Joy in the world

The other day it occurred to me that my grandfather, who was born in 1903, never went on vacation, not once, and I don’t think he missed it. Perhaps you remember somebody like that. I found myself wondering when people started going on vacation and where the word vacation came from.

What I learned is that, until the 1850’s, Americans used the word the way the English do: vacation is the time when teachers and students vacate the school premises and go off on their own – not necessarily to play, though. The custom of  summer breaks, first for the law courts and, later, for universities, was introduced by William the Conqueror from Normandy, where its purpose wasn’t leisure, but assuring a successful grape harvest.[1] Now that’s the kind of vacation my grandfather would have been familiar with: a break from school so everybody can lend a hand during the harvest. I also remember from my earliest school days that some grown-ups called the week of fall break, Kartoffelferien, potato break.

Cindy Aron wrote the first full length history of how Americans have vacationed – from eighteenth-century planters who summered in Newport to twentieth-century workers who headed from the city for camps in the hills.[2] At first, vacations were taken for health more than for fun. The wealthy traveled to watering places, seeking cures for everything from consumption to rheumatism. But the notion that people need a break from work and get away from it all, took quite a while to develop.

For Puritans, work was blessed, and idleness suspect. They worked six days a week and on the seventh day they went to church where the preacher affirmed from the pulpit the goodness of work and warned them against the vices of idleness. But in the 1850s, things began to change quickly and rather dramatically. The railroad allowed people to get to the shore with relative ease, and railroad companies built resort hotels to give the growing white-collar middle class a reason to ride the trains.

Part of what made the middle class was that they had strong values like hard work, discipline, and sobriety, which allowed them to accumulate enough resources to go on vacation. But when they got there, they were tempted to idleness, drunkenness and other worrisome things. So there needed to be a form of vacation where middle class people could relax without worries. The churches were paying attention, and they developed their campgrounds in Martha’s Vineyard, in the Delaware shore, and in other places into worry-free resorts. No drinking, no smoking, no gambling. You couldn’t even bathe on Sundays.

Middle class people were still uncomfortable with the notion of leisure, though, and the resorts responded with a host of programs to keep vacationers busy. They developed schedules of lectures, classes, and courses, and organized hiking and competitive sports absorbed the idle hours. Working on self-improvement – spiritual, educational, physical – helped people feel productive while at play.

But Americans’ uneasy relationship with leisure remained. Robert Siegel, in an interview with Cindy Aron, quoted the saying that Europeans work so they can go on vacation, and Americans go on vacation so they can go back to work. And the author responded,

I think there’s something of a truth in that, and I think it’s an old story. I think if you look at the history and you look at this tension between work and leisure in American culture, I mean, we have this love-hate relationship with our vacations, and I think we’ve had it from the beginning. Some people maybe really like work better. I think being on vacation means dealing with your family, sometimes in ways some people would rather not.[3]

Now that opens another can of worms, and I may have to get to that another time. For now, I want us to think about this desire, this need perhaps, to get away from it all. Feeling the need to get away tells us that things are seriously out of balance where we are. I don’t want to make my grandfather the standard of a balanced life, but I am curious why he never said, “Man, I need a vacation so bad.” I suspect it’s because he took a walk in the woods every day, and a long one on Saturdays. And he worked in his garden every day, and talked to his chickens. He never worried about finding a rhythm for his life, because his life already had a gracious rhythm of work and rest. I never heard him use phrases like running on empty or needing to recharge.

We go on vacation to the beach, to the mountains, to the little house by the river, and inevitably we come back sighing, “I wish I could bring back with me that sense of being alive. I wish I knew how to nurture my mountain soul (my beach or river soul) in the city.” This language is very close to religious sentiments. “I wish I knew how to nurture my heavenly soul in this world.” The language is similar because the longing expressed in those words is very similar, and at its root, it may well be the same. We long for life to be whole and we experience our lives to be out of balance, out of tune, out of sync.

Now we encounter Jesus who says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”[4] We struggle to name the thief who robs us of life, because in so many ways it’s our own doing, our own misguided ambition, our own misunderstood appetites that, while promising fullness, never fail to drain us.

Jesus was sent by God that we may have life, and have it abundantly. He embodies a life where holiness and wholeness are one, and giving himself to us he draws us into this fullness.

It is Thursday night in the part of John’s account we heard earlier. It is the evening before Jesus’ crucifixion. He has given his friends everything that was given him from God, and only one thing remains for him to do to complete the gift. He doesn’t give them last-minute instructions, though, no hurried notes about the good life, lest they forget. He prays, and we get to hear what he says. He lives this moment, like every moment of his mission, in the intimacy of his relationship with God. He is at peace, not because he knows he’s going home, but because he already is at home.

In the gospel of John, “world” is not another name for “earth” or “universe.” The “world” is that part of creation that doesn’t know God, it is that part of life that is out of tune, out of sync to the point where it is actively opposed to God’s rhythms and seasons.[5] But the “world” is also the object of God’s love. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.[6]

Jesus is at peace, he is completely at home with God and his friends, and we overhear the words of his prayer. He prays for them and for us. He asks God to sanctify us and protect us. He asks God to set us apart for the sacred mission of testifying to the truth in the world, the truth and the life that has found us in Christ. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.

The evil one, the ruler of this world, the thief, that reality we struggle to name because we find ourselves so thoroughly entangled in it, the evil one has been judged and condemned,[7] but we need God to keep us safe.

The holiness and wholeness of life is not found through separation from the world, getting away from it all, but through our being sent into it, through our participating in the mission of God, through our sharing in the intimate relationship between Jesus and God. And as much as we live in that relationship of mutual love, we are in tune with life and at home. In that relationship our ambitions and appetites are healed, and we know who we are and what we are to do. We are at home already, which allows us to live amidst the tangled complexities of the world without getting trapped and exhausted. We know that we do not belong to the world, but that the world is God’s. And that allows us to stop serving the ruler who robs us and drains us. Knowing that the world is God’s, we praise the giver for the beauty of earth and sky and sea, for the rhythms and seasons of life.

We overhear Jesus saying, “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” He speaks of joy, and I can’t think of a better way to describe in a word what fullness of life feels like. Joy is that wondrous gift that is more enduring than the best vacation. Joy is the song our soul sings on the beach and in the mountains. Joy is the tune of our one-ness with God and God’s creation and the people with whom we live our days. The joy of being at home with God allows us to live fully and faithfully in the world, engaged with its needs and its wounds, knowing that we are participating in God’s mission of loving all things into wholeness.

Now this may sound like I figured it all out, but I didn’t. All I did is spend a few hours listening carefully for the word of God in scripture, and come Monday morning, like most of you I will struggle to remember. But what I heard and tried to put into words, will still be true, beautiful, and promising.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacation

[2] Cindy S. Aron, Working At Play: A History of Vacations in the United States (Oxford University Press, 1999)

[3] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105545388

[4] John 10:10

[5] See John 1:10

[6] John 3:17

[7] See John 16:11

We are one

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.

It’s Mother’s Day, and God drops a scripture passage in our laps that speaks of the love between the Father and the Son, and you think, “Isn’t it ironic?”[1] And then God drops another passage in our lap, and it speaks of God giving birth to us and, like any mother and her children, wanting to see us all live together in peace as brothers and sisters.[2] We are children of God and we love it, but most of us know how difficult it can be to live with siblings.

On Mother’s Day we tell our mom that we love her, we send her a card, we give her a call, we insist that she stay in bed until we bring our best breakfast to her, we take her out for lunch and draw her a picture. Mother’s Day is all about her, except that it’s also about us, or, more precisely, about me, because I want her to love my picture better than my brother’s, I want her to know that I made the near-perfect scrambled eggs and that it was my little sister who burned the toast and spilled the coffee. And Mom? “I LOVE these eggs,” she says with a broad smile and I grow an inch and a half, but then she continues, “and this is the BEST toast I ever tasted. And the pictures you drew, I must say, you’ve outdone yourselves. Thank you so much! You are the kindest, most thoughtful and generous children any mother could wish for.”

I don’t know about you, but I always found being my mom’s child much easier than being the brother of my siblings, and I guess the same is true for them. Rivalry and love make an explosive mix, and I imagine that many a mother had to step between her feuding children, telling them to stop it and be more loving with each other. “Why should I love him? He hates me!” they both protest, and she doesn’t say, “Because I say so.” She says, “Because I love him and I love you.” You gotta love your brothers and sisters, because she who gave birth to them and to you loves them as much as you.

I thought I’d sing us a song today in honor of our mothers. It’s a great song for brothers and sisters to sing together.[3]

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord,
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored:

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
They’ll know we are Christians by our love.

We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand.
We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand,
And together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land:

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
They’ll know we are Christians by our love.

We will work with each other, we will work side by side.
We will work with each other, we will work side by side,
And we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride:

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
They’ll know we are Christians by our love.

All praise to the Father, from whom all things come,
And all praise to Christ Jesus, God’s only Son,
And all praise to the Spirit, who makes us one:

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
They’ll know we are Christians by our love.

This simple, little song was written in 1966 by Peter Scholtes. He was a priest at St. Brendan’s, on the South Side of Chicago, and the parish was Irish-catholic and black-catholic, about 50/50. It was the height of one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history, and Scholtes was moved by the testimony of Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, and others in the civil rights movement. He was also steeped in the worldview and language of John: By this we will know whose we are, the writer of 1 John says midway through his composition, by the love we enact as children of God “not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”[4]

Truth and action. “We are one,” Father Scholtes taught the youth choir at St. Brendan’s to sing; he had written the piece in less than half a day. We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, and our faith, our walk, our work, our lives are for the restoration of that unity.

When Dr. King came to Chicago on his first trip north, Scholtes and a friend hung a welcome sign outside the church, a testimony to love in truth and action, and he weathered the protest of white parishioners that ensued. And he watched in disappointment as white congregants continued to move out of the neighborhood. He wanted to teach them to sing, “We are one in the Lord and we hope that all unity may one day be restored.” He taught them to sing “one day” hoping that today might be the day of restoration, that the day of love’s faithful labor toward unity would be today, always today. But those who could, moved away; to them “one day” meant “some day, not today; not us, not now.” The writer of 1 John insists that love and love’s demands cannot be postponed but must be lived, must be inhabited.

Love, love, love, parent, child, obedience, commandments, and conquer, conquer, conquer, this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. The phrases grow like branches on a vine, they spiral and twist, interlace, entwine, they twirl and tangle, and a reader may get carried away by the current of words and experience verbal vertigo. The vision given expression in this tangle of words and phrases is a vision of life: God and the children of God, inseparably united in love. Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down, weaving us and all things together in one covenant of love, making the joy of heaven complete in life on earth, all the children of God living as brothers and sisters in God’s garden, receiving, sharing, and fulfilling the most excellent gift of God.

The extravagant whirl of words in 1 John, aiming to match the exuberant circling of God’s love throughout creation, this swirl is centered in a life, in a name and a testimony: Jesus is the Christ. It is a name. It is a life, not a simple answer to all questions. It is a testimony that all things converge in Jesus the Messiah. He is the center at which life in its confusing complexity and life in fullness come into focus: “Abide in my love,” he says, abide in the love my life embodies. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. This is my commandment that you love one another as I haved loved you.[5]

The love of God poured out in the gifts of creation is our dwelling place, our habitat, our home. Likewise, we become God’s dwelling place when we allow love’s flow to continue through us. Obeying Christ’s commandments we abide in love and love abides in us, and his commandments are not burdensome. Wait a minute; not so fast. Not burdensome? Loving one another is not burdensome? You have to wonder if the author lived alone all his life. Perhaps he never had to put up with a sister who occupied the bathroom for an hour every morning. Perhaps he never had to put up with a brother who not only ate the last two pop-tarts, but put the wrapper back in the box and then put the box back in the cabinet. Perhaps he never had to put up with a spouse who paid no attention to the toilet seat, never put the cap on the toothpaste, and thought the floor was a perfectly good place for dirty clothes.

Loving one another is not burdensome? Our life says otherwise, doesn’t it? Putting up with each other’s foibles day in and day out is indeed a burden, and I think he knows that. I think he wants us to understand that love is of all the burdens the lightest. He wants us to fully grasp that lovelessness is always the heavier burden. Love is not burdensome because love and love alone has the power to overcome estrangement, to drive out fear, to reconcile and heal. All things have their beginning in love, and only love can bring all things to fulfillment by restoring the unity of creator and creation.

