Isaiah's Advent suite

Some music you barely hear, it’s just part of the background noise. Jingle Bells at the mall.

Some music you hear and it stays with you. And I don’t mean how you can’t get Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer out of your head after a quick trip to the grocery store.

Some music stays with you – you love the lyrics, you like the beat, it makes you feel good just to hum along. You buy the record. You add it to your playlist. You love waking up to it.

Some music stays with you because it was playing just before your first kiss. You don’t care that nobody else seems to recognize the tune anymore; it’s your song and it will always be. You hear it and it takes you to a very happy place.

And some music just stays with you and you can’t quite say why. It’s not just part of the sound track of your life like all the rest; somehow it’s bigger than that, and you return to it again and again.

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote six suites for cello, sometime in the first half of the 18th century, and like most of his music, they were almost forgotten. In 1890, almost a century-and-a-half after Bach’s death, the great cellist Pablo Casals discovered a tattered copy in a secondhand sheet music store. He wasn’t great then, he was only 13 years old, but he spent years practicing these little-known suites and falling in love with them, before performing and eventually recording them. Bach’s cello suites by Casals has been on my desert island CD list ever since I first heard the staticky opening bars on the radio. And it was on the radio the other day that I heard Tom Ashbrook talk about this music with his guest, Eliot Fisk, who only recently had completed a transcription of the suites for guitar. They talked about how this 300-year-old music continues to draw in listeners; it has this impossible-to-describe quality. One caller said it sounds like it could have been written only yesterday. And then Eliot Fisk mentioned how there’s a lot of talk about fake news these days and how this music is the exact opposite: “This is true—whatever it is.”

Bach’s life was marked by great hardship. He was orphaned at age ten. He was the father of twenty children, but only ten lived to adulthood. His first wife died while he was gone on a trip, and he didn’t know until he came home and was told, “Your wife has died.” He had to live with so many painful losses, and yet his music comes from a place of joy, a deep, calm joy.

Why am I talking about music? Because Isaiah sings. He sings us an Advent song and in his song the desert, the most lifeless place imaginable, sings. The prophet sings of a day when the desolate and dry land erupts with lush life and song.[1] Isaiah doesn’t give us a text on horticulture or desert ecology; he gives us the poetry of hope, a hope grounded in the presence and power of God.

The second movement of Isaiah’s prophetic suite gives voice to the suffering of a people in exile: the lyrics speak of weak hands, feeble knees, and fearful hearts, of lost vision, hindered hearing, paralyzed limbs, and silent tongues – we can see a body utterly overwhelmed by despair and weariness, and at the same time we can hear a clear call to strengthen and to make firm and to say to those who are of a fearful heart what the prophet says to us, “Be strong, do not fear! Behold: your God.”

The prophet sings of the desert bursting into song as life erupts, because God will not leave the world as it is, in bondage, in drought, and in exile, but will restore the people and the land to wholeness. The people and the land will rejoice, be glad, and sing. And that joy is not a distant, someday joy. It is present in the song of the prophet and so much music and in all the ways we find to strengthen weak hands, feeble knees, and fearful hearts.

John the Baptist was in prison when he heard what Jesus was doing. So he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Do you remember how he answered? “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”[2] Go and tell what you hear and see: the healing of all that stands in the way of joy.

We affirm that in Jesus, God has entered the world as a human being, in power and in vulnerability. We testify that he is the one who is to come because in him we recognize the healing love that redeems and restores all things. We follow him because wherever he goes, the kingdom of God breaks in like showers of grace in the desert, and new life emerges. We follow him because his life, all of it, is for us a highway in the wilderness, a holy way: the road home for the people God has redeemed from all our exiles.

In the final movement of Isaiah’s Advent suite for voice and creation we hear and see the children of God walking homeward in a glorious procession of life, and upon their heads – like a canopy, a garland, or a crown – unbounded and unending joy. Some music stays with you because it taps into that joy and in an instant your heart knows, this is true.

There are many things the heart knows and experiences only the heart can comprehend. George Carlin gave us a fine study of how words can hide the truth by concealing reality. He said he didn’t like euphemisms and that American English is loaded with euphemisms. “Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality,” he suspected.

Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I’ll give you an example of that.

There’s a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It’s when a fighting person’s nervous system has been stressed to it’s absolute peak and maximum. Can’t take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap.

In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves.

… Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and the very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn’t seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. …

Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, we’re up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It’s totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.

Then, of course, came the war in Viet Nam … and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it’s no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we’ve added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon.[3]

Post-traumatic stress disorder. The pain completely buried under jargon. Now we call it PTSD, removing even the last trace of trauma from from the name. Carlin didn’t mention that two generations before the first world war, during the Civil War, traumatized combatants developed a condition they called soldier’s heart. It broke their heart to see what they saw, to suffer what they suffered, and to do what they did. It broke their heart and shattered their sense of self and of life’s integrity.

Perhaps you noticed that both the prophet Isaiah and the apostle James point to the heart as the place that needs strengthening. Parker Palmer reminds us that the heart is the “center place where all of our ways of knowing converge—intellectual, emotional, sensory, intuitive, imaginative, experiential, relational, and bodily, among others. The heart is where we integrate what we know in our minds with what we know in our bones.”[4] Our hearts will get broken by loss, failure, or betrayal; the question is not if or when your heart breaks, but how. If your heart breaks apart into pieces, you need others who will shelter and strengthen you as you begin the work of healing. If it breaks open, your capacity to hold the full range of human experience will expand and you will bring new knowledge, true knowledge to those whose lives you touch.[5] I believe this is where Isaiah’s Advent poetry comes from and Bach’s music, from the heart broken open.

So what do we do, other than learning to sing Isaiah’s song of redemption and the song the angels sang the night when Christ was born? In Deuteronomy, Moses recites the words the Lord spoke at Sinai and says, “And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart.”[6] In one of countless rabbinic story commentaries on that verse, a disciple asks the rebbe: “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?” The rebbe answers: “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.”[7]

[1] See https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/nature/wildflowers.htm or Death Valley Is Having A Rare And Magical ‘Super Bloom’ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/death-valley-super-bloom-2016-flowers_us_56dd81a3e4b03a405679135b

[2] Matthew 11:2-5 with quotes from/echoes of Isaiah 29:18f; 35:5f; 42:18; 61:1.

[3] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/22/868800/-George-Carlin,prophet

[4] Parker Palmer, Healing the Heart of Democracy, 6.

[5] See Palmer, 18.

[6] Deuteronomy 6:6 (RSV)

[7] As told by Jacob Needleman; see Palmer, 149.

There will come a day

The first word the church hears in Advent is a magnificent portrait of peace, spoken by the prophet Isaiah: his vision of days to come when nations stream to the mountain of the Lord’s house. The nations come not to conquer, plunder, and destroy as in days past, no, they come to learn God’s ways and walk in God’s paths. The nations come not because they have been defeated by a yet another empire and are now forced to pay tribute; no, they come willingly, uncoercedly, eager to learn. They come to let God’s justice be their justice, and they are finally free to beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.

The first sound of Advent is the sound of days to come when from all the ends of the earth people are making their way to the city of God. The first sound of Advent is this symphony of people, their chatter and laughter, their stories and songs, and the clanging of hammers falling on anvils, ringing across the land, bright and clear as bells. Swords are being beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, tanks into school buses and war ships into bridges, fighter jets into bicycles and M16s into water mains—every tool of destruction is being forged into a tool of shared life. Through the din of Black Friday commercials and the relentless news of violence and war we hear the sound of days to come—that our feet may pick up the rhythm and we may learn the tune by heart and hum the new song as we go up the road of hope.

Hope wasn’t Isaiah’s first word, though. His first word was a clear-eyed description of what he saw when he looked around the city and the land: the words that stand out from just the first four verses of the book’s opening chapter are rebellion, iniquity, sinful, evil, corrupt, estranged – and it doesn’t stop there. The religious festivals have become a burden God is weary of bearing. The country lies desolate. The city where righteousness is meant to lodge, is marked by injustice. Her silver has become dross, her wine is diluted with water, her princes are companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them.

