Jesus asked his disciples, “Have you understood this?” “Yes,” they said. “Everyone who understands what I say,” he said, “is like a person who brings out of his treasure what is old and what is new.”
The old and the new: we in God’s Church live in a dynamic tension between what God has revealed and what God is revealing. We are like trees planted by water, whose roots sink into something set and stable and we are like a leaf in the wind, being blown to a fro by the Holy Spirit. This tension is manifested in many different ways; pleas to post the 10 Commandments on courthouse walls express a longing for olden treasures while calls to allow women a greater role in the life of the Roman Catholic Church cry out for what is new.
Years ago I was at a meeting of clergy gathered to give counsel to a bishop. In attendance was a priest who served in one of the northern Virginia parishes that later would leave the Episcopal Church, attempting to take diocesan property with them. This priest was well-dressed for the meeting, in a suit and tie you might expect to see worn by a highly-placed beltway insider. He sat at a table with his palm-pilot docked on a keyboard, which was cutting edge technology in the day. If there were a GQ Magazine for clergy, he could have been on the cover. When the conversation turned to issues of human sexuality, he criticized the direction the church was headed stating it was trying to be too much like the world. I kept to myself my amusement at the irony, but have always held the moment as an image of how the goodness of newness, like beauty, is often times in the eye of the beholder. My new may not be good to you.
When we talk about the church moving toward what is new and holding on to what is old it is important to make a distinction between method and message; the two are not the same, but both are important. Our methods of communicating the Gospel are closely tied to the culture. After I was newly ordained I attended a seminar designed to train churches how to set up telemarketing phone banks to “get the word out.” Today that approach is passé; swamped by the public’s distaste for it and by the rise of social networks.
Method. I jokingly told Doug Kincaid that he was in charge of organizing a task force to recommend how best to incorporate projection screens in our worship space. Being one of our most conservative members, I don’t expect a report any time soon. Still, we live in a culture that has moved from verbal to visual and this presents both challenges and opportunities for our method of worship.
New methods seem to come and go as the culture moves along, but new messages have a way of causing a stir before they take root. If we were gathered at St. Paul’s 160 years ago, no doubt our pews would be populated with slave-owning parishioners. Any sermon that attempted to repudiate the bible’s apparent validation of this institution would have been round rejected as “new-fangled” hogwash. But today, that “new” teaching is a part of the “old” message entrusted to us.
In his address at diocesan council last February, our bishop said it was time to organize a task force to help our diocese have conversation around issues of sexuality and the blessing of same gender unions. He pointed out that next summer’s General Convention of the entire Episcopal Church will receive liturgies for the blessing of same-gender unions and make some determination about what to do with them. His reasoning for calling together a task force is sound: it is better to go into such a moment informed and in communion with one another than to be blindsided by it.
As I listened to the bishop I agreed with the need for such a group to begin to meet, but thought to myself, “I don’t have a clue what they should do and I feel sorry for whoever is asked to serve on it.” Later that day the bishop approached me and said, “Keith, I need you to do me a favor.” He didn’t even have to say it, the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that he wanted me to co-chair the group.
I have spent the better part of my ordained ministry trying to stay out of this “fight,” but I have to tell you it is fascinating reading material and listening to personal stories from all points of view and perspectives because they exhibit the dynamic tension between what God has revealed – the old – and what God is revealing – the new. Our task force meets for just the second time later this week. I have no idea where we are heading or what we will produce, but it feels like one of those good and godly challenges to figure out which treasures of the old should not be discarded and which treasures of the new should not be discounted.
Churches in the reformed tradition have a saying that goes semper reformanda – “always reforming.” It is rooted in a belief that the church can never stand pat. We treasure what is new because the Church is to be more than a museum and more than a historical society. The Church is to be God’s greatest and most effective means of mission; giving shape and substance to God’s love for the world. The Church values what is old because it is impossible to make sense of our on-going story without the perspective and wisdom of the old, old story.
We heard this morning a string of parables calling on us to imagine a new reality called the kingdom of heaven. It is a reality emerging from the rich tradition of Judaism and God’s on-going promise to use that people as witness to divine love. This new kingdom is like something that starts off small, but in the end is very large. It is like leaven which animates dormant flour. It is like discovering an unexpected treasure. It is like stumbling across the one thing you have spent all your life searching for. It is like a very large haul of fish that must be sifted for what is good to eat and what is not. Each image in its own way describes a treasure that is old and a treasure that is new.
Ultimately the kingdom of heaven is God’s dream for creation. It is a dream that we see as if through a mirror dimly. It contains both what it old – what was, is, and always will be – and it contains what is new – what is yet to be seen. It can be a bit scary living in this tension, but it can also be exciting. It is scary when something fundamental to our understanding of God’s dream is challenged. It is exciting when God challenges a wrong we ourselves are powerless to make right.
“Do you understand all of this?” Jesus asked his followers. Doubtless they did and they didn’t. They had an inkling that Jesus was going to turn over some tables, but did not at the time have a full vision of the kingdom of heaven. Holding tight to what we have been given, let us move forward with courage and good will toward all as we lay hold of treasures yet unseen.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Search Me Out, O God
Psalm 139
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You trace my journeys and my resting-places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O Lord, know it altogether.
You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.
Where can I go then from your Spirit? *
where can I flee from your presence?
If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, *
and the light around me turn to night,”
Darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day; *
darkness and light to you are both alike.
For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,
when as yet there was none of them.
How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them,
they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
You that thirst for blood, depart from me.
They speak despitefully against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.
Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.
A few years ago there was an Episcopal comedian making the rounds at diocesan councils throughout the church. Now, I admit, you after to be pretty hardcore into our denomination to appreciate Episcopal humor. One of his lines, which I am sure you won’t laugh at now, poked fun at assigned bible readings that skip over certain verses. “Are you like me,” he asked? “Do you want to pull out a bible and read the stuff they didn’t want you to see?”
We jumped over fives verses in today’s gospel reading because in it Jesus tells another parable before explaining the one we read. Not much drama there. The Psalm reading for today, however, called for verses 1-11 and 22-23. This focused the psalm more toward the Old Testament reading, highlighting God’s abiding presence with us as God was present with Jacob. But what was to be omitted is worth reading and thus we recited the entire 139th Psalm, not just a portion of it.
Appointed psalms often get chopped up. As I said, sometimes it is done to focus the poem more toward the theme of another appointed reading. Other times it is because the verses are just down-right embarrassing. Take Psalm 137 for instance. It begins with that beautiful, moving lament:
By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
when we remembered you, O Zion.
But we tend not to hear the last two verses in public worship:
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy the one who pays you back
for what you have done to us!
Happy shall he be who takes your little ones,
and dashes them against the rock!
Surely you can understand why these two verses are left out.
In addition to its soaring poetry the 139th Psalm contains a similar obstacle:
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
***
If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
***
For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
***
I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
***
How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them,
they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
Think how impoverished our doctrine of God and our doctrine of humanity would be without these incredible, theological insights. But all of the wonderful, sacred reflection leads up to this:
Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
You that thirst for blood, depart from me.
They speak despitefully against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.
Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.
It almost feels like the writer took a sharp turn and drove the psalm right off a cliff. No wonder these verses get omitted from our public reciting! And yet, to my reading, they are the key to understanding the entire psalm. Let me explain.
It is clear that beyond all the magnificent language and imagery, the psalm’s author is filled with anger. He is consumed with rage at his enemies, at those who take God’s name in vain, at the wicked in the land.
Now, anger takes many different shapes and forms; some appropriate, some not.
• Rage is a violent outburst of anger in which self-control is lost.
• Fury is an overwhelming rage of such frenzy that it borders on madness.
• Indignation is a righteous anger aroused by what is considered unjust.
• Wrath is deep indignation that expresses itself in a desire to punish or to get revenge.
It is hard to say which of these the psalmist experienced, but this we do know: the author – no matter how justified he or she may have been in feeling anger – was not comfortable with its intensity. He or she wonders if it is the appropriate response or not.
And so the psalmist confesses a belief that God is always present, that God made the author to be who he or she is, that God knows the author through and through, that God’s insight is deeper and greater than anything we can imagine. Given all of this, the author lays out the hatred he or she feels.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.
“Here I am God, bare and unvarnished. Now tell me if I am justified to be this angry or am I nurturing sin with all that is raging inside me.”
It is a powerful psalm not just because of what it says about God and not just because of what it says about God’s craftsmanship displayed uniquely in each one of us, but also because it demonstrates how one person presents him or herself to God for examination, for judgment, and for correction. “O God, am I right to feel the way I do?” What an incredible prayer.
Many of the psalms approach God with a question and in some of them God responds, but not here. This one ends with the psalmist’s offering of self before God. Whatever God’s response was, the psalmist chooses not to incorporate it in this work. I am O.K. with that. Imagine if God’s answer to this person was, “Of course you are right to hate your enemies.” Then the psalm would be used as a proof-text to justify all anger. Or what if God’s answer was, “No, you are wrong to hate.” Well, then the psalm might be used to say all anger is unjustified. What the psalm gives us is the question; the witness of one person placing him or herself before God seeking divine discernment.
