were prerequisites for a harmonious life within a nation. They also became requirements for such a life among nations.”

The Swedish Ambassador continued, speaking of the intensity “that grew stronger each year,” with which Hammarskjöld stressed that:

“The United Nations had to be shaped into a dynamic instrument in the service of development. In his last report, in a tone of voice penetrating because of its very restraint, he confronted those member states which were clinging to ‘the time-honored philosophy of sovereign national states in armed competition, of which the most that may be expected is that they achieve a peaceful coexistence.’ This philosophy did not meet the needs of a world of ever increasing interdependence, where nations have at their disposal armaments of hitherto unknown destructive strength. The United Nations must open up ways to more developed forms of international cooperation... This report...now stands as a last testament.” Ambassador Edberg concluded: “Dag Hammarskjöld found the words of the U.N. Charter concerning equal rights for all nations, large and small, filled with life and significance. Above all, it was the small nations, and especially the developing countries, which needed the United Nations for their protection and their future.”

This address, delivered in December, 1961, still contains timely and urgent words.

In describing his character, Ambassador Edberg said that Hammarskjöld demonstrated how: “Such a conviction must be based on a determined philosophy of life. No one who met him could help noticing that he had a room of quiet within himself.”

This might have been a reference to the U.N. Meditation Room, which is located off the public lobby of the General Assembly Hall in New York, that Hammarskjöld designed. This place, set aside intentionally as a place to listen for the “still, small voice” of God includes an inscription on a black marble plaque, which Hammarskjöld wrote:

“This Is A Room Devoted To Peace And Those Who Are Giving Their Lives For Peace. It Is A Room Of Quiet Where Only Thoughts Should Speak.” He also wrote the text of the leaflet given to visitors to the Meditation Room. It begins: “We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence.”

The last translation work that Hammarskjöld engaged in was to put the works of twentieth-century Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, into Swedish. I and Thou (Ich und Du), the great book written by Martin Buber, speaks of his belief that all real living is in relationship. Pages from I and Thou were found in the wreckage of the plane in which Hammarskjöld was killed.

Ambassador Edberg described the likeness of Buber’s writing to Hammarskjöld’s own convictions, that: “There were invisible bridges on which people could meet as human beings above the confines of ideologies, races, and nations.”

Just before his plane took off on its fatal flight, Hammarskjöld left behind with a friend a copy of the book Imitation of Christ. by Thomas à Kempis. Tucked inside its pages was the oath of office of the United Nations Secretary-General.

This week we pray for the World Summit at the United Nations, and in thanksgiving for the ongoing work of the United Nations during this year’s observance of the 60th anniversary of the United Nations. We also pray for the work of the Lutheran World Federation, and for all groups and individuals who dream about, and pray and work, for human rights and world peace.

I believe that we should die with decency
so that at least decency will survive.”
Dag Hammarskjöld
The full address by Rolf Edberg, the Swedish Ambassador to Norway, is at the website of the Nobel Prize Committee.

Reverend Lisa Bellan-Boyer
Parish Iconographer
St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church
Written on September 18, 2005

Prayer for 9/11 anniversary

2011-09-09T10:59:00.000-04:00

O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home.

As we recall terrors past and present, grant that we may remember your response: the way of the cross, the resurrection from the dead, and the sharing of bread. Heal our suffering world, and grant that we may not be marked by evil, but transformed by the power of your redeeming love, in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Credits:
Isaac Watts, "O God our help in ages past," from The Psalms of David, 1719.
Stephane Jaspert, "Two candles" (1982) after Gerhard Richter, used by permission.

The New Rugged Cross

2011-08-29T13:03:00.000-04:00

Immediately following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, there was an extensive search to rescue any surviving victims. On September 13, 2001, one of the construction workers, Frank Silecchia, was searching in the debris under 6 World Trade Center. He has said that he had been having a silent conversation with God, in despair at the wreckage. He felt lost in his heart, mind, and every other way. In the tangled mess of destruction, there were no longer any straight lines, no reference points.

Frank turned around and saw a void, which he later called a "chapel," and saw three vertical lines through the dust. As he got closer, he saw three crosses of steel beams. The central one, 20 feet tall, had a shroud of ductwork draped over its left beam. Frank took this as a sign that God was present in the midst of the destruction, and it became used as a shrine and place of prayer. In early October, the central cross was moved to Church & Liberty Streets, next to the morgue trailers. It became used as a regular place of worship as the debris was cleared from the WTC site. (See Wikipedia: World_Trade_Center_cross.)

One of the chaplains who worked in the WTC recovery, Lisa Bellan-Boyer, had met the cross and Frank and heard his story and the way the cross was used as a place of interfaith spiritual respite. Just preceding the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, she recalled a well-known hymn about the “old rugged cross.” She quickly wrote down an additional verse and refrain about the WTC's “new rugged cross,” feeling that the words came from a source beyond her. They evoke the way that cross speaks to both the reality of brutality and the hope of God's continued presence. She has said that she felt the new verse answered those who were proclaiming the disaster a sign that God had turned away.

“The Old Rugged Cross, with a New Verse”

On a hill, far away,
stood an old rugged cross,
the emblem of suffering and shame.
And I love that old cross, where the dearest and best,
for a world of lost sinners was slain.

REFRAIN:
So I’ll cherish the cross, (the old rugged cross,)
till my trophies at last I lay down,
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
and exchange it someday, for a crown.

Oh, that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,
has a wondrous attraction for me;
for the dear Lamb of God left his Glory above,
to bear it to dark Calvary.   REFRAIN

In the old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
a wondrous beauty I see,
for ‘twas on that old cross, Jesus suffered and died,
to pardon and sanctify me.   REFRAIN

To the old rugged cross, I will ever be true,
its shame and reproach gladly bear;
then he’ll call me someday,
to my home, far away,
where his Glory forever I’ll share!   REFRAIN

Near the Pit, so close by,
stands a “New Rugged Cross,”
an emblem of catastrophe.
It reminds us of those, ‘neath that bright morning sky,
who faced their own Calvary.

FINAL REFRAIN:
And I look to that cross, that new rugged cross,
As it stands, so solid and square,
With hope, as a sign, from the Spirit of Love:
God was, is, WILL ALWAYS BE THERE.

“The Old Rugged Cross” words & by George Bennard, 1913.

“The New Rugged Cross” verse and refrain by Rev. Lisa Bellan-Boyer, copyright 2002 & 2011 and used by permission.

Artwork by Keith Piaseczny, ArtAid.org, copyright 2002 and used by permission.

Cristobal de Morales Requiem Mass - 9/10/11

2011-08-11T15:28:00.000-04:00

Saturday, September 10th at 11:30am, Holy Rosary Church will offer a Requiem Mass in memory of those killed ten years earlier. The mass will be sung by Cantores Sancti Rosarii, directed by Harold Bott.

This is a moving and ethereal treatment of the Mass for the Dead. Cristobal de Morales' music is typical of the polyphony of the middle Renaissance, and the Requiem is a simple, contemplative presentation of the funeral mass. The central theme of the service is in the Requiem text: "Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine on them."

Holy Rosary Church is at 344 6th St (between Brunswick and Monmouth Streets) in downtown Jersey City (FLYER).

Prayer for faith in the storm

2011-08-06T02:13:00.000-04:00

Great God, as tumults rage, grant us the impetuous faith to throw ourselves into a disorderly world, that we may find you there. Grant us the power to bring calm to those in trouble, hope to those in peril, healing to any who are broken, and bread to the hungry, in Jesus name. Amen.

Matthew 14:22-33, with thanks to Matthew Skinner for a great idea and some good language.

Taking Jesus Literally

2011-08-02T19:33:00.000-04:00

In the gospels we hear again and again how Jesus loved to break bread with others. He repeatedly sent his disciples out to see that people were fed, even when it seemed impossible (Matthew 14:13-21).

Telling about our churches' food pantries or tallying up our hours at the local soup kitchen doesn't feed anyone. When we have more than we need, there is room to share more. At a time when our government is heading in the wrong economic direction and when Congressional leaders are out-doing each another in doing less for those in need, Jesus asks “do you love me”? If we do, we will feed his people. (You can look it up: John 21:15-19).

Perhaps now is a good time to challenge one another to take Jesus literally. Food ministries in the US are close to crisis status, with declining support and increasing need. The front page of today's New York Times features a photograph of a child starving in Somalia (“Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine”). Its famine hits world attention as the number at risk of death rises towards - or above - one million. Can you look this child, probably dead by now, in the face?

I have a clue about what Jesus would do. How about us?

I challenge us each to make a donation to hunger relief and to ask our congregations to do something beyond what we are doing now. Lutheran World Relief makes great use of donated funds, as does the ELCA's World Hunger program. Bread for the World does a great job of ecumenical advocacy and can help educate congregations about responses to Jesus' command: “feed my lambs.”

Maybe you can even drop in at the local soup kitchen and share a meal with those being served. All at once, you can fill your belly, make some friends, and feed your hunger - for justice.

Photo: “A woman held a malnourished child at a camp. Somali aid workers said dozens of children are dying every day, most buried in unmarked graves” (cropped). Credit: Tyler Hicks, NY Times.

9/11 Books, Video and Other Resources

2011-08-02T10:45:00.000-04:00

Some of the best resources I've found for presenting and interpreting 9/11.

Books

City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center. James Glanz and Eric Lipton, Times Books, 2003. The best, most comprehensive telling of the World Trade Center’s history, from its conception and construction to its destruction and beyond.

102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers. Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, Times Books, 2005. Stories from inside the towers on 9/11. Good architectural diagrams of the buildings’ structure, and discussion of the design decisions which had an impact on survival.

Messages: Signs, Visits, and Premonitions from Loved Ones Lost on 9/11. Bonnie McEneaney, William Morrow, 2010. In a different vein, tells stories of peoples’ after-death experiences with 9/11 victims. Well done and respectful of both belief and skepticism in the afterlife.

Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back. Jere Longman, HarperCollins Perennial, 2003. Does a really good job in telling the Flight 93 story, especially given its publication before many in-flight records were released.

The Book of Mychal: The Surprising Life and Heroic Death of Father Mychal Judge. Michael Daly, St. Martin’s Press, 2008. Good biography of an amazing man and faithful priest, the NYFD Chaplain killed at the World Trade Center.

The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. The factual baseline for what happened on 9/11 and the events leading up to it, although sadly limited in many respects.

The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden. Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. Ballantine, 2011. Update on many of the missing pieces from the 9/11 Commission Report.

Portraits: 9/11/01: The Collected "Portraits of Grief" from The New York Times. The New York Times, Times Press, 2002. Brief sketches of most people killed at the World Trade Center, as published in the well-known NY Times series.

Video

Frontline: Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero. Exceptional exploration of faith and theological issues around the 9/11 attacks, focusing on people directly involved in the disaster and its response. Unfortunately out of print. Try your local library.

The Heart of Steel. Angelo L Guglielmo, Director. Moving presentation of some of the volunteer experiences in the World Trade Center response.

Online

911digitalarchive.org. The September 11 Digital Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. The Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, a tally that includes more than 40,000 emails and other electronic communications, more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images.

Preaching the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

2011-08-01T21:02:00.000-04:00

I’ll be preaching this September 11th, the tenth anniversary of the Al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center and Washington DC. I have been involved in the recovery work from those attacks since that date, working as a chaplain in the World Trade Center recovery, and more recently guiding tours of the World Trade Center site for the Tribute Center.

This means that I know a lot about those events. They have been part of my life. They deeply affected me and many people I know. It also means I feel the need to do some extra work to think this one through, to put my feelings and experience in service of proclaiming good news.

Beginning that work, there are a couple of thoughts that may be helpful to other preachers and speakers who will grapple with what to say.

Unique Memories

One of the features of 9/11 for the preacher is that most of your audience will know what you are talking about. As one of the signature moments in cultural history, people remember where they were when they heard the news. Certain images replay in people’s heads. Many people have their own 9/11 story.

September 11, 2001 is also closely linked to other events and themes: war in Afghanistan and Iraq, fear of others (especially Muslims), the desire for security, sacrifice, retribution and forgiveness, peace and reconciliation. People remember 9/11 each time they take their shoes off in an airport or see an old movie with the World Trade Center towers in the background.

Many of these experiences have strong emotions attached to them: grief, helplessness, anger, desire for vengeance, fear, courage, pride, hope, love...

Whether it directly becomes part of the sermon, it will be good to listen for some of those stories and feelings in the preaching process, including your own. Where were you on September 11th? How did it affect you? What did you feel? What did you do in response?

Selected works from "Art for Heart," an exhibition of paintings
by children who lost loved ones in the attacks on the
World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001.
Developing a Shared Memory

Virtually no one under the age of about 14 will remember the events of September 11, 2001. Most will have heard something about it, but few will have covered it in school. Like every other cultural reference (to movies released 20 years ago, to current pop culture, to Bible stories), the preacher will need to assess how much the listeners recognize and understand the referent. You’ll need to make some decisions about how and how much to describe the events, in order to support proclamation of the gospel.

This is also true even of those of listeners who remember 9/11. Those who remember 9/11 have a variety of experiences, feelings, and opinions about it. As with any big story, we will each know only fragments. One of the functions of preaching is to “gather up the broken pieces,” to contribute to a shared view of reality. In choosing what to remember, what to emphasize, what to omit, the preacher has an influential voice in shaping community memory.

1. What is the heart of the gospel? Where do you hear the good news of deliverance, of hope, of life beyond destruction?

2. What parts of the story (the 9/11 story, the scriptural story) are necessary to proclaim the gospel?

3. What parts of the story (the 9/11 story, the scriptural story) hinder the hearing of the gospel? How does God speak and act in the presence of stumbling blocks?

Brief additional thoughts

9/11 was not the first nor the last occasion of terror and the murder of innocents. America took note of this one, not only because of its magnitude, and spectacular, cinematic, media-saturated quality, but because it happened here, to us. It is important to appropriately remember this particular event, and also the 9/11s which happen daily throughout the world. The cross of Jesus Christ illumines persecution, torture, and murder everywhere.

As we see the face of Jesus, we see a human face. Since Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans memorial, remembrances of the world's killing fields have highlighted the individual lives which make up the macro-events of history. You cannot go wrong by looking at the faces of those involved in 9/11 - the victims, the survivors, the responders, and even the perpetrators - with the light of Christ. (See the NY Time Portraits of Grief, or CNN list of 9/11 victims.)

The Appointed Texts

The texts for the day offer a lot to address this anniversary. Some brief thoughts on some of the lectionary texts for Sunday, 9/11/11.

Genesis 50:15-21 - Joseph forgives his brothers

1. “Even though you intended to harm me, God intended it for good...” I get very uncomfortable with the notion that God somehow supports or enables evil, knowing that good will eventually be the outcome. “It's all part of God's plan” can be a facile excuse for wrongdoing and tends to diminish the experience of those wronged. I love this story – but I favor a careful telling where God’s “left hand” is patiently at work behind the scenes, continually finding ways to bring about good no matter how diligently people seek other ends. I recall how destruction is easy. 19 people and a few boxcutters brought down 4 planes and those tall towers. But millions stepped up in response. It may be occasion to point to signs of healing. And yet, there will be a tension not found in Joseph's story - he, after all, survived the ill done to him, and prospered. Those who were murdered on 9/11 are still mourned, and not all who were hurt have found the good that God intends... Come, Lord Jesus, come.

2. Joseph never uses the word “forgive.” Does he forgive his brothers? What does forgiveness look like in the real world?

Matthew 18:21-35 - How often should I forgive?

1. Forgiveness may be a matter of grace - but it usually takes work. On a good day, we might forgive once. Seven times seems very hard. Seventy-seven? Just about impossible. While this is a continuation of the teaching on forgiveness and reconciliation in the preceding verses, this reading ends with a disturbing image of God as torturer. Anybody really listening will hear that, too. (Does God in the text live up to God’s own forgiveness standard?) Preaching might focus on the hell that unforgiving people make for themselves and others. By contrast, living examples of forgiveness might be lifted up, showing the burdens that are lifted when God’s generous mercy finds a home in our lives.

Some of the best resources for presenting and interpreting the stories of 9/11/01.

Images:
• St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, the only church building on the WTC site, destroyed 9/11/01
• Selected works from "Art for Heart," an exhibition of paintings by children who lost loved ones in the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001
• Artist's rendition of Reflecting Absence, part of the under-construction National September 11 Memorial & Museum, image by Squared Design Lab

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus of Bethany

2011-07-29T21:33:00.000-04:00

Almighty God, we give you thanks for those witnesses who have preceded us in faith, especially remembering this day the New Testament saints of Bethany: Mary, who sat at her rabbi's feet; Martha, who trusted in Jesus and confessed him as Messiah; and Lazarus, who obeyed Jesus' command and came out of the grave. Give us the grace to listen to your Word, true hearts to know your presence, and the will to follow you from death into life. Grant that we too may follow you in faith, trusting ever in your promise of new life in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Craven

2011-07-13T01:20:00.000-04:00

The U.S. Constitution, adopted September 17, 1787: “Section. 8. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;...” (archives.gov).

“This debt limit increase is his [Obama’s] problem...” John Boehner, Speaker of the House, July 12, 2011.

“We need to raise the debt limit - but Republicans can’t take the responsibility.” Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, July 12, 2011. (OK, that’s not a quote - just a summary of what he said. He described his plan where the Republicans would vote “against” a debt limit increase - but also give Obama the authority to do it, abdicating their responsibility under the Constitution. See Mitch McConnell says Republicans will not let government default.)

Shame on you. Your economics are wrong. Your politics (I pray) are wrong. And your idea of leadership is to point the finger at somebody else, to shirk your duty, and to avoid any sense of responsibility for the state of our nation. The most out of touch institution in the U.S. is the Congress. This is about your spending, your tax policies, the budgets and earmarks and tax loopholes and bailouts and pork that you lobbied for, schemed for, and voted for.

Obama’s time in office: 19 months. Average length of service in the House at the beginning of the 110th Congress was more than 10 years; in the Senate, 12.8 years. If you want to assign blame, start from there.

If you want to accept responsibility, you need to start from a very different place. The President “implored both political parties to give ground and show the American people that Washington can actually work. ‘If not now, when?’ Obama said” (Debt-talks). Big proposals - the Republicans say no. Moderate proposals - the Republicans say no.

It’s about economics - artificially low taxes for the wealthy. And it’s about politics - according to Sen. McConnell, as long as Obama is president “a real solution is unattainable.” That means “we won’t work with this guy no matter what happens to the country.”

America will judge which position represents responsible leadership.

Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell: the debt limit, and the deficit, and the debt, and the job crisis, the housing crisis, the banking crisis, and the gap between rich and the rest of us - all of these are our problems. America gets it - why can't you?

Land that I love

2011-07-04T14:59:00.000-04:00

July 4, 2011

I used to make a point of calling this holiday “Independence Day.” Its major feature was, for me, the specific point of national pride in seeking independence from a foreign master. It was about standing up, declaring “this is what we stand for,” and being willing to back it up with “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

I know a little more history these days, enough to know that few persons’ deeds ever match their rhetoric. Those who talk freedom are not always the ones who sacrifice of themselves to win it. And American freedom has far too often been at the expense of others’ bondage: slaves, women, native peoples, the poor in this land and others.

The very term “independence” rings oddly when we know that independence is a fiction, whether we are talking about “individuals” (who only exist in families and communities), the global political-economy, or the interconnection of all things (dependent origination).