The prophet’s first word is a long litany of indictments, line after line written with tears of fury and the fire of wrath: “The strong shall become like tinder, and their work like a spark; they and their work shall burn together, with no one to quench them.” Thirty-one verses of relentless accusation and judgment, and then Isaiah abruptly stops. It’s as though his ears have picked up, above his mournful and angry lamentation, fragments of a different tune, a song as old as creation and overflowing with the promise of newness. It’s like he must start over, because in the doom and gloom of human faithlessness, suddenly, light shines, divine light. And so he begins to speak of days to come, of a newness far beyond the possibilities of current circumstances; he draws a wide horizon of hope opened up by the faithfulness of God.

A colleague of mine from Memphis was on a summer vacation in Maine, and one morning he took the ferry to one of the islands. The sea was smooth as glass, mirroring the clear, blue sky; it made for a most pleasant crossing. The trip back later that day, though, was a different story. A front had moved in and where earlier there had been only a gentle breeze, now there were stiff gusts of wind. Before long, the sea became quite choppy and the adventurer from Tennessee was starting to feel a storm brewing in the pit of his stomach. The captain took one look at him, noticed the hint of green in his complexion, and gave him a good word.

“Sit down, find a point on the shoreline and focus on it.”

That’s exactly what he did. He sat down near the rail. Then he picked a spot, far away on the rocky shore, a sharp peak with a lighthouse on it, and he kept his eyes on it. The boat kept pitching and rolling, but he kept his eyes fixed on that point. Soon his stomach became calmer, his head cleared, and he began to breathe deeply. “I’m going to make it,” he said to himself.

The word that Isaiah saw is a point on the horizon of time, a focal point in the turbulent days of injustice, fear, and war. We keep our eyes fixed on God’s promise, not only to calm our storm-tossed souls, but to keep the end of the journey in mind, to remember where we are headed, and to walk with courage.

Ruby Bridges was one of four children to integrate New Orleans public schools in 1960; she was the only black child to enter the William Frantz Elementary School that year. On her way to school, for days that turned into weeks and weeks that turned into months, this child had to brave angry mobs who were hurling threats and slurs at her. Every day, federal marshals walked with her to school and brought her home. At first, she attended school all by herself, because of a total boycott by white families. She sat alone in the classroom, and only one teacher overcame her own fear and taught her.

Robert Coles was a young psychiatrist working in New Orleans, and he volunteered to talk with Ruby to help her process the daily terror. A teacher told him,

I was standing in the classroom, looking out the window, and I saw Ruby coming down the street, with the federal marshals on both sides of her. The crowd was there, shouting, as usual. A woman spat at Ruby but missed; Ruby smiled at her. A man shook his fist at her. Ruby smiled. And then she walked up the steps, and she stopped and turned around and smiled one more time. You know what she told one of those marshals? She told him she prays for those people, the ones in that mob. She prays for them every night before going to sleep.

Ruby told him, “Yes, I do pray for them.”

“Why?” Coles asked her.

“I go to church,” she told him, “every Sunday, and we’re told to pray for everyone, even the bad peeple, and so I do.” When the subject came up again she said, “They keep coming and saying the bad words. But my momma says they’ll get tired after a while and then they’ll stop coming. They’ll stay home. The minister came to our house and he said the same thing, and not to worry, and I don’t. The minister said God is watching and He won’t forget, because He never does. The minister says if I forgive the people, and smile at them and pray for them, God will keep a good eye on everything and He’ll be our protection.”

Coles asked her if she believed the minister was on the right track.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I’m sure God knows what’s happening. He’s got a lot to worry about; but there is bad trouble here, and He can’t help but notice. He may not rush to do anything, not right away. But there will come a day, like you hear in church.”[1] 

Little Ruby didn’t keep her eyes fixed on the steps to the school house; she looked at the people who harassed and assailed her, but her eyes were fixed on God’s promise. There is bad trouble here, and God can’t help but notice. He may not rush to do anything, not right away. But there will come a day. There will come a day.

Little Ruby had learned, young as she was, that the most important question to ask in Advent is not, “When?” but “Who?” The future doesn’t belong to the haters and harassers, but to the One who is coming.

About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

When, we do not know, but be believe that the One who is coming is the same who has come and who is with us always, to the end of the age. We see great courage in Ruby and in countless others who have kept their eyes fixed on the promises of God in times of turmoil; it’s a courage born of deep trust that Christ has made us his own. He lived fully for the kingdom of God, and he entrusted himself completely to the faithfulness of God. He died alone on a hill that looked nothing like the mountain of the house of the Lord. He died, scorned and taunted, surrounded by swords, pierced with a spear. And there the depth of God’s commitment to us was revealed.

We didn’t start the fire in the forge where the nations will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. God did by raising Jesus from the dead.

And so we begin the year with Advent, we begin by awaiting the fullness of him who was, who is, and who is to come. The future doesn’t belong to the haters and harassers, but to him who fills all of creation with the light of his love. Through the din of Black Friday commercials and endless news of violence and war we hear the sound of days to come—and our feet pick up the rhythm and we learn the tune by heart and we hum the new song as we go up the road of hope. Come! Come let us walk in the light of the Lord!

[1] Robert Coles, The Moral Life of Children (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986) 22-24.

Gathering the scattered

The days are getting shorter, and the colors around us are changing; pumpkin orange and corn yellow are fading and the richer tones of cranberry red and spruce green are coming to the fore. The days are getting shorter, the temperature outside is finally catching up with the season, and we start dreaming in the middle of the afternoon about being at home, cozy and warm, with the people we love and the music we have known forever. We want to bake cookies, we want to send cards, wrap presents, and light candles.

The days are getting shorter, and we look forward to the long night when shepherds hear the angels sing, “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” We look forward to finding the child lying in the manger, wrapped in swaddling cloths. And we look forward to asking again with hushed wonder in our voices,

What child is this who, laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping? Whom angels greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds watch are keeping?

and to respond with joy, “This, this is Christ the King…”[1]

Toward the end of Second Samuel, we read an old man’s last words, written down so that generations to come would know and remember:

One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of the morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.[2]

The hope for one who rules over people justly goes back as far as historical records, legends and ancient epics can take us. And the hope for one who rules in the fear of God is as old as the sad reality of rulers who abuse their position for selfish ends. The prophet Jeremiah accused the king of Judah,

Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,
and his upper rooms by injustice;
who makes his neighbors work for nothing,
and does not give them their wages;
who says, “I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms,”
and who cuts out windows for it,
paneling it with cedar,
and painting it with vermilion.

Are you a king because you compete in cedar?

Did not your father eat and drink
and do justice and righteousness?[3]

It wasn’t the king only whom the prophet accused in the name of God:

Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture![4]

The leaders were responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of God’s people, but the scattering didn’t begin when the captives were taken to Babylon or the refugees fled to Egypt. The ‘scattering’ had begun when families were driven off their land because they couldn’t make their debt payments and when the workers who built the spacious houses and paneled them with cedar were not paid their wages. The ‘scattering’ had begun when the king and the leaders of the people attended to their own real estate interests instead of pursuing justice and righteousness. The ‘scattering’ had begun when personal desires and ambitions pushed the needs of the poor to the margins of attention – and this is where the prophet’s indictment concerns us all, where we can’t deflect its force to hit somebody else or pretend it will remain safely enclosed in a long-ago past, in a country far, far away. God’s people are scattered when our attention is absorbed by our own needs and desires until there is no time left, no energy, no love to attend to the needs of others, particularly those left to fend for themselves. Again and again, God’s commandments draw our attention to the widows and orphans and strangers, to those whose lives are vulnerable and fragile and whose position in the community carries little influence, but whose wellbeing is the measure by which the community as a whole is judged.