Some people say that the bible has all the answers to life’s questions. While it does contain some concrete direction, often times what the bible gives us is a question. The question of Psalm 139 is “Am I right to hate my enemies?” And while it does not give us the answer, still there is something incredibly valuable about its witness, isn’t there. It calls us to be people who come before God continually, presenting ourselves, our actions, our motivations, our emotions before the seat of the One who is always with us, who formed us to be who we are, and who knows us inside and out.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You trace my journeys and my resting-places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O Lord, know it altogether.
You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.
Where can I go then from your Spirit? *
where can I flee from your presence?
If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, *
and the light around me turn to night,”
Darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day; *
darkness and light to you are both alike.
For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,
when as yet there was none of them.
How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them,
they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
You that thirst for blood, depart from me.
They speak despitefully against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.
Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.
A few years ago there was an Episcopal comedian making the rounds at diocesan councils throughout the church. Now, I admit, you after to be pretty hardcore into our denomination to appreciate Episcopal humor. One of his lines, which I am sure you won’t laugh at now, poked fun at assigned bible readings that skip over certain verses. “Are you like me,” he asked? “Do you want to pull out a bible and read the stuff they didn’t want you to see?”
We jumped over fives verses in today’s gospel reading because in it Jesus tells another parable before explaining the one we read. Not much drama there. The Psalm reading for today, however, called for verses 1-11 and 22-23. This focused the psalm more toward the Old Testament reading, highlighting God’s abiding presence with us as God was present with Jacob. But what was to be omitted is worth reading and thus we recited the entire 139th Psalm, not just a portion of it.
Appointed psalms often get chopped up. As I said, sometimes it is done to focus the poem more toward the theme of another appointed reading. Other times it is because the verses are just down-right embarrassing. Take Psalm 137 for instance. It begins with that beautiful, moving lament:
By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
when we remembered you, O Zion.
But we tend not to hear the last two verses in public worship:
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy the one who pays you back
for what you have done to us!
Happy shall he be who takes your little ones,
and dashes them against the rock!
Surely you can understand why these two verses are left out.
In addition to its soaring poetry the 139th Psalm contains a similar obstacle:
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
***
If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
***
For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
***
I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
***
How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them,
they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
Think how impoverished our doctrine of God and our doctrine of humanity would be without these incredible, theological insights. But all of the wonderful, sacred reflection leads up to this:
Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
You that thirst for blood, depart from me.
They speak despitefully against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.
Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.
It almost feels like the writer took a sharp turn and drove the psalm right off a cliff. No wonder these verses get omitted from our public reciting! And yet, to my reading, they are the key to understanding the entire psalm. Let me explain.
It is clear that beyond all the magnificent language and imagery, the psalm’s author is filled with anger. He is consumed with rage at his enemies, at those who take God’s name in vain, at the wicked in the land.
Now, anger takes many different shapes and forms; some appropriate, some not.
• Rage is a violent outburst of anger in which self-control is lost.
• Fury is an overwhelming rage of such frenzy that it borders on madness.
• Indignation is a righteous anger aroused by what is considered unjust.
• Wrath is deep indignation that expresses itself in a desire to punish or to get revenge.
It is hard to say which of these the psalmist experienced, but this we do know: the author – no matter how justified he or she may have been in feeling anger – was not comfortable with its intensity. He or she wonders if it is the appropriate response or not.
And so the psalmist confesses a belief that God is always present, that God made the author to be who he or she is, that God knows the author through and through, that God’s insight is deeper and greater than anything we can imagine. Given all of this, the author lays out the hatred he or she feels.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.
“Here I am God, bare and unvarnished. Now tell me if I am justified to be this angry or am I nurturing sin with all that is raging inside me.”
It is a powerful psalm not just because of what it says about God and not just because of what it says about God’s craftsmanship displayed uniquely in each one of us, but also because it demonstrates how one person presents him or herself to God for examination, for judgment, and for correction. “O God, am I right to feel the way I do?” What an incredible prayer.
Many of the psalms approach God with a question and in some of them God responds, but not here. This one ends with the psalmist’s offering of self before God. Whatever God’s response was, the psalmist chooses not to incorporate it in this work. I am O.K. with that. Imagine if God’s answer to this person was, “Of course you are right to hate your enemies.” Then the psalm would be used as a proof-text to justify all anger. Or what if God’s answer was, “No, you are wrong to hate.” Well, then the psalm might be used to say all anger is unjustified. What the psalm gives us is the question; the witness of one person placing him or herself before God seeking divine discernment.
Some people say that the bible has all the answers to life’s questions. While it does contain some concrete direction, often times what the bible gives us is a question. The question of Psalm 139 is “Am I right to hate my enemies?” And while it does not give us the answer, still there is something incredibly valuable about its witness, isn’t there. It calls us to be people who come before God continually, presenting ourselves, our actions, our motivations, our emotions before the seat of the One who is always with us, who formed us to be who we are, and who knows us inside and out.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Monday, June 20, 2011
A Biblically Balanced Theology of Creation & Environmental Concern
We read this morning the breathtaking 8th Psalm. It is the Psalter’s version of the creation story. The poet is sitting under the nighttime stars. In the middle-eastern culture of that long-ago era, with no artificial lights to diminish the view of the darken sky, the view must have been spectacular: more stars than the mind can count, the Milky Way striped across the darkened dome, asteroids making fiery dashes from every direction. And so the poet begins to ponder what countless others have pondered ever before and ever since:
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers, *
the moon and the stars
you have set in their courses,
What is man that you should be mindful of him?
the son of man that you should seek him out?
It is a question I have asked while encountering the grandeur and majesty of God’s creation and I suspect it is one you have considered as well. “Given all that is before me, just who am I and how do I fit into the grand scheme of things?”
For the poet of Psalm 8, the answer is rooted in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. There we read about God’s six-day work of creation. The story is not intended to be taken as a literal scientific textbook, but rather is pregnant with meaning; conveying to us God’s intimate involvement with the creative process and God’s pleasure deeply imbued in every aspect of it. And here is the meaning that speaks powerfully to the poet (Genesis 1:28ff):
“God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.’”
The psalmist picks up this sense of ordering or hierarchy and to the question “Who am I” makes this assertion:
You have made us but little lower than the angels;
you adorn us with glory and honor;
You give us mastery over the works of your hands; *
you put all things under our feet:
All sheep and oxen, *
even the wild beasts of the field,
The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, *
and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea.
Who are we? We are the ones who have dominion and mastery over all of creation. We are commanded to subdue it and make it yield to our purposes. It is God’s first command to the human family and we have taken it and hit the ground running, haven’t we.
Much good has come from our hierarchical understanding of ourselves above creation. We have been given authority to cure disease, harness the power of the elements, plant fields, and create livestock. Some other religious perspectives place humanity on an equal footing with creation while a few place us even lower than creation and the results are a social disaster where human beings experience unimaginable and preventable suffering. Our Judeo-Christian heritage has given us a theological perspective that holds human misery (1) is not God’s will and (2) we have been empowered by God to do something about it.
This is the positive side of our theology, but there is a shadow to it. We now can level entire mountain ranges in order to extract coal. Human activity has contributed to an alarming rate of species extinction. In our own community the waters of the upper Nansemond River are unfit not only to support aquatic life, but also for human recreation.
As far back as 1967, people began to link environmental destruction to Christian theology. In her book, “The Historical Roots of the Ecological Crisis”, Lynn White stated that Christianity carries a “huge burden of guilt” for perpetuating a theology of God removed from creation and exalting humans above the rest of creation - leading to the belief and practice that everything exists primarily to serve our needs. It is a serious charge that is not without merit.
I find that even those with a nominal understanding of the bible possess an awareness that God has put us in charge and that creation is here to meet our needs. If all scripture said on the subject was contained in Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 then this might be an accurate perception. But a fuller understanding of what the bible says fills out the picture in ways that are challenging to this old notion and helpful in our present time.
Last Sunday we read a portion of Psalm 104. At thirty-seven verses, it is nearly four times longer than Psalm 8 and though it starts in roughly the same place – pondering the nighttime sky – it moves in a very different direction. The first ten verses describe God’s active role in creation, but take it one step further by placing God’s creating work within the forces of nature:
You make the winds your messengers *
and flames of fire your servants.
If wind and fire are tools that God uses, what implications does this hold for the human race who has been given dominion and mastery? It says at least that our subduing is subservient to God’s higher purposes.
The psalm goes on:
[The waters] went up into the hills
and down to the valleys beneath, *
to the places you had appointed for them.
Why does this poet believe that God is so intimately involved in the location of water? The answer begins in verse 11:
All the beasts of the field drink their fill from them, *
and the wild asses quench their thirst.
Beside them the birds of the air make their nests *
and sing among the branches.