Believing that Jesus is God’s Messiah, we are born into the family where love flows freely. In this family, love is invited and offered, never forced; it is motivated by faithulness, not by fear or shame; it is mutual in the back-and-forth of giving and receiving. This is the faith that conquers the a loveless world, like light shining in the darkness. The darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining, we read in 1 John 2:8. The true light is already shining brightly at the center where the word of God became flesh and lived among us, and the true light is reflected in every act of obedience among Christ’s brothers and sisters, in all our deeds of love in truth and action. The true light is already shining, and one day it will shine through all things, and all unity will be restored.

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[1] John 15:9-17

[2] 1 John 5:1-5

[3] With thanks to Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2, p.490-94

[4] 1 John 3:18f

[5] John 15:9-10, 12

New glass

The vine and the onion

This is the Sunday when the gospel reading is the passage from John, where Jesus paints a beautiful picture, saying, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” The vine and its branches offers a lush and fertile image of our life in Christ, an image that blooms and brings forth much fruit in our imagining, thinking, and doing. It encourages us to linger and behold; it teaches us to become open and attentive to its rich possibilities. Little wonder, then, that every year during the season of Easter, I find myself drawn to that image with joyful expectation, ready to find new dimensions of resurrection life.

But not so this year. When it was time to select the two readings for our worship on the fifth Sunday of Easter, the angel of the epistle whispered in my ear, “Look, what beauty and truth is written in these lines of First John. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. There’s not a person in the world who doesn’t need to hear that!”

I don’t argue with angels, but I wish they would stay around long enough or come back to whisper in the preacher’s ear when he stares at the passage wondering what to make of a text that is so repetitive, almost relentless in its drumbeat of love, love, love. Fifteen short verses, and love is mentioned twenty-five times! The angel didn’t whisper; instead I heard John, Paul, George, and Ringo singing, All you need is love! and Tina Turner responding, What’s love got to do with it? What’s love but a second-hand emotion? and then Joan Baez, bless her heart, chimed in singing, Love is just a four-letter word.

I don’t know what songs start playing in your head when you hear love repeated again and again, but I suspect they are songs of romance and joy, songs of hope and fulfillment, songs of heart-break and the courage to love again.

One of the commentaries I consulted asked, “How does one approach a subject so shopworn and trivialized as love?”[1] Shopworn and trivialized. I don’t know. At first the phrase resonated with me; words do wear thin from overuse. It is very difficult to speak of God’s enduring relationship with creation, when the same words are used in a MacDonald’s tagline. And only you know what first comes to mind when you hear the words, “I’m lovin’ it.” There’s a website for everything these days, from ilovecheese.com (the official website of the American Dairy Association) to ilovejesus.com (a Christian web hosting service).

Is love shopworn and trivialized? Yes it is. But this overuse also speaks of our desire to see all things infused with love. And even the cheesiest love song also sings of this feeling deep down in our souls, this happy suspicion that love indeed ties all things together; that love indeed is life’s beginning and fulfillment.

For the writer of 1 John, love is not one thing among many God does. Everything that God does is loving, because God as revealed in the story of Jesus is love. The philosophers had thought about the character of the divine for generations, and for Aristotle it seemed clear that God must be pure reason. Plato added that God may also be named The Good beyond Being. And the writer of 1 John didn’t write a long dissertation on the nature of the Divine, but a rather short meditation on what the story of Jesus reveals about who God is, and he became the first one to declare, God is love.

Jesus is sent because God loves the world. Jesus embodies and proclaims the love of God in all he says and does. Jesus teaches his followers that in love he abides in the Father and the Father in him, and that through love we participate in the eternal life they share. Jesus lays down his life for his friends, and no one has greater love than this. This is my commandment, Jesus says, that you love one another as I have loved you. Love, love, love, love. There’s no room for fear, for apathy or hatred, because love’s desire is to be all in all.

Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down;
fix in us thy humble dwelling, all thy faithful mercies crown;
Jesus, thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art;
visit us with thy salvation, enter every trembling heart.

Charles Wesley sings with exuberance that God is love. Martin Luther points to the cross and says, God is nothing but burning love and a glowing oven full of love.[2] Bill Coffin picks up the thread and declares, God’s love is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.[3]

Love pours from the First Letter of John as from an overflowing cup because in the story of Jesus all things are transfigured and shine with the glory of God. The glory of God, the fullness of God’s very being, is love, overflowing into creation and bringing forth life in abundance. But do not think of this flow as aimless spillage or random bursts. God’s love is intentional and God’s desire is for love to be fulfilled in the blessed conviviality of life, the sabbath communion of loving creator and beloved creation. Love flows forth and life emerges in manifold beauty – from the soil and the sea, from rivers and ponds – and what happens to the flow when it reaches us? Does it then stop, having bestowed the gift and fulfilled its purpose? No, for we were created to be and act like God, to let the movement of God’s life-giving, life-redeeming, and life-fulfilling love continue. It flows into us and then flows on from us in words and deeds of mercy.

This means that our loving, our giving of ourselves to one another is both our doing and not our doing, for we are participating in the movement of God’s love in Christ. The gift of God is both, Christ dwelling in us and working through us, creating a sabbath community of peace.

All this, of course, is very much about the vine and the branches. Christ is the vine, we are the branches. We abide in him and he in us, and we bear much fruit. But I want to close with a story about a much humbler plant. It’s a story told by Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov. Grushenka says to Alyosha,

It’s only a story, but it’s a nice story. I used to hear it when I was a child from Matryona, my cook, who is still with me. It’s like this. Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; ‘She once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’ And God answered: ‘You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’ The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I’ll pull you out.’ And he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. ‘I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’ As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.

What’s love got to do with it? The angel weeps because love is so strong and yet so weak. One onion, one humble, ordinary onion, received as a gift, pulled up from the garden, and given to another, is the very path to paradise. There’s no doubt in my heart that the humble onion is strong enough to pull us all out. Even the smallest act of kindness for a little sister or a little brother has the power to change everything, because it embodies the love of Christ. But love is weak and inevitably breaks when we want to keep it for ourselves.

We do belong together, all of us, and it is love that makes us one. “I am the vine, you are the branches,” says Jesus. “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”

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[1] NIB, p. 432

[2] WA 36, p. 425

[3] Credo, p. 6

2012 Roger T. Nooe Lecture for World Peace

This year's lecture was a project co-sponsored by Vanderbilt University's Project Dialogue and Vine Street Christian Church. We are pleased to make this video of Dr. Eboo Patel's talk available.

Katniss and MacGyver

Some of you may not know who Katniss Everdeen is. Imagine a world that has been destroyed by human action and lack thereof. Imagine a world after the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires; after the rising oceans have swallowed up much of the land; a world after one more brutal war.

Suzanne Collins tells us a story envisioning an America that has been destroyed, ecologically as well as culturally. She envisions the emergence of an empire based on division and inequality; an empire built on military power and control of the media. The name of the empire is Panem, and panem is the Latin word for bread, as in panem et circenses, bread and circuses.

The empire of Panem has its own version of the circuses. It’s a nationally televised tournament in which each year one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 are selected from each of the twelve districts of Panem. This may at first sound like some version of the Olympic Games, but it’s not about the youth of the world competing for victory and fame; the teenagers selected to participate in the Hunger Games fight to the death until only one remains. Year after year, like a graduating class in spring, they are sent into the arena with the cheerful greeting, “May the odds be ever in your favor.”

The world Suzanne Collins depicts in The Hunger Games trilogy is fiction, it is fantasy, but it is frigheningly close to the world we know, with its daily violence, the increasing divide between the rich and the poor, the environmental abuses, and the ever grotesquer realities of reality tv.

The three novels tell the story of Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old girl who draws strength from sources the empire cannot control. At the reaping, the annual random drawing that determines which teenagers will participate in the deadly spectacle of the games, she steps forward to take the place of her little sister, Primrose, whose name had just been drawn. And then Katniss participates in the games, but she follows her own set of rules; with courage and skill she out-maneuvers the game designers, and she and her partner Peeta both end up as champions.

This is unprecedented; you can imagine that the masters of Panem are quite worried after this victory that turned the rules of their game upside-down. What if others follow the champions’ example and defy the empire’s rules of deadly competition? “Katniss Everdeen,” says President Snow, “you have provided a spark that, left unattended, may grow to an inferno that destroys Panem.”

Well, if you haven’t read the books yet, I won’t spoil them for you if I tell you that in the end, after many twists and turns, the world of the hunger games gives way to a world without hunger, a world where all people are alive and free. And it’s all because of an ordinary girl doing extraordinary things; it’s all because of one teenager who draws strength from a source the empire cannot control, and her spark becomes a wildfire of change and renewal.

It’s all fiction, of course, fantasy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Jesus said [Luke 12:49], “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” And kindle it he did, with his whole life, and the spark became a wildfire.

Katniss Everdeen came to mind recently when I read again the words from 1 John 3, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” This statement has a very heroic ring to it, like a young woman of great courage stepping forward publicly to take her little sister’s place in a deadly game and defying the powers that be.

I thought about others who laid down their lives, like the Christian martyrs who bravely stepped into the arena where the lions were waiting. I thought about Martin Luther King, Jr. shot in Memphis for his conviction that the universe was bent toward justice. I thought about Bishop Romero shot at the altar during mass in El Salvador for his gentle witness to the love of Christ.

There’s a fire burning in the world, a fire that the shroud of death cannot suppress, a fire that the heavy blankets of oppression cannot smother. It’s the fire that lit the bush where Moses took off his sandals; it’s the fire that illumined the path for the Hebrew slaves on their way to freedom; it’s the fire that burned in the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; it’s the fire that God kindles for the sake of freedom and fullness of life.

We hear “laying down one’s life for one another” and we think about one heroic moment of sacrifice, and we’re both inspired and intimidated. Inspired because we are privileged to witness an extraordinary act of selfless love, and intimidated because we can’t imagine we’d have what it takes to go and do likewise. I suspect the writer of 1 John knew about this odd mix of feeling both great and small in the presence of people of great courage, and so he offers us everyday people an everyday example of what he has in mind: Look around, he says, open your eyes and hearts, pay attention, and when you see a brother or sister in need of life’s necessities, lay down your life for them – if they’re hungry, give them something to eat; if they’re thirsty, give them something to drink; if they need clothes or a roof over the head, help them out.

What I hear him say is, laying down our lives for one another is laying down our desire to live for ourselves. It’s laying aside our claim to our own lives, and allowing the love of God to use our lives to change the world. It’s allowing the fire of God to burn in us and to reorient us toward our little brothers and sisters.

The rules of the hunger games are brutally simple: It’s kill or be killed. Do whatever it takes to come out a winner. But Katniss knows another way out: The rules of the game can be subverted. The rules of the game can be changed. Stay true to yourself.

As followers of Jesus we believe and proclaim that the rules of the game have been changed. His life of self-giving allows us to see the love that is at the heart of all things. Yes, it is love that is at the heart of all things, not violence, or the harsh wisdom of everybody for themselves, or the frustrating endurance of systems of oppression—it is love’s power, love’s wisdom, and love’s endurance.

We all want to change the world and make it a better place. We want to be part of rebuilding communities that have been destroyed, and we want to do what we can to keep our communities strong and vibrant. We want to understand if our way of life contributes to the flourishing of God’s creation or if it is ultimately destructive. We want to be part of bringing down the empire of death and spreading the kingdom of life. We want to know if we are living in the truth of God’s love or in the greater convenience of the empire’s simple rules of survival. And sometimes we catch ourselves thinking that all we’re doing amounts to little more than a drop in the bucket, that we’re not doing enough and never will, and our worried, little hearts condemn us.

Apparently the writer of 1 John knew about that, too. “My little ones,” he says, “let’s not just talk about love. Let’s not just sing about love. Let’s put love into action and make it real. And whenever our hearts condemn us, let every act of love, every small act of laying down our lives for one another, reassure our hearts and remind us that we are on the path of truth; for God is greater than our hearts.”

Our hearts are fickle, easily manipulated by fear, but our hearts are not the supreme court of our lives. Our court of final appeal is God, and we see God’s character most fully revealed in Jesus who laid down his life for us. His life is the complete embodiment of divine love, and his commandment for us is to love one another in the same way, in a million everyday ways. His call to us is to stay true to ourselves and to God by staying true to each other. That is how the love of God will continue to be embodied in the world and change the world.