We hear a lot these days about being divided – red and blue, black and white, rural and urban – but those simple dualisms are too simple to reflect the many shades of purple we represent and the complexity and diversity of our life together. I believe Jeremiah’s ‘scattered’ captures much better how fragmented our common life has become; thankfully the prophet also points to the way out of this mess for God’s people: I myself will gather them, says the Lord. Our God indicts us for our scattering ways, and judges us for fragmenting the unity of life on God’s earth, but God also gathers us:

I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.[5]

The prophet’s words point to God’s faithfulness, and for the church they point to Jesus who has compassion for us because we are like sheep without a shepherd. The promise points to Jesus, the curious king who builds his spacious house with living stones and whose upper room is large so he can gather us in, all of us scattered ones.

What joy to hold the baby in our hands and sing, “This, this is Christ the King…” This is the long-awaited one, the righteous one, the one of whose kingdom there will be no end. Today is the last Sunday of the church year when the church celebrates the reign of Christ the King. We continue to use kingdom language, even though most nations have banned kings and queens from our political life. Many say, and with good reason, that we shouldn’t call Jesus “the king”, because our imaginations are already overstuffed with men sitting on thrones or high on the horse. Yet we continue to use the language, and not just out of respect for tradition. We use it, because we trust that Jesus has the power to transform and redeem all of life, including our imagination and our language. Robert Capon wrote,

We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he (…) claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; it’s just that he wasn’t what we were looking for.[6]

He wasn’t what we were looking for. He doesn’t fit our patterns and molds, but remakes them. We use words like Messiah, Christ, and king, but it’s not the words that define who Jesus is; it’s the other way round. His life gives new meaning to the old language. His death and resurrection open the door for us to life that is nothing but life.

On the night of his birth, the angels sang and we were glad to join their heavenly anthems. Then the air was filled with song and possibility, the small cradle was big enough to hold all our hopes and expectations. But on the day of his crucifixion there were no anthems, only a cacophony of scorn, “Hey, Savior, show us some salvation!”

“He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God!” the leaders were laughing.

“If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” the soldiers jeered at him.

And one of the two criminals joined them in taunting Jesus, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

The scene looks like an obscene joke, with the punchline written on a sign and nailed over Jesus’ head, “This is the king of the Jews.”

Amid the abuse and the clamor Jesus remained silent. “Father, forgive them,” he prayed, “for they do not know what they are doing.” Forgive whom – the soldiers who, as always, were only following orders? Forgive those who gave the orders? Forgive the leaders who assure us they always act with the best interest of the state or the temple or the church or the nation in mind? Forgive all of us who are trapped in sinful modes of relating, thinking, speaking, and acting? Forgive us and our scattering ways? Forgive us who can find a moment of unity only by ganging up against him?

Yes.

This kingdom, his kingdom is not a new and improved version of the kingdoms of the world, it’s their end. It’s the end of our royal ideologies and our dreams of domination. It’s the life of Jesus alive in us.

Delores Williams remembers Sunday mornings from her childhood when the minister shouted out, “Who is Jesus?” And the choir rsponded in voices loud and strong, “King of kings and Lord of lords!” And then little Miss Huff, in a voice so fragile and soft you could hardly hear her, would sing her own answer, “Poor little Mary’s boy.” Back and forth they sang. “King of kings and Lord of lords,” the choir thundered; and Miss Huff sang softly, “Poor little Mary’s boy.”[7]

We long for a world where justice and righteousness prevail, and we already live in that world because Mary’s boy is the Ocne whose kingdom has no end. With love and mercy he invades the world to build his reign. His pierced hand will hold no sword but a shepherd’s staff. On his haloed head he will wear no crown but the splendor of his mercy. Never will his might be built on the toil of others, but he will walk and work with us on the journey to the city of God. ‘The Lord is our righteousness’, it will be called, and the keys to his city belong to the poor.[8]

[1] What Child Is This, Chalice Hymnal #162, words by William C. Dix.

[2] 2 Samuel 23:3-4

[3] Jeremiah 22:13-15

[4] Jeremiah 23:1

[5] Jeremiah 23:5

[6] Robert F. Capon, Hunting the Divine Fox (New York: Seabury Press, 1974) 90-91.

[7] See Barbara Lundblad http://odysseynetworks.org/news/onscripture-the-bible-john-18-33-37

[8] Jeremiah 33:16; some of the words are from Gian-Carlo Menotti, Amahl and the Night Visitors

Sowing. Walking. Holding fast.

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Many weeks ago we started making plans for this Harvest Sunday. We chose the hymns, we sent out word about a special offering of food for the hungry, and we talked about how to collect and present our offering in worship, how to make it a beautiful and joyful harvest for all ages. We looked at this day as a gate through which we would enter a season of thanksgiving. We made plans for a festive meal in our fellowship hall at the conclusion of a week of hosting Room in the Inn guests: to praise the Giver of all gifts and to celebrate your generous stewardship, the many and varied gifts that, day after day and night after night, made a safe place to rest for those who have nowhere to lay their head.

Then we had an election. I stayed up late on Tuesday, much later than I had anticipated. Like many of you, Nancy and I were watching the election results, and it was like watching another kind of harvest as they were bringing in the sheaves, state after state, and I wondered what seed had sprouted and grown in the land.

Neal Gabler wrote,

If there is a single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power?[1]

Who knew? The pollsters and pundits certainly didn’t. I don’t think that all who voted for the winning candidate in Tuesday’s election are abusing women in speech and deed and bragging about it; they may not even condone it, but that didn’t keep them from voting for him. I don’t think all of them subscribe to his racist and xenophobic comments, and not all applauded his unfiltered gut responses as “straight talk”, but it didn’t keep them from voting for him.

“I don’t fear [the president-elect] as much as I fear the monster he’s awakened,” said Aysha Choudhary, a Muslim American who works with the aid group Doctors Without Borders in New York City. “It feels like he’s normalized discrimination, and I’m afraid it’s open season.”[2]

We need to listen to her and we need to stand with her. And we need to listen to the children who have come home from school crying this past week, because other kids in school have asked them if they have started packing yet since they would soon be deported. And we need to listen to the men and women whose restaurants, convenience markets, and shops have been vandalized by white supremacists. We need to hear them and stand with them. And we need to hear out the men and women who have been pushed to the margins and apparently could not make their voices heard until they cast their vote for this man.

I didn’t know all week what to say today, and I still don’t; the moment feels overwhelming and we have only begun to see and grasp what it might mean. I don’t know where to start, because this is not about me, but about the good news of God’s love for the world and all who live in it—but I find it difficult to keep my consternation and my fears out of what God and God’s church called me to proclaim. One thing I do know is that we need to get out of our respective echo chambers in what Neal Gabler calls “a media ecology in which nothing can be believed except what you already believe.”[3] We must make space for each other, beyond the sameness we like to surround ourselves with for comfort; we must make space for each other, talk to each other, listen to each other, stand with each other.

Others have begun to talk about how we can come together as a nation, but I’m more concerned about how we can be the church now and not merely another reflection of a deeply divided people. I believe small things done faithfully will be crucial. This is Harvest Sunday, which reminds me of a story Jesus told:

A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. And he kept sowing. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. And he kept sowing. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. And he kept sowing. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold.

Jesus has taught us to believe in small things that grow: Seeds of honesty and kindness. Seeds of compassion and solidarity. Seeds of generosity and forgiveness. As members of the body of Christ, we keep sowing. Sure, some of it is for the birds, some of it will wither, and some of it will be choked, but some of it will bear fruit a hundredfold. That’s plenty of bread and plenty of seed for another season.

The disciples asked Jesus what the parable meant, and of course it can mean many things, but he told them that one way to hear it was to think of the seed as the word of God. And in that unfolding of the story we are not the ones sowing the seed, but the ground on which the seed falls.

The ones on the path are those who have heard, but it’s like the good word went in one ear and out the other. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing fall away. As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.[4]

Patient endurance is more than passive waiting; it’s a certain attentive perseverance that won’t let the word go in one ear and out the other, but allows it to take root, and doesn’t let it get choked by anxieties and despair. Jesus invites us to let him come alive in our hearts and our actions so we don’t just react helplessly to changing and frightening circumstances, but respond to them with faith and courage. We hold fast to the word and we keep sowing.