Yet the fourth day in July is a good occasion to remember and reflect what is best about this land that I love. This Fourth, I'd like to highlight three things I value about my native land.

Freedom is linked to opportunity and justice. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men [people] are created equal;

that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Parse these any way you like, but these words were the opening salvo of American democracy, which led to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, one of humanity’s best attempts to structure a just civil society. We can enumerate the myriad ways which, since the beginning, this nation and our people have fallen short of this ideal. But the vision cannot be negotiated away without losing our soul. It is a hope and a promise and a guide.

Fighting spirit. While we may be too quick to engage in war, and not dedicated enough to the practice of engaged, disciplined diplomacy and peace-making, I do love the backbone behind this fighting spirit. We see it in the impulse to serve – in the military, in civic service, and in helping professions. And we also see it in the way Americans often find ways to pull together in times of crisis. I remember 9/11 – especially for the response of thousands after thousands of people to step up. We see it in most disasters. If we look, we see it every day. I sometimes dream about what our world would be like if we would put down the remote control and buckle down to tackle poverty, sickness, and injustice the way we can fight a more easily-defined enemy.

Welcome the stranger. In his book The Island at the Center of the World about the early Dutch history of New York, Russell Shorto sketches an intriguing case for the way New York City’s flagship role in the American experience is due to the relative openness and tolerance practiced by the Dutch and carried forth by their polyglot heirs.

The United States of America, except for our native peoples who first inhabited the land, and for the descendents of slaves, brought and kept here against their will, is a nation of immigrants. Our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. Our culture is jazz – which is to say we are the beneficiaries of the frisson, or sizzle which happens when cultures meet, ideas and goods are exchanged, peoples intermarry.

And despite the many points of conflict and even violence, by and large this is a story of people being able to work it out, to work and live together.

The illustration to the right is the American flag at Chuang Yen Monastery, a Pure Land Buddhist and mostly Chinese community near Carmel, NY. It flies outside the Great Buddha Hall, and overlooks statues of Buddhist saints and the community's large ceremonial drum. In every age, immigrants have come to America to make this land their land, and to enrich the rest of us through their presence.

God bless America - land that I love.

Artwork:
The Post-9/11 American flag painting hangs at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, artist unknown.

Sunday haiku

2011-07-03T13:54:00.000-04:00

Rain drops, fish plops, monk
chants drift. A carp floats
close by Kwan Yin, belly up.

A glimpse of the Buddha

2011-07-03T09:07:00.000-04:00

Today (Saturday 7/2) was the first full day of Buddhist Summer Camp at Chuang Yen Monastery. The day is programmed with Dharma talks and Buddhist education, service, “working meditation,” vegetarian meals, and typical camp activities like relay races. I have visited the monastery before but never stayed overnight. It is a peaceful, beautiful, well-used, and welcoming place.

At the end of the day, I walked back to the men’s dormitory, which sits across from a small lake. In late twilight, I paused to sit for a few moments on a flat rock. The lake was before me, mirroring the surrounding trees and the deepening shades of the sky above.

Every few moments carp would break the surface of the lake, each plop a reminder that the lake was a living thing. And also the occasion to think of how nice it would be have a pond with such well-fed fish, who dine on remainders from the dining hall, and who would no doubt make a tasty, sustainable addition to the dining table.

Then I thought of the karma generated by this place, where no animals are killed and campers do not slap stray bugs, but carry them outside. There just may be a different vibe to a pond where fish are never harvested, to a piece of land where deer are not hunted and no slaughtered chickens, pigs, and cattle are trucked in. And to a place-and-community where the people seek to cultivate compassion in their every day relationships.

Then a car came up the road. As it pulled in to park, for several moments its headlights illumined my lakeside scene. Past me to my left, on the small rock cliff that formed part of the shoreline, there was a shadow of a seated buddha, my shadow.

As a shadow, you couldn’t look for all the marks of a Buddha - you could only get a resemblance, a suggestion. While I have the build for a good Chinese Buddha, anyone seated on the rock in that way would have cast a similar shadow.

And that’s about right. Zen Master Seung Sahn writes that “Everyone already has goodness in their mind. It is already present, and needs no special cultivation” The Compass of Zen (Shambhala, 1997, p.38). In another idiom, you might recall “created in the image of God.”

The image does not have to be complete to evoke the truth that Buddha-nature, our God-given goodness, is right here where we live. In truth, I make a pretty crappy Buddha. An image which blurs some of my rough edges is sometimes necessary to see the shape of enlightenment, to recall the hope of deliverance and the peace that passes – or perhaps fully is understanding.

The car headlights went out. The mosquitoes began diving in to test my compassion for them and my equanimity towards even small sufferings. But the Buddha-shadow remains, contemplating Kwan Yin Lake in the moonlight, even as I write.

Saints Peter and Paul

2011-06-30T01:02:00.003-04:00

June 29 is designated as the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul. You might think that this is one example of the Church having a sense of humor, for these two make an unlikely pair.

Two great pillars of the first century church, the New Testatment does not depict them in close union. Each is clearly gifted, each is committed to serving Christ - and each is just as clearly headstrong and stubborn.

According to Paul (in Galatians 2), Peter extended the hand of fellowship and affirmed Paul's ministry to the gentiles. Yet they clashed in Antioch over Peter's equivocation about breaking the boundaries between Jew and gentile.

It may well be that they had different visions for the Jesus-movement that would later grow into a Jewish-derived but non-Jewish "church." It may also be that two strong egos had a bit of rivalry.

Yet the church put them together at an early date, commemorating this as the date of their martyrdom. This is something they unambiguously shared. Tradition has them both dying in Rome, Paul beheaded, and Peter crucified upside down. Whatever their differences in life, whatever their arguments about the faith, their lives both bore witness to the truth they knew in Jesus Christ.

Stefaneschi Triptych, reverse.
Martyrdom of Saint Peter and Martyrdom of St. Paul.
(Central panel omitted.)
Holy God, your mercy is as boundless as your compassion for your people. Grant that, whatever our circumstances, we may know your reconciling love in this life and the next, and give witness to your saving power, known by Peter, Paul, and all the saints, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Love finds a way

2011-06-25T00:09:00.001-04:00

ALBANY — Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed, and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born ["Gay Marriage Approved by N.Y. Senate", June 24, 2011, by Nicholas Confessore and Michael Barbaro].

Ecclesiastes is known for his preaching that "for everything there is a season." And yes, there is a season to marry. Hallelujah!

Yet Ecclesiastes also wrote: Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has already been, in the ages before us." Ecclesiastes 1:10. The desire, the need, the hope to join two lives together has been a God-given blessing to humankind since our earliest days. People have always sought to live together in love. In every age, people have found a way.

Today, thank God, we have removed another obstacle. It is always just to live together in love.

Prayer for Trinity Sunday

2011-06-17T11:30:00.000-04:00

God from the first days, we give you thanks for your awesome work of genesis: light from darkness, a world from wasteland, life from emptiness.

But we are puzzled over your tri-unity. We can understand One. On our better days, we can work with Two. But Three is beyond us. Whenever three are gathered, sooner or later we find two lording it over one.

Yet in your life is hope: three in one, undivided, ever-loving, never-ending, where creation and redemption and sustenance are woven together and the life of God transforms the life of the world.

Lead us, deliver us, renew us, Father-Son-Spirit, that our life may be ever more in your image, holy, holy, holy, one God, our source, our end, our all-in-all. Amen.

Prayer at Pentecost

2011-06-13T08:23:00.003-04:00

A rush of wind and tongues afire is your gift to us, moving us beyond what is familiar, beyond our clans, beyond what we thought we knew.

Holy Spirit, inspire us anew, breathe your divine power into our lives and our churches, that we may drink deeply of your love for the world, and be emboldened by your passion for redemption.

Grant that we, made new in Christ, be reformed and reshaped and reborn in justice, in righteousness, in praise, and in peace, for the sake of the world and by the love of Christ. Amen.

"Holy Spirit Coming" by He Qi.

Ascended

2011-05-30T17:15:00.001-04:00

Ephesians 1:11-23

The Ascension is another one of those stories which pose problems for Christian believers. Set aside the supernatural, set aside the speculations about where Jesus went or where heaven is located, and go straight to the heart of the matter. Jesus' disciples are again left alone. How is Jesus present among us, and what are we to do, when he is so obviously, so scripturally, GONE?

The popularity of this image in the church may certainly be attributed to the proclamation of Jesus as ruler in the heavens, and in anticipation of the way believers hope to rise up with him in the afterlife. But perhaps it also speaks to the attempts to hold onto, to keep connected to this beloved one who is not directly present with us. I cannot help but remember our visits to my grandfather and the way, just prior to climbing in the car to travel home, the whole family would gather for photographs, the last remembrance for another year - or perhaps forever.

The letter to the Ephesians dates from a time when the new Jesus communities are making their own transitions, the time when the expected second coming of Christ is taking longer than expected and the first generation of apostles is ending with the glory still to come. This is a lonely place, prone to doubts. This reading from Ephesians is no doubt appointed for the feast of the Ascension because it speaks of Jesus ruling in in the heavenly places. But we might also read it as emphasizing the sure connection we, the living, have to this heavenly Lord.

"In Christ we have obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to his purpose..." (Eph 1:11). The first great Ephesians theme: God's got this covered. God has "a plan for the fullness of time" (1:10), God destined us for adoption as God's own children (1:5), God has created us for good works which have been ordained for us (2:10), all "in accordance with the eternal purpose" in Christ Jesus our Lord (3:11). God's will may be a mystery, but it is made known to us in Christ, "to gather up all things in him" (1:10). You may be feeling lost, you may be wondering what's next, but God's got this covered. You "were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption" (1:13-14).

That's the letter's first step, to simply proclaim that our doubt, our confusion, our fears, even our sense of loss and failures of hope all take place within a context where God has already decided the main issues. And God's decision is for us. Take courage, ‘cause God’s got this.

And then the apostle turns to the other major theme of the letter: survival strategies. Later we’ll hear much exhortation about how we are to live. Living with humility and gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love (4:2) and so on, are meant to help us cope with the world as it is and to prepare for the world that is coming into being. In these early verses, the apostle is laying the foundation for the practical advice that is to come.

Yet we cannot sustain faith on our own. Without our lord and savior in front of us every day, without our beloved teachers and mentors, we falter. Seeing our own insufficiencies, our own failures, our own broken conceits and foolish ideas about God's plan, we may well be prone to discouragement. Each day, we see the evidence that the entire world is not yet acting as though Christ is ruling with justice. Sometimes our own people seem just as fallen as the empire, and there’s no earthly Jesus, no Paul or Peter or James or Thomas or Mary to buck up our spirit.

So the apostle writes, at one and the same time commending his hearers for their faith, and linking it to love their fellows and prayer that their hope may be nourished, may be nurtured, may be completed in God. "I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints," and for this reason the writer is thankful, and I daresay, confident. He gives thanks, and he prays that we may receive wisdom, that we may evermore know "the hope to which God has called us."

For this whole business is about power – God’s great power at work in Christ, not simply ruling over the heavens, but active in the world. God’s power rules over all: thus demons are cast out, people and institutions are healed, the deadening yoke of oppression is being broken and replaced with the reconciling power of Christ’s peace. Our "glorious inheritance" is not that we are on the winning team, but that God’s victory for us means healing, liberation, and wholeness-peace-shalom.

All that wonderful advice, and all that wonderful ministry that's already occurred is only a part of the complete plan for God's kingdom. The glimpses we've had are pale shadows of the fullness of God's vision. Jesus, coming in glory, no painter can do it justice, it's not about clouds and thrones and radiant light, but about God breaking down the barriers of sin and death and enmity. Hold fast to that hope, for he is coming to complete the redemption of his body - you, me, everybody, the whole world filled with his glory! Hosanna!

God's hope is the great survival strategy of this age: "with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you" (1:18).

It is not easy to see him go. Perhaps we must save the snapshots which remind us of his journey on earth. Yet the fullness of his hope, which may be granted to those who "come to know him," (1:17) is a kind of reflected glory. We may do better to pray that we may know his heavenly light shining among us even now, when we share the bread of fellowship and of peace that Christ first shared with us.

"Ascension of Christ" by Garofalo, 1520.
Attribution unknown for the other two artworks.

District 31-33 map

2011-05-05T12:03:00.000-04:00

There may be an official map out there somewhere, but here is the first unofficial map of the new boundaries between NJ legislative districts 31 and 33.

It is compiled from the Reapportionment Commission's list of local electoral districts checked against Jersey City ward maps. Click on the map for a larger version.

A bad end

2011-05-01T23:34:00.000-04:00

It is reported that Osama bin Laden has been killed by U.S. military action.

This man is responsible for the death of thousands, and the reactions to his actions have killed many thousands more. NBC News is calling it “breathtaking.” 9/11/01 and its many victims took my breath away; this does not.

Many will celebrate; I cannot. If any deserve death for their crimes, Osama bin Laden surely did. I have suffered with my neighbors. I have walked through the ruins he made. I have cared for the remains of his victims, and grieved with those who survived his attacks. Let the names of his victims be remembered. Let their lives be lifted up.

I am glad Osama bin Laden no longer has the ability to do harm. His life has been soaked in blood. Yet I am sorry to see his end come in still more violence. Despite all its complications, I wish he could have had the trial we – the civilized world – so richly deserved.

But that is apparently done. There will be a parade of images, his body will be displayed, and many will be glad to call this the end of his story.

May God have mercy on his soul.

The Story of the Easter Egg

2011-05-01T20:47:00.000-04:00

The Eastern Church has preserved a very different portrait of Mary Magdalene than the ideas about her that predominated for centuries in the Western Church, where she has been conflated and confused with the nameless “woman of the city” who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears (among others). The Eastern Church remembers her as a cultured and intelligent woman, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant family from the seaport town of Magdala. This is what gave her the resources and influence to support Jesus in his ministry. Because Jesus appeared first to her in resurrected form, and commissioned her to go tell the rest of the disciples this amazing good news, she is honored with the title: “Apostle to the Apostles” and “First Apostle” – the word “apostle” meaning: “One who is sent.”

After the descent of the Holy Spirit onto the early Christian community, Mary Magdalene traveled with John to preach and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. Her ability made her a leader in the early Community and gained her admission into the homes of many influential families. This was how she came to attend a banquet where the Roman Emperor, Tiberius Caesar, was present. During the meal, she talked of Jesus and told the story of his Resurrection. Tiberius scoffed: “No one rises from the dead!” He pointed at a platter of hard-boiled eggs on the table in front of them. “Why, a man could rise from the dead no more than these white eggs could turn red!”

Mary Magdalene reached out and picked up one of the eggs, which turned bright red in her hand – right before the eyes of the Emperor. This sign so astonished Tiberius that he asked her for more of the story. It is documented in the administrative accounts that survive from the Roman Empire that Pontius Pilate, known for years as a ruthless “hanging judge” maintained colonial power in Judea and Palestine by crucifying anyone who caused any kind of disturbance. And for years, that was fine with Rome. But at about the same time as the banquet story may have happened, Pilate was abruptly fired and recalled, because of the indiscriminate crucifixions he had been inflicting on the people of Jerusalem. What caused this sudden change of a long-standing policy?

Perhaps it really was the dinner conversation that Mary Magdalene had with the only man in the Empire who could have given the order to fire an Imperial Governor for punishing people too harshly. At any rate, this story is where the practice of dyeing Easter eggs bright colors is said to come from. In Orthodox churches, at the end of the Great Easter Liturgy, baskets of eggs, colored solid red, are blessed by the priests, and distributed by deacons to each person in the congregation as part of the Communion service. This is to remember Mary Magdalene and her part in the Resurrection story of Easter with these ancient symbols of Spring, rebirth and new life.

This icon of the “Apostle to the Apostles” by Robert Lentz depicts Mary Magdalene wearing the red robes that are the attribute of witnesses, “martyrs” of the Church. She holds an egg and points to it. The writing beneath reads: “Saint Mary Magdalene” in Syraic, a dialect of the language she spoke, along with Jesus. It was commissioned for the consecration of Barbara Harris, first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion.

Written by Lisa Bellan-Boyer, St. Matthew’s Parish Iconographer
One Spirit Interfaith Seminary Class of 2011

Mary Magdalene icon by Robert Lentz, available from the online catalog of Trinity Stores.

Icon of the Resurrection

2011-04-30T20:08:00.000-04:00

Icon of the Resurrection
Pskov, Later Sixteenth century

In the wording of the Creeds, Jesus was “crucified, died, and was buried. On the third day, he rose again...” This icon illustrates some of the early traditions about what the Spirit of Jesus was doing in that interval, while his body laid in the tomb. Also called: “The Harrowing of Hell,” this icon of the Resurrection is part of the collection of the Andrei Rublev Museum in Moscow, dedicated to preserving early Russian art, and named after one of history’s greatest iconographers. It is located in a former monastery, where Saint Andrei Rublev once lived and worked.

The area around Pskov and Novgorod was known for a relatively egalitarian social system, in terms of gender relations. This is reflected in the center of the icon, where Jesus has the hands of both Adam and Eve, pictured as regular human beings, minus the haloes of saints. He pulls them up from Hades, along with many figures from the Hebrew Bible, who had died before the time of Jesus. The company includes Moses, King David, King Solomon, Rebecca, Rachel, Sarah, and Miriam, positioned to echo the positions of Mary and Martha in Russian icons of the raising of Lazarus. Also included, behind Eve, is John the Baptist, the Forerunner of Christ in birth as well as death.

Two angels subdue the forces of Evil at the bottom of the Pit of Hell, as the dead are raised to new life. Two other angels hover over the scene, bearing the instruments of the Passion. The Old Church Slavonic lettering reads: “The Resurrection of the Savior.”

Jesus stands with his feet on the crossed and broken doors to the tomb, symbolizing the gates of hell. Combined with his outstretched arms and the cross that appears in his halo, the composition becomes in itself an embodiment of an Orthodox Cross.

Early Russian icons of the Resurrection illustrate the words to the chant, sung over and over again during the Orthodox Great Liturgy of Pascha – the “Passion” – a word derived from Pesach, or “Passover” in Hebrew. In English translation, the words to the chant are:

Christ is risen from the dead!
Trampling down death by death,
and upon those in the tombs, bestowing Life.

Written by St. Matthew’s Parish Iconographer, Lisa Bellan-Boyer
One Spirit Interfaith Seminary Class of 2011

Epitaphios

2011-04-29T23:39:00.000-04:00

Epitaphios – the Entombment of Christ

This Greek Orthodox icon was written by iconographer, Anathios Clark, in a stark and simple form that conveys the grief and devastation of the little group that laid Jesus in the tomb that Friday at dusk.

Though there are sometimes others in the scene, the people most often depicted in the Epitaphios (related to the Greek word: epitaph) who took Jesus down from the Cross and placed him in the Tomb are Mary, his Mother; Mary Magdalene; John the “Beloved Disciple,” and Joseph of Arimathea, as mentioned in John, Chapter 19.

Dressed in the dark terra-cotta color of the red earth, Mary bends low over Jesus and is shown here in a touching gesture that movingly duplicates the cheek-to-cheek caress of Mother and Child in the icons known as “Valdimirskaya” and “the icon of humbleness.”

Behind her is Mary Magdalene, who is crying out in her grief and distress, hands raised in the “orens” position of outspoken prayer.