Nancy and I went to Belmont United Methodist Church on Friday to watch a documentary, Tent City, USA. The film tells the story of a community of homeless men and women here in Nashville whose campsite was destroyed by the flood two years ago, and it follows some of them closely in their struggle for housing and for a voice at the tables of power. After the screening, Tee Tee, Stacey and Bama, MacGyver and Wendell came to the front of the room, and it was like they had just walked in from the end of the movie.

The reason I mention this is because today we give thanks for Room in the Inn and the countless volunteers that make this vital ministry possible, and I want to thank all of you who have participated during the season that ended in March. I hope you will be back in November, when another season begins, to help us embody the love of God with some of the most vulnerable citizens of our city.

But there’s another reason I wanted to tell you about this film, and this too has to do with ordinary people doing extraordinary things. After the screening, MacGyver, one of the homeless men we met in the film, told us how he’d been doing these past few months, and it was obvious things were not going well; he used the word complicated at least five times. But then he talked about his daily efforts to be there for others. He told us how he watches when billboard workers are taking down the large vinyl tarps printed with ads, and he saves the pieces for people on the street who need shelter. He told us how he ran into a guy who didn’t have a sleeping bag, and he gave him one he had stashed away safely somewhere. When he heard about another guy who needed a tent, he gave him a small one he had kept in case he would need it. It wasn’t a great tent, but it was better than nothing.

MacGyver had very few of the world’s goods, but when he saw a brother or sister in need he didn’t close his heart. He laid down his life for them. This is what we do, in a million ways, great and small, and it will change the world.

Remembering well

Remember who and whose you are. I have long thought that’s a pretty good line, and I don’t know how many times I have written or spoken it since I first stumbled upon it, I don’t know how or when. Over the years, I have changed my mind about many things, but not about this line. It’s the gospel in six words. It is like another great commandment that shines through all the others. Remember who and whose you are.

The other day, I listened to an interview with Desmond Tutu, the retired Archbishop of Cape Town, and one of the great souls of our time. Recalling three hundred years of colonial oppression in South Africa and the decades of struggle against apartheid, he mentioned how he discovered that the Bible could be such dynamite. Dynamite! His laughter is so beautiful, so infectious, so full of Easter. Dynamite, he said, and “if these white people had intended keeping us under they shouldn’t have given us the Bible. Because, whoa, I mean, it’s almost as if it is written specifically just for your situation.”

The interviewer asked him for a sample of the dynamite, and he said,

“Well, it’s actually right the very first thing. I mean, when you discover that apartheid sought to mislead people into believing that what gave value to human beings was a biological irrelevance, really, skin color or ethnicity, and you saw how the scriptures say it is because we are created in the image of God, that each one of us is a God-carrier. That no matter what our physical circumstances may be, no matter how awful, no matter how deprived you could be, it doesn’t take away from you this intrinsic worth.”

And then he talked about a small parish he served in Soweto while working for the South African Council of Churches. Most of his parishioners were domestic workers in the big homes of white families in Johannesburg. It was common for the white employers never to use a black worker’s name, even though he or she worked in their home every day. Their names, they said, were too difficult. And so women would be called “Annie” and most black men would be called “boy.”

Nobody calls a grown man boy because his name is too difficult.

Nobody robs a woman of her name except to remind her that who she is is defined entirely by those who name her as they please.

And what did The Rev. Desmond Tutu tell the people in that small parish in Soweto?

I would say to them, “When they ask, ‘Who are you?’ you say, ‘Me? I’m a God-carrier. I’m God’s partner. I’m created in the image of God.’” And you could see those dear old ladies as they walked out of church on that occasion as if they were on cloud nine. You know, they walked with their backs slightly straighter. And, yeah, it was amazing.[1]

This is the dynamite that blows away the lies. This is the dyamite that reminds us who and whose we are; and all who remember begin to walk with their backs slightly straighter, and the explosive news spreads as they tell it to their sons and daughters, and cross-stitch it on the receiving blankets of children yet unborn.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.

On Easter morning, we baptized Sarah, Miller, Boyd, Molly, Emily, and Morgan, and as they emerged from the water we called them each by name and by the family name we share; Sarah, child of God, we said; Miller, child of God; Boyd, child of God; Molly, child of God; Emily, child of God; Morgan, child of God: you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.

Remember who and whose you are. We come from different places, each with our own story; we come with complex and colorful personalities, with many layers of experience and expectation, we come with the lies we have come to believe and the truths we have forgotten – and the water washes away all that could keep us from being who and whose we really are.

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

Dynamite! In love God has created, named, and claimed us; that is who we are. And what will we be? Held by the same love. Forgiven by the same love. Restored and made whole by the same love. We will be like him who is fully alive in the love of God.

Nothing is more important than remembering who and whose we are. Last week, Rabbi Kliel sent me an email with a link to an article his sister-in-law had written on the occasion of Yom Ha’Shoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Toward the end of the article she wrote,

In college, I participated each year in a communal exercise to grapple with both the hugeness of the Shoah and its individual impact. Each year on Yom Ha’Shoah, we organized volunteers to read the names of the victims, in the middle of campus, for 24 consecutive hours. During my sophomore year, I took the 3 a.m. shift, and stood in front of the library in the dark, chilly April night, reading names into the quiet emptiness. In the midst of this rhythm, I stopped suddenly, my stomach sinking, my breath catching. For there it was: my own name. I have no idea who that Judith Rosenbaum was, where she was from, or how old she was when she died. Perhaps she was a relative, perhaps not. But I do know that reading her – our – name changed me. It brought me into the story in a new way.[2]

I just sat there after reading that paragraph, trying to imagine what it was like for Judith to find her own name among the names of the victims. Then I thought about how much of my life has been about finding myself in that story that is mine whether I want it or not. I saw myself standing in a dark, chilly night, reading name after name into the quiet emptiness, only I wasn’t honoring the memory of the millions who died by speaking their names; I was reading the names of the millions who pretended not to see, not to know, not to be responsible, and I asked for answers. And I tried to imagine what finding my own name among them would be like.

Yom Ha’Shoah was on Thursday, and in the evening, Nancy, Miles, and I were guests at a Passover Seder at the Jewish Community Center. We sat at table with Jews, Christians, and Muslims. We told the story of God’s liberation of Israel from slavery, we said the blessings, we ate the matzah, we drank the wine, we opened the door for Elijah, and we sang the songs. I don’t know what that evening meant to all the others, but I knew I was sitting at table with the healing mercy of God. It was a taste of the world to come.

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

We all come from different places, each with our own story; we come with complex and complicated personalities, with layers of experience and expectation, we come with the lies we have come to believe and the truths we have forgotten. Sin has a way of breaking us, all of us. Sin distorts how we relate to God and to ourselves, to other human beings and to our fellow creatures. Sin breaks what love makes, but greater than the power of sin is love’s power to renew, redeem, and restore. See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are and were always meant to be. We are children in the household of God, brought together not in patterns of our own making, but in the image and likeness of Christ. The patterns of our life together will not forever be defined by the walls of fear, prejudice and hate or the abyss of apathy between us and them, but by the love of God who makes all things new.

The more fully we remember who and whose we are, the more fully we will embody the kindness and courage of Jesus. We will laugh with the Archbishop; we will cry with Judith; we will walk in the company of those dear old ladies, and we will tell our children, all our children, that they are God’s own.

---

[1] http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/tutu-god-of-surprises/transcript.shtml

[2] Judith Rosenbaum, Strange, Inconceivable Fire: Leviticus and Holocaust Remembrance Day http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/judith-rosenbaum/strange-inconceivable-fire-leviticus-and-holocaust-remembrance-day_b_1429812.html?icid=hp_religion_dl_art

We follow again

Our Bible is full of surprises, and not just the kind of surprises we expect to find there. Our lectern Bible, after years of use, had begun to show signs of wear. The binding was a little lose in places, the edges looked frayed, in short, it needed a little work done. While it was at the bookbinder’s shop, we started to read from a younger model – same translation, but tight binding, flawless gold edging, and wrapped in gorgeous red, Moroccan goat leather.

One Sunday, Jeff opened that beauty to read from the first chapter of Genesis, and began to turn the pages. There’s always a dedication page, an introduction, an editor’s note, things like that, a table of contents, but eventually you’d expect to lay eyes on Genesis 1:1. Well, not with this red beauty. It opens with Genesis 3:18, something about thorns and thistles, on the next page you read something about every creeping thing, it’s Genesis 1:26, you turn the page and – taddah! – there’s Genesis 1:1. But turn that page, and you’re suddenly in chapter 5, and turn another, and there’s chapter 13. As far as we can tell (without turning all 1073 pages), all chapters and verses are there, just not necessarily where you’d expect to find them.

The best part, of course, is that Genesis 1 is all about how orderly things come about in God’s creation! What do you think happened? Was it the printer who messed things up or the binder? Or was there somebody with a great sense of humor, somewhere along the production line who decided that scripture is just way too predictable, and that the occasional surprise page would keep the readers engaged?

A few years ago, a seminary student had memorized the entire gospel of Mark in order to do a dramatic monologue before a live audience. He started with chapter 1, verse 1, “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ,” but he wasn’t sure where to end his performance. According to the current scholarly consensus, based on careful study of the oldest and most reliable manuscripts, Mark ends with chapter 16, verse 8,

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

You wonder what happened. Did the author suffer a sudden heart attack at that point and slump over his manuscript? Or had he written the most wonderful ending, but somehow that part of the scroll was lost or removed by a scribe with a strange sense of humor? Did somebody perhaps need a piece of parchment to write a letter or another story? Hard to tell what happened. The young performer decided to follow the most reliable manuscripts and end his presentation right there in the middle of verse 8. He ended his first performance declaring, “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid…” And then he stood there awkwardly in the middle of the stage, shifting from one foot to the other, the audience waiting for more, waiting for another sentence, waiting for a proper ending. And finally, after several anxious seconds, he said, “Amen!” and made his exit and, greatly relieved, the audience applauded loudly.

We like our stories and our songs to end well: a final chapter where all story lines come together and all tensions are resolved; a final measure when the melody comes home and we along with it. To that student, however, wrapping things up for the audience with a confident Amen just didn’t feel right. So at the next performance, when he reached that final verse he said,

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid,

and then he turned and left the stage in silence.[1]

Now that’s hardly a shout of victory over death.  Give us a woman in the garden, give us two disciples on the road, or a breakfast on the beach – women fleeing from the cemetery in silence? That’s no way to end a gospel. Clearly something must be done about this ending, or at least that’s how many people felt. Early Christian scribes who copied Mark’s gospel tinkered with its ending. One added just a couple of sentences, indicating that the women did as they had been told.[2] Another scribe borrowed a few details from Matthew and Luke to compose a conclusion that would leave readers reassured about the order of things.[3] A few extra lines, the curtain falls and we are pleased. The world is a reliable place after all: dramas begin and conflicts arise, yet all is resolved in the final scene.

But what if this strange ending is exactly how Mark wanted to tell the story? What if this gospel has this unfinished feel on purpose, and not because parts went missing? What if this gospel wants to leave us hanging in midsentence with this puzzled expression in our faces? We have heard the whole story, from its beginning to this moment. We were there when at Jesus’ baptism the heavenly voice declared, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”[4] We were there when Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain, and he was transfigured before them.[5] We were there when Jesus prayed in Gethsemane and the disciples couldn’t keep awake.[6] We were there when Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him, and all the disciples deserted him. We were there when Jesus was arrested, questioned and judged, mocked, abused and executed. We are attentive listeners, and even more attentive readers; we were there. We know that the women were the only ones who didn’t run away, that they watched from a distance, that they saw where the body was laid. Now three of the women come to the tomb and hear the message to go and tell—and now even they finally fail?

They fled and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Now everyone has fled, but the story is not over. We have heard it. We have read it. We have lived through its every moment, and now we must decide what happens next. We were there when Jesus told the men and women who followed him, “After I am raised up I will go before you to Galilee.” Will we trust his promise? Will we go to Galilee, or will we flee the scene and go back to the world as it was?

Silence is an option. We can deny the whole thing, act as though it never happened, and continue to live in the Friday world. Or we can begin to live in this new reality. We can go to Galilee where Jesus promised we will see him. We can go to the place where the story began and start the journey over.