Some of you will recognize the wise words Reinhold Niebuhr wrote back in 1952:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.[5]

In all this – sowing seeds, pondering with care the word of God, and taking the long view beyond now – in all this we trust in God’s boundless capacity to bring forth newness. There is nothing in all of creation that is beyond God’s reach or beyond God’s capacity to change. The prophet Isaiah, in the passage we heard this morning, invites us to lean into the broad space of hope opened by an extravagant promise: it heralds the overcoming of everything that has gone wrong in creation, touching every aspect and phase of life and remaking them whole. His prophecy addressed a moment of shattered hope: The remnant of Israel had returned from exile in Babylon to Jerusalem, full of expectation. They believed that the kingdom of David was to be restored, the Temple rebuilt, and God’s reign established once and for all on Mount Zion. But the high expectations were not fulfilled in the way they had hoped; they soon discovered that the rebuilding of Jerusalem was a costly task. And not only did the surrounding nations oppose them, even their own Jewish kin who had remained there during the exile were not at all enthusiastic about their arrival home. But the prophets were passionate about keeping the hope of Israel alive; they believed in the promises of God, and not because the circumstances showed such potential, but because God was faithful. The prophets leaned into the broad space of hope opened by God’s faithfulness and sang of what they saw:

The Lord creating Jerusalem as a joy and her people as a delight. A renewed creation with a city at its center, and in it, not palaces with glistening facades and golden gates, but men and women whose children don’t die as infants and whose parents live out a lifetime; families who build houses and get to live in them, who plant vineyards and get to enjoy their fruit; people in communion with their God.

This is what we do as God’s people in this time and place: We lean into the broad space opened by God’s promise and faithfulness, and we let ourselves be drawn into the future God is creating, where no one weeps or cries in distress or withdraws into silence. And so today, as part of our offering, we build something beautiful, a small part of the glorious city whose center is defined by the table of Christ. We make a thanksgiving offering with canned veggies, jars of peanut butter, tins of tuna, boxes of cornbread mix and all the wonderful things you have brought this morning. Come forward from wherever you are, come forward while we sing, let your feet practice our daily walk to the city of God, and add your gifts to its fullness and beauty.

[1] “Farewell America” http://billmoyers.com/story/farewell-america/#

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/us/donald-trump-blacks-hispanics-muslims.html?_r=0

[3] Neal Gabler; see note 1.

[4] Luke 8:4-8, 11-15

[5] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (1952)

With great joy

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem when he passed through Jericho. The city lay at the intersection of major trade roads and was a beehive of commercial activity. In the Roman province of Judea, it was one of the top markets for toll collecting. The Roman system was simple and effective: the right to collect taxes was auctioned off to the highest bidder, then the bidder paid the governor and hired locals to collect tolls at bridges and gates. In Jericho, Zacchaeus had won the auction. He was rich, and just about everybody assumed he had built his wealth by collecting considerably more than what he had paid the governor. Some would call that corruption, others would call it Roman efficiency.

People saw men like Zacchaeus as a traitors since they collaborated with the Roman occupiers, and everybody in Jericho knew that that fancy house of his had been paid out of their own pockets. Little wonder that he wasn’t very popular; people shunned him, ignored him when they could. And the day Jesus came to town, they could.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, and the streets were packed with people. Zacchaeus wanted to see who this Jesus was, but he was a short fellow, and nobody was going to let him through. I imagine him staring at a wall of people, lined up shoulder to shoulder, with barely a crack between them. I wonder if he tried. Perhaps he tapped somebody’s elbow, “Excuse me? May I?” Perhaps he tried to squeeze through or stretch his legs and neck standing on the tip of his toes. He really wanted to see who this Jesus was, and eventually he ran down the street a bit and climbed a tree. You have to like the fellow. Sure, he was rich, and in Luke news about the rich is consistently bleak: They are the ones sent away empty when the hungry are filled with good things. They are the fools who can only think of building bigger barns after a good year. They are the gluttons feasting daily who don’t seem to see Lazarus starving at the door. The last time Jesus had looked into the eyes of a rich man, he said, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” But there was more to Zacchaeus than his wealth. It’s not like he could enjoy life strolling in the sunshine of his fortune and the warmth of people’s respect and admiration. He lived in Jericho, but he wasn’t at home there. He had few if any friends. That wall of bodies he tried to squeeze through? It likely was something he faced every day, one way or another.

Why did he want to see who this Jesus was? It had to be more than just curiosity. No grown man runs down the street and climbs a tree like a little boy merely out of curiosity. Zacchaeus was rich, but he was cut off from the life of the community like he didn’t even exist.

Why did he want to see who this Jesus was? He had heard people talk about the prophet from Galilee. He had heard them call him a friend of tax collectors and sinners, and they said it with disdain in their voices, but to him it sounded like the promise of a different kind of life. He was sitting up in that tree because he had been wondering, if it could be true: acceptance, belonging, friendship even, for somebody like himself.

You’ve sat in that tree, haven’t you? Some of you may have been sitting in that tree for quite some time, wondering who this Jesus is who heals and forgives men and women, accepts them for who they are, and calls them to follow him. You want to see him, you really want to see him. That’s when that wonderful moment happens in the story: Jesus came to the place and looked up and saw Zacchaeus and didn’t turn away and move on, but stopped and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” And hurry he did, he practically fell out of the tree and welcomed Jesus with great joy. Or was it Jesus who welcomed him with great joy? The pronouns in the text are beautifully ambiguous, and of course the welcome was mutual and the joy complete, because either had been seeking to see, and ultimately be with, the other. And off they went, side by side, the crook and the Christ, walking together to the welcome table where the guest is the host and wee little Zac the child at home.

Now you’d think that such joy would be uncontainable and infectious, and that the whole crowd would follow the two on their way to the table of gladness and delight, but no, the old labels don’t come off that easily. All who saw it, Luke tells us, began to grumble. Grumble is the perfect word here, this blend of growl and rumble, this muted complaining that can’t quite bring itself to speak up, but remains a mumbled growl, more like thunder underground than speech. All who saw it began to grumble, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” This had been a constant in Jesus’ ministry, practically from day one. Back in Galilee, Jesus had seen Levi, sitting at the tax booth, and said to him, “Follow me.” And Levi got up and followed him. And then there was a great banquet at Levi’s house, and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. There was joy in the house, but some who were watching, grumbled, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” (Lk 5:27-30). You may have noticed that in those early days the grumblers were still talking to Jesus, rather than about him. Later, when Jesus was already on his way to Jerusalem, a similar scene: Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus, but again, some who where watching, grumbled, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them" (Lk 15:1-2). In Luke, whenever people are watching Jesus and grumbling it’s about the same thing—he just can’t stay away from sinners! The grumblers are watching, but they can’t see what’s happening between Jesus and the men and women he calls, forgives, or shares meals with. The grumblers can’t see that Jesus embodies the mercy of God, and so they remain convinced that if somebody like Zacchaeus deserved any attention, it should be a stern demand like, “Get down from that tree, Zac; you better straighten out your life or I’ll come and do it for you!” The grumblers can’t see how liberating and transformative God’s mercy is.

Having heard the complaints, Zacchaeus stood up and made the most astonishing statement: “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Touched by the healing mercy of God, Zacchaeus committed himself to doing justice by the sharing of his wealth with the poor and by making reparations to the individuals he had betrayed. When Jesus looked at him, when they saw each other face to face, Zacchaeus found himself immersed in God’s boundless grace and his life became part of its redemptive flow. It was as though he jumped off the tree into a river called Jesus, and before long the current of love that embraced and carried him became visible in his actions. Jesus of course clapped his hands for joy and shouted, “Today salvation has come to this house!” forever hoping that such exuberant joy that is shared by the angels in heaven would be contagious until the last grumbler left on earth would begin to dance a little.

Salvation came to the house of Zacchaeus, and he was freed to be who he was made and meant to be: a member of God’s household. That day the Empire lost one of its most successful players, and the kingdom of God gained one.

