Tough questions

Proper 19 B; Sept. 16, 2012

Proverbs 1:20-33; Psalm 19

James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38

The word for this gospel lesson is CRISIS: it is the turning point in the Gospel of Mark, the hinge point which marks the end of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and the beginning of the end. Jesus now faces his disciples toward Jerusalem, toward the challenges that lie ahead, toward the cross, toward sacrifice, toward death. He asks them the BIG question, and they have to come up with the RIGHT answer.

The news around us seems to indicate that the whole world has been thrown into a crisis, and at every point, like the disciples confronted by Jesus, we are forced to make a choice, and every choice seems to hold life or death consequences. The Presidential election maybe the most debated one of the moment. Who do we say Romney, or Obama, is? Which side are we on? Which path should we take?

When Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” they trot out the usual answers, drawn from their experience with religious figures: Elijah, who was an ancient Jewish prophet, John the Baptist, who cried out in the wilderness. That would be the predictable thing, to understand Jesus because he was like someone we already knew about. But then Jesus surprises them – and us – by asking them – and us, the readers of this encounter, “Who do YOU say that I am?”

Peter delivers the surprise line now: You are the Christ. You are the Messiah. You are the leader with royal stature and political power to lead us in a revolution against all that oppresses us. You are the one who will deliver us from the power of the Roman Empire and the corruption of the Jewish authorities. You are the Man.

We can hear a tune playing in the back of Peter’s head: “happy days are here again.” Visions of sugar plums, their side winning, the oppression of the cruel Romans routed out, no more crippling taxes, leaders with true spiritual and moral integrity restored to the Temple in Jerusalem. These plans sound good. Isn’t this where you’ve been heading all along, Jesus?

Maybe Peter should have paid attention to the kind of advice given in the Epistle of James – “Watch your words!!” – for Peter’s words in answer to Jesus’ question caused the teacher to erupt in an angry rebuke: “Get behind me Satan.” What you have in mind are merely human expectations; you need to set your mind on what God has planned, and for the short term, it won’t be pretty. God has sent me here to confront all those evil things that you mention: the powers and principalities that work against what God has in mind for humanity. But they will fight back, and I will suffer and die. And to follow me means sharing in that fight, in that suffering, even in that death. This way is difficult, but this is the way to life, to justice, to abundance, to mercy, to love, to community, to life.

No, this is not the response you will hear from political candidates, and believe me, it is no easier for preachers to deal with texts like this that it would be for politicians. It’s so much easier to preach on the abundance Jesus promises, or the healing he delivers, or many times he fed and taught and touched people in need. Here we are faced with what seems like an impossible choice, to follow Jesus down a difficult road.

Let’s step back a bit. Unlike Peter, we can move away from the brink. We have all of the Gospels before us; how else does Jesus talk to us? In the parables, for instance, all those wonderful little stories which frequently begin, “The kingdom of heaven is like …” Jesus tells us stories about how God is searching for US – how God is seeking the lost and the least, and is less interested in the triumphalistic and the powerful, or the secure and the slick and those who are SURE they always have the right answers. One theologian put it this way: “The Christian Church does not offer men and women a route map to God. Instead it tells them by what means they might be found by [God].”

So often, when we seek God, the temptation is to look for a reflection of our own needs, to find the key to our own selves. But our lessons today remind us that when we get in this business of a relationship with God, God takes the lead – God looks for us – God asks tough questions of us – God directs us to places we never thought we’d go. “Who do YOU say that I am?” Jesus asks us. This is not the final exam, but it is an invitation to follow him and to find out more.

EVERYONE falls within the reach of God's saving grace

Proper 18 B   September 9, 2012

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23

Psalm 125

James 2:1-10, 14-1

Mark 7:24-37

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt created Social Security, he knew it would not work if it was only for a certain group of poor old people, who could be isolated, stigmatized, shunned. The program could be chopped off by later administrations if it was something for “those people.” Social Security would work, he advocated, if it was for everyone: the very needy would be embedded into something that was good for everyone who got old. It was old-age insurance for everybody, rich and poor.

All of our lessons today talk about the rich and the poor, and, like FDR’s plan for Social Security, what we actually read is not what we thought we might be reading, at first glance.

Our Gospel today has this very curious interchange between Jesus and the Gentile, Syrophoenician woman. He seems to make fun of her, telling her her ailing daughter is not worth any more than a dog. Yet the woman persists, gets back at Jesus, and when she returns home, the child is healed.