Just as with Genesis 1, Psalm 104 should not be taken as a textbook on ecosystems, but what it does give us is a theology of God’s intentionality. God has created the world in such a way that it is set to meet the needs of all God’s creatures. The poet specifically mentions plants, flocks and herds, foods, wine, oil, bread, trees, birds, storks, mountain goats, rock badgers, lions, and animals of prey. The poets has a sense of the delicate balance of things, observing how some animals come out at night to hunt and then slip away to their dens at the first hint of dawn.
Only after the sun has come up and the wild beasts have sought shelter - in the twenty-fourth verse of the psalm - does the poet begin to consider the human race:
Man goes forth to his work *
and to his labor until the evening.
What does it tell you that the poet sets humanity not above but within the rhythm of life? For the author, it means that we are one of God’s many creatures who inhabit the earth together in a manner fashioned by God’s wisdom.
The psalm goes on to describe the seas as a place both filled with “living things too many to number” as well as a place where ships navigate and ply their trade. “All of them” look to God to give them their food, says the psalmist, and the ‘all’ includes us.
You give it [food] to them [including us humans]; they gather it; *
you open your hand, and they are filled with good things.
You hide your face, and they are terrified; *
you take away their breath and they die and return to their dust.
You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; *
and so you renew the face of the earth.
May the glory of the LORD endure for ever; *
may the LORD rejoice in all his works.
All in all, it is an elegant poem conveying (to use our word) an ecologically sensitive theological perspective. It is an under-taught and underappreciated part of our Christian heritage and we live in an era that begs for its recovery.
I believe Jesus fashioned his theology from the roots of both Psalm 8 and Psalm 104. Do you remember when he taught his disciples not to worry? “Consider the sparrows,” he said. “They are bought and sold for pennies, but God cares enough about them to feed them” – Psalm 104. And then he asks, “Are you not of more value then they?” – Psalm 8. “Well then, trust in God to feed you too” - again, Psalm 104.
We Christians, who some say bear a huge burden of guilt for the ecological crisis – have a theology that can and should put us at the forefront of caring for God’s creation. Psalms 8 and 104 affirm the following:
• God is intimately involved in all aspects of creation.
• God’s majesty is conveyed through the manifold nature of God’s creatures.
• God has created certain rhythms, cycles and patterns to sustain all of God’s creation.
• We human beings can and should use our mastery over creation to meet our needs, but our ability to do this must not come at the expense of creation.
• In this day and age our mastery should be focused on managing all of God’s creation in a way that allows it to flourish.
You and I can live into this through our prayers and through our actions. We can live into it through how we manage our households and our properties, through the products we purchase and through the policies we endorse with our votes. As we look at the nighttime sky and ask the age-old question: “Oh Lord, when I consider all the works of your hands, I wonder what exactly is my place in all of this,” the answer is both ancient (rooted in the wisdom from long ago) and modern (grounded in the environmental reality of our times).
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers, *
the moon and the stars
you have set in their courses,
What is man that you should be mindful of him?
the son of man that you should seek him out?
It is a question I have asked while encountering the grandeur and majesty of God’s creation and I suspect it is one you have considered as well. “Given all that is before me, just who am I and how do I fit into the grand scheme of things?”
For the poet of Psalm 8, the answer is rooted in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. There we read about God’s six-day work of creation. The story is not intended to be taken as a literal scientific textbook, but rather is pregnant with meaning; conveying to us God’s intimate involvement with the creative process and God’s pleasure deeply imbued in every aspect of it. And here is the meaning that speaks powerfully to the poet (Genesis 1:28ff):
“God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.’”
The psalmist picks up this sense of ordering or hierarchy and to the question “Who am I” makes this assertion:
You have made us but little lower than the angels;
you adorn us with glory and honor;
You give us mastery over the works of your hands; *
you put all things under our feet:
All sheep and oxen, *
even the wild beasts of the field,
The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, *
and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea.
Who are we? We are the ones who have dominion and mastery over all of creation. We are commanded to subdue it and make it yield to our purposes. It is God’s first command to the human family and we have taken it and hit the ground running, haven’t we.
Much good has come from our hierarchical understanding of ourselves above creation. We have been given authority to cure disease, harness the power of the elements, plant fields, and create livestock. Some other religious perspectives place humanity on an equal footing with creation while a few place us even lower than creation and the results are a social disaster where human beings experience unimaginable and preventable suffering. Our Judeo-Christian heritage has given us a theological perspective that holds human misery (1) is not God’s will and (2) we have been empowered by God to do something about it.
This is the positive side of our theology, but there is a shadow to it. We now can level entire mountain ranges in order to extract coal. Human activity has contributed to an alarming rate of species extinction. In our own community the waters of the upper Nansemond River are unfit not only to support aquatic life, but also for human recreation.
As far back as 1967, people began to link environmental destruction to Christian theology. In her book, “The Historical Roots of the Ecological Crisis”, Lynn White stated that Christianity carries a “huge burden of guilt” for perpetuating a theology of God removed from creation and exalting humans above the rest of creation - leading to the belief and practice that everything exists primarily to serve our needs. It is a serious charge that is not without merit.
I find that even those with a nominal understanding of the bible possess an awareness that God has put us in charge and that creation is here to meet our needs. If all scripture said on the subject was contained in Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 then this might be an accurate perception. But a fuller understanding of what the bible says fills out the picture in ways that are challenging to this old notion and helpful in our present time.
Last Sunday we read a portion of Psalm 104. At thirty-seven verses, it is nearly four times longer than Psalm 8 and though it starts in roughly the same place – pondering the nighttime sky – it moves in a very different direction. The first ten verses describe God’s active role in creation, but take it one step further by placing God’s creating work within the forces of nature:
You make the winds your messengers *
and flames of fire your servants.
If wind and fire are tools that God uses, what implications does this hold for the human race who has been given dominion and mastery? It says at least that our subduing is subservient to God’s higher purposes.
The psalm goes on:
[The waters] went up into the hills
and down to the valleys beneath, *
to the places you had appointed for them.
Why does this poet believe that God is so intimately involved in the location of water? The answer begins in verse 11:
All the beasts of the field drink their fill from them, *
and the wild asses quench their thirst.
Beside them the birds of the air make their nests *
and sing among the branches.
Just as with Genesis 1, Psalm 104 should not be taken as a textbook on ecosystems, but what it does give us is a theology of God’s intentionality. God has created the world in such a way that it is set to meet the needs of all God’s creatures. The poet specifically mentions plants, flocks and herds, foods, wine, oil, bread, trees, birds, storks, mountain goats, rock badgers, lions, and animals of prey. The poets has a sense of the delicate balance of things, observing how some animals come out at night to hunt and then slip away to their dens at the first hint of dawn.
Only after the sun has come up and the wild beasts have sought shelter - in the twenty-fourth verse of the psalm - does the poet begin to consider the human race:
Man goes forth to his work *
and to his labor until the evening.
What does it tell you that the poet sets humanity not above but within the rhythm of life? For the author, it means that we are one of God’s many creatures who inhabit the earth together in a manner fashioned by God’s wisdom.
The psalm goes on to describe the seas as a place both filled with “living things too many to number” as well as a place where ships navigate and ply their trade. “All of them” look to God to give them their food, says the psalmist, and the ‘all’ includes us.
You give it [food] to them [including us humans]; they gather it; *
you open your hand, and they are filled with good things.
You hide your face, and they are terrified; *
you take away their breath and they die and return to their dust.
You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; *
and so you renew the face of the earth.
May the glory of the LORD endure for ever; *
may the LORD rejoice in all his works.
All in all, it is an elegant poem conveying (to use our word) an ecologically sensitive theological perspective. It is an under-taught and underappreciated part of our Christian heritage and we live in an era that begs for its recovery.
I believe Jesus fashioned his theology from the roots of both Psalm 8 and Psalm 104. Do you remember when he taught his disciples not to worry? “Consider the sparrows,” he said. “They are bought and sold for pennies, but God cares enough about them to feed them” – Psalm 104. And then he asks, “Are you not of more value then they?” – Psalm 8. “Well then, trust in God to feed you too” - again, Psalm 104.
We Christians, who some say bear a huge burden of guilt for the ecological crisis – have a theology that can and should put us at the forefront of caring for God’s creation. Psalms 8 and 104 affirm the following:
• God is intimately involved in all aspects of creation.
• God’s majesty is conveyed through the manifold nature of God’s creatures.
• God has created certain rhythms, cycles and patterns to sustain all of God’s creation.
• We human beings can and should use our mastery over creation to meet our needs, but our ability to do this must not come at the expense of creation.
• In this day and age our mastery should be focused on managing all of God’s creation in a way that allows it to flourish.
You and I can live into this through our prayers and through our actions. We can live into it through how we manage our households and our properties, through the products we purchase and through the policies we endorse with our votes. As we look at the nighttime sky and ask the age-old question: “Oh Lord, when I consider all the works of your hands, I wonder what exactly is my place in all of this,” the answer is both ancient (rooted in the wisdom from long ago) and modern (grounded in the environmental reality of our times).