Zacchaeus is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Zakkai, and in Hebrew the name sounds like clean, innocent, righteous. This is who the man truly is, even when all the grumblers can see are labels like sinner or taxman.  Jesus knows we are made for righteousness, which is another way of saying we are made for relationship with God, with one another, and with all of creation – the joy of heaven made complete on earth. Which is another way of saying we are made for life in communion, here and now and forever.

Jericho was Jesus’ final stop before he entered Jerusalem. His words to Zacchaeus are like a headline for his entire mission: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Thanks be to God.

God-breathed marvel

Open House for Butterflies is a book for children and the people who love them; it was written by Ruth Krauss, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, and first published in 1960. Open House for Butterflies has been reprinted again and again, and I keep a copy near my desk, for smiles. The little book is full of words of wisdom, the kind that blossom and flourish in places where young children share their observations of the world. Several times over these past weeks and months I turned to the opening page, with plenty of white space framing a little drawing and a single line of text: A screaming song is good to know in case you need to scream.[1]

Nobody expected this presidential campaign to be a pleasant experience, but who would have thought that so much of our public discourse would be so utterly indistinguishable from the worst of so-called reality tv? A screaming song is good to know in case you need to scream. I don’t know any screaming songs, do you? I’ve screamed Rocky Top at Neyland Stadium as though my blood ran orange, but that’s not a screaming song. And I don’t think there is one in the hymnal, do you? I imagine a screaming song would be a fine opportunity to cuss like a sailor without the bad language; people could shout the song together and yell out all the rage, the wrath, the anger, the pain, the fear and frustration, and it would clear the atmosphere like thunder and lightning at the end of a day of thick heat. And then we would sit there with our soar throats, exhausted, and perhaps we would begin to find the words the other could hear, and perhaps we would begin to listen.

A few pages into Open House for Butterflies is one of my favorite morsels of wisdom. There’s a drawing of a little boy, sitting on a hill, with his eyes closed, next to a little stream. And again, just one line of text: Everybody should be quiet near a little stream and listen.[2] I imagine the boy is listening to the water running over the rocks, the insects rustling in the grass, the wind playing with the leaves in the trees, and the faint sound the air makes when it becomes breath in his nostrils. He’s listening to all there is in this particular moment. I love this little scene, the words and the drawing, because I love being quiet near water – near a little stream or on the lake or on the beach when the waves roll in – and I believe everybody should be there and listen, and not just once a year.

I also love this little scene because when I turn it, it reminds me that you and I and everybody else are all little streams in the mighty river of life, and how very good it is when every now and then somebody is quiet near us and listens. And when I turn the image one more time, it brings to mind how the Bible is like a stream, a mighty stream – deep and wide and full of wonders; ancient and yet new and different every time we listen. “Continue in what you have learned,” we heard in today’s reading from 2 Timothy, “knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”[3] This knowledge begins with our relationships with those who have been quiet by that mighty stream and listened and told us what they heard; this knowledge evolves into our own familiarity with those sacred writings, a familiarity not just with words, but with voices; with centuries upon centuries of struggle for understanding and discernment; a familiarity with this vast river of wonderings and insights regarding God’s presence and work in the world. We hear stories and philosophical musings, prayers and love poetry, proverbs and moral teachings, long lists of names, building instructions, prophetic indictments, riddles and parables. And for generations, people have turned to those sacred writings for all kinds of reasons: to find answers to pressing questions, prove a point, or win an argument, to formulate dogma or reconstruct ancient history, to get rich, to induce shame, to justify oppression and promote violence. But still, Paul of 2 Timothy gently insists, these writings, despite their questionable uses and outright abuses, are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. They can make us wise by cultivating in us a sense of wonder about God, the world, others, and ourselves.[4]

Fred Craddock once told a congregation,

I read something recently—I knew this, but I had forgotten about it—that years ago our ancestors used to go out walking, usually on a Sunday afternoon—sometimes alone, sometimes couples, sometimes the whole family—and they called it “going marveling.” Marveling. They would look for unusual rocks, unusual wild flowers, shells, four-leafed clovers, marvelous things. They would collect them, bring them back to the house, and show off the marvelous things they had found. Isn’t that a delightful thing, to go marveling?[5]

Craddock told them that when he read that and was reminded of that, he went marveling himself. I’ll tell you later what he found. I want us to stay a little longer with that lovely phrase, going marveling. It reminds me very much of the little boy, sitting quietly by the little stream, listening, hearing things he hadn’t noticed before, marvelous things he’d take back to the house and share. When we listen to the Scriptures in wonder, says William Brown, “not only does the text fall open to the reader, the reader falls open to the text.” There is a solitude at the heart of that encounter between Scripture and listener, but it doesn’t happen in isolation. It takes place in communion with others, in which fresh insights are shared and new relationships are formed. Reading with wonder, listening with wonder broadens and deepens the community of listeners and readers.[6]

In the passage from 2 Timothy we heard this morning there is a word that is incredibly rare; it’s used only once in the entire Bible. It’s a little word that has had to carry a lot of weight in debates about the Scriptures and how they are the Word of God. In the translation we heard, v. 16 says, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” The reference is to the Jewish sacred writings that were considered authoritative at the time, long before the apostolic writings were collected and became what we know as the New Testament. 2 Timothy was part of a push against tendencies among some Christian teachers to dismiss the books of Moses, the prophets, and other sacred texts as inferior or outdated. These writings, the apostle insists, are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, they are useful for teaching and all manner of other things, and they are inspired by God. Some hear inspired and think of heavenly dictation, others think of writers using their own words to communicate what they heard God say, and again others think of some moment akin to being kissed by a muse that gives a writer something to write about. The NIV translates more literally and less traditionally, “all Scripture is God-breathed.” It’s a fine translation that frees us to listen again in wonder and to go marveling. All Scripture is God-breathed… When you sit with this image of God breathing, what comes to mind?

I think of the moment, you can read about it in Genesis 2, when the Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living being. I wonder if the apostle is saying the sacred writings are alive with the breath of God just as humans are—and wouldn’t that mean that we have to let them breathe? We sit quietly by the wide stream of Scripture, listening, waiting expectantly as the Spirit of God moves among us, marveling at the new connections we discover in the sacred writings and among us, connections that reflect a wisdom beyond flat information, and more than wisdom, our salvation in Christ. And wouldn’t you agree that we need new connections alive with the breath of God more than anything in our time?

Yes, a screaming song is good to know in case you need to scream. But better yet to find a place beside the stream and listen.

So Fred Craddock told the congregation how he went marveling himself. “You know I live about a mile from here,” he told them.

If you walk down the railroad, it’s about a mile. So I left the house and went marveling. About a mile away I came upon a pavilion, and inside I saw a lot of people singing, praying, and reading scripture, and sharing their love for each other. They were vowing that they would—they promised to each other, and they promised to God—make every effort, God help them, to reproduce the life of Jesus in this place. And I marveled, how I marveled. And I said to myself, Look what I have found, right here, in this little building.[7]

For us, all the words of Scripture point ultimately to Jesus, the eternal Word of God, perfectly embodied in human life. So let us live to let his life be ours.

[1] Ruth Krauss, Open House for Butterflies, 1960

[2] Ibid.

[3] 2 Timothy 3:14-15

[4] See William P. Brown, Sacred Sense, p. 2

[5] Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, p. 65

[6] See Brown, Sacred Sense, p. 12

[7] Craddock Stories, p. 65

The wide embrace

Have it your way. Have it your way was a tagline introduced in 1974 by Burger King. Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce. Special orders don’t upset us. Have it your way. Years passed, burgers were sold, tag lines changed. Burger King reintroduced Have it your way in 2004. The four simple words still tapped into the deep current of individualism in America; in addition, the thirty-year-old slogan had a vintage feel, and vintage was hip. Have you ever read what’s printed on the bag they hand you with your burger and fries at the drive-through? Listen to this:

Have it your way. You have the right to have what you want, exactly when you want it. Because on the menu of life, you are “Today’s Special”. And tomorrow’s. And the day after that. And… well, you get the drift. Yes, that’s right. We may be the King, but you my friend, are the almighty ruler.