So we think that this bossy woman caused Jesus to change his mind – and yes, she was outspoken. But where else did we ever hear of Jesus NOT healing one of the many, many people from all walks of life who came to him for healing? Never. So what was it about THIS woman?

The point Jesus is trying to make in this interchange – and yes, Jesus knew what he was saying to her – is that even a woman like this woman – a Gentle, a foreigner, and a well-to-do foreign woman at that – receives the blessings of God’s grace. Like Social Security, Jesus’ healing powers are for the rich and the poor, the native-born and foreign-born, our next-door neighbors and the ones on the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

As always in the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus is is part of the story. Tyre, far up the Mediterranean coast, is a Roman port city, well-to-do, Gentile, Hellenized. “Hellenized” means Greek-speaking, but it also means more. It means people who are part of the upper-class culture of the day, the cosmopolitan, Empire-traveling Greek-speakers. The Syrophoenicians who lived in Tyre moved in the circles of power and privilege and influence. This posh place is where we find Jesus today.

Yet we usually think of Jesus being among the poor – and the poor people of Jesus’ day were given a raw deal by people with power and privilege. Not only was this bossy woman a Gentile, she was part of the elite class that benefited from keep poor farmers and fisherfolk and townspeople at the bottom of the economic ladder.

How astounding then, when Jesus comes to this region, trying to lay low and keep his presence a secret – he seems to be coming here for a kind of vacation, away from all the press of the crowds who want healing and hope --  that a woman of this Syrophoenician, Greek-speaking, urban elite comes barging in. Jesus’ secret was apparently not safe; even this Gentile woman knew this random, roving teacher had the power to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Somehow even she has heard the Good News, she, who Jesus notes, someone supposedly excluded from it. This woman comes from the outside, from the world of power and privilege and empire. She does not live by the covenant with God, but she knows Jesus can help her.

And if we read between the lines of their repartee, we see that Jesus not only helps her by healing her daughter, but that Jesus uses this interchange – this conversation with the outsider, rich woman – to prove to those around him that God’s reign knows no limits. After this, Jesus leaves Tyre, goes north to Sidon, and then takes a journey of 40 miles to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. He travels through Jewish Galilee to the Gentile, Roman, Greek-speaking region of Decapolis, another city of “foreigners.” Again, Jesus’ messianic secret is not so well kept. Here a deaf man, with a speech impediment, comes to be healed -- even someone who is deaf has heard the Good News. When God rules the world, EVERYONE falls within God’s saving embrace. The kind of distinctions that humans love so much – rich, poor; native, foreign; “our kind” of religion vs. “their kind” of religion – are not what God cares about.

In the letter of James, we read how the early church lived out this Good New. James continues Jesus’ radical equality: rich and poor are included. The rich should not be privileged, but they are our neighbors. The poor should be treated with dignity – with honor to their “excellent name” – and yes, some of what the rich hoard must be shared with the poor. The mark of a faithful person, James says, are seen in what that person does. “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and … yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” Sounds like Social Security to me. Maybe all those years sitting in church listening to scripture did something to FDR. Maybe this line, from Proverbs, began to sink in: “The rich and poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all.” Even a rich fellow like him – deaf, in a certain way, and shielded from the poor – understood that the Good News really had no limits, and no, Social Security wouldn’t work if it was only for the poor.

But Social Security, as good as it is, is, after all, only a human-designed program. In the world that Jesus proclaims, in the reign of God, everyone, always, has all that they need, and everyone’s excellent name is honored.

Three Miles an Hour

Proper 17 B     Sept. 2, 2012

Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Ps. 45:1-2, 7-10

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Labor Day is the American holiday, as the unions like to say, brought to us by workers. Working conditions at the beginning of the 20th century were abysmal, especially in the rapidly industrializing cities, Laws and customs changed when people, working across class and social boundaries, decided it was in everyone’s best interest to improve things for the people who worked the hardest: No child labor. 40-hour work week. Occupational health and safety standards. And an occasional paid day off: hence, Labor Day. The last day of summer. The last day of the State Fair. Brats and burgers on the grill. Fresh corn and tomatoes. One farewell swim at the beach.

Yet even if the workers threw off their chains over the past 100 years or so, the industrial revolution is not what it used to be. We’ve certainly seen in this community how it has come to a screeching halt, and no amount of fair work rules can make up for a workplace that is no longer there. Technology is rapidly creating a new kind of workplace and a new kind of labor, but we know that it has not quite jelled in our social consciousness. We’re going somewhere in a hurry, but we may not be quite sure where, and if we stopped a minute to think about it, we might acknowledge some worry that not everyone is coming along.