In her role as preacher and proclaimer, the “Apostle to the Apostles” she was depicted with her hands raised this way in some of the very earliest examples of Christian art. She is dressed in the brighter red of witnesses, saints, and martyrs (‘witness” in Greek).

Dressed in purple and blue, colors of nobility of spirit and gratitude, John is beside Jesus, and behind him looms the foot of the Cross, but we do not see the arms where Jesus was hanging – that part of the story is over, now.

Jesus is shown on a winding sheet that resemble traditional Eastern European as well as Hebrew textiles, and while the wounds in his hands and feet, and in his side, are clearly visible, they are not graphically emphasized, as in Latin American and Spanish art traditions.

An Epitaphios is also a liturgical, ritual object as well as an icon. The body of Christ, as represented in this icon, is embroidered on a pall, which is laid out in the church, as for a funeral, on Good Friday evening, and until the Great Saturday Vigil begins. It is carried, horizontally, as on a stretcher, in a funeral procession around the church, three times, and then placed in the church to rest, as in the Tomb.

Joseph of Arimathea, who is dressed in green, the color of paradise and unity between heaven and earth, is placed at the feet of his teacher. Behind him is the cave that represents the Tomb.

Echoing the Eastern Orthodox tradition that Jesus was born in a cave (stables were often in caves in those times) and was buried in a cave, this is an ancient symbol of the mystery of the unknown in birth and death, a mystery which caves have represented, as an archetype, since neolithic times, if not before.

Were you there when they laid him in the Tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the Tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the Tomb?
Oh, Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble...
Were you there when they laid him in the Tomb?
African-American traditional sources

Written by St. Matthew’s Parish Iconographer, Lisa Bellan-Boyer
One Spirit Interfaith Seminary Class of 2011

See the website of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Icon of the Crucifixion

2011-04-29T14:17:00.000-04:00

Icon of the Crucifixion
Russia, Late Sixteenth century

Depicting the moment when Jesus bequeaths Mary and John to each other: “Woman, Behold your son,” the simple composition of this icon reflects the gravity of this world-changing event.

Above the Cross, two grieving angels, representing the sun and moon often seen in Crucifixion scenes, attend Jesus. Though John, said to be the “beloved disciple” is often dressed in brilliant red, in this icon he wears muddy, earthy green and terra cotta colors. Mary’s outer red robe has so much dark pigment in it that it appears nearly black. Standing behind to support her is Mary Magdalene, who stayed with Jesus to the very end, as it says in the Gospel of John. She wears the brighter red robes of a witness, one who testifies.

Standing behind John is the centurion, whose name has come down in tradition as Longinus, though he is not named in the Gospels. He is the Roman soldier who saw Jesus at the moment of his death and proclaimed: “In truth this man was the Son of God” (see John 19:34, Matthew 27:54, and Mark 15:39)

Beneath the Cross yawns a cavern that symbolizes the Pit of Hell. It contains a skull, said to be the Skull of Adam, marking Golgotha as the “Place of the Skull.” The cross in the halo around the head of Jesus glows red, in witness to his suffering, along with the grieving angels.

This icon is now in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and came from the Arkangelsk, or Archangel, region of Northern Russia, near the Arctic Circle. It was painted in the style of the Stroganov School, famous for expressive detail and theological depth.

The anonymous iconographer who created this work probably occupied a middle ground position in Christological controversies about the humanity and divinity of Christ, based on the balanced qualities of pathos and dignity conveyed in this icon.

Over the top of the Cross is the sign, in Old Church Slavonic, bearing the initials for Jesus Christ and declaring: “This is the King of the Jews.” On either side of the Cross are two doorways into the unknown realms of birth and death, which Jesus went through, as a human being, our Brother and Friend, Teacher, Redeemer, and Healer.

Surely he hath borne our grief,
and carried our sorrows
Isaiah 53:4
Written by St. Matthew’s Parish Iconographer, Lisa Bellan-Boyer
One Spirit Interfaith Seminary Class of 2011

Jesus Washing the Feet of the Disciples

2011-04-28T23:59:00.000-04:00

John 13:1-38

Pskov, Early 16th century

This icon is a panel in an iconostasis (icon screen) now in the collection of the Pskov Museum. An ancient city of Northern Russia, icons from Pskov and Novgorod have many attributes in common, including great theological depth of meaning.

The iconostasis from which this icon comes stood in the Thirteenth-century Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel in Gorodets, Pskov District, until 1927, when it was confiscated by the new Soviet regime.

During WWII, it was looted by the Nazi invaders of the region, but was returned to the people of Pskov after the War.

The faces of the characters in the icon are typical portraits of people from the Pskov region in the Middle Ages, with dark skin and hair coloring. One of ten panels located in the Church Feast Tier of the large iconostasis, this icon includes many interesting features.

Note the cock sitting on a column, waiting for his cue to crow, at the top of the composition.

It is a detail known from Byzantine icons since the 13th century, when the church was built, but one that is rarely found in old Russian icons. Peter points at himself, objecting to Jesus’ humbling act.

The font holding the wash water resembles the baptismal fonts in old Russian churches, and the laver in which the midwives wash the infant Jesus, as depicted in Russian icons of the Nativity.

The towel Jesus uses is bordered with decorative striping that looks like traditional Hebrew textile weaving; but it also resembles the ritual towels of the Eastern Orthodox church, symbols of God’s protection and care for people, that are used to drape icons and decorate domestic altars in Russian and Ukrainian homes. These towels are an interspiritual parallel to the marigold garlands used in Hindu practice and the white prayer scarves used by Buddhists, as signs of love, respect, and veneration.

All the disciples are looking at Jesus, or speaking with each other, except for Judas. He is facing out toward a doorway topped by an iron porticullis. This detail offers a portent of the next part of the story, the betrayal and brokenness that is present even in this moment of Communion.

“A new Commandment I give you:
that you love one another, as I have loved you.”
Written by St. Matthew’s Parish Iconographer, Lisa Bellan-Boyer
One Spirit Interfaith Seminary Class of 2011

Prayer on Holy Saturday

2011-04-23T21:36:00.000-04:00

God of Glory, yesterday we all ran away, or at least tried to keep a safe distance from your suffering and death.

This day, like so many others, we are lost, and know not what you are doing behind the scenes. Your tomb seems rock solid, just like the oppressive empires and the despair which haunt us.

Yet your life is now beyond death, hidden from our view and shrouded in Holy Mystery, like yeast in a large measure of flour. Help us rise on your new day, and lift the veil from us, that we may see your living Word and be made new with resurrection Glory, in the name of Jesus Christ, who awaits our awakening. Amen.

Artwork: Tomb, by Sieger Köder.

Lessons for the rest of Lent

2011-03-29T11:01:00.000-04:00

For the remaining three Sundays of Lent, here are links to earlier posts, which have been visually updated since they were first posted.

Lent 4A Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41 - Things Done In the Dark

Of course, “darkness” is used as a metaphor. Nowadays we don’t often spend much time in the real dark. If we’re out at night there are streetlights or headlights to illumine the way. At home there’s the comfort of light bulbs and the glow of TVs. Even adventurous cave explorers take light with them. Yet darkness is unfortunately not that strange to us. At times it can be dark indeed....

Lent5A Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-45 - I Felt the Lord's Power

A modern Ezekiel might be taken to a small town on the prairie, where the local business are dried up and the next generation is exiled to another land. He or she might walk down the streets in certain neighborhoods, looking at foreclosure properties. The prophet might be transported by bus to the furthest corners of our states, where prison fortresses keep some folks’ bones out of sight and far from home. Faced with places and problems like these, we may be too daunted to believe that even God can make a difference. “LORD God, only you can tell [if these bones can live]”...

Lent 6A Passion Sunday Psalm 31:9-16 - I am a broken dish

The Passion, the suffering servant, the Philippians hymn, all describe one who is an outcast. Insults, bullying, gossip, layoffs, illness, divorce, aging, scandal, rejection. There are so many ways to be out, not in. Yet this Sunday, this Holy Week, in fact every Sunday and every week, God directs us again and again to attend to the one who is suffering. In the Passion, we look to Jesus as his life becomes this Psalm.

He Told Me Everything I Have Ever Done!

2011-03-13T08:41:00.000-04:00

Third Sunday in Lent
March 27, 2011
John 4:5-42

She came to the well every day at noon, when the sun was hottest. The other

women in the village had long since gone back to their households, lugging the heavy water that sustained life and health in a dry land – as millions of women still do, daily, in poor and developing nations all over the world. Coming to the well at midday meant that she could avoid the dulling pain of being shunned and frozen out of the cheerful group that would meet each morning at the well, to carry the water in the cool of the day.

Some traditional depictions of this story portray this Samaritan woman, someone who was very much an “other” to the Jews, as a sort of Bible-story version of Zsa Zsa Gabor or Elizabeth Taylor – a “use ‘em and lose ‘em” character with all her many husbands, a “woman of the world.” But more recent – and careful – scholarship, that takes the anthropology and social structures of that time and place into account, gives us a different kind of picture of this woman at the well.

Women were valued for their childbearing abilities. They could not initiate a divorce; but their husbands could. It is much more likely that she was “barren” – that she could not conceive, and so had been dumped by one husband after another when it became evident that she would not be producing any children. Hers must have been a life of one disappointment after another, hopes dashed on all sides. The reason she would come to the well when the other women weren’t there is because they would shun her, not for being a “loose woman” as the traditional interpretations of this story portray it. They shunned her because she was bad luck – a “barren woman” – whose curse of barrenness might rub off, somehow. It wasn’t personal – they were just playing it safe – guarding their own hopes, protecting themselves from their own disappointments.

Then, one hot noonday, there is this man at the well and his surprising talk of “living water” – surprising that he would talk with her at all – and his talk is all about the water of eternal life, of hope and inspiration and encouragement and promise. Words of hope and promise – to one who knew all the bitterness of bitter disappointment. This message of eternal life is not even dependent, as the promise made to Abraham was, on the reproduction of progeny. Jesus tells her: “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

What words of comfort and release! When she goes back to the village and tells the people: “He told me everything I have ever done!” it’s not because he has recited to her the diary of her serial monogamies – he’s spoken compassionate and healing words to her about her journey through all that disappointment and beyond, in order to arrive at a new kind of place – the source of living water.

This revelation is so overwhelming that she jumps at the chance to share the good news with the very townspeople who have disappointed her so much. The text takes note that she even forgot to take her water jug home with her!

Some traditions honor this Samaritan woman – nameless in the text – as the “first evangelist” because of her eagerness to share the message of Jesus and his “living water.” In Eastern Orthodox church tradition, she has a name: in Greek: “Saint Photina” as in: “photograph” and “photosynthesis” and in Russian, she is “Saint Svetlana.”

This name gives her an identity. She is a “bringer of light.” She joyfully carried the “living water” of the good news of eternal life in Jesus Christ – the “Light of the World.” May we model ourselves on her grace-filled example.

This reflection was prepared by Lisa Bellan-Boyer.

A reader noted that the woman's refers to "everything I ever did" (v29), not "everything that was done to me." Lisa & Paul Bellan-Boyer collaborated on this elaboration...

People that suffer do not do so passively, even when the suffering is brutal and they have little freedom or agency left.

Being human, people who suffer have responses and reactions that are expressed in behavior: they "do things."

Placing hope in things and people that disappoint, getting depressed and giving up, acting out in anger and frustration; hiding away and becoming protective and secretive, these are all kinds behavior that Jesus might have described to her when they were having their talk at the well. Jesus does not name in the text the "things she's done." It's not the concern of the text and it's not our business. It was her business, and she knew that he knew her. (See John 3:17 and John 8:11 - Jesus is not in the condemnation business so familiar to her and to us.)

There's another little problem for us if we focus on the woman's deeds. She says "He told me everything I ever did," but the text does not seem to include all that detail. We might guess that John's telling is not a verbatim account of a pastoral conversation, and imagine that there is a more detailed interaction behind it. But that is in the realm of imagination.

When she said "he told me everything I ever did," does the text indicate what she meant? Was she referring to his recital of her marital history? Or did she mean that Jesus was the one, the first one, the only one who recognized and spoke to her hope?

She tells us which is important to her. "I know that the Messiah is coming," she says. The Messiah is the one who will reveal everything. Especially who we are, who we really are, who we are called to be. He sees her - and she sees him.

For a very well researched, imaginative, and believable example of the relationship of suffering to behavior, in a woman of the ancient world and from the Bible, see the Anita Diamant novel: The Red Tent, about the life of Dinah, the sister of Joseph, and the women in Jacob's camp.

You can hear the wind

2011-03-12T21:38:00.000-05:00

Second Sunday in Lent
March 20, 2011
John 3:1-17

Poor Nicodemus. It’s not just that as a leader and teacher of the nation, he seems thick and pedestrian. But at a more personal level, he comes seeking something, then seems clueless.

This is the first of three long conversations in the gospel readings for this and the next two Sundays. Each is between Jesus and someone on a journey of faith. Each seems to go further in finding faith in the one before them. And poor Nicodemus has the misfortune to be the first one, the slow one.

Struggling with questions can be important in helping us to faith, in strengthening and defining faith. Yet when we’re resistant or reluctant, or simply in the wrong place to see clearly, we can keep asking questions to help us avoid the real issues.

When you get down to the basics, a life of faith is not that complicated. Matthew, Mark, and Luke say, “Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself.” John says you simply have to be born again. And this is a Spirit-thing, not under our control.

None of us is in charge of our birth. However much struggle and pain is involved (for the one giving birth, for the one being born, for those attending the birth and waiting anxiously), it happens when it happens, and the little one being born, of necessity, must simply “go with the flow,” and ride the contractions through this passage into life.

“The Spirit is like the wind,” Jesus tells us, “it blows where it will.” God’s Spirit works in its own way, like the wind, not something you can see directly. But you can feel the breeze on your skin, or see the trees bow down their heads when the wind is passing by.

Perhaps we might be attentive to those movements of Spirit in our own lives and in those nearby. We might miss it if we look too quickly or too shallowly. But the great wind of God is moving and shaping us and the world in which we live. When we see with the eyes of faith, we’ll notice God at work, because we see that as individuals and as a people we have been moved.

We don’t get to hear Nicodemus’ full story. We don’t know exactly how he resolved his questions. But later in the gospel (John 7:50-51), Nicodemus stands amidst his own community of Pharisees to speak up for Jesus and for just treatment. And later still (John 19:39), he came again to Jesus, this time in broad daylight, bearing precious myrrh and sandalwood to give honor to this Word of God. The wind has been blowing...

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Originally written for Lent 2008.

Painting of "Nicodemus Visiting Jesus," by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1899.

God bless you, Danny Stiles

2011-03-11T18:14:00.000-05:00

A long-time presence on the New York City and New Jersey airwaves has died.

Danny Stiles had a radio show like no other. Devoted to the popular music of days gone by, he would spin records of

smooth crooners and hot swingers, of jazz men and women, of even some doo-woppers and rockers, of the luminous greats and those whom time had passed by. And always tenderly and lovingly for his audience, his fans, and the musicians who continued to give so much pleasure, at 78 and 33 and 45 revolutions per minute.

We'll miss you, Danny boy, and will always picture you in your Art Deco penthouse studio, high atop a New York City skyscraper.

Wikipedia: Danny Stiles

WNYC article - scroll down for Danny's lovely landscape of legacy left in his legion of listeners' letters.

Prayer for the Pacific Rim

2011-03-11T08:17:00.000-05:00

We praise you, God,
    we praise you, for your Name is near;
    people tell of your wonderful deeds.
You say, “I choose the appointed time;
    it is I who judge with equity.
When the earth and all its people quake,
    it is I who hold its pillars firm."
Psalm 75:1-3, NIV

Holy One, watch over the people of Japan and all Pacific lands as they are faced with earthquake and tsunami. Lead those in danger to safety, and lead those in safety to respond with care and generosity. Receive into your heart, O God, the dead and the suffering, and hold firm the pillars of your earth and your people, that we may be assured of your support in this and every time of need. We ask in the name of Jesus, who stood among us, who was brought down to the grave, and who rose again that we might know the fullness of life in your love. Amen.

They were naked

2011-03-10T11:02:00.000-05:00

First Sunday in Lent
March 13, 2011
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7, Matthew 4:1-11

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you find yourself in school, or on a busy street, or in the middle of the mall and realize you’re not wearing any clothes?

Put aside for a moment the question of sin, and pay attention to the emotional experience. When they realized they were naked, they knew how exposed, how vulnerable they were.

As naked as an addict who has hit bottom. Naked as a politician whose lies are no longer believed. Naked as an ordinary family whose credit has collapsed, whose home is in foreclosure. As naked as Jesus in the desert, standing before Satan.

The usual line on Lent is sorrow for sin. That is most certainly true. Sin and evil is something we all confront. But when the consequence of sin lands upon us, it is perhaps not so important how we got into the mess.

Many times, in fact, we deceive ourselves or are deceived into believing doing something harmful actually makes sense. Surely the serpent has a point, and it will be a good thing to know the difference between right and wrong. Surely that Bible-quoting presence in the desert is offering a great opportunity. Wouldn’t the world really be better off if we were on top?

Going down that road, there always comes a moment when it falls apart. The craftiness of the snake, the smooth talk of the devil, the new-found knowledge of the man and woman, none of this is any help. “They saw what they had done, and they realized they were naked.”

And our attempts to cover it up, to fix it up, usually work about as well as sewing fig leaves together.

Believe it or not, this is a moment of grace. It feels awful, to be exposed as a fraud, a failure, a fool. It is frightening to be faced with truth, to dangle on the precipice between ruin and rescue.

Yet it is the first step back to the garden. Not back to that long-lost idyll, but to the cultivation of a new life – without fig leaves.

--------------------

Originally written for Lent 2008.

Photo: Dan Langston’s “Adam and Eve 2.0” on display at the 14th Annual Stillwell Student Art Show, 11/11/2003.

Ashes

2011-03-09T18:57:00.000-05:00

Some days, Lord, we aim at righteousness and wind up with ashes. Take the wrecked and burned and broken and wasted pieces of our lives, Lord. Take all the virtues that have come to naught and the crumbled debris of sin. Blow them to the winds, soak them with the rains, bleach them with your sun, that like prophet bones in the desert they may be brought together again, that life may grow where now we see only devastation. Have mercy, Lord, upon your people, and lead us in love from this day forward. Amen.

Text-image by Paul Bellan-Boyer and wordle.com.

God’s architecture

2011-02-19T10:07:00.000-05:00

Epiphany 7A
February 20, 2011
1 Corinthians 3:10-23

This passage is full of things we hear repeatedly in the apostle Paul’s letters.

1. The believer as God’s temple (3:16-17)
2. The contrast between God’s and the world’s wisdom (3:18-20)
3. The illegitimacy of human boasting (3:21)
4. The conflict around different leaders in the assembly (3:21-23)
5. The architectural metaphor – “the Church’s one foundation” (3:10-15)

Now any of these subjects will preach, and each is undoubtedly an important theme in Paul’s proclamation and mission.

Yet the passage also contains an idea which is central for Paul’s apostleship, to his understanding of his role, and to his understanding of the assembly of believers. It is the “foundation” which underlies Paul’s use of the architectural metaphor.

Hierarchy justifiably gets a bad rap. But sometimes there’s no way around the fact that there is a certain order to the way things work. You cannot put the roof on if you have not yet raised the walls – or at least the support pillars. It doesn’t make any sense to put up walls if you have not prepared the foundation which supports the whole structure.