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
The Promise of the Holy Spirit
When I was a teenager I went on a mission trip to Owsley County, Kentucky, one of the 10 poorest counties in America. Our church had a relationship with a little congregation there and each summer that year’s confirmation class put on a Vacation Bible School for local children. In the evenings we did different things in the area to get a feel for Appalachian life and culture. One night we attended a small, Pentecostal Church. It was an experience I will never forget. The tiny, white, clapboard structure was hot inside and packed. The choir was loud and in constant motion. The preacher was even louder and more energetic than the choir. And then it happened: members of the congregation ‘got slain in the Spirit.’ They were shaking. They were screaming. They were jumping. They were seeing ecstatic visions. They were talking gibberish. They were being anything but Rite 1 Episcopalians. I remember my friends and I being wide-eyed at the sight and a little afraid.
Throughout the Easter season, the assigned readings from Scripture point us in anticipation toward Pentecost – next Sunday – when we celebrate the gift of God’s Holy Spirit and the birth of the God’s church. Most Episcopalians are not big “Holy Spirit” type people. We don’t speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick expecting miracles, or get carried away shaking and dancing during the service. When we think about the Holy Spirit, we tend to think of the extreme manifestations of the Holy Spirit and thus assume that the Holy Spirit is not for us. Our Easter season readings challenge us to think otherwise; to name the fundamental works of the Holy Spirit, to claim them for ourselves, and to manifest them in our lives.
On Resurrection Sunday evening, Jesus appears to the Disciples as they are gathered together in a locked room. “Peace be with you,’ He says to them. And then the text says He “breathed” on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” And so here we see the first work of the Holy Spirit, that of bringing peace: peace where there is panic or grief or fear or worry and peace where there is brokenness or hostility between people.
There was a juried art show where participants were invited to submit works that centered on the theme of “Finding Peace.” Many different pieces were submitted and these of varying quality with vastly divergent interpretations. In the end, the contest came down to two paintings. The first depicted a placid, rural scene in the center of which stood a country farm house. It was surrounded by fertile fields of wheat which seemed so lifelike you could almost hear them rustle in the wind. A bright sun shone down from a blue sky with wispy clouds as cows stood under the shade of a tree, drinking from a cool, clear stream. All of this was nestled in a valley whose soft, distant hills made the world of the city – our world – seem light years away. The painting’s quality and composition were so well done, that you felt more at peace simply by gazing at it for a moment or two.
That was one painting. The other was very different. Its artist depicted a raging tempest, with trees swaying to and fro on a storm-lashed mountainside. The ominous sky was marked by zigzag flashes of lightning. Its turbulent content and use of color were deeply unsettling. At first glance, nothing about the painting projected the theme of finding peace. But a closer look revealed a small nest perched under a rock outcrop. In the nest was a bird, which, even though it had scant protection, appeared content in the face of all that swirled around it.
God’s Spirit leads us to green pastures and still waters; those times and places conveyed by the first painting. But the circumstances in which the Disciples found themselves when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit’s peace upon them more closely resembled the second painting, didn’t it.
Years ago I got one of those calls that pastors get: a woman in the parish was dashing to a trauma center because her husband had been in a horrific accident. I met her in the ICU and the situation was everyone’s worst nightmare. She and I talked about many different things, but the most important was what to say to her middle-school aged children. We discussed different options and (with my gentle leading) decided that they needed to face this together as a family. And once she made that decision, a peace came over her at that moment I will never forget. The months ahead were filled with many, many challenges and it was not an easy road for any of them, but the peace of God which passes all understanding – the peace which is a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence – never left her.
The Holy Spirit’s presence: last Sunday we heard Jesus say to His followers, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.”
There was a priest who was upset because some parishioners were leaving church after receiving communion and not staying for the final prayer and hymn. So rather than doing the obvious (like cutting down his sermons so everyone could get out on time!), he posted this message in the bulletin:
“It is a great dishonor to our blessed Lord if you leave the church before the end of the service. The Church tells us Jesus remains in our bodies fifteen minutes after we have received communion. [By the way, I have never heard that before] This means that our communion should last fifteen minutes long and we should not leave the church until our Lord is no longer with us.”
Well, if we followed this counsel we would never leave church at all. Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, abides with us at all times and in all places. Sometimes we know this presence as a guide, other times as a comfort; sometimes as a source of great courage, other times as a fount of deep quiet. One of the reasons why the 23rd Psalm is so beloved is that its affirmation rings true with our experience: “You are with me.” That powerful sense of God’s abiding presence is a work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Peace and a sense of God’s presence. Today’s reading adds to these one more part of the Spirit’s work in us. Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Next Sunday we will hear again the Pentecost story where the Spirit gives power to the Disciples to reach across customs and cultures to proclaim the Gospel. In word and in deed we are given power by the Holy Spirit to live the Christian life.
At each baptism we make crazy professions and promises far beyond are ability to fulfill:
I renounce Satan, the world, and myself.
I will continue in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers.
I will persevere in resisting evil, and whenever I sin repent and return to the Lord.
I will proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ.
I will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving my neighbor as myself.
I will strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.
And the only way these professions and promises make any sense at all is that as we make them we say, “I will [comma] with God’s help.” That help which we count on and claim is the sure and certain work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
I think back to that evening service at the Pentecostal Church so many years ago and can make no more sense of it today than I could then. Its witness to the Spirit is not one I have ever sought or experienced. My own experience of the Holy Spirit is one I proclaim to you: that the Holy Spirit is with you as a source of power and peace, conveying God’s abiding presence in your life.
Throughout the Easter season, the assigned readings from Scripture point us in anticipation toward Pentecost – next Sunday – when we celebrate the gift of God’s Holy Spirit and the birth of the God’s church. Most Episcopalians are not big “Holy Spirit” type people. We don’t speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick expecting miracles, or get carried away shaking and dancing during the service. When we think about the Holy Spirit, we tend to think of the extreme manifestations of the Holy Spirit and thus assume that the Holy Spirit is not for us. Our Easter season readings challenge us to think otherwise; to name the fundamental works of the Holy Spirit, to claim them for ourselves, and to manifest them in our lives.
On Resurrection Sunday evening, Jesus appears to the Disciples as they are gathered together in a locked room. “Peace be with you,’ He says to them. And then the text says He “breathed” on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” And so here we see the first work of the Holy Spirit, that of bringing peace: peace where there is panic or grief or fear or worry and peace where there is brokenness or hostility between people.
There was a juried art show where participants were invited to submit works that centered on the theme of “Finding Peace.” Many different pieces were submitted and these of varying quality with vastly divergent interpretations. In the end, the contest came down to two paintings. The first depicted a placid, rural scene in the center of which stood a country farm house. It was surrounded by fertile fields of wheat which seemed so lifelike you could almost hear them rustle in the wind. A bright sun shone down from a blue sky with wispy clouds as cows stood under the shade of a tree, drinking from a cool, clear stream. All of this was nestled in a valley whose soft, distant hills made the world of the city – our world – seem light years away. The painting’s quality and composition were so well done, that you felt more at peace simply by gazing at it for a moment or two.
That was one painting. The other was very different. Its artist depicted a raging tempest, with trees swaying to and fro on a storm-lashed mountainside. The ominous sky was marked by zigzag flashes of lightning. Its turbulent content and use of color were deeply unsettling. At first glance, nothing about the painting projected the theme of finding peace. But a closer look revealed a small nest perched under a rock outcrop. In the nest was a bird, which, even though it had scant protection, appeared content in the face of all that swirled around it.
God’s Spirit leads us to green pastures and still waters; those times and places conveyed by the first painting. But the circumstances in which the Disciples found themselves when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit’s peace upon them more closely resembled the second painting, didn’t it.
Years ago I got one of those calls that pastors get: a woman in the parish was dashing to a trauma center because her husband had been in a horrific accident. I met her in the ICU and the situation was everyone’s worst nightmare. She and I talked about many different things, but the most important was what to say to her middle-school aged children. We discussed different options and (with my gentle leading) decided that they needed to face this together as a family. And once she made that decision, a peace came over her at that moment I will never forget. The months ahead were filled with many, many challenges and it was not an easy road for any of them, but the peace of God which passes all understanding – the peace which is a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence – never left her.
The Holy Spirit’s presence: last Sunday we heard Jesus say to His followers, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.”
There was a priest who was upset because some parishioners were leaving church after receiving communion and not staying for the final prayer and hymn. So rather than doing the obvious (like cutting down his sermons so everyone could get out on time!), he posted this message in the bulletin:
“It is a great dishonor to our blessed Lord if you leave the church before the end of the service. The Church tells us Jesus remains in our bodies fifteen minutes after we have received communion. [By the way, I have never heard that before] This means that our communion should last fifteen minutes long and we should not leave the church until our Lord is no longer with us.”