Listen to this, the Manifesto of the Slow Food Movement, written in 1989, in Paris (of course):

Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine, and then took it as its life model.[i]

Slow Food, which began as a protest to the introduction of a McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps in Rome, now claims over 100,000 followers, in 53 countries. They are dedicated to food grown and served locally – food that starts out fresh and ends up as a delicious meal on your table. By hearkening back to the beginning of the industrial era, I think they are saying that workers don’t live by their union dues alone – that there has to be something about the quality of life – about the very bread we eat and the wine we drink – that is worthy of who we are as humans created in the image of God.

I think Jesus would be part of the Slow Food movement. In our reading today, Jesus accuses the Pharisees of being too rule-bound, of worrying too much about who shouldn’t eat with them. In service to these well-intentioned rules, they have neglected some of the deeper traditions of God, traditions like hospitality to strangers, and feeding the hungry, and providing for those who are in need. They certainly have forgotten the sensual beauty of the Song of Solomon, where every meal is a delight, especially when shared with someone you love. The words of the Psalmist fall on their deaf ears, unaware of the songs and treasures and fragrances that are part of the language humans use to praise God.

The Slow Food movement has encouraged other movements, including a Slow Church movement. Like the rest of society, church life can get too busy – we can focus our attention on the wrong things, and lose sight of the delight we have in each other, in being called together in Christ’s name. We can think too much of our selves, and our needs, rather than on those out there who need us, and how much we have to share. Theologians have for some time encouraged us to slow down and pay attention to what is going on around us; they remind us that the pace of the modern world, and all its rules and restrictions, distance us from life itself. “Love has its speed,” Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama tells us:

It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice it or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks.[ii]

Each local chapter of the Slow Food movement is called a convivium. It’s a Latin word, describing the place where people come together for a feast, where they live and dine together, where they eat, drink and are merry.

A convivium is what Jesus had in mind when he ate and drank with his disciples, for wherever the love of God is, you will find a party. Remember the story from the Gospel of Luke, about the dinner in Emmaus. Two disciples invited their companion, who had walked along the road with them, to join them for a meal. As the meal progressed, and the conversation became lively and animated, it was then they realized they were having a party, a great, rollicking, delightful party, and only then, in the middle of all that conviviality, did they realize it. Only then did they realize that their companion had brought the party with him, only then did they realize it was Jesus, revealed to them in the breaking of the bread.

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[i] Quoted by John Pattison in “Why We Need a Slow Church Movement” http://neuemagazine.com/digital-archives/issue-08-augustseptember-2011?page=34

[ii] Kosuke Koyama, The Three-Mile-an-Hour God (Orbis Books, 1980), quoted by Simon Marsh in <http://simonmarsh.org/2011/07/22/three-mile-an-hour-god-2/>

Bread: where earth and heaven meet

Proper 16 B

Aug. 26, 2012

1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43

Psalm 84

John 6:56-69

You are not alone in thinking that the images Jesus uses are indeed, as he asks his disciples in today’s gospel, offensive. Drinking blood and eating skin – not a pretty picture. Bread? Yes, wonderful. Wine? Yes, as well. Communion? Yes, we those we get. But body and blood? Why such a sacrifice? Why such a commitment? Why such a risk?

What is shocking about today’s gospel is that Jesus lets a whole lot of his disciples go. For these folks, this imagery is just too much. Is it the grotesqueness? Is it the commitment? Is it the allusion to sacrifice and death? For whatever reasons, they walk away, and Jesus gives even his inner circle that option, too. Just how convincing is Peter’s answer? “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.”

One of the earliest images of Jesus, from the earliest days of the Christian community, are images of Jesus sharing bread with his friends. They are depictions of communion, of the Last Supper. It was not until centuries later that Christians dared depict Jesus on the cross – remember that many of those early Christians faced martyrdoms and deaths of their own. Perhaps in the early days of the church they were living the scandal of the cross – of the God made human – sharing all too closely in his life and death – to want to reflect on it in art or symbol. We, now free from danger of crucifixion ourselves, can find the cross a meaningful symbol of the God who walked among us as one of us.

Our English word “companion” has relevance here. Its roots “com” meaning “with” and “pan” meaning “bread” imply that a companion is one who is with you with bread. A companion is one with whom you share your bread, your nourishment, your life, as you walk along your way. And indeed, Jesus, our divine companion, continues to share the bread of his eternal life with us, even if we, like Peter, are not always absolutely convinced that walking along with Jesus is a wise thing to do.