And that’s the way it is in the community which traces its membership, its discipleship, its fellowship, its practice back to Jesus. Paul says that there is a way in which each member and the whole community fits together. I take my cue from the ones who have brought me into faith, who have taught me, and more importantly still showed me with the witness of their own lives who Christ is. And the same is true of our models, and of theirs, all the way back to those first apostles who tried to incarnate the Christ they had come to know.

Of course, becoming like Christ means something more than growing a beard and putting on a robe.

The Apostle Paul is no shrinking violet. As a “skilled master builder” he is convinced that he has brought to the Corinthians the true Christ. And he would like the Corinthians to follow his example. In the next chapter, he urges them to imitate him (1 Cor 4:16). His classic statement comes later in this letter: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (11:1). This concept is explicitly and implicitly throughout Paul’s letters. (Partial list appended at the bottom of this post).

The apostle is effectively saying “be as I am and do as I do. For I am doing what Christ did. And Christ was conformed to God.” Paul is clear that this is the way faith and discipleship works. God's house of faith is built when each of us follow the plan God has given us, not so much by following a recipe or precise blueprint, but by taking the form of a servant. And yes, accepting all that comes with this vocation.

1. It’s not hard to see in this that Paul the Pharisee is simply living out the call to “be holy as the Lord your God is holy” (Lev 19:1).

2. But Paul has come to see that human wisdom is foolish, and that God’s holy wisdom requires a transformation of mindset and attitude and perspective, a conversion from the sacrifice of others to the sacrifice of self.

3. This is a call to a high standard. We are to literally be examples to others, to live as if their lives and faith depended on us. For we are not building an outhouse or a house of prostitution or a “temple” of commerce. This work is to build a temple worthy of the Living God.

4. Like the Temple in Jerusalem, it is a grand place, and we are to build it with the best we have. But this temple is grand not because of the size of its stones or the luster of its decoration. This is not a superficial resemblance, based on putting on an apostle suit or a Jesus costume, but a fundamental correspondence, achieved through God's tranformation of our lives. As we'll hear in Paul's next letter, this human temple is built of the cracked pottery of very imperfect disciples. Yet it is built on the kind of love which is poured out for others. As Christ was for us. Foundational.

Appendix

The Apostle Paul on the subject of imitation/modeling/mimesis:

+ You became imitators of us and of the Lord... (1 Thess 1:6)
+ You, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: you suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Judeans (1 Thess 2:14).
+ [We] offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate (2 Thess 3:9).
+ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5)
+ Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do (Philippians 3:16)
+ Be imitators of God (Eph 5:1).
* More generally, Paul's language of parents and children, of adoption and heirship, is I think in much the same vein, the descendants taking on the form of their forbears in faith. So too his negative example of the way sin and death have been transmitted from Adam (Rom 5).

Prayer for civic change

2011-02-16T11:01:00.000-05:00

God of power and God of peace, your will for us has always been release from bondage, freedom, and lives of righteousness. Support the desire for liberation and strengthen your people in truth, compassion, and the practice of non-violence. Keep watch over all the nations of this world, especially Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, and Egypt, that movements for civic change may also change hearts and minds. Restrain any tempted by violence, and lead your people into the realization of just hope. We ask this trusting in the name of Jesus our liberator. Amen.

Opposition supporters wave roses during an anti-government protest in Sanaa, Yemen. Photograph by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters.

You are not ready

2011-02-06T11:53:00.000-05:00

Epiphany 6A
February 13, 2011
1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Hard words to hear.

Maybe we’ve heard them from someone denying us an opportunity – “You’re not ready for this job, come back when you’ve got more experience.” Maybe it’s meant as a slam – “You’re just a kid!”

Sometimes I wonder about the Apostle Paul. It sounds like he’s right in his assessment of the folks back in Corinth. They don’t sound spiritually mature. And that may be understandable, given the newness of Christ’s revelation, the world-confounding nature of the cross, and the confusing pictures of faith being presented to them from many different sources: Rome, Jerusalem, Paul, Apollos, Cephas...

But for someone who wants to be seen as their “father in faith” (1 Cor 4:14-16), calling them babies might not be the best approach. “You are like babies as far as your faith in Christ is concerned. So I had to treat you like

babies and feed you milk” (3:1b-2, CEV). While logically consistent, it is emotionally charged. This kind of argument has seldom worked on me, and never worked for me!

The problem as Paul identifies it is quarreling rooted in jealousy (zelos: zeal/jealousy). It sounds very similar to the struggles in the synoptic gospels over which disciples are greatest. Whose group is best? (The same kind of issue will arise later in the letter in Paul’s concern over who eats first and best, chapter 11; conflicts over spiritual gifts, chapters 12-14; perhaps also in who exercises judgment over church members, chapters 5-6.)

Paul seems initially less concerned about the substance of the debates than the divisive character of how they are being conducted. This envious strife is proof that Christ is missing from their fellowship. Yet it may well be that Paul’s intervention excites that conflict. Later in the letter, the apostle recognizes that “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are beneficial” (10:23a, NRSV). He may be right on the merits – but his second letter back to Corinth is a pretty good indication that things have not gone well.

While Paul, the imperfectly reformed zealot, knows that this divisive quarreling is sinful, when we face conflicts in our relationships we might take a step back and ask what is going on. There are all kinds of reasons why we might act “like babies,” and if we are to “grow up” in faith, it helps to know how we need to grow.

We might tolerate milk but not meat due to pain. Have you ever had dental issues that made it impossible to chew? Pain can make even mature adults act “like babies.” Have you ever known someone who had surgery and needed a liquid diet to recuperate? And some among us avoid meat for ethical reasons.

It is so difficult to diagnose from afar!

When the name-calling doesn’t work, when the metaphors break down, perhaps the best we can do is treat the symptom.

Now we know why Paul spent so much of the previous chapters speaking about boasting. There is, I fear, no cure for jealousy and quarreling but to simply lay them down. “What is Apollos? What is Paul?... God’s servants, working together...” (3:5,9). It is best to step aside, for this is not Paul’s business, nor Apollos’ kingdom, nor Peter’s project. It is God’s.

This congregation, this people, this great good news of Jesus Christ are not objects to be fought over. No church member and no apostle owns this mission field. It is God’s. It is God’s, and all who labor in this field have a common purpose. We might not see it today, in the midst of our strife. But we should.

When will we be ready to belong to God, and follow that foolish, cross-illumined path that is salvation?

The Spirit searches everything

2011-02-06T11:51:00.000-05:00

Epiphany 5A
February 6, 2011
1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Paul spends so much time making complicated arguments, we may forget that at heart he is a mystic, who lives important parts of his life outside the domain of reason. In his letters to the Corinthian assembly, though, we get many indications of a charismatic, Spirit-possessed Paul.

To us who are being saved

2011-01-28T12:01:00.000-05:00

Epiphany 4A - January 30, 2011
1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Have you ever had a radical realignment, a perceptual shift where everything changes?

We've stopped talking about the conversion of Paul because of the way "conversion" suggests a change of religion. According to Paul himself, he never ceased to be a Jew, and at the time, there was no "Christianity" to convert to.

But it is clear that something happened to turn him around. We don't know much about where or how it happened - but we can see his movement. Saul the persecutor took on the role of persecuted. His encounter with God led this Pharisee to embrace the illegal (un-kosher) and un-holy, and accept the "pollution," the shame, the outcast status, and the physical suffering that came with this change.

In his letters, Paul repeatedly talks about the radical, earthshaking, transformative nature of the change. Here he stresses the perverse revelation of God, whose coming is seen not in immense power, but in weakness, whose wisdom looks like complete foolishness.

Have you ever seen those so-called "optical illusions," which can be seen in more than one way? Like the picture to the right, most people first see the picture one way. It requires some looking, some work, some change, for your eye and brain working together to notice the picture may be perceived quited differently. Is it a chalice, or two faces?

It seems to me that the Apostle is now seeing the world differently than he did before. Nothing much changes in the world when God's revelation comes. Jesus was not the first nor the last child of God to be nailed to a cross, not by a long shot.

But for those who are being saved, the world, seen through Jesus Christ and God's scandalous righteousness, is turned upside down.

One suspects that God's revelation to Paul was not a dramatic, one-time event, even given Paul's own description of his vision of heaven and Acts' story of his Damascus journey. Once that first shift occurs (when you now see the chalice, or the faces, when you realize that no continent has any better claim for being "on top" of the world), your location changes. You cannot go back to seeing just the chalice.

This is not something that happened once to a long-dead apostle. Paul describes God's process of on-going revelation and on-going transformation of the world.

The repressive regimes represented by the Iron Curtain seemed too strong to topple. But in the 1980s small cracks appeared - in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Hungary, in the Soviet Union. And at a certain point, people looked around and said "The emperor has no clothes. It's possible. It's time." Most of this change took place without violence, as millions of people saw at more or less the same time that what was solid was now shifting.

And so today. As people throughout the world look at their governments and institutions and see the always fragile nature of authoritarian power, we pray that people reach firmly and peacefully for freedom, in Tunisia, in Egypt, and elsewhere. We know that God's call to justice and righteousness is too often resisted with spilled blood. Yet we are awed at the witness of those praying and demonstrating in the face of police and military opposition, and still more at places where demonstrators and police have stopped their confrontation to share water and prayer.

Paul knew that once you experience a new vision of what God is doing in the world, of what is now possible, while nothing is different, everything is changed.

But it is critically important to him that the change be directed by God. The moment of revelation is not "game over," but "game on." The new perception, the new reality, calls us to take responsibility for where we are going and what we are doing not just with our own lives, but with the world around us.

Paul is encouraging his listeners to recognize, to remember, to realize what God is doing with them. He knows how easily we are misled by our own desires. Our best desires - for God, for our ideals - may be even more susceptible to error. Our wisdom is likely to be foolishness, and our delusions of power are not solid.

This is why Paul, while he may not be able to change his "stripes," his Jewishness, his personality, his zealousness, he can change his location, his orientation. "God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are," so that we may receive God's righteousness and sanctification and redemption. This can't come from Rome, or Jerusalem, or Cairo, or Washington - only from God. And until we turn God-wards, we will be looking for salvation in all the wrong places.

The great good news is that "the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1:18). We have the benefit of almost two thousand years of trying to get our minds around this notion - and it is still foreign.

But the message of the cross is simple. God stands with the persecuted. God stands with the forsaken. God's love for the world will never be extinguished, not by the worst tyrant, not by the most despotic regime, not even by the failings of God's ragtag people. That message only makes sense to those who are being saved...

We do big things

2011-01-25T22:43:00.000-05:00

The commentators are so totally not going to get this. Amazing, and a very odd moment in American oratory. I think people were paying attention, while Obama said things that were hard to disagree with in a way that confounded the folks in "the Chamber." The folks in "the Chamber" (the Congress, the 24-hour media "echo chamber," the Chamber of Commerce?) didn't quite know how to react. It was Sober. Most of this plays very well outside the Beltway, and on my block. A lot of folks will listen to this. Amazing! We do big things.

Did you hear that?!? Veto earmarks? Remove oil subsidies? (I've seldom heard less applause for more popular ideas.)

Did you hear that? No retreat on health care. You got an idea? Put it out there baby!

Did you hear that? Dream Act on the one hand.. Let's talk "illegal immigration" on the other. I dare you... let's do immigration...

Freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years? Say what? You think any Congress will do this? I dare you... mess with my budget...

Did I mention tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans?

"This year...we finish the job of bringing our troops out of Iraq. America’s commitment has been kept; the Iraq War is coming to an end."

One big question... Afghanistan... Missing is the plan for that war coming to an end.

And God, bless 'em, "Plan B," guts and ingenuity and the miracle. We do big things.

We do big things.
Text of President Obama's State of the Union Address, January 26, 2011.

No divisions?

2011-01-17T14:33:00.000-05:00

Epiphany 3A - January 23, 2011
1 Corinthians 1:10-18

No divisions!?!

For Christ’s sake, how do you expect that to happen?

Perhaps we don’t. In our daily lives, we constantly see real differences and divisions. All the current rhetoric about political divisions touches on the real fact that people have different opinions, beliefs, and interests. Personally, the markers of difference are part of our identity. And many of these are pretty important – we will not give them up or set them aside lightly.

Ordinarily we think of these differences as the things which make us who we are. They define where we are in the world and who we are related to others.

Divided Loyalties (artist unknown)
This may have been even more acute in first century Corinth, where everything depended on who you were with. It mattered if you were with Cephas, or Apollos, or Paul. In the society it mattered whose family who were part of, since your family’s (and its head, its father) wealth, power, and influence determined your wealth, power, and influence. It mattered which city you belonged to, since each city had its own laws and privileges. It mattered if you belonged to Rome (were a Roman citizen), to Jerusalem (capitol of a conquered nation within the empire), or to the "barbarian" tribes beyond the empire’s control.

Unity was found in this context of banding together against the next family, city, nation... "I belong to... " was a powerful statement. (Even when it was forced upon you by your owner.)

It may sound a bit puzzling that Paul criticizes even those who say "I belong to Christ." Haven’t they got it right?

No. They may have the right name, but the wrong spirit. The problem is not that they have different household in faith, but that they are quarreling. This points out that they lack the kind of unity which Paul presumes is a fruit of belonging to Christ.

This is not union in everything. Paul’s apostleship is in fact built on allowing, but disregarding many of the differences which the surrounding world saw as important. Foreskin or circumcised? No difference. Slave or free? No difference. Man or woman? No difference – in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:27-29). Clothing yourself with Christ does not erase our differences, but it does cover them, set them aside, put them in a new context.

Paul does not ask that the Corinthians be identical – only that they cease to work at cross purposes, and instead work for cross purposes. They are to stop working against one another (through competitiveness, quarreling, and maintaining imperial divisions in their fellowship - 1 Cor 11). Instead, they are to work together by emulating Christ’s radical upset of the world’s power relationships.

We will hear more about this in the next lesson (the foolishness of the cross and the power of God), but for now let’s simply lift up that unbelievable idea that "there be no divisions among" the church at Corinth.

Paul’s apostleship is marked by transformation by his encounter with Christ, and his presumption is that the same kind of radical change will take place in the people and communities who encounter Christ through preaching, baptism, and the Holy Spirit. But let’s use his own image to think about the kind of unity Paul is preaching.

The new people gathered together around the cross of Christ and sharing Christ in their communal life are a body, the body of Christ in the world (1Cor 10-12). The body has many parts. They do not look alike or act alike. They do not even always move in the same direction. Look at a runner – arms and legs pumping, as one goes back, the other goes forward. All the various part of the body are joined together and they work together to move the whole body forward.

"All of you be in agreement, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose." This is directed not at identity, but at mission. Division is to be avoided because Christ has called us together, into a body, to accomplish God's purpose in the world.

No divisions!?!

For Christ’s sake is exactly how that happens.

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See also John Meade, "What is Church Division?" (2007) for a discussion of New Testament language on "division."

Prayer for Haiti

2011-01-12T22:03:00.000-05:00

Lord God, as the earth moved one year ago in Haiti, move the hearts and hands of your people throughout the world, that we may remember the people of Haiti with our prayers, with our hearts and our words, and with our actions.

Lord God, as the earth shook one year ago in Haiti, we ask that you shake the powers of this world. Shake loose some money, that it may fall upon Haiti, not just on the corrupt class, but upon those living in tents and on the streets, that it may make a difference in their lives. Shake up the structures of power which seek to exploit Haiti, shake out corruption within and without Haiti, and shake aside obstacles to adequate food and shelter, health care, safety from violence.

And, Lord God, we tremble to ask that you also shake the people of Haiti, gently we pray, that they may band together to keep working and fighting with love for justice in their land.

Bless the land of Haiti, and keep it and its people ever in your care, through Jesus Christ, bloodied, crucified, yet risen now and forevermore. Amen.

God is great!

2011-01-07T21:11:00.000-05:00

There is always a place for hope.

On New Years Day, a bomb, possibly from a suicide attacker, exploded in front of a Coptic Christian church as a crowd of worshippers emerged from a New Years Mass. At least 21 people were killed and nearly 80 wounded. The attack came in the wake of threats by al-Qaida militants in Iraq to attack Egypt’s Christians (Al Hayat wa Dounia newspaper).

Eternal rest, grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they rest in peace.

And then - a Christmas miracle.

Last night, thousands of Egyptian Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve services offering their bodies as "human shields," making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife (Ahram online).Egyptian Muslim women displaying cross and crescent
together in support of their Coptic neighbors
May God, who is one, who is all-knowing, who is all-merciful, who is peace, guide and support and sustain and protect the people of Egypt in their desire for brotherhood and peace. Restrain the hands of any who contemplate violence, and bless the land with the courage and hope of all who live for peace, for the sake of all your people. Amen.

We are inspired and blessed by the faithful witness of Egyptians to stand together against violence and for one another. May God bless the Coptic church and Egyptian Muslims. You give the world hope.

To the church of God

2011-01-03T09:34:00.000-05:00

Epiphany 2A - January 16, 2011
1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is the appointed second reading for most of the Sundays in Epiphany, with Year A containing portions of the early chapters (1-4), Year B the middle chapters (6-9), and Year C some of the later chapters (12-15).

The interpreter has some basic choices to make in approaching these texts. The letters are intensely personal and address very specific concerns of Paul and the assembly of believers in Corinth. One approach to their interpretation is to try and understand this context as well as possible. In drawing conclusions about what faithfulness looked like in that setting, we might have an idea of what faithfulness looks like in similar circumstances.

Another approach may look at the historical setting of the letter, yet recognizes that the letter now has a canonical context. The church has made use of this text in ways which go well beyond its original setting.

These reflections will focus more on the latter approach, using the basic outlines of the historical setting to inform how the text speaks to congregations and believers today. While the issues faced by the Corinthian church are not exactly the same as those in current congregations, the broad issues may be recognizable: power and authority in the community, exercising spiritual gifts, idolatry and the relationship to non-godly powers in daily life, intra-community conflict.

In the church today, we also chop these letters up into pieces, reading only a short segment in each worship service, rather than hearing the whole letter at a sitting, as if it were sent direct from the apostle to us. Most preachers will thus try to stick close to the words and ideas contained in each reading, since the congregation will have only heard that portion.

Having read the whole letter, one can then go back to the initial salutation for clues or signs about Paul’s overall proclamation. In the opening salutation of First Corinthians, the Apostle briefly foreshadows themes that he will come back to:
  + The transformative nature of Christ’s call (“to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints,” v2);
  + The unity of the whole church: the Corinthians are not isolated in their faith, but are “(together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” v2);
  + His own authority to teach, to encourage, to chastise (“called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,” v1);
  + The grace of God, which is manifested in spiritual gifts given to the Corinthian church and its members (v4-7);
  + Faithfulness in preparation for the time of Christ’s return (“that you may be blameless,” v8);
  + And perhaps most important, reemphasizing the call of Christ to all believers, which is rooted in the proclamation that “God is faithful” (v9).

Each of these points is a starting point for preaching, and might be rephrased in the form of questions. What does Christ's call mean in our lives? How does fellowship in Christ connect us to other members of his body? What does it take for us to exercise the authority given us - how do we "step up" to God's call? How are we enriched in Christ? What are, and how are we using our spiritual gifts?