Now Galilee is no longer just the name of the hill country north of Jerusalem. Galilee is the name given to the land of promise and faith: it is the land where we live and work, where we sing songs and tell stories, where we raise our children and think about the future. Galilee is the Friday world we know under the Sunday promise. The risen Christ invites us to live there, in the company of all the other men and women who chose to follow again.

The Friday world of the cross had reduced all of them to silence and fear. But from such weakness and failure, God brought forth faith. The risen Christ didn’t choose a new team, but God raised those imperfect men and women to live as bold witnesses to the resurrection.

Bill Sloan Coffin noted years ago,

Not only Peter but all the apostles after Jesus’ death were ten times the people they were before; that’s irrefutable. (…) I believe passionately in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because in my own life I have experienced Christ not as memory, but as presence. So today on Easter we gather not, as is were, to close the show with the tune, ‘Thanks for the Memory,’ but rather to reopen the show with the hymn, ‘[Christ the Lord] Is Risen Today.’[7]

Risen today. Easter is not about memory, but about presence, disruptive and transformative presence. The gospel Mark wrote down is only the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ—the story is still unfolding with us no longer in the audience, but as participants.

The women were paralyzed. Something had gone wrong – or had gone so right they couldn’t take it in. There was the news that Jesus had been raised. But there was also the word about a new life for them: Move your feet. Leave the tomb. Tell the guys. Galilee. Follow me. You will see.

The life-giving power of God had radically transformed the body of Jesus, but it had only begun to transform them. And so they ran away from the cemetery and said nothing to nobody. If Jesus had been raised and vindicated by a mighty act of God, and if by raising Jesus God had indeed reversed the whole order of time and history, of life and death – then nothing would ever be the same again. Little wonder they were afraid.

If Jesus is defeated, crucified, dead, and buried – it may break our heart, but it also confirms everything we have suspected about the world all along. It’s a Friday world: Might makes right. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for more of everything, and the meek will inherit nothing at all. But if we can wrap our small, fearful hearts around the promise and reality of today, Sunday is flooding this Friday world with hope. If we can pin our hope on that promise for just a moment, we begin to realize that it’s not human evil that has the last word, but the God who spoke the very first word. The last word belongs to God who said, “Let there be light,” and the Friday darkness fled at the dawn of this new day.

“Who will roll away the stone for us?” In Mark’s story this is the last question on the lips of those who used to follow Jesus. We know that stone. It lies heavy on our ability to continue to live kind and compassionate lives in this Friday world, to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with our God. The stone slows us down, it blocks our movements, locks us in, suffocates our courage. But today we hear that the stone, which is very large, has already been rolled back; and God calls us, again, to practice resurrection by following the one who is going ahead of us.

Today we can see that God’s faithfulness will not be undone by our infidelity. And today, chastened by our failures and empowered by Christ’s presence we follow again.

---

[1] Cf. Thomas Long, “Dangling gospel,” Christian Century, April 4, 2006, p. 19

[2] Mk 16:8b “The Shorter Ending”

[3] Mk 16:9-20 “The Longer Ending”

[4] Mk 1:11

[5] Mk 9:2

[6] Mk 14:32-42

[7] William Sloan Coffin, Credo, p. 28; my emphases

Friday World

I hope you will join us on Good Friday at 7pm in the sanctuary for a walk of seven stations (the pictures give you only six glimpses).

For Emily, Boyd, Morgan, Molly, Miller, and Sarah, the walk marks the conclusion of their baptism retreat.

For the rest of us it's a good way to begin living fully in God's Easter world again. 

And remember, on Thursday we meet at 6pm for supper in the fellowship hall.

Are we done?

We have been talking about music a lot recently, for very good reasons. Now we are only days away from wrapping up the conversations and distilling countless comments into a job description!

When we planned the Worship Sounds process, we scheduled one last listening group for April 15, the Sunday after Easter. But we find ourselves wondering, "Do we need another session? Or are we done talking and ready to move on?" What do you think?

If you didn't have a chance to participate in a triplet or one of the listening groups, perhaps you'd like to attend the wrap-up session on April 15. If you feel like you've already said all you need to say, you can still help us out with a quick response. Please use the form below to help us decide if we need to have one last listening group on Sunday, April 15, after the 10:45am worship service.

51

[I'm a little late. This is the sermon for March 25]

The psalm for this day calls for a story. The scribes who assembled the poems and songs that eventually became the collection we know as the book of Psalms, gave this psalm a short introductory note, “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

That is quite a story. It begins in the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle – but that year king David sends his generals out and he himself stays in Jerusalem. Late one afternoon, he rises from his couch and, walking about on the roof terrace, he sees a woman bathing, a very beautiful woman. He sends someone to find out who she is, learns that her husband is out with the army, and he sends for her. 

She comes over, they have a couple of drinks, they make love, and she goes home. A few weeks later, there’s a message for the king. David opens the envelope and reads it. “I’m pregnant. Bathsheba.”

David concocts a plan to hide the consequences of his adulterous affair. He calls Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah back from the front lines, scheming to make him think the child is his own. “Go home, take a break,” he says, “spend a little time with your beautiful wife.” 

But David is in for a royal surprise: Uriah refuses to go home, saying that he cannot indulge himself in such pleasures while his men are left in the battlefield.

The king resorts to making him drunk, yet Uriah, ever the good soldier, still resists the comfort of his wife’s bed; he spends the night camping out with the other officers.

Now the plot thickens as David moves another step deeper into the morass. He orders his general Joab to put Uriah in the front lines where the fighting is fiercest, and to make sure he dies there for king and country. And so it happens. Word comes that Uriah has been killed in action. 

On hearing the news of her husband’s death, Bathsheba laments. After the period of mourning is over, David sends for her and she becomes his wife. The king gets what he wants. End of story? Not quite.

The prophet Nathan comes to the palace and tells the king about a rich man who has stolen a poor man’s only lamb and slaughtered it for dinner. The king is furious, “That is an outrage! Not in my kingdom! The man who has done this deserves to die!”

“You are the man,” says Nathan.

That is when the fog of power and self-absorption finally lifts, and David realizes what he has done.

This psalm, the scribes wrote in the margins of their scrolls, this psalm is the sort of prayer that fits such a moment of sudden clarity when your knees buckle and your soul drains through the soles of your feet. This Psalm is not the quickly written apologetic press release you’d expect from a powerful man who happened to get caught. Psalm 51 is a deep and honest reflection, a “liturgy of the broken heart.”

Just about every word from the vocabulary of human sinfulness is listed in the opening lines: my transgressions, my iniquity, my sin, the evil I have done in your sight – it’s like there aren’t enough words for the horror, the guilt, and the shame. We are listening to the voice of a grown up human being who reflects on our common capacity to do evil.

But this is not just David’s prayer. The “I” that speaks in this psalm are God’s people Israel who recognize themselves in these words, and it doesn’t end with them. The “I” that speaks here is all of humanity, all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve at the moment when the fog of our self-absorption lifts and we realize our capacity for evil. This prayer allows us to reflect on the universality of sin without wallowing in confessions of guilt like pigs in a mud pit. This psalm encourages us to see ourselves in the light of God’s judgment and of God’s power to redeem, restore and renew.

Before the litany of sin that dominates the opening verses, the prayer appeals to the character of God who is merciful and whose steadfast love and tender compassion have been affirmed by generations of God’s people. The only place to reflect on what Scripture calls sin, according to this psalm, is in the light of God’s grace. Much of what sin entails can only be seen in that light, rather than the dim rays of a guilty conscience.

Sin is not a churchy word for doing the wrong thing or breaking the law. Sin is the name given to our broken relationship with God, a brokenness that impacts how we relate to ourselves, to each other, and to the world. Sin is what rules us when we imagine ourselves as gods instead of creatures of God. Sin is what distorts every aspect of our thinking, speaking, and doing, when we fail to know ourselves and one another as God’s own. Sin is like being completely out of tune in a creation that sings the glory of God.

Many prayers for help say, “Change my situation, so I may praise you.” But this one says, “Change me; I am the problem.” We learn to say from a very young age, “I’m sorry. Can we start over?” We ask for a clean slate, for a new beginning that disregards the past. But this prayer rises from a place of deeper insight. Sin is not an occasional thing, something we do now and then, but rather a reality that pervades our lives and distorts our entire being. 

Psalm 51 comes from the place where the fog of our self-assured autonomy lifts, and we suddenly see that we are not who we imagined ourselves to be. “I don’t recognize myself anymore, and I can’t put myself back together. Wash me in your mercy. Recreate me in your grace.”

A clean slate will not do. Create in me a clean heart. Create in me a heart that is free of all that alienates me from you, for I cannot be myself without you.

In this prayer, and quite often in Scripture, heart does not refer merely to an organ, a part of the body. It is rather understood as the center of our consciousness, that through which we perceive the world around us and express what is within us. The heart is like a hub where our sensibility, our imagination, our mind and will come together to shape our perception and give direction to our actions. And Scripture insists that we have a heart problem. We have hearts that gravitate toward pride and fear and idolatry. That is why the psalm doesn’t rise from the heart but from the place where the heart’s poverty is revealed in the light of God’s grace.

The prayer begins not with the painful recognition of sinfulness, but with the hopeful appeal to the mercy, love, and compassion of God. Yes, human sinfulness is pervasive, powerful, and persistent, but God’s mercy, love, and compassion still come first. The faithfulness of God is more encompassing than the reality of our sin. Where sin draws a circle of despair that traps us all, God draws a wider circle of mercy that holds us.

When we recognize the voice of Psalm 51 as our own, we begin to see that we are surrounded by God’s loyal love and we notice the sin that is ever before us; we begin to trust that God not only desires fullness of life for us, but that God’s mercy is also the power that makes fullness of life possible; learning to pray with Psalm 51, we begin to envision ourselves and our communities no longer entangled in the consequences of our sinfulness, but knit together by the creative possibilities of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, intricately woven after the pattern of God’s will.

This psalm calls for a story. These words of truth and hope call for a story that we, like the scribes of old, can write into the margins. And not just that; there’s a story that calls for this psalm. There’s a story that cries out for truth and hope and new hearts.

It is the story of a teenage boy who watches a basketball game on tv with his dad. During half-time, he walks to a store in the neighborhood and buys a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea. On his way home he is shot and killed by a neighborhood watch captain.

It happened on February 26. The young man’s name was Trayvon Martin. I find it utterly questionable when people patrol their neighborhood with loaded guns, but I will not talk about that now.

I find it almost impossible to fathom that the shooter has not been arrested, but I will not talk about that now.

What I do want to talk about is the nagging suspicion in my heart that the shooter would be in jail and awaiting trial, had the shooter, rather than the victim, been African-American.

What I do want to talk about is young African-American males growing up with the weight of suspicion on their shoulders, and their parents who must remind them not to run down the sidewalk, especially when they carry a bag or a package, so nobody would mistake them for a robber.

What I do want to talk about is how racist stereotypes twist and distort our perception of ourselves and of each other to the point that we don’t see another face, another person, but only a projection of our fears, a projection of our own brokenness.

This story calls for long, honest conversations about the things that alienate us from each other. This story calls for a long, honest prayer asking God to create in us hearts that are free of all that alienates us from God and from one another.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

A spirit of honesty to sustain our efforts to reestablish truth and trust in our communities. A spirit of hope to strengthen our belief that change, though slow, painfully slow, is possible. A spirit of love to give us the courage to surrender together to God’s power to make all things new.

This story calls for a psalm, and the psalm calls for a people to pray it and live it, a people after God’s own heart. By the grace of God, may we belong to that people.

Alive with Christ

[I'm a little late. This is the sermon for March 18]

The mess is much greater than we want to admit. I’m not talking about any particular mess, although I could easily name a few, from news reports to the very personal. The mess is much greater than we want to admit, because admitting it is so hard. In general, we much prefer blaming somebody else for the things we ought to face. We blame our parents, we blame the poor or the rich, we blame the other voters, we blame the media or China. And if we can’t find anyone else to blame, we much prefer living in denial. Why face reality when you can avoid it? 

Her friends have been telling her they are worried about her drinking, and she just laughs, “Oh, I just have a little wine to help me relax, but it’s all under control. I could quit tomorrow if I wanted.”