Full confidence in the faith is hard. Oh, that we had the confidence of Solomon, to build that Temple for God, the confidence, even to be humble enough to ask God for wisdom and not only glory. Yet to be honest, we must admit that the sayings of Jesus are difficult, and the life that Jesus bids us live carries with it costs and sacrifices.

Maybe the best we can do is eat the bread. To stand in line with everyone else, put out our hands and take a piece of that bread in faith. Maybe the important thing is getting up week after week to do this: to listen to the scriptures, to spend some time in quiet prayer, to worry about how hard it really is to follow Jesus, and then, nonetheless, get up in that line anyway and put out our hands, take the bread and eat it.

That’s the power of the sacrament, and the power of the community. We are not in this alone. On any given day, when the words of Jesus are just too hard to understand, or too difficult to follow, someone next to us will be able to. We are in this together: that is the essence of communion, of COMMON prayer, of companionship. We take, we eat – we may not be able to “get it” that day, or every day, but by taking, by eating, we DO “get it” – it’s not so much the eating, but the abiding – the Christ dwelling in us and we in Christ that happens when we stand here, side by side, hands outstretched, ready to take Christ into our selves, our souls and bodies ,whether we know what we are doing or not.

The bread of life and the cup of salvation, broken and shared, Holy Manna, bread from heaven, where earth and heaven meet.

The Wisdom of Solomon, or how are you going to live YOUR life?

Proper 15 B - August 19, 2012

1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14; Ps. 111; John 6:51-58

God is giving King Solomon the equivalent of the pep talk right before the Big Game. God here is Solomon’s life coach, his mentor, his personal trainer and inspirational speaker. Tell me what you need, God asks Solomon.

Solomon then speaks, we can surmise, from the heart: he does not ask for riches or personal gain – he’s not just out to win the game. He asks for wisdom, discernment, the ability to know right from wrong – gifts which God places in his heart. Then we read something about God’s character as a coach. God is not one of those “winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing” kind of mentors. You can see from the advice God gives Solomon that God is in this for the long haul. HOW Solomon lives is God’s “everything”, God’s “only thing”, God’s goal: “If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments … then I will lengthen your life.” God is assuring Solomon that he will succeed: that he will be wise and discerning and rule over a great kingdom – but what is really important to God is HOW Solomon lives his life, how he stays in relationship with God and with the kind of life God wants him to live.

So, was Solomon BORN with this ability to be King? Yes, his wisdom was a gift from God, but even the question Solomon asks reveals this quality before God grants it. Was it a product of his nurture? Was it his privilege as a king’s son? Was he sent away to the ancient equivalent of the playing fields of Eton?

In some research[i] I came across about education, the headmaster of an elite prep school and the principal of an inner-city charter school worked together to try to understand the influence of character on their students’ lives: other than high test scores, what factors could reasonably predict whether students would get in to college – and not only get in to college, but lead lives that were not just successful or even happy, but meaningful and fulfilling. Character, these educators determined, could be nurtured and developed – skills could be learned and practiced as math problems and grammar and critical thinking could be learned and practiced. In some of these traits, the children from the charter school had more “character” than the children in the elite school – more resilience, more learning from hardship and disappointment, more experience in picking themselves up and succeeding after a set-back.

The educators’ goal for these children was more than just getting them into college: it was the quality of these children’s lives. It was how they lived, what meaning they made – to paraphrase God’s blessing of Solomon, it was the HOW of life that mattered.

This kind of wisdom is sometimes not about being literal. In the Gospel, are the people around Jesus really so dense as not to understand a metaphor? Are they really so thick and rule-bound and goal-driven not to see that Jesus is talking about the HOW of life?

All summer, it seems, we have been hearing about bread from Jesus: the feeding of the 5000 with baskets left over, the bread of life, the living bread, the bread from heaven. So much bread, so much abundance – God will, God does satisfy our needs.

But that then raises the HOW question for our own lives: we have the living bread; now what do we do with it? How do we increase it, share it, multiply it? What does it mean in our own lives to be blessed with such abundance? If we give it all away, won’t there still be enough to go around?

In that story of the rich kids from the prep school and the poor kids from the charter school we note that all of those students had some measure of abundance. They all had some piece of what Jesus would call the living bread. The amazing thing is that their teachers began to see those children as more than their test scores or their parents’ income or the differences in where they went on their summer vacations. Their teachers cared about developing their characters – about increasing that life-giving “how” at the center of what it means to be human. Who knows if those teachers were “Christians” or not – probably not; but what they shared with their students was a piece of the living bread.