Well, if we followed this counsel we would never leave church at all. Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, abides with us at all times and in all places. Sometimes we know this presence as a guide, other times as a comfort; sometimes as a source of great courage, other times as a fount of deep quiet. One of the reasons why the 23rd Psalm is so beloved is that its affirmation rings true with our experience: “You are with me.” That powerful sense of God’s abiding presence is a work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Peace and a sense of God’s presence. Today’s reading adds to these one more part of the Spirit’s work in us. Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Next Sunday we will hear again the Pentecost story where the Spirit gives power to the Disciples to reach across customs and cultures to proclaim the Gospel. In word and in deed we are given power by the Holy Spirit to live the Christian life.
At each baptism we make crazy professions and promises far beyond are ability to fulfill:
I renounce Satan, the world, and myself.
I will continue in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers.
I will persevere in resisting evil, and whenever I sin repent and return to the Lord.
I will proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ.
I will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving my neighbor as myself.
I will strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.
And the only way these professions and promises make any sense at all is that as we make them we say, “I will [comma] with God’s help.” That help which we count on and claim is the sure and certain work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
I think back to that evening service at the Pentecostal Church so many years ago and can make no more sense of it today than I could then. Its witness to the Spirit is not one I have ever sought or experienced. My own experience of the Holy Spirit is one I proclaim to you: that the Holy Spirit is with you as a source of power and peace, conveying God’s abiding presence in your life.
Monday, May 23, 2011
"Show us the Father"
The Apostle Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
There is a universal longing to know the One who is Holy and Other. It cuts across culture and time. Every week there is a headline that in one form or another touches on the human desire to encounter God. This week the renowned Oxford physicist Stephen Hawking made news by proclaiming heaven is a fairy tale and mathematics explains how creation came to be without the aid of a creator. At the other end of the spectrum a radio host garnered lots of attention by predicting the rapture would take place yesterday. Both of these in one just week.
12,000 years ago, human civilization began to take shape at a Turkish site known as Göbekli Tepe. Built some 7,000 years before the pyramids, it is the oldest know worship space ever discovered and the earliest known sign of an organized community. The ancient stone ruins bear witness to the human quest to search for the divine. In one form or another, the plea and the prayer “Show us the Father” has been uttered and offered for a long, long time.
Before we even begin to wonder “Who is God?” we might want to ask if the answer will matter. Many people will tell you they believe in God, but the real question is not the existence of God, but the importance of God. How does God make a difference in your life? How should it? I have never been to the South Pole and yet I believe it exists. Still, that geographical assertion makes little difference in my daily life. I don’t remember much about the Pythagorean Theorem, only that it is an abstract statement which does not really affect my daily life either. To believe that God exists in the way you believe in the South Pole or in the reality of an equation is not a religious stance. A god who exists but does not matter, who does not make a difference in the way you experience life, might as well not exist. As important as it is to know who God is and what God is like, that pursuit will be meaningless if, as we get closer to the answer, we are not fundamentally changed but what we are discovering.
So that is one question… if you see God will it make any difference. Here is another… can you see a God who looks any different than you? The 18th century French political commentator and part-time meteorologist Baron de Montesquieu said that if triangles had a god, it would have three sides. He was speaking of the human tendency toward graven images with the self being the model for the figure.
There is a story about a man who wanted to see God so he traveled the world searching for enlightenment. Eventually he was directed to a remote location in the Himalayas where a wise mystic was said to live. Upon meeting the holy man, the searcher told him of his dreams. “I can show you God if you follow me,” the mystic assured him. The searcher was led into a beautifully decorated chamber where an elaborately carved chest was prominently displayed. “Open the door of the chest,” the mystic instructed, “and you will see God.” The man opened the door only to find behind it another door. The mystic implored him to open that one. Again, there was another door. “Keep going,” he was told. Again, a door and then another and another. Finally he came to a small, simple, roughly hewn door that appeared to be at the center of the chest. “Open this door and you will see your God.” With great trepidation, the searcher opened the door, and there before him was a mirror with the image of his own face reflecting back at him. The mystic’s great insight was to highlight the human proclivity to conceive of God as being in our own spiritual, emotional, psychological, and even physical likeness. Triangles need to remember that God is not limited to three sides.
That is something we don’t and probably can’t understand when we are younger. Seven-year-old Kristi Pflanz said this about her notion of God:
"God makes people’s lives better. He made my dad be the pushover because he buys me more toys than my mom. But sometimes God’s sort of not nice because one time He made this machine where you try to set it to grab the stuffed animal. He didn’t give us any luck on that, and we spent four dollars... in quarters... And we didn’t get any stuffed animals."
William James, in his classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience, writes of “once-born” and “twice-born” people. The once-born are those who sail through life without ever experiencing something that shatters or complicates their faith. Yes, they have problems, but they never go through a time when they say, “The religion I was raised in is a lie; that’s simply not how the world works.” Their understanding of God when they are older is not much different from their view of God when they were children. They think of God as being a benign heavenly parent who keeps the world neat and orderly for them.
For James, twice-born people are those who lose their faith and then regain it as a new faith very different from the one they lost. Instead of seeing the world as flooded with sunshine (as the once-borns always do), they see a world where the sun struggles to come out after the storm, yet still manages to reappear. Theirs is a less cheerful, less confident, more realistic outlook. God is no longer the parent who keeps them safe and dry. God’s presence enables them to keep going in a stormy and dangerous world. From experience they learn to worship God, not because God makes the path smooth, but because God grants grace and determination to keep walking even when the path is rocky. God’s promise is not that they will be kept from stumbling, but that God’s hand will be there to help them get up again, no matter how often they fall. From the school of hard knocks, twice born people have learned that what is stretched out before us is as full of kindness as threat, as sensible as it is mystifying, as good as it was bad, and yet, through thick and thin, God is with us.
I think Archbishop Desmond Tutu would number himself with the twice-born:
"When I was young, I thought of God as a grandfatherly figure, which made God very accessible. Now, inside me is an almost imageless conception, a dark light, or a light darkness.
I am one who has a faith that is reasonably stable. There have been [difficult] moments. When I saw the awful things that police did to students at the University of Fort Hare, nearly 20 years ago, I broke down in a Eucharist service. I am not a pacifist, like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi. I couldn’t stand by and see someone throw children into a gas chamber. How could God allow that? How could He make obviously evil people succeed against children?
Ultimately, all you can say is that God does not occupy an Olympian fortress, remote from us. He has this deep, deep solidarity with us. God became a human being, a baby. God was hungry. God was tired. God suffered and died. God is there with us."
The Christian faith asserts a bold, audacious claim. To the degree that the infinite Being who created all existence can be known by finite, limited creatures, to the degree that very light of very light can be contained in the flesh, we have seen the Father in the Son. There is no way to know God more deeply, to understand God more accurately, to see God more clearly than in the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. We don’t want to demean automatically other religions because many of them have discerned from creation and the natural order of things significant truths about God and the way life is to be. But only God can make God’s self known completely and this God has done to fullest of our ability to comprehend through the Son.
In today’s Gospel reading, the Apostle Philip says to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” You can almost feel the frustration in Jesus’ reply, “How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” It took Philip and the rest of the Apostles a long time to understand fully the implications of this but in time it dawned on them as it continues to dawn on us.
There is a story of a little girl who attended a Sunday School regularly. One day her teacher provided the class with paper and crayons and encouraged the children to draw whatever they wanted. Well, the girl dove into the project with such gusto the teacher had to ask her what she was coloring. “I am drawing a picture of God,” she said with great confidence. The teacher, not wanting to discourage an artist, but not wanting to encourage a heretic, replied gently, “But don’t you know no one has ever seen God. No one knows what God looks like.” Unphased and without missing a beat, the little girl looked up and proclaimed, “Well, they’ll sure know what God looks like once I’m finished!”
“Look at me,” Jesus says to Philip. “Look at me, and not at yourself. Look past your childish notions with new, realistic eyes. Look in a way open to being changed by what you see. Look at me and you will see the Father.”
There is a universal longing to know the One who is Holy and Other. It cuts across culture and time. Every week there is a headline that in one form or another touches on the human desire to encounter God. This week the renowned Oxford physicist Stephen Hawking made news by proclaiming heaven is a fairy tale and mathematics explains how creation came to be without the aid of a creator. At the other end of the spectrum a radio host garnered lots of attention by predicting the rapture would take place yesterday. Both of these in one just week.
12,000 years ago, human civilization began to take shape at a Turkish site known as Göbekli Tepe. Built some 7,000 years before the pyramids, it is the oldest know worship space ever discovered and the earliest known sign of an organized community. The ancient stone ruins bear witness to the human quest to search for the divine. In one form or another, the plea and the prayer “Show us the Father” has been uttered and offered for a long, long time.