One of these will usually jump out and call to the preacher as a lively issue for this time and community.

I think that central to Paul was this last point - that God is faithful, even when we are not. God's grace calls to us even when we are most alienated from God. Recalling, for example, that time when he was a persecutor of the church, and God called him out, and into a new life of mission and blessing... As we read through the Corinthian letter, Paul is most unhappy with how they have gone astray, and locates this problem principally in people's failure or inability to trust in the redeeming power of God. This is an opportunity to be in touch with those times when we have felt abandoned by God, or been unable to trust in God's faithfulness and care.

Paul has been there, and will go on in this letter to preach Christ crucified, the way God has turned the world upside down. Yet without abandoning God's promise of care for God's own.

For other resources for preaching this text, see Textweek.com.

Thanks to Rev. Elsa L. Clark for helping me think about this text.

Christmas cancelled

2010-12-24T17:28:00.000-05:00

I imagine this bothers Jesus less than it does me.

I'm sure they just want their members and visitors to be safe. But for Christ's sake! It's like they put up a sign saying "It's not that important."

Praise and Creation

2010-12-20T01:40:00.000-05:00

The First Sunday After Christmas
Psalm 148

This is one of my favorite psalms. I love its exuberant, over-the-top, unabashed joy in praising the Lord of all creation. In one sense it is very simple to exegete: it is a hymn and a prayer for all creation to join in praising the Lord.

It does so in fairly simple fashion. In parallel structures of Hebrew poetry, it pulls in all parts of the universe by listing the "alphas" and "omegas," the boundaries which define the created world. The reader will note its similarities to the creation story in Genesis 1, the same cosmology of the three-tiered universe, a rough correspondence to the order of creation, the same varieties of living creatures. Everything, everything, is praising God!

This psalm only appears in the lectionary the first Sunday after Christmas every year. It is appropriate here, given the way the church has retrospectively and exuberantly glorified its Messiah’s birth. How natural that all creation sings in praise!

Yet praise does not come easy to everyone. In fact, some of us are natural born critics! But some part of this comes to us honestly. Praise for attributes we do not have or honors we have not earned is deceit or mockery. While praise may be spontaneous, and it may be genuine, it cannot be automatic. Real praise involves an assessment that something is worthy to be praised.

There is a godly model for having this evaluative eye. After many of the creative acts of Genesis 1, we hear that "God saw that it was good." But the Hebrew "ki tov," might be more literally translated as either "How good!", or "How good?" It might be read as God expressing approval – and it might also be an assessment of the divine handiwork.*

Sometimes one may gain the impression (perhaps even from this psalm, or from the throne scene in the book of Revelation), that creation is created to give praise, and that the natural, automatic response of creation is to praise God. Maybe so...

But we misunderstand Biblical creation if we think it is a story about how the universe was made. In the whole scope of Biblical theology, creation is the act of God making the world godly, finding chaos and bringing about a good, productive, life-generating, fruitful order. God is the God of creation because God is also the God of redemption, giving the breath of life and giving the holy breath of new life, righteous, just, peaceful, and loving. Creation and eschaton are more than kissing cousins – they are the seemless garment of God bringing goodness into being.

In this way, the psalmist is pointing the way for creation to follow. It is an invitation. Praise the Lord, because the Lord is worthy of praise! Yes, ALL creation, in all its variety, sings praise because it has asked "ki tov," "How good"?, and found God’s eternal YES. "Praise the LORD from the earth... [for] God has raised up a horn for God’s people" (Ps 148:7,14). God has always been in the incarnation business, taking the humble stuff of the material world, and spinning it into holiness. Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights!

* Phyllis Trible pointed this out to me in her 1998 seminar on Genesis 1-11. I think that God’s final look at the end of day six ("God saw all that he had made, and it was very good," Gen 1:31) has definitely turned to pure "it's good!" One might consider that this final statement should then be guide the translation of the prior ones. I prefer to think that is the capstone. The prior "how goods" contain the flavor both of a question and its answer, and the final exclamation in 1:31 is the culmination of previous judgments, seen at the end of this mighty work. Even this declaration is not a final statement, but one suited to its moment. Creation is not over on day seven. It is ongoing, and Genesis 1's account lays out the framework in which God's further actions will take place.

Artwork:
"Creation According to Genesis 1", by Judy Racz, 9 oil on canvas panels.
Mandelbrot Set by Peter Alfeld.

The grace of God has appeared

2010-12-09T12:36:00.000-05:00

Christmas Eve
Titus 2:11-14

Christmas! It's a time we celebrate. The harvest festivals have edged into a "last hurrah," in the face of the long cold nights of winter. The season's images (in the north at least) include a warm hearth, lights decorating home and streets, rich foods, and gifts wrapped up brightly to be even more special.

The church, too, is decorated with pine boughs and bright red poinsettias, with elaborate manger scenes, Christmas pageants, white and gold paraments. And Christmas Eve services are often a "dress up" occasion.

The Feast of the Incarnation is justly celebrated with the best we have to offer, with gold and exotic spices.

Yet sometimes I think that we might instead put out tattered altar cloths, and light only the barest stub of a candle. When I think of the Christmas stories that affect me the most, they're not tales of glory and bright shiny things under the tree – but of the glory and radiance that shine forth when love comes to dwell in seemingly unlikely places.

They may be sentimental images. When adversity throws strangers together and they discover in it a blessing. When an unexpected kindness becomes a saving moment of grace. When the rich and powerful are humbled at receiving a gift from one who is poor or outcast. When generosity breaks down barriers and food and stories are shared. When a long-lost soul finds their way home. Perhaps you have been part of moments like this in your life.

These are stories of Presence, when the holy breaks into the ordinary.

The New Testament icon of the season is the Word made flesh, the living God come among us, as One of us. As the apostle marvels to Titus, "the grace of God has appeared" (Titus 2:11, NRSV). And this is not simply a good show, but God showing up, "bringing salvation to all." God's appearance changes the world. Grace changes the situation we're in. It schools us in new ways of seeing, believing, and being. And these appearances of holiness in our lives become "the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ" (2:13).

Jesus came into the world not at the top, but at the bottom, and while you may justly see the glory of God in the immensity of creation and the grand things of human artistry, we do better to look in the forgotten corners of the earth and of human community. For God has always been in the redemption business: bringing light from darkness, calling unlikely people to remarkable things, hearing the prayer of slaves and foreigners, leading captives homeward.

Like us. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that all our finery is fleeting. No one is that far from being told there is no room for us. We all have our manger moments. But by the grace of God, the blessing appears not only in the "best" place or to the "best" people – but in the right places and to the right people, the very ones ripe for redemption.

May the grace of God dwell in you this day, and shine forth forevermore.

Thanksgiving 2010

2010-11-25T12:47:00.000-05:00

Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving... 1 Timothy 4:4 (NIV).

Everything?

That's what it says. Everything God created is good. And nothing is to be rejected - IF - it is received with thanksgiving.

This is a radical, surprising, and controversial claim.

While it may now be Christian theological orthodoxy (that creation itself is good, but fallen), most creation theologies and origin-stories are violent. Creation itself is often seen as suffused with blood, born out of the battle between gods, or between good and evil forces. Not every Christian even believes in the thorough goodness of creation, as seen in traditions which "deny the flesh" without also embracing it, or which fixate on the battle with evil.

But this scripture is clear. Everything God created is good.

And now the still more amazing claim. No part of creation is to be rejected, nothing denied or disowned - but its acceptability is determined by its reception! If it is received with thanksgiving, as a blessing - well, IT IS!

One of the hallmarks of Native American spirituality is the centrality of thanksgiving. Some have called it the highest form of prayer. It is certainly true that it permeates our awareness of the holy: thanks for the world which which walk upon, thanks for the plants and animals which feed us, thanks for the ancestors who brought us into this world, thanks to those who journey with us, thanks for each breath which gives us life.

We can hardly go wrong in this world if we are continually alert to those many things for which thankfulness is the true and appropriate response. And if we make opportunities for experiencing and lifting up and hallowing those moments of thankfulness. Those hokey grade school turkeys, with every feather a prayer of thanksgiving. Thank you to the teachers who brought those thanksgivings into the world.

People talk about cultivating an "attitude of gratitude." Almost every moment, every action is an opportunity to be thankful. In this way, you have a greater opportunity to live in holiness, in that you more often experience the goodness which so so much part of the fabric of God's creation. The major problem with Thanksgiving Day is that every day might be a day of thanksgiving. It is wonderful that so many meals are being served this day to those who need food and companionship. Thank God, and thanks to all who are moved to donate their money, their time and skill, their care and compassion. How much more thanks are needed for those who do this every day? Thank God!

We need not be thankful for everything, as we pray for the end of things which are no blessing: war, poverty, illness, pain, broken relationships. We all have our list of things from which we await deliverance.

But there is so much to be thankful for this day. What is your thanksgiving?

I am grateful for the opportunity to write these words, and for those who read them. It is amazing sensation to know that people in Nigeria, the Philippines, Ukraine and Hudson Bay, Egypt and Panama have glanced this way - Thank you! For the good friends who are sharing their home and hospitality with me. For my partner and friend. For a job which has blessed me in so many ways, in feeding me and in making more of me. For the hope of change in our government and political life. For a church which is trying to love, welcome, nuture, and serve. For the first snow of the season. For a God who is faithful and so much more than I have been able to imagine.

Singing in Advent - Psalm 122

2010-11-22T12:19:00.000-05:00

First Sunday in Advent, Year A
Psalm 122

The Season of Advent, the four Sundays which precede Christmas, is traditionally a time of singing. The rest of the world is playing Christmas carols in the background with Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the sounds of jingling bells. And perhaps we might sing along joyfully, knowing what is coming.

The season of Advent has this tension built into it. It is a season of expectancy and anticipation. Of preparation and watchfulness. Advent has a penitential character. It has been seen as a parallel season to Lent, with the same traditional color of the season (penitential purple) and with the same strict fast.

Yet, God love us, we have peeked under the wrappings and know that Christmas awaits, the Savior is coming but he is the One who has already come! Alleluia!

I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD!" (Psalm 122:1, NRSV).

This psalm-song lives in the joy the pilgrim feels when anticipating their journey to the holy city, the place they know (or imagine) that God touches earth. Singing this psalm, it is impossible to think that hope is an abstract concept, or that joy is something which is more anticipated than lived. Each also has a habitual quality. They can be practiced, rehearsed. They are virtues which need cultivation.

By imagining the end of the journey – "Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem" (verse 2) – you already begin to feel the joy of arrival in this "promised land." It may be that there is more joy in the anticipation than in many actual arrivals...

The anticipatory joy quickly turns to memory to reinforce, to solidify the imagined fulfillment of the pilgrimage, in conjuring up an image of this place and its importance: "Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together. To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD. For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the house of David" (verses 3-5).

And it is striking how recalling the significance of Jerusalem so quickly turns to care and concern for the very stones of the holy place. Apparently even the holiest places are under threat.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: 'May they prosper who love you. Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.' For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, 'Peace be within you.' For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good. (verses 6-9)

Jerusalem, Jerusalem... we pray, like the pilgrim, for the peace of Jerusalem. It is the tangible symbol of the shalom we urgently need in our world and in our lives. Three faiths profess it as a place where heaven and earth meet. You may look to the golden dome that now stands there, to the old rock of Zion that crowned the Temple mountain, to the mysterious lacuna of an empty tomb – or even to that vision of a new Jerusalem, a source of healing for all the nations.But the hope is not less fervent if your vision sees Amritsar or Bodh Gaya or the Black Hills.

We hope for a transformed world, for deliverance, for shalom, for a good end. Hope is not optional for the pilgrim. Nor is the joy - so often proleptic, anticipated, long-awaited - reserved only for the realization of our hopes, those moments when heaven touches the spot of earth where we are standing. We cannot save all our joy for Christmas, or for the end of whatever journey we are on. "Advent" is the coming of the holy, the real-izing of that hope which God has for our world. And it is our work to be ready, to rehearse, to practice, to live that longed-for reality.

I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD!"

A sign for the journey:
The previous image is of Rabbi Menachem Froman, who says that "The key to peace is peace in Jerusalem, to re-establish Jerusalem as the capital of peace in the world." See From an Israeli Settlement, a Rabbi’s Unorthodox Plan for Peace, Isabel Kershner, NYTimes 12/5/08. Photo by Rina Castelnuovo.

Pointers to other texts in the day’s lectionary:

Isaiah 2:1-5
A vision of all the nations streaming to the holy mountain of Jerusalem, and the Lord teaching an end to war.

Romans 13:8-14
Pure anticipation: "salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near..." (11b-12a)

Matthew 24:36-44
The gospel text inhabits a rather different world from the psalm, with the prophetic warning that the end of the age will come suddenly and unexpectedly, and urging watchfulness. Perhaps there are two good points of connection. 1) One way of maintaining watchfulness is by "going to the house of the Lord" and being attentive to your encounter with signs of the holy. 2) The peace of Jerusalem is not a feature of this age. Rather, the end of this age will see the end of the violence, warfare, and injustice which now afflicts us.

Veterans Day 2010

2010-11-10T22:29:00.002-05:00

This is an odd holiday, commemorating a number of different things. Do we pick and choose? Do we try and hold them together?

In the United States, November 11th is observed as Veterans Day. The service of all veterans of U.S. military service, living and dead, is lifted up as a civic honor. It was established in 1954 after a grassroots campaign to make it a day for “All Veterans.”

Previously the day had been observed as Armistice Day, commemorating the cessation of battle on the Western Front during the First World War. That day, the guns fell silent, and the people at home rejoiced at the end of unimaginable destruction (16 million dead, 21 million wounded, both military and civilian).

That beginning of the peace, set for the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, fell upon St. Martin’s Day.

Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier when, through a dream where Jesus recognized him, he became convinced in his Christian faith. He continued to serve in the military, until he came to believe that his faith prevented him from fighting. Martin was jailed for cowardice, but offered to go into battle at the front of the army, but without arms. Eventually released from military service he lived as a hermit, founded a monastery, and was acclaimed bishop of the city of Tours. The patron saint of soldiers, he is also seen as a witness for peace in the way he put down his arms but not his courage.

Honoring veterans... celebrating the end of a destructive war... remembering one person’s holy struggle with faith and mission...

There are these tensions built into the day. One is the place where military veterans stand. Veterans know war to be both horrible and compelling. Veterans tend to support the military enterprise, yet none are more glad and relieved at the end of a war. Veterans love the flag, yet know in real and personal terms some of the cost of that cloth.

However you choose to observe November 11th, please remember those who serve and have served in uniform. Please remember those, military and civilian, who have been sacrificed in war - in numbers too vast to comprehend and whose loss is too dear to calculate. And pay honor to the symbols that speak of the promise that people in every day seek to realize - freedom, justice, and peace.

Photos:
Military graves at Douamont, France (near Verdun) is by David Straker, 2006.

Christ the King, Christ the Head

2010-11-08T14:28:00.000-05:00

Christ the King
November 21

Colossians 1:11-20

When you think about it, it’s really miraculous – that we can use words to describe the wonders of creation, the transcendent, those things which go so far beyond the syllables which reference them. Brain and language researchers are beginning to respect how, as we heard in Genesis 1 and John 1, the Word calls things into being. Language and meaning go hand in hand, and words do more than describe reality. For humans, words help constitute reality.

This means we take theology (theo-logos, God-speech) seriously. When we say “Christ the King,” we are proclaiming something about Christ – that our Messiah is a king.

The beauty of metaphor is the way it says something real. The problem of metaphor is that, in saying that one thing is another, we can get stuck in the metaphor and lose track of how the metaphor “exegetes,” illustrates, and illumines its subject. What about the earthly kings we know is true of Christ?

There is much commentary and preaching on Christ’s kingship – particularly the way his kingdom differs from that of earthly kings (see for example Philippians 2:5-11). Christ is kingly – but the armies he commands do not seek vengeance or inflict violence. Instead they sow mercy and kindness and proclaim God’s love. Christ’s kingdom is filled with riches – but those riches are not stockpiled gold in the treasury. They are the endlessly distributed productive activity of people and yeast and all of creation sharing life with one another.

This image from Colossians – that Christ “is the head of his body, which is the church” (1 Col 1:18, CEV) – is another metaphor. This passage contains exalted, extravagant, beyond kingly language: “He is the first-born Son, superior to all creation. Everything was created by him..." (1:5-16, CEV).

But let us take those metaphors of head and body seriously. Nowadays we give honor to the head, thinking that the brain is the seat of consciousness, sitting atop the body and commanding it.

But the head does not create the body, and if we are honest, the head does not command nearly as much as we thinkers might like. The head does not end nor the body begin at the neck. The head and body are linked from the beginning, from the process of conception and development in the womb, to the way nervous system and blood supply and our marvelous chemical signals ensure that the whole body is linked together in an interdependent, continually communicating network where nutrients and messages are exchanged among all parts. And when that circulation, that interdependence stops – by illness, injury, or death – the body and its parts die.

As we hold this body metaphor together with that of Christ as king, we might think about the Roman and similar empires as diseases which inhibit the healthy functioning of humanity's body. We can see the signs of disease when humans are kept in debt, in poverty, in slavery, and hung on the world's many crosses.

We justly call Christ “King,” we honor and follow him not simply because of his exalted position at the head. But read further into the passage. Christ is at the head because he was first to be raised from death, and that death was sacrificial. And that sacrifice was not deadly, but reconciling and healing and life-giving for the whole body. It was the medicine that diagnosed (revealed) the condition of human evil and at the same time applied the antidote, seen in Christ's anti-kingship.

“God was pleased for him to make peace by sacrificing his blood on the cross, so that all beings in heaven and on earth would be brought back to God” (1:20, CEV).

Christ’s body does not end at the neck any more than his life ended at the tomb.

You can have all the other kings, all the other heads, all the other leaders and shepherds and lords. Give me Jesus, whose kingship, whose headship, whose Son-ship all speak of his great love for his whole body – which is you and me and all those who share life in Christ.

[This text is available with additional resources for Christ the King Sunday, as an American Bible Society EBulletin.]

All Saints 2010

2010-10-30T17:21:00.001-04:00

All Saints 2010

Death and what happens to our human “selves,” our consciousness, our soul, is one of the great mysteries that all peoples have tried to understand. One moment a person is breathing, their heart beating and body warm, sharing life with us. And then something passes, they are still, grow cold, the light leaves their eyes, and they do not respond to any of our entreaties. All animals feel pain, and social animals feel social pain. We mourn the loss of those we know, and wonder what it means for us.

In Mexico, Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), November 2, links ancient indigenous practices and imagery to the Catholic feast of All Souls. In Roman Catholic doctrine, souls which are not condemned to hell but who still need some purgation as a result of earthly sins, spend time in Purgatory or “limbo.” So on the day of the dead, those departed who are still “in play” are invited back into the world. Altars are built to honor the deceased using sugar skulls, marigolds, and favorite foods and beverages of the departed. Their graves are visited and these items brought as gifts.

All Saints Day, November 1, is the Christian remembrance of those ancestors in faith who have gone before us and passed from this earth. Officially, the festival commemorates those who have attained heaven. In practice, and especially under the influence of the protestant Reformation which has moved away from intermediaries between humans and heaven, people remember all the baptized, “all the saints.” And still more broadly, people remember all those who have died for whom heaven is a hope.