Yeah, it’s a little over the top. But only a little. Henri Nouwen, while traveling in Latin America in the early 80’s, saw something, noticed something important.

We people of the first world emphasize our rights. We claim our right to food, health, shelter, and education. [We] relate to the goods of life as possessions that are ours and [that] need to be conquered ... and defended. Although the poor in the third world do not deny that they have basic human rights, their emphasis is on the giftedness of life ... The goods that come to them are experienced as free gifts of God ... gifts to be grateful for and to celebrate.

Nouwen paints with a broad brush and he may be dangerously close to romanticizing poverty, but he has noticed something worth pondering: Some members of the human family live in a world where we’re being taught that on the menu of life we are “today’s special” and the almighty ruler. Others live in a world where life is gift after gift after gift.

Peter Marty comments, “Gratitude becomes completely superfluous when life is viewed as entitlement instead of gift.”[1]  We gather here Sunday after Sunday for a variety of reasons, but one of them is our hope that the vintage jingles we sing in worship, we call them doxologies, shape our perception of the world and how we live in it.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow… gift after gift after gift, flowing from the heart of God… Praise God all creatures here below… all that has life and breath… Praise God above ye heavenly host… earth and heaven joined in praise… Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost… praise God who is the giver and the gift and the giving in the perfect mutuality of love.

We worship God because there’s something about life that calls for it. We worship God because we have seen something, noticed something that makes us want to say thank you, sing thank you, live thank you. And we worship so we learn to see even more fully until all that we are becomes one gift of praise to God. John Burkhart reminds us that,

“What matters … is not whether God can be God without our worship. What is crucial is whether humans can survive as humans without worshiping. To withhold acknowledgment, to avoid celebration, to stifle gratitude, may prove as unnatural as holding one’s breath.”[2]

Martin Luther was once asked to describe the nature of true worship. His answer: the tenth leper turning back.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem when he was approached by ten men with leprosy. Luke writes he was traveling between Samaria and Galilee, only there wasn’t any land between the two, there was, however, a line. There was no border, no border control, no fence or wall, but there was a line, a sharp line drawn between two groups of people who hadn’t been friendly with each other for generations, Jews and Samaritans. The enmity between them was entrenched and old. They disagreed about things that mattered most to them: how to honor God, where to worship, what set of scrolls to accept as sacred scripture. The line between them wasn’t so much on the land as it was in the heart, the mind, and the imagination. They did what they could to avoid contact with each other.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, traveling between Samaria and Galilee, when he was approached by ten men with leprosy. Leprosy was more than a name for skin blemishes that looked suspicious and triggered fear of contagion. Leprosy was a sentence to exile. These men had been banished from their homes and villages; who knows how long they had not felt the loving touch of spouses, children, parents, friends. It didn’t matter any more which side of the line they once claimed as home, which community they claimed as theirs. It didn’t matter any more who they used to be or dreamed of being, now they were lepers. Whoever saw them didn’t see them as persons, but as no-longer-persons, untouchables pushed out and left to beg and wander in the invisible land between Samaria and Galilee. “They shall live alone; their dwelling shall be outside the camp,” the law of Moses, which was the law of Jews and Samaritans, declared.[3]

These ten no-longer-persons who had been dwelling outside the camp for who knows how long approached Jesus, begging for mercy, and Jesus saw these invisible ones. “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” he responded to their plea. The priests, of course, were very much “inside the camp,” they were the ones responsible for determining if a rash was leprous or not. The priests were the ones who would examine the skin and decide if a man or woman could return from their exile after the blemish had faded. “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” Jesus said to the ten, as though it was time for their return to life. And as they went, they were made clean.

Unclean meant not belonging. Made clean meant they belonged again. Made clean meant they could return to all that makes us persons – family, community, intimacy. Made clean meant they could touch and be touched, embrace and be embraced, hold the baby, kiss the children, hug their wives, do their work, eat and drink with their friends.

The ten had encountered Jesus in the land of not-belonging and they were not just cured, but healed, restored to wholeness. One of them, though, when he saw that he was healed, didn’t continue on his journey to see the priests. One of them turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and he thanked Jesus. One of them, when he saw that he was healed, saw something the others didn’t. Nine of the ten got their old lives back. One found new life. And he was a Samaritan.

Again it was a Samaritan who saw what others didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t see. At the beginning of his journey to Jerusalem, Jesus told a story about a man who fell into the hands of robbers on the Jericho Road. You know the story. A priest happened to come down that road, and when he saw the victim, he passed by on the other side. Next a Levite came to the place and saw the man, and he passed by on the other side. And then a third man came near, and when he saw the man, he was moved with pity. And he was a Samaritan.

On the dangerous Jericho Road and in the no-man’s-land between groups tangled and trapped in enmity it’s an outsider who sees what others don’t. It’s an outsider whose actions reveal what being a neighbor is about. It’s an outsider who sees that in Jesus the kingdom of God is present.

Ten cried out for mercy. Ten were made clean. Nine went home and lived happily ever after; nothing suggests that their healing was revoked. One, however, turned back and gave praise to God at Jesus’ feet.

In Jesus, the kingdom of God has broken into the invisible land between Samaria and Galilee, the land of non-belonging where the exiles dwell, longing for redemption and crying out for mercy. Leprosy is a way to name all modes of non-belonging and being cut-off from life. For some of us, complete isolation may be difficult to imagine, but to the degree that we are not at one with the world, not at one with each other and with ourselves, we all know what it means to wander the roads outside the camp, longing for life that is nothing but life.

The Samaritan saw that with Jesus the kingdom of God had entered the world. He saw an embrace so wide, it wouldn’t create yet one more camp in our broken, divided world, but one redeemed humanity, healed and saved in the arms of God’s mercy and at home. He saw grace so deep, his whole life became gratitude and praise.

Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, on the way to the cross, and we know that his journey was more than a long walk across a piece of Middle Eastern geography. He traveled through the vast, invisible land between, his feet tracing the many lines that divide us, his hands stretched out to either side in the most vulnerable gesture of reconciliation; he went all the way to the cross, erected outside the city gates, outside the camp, any camp – and there the deep divide between us and God was revealed, the violent pride of God’s human creatures presuming to be the almighty rulers. And there God’s faithfulness prevailed.

Can you see how wide an embrace this is? So, yes, make a joyful noise, all the earth; sing the glory of God’s name.

[1] The Christian Century, August 17, 2016, p. 3.

[2] John Burkhart, quoted in A Sourcebook about Liturgy, ed. by Gabe Huck (Chicago: LTP, 1994), 148.

[3] Leviticus 13:46

How long?

The wicked surround the righteous—and many fear that the wicked are winning. The wicked are the ones who hold the power: they have the money;  they have the bombs, the guns, the muscle; they have the ruthless ideologies, the single-minded tenacity, the murderous certainty. The wicked call the shots.

Habakkuk sees it and he cries out; he complains in bold language reminiscent of the psalms. He doesn’t just groan, he laments and insists, and with his questions he holds God responsible: How long shall I cry for help, and you, Lord, will not listen? How long shall I cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble, destruction and violence, strife and contention? Where is your justice when the wicked pervert justice? Where is your justice when the righteous are surrounded?

You listen to Habakkuk and you hear echoes from the psalms:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever? How long, Lord, shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult?[1]

Habakkuk doesn’t just groan under the weight of wrongdoing, trouble, violence, destruction, and perverted justice pressing down on God’s people—he names the wrongs, points them out, and he insists on a response from the Lord who is known as a lover of righteousness. Habakkuk gives voice to those among God’s people who see the wicked surrounding the righteous, twisting justice, and getting away with it – day after day, year after year, generation after generation. Habakkuk insists on a response on behalf of all who struggle to hold onto the belief that real justice is possible in this world.