Before we even begin to wonder “Who is God?” we might want to ask if the answer will matter. Many people will tell you they believe in God, but the real question is not the existence of God, but the importance of God. How does God make a difference in your life? How should it? I have never been to the South Pole and yet I believe it exists. Still, that geographical assertion makes little difference in my daily life. I don’t remember much about the Pythagorean Theorem, only that it is an abstract statement which does not really affect my daily life either. To believe that God exists in the way you believe in the South Pole or in the reality of an equation is not a religious stance. A god who exists but does not matter, who does not make a difference in the way you experience life, might as well not exist. As important as it is to know who God is and what God is like, that pursuit will be meaningless if, as we get closer to the answer, we are not fundamentally changed but what we are discovering.
So that is one question… if you see God will it make any difference. Here is another… can you see a God who looks any different than you? The 18th century French political commentator and part-time meteorologist Baron de Montesquieu said that if triangles had a god, it would have three sides. He was speaking of the human tendency toward graven images with the self being the model for the figure.
There is a story about a man who wanted to see God so he traveled the world searching for enlightenment. Eventually he was directed to a remote location in the Himalayas where a wise mystic was said to live. Upon meeting the holy man, the searcher told him of his dreams. “I can show you God if you follow me,” the mystic assured him. The searcher was led into a beautifully decorated chamber where an elaborately carved chest was prominently displayed. “Open the door of the chest,” the mystic instructed, “and you will see God.” The man opened the door only to find behind it another door. The mystic implored him to open that one. Again, there was another door. “Keep going,” he was told. Again, a door and then another and another. Finally he came to a small, simple, roughly hewn door that appeared to be at the center of the chest. “Open this door and you will see your God.” With great trepidation, the searcher opened the door, and there before him was a mirror with the image of his own face reflecting back at him. The mystic’s great insight was to highlight the human proclivity to conceive of God as being in our own spiritual, emotional, psychological, and even physical likeness. Triangles need to remember that God is not limited to three sides.
That is something we don’t and probably can’t understand when we are younger. Seven-year-old Kristi Pflanz said this about her notion of God:
"God makes people’s lives better. He made my dad be the pushover because he buys me more toys than my mom. But sometimes God’s sort of not nice because one time He made this machine where you try to set it to grab the stuffed animal. He didn’t give us any luck on that, and we spent four dollars... in quarters... And we didn’t get any stuffed animals."
William James, in his classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience, writes of “once-born” and “twice-born” people. The once-born are those who sail through life without ever experiencing something that shatters or complicates their faith. Yes, they have problems, but they never go through a time when they say, “The religion I was raised in is a lie; that’s simply not how the world works.” Their understanding of God when they are older is not much different from their view of God when they were children. They think of God as being a benign heavenly parent who keeps the world neat and orderly for them.
For James, twice-born people are those who lose their faith and then regain it as a new faith very different from the one they lost. Instead of seeing the world as flooded with sunshine (as the once-borns always do), they see a world where the sun struggles to come out after the storm, yet still manages to reappear. Theirs is a less cheerful, less confident, more realistic outlook. God is no longer the parent who keeps them safe and dry. God’s presence enables them to keep going in a stormy and dangerous world. From experience they learn to worship God, not because God makes the path smooth, but because God grants grace and determination to keep walking even when the path is rocky. God’s promise is not that they will be kept from stumbling, but that God’s hand will be there to help them get up again, no matter how often they fall. From the school of hard knocks, twice born people have learned that what is stretched out before us is as full of kindness as threat, as sensible as it is mystifying, as good as it was bad, and yet, through thick and thin, God is with us.
I think Archbishop Desmond Tutu would number himself with the twice-born:
"When I was young, I thought of God as a grandfatherly figure, which made God very accessible. Now, inside me is an almost imageless conception, a dark light, or a light darkness.
I am one who has a faith that is reasonably stable. There have been [difficult] moments. When I saw the awful things that police did to students at the University of Fort Hare, nearly 20 years ago, I broke down in a Eucharist service. I am not a pacifist, like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi. I couldn’t stand by and see someone throw children into a gas chamber. How could God allow that? How could He make obviously evil people succeed against children?
Ultimately, all you can say is that God does not occupy an Olympian fortress, remote from us. He has this deep, deep solidarity with us. God became a human being, a baby. God was hungry. God was tired. God suffered and died. God is there with us."
The Christian faith asserts a bold, audacious claim. To the degree that the infinite Being who created all existence can be known by finite, limited creatures, to the degree that very light of very light can be contained in the flesh, we have seen the Father in the Son. There is no way to know God more deeply, to understand God more accurately, to see God more clearly than in the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. We don’t want to demean automatically other religions because many of them have discerned from creation and the natural order of things significant truths about God and the way life is to be. But only God can make God’s self known completely and this God has done to fullest of our ability to comprehend through the Son.
In today’s Gospel reading, the Apostle Philip says to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” You can almost feel the frustration in Jesus’ reply, “How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” It took Philip and the rest of the Apostles a long time to understand fully the implications of this but in time it dawned on them as it continues to dawn on us.
There is a story of a little girl who attended a Sunday School regularly. One day her teacher provided the class with paper and crayons and encouraged the children to draw whatever they wanted. Well, the girl dove into the project with such gusto the teacher had to ask her what she was coloring. “I am drawing a picture of God,” she said with great confidence. The teacher, not wanting to discourage an artist, but not wanting to encourage a heretic, replied gently, “But don’t you know no one has ever seen God. No one knows what God looks like.” Unphased and without missing a beat, the little girl looked up and proclaimed, “Well, they’ll sure know what God looks like once I’m finished!”
“Look at me,” Jesus says to Philip. “Look at me, and not at yourself. Look past your childish notions with new, realistic eyes. Look in a way open to being changed by what you see. Look at me and you will see the Father.”
Monday, May 9, 2011
Caught in a Stare at More than Meets the Eye
Luke 24:13-35
That very day, the first day of the week, two of the disciples were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?”
They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.”
Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
The Sermon
The Chapel sits at the far end of the court yard of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. Smaller than our worship space here, it was an intimate place for our group to gather in prayer each morning of the study program I attended two years ago. Built in 1690 of stone and ornate, dark carved wood, it is as traditional as traditional gets. Hanging above the altar is a painting, The Supper at Emmaus by Ceri Richards. Colorful and contemporary, it is the polar opposite of the space it graces. The setting and art work well together, complementing and augmenting what the other lacks.
Richards’ painting portrays the biblical story we heard read moments ago. Jesus is at table with two disciples. Only a few hours after the resurrection, when news of the event is still garbled and its meaning is still allusive, Jesus has spent the day walking with His followers, explaining how his death and resurrection is to be understood through the lens of the Hebrew scriptures. He holds them in rapt attention, but for reasons we don’t understand they do not recognize who he is. Jesus remains for them a stranger; one who is with them but they do not know, until at supper he blesses and breaks the bread. Through this Eucharistic moment their eyes are opened, they see Jesus for who he is, and then he disappears from the room.
The obvious features of Richards’ painting are its use of color and his characteristic exaggeration of the hands and feet. Jesus is sitting at table. We can see his face. One disciple’s back is to us. We can not see his face, which must register complete astonishment, because, having recognized Jesus, he appears to be falling off his chair. The other disciple sees none of this yet, because – interestingly – he is saying grace. Hands folded, eyes closed in prayer, he does not see the incredible epiphany before him. Jesus himself is framed in a yellow cross, a part of which serves as the painting’s table. Bread and wine and Christ are all part of the cross. Richards has captured that moment after recognition and before disappearance when Jesus is beginning to fade from view.
While the painting conveys many meanings, hanging above the altar in St. Edmund Hall Chapel, it clearly invites each worshipper to look for Christ in the Eucharistic meal and moment. It challenges us to consider how we might be blinded to Christ by our own prayers and religious devotion.
I came upon Denise Levertov’s poem while reading one day, but had never seen Valasquez’ painting. One incredible benefit of the internet age is how things we have never seen or read are only a lightning quick google search away. Levertov does a wonderful job of depicting the painting by giving words to the thoughts of Valasquez’ servant girl. Perhaps difficult to see in your reproduction, she is a kitchen preparing a meal. Over her right shoulder, in the top left hand corner of the painting, we see two figures sitting at table. Is it Jesus and one of the followers or is it the two followers, with Jesus obscured from our view, but not hers? I’ll let you decide. Interestingly, this part of the painting was hidden for years. No one knew it was there until restoration work brought it out. Until then, the painting was revered simply for showing a servant at work in a kitchen. Now we see that it depicts a moment when Jesus’ followers have not yet recognized him, but the servant girl, catching a reflection on the jug, perceives him to be the Risen Christ in their midst.
Although the servant girl is a fictional character not a part of the gospel story, Valasquez challenges us through her. She is a woman. She is black. She is an uneducated maid or perhaps even a slave. She could not possibly be lower of the social ladder. And yet she is the first to recognize Jesus. And she does so in the midst of the most mundane of daily activities, while tending to the chore of serving the meal.
The Servant Girl at Emmaus asks us to ponder how each person, and especially those to whom we are most dismissive, might help us to know and to see Christ. It asks us to ponder how Christ is unknowingly present in a the daily routine.