His sister tells him she’s concerned about the toll his travel schedule is taking on his family, and he just smiles, “Oh, it’s OK, they’re used to it, and in the summer, I’ll take a week off.”

The mess is much greater than we want to admit. Admitting it is hard, because it means admitting to ourselves that we are not who we like to think we are.

Tom Long was watching a talk show on tv, where a well-known Christian musician was telling his life story. He talked about growing up in a warm and loving Christian family and how he discovered in high school that he was blessed with a vibrant faith and also with a rare musical gift. Eventually shaking off the dust of his little town, he took his faith and his guitar and headed off toward the bright lights of Nashville, aiming at a career in gospel music. And here in Music City, he found some success, but, unfortunately, he also found drugs—lots of them. Soon his once young and hopeful life spiraled out of control; his vibrant faith all but vanished. One night, he came completely apart emotionally and found himself lying face down on the linoleum floor of his kitchen, sobbing uncontrollably, crying out to God in despair. “I woke up the next day,” he said, “and I haven’t been the same since. That was 28 years ago. I just give credit to the Lord,” he said, reflecting on three decades of sobriety and productivity. “I think God rescued me.” [See Thomas G. Long, Just as I Am, The Christian Century, March 21, 2006, p. 18]

The mess is much greater than we want to admit, and sometimes it takes getting this very close look of the kitchen floor, before we can cry for help. Now Tom Long is a theologian and a professor who teaches preaching, and before he even started telling this story, he let his readers know that he doesn’t want to hear this kind of story from the pulpit. And after he told it, he went on to name all the good reasons why a story like that shouldn’t be told from the pulpit. “It seems simplistic,” he writes, “theologically naïve; it belongs in the Christian tabloids.” Turns out, this kind of story is very much part of the world he grew up in as a southern Protestant. It reminds him of the sweaty revivalist culture of  his youth and the personal testimonies with their recurring plot of  “I was sinking deep in sin.” 

Tom Long doesn’t like stories that come with the smell of sawdust. But he’s old enough and wise enough to question his own discomfort with stories of sin and salvation. Perhaps these stories just get too close to the core, he wonders. Perhaps this desire to make the faith about spiritual enlightenment or ethical ideals or the broad love of God that inspires tolerance, perhaps that desire is about keeping things orderly, reasonable, and under control, much like the rest of our lives.

But there’s no denying that the gospel is at root a rescue story, a story about people face down on the kitchen floor. “You were dead,” is the opening line of the second chapter of Ephesians, “but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. … By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Talk about a rescue story! We weren’t just picked up from the kitchen floor, we were snatched from the jaws of the lion, and we barely knew even half the trouble we were in. The mess is much greater than we want to admit. We want to hold on as long as we possibly can to the illusion that everything’s fine and we don’t need anyone’s help. We cannot admit that we are trapped, that we are captive to destructive forces over which we have no control, that they have drained the life out of us, that we are unable to think or feel or work or crawl our way free. We cannot admit that we need saving. 

Ephesians was written in a world very different from our own, and the letter’s first audience had no trouble imagining a demonic ruler of the power of the air. We do not commonly describe that which drives us to destructive behavior against each other and against ourselves as an independent power; but we know that people can be trapped and not know it. We can be trapped in death and be convinced that life’s just like that, or worse, that it’s supposed to be like that; our whole life can be twisted around a lie and we’re convinced it’s the truth, because it’s all we’ve ever heard.

The gospel is a rescue story, the story of an ongoing rescue operation. We need saving because we live in a world that is estranged from its maker, and we don’t realize that we live in a broken relationship until we get a taste of God’s faithfulness, a taste of the redeemed life. In Ephesians, this is spelled out in powerful images of overcoming. Estranged from God, we become confused about the purpose of life and who we are, and we lead lives that are destructive – for others, for ourselves, and ultimately for all of life. We may not know it, but we follow the course of the world; we follow our own passions and desires, and even they are not our own because we don’t know who we are. 

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ … and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places.

In the cosmology of this letter and of the people to whom it was first addressed, the powers that confuse us about who we are and what life is, inhabit the air between earth and the moon, hence the name, ruler of the power of the air. But Christ has been raised and seated beyond them – and we with him. This doesn’t mean we’ve been taken out of the world – obviously we haven’t. But with Christ we know who we are as God’s own, and with Christ we gain a better perspective of our lives and how to live as God’s own rather than as slaves to oppressive powers.

The cosmology of the ancient world is very strange to me, but I love the contrast between two images: one of a man lying face down on the kitchen floor, crying out for help, and another of that same man sitting next to Christ on high, redeemed by the loyal love of God. Few of us imagine the world the way people in antiquity did, but this image has lost nothing of its power: the love of God is greater than the powers that rob us of life, and in the company of Christ, we are who we were meant to be: human beings in relationship with God, and therefore truly alive.

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Perhaps you were still wondering if being seated with Christ in the heavenly places might mean something like being removed from he world, spiritually or otherwise. To me, this verse makes it very clear that the redeemed life is not about being rescued out of the world, but about being in the world and walking the path that has been prepared for us, be it individually or as a community of God’s people. Every human life has good works as its purpose, which means every person has a divine calling: to follow a way of life that reflects the loyal love and mercy of God, that is to walk with Christ, to work with Christ, to be alive with Christ.

We read portions of Psalm 107 this morning; it is a song with a recurring refrain, calling on the redeemed to thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind. The psalm sings of people wandering in desert wastes, hungry and thirsty, their souls fainting within them.

Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he led them by a straight way until they reached an inhabited town.

At first glance, that straight way is simply the shortest way out of the desert. But at second glance, we recognize that straight way as the way of life God has prepared for us to lead us from the desert wastes to the community where life flourishes. The psalm goes on to sing of some that sat in darkness and in gloom, prisoners in misery and in irons; they fell down, with no one to help.

Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress; he brought them out of darkness and gloom, and broke their bonds asunder.”

At first glance, that verse is about getting out of prison. But at second glance, it is about all of us who are trapped in lives that are neither our own, nor God’s—until God breaks our bonds.

Let those who are wise give heed to these things, and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.

More Easter for your money. Guaranteed.

Our friend, Joe Blosser walked into his local Wal-Mart. He couldn’t help but lift up his eyes to a large poster suspended from the ceiling. He saw grass, beautiful grass, the kind of brilliant green grass you only see at the beginning of spring. He saw blue sky with little white clouds, and written across it, in large yellow letters, the word EASTER.

Oh, the promise of new life after the long winter – Joe lives in Chicago, where it’s been grey, windy, and cold for months, so we forgive him for having a tender moment of hope in a Wal-Mart box. But it didn’t last. I knew it couldn’t last. Printed below the happy word, EASTER, was a line of text in white letters:

More Easter for your money. Guaranteed.

Really? You’re gonna give me more Easter for my money? Guaranteed? What makes you think Easter is for sale? What makes you think you can pack Easter into a shipping container in China, and I’ll be waiting here to buy a little more of it? You may know a lot about logistics and global sourcing; but you know nothing about Easter. You may know a lot about cutting costs and squeezing out the competition; but you know nothing about Easter. And you certainly know a lot about becoming bigger and dominating the neighborhood and keeping unions out of your stores and building a retail empire; but you know nothing about Easter. Or have you thought about a poster for your Good Friday sale? Have you thought about an ad campaign around the self-less love of the One who gives himself away for the life of the world? Without the cross, Easter is nothing but more chocolate, bigger bunnies, and cheaper lilies for my money. Guaranteed. Thank you very much, but I have no use for your promises.

Corinth in the days of the apostle Paul was a cosmopolitan city. Situated between two sea ports, it was an economically vibrant and culturally diverse community where many languages were spoken, many traditions blended together, and all manner of goods, services, and ideas were exchanged. Corinth was an economic, cultural, and political hub in the Eastern Mediterranean, and it ranked persistently among the best places to live in the Roman Empire.

The church in Corinth was a microcosm of the city, but things didn’t look good. Competition among members had plunged the community into conflict. Some bragged about belonging to Apollos, others about the greatness of Cephas, and still others about the prominence of Paul. Each faction praised its own apostle and disparaged the others. Imagine something with the energy of a presidential primary process, but without an election. They didn’t have candidates, only campaigns and Super PAC’s; and each campaign praised the theological insight of their apostle, significantly bolstering their own egos as well, since they were the ones recognizing true greatness!

Corinth was a hub in the Roman Empire, and Corinthians knew a lot about global trade, logistics, smart business deals, and how to sway others with the right word at just the right time. Rhetoric was a major part of the education among the elites, and people identified eloquence and cleverness of speech with power, wealth, and success. Correspondingly, the lack of refined and polished speech was a sure sign of low status  and of a lack of wealth and power.

When David Sedaris wrote, Me Talk Pretty One Day, he was only reflecting on his attempts to learn French. In Corinth and in other cities of the empire, that line would have been a song about upward mobility, about success and belonging. Me talk pretty one day: Clever speech was seen as a ticket to the top.

And how did Paul respond to the heated debate in the church about who was more eloquent and hence the greater apostle? He masked his anger with a serious joke.

“So, I understand some among you shout, ‘I belong to Paul,’ and others, ‘I belong to Apollos;’ and still others, ‘I belong to Cephas.’ Who then is shouting, ‘I belong to Christ?’ Huh?—Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in Paul’s name?”

And then he held up a single word against the surge of clever speech.

A young friend of mine a few years ago was shocked by the sudden realization that the cross was an instrument of torture and of executing the death penalty. “Isn’t that like putting an electric chair in the middle of the chancel,” he asked. “Isn’t that like hanging a noose above the baptistry?”

Twenty centuries of usage as a religious symbol, as jewelry and decoration have dulled the impact of the words cross and crucifixion.

As a particularly horrible form of public torture and execution in the Roman Empire, crucifixion was designed to demonstrate that nothing but complete surrender to the power of Rome would be accepted. Crucifixion was reserved for non-citizens, for slaves, prisoners of war, and insurgents—anyone who threatened the divinely sanctioned order of Rome. The cross had connotations of contempt, degradation, humiliation, and shame, and crucifixion was a virtual obscenity not to be discussed in polite company.

In a speech defending a Roman senator against a murder charge for which the prosecutor was seeking the death penalty and was apparently suggesting crucifixion, Cicero sought to sway the jury, declaring, “The very word ‘cross’ should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes, his ears.”[1]

And that very word ‘cross’ is what Paul holds up for all in Corinth to see. Paul’s gospel is a scandal, an insult to the sensibilities of educated men and women, an ugly interruption of any polite conversation about politics, the law, or religion. Paul proclaims Jesus Messiah, and him crucified. He does not make pretty talk of the cross, or clever talk. All he can do is hold it up; the cross disrupts everything we think we can say about the divine, or about justice, or power, or love.

We want signs. We want God to do something big and spectacular, something like a Super Bowl of truth where Jesus wins 40:0 while the whole world is watching; instead we must look at the cross. We want wisdom. We want the gospel to be philosophically elegant and aesthetically pleasing; instead we must listen to the cross. The power of God is both hidden and revealed in the cross; it cannot be known by what we consider convincing evidence or a conclusive argument. Where we expect power, weakness is given. Where we expect wisdom, foolishness is given. But in the community that gathers around the cross, in the community shaped by the love and obedience of Christ, weakness, compassion, and humility are known as the power of God, and divine wisdom is spoken and heard in ordinary speech and song.

We know how the world works; power is the ability to inflict suffering or escape from it, not to undergo it. We know how the world works; knowledge is all about controlling things and directing them toward our own goals. But the cross both embarrasses and embraces us; it turns our world upside down and starts it over. Rather than proving the sovereignty of our empires, the cross shatters our systems of power. Rather than confirming what the smartest talkers already know, it shatters our systems of knowledge. The God who hides and meets us in the cross of Jesus does not fit into our ideas of how the world works; the cross is the end of “how the world works” and it is the beginning of the world to come.

Wal-Mart knows how the world works, how to compete, out-perform, and rule in the retail markets. Unfortunately, the numbers on the price tags and in the earnings reports don’t tell the stories of the people who can’t keep up.

Corinth knows how the world works, how to harness education, technology, and investments to become a great city. Unfortunately, the reports from the chamber of commerce can’t go into much detail about the social costs of growing economic disparity in the city.