On June 17 last year, 21-year-old Dylan Roof killed nine men and women at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. One of the victims was Ethel Lance; she was the sexton and she was 70 years old when she was murdered at the Wednesday Bible study. At a bond hearing in a Charleston courtroom later that summer, family members of the victims were invited to give statements. Ethel Lance’s daughter, Nadine Collier got up and made her way to the podium. What she said, looking at Dylan Roof on closed-circuit tv and choking back sobs, came out like this:

“I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never get to talk to her ever again—but I forgive you, and have mercy on your soul … You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. If God forgives you, I forgive you.”

Her words took everybody in the courtroom by surprise. Her own family wasn’t prepared for them. “When she said that, I was just shocked,” says her sister, Sharon Risher. “I was like, Who in the hell is she talking for? Because she’s not talking for me.” Risher looks back a year later and says, “The flag went down, yes. This little boy is in jail, yes. But all of this has just caused too much.” It is too soon to talk about healing when the wounds are still being torn open every day. For Risher, the murder of her mother is not an isolated event. “Every night somebody else gets killed in this country, and I have to relive that pain,” she says, “because I know what these people are going through.”[2]

How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall I cry for help, and you, Lord, will not listen? How long?

What does real justice look like? Dylan Roof’s trial will begin in January; he’s facing federal hate crime charges in addition to having been indicted with nine counts of murder. He may get sentenced to death, and that may satisfy the state’s justice – but what about the festering wound of racism that will not heal? My friend Latisha has no words left for her pain and her anger after hundreds of years of violence against blacks and the relentless news over recent months and weeks of questionable police shootings of black men and boys. There’s no end to it. Latisha is tired of shouting, How long? She has no tears left. She has changed both her cover photo and her profile picture on Facebook to solid black rectangles that swallow up all light – it’s her speechless lament, a silent cry of mourning and rage.

On September 18, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a eulogy in Birmingham. It was the funeral for three of the four girls killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church three days earlier. He said, “These children—unoffending, innocent, and beautiful—were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity. … They have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. … They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.”[3]

Dr. King reminds us that we must be concerned not merely about the perpetrators, but about the vision of life that produced and continues to produce them. And we must substitute courage for caution, because the vision of life that leaves no room for the other or insists on assigning the other his or her place in what we presume to be our world, that vision is much more common among us than we care to consider, let alone admit. It feels good when we can identify with the righteous whom the wicked surround, but it takes courage to face our own complicity in wicked systems that keep righteousness from flourishing among us.

“How long shall I cry for help, and you, Lord, will not listen?” said Habakkuk. “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what the Lord will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.”

The Lord answered the prophet and made a promise: “There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”

There is still a vision of life where the end is not violent exclusion but courageous embrace. There is still a vision of life where all lives do indeed matter. There is still a vision of life where wickedness has been redeemed by love and righteousness is at home throughout the world. There is still a vision; it will surely come. We affirm that this vision is Christ’s proclamation of the kingdom. We affirm that the vision has become tangible in the life he lived and the just reign he inaugurated. We are still waiting, but what we await is not unknown; it is the fullness of the life we see when we look at Jesus. What we await is the consummation of creation in the loving communion of God and God’s creatures.

When we gather around the table of Christ, we do it in remembrance of him. And as often as we eat the bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. It is as though we lean forward into the fulfillment, into the future that is already present when welcoming each other as forgiven sinners in Christ’s name and recognizing each other as brothers and sisters in Christ we celebrate the feast of life.

I don’t know where the courage to look at ourselves with honesty would come from, if not from that vision. I don’t know where the courage to open up to one another across all that divides us would come from, if not from that vision. Habakkuk calls us in God’s name to trust that promise – to trust it more than our cynicism, more than our own complicity in wickedness, and more than our anger and our grief.

Habakkuk concludes his prophecy with beautiful words of tenacious faith, inviting us to trust and wait and work with him:

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines;

though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food;

though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will exult in the God of my salvation.[4]

[1] Psalms 13:1-2; 74:10; 94:3

[2] See http://time.com/time-magazine-charleston-shooting-cover-story/

[3] See http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_eulogy_for_the_martyred_children/

[4] Habakkuk 3:17-18

Tell me your story

An unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world have been forced from home (that’s approximately the population of Great Britain). Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees who have fled their countries. Over half of the refugees are under the age of 18. More than 10 million children in the world are refugees. We live in a world where nearly 34,000 people are forcibly displaced every day as a result of conflict or persecution.[1]

The numbers are hard to imagine. But they are people; they are families; they are men, women, children, not a bowl of Skittles. They have lives and dreams they left behind. They have stories to tell. They have names. The question is not, “Can you imagine 21.3 million refugees?” The question is, “Can you imagine being one of them?” Can you imagine being forced to leave your home with little more than the clothes on your back ? Can you imagine, for a moment, for mercy’s sake, being the mother who lifts her child into a rubber dinghy to cross the ocean? Can you imagine having lost everything and everyone? Can you imagine being the poor man at the gate?

In Jesus’ story, the world is very small and very divided. There’s a rich man in the house and a poor man at the gate. And the rich man is dressed in purple and the finest linen, while the poor man is covered in sores that only the dogs show any interest in. And the rich man feasts sumptuously every day, while the poor man hungers and longs to eat the crumbs that fall off the rich man’s table. It’s a world sharply divided into rich and poor, a world separated by a gate. And surprisingly, as though to remind us that the poor are not merely statistics in the rich man’s world but people, Jesus tells us the poor man’s name, Lazarus. Jesus paints a world with just a few strokes.

In the next frame, Lazarus dies. Did he starve? Did one of his sores get infected? Or was it one of those nights when temperatures dropped into the 20’s? Apparently those are details that don’t matter in Jesus’ story, but he’s careful to tell us that when Lazarus died the angels came to carry him away to rest at the bosom of Abraham.

The rich man also died and was buried. Somebody else might have told us how long the funeral procession was and how exquisitly carved the headstone. Jesus tells us that the rich man was buried. Period. No angels came. Just a few simple strokes and we can see that death doesn’t discriminate between rich and poor.

In the next frame, we see again a very divided world. Only now it’s the rich man who is in agony and Lazarus is the child at home, the guest of honor feasting at Abraham’s banquet.

Let’s pause here for a moment. The prophet Amos, in the days of King Jeroboam, composed a song of sorrow and grief:

Woe to those who are at ease in Zion ... Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the stall; who drink wine straight from the bowl, and anoint themselves with the finest oils—but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! [2]

One scholar has called the prophecy “a lament over people who can see nothing about which to lament.”[3] Is that what had happened in the rich man’s world? Had he not seen Lazarus in his agony? Had he only had eyes for life this side of the gate? Now he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.  And now he responded, calling out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” You have to wonder how long he had known that name – Lazarus – and had he ever spoken it before? And the cry, “Have mercy on me!” – had he heard it before? Had he heard it or had it remained unheard, part of the white noise occasionally wafting in from beyond the gate?

The man in agony didn’t ask for much, a drop of water, not a seat at the banquet, and Abraham heard him. And he said, “Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” It had been a small world, divided by a gate, only now the great divide was permanent. The time to reach across with kindness and generosity was over. Opportunities to see and hear and respond once had abounded, but now it was too late – for the rich man, that is, not his siblings.

“Send Lazarus to my father’s house to warn them,” the man asked, and Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” Yes, we should, but our track record is not very impressive, and the man in Hades knows it and he intercedes one more time, not for himself, but for us, telling Abraham, “If someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He has great confidence that we will change the way we live once we are told of the great reversal where the Mighty One has brought down the powerful and lifted up the lowly, has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52-53). Abraham is a lot less confident. Will we listen to Moses and the prophets and to Jesus whom God raised from the dead?

We live in a vast and complex world, a world that awes us with its beauty and terrifies us. Only we don’t really live in a vast and complex world, but in small worlds, divided worlds, and beyond the gate, in each of our little worlds, are the things and people we’d rather not see, because we don’t know what will happen to us when we do. Jesus invites us to imagine ourselves, for a moment, for mercy’s sake, on the other side of that gate and to let the view from the other side of the great divide shape our actions. We might decide to open the gate. We might decide to jump the fence. We might begin to take down the wall.