Hope is something which connects many death rituals. The great unknown of death is a space into which people naturally project their imagination. The fear of ghosts and other spirits inhabiting the world after life is one side of that coin. And another is the hope that somehow, in the face of this great change, life will continue and that things will be well.

In this icon, Christ is enthroned in heaven, surrounded by angels and saints and the heavenly altar. In the scene below, we see Abraham in Paradise, holding someone (a child?, the poor man Lazarus?) at his bosom, as at the right the repentant thief (Luke 23:32-43) enters. The great testimony of Christian faith is that God has a heart for salvation.

All Saints is a hopeful festival. We do not understand the mysteries of the universe, or the mystery of faith, or what the resurrection will be like, but we do know something about hope.

We hope that what we see is not all there is - that more and better awaits us. We hope that God’s promises of justice and liberation and peace are still being worked in our lives and in this world. We hope that death is not the end, but that a new life awaits us. We hope that the ones we love and who have loved us are not gone, but waiting for us and praying for us and hoping for us. We put our hope in Christ and his promises that the day will come where all things find their end in a new beginning, a new Jerusalem, a new kingdom where all is eternally whole.

This year, as every year, I am a step closer to my own death and I’m remembering more people than last All Saints Day, especially Jon and John and Gregorio and Joe and Frank, saints. Throughout the world, an All Saints tradition is to light candles to remember those lights in heaven who still illumine our way. May God bless and keep all of us still awaiting the fullness of resurrection, and strengthen in us the memory of those faithful ones who inspire us still.

A Mighty Fortress

2010-10-18T22:44:00.007-04:00

Reformation Sunday
October 31

Psalm 46

On this day in 1517, Martin Luther attempted to open a public theological dialogue about reforming the practice of the church. One of the results was the Reformation, as social, political, and ideological conflicts divided the Western church. Different branches of the Protestant tradition emphasize different ideas about the Christian faith: the primacy of grace, the distinction between law and gospel, the sovereignty of God, the freedom of the Christian.

The readings for today touch on these themes, which the reformers would assert are not theirs alone, but true for all Christians. Perhaps the most enduring and most radical notion was the reformers’ return to the Bible, translating scripture into modern languages.

Reading and hearing the actual words of scripture... Of course, this has produced some bizarre, idiosyncratic interpretations. But this has also been eye-opening and liberating for uncounted millions, for the church, and for the whole people of God. For the Lord often says something more surprising, more subtle, more challenging, and more grace-ful than we expect.

Take Psalm 46, which was a starting point for Martin Luther’s most famous hymn. “God is our mighty fortress, always ready to help in times of trouble” (Psalm 46:1, CEV).

This kind of prayer is a staple of personal faith. So often we need protection from the things which bedevil us, from real enemies and forces which threaten our safety and wellbeing. Luther himself spent nine months hidden from his enemies at Wartburg Castle, in that time translating the New Testament into German.

Yet the psalm – and the whole of scripture in which it is set – takes us well beyond that very real desire for God’s protection. It is a declaration that our refuge goes far beyond that which we imagine.

We hope for security. But God’s strength is not found in fortifications – the walls of Jericho, Jerusalem, Babylon, and Berlin have all come tumbling down. It is not found in mighty empires – they all crumble, leaving behind the rubble of their fleeting glory. It is not found in the created order – for neither the earth nor the sea is secure. It is not found in wealth, nor family, nor even our religious institutions, despite our deep desires to find something in this world we can trust wholeheartedly. (The psalmist himself may well believe that the holy city of Zion is so closely tied to God that it is such a fortress... Luther himself placed an unfortunate trust in the fortress of the state, with dire results for the German people in his day and in later centuries...)

But the words are clear: “God is our mighty fortress...”

God is more than we dare suspect. More than creation: “At the voice of God the earth itself melts” (Psalm 46:6, CEV). More than empires: God “breaks the arrows, shatters the spears” (Psalm 46:9, CEV). And even when we dare to cling to God’s might, “The LORD All-Powerful is with us” (Psalm 46:11, CEV), we might ponder the nature of God’s power.

For we know that, much as we might wish it, the fortress God does not make us invulnerable. That is the desire of those who build castles and fortifications, which stand only for a moment. “A mighty fortress is our God,” sing the Psalmist and Brother Martin and all the faithful. If we wish to find refuge in God, let us cling not to that which is fleeting – but to God’s righteousness, God’s justice, God’s saving power, God’s loving faithfulness, and yes – though it may be unjustified and totally unexpected – to God’s mercy.

Images:

Joseph Fiennes as Luther posting his 95 Theses, http://www.theologynetwork.org/Images/Layout/headers/mt8.jpg

Photo of Wartburg Castle, Eisenach, Germany taken by Robert Scarth, 9th September 2006, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license (original at http://www.flickr.com/photos/18222776@N00/241708183).

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/walkingthewall/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/img_68801.jpg

Prayers for Domestic Violence Awareness Month

2010-09-23T15:30:00.000-04:00

October, 2010

Since 1981, October has been designated as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Domestic Violence is a problem that cuts across all religious, cultural, racial, social, and economic class lines. The color of Domestic Violence Awareness Month is purple – many people wear purple ribbons to remember the victims of private violence, where it takes place behind closed doors.

Here is the text of a proclamation by President Obama about Domestic Violence Awareness Month and why it is so important to consider this issue carefully in every family and every community.

NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AWARENESS MONTH, 2009
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION
Domestic violence touches the lives of Americans of all ages, leaving a devastating impact on women, men, and children of every background and circumstance. A family's home becomes a place of fear, hopelessness, and desperation when a woman is battered by her partner, a child witnesses the abuse of a loved one, or a senior is victimized by family members. Since the 1994 passage of the landmark Violence Against Women Act, championed by then Senator Joe Biden, our Nation has strengthened its response to this crime and increased services for victims. Still, far too many women and families in this country and around the world are affected by domestic violence. During National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we recommit ourselves to ending violence within our homes, our communities, and our country.

Read the full proclamation by President Obama.

These prayers were compiled through the ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Metro New York Synod Domestic Violence Awareness Task Force, for daily devotions during the month of October. We hope you will pray these prayers with us, each day, throughout the month. May God bless you with abundant grace and peace as you pray.

October 1: Gracious God, you created us in your image and breathed life into us. A life you want us to live abundantly. We ask you to free those living with abuse physically, mentally or spiritually, from their oppression, so that they may walk in peace and enjoy a life full of your blessings. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 2: Teaching God, we pray that you open our ears, our eyes, and our hearts to be more aware, outreaching, and supportive to people in abusive situations, so that they won’t feel alone and know that someone cares. Let us love them as you have loved us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 3: Compassionate God, protect the innocent children who suffer or witness violence and abuse at the hands of the ones they love. Bring them to a safe place where they can begin to heal. Restore their minds to trust and their hearts to love and their spirits to be free. Surround them with your angels. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 4: Loving God, help us to be kind to everyone so that people who are poor, abused, hungry, neglected and afraid, or in any need will have justice. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 5: Loving Savior, touch the hearts of those who abuse others. Heal their thinking, so that they may turn to you and seek your ways. Help them to know that every human being is a treasure to you. Help them to know that you are a forgiving God and can lead them on a path to new life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 6: Merciful God, we give you thanks for your gift of strength and life and especially for the gift of your Son, Jesus Christ, through whom we have health and salvation. Help us by your Holy Spirit to witness your power in our lives and to know your eternal love. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 7: Almighty God, we pray for all victims of abuse. We ask you to surround them with your care and protect them by your loving might and permit them to enjoy health and healing, wholeness and strength, calmness and peace and love. Most of all that they feel your presence and be confident in you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 8: Good and Merciful God, comfort me in moments of distress. Help me to not give in to anger, fear, resentment, bitterness, and not forgiving. Rather call to my mind your promises of love, joy, and hope. Fill me with your peace. Heal any disease in my body, mind, and soul, including my memories or my emotions which overwhelm me at times and cause me to default to old patterns of thinking that are not of you. Allow your healing waters to refresh and renew me. Show me your ways, oh Lord, so that I may walk in the light of thy eternal love. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 9: Gracious God, look upon the victims of domestic violence with compassion and guide their journey through the legalities of obtaining an Order of Protection so that they might have the chance to begin a new life free from fear and pain. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October l0: Merciful Father, we ask that you watch over your elderly children who are left weak and frail from their many years on this earth. Remove them from the harsh and hurtful treatment they are being subjected to and provide them gentle and loving care for their remaining time on this earth. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 11: Righteous Lord, be with all the judges and lawmakers so that all who enter their courts will be dealt with in a fair and just manner. Touch their hearts to pray for all their petitioners. Let these systems, set up to enforce justice, work for the good of your people. In Jesus’ name. Amen

October l2: Giving Lord, we thank you for all caregivers, foster parents, clergy, deacons, and lay people who open their hearts and their homes to help people find or rediscover their worth. Thank you for all congregations and communities that welcome and provide fellowship, understanding and assistance to people who are in need of knowing and experiencing your love. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 13: O Lord, help us to be strong stewards of all you have entrusted to us. Give us the courage and your strength to stand against abuse of any kind inflicted upon your precious people and also to the animals you have placed on this earth. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 14: Loving God, be with all men and women who are in doubt about their intimate relationships. Give them clarity of mind and peaceful hearts so that they can make good decisions guided by your love. Let those who must, discern any abuse that may exist so that they can learn to care for themselves with your help. Let those who must, acknowledge that they are harming the other, so they can learn to abhor their own behavior and come to true repentance and amendment of life. Keep us all safe in our relationships. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 15: Most Holy Spirit, comfort and protect all who work to help victims of domestic violence, rape and assault. Give them the strength and courage to listen day by day to the hurts of others. Help them as they seek to comfort and guide the lost souls who come to them for aid. Bring them peace in their own lives, that they may better serve those to and for whom they are responsible. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October l6: Gentle God, we give you thanks and praise. Touch us with your grace. Strengthen us to accept the conversion of heart which requires us to live in equality and mutuality, with gentleness and compassion, with reverence and respect, toward ourselves and toward one another. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 17: God of Peace, there are many places and many people who do not experience your peace. Right now there are many, many women and children who live under the weight of fear and violence in their own homes. We pray for your protection and for wisdom for friends and officials to help bring that right protection to them. We pray for the many men who themselves feel powerless and confused about their relationships. We ask that you would help them find healthy ways to work out their frustrations and to find hope without resorting to destructive impulses. We ask for your perfect peace. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 18: Merciful Lord, we pray for those who suffer in silence, who are afraid to utter a word, afraid of being misunderstood or misjudged. We pray that as a church you help us to hear the voices of those who cry in silence. Help us to be compassionate and not to judge. Help us to be a responsive community of faith in denouncing verbal, emotional, physical, sexual and economic abuse when we see it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 19: Dear Jesus, help me to be humble, willing to apologize, make amends, and change any hurtful behavior. Please help me, too, to find the courage and compassion to confront hurtful behavior as you would. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 20: Lord God, your own Son was delivered into the hands of the wicked, yet he prayed for his persecutors and overcame hatred with the blood of the cross. Grant those who stand against violence peace of mind and a renewed faith in your protection and care. Protect us all from the violence of others, keep us safe from the weapons of hate, and restore to us tranquility and peace. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 21: God of Restoration, we ask you to guard and guide our youth as they struggle to find their way and your way in life amid all the pressures and messages sent out by media and peers. These messages look down on women, musical messages that inspire the love of money and no sexual boundaries. Help parents to be more involved in what their children are involved in, to inspire them to do good, to respect and to honor others. Restore family structure to be a strong unit, a safety net, and a light to the path that leads to you and your ways. In. Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 22: O God, in whose enduring love we trust, bind up the wounds of those betrayed by abuse at the hands of others. Heal them and make them whole, that they may once more receive and give love with confidence in their dignity as your sons and daughters. In. Jesus name. Amen.

October 23: God of Truth, we ask you to bless and protect the offspring of relationships where domestic violence murder has taken place. Help them to recognize you, O God, as their strong and gentle parent. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 24: All Knowing God, you know what is in our hearts and you know our intentions. Help us examine ourselves before we try to help others. Heal us so that all we do will magnify you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 25: God of Peace, restrain the hands and convert the hearts of those who seek to do violence. Bring to repentance the perpetrators of domestic violence, and minister with persistent grace to all those harmed by abuse, that they may be signs of your healing power and hope for the world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 26: Suffering God, stand always with those hurt by violence and abuse. Let none suffer in silence. Give voice to all who cry out, give courage to all who speak out, and give power to all who intervene, replacing abuse with loving justice. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 27: Divine Provider, we ask for your protection and inspiration for those who suffer from economic abuse, and the loss of hope, self esteem, vision and enthusiasm that result from the suffocations of poverty and need, in our households and in our society. We pray for those who use financial resources to control or dominate, and we seek your guidance in establishing economic justice in wages and benefits that are sustainable and foster the well-being of everybody. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 28: Divine Protector, spread your Holy Wings over those who are affected by domestic violence, both victims and perpetrators, in the wake of environmental disaster, economic collapse, terrorism and war. Violence behind closed doors ever increases after such events, and we ask you to help guide those who experience these “ripple effects” to healing resources and safe havens. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 29: God of Mystery and Majesty, we pray for those who suffer, and those who inflict suffering and injustice, based on abusive interpretations of Scripture, religious traditions, and language about what is sacred and sanctified. Give us a sense of wonder and awe at the infinite and intimate faces you show us in our lives, and gratitude and reverence for all of them, in all their diversity. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 30: Faith and Hope of our Mothers, living still, we thank you for the blessings of our ancestors, the women and men of faith and compassion who have gone before us, and sacrificed much for the love of God and for their children, even to giving their lives. We pray, on this eve of All Hallows, for those throughout history, and in many countries around the world today, who are accused, tortured and killed as scapegoats and “witches.” Bring the Light of your Mercy and Love into these places of shadow. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

October 31: Renewing and Reviving God, we thank you for the continuing reformation and formation of your holy church, in all its variety, and for the communion of the saints. Grant us a spirit of refreshment and reformation in our lives at home, in our work and service, in our devotion, and in the wide world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Download a Word document formatted for printing here (available until 10/23/10). Edit the last page to reflect Domestic Violence resources in your community.

Life among the wicked

2010-09-20T23:35:00.000-04:00

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 3

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
Psalm 37:1-9

Family flees election-related violence in Kenya.
O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?
Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?
Habakkuk 1:2, NRSV)
Do not fret because of the wicked... (Psalm 37:1, NRSV)
The prophet knows that evil is a problem. The psalmist knows that the wicked “will soon fade like the grass” (Psalm 37:2, NRSV).

Which is it, Lord?

The prophet knows that “do not fret” is not an adequate response to those who have suffered the trauma of injury and injustice. Even if the wicked will fade, they are here now, and they are all too strong. “Destruction and violence are before me;... The wicked surround the righteous” (Habakkuk 1:3,4, NRSV). The prophet cannot rest. What he sees afflicts him, and his unanswered cries for help cut as painfully – maybe more so – than the suffering he witnesses.

A number of people have noted that some prophetic literature seems to describe symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It should hardly be surprising. Witnessing or experiencing violence is shocking. We are created for good, and violent perversions of this divine purpose shock and terrify us.

The effects of trauma are not confined to an unlucky few. All those who witness violence and injustice are hurt. Victims, bystanders, and perpetrators alike are damaged. It skews us, it knocks us off a more idyllic or healthy path, sometimes off the path of righteousness. And though it may be self-evident, it must still be said that violence and injustice can be fatal.

The prophet must speak of the real anguish, which is a true experience, and a crisis for all the faithful.

But the Word of God is not one dimensional. Because God suffers with creation, God also speaks from within anguish. And God speaks not only about anguish, but to the anguished.

Sometimes it may be easier to hear from a voice outside our own tradition.

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it – always.”

Mahatma Ghandi was himself brutalized by the wicked. But he knew what the prophet and psalmist knew. God’s will will be done. Not soon enough by our lights, but inevitably. In God’s kingdom, the wicked cannot write the last chapter. As Habbakuk says, “There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay” (2:3, NRSV, see also Psalm 37:6-7).

“Wait for it”? You say wait for justice, wait for healing, wait while we are in the midst of suffering!?

Sometimes we may think that “wait for it” means “do nothing.” But that is not the counsel of prophet or psalmist.

“Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.... Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret – it leads only to evil” (Psalm 37:5,8, NRSV). We might not be able to change the evildoers, or the fact that the wicked surround us. But we do not have to let them define us. “Fretting” – being preoccupied with evil – prevents us from claiming that which is good, and provokes us to return evil for evil. It is better – perhaps not easier, but better – to keep our eyes upon the Lord.

This is a pastoral response to trauma, urging us to seek not the obsession of retribution or regret, but to seek the power of hope by practicing the righteousness and mercy that is God's answer to the failings of this world.

In truth, one way out of violence and injustice is simply to try and incarnate the kind of world we hope God is bringing about. “The righteous live by their faith,” says the prophet (Habbakuk 2:4, NRSV). Living by faith... the most active kind of waiting imaginable.

This text and additional resources can be found as an American Bible Society E-Bulletin (PDF).

Holy ground - nine years after

2010-09-10T15:47:00.000-04:00

One of the central features of current controversy over the Park 51 Islamic community center is the public debate over what constitutes “holy ground.” This is held to be an essential part of understanding and remembering what happened on 9/11/01.

Unsurprisingly, the public debate is most intense at the World Trade Center. It was the first and focal point of the 9/11 attacks, and the first and focal point of public attention. It had the “most seen” images of that day, it is the real estate most familiar and most valuable, and of course, it is the location of the greatest number of victims.

The debate is not a new one. New Yorkers and victims’ families have been contending over this since 9/11/01, even that day as the site was dubbed “Ground Zero,” a metaphor for the epicenter of total destruction and toxicity of a nuclear blast, recalling the U.S. attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 56 years earlier, and perhaps alluding to the concentric waves of devastation from that center (buildings destroyed and damaged, lives mangled and griefs multiplied, and subsequent effects such as attack-caused illnesses, retaliatory actions, even healing).

Victims’ families, responders, and other interested parties picketed and contended – never fully successfully – for what ground would be officially hallowed. They presented maps and graphs showing where each piece of recovered human remains was found. This approach reflects the ancient understanding that “blood hallows” – or in other terms might provide a telling indicator for where victims’ lives should be memorialized.

Perhaps the best known fight was to preserve the footprints of the original WTC towers as “holy ground” for memorial space only. Because the WTC plan includes memorial pools, most people think this battle was won. In fact, the memorial pools and surrounding area are smaller than the tower footprints, and not the same ground as the original tower space. “Holy ground” at the World Trade Center site has never been a self-evident, fixed, or agreed-upon concept.

In these political, commercial, and emotional negotiations, the entire WTC site has never been regarded by most people to be off-limits to all activity other than memorialization. In recovery, construction, and post-development, the WTC has been and will be a place for all kinds of human activity – as it was before 9/11/01. It is a place where people work and eat. It has toilets and garbage baskets. I have no doubt that the site has and will see love and sex, arguments and peacemaking, drinking and cursing and joking, music, dancing, and prayer in many different traditions.

Holy ground...

In the fervor to define the limits of where the “holiness line” is to be drawn, at least as it applies to Muslims, one of the more interesting proposals has come from Carl Paladino, one of the candidates for the NY Republican gubernatorial nomination. He proposed that mosques should be excluded from the area covered by the dust cloud. (”I want a simple restriction over the Ground Zero site which is the footprint and includes the dust cloud that includes the remains of all those people who died”.) While he seemed to me to be grasping at straws to find a rational basis for drawing his line, this idea again hearkens back to the notion that “blood hallows,” or that the place where human remains are laid to rest is particularly sacred.