We are part of that world, as citizens, investors, workers, and consumers, and we know how it works. But in the cross of Jesus, we recognize God’s judgment of that world and the promise of a better one; one that isn’t defined by the incessant race to the top, but by the mercy of God and the wellbeing of our neighbor. The world in which the crucified Messiah is risen calls for new ways of living.

Years ago, Bishop Dom Helder Camara of Brazil gave us a timeless reminder that our primary mission is to be the good news. “Be careful of the way you live,” he said, “it is the only gospel most people will ever read.” Our life together is the proclamation of the gospel of the cross; we learn to walk before we talk. What might that look like?

Paul’s letters are full of examples; let me pick just one. A difficult issue for the first believers was the question of whether or not to eat food that had been presented as an offering in a pagan temple. Serving that kind of food was common practice at dinner parties, especially when meat was part of the menu. Some believers said, “No big deal; there’s only one true God, and those idols are no competition. We can eat anything we please, for Christ has set us free.” But there were also those who were worried about falling back into pagan ways, and they needed the support of a solid framework of rules to protect their fragile faith. And they stopped eating meat altogether, just to be safe.

Given Paul’s own faith and robust theology, you’d expect him to side with those who act boldly in Christ-given freedom. But he doesn’t. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” he says.[2] In a community centered around the power of the cross, building up comes before personal liberty or theological correctness. I must not let my liberty become a stumbling block for my brother or sister. We must walk together in love before we talk about our liberty and what we know.

Now we don’t worry much about food that might put in question our relationship with God or with each other. But we are talking a lot about music these days, and it’s easy to think of the things that might get us all puffed up about our freedom to sing whatever we please or shouting, ‘I belong to Isaac Watts’ or ‘I belong to Fanny Crosby’ or ‘I belong to the Dooby Brothers.’

But it’s also beautiful to imagine what might emerge when we submit to each other in love. We will know more fully the power of the cross, and we won’t need a single trip to Wal-Mart to have a very happy Easter.

---

[1] The Speech In Defence of Gaius Rabirius, sec. 16, in The Speeches of Cicero, trans. H. Grose Hodge, The Loeb Classical Library (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927) 467.

[2] See 1 Corinthians 8; the quote is from v.1

The Odd Season

Lent is an odd season. It goes very much against the grain of our lives. It’s a disruption of our routines, an invitation to try on a different kind of life in order to rediscover what matters most. Our culture can handle Mardi Gras and Easter really well, the parties and the bunnies, but during the weeks of Lent, you and I, we’re on our own. For Ash Wednesday, I bought a small bag of ashes, more than enough for all of us, for $3.82. There’s just not a big market for Lenten products, and so the world of commerce, entertainment, work, and consumption doesn’t know what to make of this odd season. I like that.

Lent begins with ashes smudged on our foreheads and somber words urging us to remember our mortality, “Remember, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Remember and return are just two of the many words of this odd season that begin with the syllable “re.” Remember. Return. Repent. The ashes are all that’s left of the palm branches we waived when Jesus came riding into town and we were so excited about God’s reign on earth. The branches went up in flames much like the exuberance of our joy and our commitment to living as God’s people. Ashes is all that’s left, and we use them to trace the symbol of our hope on our foreheads. It’s Lent, time to repent, to rethink our priorities, reconsider our choices, remember our calling, renew our commitments, refocus our attention, reenter the place of truth, refuse the whispers of Satan, return to a baptized life, reclaim our identity as God’s own – in one word, repent.

Lent is an odd season. It goes very much against the grain of our lives. It’s a disruption of our routines, an invitation to slow down and step back and take a closer look and try on something different in order to rediscover what matters most and learn to remain faithful to that vision of life.

My friend Rob told his friends on Wednesday that he wouldn’t be on Twitter and Facebook for forty days. “Call me,” he said, “or better yet, come by and see me.”

My friend Melissa is doing a gasoline fast. “If I can’t get there on foot or on my bicycle, I’m not going,” she told me.

And Amy who talks more and faster than anyone else I know, Amy will sit in silence for twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes at night every day for forty days – twenty minutes without talking, without her phone, without tv or radio or her computer, twenty minutes of just Amy and silence. Why? Like you and me, they already have a nagging suspicion that some of their habits and routines are getting in the way of the life God intends for us, and now they embrace the opportunity to try on something different and develop new habits, habits fit for the reign of God on earth.

Do you know the difference between a flute and a stick? Of course, you do, it’s quite obvious. A stick is full of itself, and a flute is a stick that has been emptied of itself for the sake of music. We have a tendency to clutter our lives with junk, drown out the voice of God with noise, block the flow of the Spirit with our oversized egos or our undersized courage. We have a tendency to live like sticks when we’re meant to be flutes. The habits of Lent, disciplines like fasting, praying, and alms giving, create openings for the divine music maker to transform us. Lent is all about getting rid of the stuff that keeps us from being a symphony of praise.

Mark is a great companion for this season. The author of this gospel is a master of brevity and focus. The gospel was written to be read aloud in the assembly, and it takes about 80 quick minutes to do that; don’t try that with John. John invites us to linger, ruminate, and circle, but Mark rushes through the scenes with such speed that the only way to keep up is to keep our eyes on Jesus. Just a quick word statistic to illustrate this: the word ‘immediately’ pops up 41 times in Mark, and only 10 times in all the other New Testament writings combined. If you want to keep up, keep your eyes on Jesus, says the master of focus.

He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Jesus had just come from Nazareth of Galilee and had been baptized by John in the Jordan. He didn’t choose to go away for a while, on some kind of wilderness retreat to consider his mission. No, the Spirit immediately drove him out, no time for leisurely narrative. One moment there’s a heavenly voice calling Jesus Son and Beloved, and before he can draw another breath, the Spirit drives him out, still wet, into the desert.

Wilderness. Forty days. Tempted by Satan. Wild beasts. Angels. Forty days in five quick strokes. It’s like Mark is flashing an image, and an entire movie starts playing in our minds. He plays just two or three chords, and song after song plays in our minds.

I hear wilderness – I see Hebrew slaves on the way to the promised land, Elijah fleeing from the wrath of Jezebel, I hear Isaiah singing of the end of exile. One word, and the scenes start rolling, and songs of redemption and hope are playing.

I hear forty days – and Moses on Mount Sinai comes to mind, Elijah on the way to Mount Horeb; it is as though all Mark has to do is call out a number and the sacred memory of God’s people begins to unfold.

I hear wild beasts – oh they are dangerous and threatening, and Mark’s first audience certainly thought of the wild animals to whom their brothers and sisters were thrown in Rome’s circus during Nero’s persecution; but there’s also the picture of the garden where Adam and Eve simply are with the wild beasts, and there’s Isaiah’s song of peace for all creation where the wolf lives with the lamb and the leopard lies down with the kid. Mark mentions beasts, and memories of peace, a deep longing for peace, and the hope for one to be with us in danger are awakened.

I want to slow down the pace for just a moment. I want to linger a little at the flash of a scene where the angels wait on Jesus. I want to tell you about Elijah, the man of God. He hadn’t been driven into the wilderness by the Spirit of God, but by the fury of Queen Jezebel who wanted him dead. He had fled into the wilderness for his life, but he was also exhausted. He was so exhausted, he wanted to die. He was tired of fighting. He was tired of being the lone voice of resistance in a culture that worshiped idols rather than the living God. “It is enough,” he said, exhausted in body and soul, before he fell asleep under a broom tree.

He woke up when an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” There was a bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water. Elijah ate and drank and went back to sleep, and the angel of the Lord came a second time and waited on him, saying, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”

All Mark has to say is, “And the angels waited on him,” and the story of Elijah comes to life in my mind, reminding me that in the wilderness, Jesus is being nourished for a difficult, demanding journey.

In the middle of it all sit the words, tempted by Satan. In scripture, Satan is the name given to a voice that whispers and argues, makes promises and raises questions with the sole purpose of making us doubt or forget that we are God’s own, created for glory, and beloved. But Satan doesn’t get any airtime here. Jesus emerges from the wilderness with the good news that God’s reign has come near, and he calls us to repent and believe the good news. He calls us to follow him on the way.

On Tuesday, Eboo Patel told us a story about Jesus that isn’t in any of the gospels. It is a story attributed to a muslim, the great Sufi teacher Attar of Nishapur.

As Jesus and his disciples entered a village, some of the villagers began to harass Jesus, shouting unkind words and harsh accusations. But Jesus answered them by bowing down and offering words of blessing. A disciple said to him, “Aren’t you angry with them? How can you bless them?” Jesus answered, “I can only give what I have in my purse.”

Jesus emerged from the wilderness and he lived the compassionate life of one who trusted fully that he was God’s beloved and who recognized even in those who abused him, God’s own beloved children. All he carried in his purse was the currency of God’s reign.

We collect today a special offering for Week of Compassion, our church’s ministry of disaster relief, economic development, and refugee resettlement. We are grateful for the opportunity to give and to give generously to the proclamation of God’s reign in acts of mercy and justice. But the call to live the compassionate life Jesus embodied is about more than money for mission. Jesus frees us to take a good, honest look at ourselves, because we too can only give what we have in our purse. He calls us to make this Lent the spring time of our salvation by rethinking our priorities, reconsidering our choices, remembering our calling, renewing our commitments, refocusing our attention, reentering the place of truth, refusing the whispers of Satan, returning to a baptized life, and reclaiming our identity as God’s own – holy and beloved.

Worship Sounds

When we gather for worship, the sanctuary is filled with the sound of human voices - songs of praise, the spoken words of scripture and prayers, glorious anthems and "Little children, come unto me..." 

Then there are the sounds of organ and piano, of handbells and guitars and brass and more. Worship has a rich texture of sounds.

After 36 years "on the bench," our Organist and Director of Music Ministries, Julia Callaway will retire in the fall. Sunday to Sunday, year after year, she has played the organ and the piano, accompanied the choir and many soloists, selected hymns and musical offerings, introduced new songs and orchestrated the flow of every service. Julia has given 36 years of her professional life to the glory of God and the worship life of God's people at Vine Street, 36 years of beautiful, creative worship sounds. And while we are making plans for retirement parties and celebration concerts, we must also talk about the next chapter in Vine Street's ministry of music.

Over the next few weeks we will get together in groups of various sizes to talk about worship sounds and what kind of music leadership we will need. Our leaders want to hear from all of us so they can develop staffing scenarios that are in tune with our vision for the future.

We ask all our members and friends to participate in a triplet and/or attend a listening group. The triplets are groups of three that meet five times (between March 10 and April 15) to talk about songs, instruments, worship, and related things. All you have to do is sign up, and we'll let you know who your triplet buddies are. The triplets schedule their own sessions, and they are free to talk about a wide range of issues. We will provide a set of guiding questions/statements for each session, and each triplet will appoint a scribe to report important findings.

The listening groups are three open, facilitated sessions, each following the same agenda (so it's OK to attend just one, but it's also great to attend more of them: with different people in the room, the dynamics will be very different in each case). The agenda of the listening groups is a very condensed version of the topics the triplets will discuss. This may sound pretty confusing at first glance, but it's actually a pretty flexible process:

• You may not be able to commit to meeting with a triplet five times; but you can fit one listening group in your busy schedule. 
• You love the triplet idea, because you enjoy talking about these things in depth, and you know it's a great opportunity to get to know two other members of the church. You also want to attend at least one of the listening groups, because you're curious about what other people have to say.
• You enjoy the energy in the room when a larger group of people talk about things they are passionate about. You make sure you have all three listening groups on your calendar.

The point is, each of these combinations (and any other combination you can dream up) works; what we are aiming for is to give all our members and friends an opportunity to participate in this important conversation about leadership in music ministry. The only rule: when you make a commitment to a triplet, you commit to make every effort to participate in all sessions (that's why each triplet gets to schedule their sessions independently).

• The triplets meet five times between March 10 and April 15
• The open listening groups meet at the church on Wednesdays, March 14 and March 21 at 6:30pm, and on Sunday, April 15, for lunch after the 10:45am worship service.

To make room for sharing music and comments outside of these meetings, we created a page on Facebook. Check it out, and feel free to post your own favorite worship songs and listen to what others have posted.

This turned into a much longer post than I expected, but I don't want to end it without encouraging you to sign up for one of the triplets; please complete and submit this form, and you will soon hear back from us. Thank you!

And not be silent

I love the psalms, I have long loved them. I love them because they are so very old, and yet they don’t talk about ancient realities, but about the life I know. I love them because they are familiar, human speech.