Jesus’ story is rather blunt in pointing out that our time to reach out across all that divides us – and God knows there’s a lot – our time to reach across the great abyss is limited. We only have a lifetime to practice compassion and mercy. But we do have a lifetime to practice compassion and mercy, to cross from here to there; countless opportunities to let love and courage lead the way. I’m reminded of words written in a letter from jail by one of America’s saints, “I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham,” wrote Dr. King. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”[4] I cannot sit idly by on this side of the gate and not be concerned about what happens on the other side. I cannot sit idly by in Tennessee and not be concerned about what happens in Syria, Turkey, Afghanistan, Somalia, and South Sudan. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And because we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, every step of courageous love any one of us takes toward another moves us all one step forward.

Last week, President Obama addressed the Leaders Summit on Refugees at the UN. At the end of his remarks he said,

We can learn from a young boy named Alex, who lives not far from here in Scarsdale, New York.  Last month, like all of us, Alex saw that heartbreaking image – five-year-old Omran Daqneesh in Aleppo, Syria, sitting in that ambulance, silent and in shock, trying to wipe the blood from his hands.

Alex, who is just six years old, saw that picture, sat down and wrote a letter to the president. And in his letter he said, he wanted Omran to come and live with him and his family. “Since he won’t bring toys,” he wrote, “I will share my bike and I will teach him how to ride it. I will teach him addition and subtraction. My little sister will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him… We can all play together. We will give him a family and he will be our brother.”

We are moved by this little boy’s words and actions; we recognize an impulse we too have felt – before we learned to be cynical, or suspicious, or fearful of people from the other side of the gate. We see compassion that opens the door and invites the stranger in. We see the love that draws us all into the beloved community. The President said,

Imagine the suffering we could ease, and the lives we could save, and what our world would look like if, seeing a child who’s hurting anywhere in the world, we say, “We will give him a family and he will be our brother.”[5]

Imagine the rich man getting up one morning, opening the gate, and saying to Lazarus, “Come on in. Tell me your story.”

[1] http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html

[2] See Amos 6:1, 4-6

[3] Donald Gowan, NIB, 398.

[4] Martin L. King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf

[5] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/remarks-president-obama-leaders-summit-refugees

Shrewd like that

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you” (Luke 6:37-38). Jesus can be very clear. We know he can. But Jesus loves to tell stories. And some of them leave us scratching our heads. What’s that all about, we wonder.

There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.

That’s all we’re told. We don’t know if the manager was incompetent or corrupt. We also don’t know if the charges had any base in reality or were merely slander. We’re given very few details.

The rich man responded by summoning the manager, telling him he was fired, and demanding a final accounting. “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me?” the manager said to himself. He had to think and act fast. A demotion to digging ditches was not an option; he didn’t have the back for that kind of physical labor. And begging was out of the question. But he was a quick thinker and moved fast to make sure people would welcome him into their homes after his dismissal became final. One by one, he summoned his master’s debtors, and together they rewrote the paper work.

We don’t know if they were looking at land lease agreements or loan documents. We do notice, though, that the amounts involved were fairly substantial.

“How much do you owe my master?”

“A hundred jugs of olive oil.”

Those weren’t the small jugs you keep in your kitchen cabinet, the ones you can easily lift with one hand. Each of those jugs held about ninety gallons. These two were looking at a 900 gallon olive oil contract.

And the manager said, “Make it fifty.” Cut it in half.  He asked another, “And how much do you owe?”

“A thousand bushels of wheat.”

“Take your bill and make it eight hundred.” 20% off, that’s nice, isn’t it? We can safely assume there were other happy debtors, because nobody needs a manager only to handle two accounts. But we don’t know if this very nice debt reduction program reflected the fees and other add-ons the manager had inserted into the original contract or if he was working with payments owed only to his master. We don’t know if he was giving away what was his to give or if he was defrauding his soon-to-be former boss. Whatever it was, he did it with a clear purpose: Tomorrow he would be out of a job, so he took care of himself by endearing himself to his master’s debtors. He made sure there would be some open doors when the one to his office closed behind him for good.

At this point of the story, most folks in Jesus’ audience are slapping their knees and laughing. That little crook, he sure knew how to make the best of a critical situation! Yes, he was a rascal, but such a clever one. The property owners in the audience who depend on the honesty of their stewards and managers aren’t laughing. They are waiting for a memorable moral at the end that will teach people to be honorable and upright, something like this: And when his master found out what the manager had done, he had him thrown in jail until he had payed back every penny he owed. Those in the audience who like to think that the rich man was probably a bigger crook than the manager anyway are waiting for a punch line that will bring down the house, something like this: And the rich man in the city never knew that the books had been cooked. Instead, the next line reads: And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.

Now just about everybody is scratching their heads, wondering, What kind of story is that? What kind of master would commend a dishonest manager? And it gets even more confusing. Luke is telling us about a story Jesus was telling and there are no quotation marks in the text; that means it can be difficult to tell where Jesus’ story ends and Luke picks up the narrative thread again. That line about the dishonest manager being commended? It can also be translated, And the Lord commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. So is it the master in Jesus’ story who’s praising the scoundrel or is it the Lord himself, the master who is telling the disciples that the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light? And why would Jesus praise a man like that?

The way I read the story, the manager is not being presented as a role model for ethical business administration, but as an example of quick, creative and determined action in a critical situation. For the manager, the world as he has known it is quickly coming to an end, he knows there will be a reckoning, and that emerging future determines everything he does in the present. And Jesus wants his disciples to live and act as shrewdly, creatively, and resolutely in the light of God’s coming reign. But if that is what Jesus wants, why doesn’t he just say so? Because he loves stories and because he wants us to wrestle with the details of how to live faithfully in expectation of God’s coming kingdom. The story of the manager doesn’t have a clear ending, it transitions into a discussion of what its implications might be for followers of Jesus. It’s like the early church and Luke added other teachings of Jesus and comments from congregations to that difficult story so they would help shape the conversations of future generations.

Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

“Making friends by means of dishonest wealth” sounds a little bit like using the funds you’ve embezzled to bribe others – not a very attractive model of kingdom living, if you ask me. “Dishonest wealth” sounds too much like money made by cheating as opposed to money made by honest work. And that’s not the contrast underlying the story of the manager or of Jesus’ mission. The real contrast is between the world as we know it that is coming to an end and a new world that is dawning. Jesus isn’t talking about dishonest as opposed to honest wealth, but about the currency of the world as opposed to the currency of the kingdom. The proclamation of the gospel puts us on the threshold between this world where people hunger for righteousness and the world to come where righteousness is at home. The manager in Jesus’ story has just been shown the door, he is standing on the threshold, realizing that the world as he has known it is quickly coming to an end, and he jumps into action. He uses the tools his master has put at his disposal to make friends among the master’s debtors. He invests himself and all his recources in the world to come. Shrewd like that is how Jesus would like us to be. Creative like that. Determined like that. Focused like that.

The final teaching appended to the story is utterly clear.

No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

The choice is not if you will serve, but whom. Bob Dylan sings, you gotta serve somebody.

You may be a business man or some high-degree thief
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody.[1]

Martin Luther wrote in his explanation of the first commandment, “Many a one thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when he has money and possessions; he trusts in them and boasts of them with such firmness and assurance as to care for no one. Lo, such a man also has a god, Mammon by name, i.e., money and possessions, on which he sets all his heart, and which is also the most common idol on earth.”[2]

The contrast underlying Jesus’ story and mission is between a world in which Mammon reigns and God is thought of as a means to an end

and the world in which God reigns and wealth is used for the purposes of God. Jesus can be very clear. You cannot serve God and wealth.

The early church was intrigued with the role of the manager, the role of the steward. In 1 Peter the apostle picks up the theme and develops it beautifully, and I want to close with these words:

Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:10-11)

[1] http://bobdylan.com/songs/gotta-serve-somebody/ italics added

[2] Large Catechism, Explanation of the First Commandment at http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-03.html