While not accepting Mr. Paladino's premise that the Islamic faith or the prayer of Muslims profanes the memory of 9/11, his more expansive notion of “holy ground” is a way to touch some of the realities of 9/11. Like the firefighters who sifted through the dirt looking for their lost ones, like the family members wishing to retrieve debris from the Fresh Kills landfill because some specks of dust were missed, we have this sense that the lives lost that day were precious. Seeking to hallow every fragment speaks to the true depth of loss.

But we cannot gather up the dust to remake - even in memory - those who were killed. Some of their atoms are burned and scattered to the winds. Some we breathed in over those next few days and months, to become part of us. Some have been absorbed into the surrounding landscape. And some have traveled the world on jetstream and ocean currents.

The dead are dead. Their resurrection is in hands other than ours. And we can change neither of these realities.

So how can we claim holy ground out of what has been ground to bits?

We must be clear that the reasons the murderers gave for their crimes are not the outrage of 9/11. Neither their cited religious faith nor their claims of secular-Western-American evils were the abomination of that day.

Murder is the abomination of 9/11. The murder of people in downtown New York, in suburban Virginia, and in rural Pennsylvania is an abomination. The spilling of innocent blood is what evoked our outrage nine years ago when it happened close to home. But the spilling of innocent blood did not start or end on 9/11/01. We should regard all the world’s killing fields - the blood-soaked asphalt of poor neighborhoods, Iraq and Afghanistan, Cambodia and Congo, Israel and Palestine, Armenia and Eastern Europe - as kin to 9/11.

It dishonors the memory and profanes the ground of those who lived and died at the World Trade Center to make it a site of hatred rather than of healing.

Let us hallow the World Trade Center - once a killing ground - by making it a ground zero for peace. As the site is rebuilt, let it be a foundation stone for bridges between people, especially between the fearful and hopeful of every clan. Let it be, as it was on 9/11/01 and in the days which followed, even to the present day, a site where mercy and compassion reign in sad and holy triumph even amidst the ashes of destruction.

Gracious and loving God, whose name is peace and whose being is holy: sanctify our grief; heal our wounds; and redeem our loss. Lead us through our struggle, that we may not give in to evil, but may be renewed by your goodness, walking in your mercy and blessing your world, in the name of all those you loved, and whose lives are holy to you. We remember all victims of violence, and pray that we may be led out of the shadow of death through the light of your redeeming love. Amen.

Artwork:

Stephane Jaspert, "Two candles" (1982) after Gerhard Richter, used by permission.

Roses thrown by mourners float in a reflecting pool at the World Trade Center site in New York during a ceremony to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks Friday, Sept. 11, 2009. AP / Chang W. Lee

Don’t Let Jesus Manage Your Money

2010-08-30T21:10:00.000-04:00

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 12
Luke 15:1-10

Very often in the gospels, when there is conflict, Jesus’ teaching, his story telling, his actions are directed at helping people see things differently, to model or lead them to another way.

In reading these parables we have to be frank. Leaving 99 sheep unguarded to search for one lost sheep is terrible stewardship. The smart move is to protect your – or your master’s – major investment.

“Won't you leave the ninety-nine in the field...?” (Luke 15:4, CEV). Some read this and assume that the shepherd assures the safety of the 99 before searching for the lost one. Not so. The Greek word eremos means a wilderness. The 99 are left in a desolate, not a protected place.

99 sheep will soon enough make more sheep. Risking those 99 is not good business and is just plain irresponsible. No, most people probably wouldn’t leave the 99 unprotected to search out the lost one.

What’s a sheep worth anyway? Before you risk the 99, you’d better know what the one is worth. The scriptures are well aware that animals have a value. Matthew and Luke may disagree on the value of a sparrow, but not that there is a price for them in the market. (“Aren’t two sparrows sold for only a penny?” Matt 10:29, CEV, whereas Luke 12:6 declares that “Five sparrows are sold for just two pennies.”) Apparently the value of a sparrow may fluctuate, according to time and place, buyer and seller.

I was thinking about this recently when I heard a news report which tried to understand how much a pelican is worth. This comes as the U.S. and state governments calculate how much to make BP pay for the damage caused by its oil in the Gulf. (See Robert Smith, “Pricing The Non-Human Cost Of BP Spill,” National Public Radio, Morning Edition, July 30, 2010.)

In the U.S., it’s illegal to trade in pelicans, so we can’t get a “market price.” If you ask people how much they’d pay to prevent pelican deaths, you get numbers all over the map. Since it costs, on average, $500 to clean an oil-covered pelican, we know a pelican must be worth more than $500. A trained pelican for film work rents at $4,500 a day, and thus can earn its owner many thousands over its lifetime. A dead pelican, contaminated with oil, is worth less than nothing – you have to pay to dispose of it with other chemical waste. What’s a pelican worth?

Jesus tells this story to tax collectors and sinners, precisely when some economists of righteousness are questioning their value.

How much is a lost sheep worth? Nothing, if you’ve already given up on them. Everything, if you care for that sheep - or for their master.

It’s terrible economics if you’re looking to protect your investment, but life-giving if you are among the lost. Don’t let Jesus manage your money – but you might trust him with your life.

Peace in Downtown Manhattan

2010-08-22T20:04:00.001-04:00

In an article for the Huffington Post, Sister Joan Chittister argues for "another way" to respond to the controversy surrounding the construction of an inclusive and Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site (The 'Ground Zero Mosque' Conundrum: Lessons From the Convent at Auschwitz). She argues by analogy, saying that "Unfortunately, the world has been here before..." and recalling the controversy over a convent and cross at Auschwitz.

I think a lot of Sr. Joan Chittister, and have gained from her writing and speaking. But when viewing this situation through the lens of the convent at Auschwitz, she sees more similarities than I do.

First, some technical differences.

1. The convent was established within camp grounds ("in a building which was utilized during World War II to store the poison gas used in the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria," "Auschwitz Convent"); the proposed center is located a short distance (two blocks) from the site widely designated as the locus of the WTC atrocity.

2. The camp is designated a memorial site and recognized as such by most of the world; the WTC is being rebuilt as a commercial center which includes a memorial.

3. The convent actually erected a large religious symbol (a cross) visible to Auschwitz visitors; the Park 51 project will not be visible from the WTC site (until one goes well above ground level, not part of the explicit memorial and museum).

4. The area surrounding Auchwitz is largely rural; the area surrounding the WTC site has been urban for more than 200 years, and includes strip clubs, bars, and other enterprises which might well be seen to profane "holy ground."

Now I think there are more significant differences.

The events of Auschwitz (by itself, notwithstanding the other death camps) unfolded over years and resulted in the killing and suffering of more than a million people (Franciszek Piper, "Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz. Neue Erkentnisse durch neue Archivfunde"), at the hands of hundreds of thousands (mobilized by the Nazi state and its allies). The 9/11 attacks were a one-day event by a relatively small number of people that killed about 3,000.

Auschwitz had, over the decades since the end of the Shoah and the war which surrounded it, become the central symbol for the clearest, defining example of what the world was coming to know and condemn as genocide. The WTC is for me an unambiguous example of murder. Yet it has been used by some as a justification for nine years of wars which have resulted in more than 100,000 civilian deaths. It is not as clear or universal a symbol for the evil of terrorist violence.

The case for Christian and church complicity in the slaughter of Jews at Auschwitz is centuries deep and widespread. The very institution and some of the very same people which built convent and cross were directly involved in the atrocity, as bystanders certainly and in some cases as collaborators. They included unrepentant offenders. (The Carmelite convent and order remained subject to the Roman Catholic church, and while things have changed since 1984, I don't think most would regard the church as coming as far as it needs to in owning up to its part in the genocide.)

I don't know what I should about the Polish tradition of religious liberty. But I do know that the Polish convent project was conceived during and approved by an authoritarian regime in a mono-religious culture. And it is clear to me that the efforts to prevent the Park 51 project from building rather than to persuade them to modify their plans are profoundly counter to the most deeply held constituting principles of U.S. society and government.

Sr. Chittister goes on to say:
> From where I stand, there has to be another way
> to deal with this that is sensitive to both sides,
> accepting of both positions, healing of both
> wounds and a monument to real peace.

I hope and believe there is a better way. But I don't think we get there by catering to the worst prejudices among us.

The problem with her formulation of "accepting of both positions," is that one position is rooted in sickness, bigotry, and prejudice. I am a 9/11 responder who has lived with the fallout of this attack for almost 9 years. I know many 9/11 families and responders. I am saddened to say that the opposition to the center depends (unlike the Auschwitz example cited by Sr. Chittister) on blaming people who had nothing to do with the offense. The few glimmers of other reasons usually wind their way back to "we don't want them here because we don't trust them - they're the same as the ones who hurt us."

A monument to real peace must find a way to transform that. But that is what the community center is trying to do. (It is also simply not true to say that the Center did not reach out to 9/11 families and other concerned groups prior to the current controversy. I know people privy to some of those conversations.)

As a matter of law and government policy, George Washington got it right exactly 220 years ago: "...happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens..." ("Letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport," August, 1790).

While Joan Chittister is calling for something beyond the role of the state, it is unfortunate that she does not say much about steps that real people might take to get there. The social-theological problem is that everyone is calling on someone else to make a sacrifice. And that is a 9/11-size problem.

The state has fulfilled its legitimate role by ensuring that the project meets legal requirements, and by providing for civic order as people demonstrate pro and con. But at this point we have stepped into it. This is a time for leadership - and statesmanship - beyond what is required by law.

Perhaps a good role of public leaders - including religious leaders - is now to provide tangible support for "breathing space" whereby some of those offended (I am not speaking of the grandiose and politically opportunistic), the downtown NYC community, and the Park 51 community may sit together. Arguments are not the best way to begin a relationship - but they are a starting point nonetheless for those who truly seek to be good neighbors.

They Desire a Better Country

2010-07-23T00:06:00.000-04:00

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

This passage begins with a discourse answering an implied question: “What is faith?” And we hear a well-known answer, often quoted when speaking of faith: it is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1, NRSV).

There is no mistaking the importance of faith in Christian community, and it’s good to know what we mean when we use this powerful word. Yet there are two key things to be careful of in reading this passage.

First, “faith” is often invoked as an antidote to reality, belief in spite of the evidence. But this passage does not quite say that. It only says that we trust in, we look towards, and we set our hearts upon things which we know, but which are not yet in view.

There are plenty of things which are invisible whose existence we do not doubt. While 7/8s of an iceberg is under water, we understand that what is unseen is still there. We do not see the wind, but when we feel it on our cheek or hear it blowing through the trees, we know it is real. We cannot see beyond the horizon, but we believe that if we keep walking, we’ll get to a new country.

Faith is itself a mode of perception. Through “the eyes of faith,” we can see things not otherwise visible or clear.

It’s also important to understand the author of this letter is not asking an abstract question or debating a point of philosophy. His people need to know what faith is because they are being tested, not by God to see how faithful they are, but by persecutions, public abuse inflicted upon them, their families, and friends in the gospel (see the preceding chapter, especially Heb 10:32-33). Faith is not an object of academic interest – it is essential for survival.

Their persecutors aimed to make them submit, not to the faith-worthy and faithful God, but to the lesser gods of empire and culture in which these human outposts of good news were embedded.

It might have worked. But there is this little thing called faith...

Faith is linked not to evidence, but to hope. (Perhaps the Apostle Paul was thinking of something similar when he joined faith, hope, and love together in 1 Cor 13:13.) Faith looks ahead to things which are not yet in view, but which are real, are known, and are hoped for with urgency.

Perhaps a more recent example may help both our faith and our sight. Looking at Montgomery, Alabama in 1954, not many people could see that bus segregation would soon be ending. But Rosa Parks and a mighty host set out in faith, because they desired a better country, a heavenly one (Heb 11:16) – as seen in an integrated bus system.

In 1963 as Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on Lincoln’s steps and looked out over America, there wasn’t much proof that America would repent its sin of racial segregation. But his dream of an integrated and just America was not based on fact, but on faith. His faith in God’s transformative power was, to him and to many others, the assurance of the things they hoped for. He stepped forward in faith, because he and millions more desired a better country, a land well-watered by justice and righteousness.
Today we’re telling faith stories of Parks and King much the way Hebrews recalls Abel and Abraham. And that old letter-writer knew that the hope of heaven was not separate from the hope for a transformed earth. The trials of today are connected to the promised land just across the horizon. We step forward in faith not because we’re sure everything will work out in the next few days – but because we put our hope in God’s beautiful dream for creation.

Horizon image from www.cornucopia.org.

The same text, with additional resources, is available as a PDF file at the American Bible Society's Bible Resource Center.

Prayer for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

2010-07-09T23:49:00.000-04:00

Good God, we overhear Jesus telling a story to a lawyer, and wonder where we fit in. We like to imagine that we are the good neighbor, glossing over the Samaritan part.

Yet if truth be told we have preyed on others (and are thus robbers) and we have ignored those in need, for very good reasons I'm sure (choosing again and again to live in stand-by mode).

And even in these roles we find more comfort than identifying with the man in the ditch, beaten down, on our way to death, and unable to restore ourselves.

Lead to us the blessing of one (thousands if you can manage it) who will take our care upon them and bring us to a place where we may be healed. And help us to make that blessing ours, that we may share it with others, outcast to outcast, in your name, which is mercy. Amen.

The Parable of the Good Neighbor (Luke 10:25-37)

Martin Luther King and the Good Samaritan

2010-07-06T00:36:00.002-04:00

Martin Luther King, Jr. often referred to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). While King’s interpretation of the parable evolved over time, he maintained a consistent focus on the way the parable allows us to examine the obligations owed to one another, provided an enduring way to read this text.

King had a sermon on the topic which he used frequently. "Who Is My Neighbor?" highlights the question asked of Jesus. Jesus’ questioner, a lawyer, is testing Jesus and testing the limits of what Jesus’ God requires. They are agreed that loving God and neighbor is essential. But how far does this go?

In 1964, in a sermon preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, he discerned a philosophy or motivating principle expressed in the actions of three sets of the parable’s characters. "Everyone within the sound of my voice today lives by one of these three philosophies."

1. The Robbers

Often taken for granted, the waylaying of the traveler is what makes the parable possible.

Predatory behavior has bedeviled human history, and King gave a number of examples ancient and modern: slavery, colonialism, street crime, even preachers’ playing on people's religious desires in order to line their pockets. King’s fury was evident as he recited again and again the robber’s credo: "What is thine is MINE! And if you don’t give it to me, I’ll take it from you."

2. The Way of the World

The priest and the Levite evoke some sympathy. Not only does King understand something about religious professionals, they seem to have very ordinary motivations. The Jericho road through the Judean wilderness was known for its dangers. Are the robbers still near? Is this a trap? If they touch the man, whether he is dead or alive, they will become unclean and thus unfit for their duties at the end of their journey. And if the man is dead already, what sense is there in stopping?

All this is very understandable and makes great sense. "And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" (King, April 3, 1968).

We know this philosophy, this way of living. Yet King indicts this attitude of cautious self-preservation, using Biblical stories, including his favorite parable of the rich man and Lazarus. (King inherited much of his thinking on this parable from the great preacher Vernon Johns, his predecessor at Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.) It was not his wealth which sent the rich man to hell, but his failure to see the plight of his neighbor Lazarus, whom he passed by every day. And this attitude is found not just among the most powerful. It was in Dr. King's congregation, it is in our churches, it can be found whenever our time, talent, and treasure are devoted to the philosophy which segregates peoples' needs and gifts, letting some live in prosperity and others in poverty.

Whether unconscious or studied, indifference to the needs of our neighbors fixes a great gulf between us and our neighbor, and thus between us and God. King expressed this as the working out of a familiar idea: “What is mine is mine, and what is thine is thine.”

3. The Neighbor

Of course, the parable makes clear that the Samaritan, the one who does not pass by, the one who risks himself and gives of himself, is the true neighbor of the wounded traveler.

King, noting that the merciful stranger was of a different race* than the wounded traveler, also notes that he lives by a different principle from that of the robber or the passersby. This Samaritan, this good neighbor has somehow come to know that "What is mine is thine." Like Albert Schweitzer, peace corps volunteers, and those working and marching and dying for civil rights, the Samaritan understands that "all humanity is tied together." Neither predators nor passersby can be safe in a world where misery, famine, plague, and hatred are the scourge of millions. These ills are contagious, you know...

"He who lives by this philosophy lives in the kingdom NOW!", not in some distant day to come. This is the witness of Jesus, "who said in his own life 'what is mine is thine, I’ll give it to you, you don’t have to beg me for it.' This is why the cross is more than some meaningless drama taking place on the stage of history. In a real sense, it is a telescope through which we look out into the long vista of eternity and see the love of God breaking forth in the night.... It is God saying 'I will reach out and bridge the gulf that separates me from you.'"

For King, the Samaritan neighbor has flipped the implicit question asked by the passersby (what will happen to me if I help?) and acts on the question "what will happen to the wounded stranger if I don’t help?" It is this, and his effective action to render aid, take the wounded traveler to safety, and subsidize his treatment that makes the Samaritan a good neighbor.

One More View

Later on, King came to enunciate yet another view. You might call it a development of the "Good Neighbor" philosophy, a prophetic perspective, or even a God’s-eye view.

King made use of his own experiences to understand something about the parable. "I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road I said to my wife, 'I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.' It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. [The road descends nearly 3000 feet in elevation over only 20 miles between Jerusalem and Jericho.] That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the 'Bloody Pass'" (King, April 3, 1968).

Dr. King had come to know other dangerous roads. The road to integrated buses, waiting rooms, and lunch counters was a dangerous road to travel. The road to voting registration was a dangerous road for African Americans. The road to economic health and opportunity was a dangerous road for poor people. The road between Selma and Montgomery was a dangerous road when walked by integrated protesters. The road to justice - which must of necessity challenge those who depend on injustice - has always been a dangerous road.

But King realized that the danger of these roads was not a feature of creation, but of social relation, and proposed a re-architecture of our social landscapes.

"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring" (King, April 4, 1967).

There are many ways to improve the Jericho Road. One is to send Good Samaritans down it to rescue those in trouble. Another might be better policing to protect travelers. Another might fund a public works project to straighten out some of the most dangerous spots. And still another might be the transformation of society such that few are tempted to become robbers.

In this final step, King has gone beyond the parable, which was Jesus' goal in telling the story. Answering the question "who is my neighbor?" is only the first step. It is the way into the personal and collective transformation to which God is calling us. One might say that neighborliness is next to godliness.

* NOTE: Some have objected to King "reading race" into the parable. While it is a commonplace of New Testament studies to understand Samaritans as an "other" to Jewish identity, not unlike blacks to American whites, the story itself contains a signifier that ethnic identity issues are present. Jesus identified the final traveler as a Samaritan. But when he asks the lawyer which was a neighbor to the wounded man, the lawyer answers "The one who showed him mercy." Not many interpreters have been able to find ambiguity in who shows mercy in this story. Is it a stretch to see the lawyer as unable to say the word "Samaritan" in praiseworthy context?