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.[1]

Whoever wrote those lines – who knows when – gave words to a longing and a thirst we all know in our bones. Walter Brueggemann wrote, “The Psalms, with few exceptions, are not the voice of God addressing us. They are rather the voice of our own common humanity, gathered over a long period of time; a voice that continues to have amazing authenticity and contemporaneity. It speaks about life the way it really is, for the same issues and possibilities persist in those deeply human dimensions.”[2]

The voice of our own common humanity that speaks about life as it really is. I love the psalms for that voice, and for the ways in which it gives witness to the elusive presence of God – elusive, but utterly trustworthy:

Weeping may linger for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.[3]

Whoever wrote this line – who knows when – has wept through many a night and came back with a song about the faithfulness of God. I love the psalms because they invite us to sing along.

In the early fourteenth century, Richard Rolle wrote about the psalms in the preface to his translation,

Psalm singing chases fiends, excites angels to our help, removes sin, pleases God. It shapes perfection, removes and destroys annoyance and anguish of soul. As a lamp lighting our life, healing of a sick heart, honey to a bitter soul, this book is called a garden enclosed, well sealed, a paradise full of apples![4]

Wether we sing them, say them, chant or read them, the psalms invite us into conversation with God about things that matter most. In these poems and songs we encounter God, who meets us in the depths of need and on the heights of celebration. “The Psalms draw our entire life under the rule of God, where everything may be submitted to the God of the gospel.”[5]

The psalm we said together this morning ends on a note of joyous praise and gratitude:

You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you haven taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

For a while, though, the psalmist remembers, for a while silence was a very real possibility; not the beautiful silence of holding a sleeping infant in your arm or gazing at a full moon in the winter sky. No, a very different silence, the silence that spreads when life drains away.

There was a time when everything was just right. You had a job and you loved it. The kids were doing great and you didn’t have to worry about your parents. Your doctor smiled when she saw you and said, “Whatever it is you’re doing, keep doing it.” Your friends loved hanging out with you and you enjoyed food, wine, music, movies, and making travel plans. You were the poster child of happiness and confidence – and then it was like a pit opened and threatened to swallow everything. That is the very moment where this psalm comes from: As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall NEVER be moved – and then my whole world began to spiral downward. The rock of my life had turned into quicksand and I was sinking fast.”

Life is about well-being and joy, about vitality in our relationships and in our sense of self, and about flourishing in all of life’s seasons; and death is, in many ways, part of life. But we also know death as a force that invades the realm of the living out of season and drains all vitality and joy from it. We know death as a reality that doesn’t serve God’s purposes, but negates them. A pit opens and threatens to swallow everything in a silence from which there is no escape.

Sometime at the beginning of the 20^th century, somewhere in southern Appalachia, somebody wrote a song that sounds almost like a psalm. No one has the foggiest idea who wrote it, and there are a lot of versions of that song scattered throughout the South.[6] I’m not from these parts, and so I first heard it when I watched O Brother, Where Art Thou? I’m talking about Ralph Stanley singing O Death.

O, Death. O, Death.
Won’t you spare me over ‘til another year?

(…)
‘O, death’ someone would pray
‘Could you wait to call me another day?’
The children prayed, the preacher preached
Time and mercy is out of your reach
I’ll fix your feet ‘til you can’t walk
I’ll lock your jaw ‘til you can’t talk
I’ll close your eyes so you can’t see
This very hour, come and go with me
I’m death I come to take the soul
Leave the body and leave it cold
(…)

O, Death. O, Death.
Won’t you spare me over ‘til another year?

My mother came to my bed
Placed a cold towel upon my head
My head is warm my feet are cold
Death is a-movin’ upon my soul
Oh, death how you’re treatin’ me
You’ve closed my eyes so I can’t see
Well you’re hurtin’ my body, you make me cold
You run my life right outta my soul
Oh death please consider my age
Please don’t take me at this stage (…)

This song emerged in a world where death holds great power. So overwhelming is death’s power that it has been personified, and there is no one else to plead with. There’s nothing here to chase away the fiends or remove the anguish of soul, no lamp, no light, no honey to a bitter soul.

O, Death. O, Death.
Won’t you spare me over ‘til another year?

The song ends in silence, after a plea that can imagine life’s continuation only as the whim of a tyrant.

I love the psalms because they don’t white-wash the reality of death that surrounds us in the midst of life. The psalms sing of life’s fragility, of the depth of human suffering, and even of the terrifying experience of God’s silence and absence – but they affirm, with a voice we recognize as our own, that God hears our cries and is summoned by them and is able to make all things new.

I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up,
and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,
and you have healed me (…)
you brought up my soul from Sheol.

Sometimes endings disrupt our sense of life’s goodness and promise. Sometimes death invades our world and we find that our experiences clash painfully with our beliefs, even to the point of feeling abandoned and forsaken by God. Sometimes the pit opens and there is nothing left to hold onto but a cry. I love the psalms because they do not deny that reality or drown it out with happy ditties; they acknowledge it, they give us words to speak about it, and they praise God who can make a way where there is no way; they sing of new joy, new hope, new purpose, and invite us to sing along.

You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

The psalms are songs of transformation; they declare how God has turned mourning into dancing, exile into homecoming, death into resurrection. The psalms are songs of transformation; whether we sing them, say them, chant or read them, they nourish divine hope in our hearts. They are what Walter Brueggemann has called “songs of impossibility,” songs that make the bold and joyous claim “that conventional definitions of reality do not contain or define what God will yet do.” [7] Reality is not closed in by death, but open to the creative possibilities of God who lifts up the lowly and brings down the mighty, who feeds the hungry and sends the rich away empty, who makes the barren woman the joyous mother of children, and brings the exiles home. These wonderful songs challenge everything but the faithfulness of God. Things don’t have to be the way they are, they declare, because God is God.

And so we come together to sing the songs of impossibility. Every Sunday we give praise to God who raised Jesus from the dead. Every day we say to the world, “All our presumptions about what can happen have been overruled!” And therefore no one, no man, woman, or child must be left singing songs of despair that plead with death to spare them over ‘til another year. Nothing is more realistic now than boundless hope. So let us praise God and not be silent.

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[1] Psalm 42:1-2

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms (Winona, MN: Saint Mary’s Press, 2001), p. 13

[3] Psalm 30:5

[4] Richard Rolle, The Psalter or Psalms of David and Certain Canticles, with a Translation and Exposition in English by Richard Rolle of Hampole. Edited from Manuscripts by the Rev. H. R. Bramley, with an Introduction and Glossary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884), p. 3; my italics

[5] Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1984), p. 15

[6] Kansas City Star http://www.kansas.com/2004/08/21/19245/song-oh-death-dates-back-to-the.html

[7] See Patrick Miller, “In Praise and Thanksgiving,” Theology Today Vol. 45, No. 2, p. 186

The Banquet of Community

In 1945, Rabbi Julius Mark of the Temple and Dr. Roger T. Nooe of Vine Street Christian Church encouraged the men’s clubs of their congregations to have a dinner meeting in February as a celebration of what was then known as “Brotherhood Month.”

The men met for dinner and decided to make this “Brotherhood Dinner” an annual event. Within just a few years, the women of the congregations joined them, and the tradition continued as the “Brotherhood/Sisterhood Dinner.” Over the years, other Nashville congregations were invited to participate, and the inclusion of Catholics and African-American Baptists showed the intention to build bridges where the community at large seemed too comfortable with disinterested coexistence or outright segregation.

For more than sixty years, this dinner gathering was an occasion for many to reflect on the role of faith communities in the fabric of our public life. In recent years, leaders from the Temple (Congregation Ohabai Sholom), St. Henry Catholic Church, First Baptist Church - Capitol Hill, Belmont United Methodist Church, and Vine Street Christian Church realized that our desire to include the Islamic community required some fresh thinking. In addition, we noticed that younger generations were not nearly as eager as their parents to come to the “Brotherhood/Sisterhood Interfaith Banquet.” We wanted to continue the great tradition of coming together to grow in our mutual understanding and to build and strengthen bonds of friendship in our city; but we also knew that new forms had to be found.

For a few years, I had been reading about a young man in Chicago, who was doing excellent work with college-age men and women of many faiths. A couple of times, I had heard him on the radio, thinking, “I wish we could bring this guy to Nashville.” When the congregations of the Brotherhood/Sisterhood Interfaith Banquet were looking for a new form to channel and direct their interfaith passion, I thought the time had come. I called the Interfaith Youth Core, the organization Eboo Patel had founded in Chicago, and learned that his work had gained international attention - bringing him to Nashville would be possible, but the cost was beyond reach for a handful of congregations. Then I learned that Vanderbilt was interested in bringing this recognized interfaith leader to Nashville, and the Elders quickly decided to partner with the university.

Funding from the Roger T. Nooe Lectureship for World Peace made it possible for us to reserve Langford auditorium on the Vanderbilt campus for the keynote event on February 21 (see the poster below). In the morning of that Tuesday, we invited faith leaders from Middle Tennessee congregations and schools to discuss with Mr. Patel how we can continue our work for mutual understanding. We’ll only have breakfast, but to me it will be another course in the banquet of community. Rabbi Mark and Dr. Nooe would be pleased to see what became of their dinner idea.

I hope you will join us for the lecture on Tuesday, February 21, at 7pm, and that you will invite your friends and neighbors. We encourage our members and neighbors to meet at Vine Street at 6:30pm, so fewer vehicles will be used and people with limited mobility can be dropped off near the entrance to Langford auditorium.

Unshackled Conversation

There is a saying of Jesus that makes him sound like a master thief. You may prefer thinking of him as a master teacher, but this still sounds like an excerpt from Burglary 101: “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.”[1]

This saying is a rather curious way to describe the mission of Jesus, and it is how he himself sees it. He has entered the strong man’s house. Following his baptism, Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan, and now he’s returned, proclaiming the good news of God. He has tied up the strong one, and now he is ready to plunder the house. It may sound like burglary, but in truth it’s an invasion whose purpose is to free those in the house from foreign occupation. Jesus returned from the wilderness not to edify, entertain, or enlighten his audience – as much as we enjoy that – but to liberate us, to set us free from the power of sin, free for life under God’s reign.

Jesus is in the house, and the anxiety level among demons and evil spirits is high. They know him, and they know the purpose of his intrusion: to tie them up and throw them out. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” they shriek. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus is in the house, their time is up, and they know it. No matter how much they cry and whimper, they can neither evade nor resist his authority. Jesus speaks, “Be silent, come out,” and the man is free.

To spread this freedom, throughout all of creation, is the ministry of Jesus. He is not just another teacher or preacher; Jesus is a Holy-Spirit-empowered invader who reclaims the house that has become a playground for demons; he reclaims the place as the home of God’s people. Those who encounter him are astonished, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” This teaching goes way beyond the best of tradition, it goes beyond building on the wisdom and authority of the past for the sake of the future. This teaching is like the voice that spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai. This is new teaching that does not become just another tradition; this is the voice that brings about newness; this is the voice that interrupts the flow of time with the fullness of fulfilment.

Jesus is not just a terrific new teacher. He speaks, and it comes to be; his words bring a new reality into being.

He speaks, and the oppressed are unburdened.

He speaks, and the possessed are unshackled.

He speaks, and the wounded are healed.

He speaks, and sinners are forgiven.

He speaks, and the evil spirits obey.

Jesus is in the house, the reign of God has come near, and it’s hard to say whether it’s songs of angels or the fragrance of new life that fill the air.

The first century world was full of demons and spirits; they regularly interfered in human life, often capriciously. It was common knowledge that they did control human behavior because they were more powerful than human beings. Most of us no longer use this kind of language; our world is not inhabited by demons and other spirit beings. But that doesn’t mean we no longer experience powers in our lives that are stronger than ourselves, ungodly powers that oppress and enslave us.

Some of you know about my friend Ruth who used to think that all those demons-and-spirits-stories in the Bible were just prescientific hocuspocus – until she did an internship with the Salvation Army. She spent time with homeless men on the streets of Hamburg, men whose lives were in the grip of powers they couldn’t escape on their own. Most of them had lost all contact to their families; many struggled with alcohol or drug addictions. And one day it clicked for Ruth.