I spent some time this week pondering those moments when I sensed Jesus was with me – not in some intellectual, theological, doctrinal sense, but really with me… when I was completely aware that I was not alone, that I knew the Holy One was in our midst. I have had such moments in my life, but they are rare. I have not had a moment like that for a while. To what degree, I wonder, do these epiphanies come only as a gift from God and to what degree are they always here if only we had eyes to see?
At baptism we promise with God’s help “to seek and serve Christ in all persons.” Does this mean that Christ is here in the person sitting next to you in the pew? Is Christ to be found this afternoon at the grocery store in the tired and overworked cashier, in the oblivious shopper whose cart is in your way, and in the mother whose child is running wild, screaming up and down the aisles? Does it mean that Christ will be sitting at your dinner table tonight, and at the table across from you tomorrow at McDonald’s, and at a table in the parish hall at our Thanksgiving Community Dinner? Does it mean Christ can be found in your coworkers and neighbors and social acquaintances? Yes, this is exactly what it means. But it is not something we see plainly, it is something we must seek.
Many mornings I begin my day with the Prayer of St. Patrick’s Breastplate:
Christ as a light, illumine and guide me.
Christ as a shield overshadow me.
Christ under me. Christ over me.
Christ beside me on my left and my right.
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all powerful.
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak;
Be in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.
And when I offer this prayer, I know that the challenge is not will Christ do this, but will I perceive it. Christ in the person on my left and my right. Christ in the heart of each person I talk to and in the words of each person who speaks to me. I know that my day would go differently if I could truly see this and I know that my attitude and demeanor toward others would be different if I believed it. I am still a work in progress, more often like the Richards’ praying disciple than Valasquez’ servant girl.
I know that I am not alone in this. I know that there are many who are just like me, wanting to see Christ as a real presence on my left and my right, but somehow not quite putting it into practice. We long for those moments described in another poem about today’s gospel called The Day by Harold McCurdy, when “caught in a stare at more than meets the eye they starring lost the seen man in the unsearchable Divine.” I pray that this morning, this Eucharist moment might be a time when bread is blessed and broken, and we, caught in a stare at more than meets the eye, might recognize Christ above, below, within, without, on our left and our right, in the face of those to whom we speak, and in the words of those who speak to us.
The Servant Girl At Emmaus by Denise Levertov
She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his—the one
who had looked at her,
once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?
Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread
from hers just now?
Hands he’d laid
on the dying and made them well?
Surely that face—?
The man
they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man
whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?
Those who had brought this stranger home
to their table
don’t recognize yet with thom they sit.
But she in the kitchen,
absently touching the winejug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.
That very day, the first day of the week, two of the disciples were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?”
They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.”
Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
The Sermon
The Chapel sits at the far end of the court yard of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. Smaller than our worship space here, it was an intimate place for our group to gather in prayer each morning of the study program I attended two years ago. Built in 1690 of stone and ornate, dark carved wood, it is as traditional as traditional gets. Hanging above the altar is a painting, The Supper at Emmaus by Ceri Richards. Colorful and contemporary, it is the polar opposite of the space it graces. The setting and art work well together, complementing and augmenting what the other lacks.
Richards’ painting portrays the biblical story we heard read moments ago. Jesus is at table with two disciples. Only a few hours after the resurrection, when news of the event is still garbled and its meaning is still allusive, Jesus has spent the day walking with His followers, explaining how his death and resurrection is to be understood through the lens of the Hebrew scriptures. He holds them in rapt attention, but for reasons we don’t understand they do not recognize who he is. Jesus remains for them a stranger; one who is with them but they do not know, until at supper he blesses and breaks the bread. Through this Eucharistic moment their eyes are opened, they see Jesus for who he is, and then he disappears from the room.
The obvious features of Richards’ painting are its use of color and his characteristic exaggeration of the hands and feet. Jesus is sitting at table. We can see his face. One disciple’s back is to us. We can not see his face, which must register complete astonishment, because, having recognized Jesus, he appears to be falling off his chair. The other disciple sees none of this yet, because – interestingly – he is saying grace. Hands folded, eyes closed in prayer, he does not see the incredible epiphany before him. Jesus himself is framed in a yellow cross, a part of which serves as the painting’s table. Bread and wine and Christ are all part of the cross. Richards has captured that moment after recognition and before disappearance when Jesus is beginning to fade from view.
While the painting conveys many meanings, hanging above the altar in St. Edmund Hall Chapel, it clearly invites each worshipper to look for Christ in the Eucharistic meal and moment. It challenges us to consider how we might be blinded to Christ by our own prayers and religious devotion.
I came upon Denise Levertov’s poem while reading one day, but had never seen Valasquez’ painting. One incredible benefit of the internet age is how things we have never seen or read are only a lightning quick google search away. Levertov does a wonderful job of depicting the painting by giving words to the thoughts of Valasquez’ servant girl. Perhaps difficult to see in your reproduction, she is a kitchen preparing a meal. Over her right shoulder, in the top left hand corner of the painting, we see two figures sitting at table. Is it Jesus and one of the followers or is it the two followers, with Jesus obscured from our view, but not hers? I’ll let you decide. Interestingly, this part of the painting was hidden for years. No one knew it was there until restoration work brought it out. Until then, the painting was revered simply for showing a servant at work in a kitchen. Now we see that it depicts a moment when Jesus’ followers have not yet recognized him, but the servant girl, catching a reflection on the jug, perceives him to be the Risen Christ in their midst.
Although the servant girl is a fictional character not a part of the gospel story, Valasquez challenges us through her. She is a woman. She is black. She is an uneducated maid or perhaps even a slave. She could not possibly be lower of the social ladder. And yet she is the first to recognize Jesus. And she does so in the midst of the most mundane of daily activities, while tending to the chore of serving the meal.
The Servant Girl at Emmaus asks us to ponder how each person, and especially those to whom we are most dismissive, might help us to know and to see Christ. It asks us to ponder how Christ is unknowingly present in a the daily routine.
I spent some time this week pondering those moments when I sensed Jesus was with me – not in some intellectual, theological, doctrinal sense, but really with me… when I was completely aware that I was not alone, that I knew the Holy One was in our midst. I have had such moments in my life, but they are rare. I have not had a moment like that for a while. To what degree, I wonder, do these epiphanies come only as a gift from God and to what degree are they always here if only we had eyes to see?
At baptism we promise with God’s help “to seek and serve Christ in all persons.” Does this mean that Christ is here in the person sitting next to you in the pew? Is Christ to be found this afternoon at the grocery store in the tired and overworked cashier, in the oblivious shopper whose cart is in your way, and in the mother whose child is running wild, screaming up and down the aisles? Does it mean that Christ will be sitting at your dinner table tonight, and at the table across from you tomorrow at McDonald’s, and at a table in the parish hall at our Thanksgiving Community Dinner? Does it mean Christ can be found in your coworkers and neighbors and social acquaintances? Yes, this is exactly what it means. But it is not something we see plainly, it is something we must seek.
Many mornings I begin my day with the Prayer of St. Patrick’s Breastplate:
Christ as a light, illumine and guide me.
Christ as a shield overshadow me.
Christ under me. Christ over me.
Christ beside me on my left and my right.
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all powerful.
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak;
Be in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.
And when I offer this prayer, I know that the challenge is not will Christ do this, but will I perceive it. Christ in the person on my left and my right. Christ in the heart of each person I talk to and in the words of each person who speaks to me. I know that my day would go differently if I could truly see this and I know that my attitude and demeanor toward others would be different if I believed it. I am still a work in progress, more often like the Richards’ praying disciple than Valasquez’ servant girl.
I know that I am not alone in this. I know that there are many who are just like me, wanting to see Christ as a real presence on my left and my right, but somehow not quite putting it into practice. We long for those moments described in another poem about today’s gospel called The Day by Harold McCurdy, when “caught in a stare at more than meets the eye they starring lost the seen man in the unsearchable Divine.” I pray that this morning, this Eucharist moment might be a time when bread is blessed and broken, and we, caught in a stare at more than meets the eye, might recognize Christ above, below, within, without, on our left and our right, in the face of those to whom we speak, and in the words of those who speak to us.
The Servant Girl At Emmaus by Denise Levertov
She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his—the one
who had looked at her,
once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?
Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread
from hers just now?
Hands he’d laid
on the dying and made them well?
Surely that face—?
The man
they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man
whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?
Those who had brought this stranger home
to their table
don’t recognize yet with thom they sit.
But she in the kitchen,
absently touching the winejug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Rush to Galilee
Two features make Matthew’s telling of the resurrection distinctive from the other three gospels. One has to do with pace – everything seems to happen very quickly – and the other revolves around talking, silence, and lies.
First the pace. The other gospel writers describe how the women go to the tomb with burial spices and tell us they wonder how they will get passed the huge stone. In Matthew, the women go only to “see” the tomb. Other gospels describe the empty tomb and the women going into it. In other accounts there is a messenger who tells them Jesus is alive, but they don’t completely understand. In other accounts the women tell the disciples the tomb is empty and the body is missing. Some of the disciples investigate for themselves. In Matthew’s telling there is none of this. The women get it right away: Jesus is risen!