SOURCES

Unfortunately I have not been able to locate a full version of either King’s standard “Who Is My Neighbor?” sermon, or his May 3, 1964 version, which is quoted on p.302-3 of Taylor Branch’s Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).

King, Martin Luther Jr., "A Time to Break the Silence", address delivered April 4, 1967, meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned, Riverside Church, New York City.

King, Martin Luther Jr., "I've Been to the Mountaintop", address delivered April 3, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee.

SEE ALSO: Martin King: Prophet & Martyr.

On your lips and in your hearts

2010-06-30T21:53:00.000-04:00

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
July 11, 2010

Deuteronomy 30:9-14

“The word is near you, on your lips and in your hearts.”

To many Christians, these words may seem very natural. One strong current of Christian spirituality has brought the word/Word near, with hymns on our lips, scripture in our ears in bible-reading and our liturgies, and the Word made flesh in-corporated into our bodies in the communion meal. To an insider, these words sound familiar, comforting.

Yet we may miss the anxiety surrounding them, and the challenge they are spoken into.

The text presents these words as part of Moses’ last testament, his charge to the people he has led out of slavery and through the wilderness. As they end their wandering and prepare to enter the promised land, a new commitment is needed. Many scholars have also seen this text as part of the Book of the Law discovered in the Temple walls during the reign of Josiah (2 Kings 22).

In each case, though, the words are addressed to a people facing major change. In each case, the people are being offered a choice, seen as the difference between righteousness and destruction, life and death. “You must decide once and for all to worship the Lord with all your heart and soul and to obey everything in The Book of God's Law” (Deut 30:10, CEV).

There are moments in life when we have the chance to commit “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.” There are some decision-points with great consequences. Think marriage vows, taking the oath of office.

Anything of consequence should give us pause. And where the ultimate is concerned, these big choices, where failure can mean suffering, isolation, death... well, perhaps it is easier to avoid the choice. Truth be told, most of us show little moment-to-moment or day-to-day awareness of the sacredness of all our choices, where this gift of life is lived always in God’s presence – whether we notice it or not.

When we consider the weight of these choices, well, it may seem too heavy. Obey all the commandments? All the time?

But God’s presence, God’s word, God’s commandments are not impossible, not impossibly hard, not impossibly far away (Deut 30:11-13).

This is a theme of Deuteronomy. Keep God’s word close, and God’s will becomes not just a possibility, but a living reality in your life. In the Shema, the great commandment of Israel (Deut 6:4-9), the people are commanded not simply to love and confess the Lord, but to recite and teach and touch God’s word constantly. This is not blind obedience, but a discipline which fosters love.

With God kept close, what might seem a burden becomes a blessing. Throughout history, we have discovered that keeping faith with God is no light or easy matter. But it is the experience of faith – and in this text, the very testimony of God – which reminds us that things go better when the word is close, “on your lips and in your hearts.” When slaves and civil rights marchers sing spirituals and freedom songs – the word is near. When an Alzheimer’s patient sparkles to the tune of “Jesus loves me, this I know” – the word is near. When trouble or death is imminent and the Lord’s prayer or 23rd Psalm comes to our lips – the word is near.

And it is not only in the extreme moments when we need this, but every day of our lives.

Son of David

2010-05-31T14:46:00.000-04:00

Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 13, 2010

2 Samuel 11:26—12:10, 13-15

This story from Second Samuel is remarkable in many ways. The courage and cleverness of the prophet in confronting the king. The king’s repentance and public confession. Both Nathan and David are justly remembered for this extraordinary moment, when a king met the word of the Lord.

But that poor little baby boy. It seems very unfair that the father’s sin results in the child’s suffering and death. I wish he had a name.

This story has caused no small problem for theologians. This infant child stands with Job, their stories bearing witness against facile answers to questions of God’s goodness and righteousness. “The Lord has forgiven you, and you won't die. But your newborn son will” (2 Sam 12:14, CEV). The sinner is forgiven and escapes with his life. Yet the innocent child sickens and dies.

We may wish that scripture eased our distress, by providing a word of comfort, or at least some more attention to the child.

People have tried to find that resolution, to get God off the hook for what just does not seem right. Some have said that the child’s death was necessary because it was conceived through sin. And that it would have been intolerable for a child conceived in this way to rule the nation. Yet “conceived in sin” is something known by all the offspring of Adam.

Others have pointed to the child’s death and David’s distress (2 Sam 12:16-17), as God inflicting upon David a punishment more severe than his own death. This may be so. But this avoids the problem of the suffering inflicted upon the young child.

Some take refuge in the mystery of God’s wisdom and goodness, in ways that will be familiar from our own funeral home conversations. We have no way of knowing what suffering the child would have experienced (or evil they might commit) had he lived. So perhaps God was being merciful. And trusting in God’s goodness in the promise of eternal life, we may say “He is in a better place.” The voice of faith is bold to step in where scripture is silent.

This may be no more satisfying than the ending of the book of Job in answering questions of God’s fairness. But perhaps the best we can do with such a troubling story is to look for faithfulness in the midst of brokenness.

And there is at least one more place where faith may speak in this story. This little baby boy, this innocent lamb, reminds us of another. Like this little one, Jesus of Nazareth bore the consequences of others’ sin. Both their lives were part of the unmasking of sin and the holy call to repentance. Both suffered and died unjustly. There is a common bond between these two sons of David.

And if the Jesus we know through faith is real, this innocent little baby is truly redeemed. This early son of David is in fact, a figure or forerunner of the Christ. I think his name must be Yeshua – Jesus.

This text, with additional resources, is available at the American Bible Socity's Bible Resource Center, http://www.americanbible.org/content/pdf/EBulletin3AfterPentecost_C_Cycle2__6_1_916.pdf.

Memorial Day 2010

2010-05-29T19:45:00.000-04:00

Memorial Day is a special holiday to me. At our house we would raise the flag and fly it for the day. Then at sundown, I'd play taps on my cornet. The sound would roll over the gentle hills and woods of our neighborhood. Then the flag would be lowered. My dad and I would fold it, and it would be taken inside for the next patriotic holiday.

Some years we would travel a piece down the road. At a serpentine bend, there was an old farm path with a rusty gate. Follow the path over the hill, past the pasture land and back into deeper woods and gullies, and you'd come to Coldwater Creek, where there was a cemetery. This was back in the late 1960s, when America was coming apart at the seams, as some of our best sons and daughters came back from Vietnam, many thankfully alive, too many damaged, and so many dead.

Some folks, I imagine the VFW and American Legion and I think some county politicians, had raised some money and done some work to beat back the woods and cut the grass, and there were American flags in front of many headstones, and red white and blue streamers decorating a platform for speeches. Some of the military graves went back to the veterans of the Revolution, and of course every war since then.

I remember vividly the hot early summer day, the carnations and bouquets of flowers, the bright green grass and the cool dark under the old trees by the creak, which softly trickled along all these many years. The colors of the flags stood out sharp against the colors of earth and growing things and the bright sky. I remember it bright and clear, even though sometimes it rained...

Of course I could not tell you anything that the speakers said. I’m sure they recognized the service given by past veterans.

But I remember like it was today the mystery of those gravestones, and the honor paid by the living who took the time - no doubt for many different reasons - to remember a portion of those lives now gone. I hope we trod lightly upon their resting place - but I am glad to have taken the time to know their bodies rested in this quiet and beautiful place, still remembered in spirit.

It was only later that I came to know something more about sacrifice, and the godawful destruction of war. I know that there are many kinds of hard and dangerous service, and that it takes more than military effort to make a people or a nation free,

But somehow my thoughts about war don't seem nearly as deep as what stirs when I remember those tiny flags in the cool earth... the tribute paid by going to an out of the way memorial ground to remember those who died serving their country... the holy air coming out of that cornet as each note tried to call the world to attention, to face those we owe, and salute their memory.

Wishing you blessings of peace this Memorial Day.

Shaken to the foundations

2010-05-06T23:49:00.000-04:00

Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 16, 2010

Acts 16:16-34

Sometimes when we think we know a story, we can be oblivious to the power concentrated below the surface. The stories themselves might even glance over things which can shake our foundations.

Like the story of Paul and Silas. It’s known so clearly and truly as a sign of divine action, bringing God’s people out of captivity. We recognize this story, having heard it with the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, the return from exile, and Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We long for this story, in the hope that we too may be delivered from persecution, trial, and captivity. In the middle of the night, when Paul and Silas were praying and singing praises to God, “a strong earthquake shook the jail to its foundations. The doors opened, and the chains fell from all the prisoners” (Acts 16:26, CEV). Hallelujah!

But after China, Chile, Haiti, just this year... can we read past the destructive power of an earthquake? A quake strong enough to shake the foundations of the jail is strong enough to flatten many other buildings. The text doesn’t tell us, so God only knows what is going on outside.

Inside the jail, it seems that Paul’s and Silas’ faith is unshakable. But the jailer may be a more compelling character for us. The earth quakes, and so does he.

Earthquakes literally shake foundations. The earth is the one thing we normally know as certain, solid. It holds the weight of our bodies, our belongings, our buildings. And in an instant, what we have relied on as “rock-solid” is shaken, unstable.
Santa Barbara County Jail after earthquake of June 29, 1925
We know for sure that the jailer was distressed. He certainly feared the consequences of these prisoners escaping. But we should not discount the traumatic nature of the solid earth shaking, and the solid symbol of human rule – the stone walls of the prison – now broken open.

Disciples of Jesus knew this story, too. They’d seen the solid rule of Rome and the Temple system crack open. Even the solid stone tomb of death could not hold against the name of Jesus.

Maybe in this light the prisoners’ faith makes more sense. They can proclaim “Have faith in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved!” (Acts 16:31, CEV) because their own world had been shaken, and they have known the Lord’s steadying hand, a love that was stronger than persecution and death. They knew God as the one foundation that cannot be shaken.

In the face of calamity, a confident and sure voice can speak deliverance. The jailer hears. The man who had been afraid that his prisoners would escape now leads them out of jail himself. After washing their wounds, he lets Jesus wash his, in baptism. And his household, which may have been shaken, is now set on a new foundation, seen in the hospitality he extends to those he had imprisoned.

Prayer, praise, and faith in Jesus still shakes the foundations of all that is false, sick, and built on sin. And it will continue to do so until all the captives are released.

Prayer for Palm Sunday

2010-03-26T22:03:00.000-04:00

"Hosanna!" we cry, which technically means "save us" but which everybody thinks means glory. And the guy on the donkey makes his way towards the end which awaits anyone on the wrong side of corrupt power.

Save us, Lord, from paving your way with delusions of grandeur and false hopes. Deliver us, Lord, from despair when these are dashed, and return again to us with the witness of new life in Christ, who vanquished death and sin not by flight, not by fight, but by confronting evil with true righteousness.

Thank you, Lord, for the grace to follow in your footsteps, to the cross and beyond, this week and for all the days to come. Amen.

Hosanna, by Ann Pearson

The beginning of the good news

2010-03-15T13:18:00.000-04:00

St. Mark, Evangelist
April 25

Isaiah 52:7-10
Psalm 57
2 Timothy 4:6-11, 18
Mark 1:1-15

Each evangelist has a distinctive voice in telling the story of Jesus. Each knew the story in a particular way, and wrote it down at a specific time and with an audience in mind. Each had their own idea about how this story was important, and their own style or “flair” in the way they told it.

Mark is known for his suddenness, the way things happen quickly, decisively, even imperatively. Count the times in your translation he marks transitions with “suddenly,” “immediately,” and how many things “must” happen. From almost the first moment to the last, the story moves Jesus through the lands of Israel to Jerusalem. If, as scholars think, Mark was the first to write the story of Jesus’ passion, he is the original source for “the greatest story ever told,” and thus an all-time bestseller.

The Gospel of Mark is full of surprises, and perhaps more than any other canonical gospel, causes its readers to wonder what this story really means. The greatest example might be that strange abrupt ending, where instead of a clear-cut resurrection and a joyful proclamation of God’s conquest of death, there is only an empty tomb, a strange man, and disciples who were afraid to tell anyone what they saw and heard (Mark 16:4-9).

Yet right from the start, Mark should have us scratching our heads.

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ...” [Mark 1:1a, NRSV]

Is this simply a designation for the start of his story: “The book starts here”? Or is he perhaps making a claim that the good news of Jesus begins, not with his birth or younger years, but with the prophecy of Isaiah? Or of John? Or maybe the beginning is this event where Jesus went down to the water and emerged Beloved?

Yet despite all the puzzles lurking in the text, Mark has not given us a mystery to solve, but a gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. The Jesus who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. Who would heal the sick and command demons to cease their torment. Who would turn to his Father in prayer, and not simply announce but live a new kind of kingdom.

Perhaps the “beginning” Mark refers to really points to that cryptic ending [Mark 16:9]. The whole story Mark tells is the beginning of the good news. The good news begins when God’s messengers – Jesus’ disciples – carry the Word forth.

Of course, Mark really means that you can be good news. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Isaiah 52:7, NRSV).

Artwork:
Artist unknown. Red Lion, Herald of St. Mark.
Agnolo Bronzino, St. Mark (detail), c. 1525.
Andrea Mantegna, St. Mark the Evangelist, c.1450. Photo by Alexander Heimann.

We are witnesses

2010-02-26T18:10:00.000-05:00

Second Sunday of Easter
April 11, 2010

Acts 5:27-32 Revelation 1:4-8
Psalm 118:14-29 John 20:19-31

The story of Thomas is so compelling. It is almost impossible not to preach on this text. Virtually everyone has some struggle with believing things they have not seen. But the broad theme for the day is the confession of those who believe in Jesus. If anything, today’s lectionary texts emphasize first-hand testimony.

• John’s vision reveals Jesus Christ as the “faithful witness” to God’s dominion over death and all mortal powers (Rev 1:5, NRSV).
• The Psalmist praises God not in hope, but through experience: “The stone that the builders tossed aside has now become the most important stone. The LORD has done this, and it is amazing to us” (Ps 118:22-23, CEV).
• Bless Thomas, for when he sees, he believes and proclaims Jesus as Lord (John 20:28).

We know that faith is such a blessing, sometimes we forget the power that comes when we know (by faith, by sight, by any means necessary) that something wonderful is true.

Imagine for a moment, from the reading in Acts, those strange days in Jerusalem. Peter and the apostles had seen Jesus murdered, had seen him risen from the dead and then ascend into heaven. The town was in ferment at this new movement, possessed by a Spirit some called Holy, others called disruptive of good order. People saw Jesus’ disciples as miracle workers and came to them for healing. When the authorities threw them in jail, an angel opened the jailhouse doors and commanded them “Go to the temple and tell the people everything about this new life” (Acts 5:20, CEV). Testimony is not an optional part of faithful living.

When hauled before the Council (preaching without a license), they surely knew what could be in store for them, the same fate their Lord received. Yet they were insolent. “We can’t obey you, we’re on a mission from God!” (Acts 5:29, free paraphrase). We saw with our own eyes what you did to Jesus, and what God did with him, raised him to glory. We have to tell the story – we’re witnesses!

The prophets, the psalm-singers, the evangelists and apostles knew that kind of amazing, world-changing story. Imagine the kind of story that you cannot keep hidden... A secret that cannot wait any longer... Something amazing you’ve discovered, seen, or been given...

“I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD” (Ps 118:17, NRSV).

What have you seen? What has God been up to in your life? What’s your version of the gospel testimony? Someone out there is longing to hear a good word.

[This text, with additional resources, is also available as an American Bible Society E-Bulletin PDF.]

The sacrament of ashes

2010-02-16T20:50:00.000-05:00

Ashes have traditionally been a sign of repentance and mourning. Ashes inherently represent the passing of something vital – a tree which once grew tall, a house destroyed by fire, all that is left of a corpse after the flesh has been burned away. Ashes from the burned palms of last year’s Palm Sunday carry the reminder that the grandiose hopes of triumphal parades can so easily turn to betrayal, persecution, and burial.

On Ash Wednesday, as people turn from their daily lives to observe the start of Lent, that season of penitence and preparation, the minister takes ashes, and draws the sign of the cross one forehead at a time, saying the words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (evoking the story of humans' creation, Genesis 2:7).

It is always a bit amazing how many people are eager to receive ashes. You wouldn’t think that we need or are eager to hear reminders of mortality. After all, we get those all the time. Loved ones die. Our own bodies show signs of wear. We are in the midst of broken situations and broken communities, and we never have to look far to see decay and corruption.

Lutheran theology speaks of sacraments as an act, instituted by God, where the Lord’s promise (of forgiveness, redemption, eternal life) is joined to a visible element. I suppose that the ashes of repentance cannot truly be sacramental because their imposition is not commanded by God in either Old or New Testaments.

But the puzzle of people’s eagerness to receive ashes makes more sense in light of sacramental theology.

It must be said that there is grace in truth. Despite the many reminders of mortality which surround us, we also live in a culture of denial. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” simply puts the truth on the table. It is a awesome, if unwelcome, starting point for a relationship with God’s grace.

And it must also be said that this recognition of mortality is only the tip of the iceberg. I strongly believe that those who seek to hear this word on Ash Wednesday have also heard and hold in mind the abundant Word of God’s promise.

Return to the Lord your God, for the Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love... Joel 2:13

Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Matt 11:28

I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. John 16:20

In the light of Christ, in the hope of Christ, our mortality is not something to be feared or denied. In fact, mortality, with its inevitable suffering, is something we share with every one of our human brothers and sisters. While we might think of mortality in connection with the isolation of loss, the dust we share can be a point of connection.
We are not at our best, we are not at our most glorious, we are not most fully human only when things are going well and we are lost in the rapture of joy. We may also be at our best precisely when things are at their worst. How we respond to suffering, disaster, and death can be just as glorious as our best hymn-singing.

Yet we cannot do it as individual specks of dust. The breath of God which gives us life, also blows us dust motes together, into holy “dust bunnies.” Dust is looking better all the time – when it is joined to God’s promise that even dust can be holy stuff.

Judges 19 finally makes it to the Super Bowl

2010-02-08T19:32:00.000-05:00

Amazingly enough, this year there has been active commentary on the way Super Bowl ads portray women and male-female relations.

One of the ads from Bridgestone Tire has not been mentioned in this context, yet it provides a Biblical-themed assault on women.

In the ad, a car approaches a road blocked by a gang of men with a post-apocalyptic look. "Your Bridgestone tires or your life," the gang leader threatens. A scantily-dressed woman is pushed out of the car, which then turns tail and speeds away. The gang leader cries out "I said your life, not your wife!" The woman is left alone to confront the gang, disappointed that their prized plunder is lost, and only "the wife" is left behind.

(Click on picture for larger image)
The ad is disgustingly reminiscent of one of the Biblical texts of terror, Judges 19. In this story, a Levite pushes his wife (or concubine) out the door, giving her over to a mob so that they will rape her instead of him.

Now the Bridgestone ad goes to some pains to paint the mob as harmless and inoffensive. This satirized mob would never gang rape a young, sexily dressed woman abandoned on a deserted road in the middle of the night, oh no.

But of all the violent, degrading, and just plain F-ed up gender depictions at yesterday's Super Bowl, this is Super-awful, and makes one wonder what they were thinking. How could anyone think this represents humor or a positive image of their product? (That tires would be valued more than a wife?) But if you read the Judges 19 story, and the use to which the Levite eventually put "his" woman, you may see an unfortunate continuity.

If you follow the link to the video, you can give it a THUMBS DOWN rating.