I know there are all kinds of sociological, medical, and political explanations for the circumstances these men find themselves in. But to most of them it’s a hopeless fight against very powerful demons; they have given up and surrendered. Jesus is the only one who can save them, in a very real way. They don’t need new and better scientific explanations, helpful though they may be; they need people who love them enough to care and face the demons with them. They need to know that there is somebody who hasn’t given up on them and who is stronger than their demons. I know that One, and it’s up to me to embody that hope for them.

I used to think that demons were little more than an imaginative way to understand mental illness or oppressive political systems. But faced with the almost success of the Nazi genocide of European Jews, I keep returning to pre-scientific notions of the demonic. Sure, there are historical factors and political reasons and economic causes and cultural circumstances, but those kinds of explanations can only do the work of trying to grasp what happened from great distance, and to me, such distance feels like betrayal. I need the One who has bound the strong one to help me face the demons.

Robert Lifton is a psychiatrist who conducted interviews with Nazi doctors who had worked in the death camps. He had a conversation about this work with Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor.

We were discussing Nazi doctors—I had begun to interview them and he had observed a few from a distance in Auschwitz—when he posed this question to me: “Tell me, Bob, when they did what they did, were they men or were they demons?” I answered that, as he well knew, they were human beings, and that was our problem. To which Elie replied, “Yes, but it is demonic that they were not demonic.” [2]

In the face of evil, explanations will not do. In the face of evil we need a different kind of knowledge, one that can ground us in the presence of the redeemer. We need the encounter with the living Christ. There is no room in the house for demons and unclean spirits, but they are here because we are here. We need the encounter with the living Christ, because in his presence they become uneasy and frightened and they resist, but he calls them out and throws them out.

He speaks, and it comes to be.

He speaks, and the oppressed are unburdened.

He speaks, and the possessed are unshackled.

He speaks, and the wounded are healed.

He speaks, and sinners are forgiven.

He speaks, and the evil spirits obey.

In his presence, the demonic cannot keep its grip on power.

When we hear the good news, we are set free and drawn into the ministry of Christ. Like Ruth in her work with homeless men, we learn that new and better explanations are important for our understanding of the world, but not sufficient for doing ministry in it. We must seek to embody for others the liberating and healing presence of Christ.

What strikes me as crucial about the witness of the gospel is its two-fold nature: the battle is won; the strong man has been bound—and the results of that cosmic victory are enacted locally, in everyday encounters, face-to-face. God’s love for creation and humankind is not a global, distant reality. God’s love is not like the wind that blows everywhere, but always concrete like the breeze touching a face.

I was reminded of that earlier this week when I listened to a story on the radio. Immigration has been a contentious issue for years, and the debate doesn’t always bring out the best in us. The temperature quickly rises, the tone easily gets shrill, and conversations turn into ugly shouting matches. In this brief radio commentary, Jose Arreola invites us to a better way.

We had to decide whether we were going north or south to get into California. My friend decided it would be best to go south to avoid the big snow storm up north. But south would take us through Arizona. I really really didn’t want to go through Arizona. I got more and more nervous. I felt paralyzed. My friend kept asking me what my problem was. Finally I told him: I’m undocumented.

I came to the United States when I was three with my family. And Arizona had just passed a law that gave police officers the authority to check people’s immigration status. If we got stopped in Arizona, I could be detained and deported.

My friend is white. He comes from a really privileged, upper-class background. He attended a private high school, the Santa Clara University with me – I went on scholarship. Politically he sees things a little differently than I do. We’ve had our disagreements.

He was quiet for a while. Then he barraged me with questions; I answered the best I could. Silence again. Then he told me about his grandfather. How he hadn’t been able to find work in Ireland, so he decided to hop on a fishing boat and get off in New York. He worked as a janitor without citizenship. Now his son, my friend’s father, is a high-ranking bank executive.

The whole time through Arizona my friend drove like 50 miles an hour. He didn’t even want to change lanes. He told me he wasn’t going to lose his best friend. He wasn’t going to let that happen.

The immigration debate became real to my friend in the car that day. We had a very different conversation than the one politicians are having right now. The minute actual undocumented immigrants are included, the conversation always changes.

Now I’m completely open about my status. I’m still afraid. Conversations don’t always go well. And it’s always a risk. But as long I remain in the shadows, I will never really get to know you, and you’ll never really know me.[3]

Jesus is in the house, the reign of God has come near, and the love of God and neighbor is always concrete. Now it’s up to us to help change the conversation. It’s up to us to do our part in casting out the demons.

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[1] Mk 3:27

[2] Robert Jay Lifton, Witness to an Extreme Century: A Memoir (New York: Free Press, 2011) p. 240

[3] My Life Is True works with people at the hard edges of the economy to explain, in their own words, a significant experience or a stubborn problem. Then their two-minute personal stories are submitted as public radio commentaries. For more information, visit www.mylifeistrue.org I heard the commentary on Marketplace on January 23  http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/commentary/secret-keeps-man-margins-economy

Micah in the Middle

In scripture, Jonah and Nahum are neighbors, and they can be hard to find. They are each only a few pages long, and it’s just too easy to flip from Obadiah right to Habakkuk and miss them all together. Jonah and Nahum are neighbors, but not next door neighbors; Micah lives between them. What they have in common, is their close connection with a city, Nineveh.

Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire, a middle eastern super power before the rise of Babylonia and Persia. In Israel, Nineveh was a hated city. Painful experience had turned it into a symbol of sinful and violent oppression. Nahum’s entire proclamation is infused with pain and rage against Nineveh.

Ah, city of bloodshed,
utterly treacherous,
full of violence,
where killing never stops!
Crack of whip and rattle of wheel,
galloping steed and bounding chariot!
Charging horsemen,
flashing swords and glittering spears!
Hosts of slain and heaps of corpses,
dead bodies without number—
they stumble over bodies.
Because of the countless harlotries of the harlot,
the winsome mistress of sorcery, [Nineveh]
who ensnared nations with her harlotries
and peoples with her sorcery,
I am going to deal with you—
declares the Lord of Hosts.[1]

I am going to deal with you; violence for violence. The city must fall. The book of Nahum ends with a question:

All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For who has not suffered from your constant malice?[2]

In 612 BCE the city was totally destroyed and never rebuilt. For people who are oppressed and abused by brutal regimes, Nineveh’s fall from glory can be a source of hope, and they can draw strength from the greater power of the Lord who declares, “I am going to deal with you,” and brings down the mighty.

The book of Jonah also ends with a question, but the whole book is like a question mark. It begins,

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, “Go at once to Niniveh, that great city, and proclaim judgment upon it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”[3]

But Jonah set out and went West as far as his feet would take him, until he stood on the beach, with his toes touching the waves of the Mediterranean Sea; but it wasn’t far enough. He found a ship going to Tarshish, a port far beyond the horizon, at the end of the world, as far away as he could from the presence of the Lord. Jonah ran away and got on a boat to go where God was not, only to find out that there was no such place. The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea: Jonah was thrown overboard in the storm, and a large fish swallowed him up. And after three days and three nights, the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land – it was the same beach where his adventure at sea had begun. There he was, fish slobber all over him, when the word of the Lord came to him a second time.

“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”

And this time, Jonah went. Not a word about how he felt, what was going through his mind. All we’re left with, all he’s left with is the stark inescapability of God’s presence and call. Jonah went a day’s walk into the city and cried out,

“Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

That’s just eight words in English, five in Hebrew. No sign of passion, neither rage nor fear. No explanation; no accusation; no call to repentance; just this brief pronouncement. And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

Wait a minute! What just happened here? Somebody pinch me, this is unreal! Did I take the wrong exit? This can’t be Nineveh, symbol of wickedness and arrogant oppression!?

No, you wait, Jonah, because it didn’t end there. No, when the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, put on sackcloth and sat in ashes with his people. And then came the royal decree proclaiming a fast in the city, no food or water, only prayers and repentance, and cattle and goats covered with sackcloth, and you may think that’s a little over the top, and it probably was, but everyone in the city, from king to cattle, repented!

“Who knows?” the king wondered. “God may turn and relent and turn back from his wrath, so that we do not perish.”

God saw what they did, how they were turning back from their evil ways. And God renounced the punishment he had planned to bring upon them, and did not carry it out.

And Jonah? Jonah who had just witnessed the most fantastic response any prophet on the face of the earth could dream of, Jonah was grieved. He didn’t like what he saw, didn’t like it at all, and he prayed,

“O Lord! Isn’t this just what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I fled beforehand to Tarshish. For I know that you are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and ready to relent from punishing these people. Take my life, for I would rather die than live.”[4]

Jonah was very unhappy because his pronouncement of certain destruction had become, in the ears and hearts of his audience, a call to repent from their evil ways; and the king’s careful weighing of possibilities, “Who knows? God may turn” had become reality.

This very curious story ends with a question, and thus it remains open, awaiting our response.

God said, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”[5]

We are quick to identify a city that has become a symbol of evil, violence, and oppression with its people. It doesn’t take much to imagine severe punishment and say with Nahum, “All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For who has ever escaped your endless cruelty?” The book of Jonah keeps the door open for a different consideration than the inescapability of punishment. The city is inhabited by human beings, and human beings, as much as they have been shaped by sinful structures, human beings can turn and change. Nineveh, the city of bloodshed, must not remain a paradigm for how the powerful God deals with violent systems in order to bring about true human community. In the curious book of Jonah, Nineveh was spared and allowed to thrive and flourish, because acts of repentance on earth were met by mercy from heaven.

I mentioned earlier that in Scripture, Jonah and Nahum are neighbors, but not next-door neighbors; the wise ones who compiled the books may have thought that the two might clash, and so they inserted Micah between them. And Micah decries injustice and corruption in the cities, he decries oppression and censorship with the passion of Nahum, but he also declares hope, hope gleaned, perhaps from the pages of Jonah.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?[6]

Injustice, arrogance, and covetousness turn every human city into Nineveh, but acts of repentance on earth, who knows, may yet be met by mercy from heaven.

We heard a very short reading from Mark this morning.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

John was arrested because his proclamation was not pleasing to Herod’s ears. But Jesus continued to proclaim the nearness of God’s reign, and he called people to repent. He called people to turn around and start living now with the changes God would bring about to make all things right. None of us want to pretend we know what all these changes might be, but we must start living into the ones we do know, because the time is fulfilled, which is to say there is no better time to wait for. The world continues to be in the grip of sinful powers beyond our control that can make us feel small and helpless: Nineveh is a harsh oppressor, Babylon is a heart-breaking exile, Rome is a violent empire – but rather than wait for their violent demise on a day of divine vengeance, Jesus invites us to live subversively now within these systems as citizens of a better city. That is why we seek to do justice that is steeped in kindness, and we seek to love kindness with passion and humility, and we walk in the company of Jesus lest we forget the power of mercy.

Many surprising things happened that day in Nineveh when Jonah declared that the city would be overturned, and the people of the city decided to turn instead. Ordinary men and women turned away from their evil ways, and – perhaps most surprising of all – the king and the nobles were paying attention, and the people’s repentance, their small acts of turning away from arrogance, injustice, and covetousness, their small acts became the royal decree, the law of the land.

“All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you,” Nahum declared, imagining the world’s applause after Nineveh’s fall. But we dare to imagine the world’s applause after Nineveh’s repentance. We have heard the good news of divine mercy, and we clap our hands.

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[1] Nahum 3:1-5a (JPS)

[2] Nahum 3:19 (JPS)

[3] See Jonah 1:1-2

[4] Jonah 4:2-3

[5] Jonah 4:11

[6] Micah 6:8 (NRSV)

Roger T. Nooe Lecture for World Peace

I am very happy about the partnership between Vanderbilt's Project Dialogue, Vine Street Christian Church, and Familiy of Abraham that made a great community event possible.

On February 21, Dr. Eboo Patel will be in Nashville. In the morning he will meet with interfaith leaders to discuss new approaches to building bridges between the faith communities in our city. He will spend the day in meetings with students and teachers on the Vanderbilt campus, and in the evening he will give a keynote address at Langford auditorium to which the entire community is invited.

This keynote address is the 2012 Roger T. Nooe Lecture for World Peace, and I am pleased about the new level of cooperation that the partnership between Vanderbilt, Vine Street, and Family of Abraham represents. I hope we will continue to work together in seeking new ways to build understanding and strengthen ties of friendship between the many faith groups in our city. 

Members and friends of Vine Street Christian Church will have the opportunity to car-pool to the lecture.