We all know places – people – in this world, places and people both near and far – who could use some of this living bread. Week after week we are reminded of this bread, of how precious it is and how much of it there is to go around. In our individual lives, and in our parish life, as we “get back into” the busy-ness of the church year, where will we share our bread, the bread that has been given to us, the bread that brings life to the world?

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[i] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=magazine

King ... or President?

For more about how Solomon got to be king, view this video from the Odyssey Network, with commentary on 1 Kings and reflections on how it might apply to our current climate of political campaigning and vying for power.

The Bread of Compassion

Proper 14-B
August 12, 2012

2 Samuel 18:5-9,15,31-33
Ps. 130; John 6:35,41-51

We delude ourselves, don’t we, when we think we live in a world of justice, a world that has “progressed” beyond the blood vengeance of the honor-shame cultures depicted so shockingly in our Old Testament readings this summer.

We read horrible stories about women who have “dishonored” their families – thereby justifying their killing by their own brothers – stories from “far away” places like the Middle East or Afghanistan. We are appalled: how can “honor” be more valuable than a person’s life – than a woman’s life?

But how much more shocking is it that six Americans at prayer in their house of worship in suburban Milwaukee are gunned down – allegedly because someone thought they were Muslims – Muslims, our “enemies,” who have brought “shame” to America. In that horrible scene, remember, there was an example of heroic justice. The Sikhs praised the Wisconsin policeman who risked his own life to prevent more tragic deaths, the policeman who knew right from wrong and acted without thought of himself to aid the people he was sworn to protect and serve.

When we read Bible stories like these from the Book of Samuel, we are tempted to draw a line between them and us: those pre-Enlightenment days were violent and cruel; men with power acted capriciously. Today we are judicious and reasonable; we are governed by law, not ruled by force.

Like the shootings in the Milwaukee, the news reports are full of examples that the capricious use of power and violence are with us still. Even the most “enlightened” of our leaders love to rattle swords. But just as we saw that moment of heroic justice, in the actions of the policeman in the Sikh Temple, even the power of King David at his most self-centered and brutal is tempered by the judgment and justice of God.

The background of today’s story of the death of Absalom begins with David’s dishonest dealings to gain Bathsheba, the woman he loves. The story of how he arranged for the death of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, must have been well known in Israel – disapproving gossip was a common then as it is today. David also allowed his oldest son, Amnon, to rape his own sister, David’s daughter, Tamar – and when David took no action to avenge this terrible act, Absalom did so on his own. He plotted and killed his older brothers, and took advantage of growing discontent with David’s bloodthirsty rule to build an army to rebel against his father, and to replace him himself as the King of Israel. That is the cause of the battle that opens our reading today. David, full of military power, defends the throne, but David, full of humanity as well, still does not want his rebellious but beloved son killed. David’s generals, fighting for their king, find it foolish to let the leader of the rebellion to live, and Absalom is killed.

David rules Israel as King, not as God’s puppet. He came to power with Yahweh’s favor, but he makes his own decisions, some good, some not so good. At several points in the story, we read of God’s great displeasure, and the consequences are not good for David. His beloved sons are killed, he must fight and scheme to stay on the throne, and what he wanted most as the crowning achievement of his reign, the building of the Temple, is denied to him. Even David, beloved of God, has offended God’s justice. There is more than honor and shame and vengeance; there is right and there is wrong, and the heroic ones act in God’s name to restore God’s justice.

In our gospel lesson today, Jesus offers what God has been offering all along: life. Not vengeance or jealousy or violence or brutality – not hunger or thirst or want or deprivation. God offers life. God also offers freedom – God created humans with the ability to do things – with agency. People may do terrible things, as David did, but people can also do wonderful things, like cultivate wheat, and make bread – bread that is made by human hands is so wonderful that when Jesus tries to describe to his followers what the love of God is like he uses bread. You ask what I am like? I am like bread. I am bread. The bread of life.

But curiously, bread is a completely human creation. Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, her close observation of nature, that if the human race were to die out, so would wheat.

“Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts of most people,” she writes, "although it is really as unnatural and freakish as the Frankenstein monster; if man were to die, I read, wheat wouldn't survive him more than three years."

Wheat, it seems, must be cultivated to produce grain to make bread. Wheat left to its own devices produce smaller and smaller grains, unable to support itself, much less the human race.

God gives us the wheat, just as God gives us love and justice and compassion and courage and the ability to know right from wrong. It is up to us to take those gifts, to cultivate them as carefully as we do wheat, and to use them, as God intended, to bring life to the world.