In John’s gospel, Mary remains near the tomb, crying. She encounters a man she assumes to be the gardener/caretaker of the gravesite. She asks him if he has moved Jesus’ body to a different location. Only when He speaks her name does she realize that it is Jesus. But here in Matthew’s gospel both Marys meet Jesus and recognize Him instantly.
These details are not contradictions because the gospelers never intended out to write a historically accurate account by our standards today. Each writer set in narrative events they had witnessed or heard about and did so in a way that conveys meaning.
Matthew’s description is lean compared to the other gospels. The pace rushes along without developing side stories. Think about the words he employs: suddenly, go quickly and tell, they ran, suddenly Jesus appeared, go and tell. The 17th century Italian writer Filippo Pananti picked up on this and developed it into an epigram, which is a short, memorable, witty saying:
Christ risen from his sepulcher at last,
appeared to the women first
so that the news would travel very fast.
Well, beyond Mr. Pananti’s rather sexist notion that women talk more than men, we might want to ask what is the hurry all about? It means something very important to Matthew, but what is it? What is the rush to get to Galilee?
Interjected into the frenetic pace of Matthew’s Easter story is the very detailed report about the guards getting paid off. Only Matthew tells this part of the story, the other gospels don’t describe it at all. Temple guards were men of high integrity, deeply devoted to their work. Their word was their bond. Their testimony was held to be impeccable. In that society women held the exact opposite status. They were not allowed to testify in court because their word was considered suspect. So God entrusts the message of resurrection to the powerless and disrespected. The powerful and elite are bribed to remain silent to the truth they have witnessed. But the truthful testimony of the women trumps the toothless tale of the guards.
Matthew does not tell us what the women said to the disciples, but whatever it was it must have been persuasive. The next thing we are told about Jesus’ band of followers is that they are in Galilee and the Risen Lord appears to them. Again, think about how Matthew constructs his narrative. He omits much that the other gospel writers include: Jesus appearing in the closed room in Jerusalem, confronting the doubts of Thomas, appearing to the two disciples walking to Emmaus, appearing at the lakeshore. Matthew moves quickly from earthquake to angel to Jesus to the guards’ conspiracy to Galilee.
Again, why the rush to get to Galilee? The other gospels don’t describe this; Luke, in fact, actually has the disciples staying in Jerusalem for fifty days until the feast of Pentecost. Why is Matthew in such a hurry to get them home? Well, home is the answer. There is a direct link between where you live and where you witness; between where you make your home and where you do the work of the kingdom. It is in their home country that the Risen Jesus gives them the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” The message to the disciples is clear: the good news of Easter is for all people and it starts right here… at home… where you live… where you work… where you play… where you worship.
Matthew constructs his narrative to prod his readers who lived some forty years after the resurrection. In his day, the church in Jerusalem had grown complacent and inwardly focused. Its members were content to sit around and wait for Jesus to return in glory. The church had no missionary zeal, no ministry to the poor and needy, and no voice calling for a just world in this world. Matthew crafts his story to say “Get up, get out of Jerusalem, go to Galilee, and lets get going with the work God has given us to do.”
And that Easter message will always be timeless because every faith community needs to assess and reassess if the good news of New Life is for it simply a warm and fuzzy message or a call to go forth and make disciples of all nations, starting in your house, on your block, with your friends, among your coworkers, and in our community. I describe the mission of St. Paul’s Church this way: “We are building faith, making friends, and serving needs in downtown Suffolk.” To the degree we live into this Matthew would say we have gotten to Galilee. To the degree we have not, we are just hanging out in Jerusalem waiting for another nice, festive celebration to lift our spirits.
When it comes to the sharing the Good News, we Episcopalians tend to be not like Mary – who told the disciples what had happened – and not like the guards – who were paid to spread a lie. We tend to be silent. Always remember there are many different ways to preach. Let me leave you with these words from St. Francis that many of us found very moving at a Wednesday evening service ten days ago:
The deeds you do may be the only sermon some person will hear today.
It is no use walking anywhere to preach the gospel unless our walking is preaching.
Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words.
Now, in the words of a famous Japanese blessing, “Go into the world with a daring and tender love. Go in peace. The world is waiting. And all that you do, do it for love, and in the name of Jesus Christ who is Lord.”
First the pace. The other gospel writers describe how the women go to the tomb with burial spices and tell us they wonder how they will get passed the huge stone. In Matthew, the women go only to “see” the tomb. Other gospels describe the empty tomb and the women going into it. In other accounts there is a messenger who tells them Jesus is alive, but they don’t completely understand. In other accounts the women tell the disciples the tomb is empty and the body is missing. Some of the disciples investigate for themselves. In Matthew’s telling there is none of this. The women get it right away: Jesus is risen!
In John’s gospel, Mary remains near the tomb, crying. She encounters a man she assumes to be the gardener/caretaker of the gravesite. She asks him if he has moved Jesus’ body to a different location. Only when He speaks her name does she realize that it is Jesus. But here in Matthew’s gospel both Marys meet Jesus and recognize Him instantly.
These details are not contradictions because the gospelers never intended out to write a historically accurate account by our standards today. Each writer set in narrative events they had witnessed or heard about and did so in a way that conveys meaning.
Matthew’s description is lean compared to the other gospels. The pace rushes along without developing side stories. Think about the words he employs: suddenly, go quickly and tell, they ran, suddenly Jesus appeared, go and tell. The 17th century Italian writer Filippo Pananti picked up on this and developed it into an epigram, which is a short, memorable, witty saying:
Christ risen from his sepulcher at last,
appeared to the women first
so that the news would travel very fast.
Well, beyond Mr. Pananti’s rather sexist notion that women talk more than men, we might want to ask what is the hurry all about? It means something very important to Matthew, but what is it? What is the rush to get to Galilee?
Interjected into the frenetic pace of Matthew’s Easter story is the very detailed report about the guards getting paid off. Only Matthew tells this part of the story, the other gospels don’t describe it at all. Temple guards were men of high integrity, deeply devoted to their work. Their word was their bond. Their testimony was held to be impeccable. In that society women held the exact opposite status. They were not allowed to testify in court because their word was considered suspect. So God entrusts the message of resurrection to the powerless and disrespected. The powerful and elite are bribed to remain silent to the truth they have witnessed. But the truthful testimony of the women trumps the toothless tale of the guards.
Matthew does not tell us what the women said to the disciples, but whatever it was it must have been persuasive. The next thing we are told about Jesus’ band of followers is that they are in Galilee and the Risen Lord appears to them. Again, think about how Matthew constructs his narrative. He omits much that the other gospel writers include: Jesus appearing in the closed room in Jerusalem, confronting the doubts of Thomas, appearing to the two disciples walking to Emmaus, appearing at the lakeshore. Matthew moves quickly from earthquake to angel to Jesus to the guards’ conspiracy to Galilee.
Again, why the rush to get to Galilee? The other gospels don’t describe this; Luke, in fact, actually has the disciples staying in Jerusalem for fifty days until the feast of Pentecost. Why is Matthew in such a hurry to get them home? Well, home is the answer. There is a direct link between where you live and where you witness; between where you make your home and where you do the work of the kingdom. It is in their home country that the Risen Jesus gives them the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” The message to the disciples is clear: the good news of Easter is for all people and it starts right here… at home… where you live… where you work… where you play… where you worship.
Matthew constructs his narrative to prod his readers who lived some forty years after the resurrection. In his day, the church in Jerusalem had grown complacent and inwardly focused. Its members were content to sit around and wait for Jesus to return in glory. The church had no missionary zeal, no ministry to the poor and needy, and no voice calling for a just world in this world. Matthew crafts his story to say “Get up, get out of Jerusalem, go to Galilee, and lets get going with the work God has given us to do.”
And that Easter message will always be timeless because every faith community needs to assess and reassess if the good news of New Life is for it simply a warm and fuzzy message or a call to go forth and make disciples of all nations, starting in your house, on your block, with your friends, among your coworkers, and in our community. I describe the mission of St. Paul’s Church this way: “We are building faith, making friends, and serving needs in downtown Suffolk.” To the degree we live into this Matthew would say we have gotten to Galilee. To the degree we have not, we are just hanging out in Jerusalem waiting for another nice, festive celebration to lift our spirits.
When it comes to the sharing the Good News, we Episcopalians tend to be not like Mary – who told the disciples what had happened – and not like the guards – who were paid to spread a lie. We tend to be silent. Always remember there are many different ways to preach. Let me leave you with these words from St. Francis that many of us found very moving at a Wednesday evening service ten days ago:
The deeds you do may be the only sermon some person will hear today.
It is no use walking anywhere to preach the gospel unless our walking is preaching.
Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words.
Now, in the words of a famous Japanese blessing, “Go into the world with a daring and tender love. Go in peace. The world is waiting. And all that you do, do it for love, and in the name of Jesus Christ who is Lord.”
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