Not with an Answer, but with a Question…

We called an emergency meeting of the Vestry earlier this week fearful that so many people might attend today’s service that not everyone could find a place to sit.  We landed on a bold idea.  We are going to offer four distinctive Easter worship services from today forward.  The first service will be for those who are new to the faith.  The second will be for regular members who prefer a more traditional service.  Next, there will be a service specifically geared toward those who have lost their faith.  And finally, we will have a service for those who a bad experience with a church in the past.  In order to market each service, the Vestry has decided to name them Finders, Keepers, Losers, and Weepers.

Imagine you are sitting in a theatre looking at the screen as the movie comes to an end.  Queue the music and the final credits.  First to appear is the name of the star, then other lead actors and actresses.  The director, cinematographer, and producer follow.  After that comes a list of names that demonstrates it take a lot of people to make a movie: best boy, key grip, drivers, hair stylists, second set coordinator, etc.  I like to focus on what are known as the bit parts.   In the credits these roles appear as the ‘third police officer’, ‘child with a popsicle’, and ‘old woman with a baby carriage.’ 

Mark’s gospel has a bit role that is both curious and significant.  It involves an anonymous young man who makes only two brief appearances in the narrative. 

In Mark 14, after Jesus is arrested and all the disciples flee, we read this:

A certain young man was following Jesus, wearing nothing but a linen cloth.  The arresting party caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.                                    (14:51-52)

Have you ever noticed this character before?  Who is he?  What is he doing following Jesus?  And what is the significance of wearing only a linen cloth?

The only real clue we have comes from the Greek word used to describe the wrap.  The word is sindona, which is used only to describe a type of linen used to bury the dead.  Symbolically, this young man is clothed with the shroud of death.  That he casts it off, leaves it with authorities, and runs off naked suggests that Jesus is going to take upon himself the death intended for the young man.  This anonymous young “follower” of Jesus appears to understand something the disciples never seem to get.  On several occasions Jesus tells them that he must die, but each time either they reprimand him, change the subject, or remain silent.  This young man – who some say may be Mark himself – becomes the first person saved by Jesus.  But who he actually is, why he follows Jesus, and to where he flees are subjects not addressed by Mark’ gospel. 

We might be inclined to forget about him altogether if it were not for the fact that he makes another appearance in the narrative four days later. 

When the woman go to the tomb to finish the burial work so hastily begun on the Friday before the Passover, they encounter the same young man sitting in the open tomb where Jesus had been buried.  He is now dressed in a “white” robe (a word used in only one other place – in the story of the Transfiguration where Jesus’ clothes become radiant white).   The person who once wore the shroud of death is now clothed with a royal garment that symbolizes the new life of the Resurrection. 

This bit player in the grand narrative of Mark’s gospel is given the role to make the greatest announcement in human history:

“Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised.  He is not here.  Look, there is the place they laid him.”

The young man directs the women to go and tell the disciples that Jesus will meet them in Galilee.  They flee the tomb in terror and amazement (literally in trauma and ecstasy), but say nothing to anyone about what they have seen because they are afraid.

In Mark’s gospel, in its most ancient form, this young man is the only person who testifies to the Resurrection.  Most scholars believe that the original gospel did not end here, but describes what happens when the disciples go to Galilee.  But, like a book where the last page has been torn out, Mark’s story ends at this odd place.  Most bibles include two possible alternative endings, but note that both were added some time later by well-meaning editors who wanted to give the story a proper ending.  Still, each is so different stylistically from the rest of Mark that they could not possibly be authentic.

So we are left with what many consider to be the most unsatisfying conclusion of the four gospels because it does not describe an encounter with the Risen Christ.  But perhaps, just perhaps, it is the best gospel for our modern age.  You see, many today easily dismiss accounts of a person rising from the dead.  Zombie Jesus, they wag.  But Mark’s lean story forces us to ask what happened.  How can we understand the end of the Jesus movement on the cross in a way that makes sense of how the Christian faith has come down through history to us?  How did one person’s death give rise to the world’s greatest religion?

Did the women go to the wrong tomb?  Well, if they did, why didn’t someone go to the actual tomb and produce Jesus’ lifeless body?  Did someone steal the corpse – maybe this anonymous young man – and move it to a different location?  If that happened, why did no one ever find the body?  And more critical, how did a missing body manage to invigorate Jesus’ dispirited disciples?  Each gospel account reports that the empty tomb leaves Jesus’ followers feeling bewildered and afraid.  Perhaps, some say, after some time passed, those dispirited disciples decided to commit their lives to perpetuating Jesus’ message and teaching.  Well, frankly, that doesn’t seem likely.  They themselves might have embraced the deeper meaning of what Jesus taught and did, but it is difficult to comprehend how this became a worldwide movement and has fueled the human spirit and imagination for two centuries.

If those explanations do not seem credible, what is left?  What could possibly explain how Christianity grew from an anonymous young man’s testimony that left a small group of women both ecstatic and traumatized (as if they had just departed from the latest high-tech roller coaster)?  How did it grow if these women depart this tomb and, at least at the outset, say nothing to anyone?  Let me finish this sermon consist with Mark’s gospel – not with an answer, but with a question… How do you make sense of why we are here today?

Taking What is Broken / Offering What is Blessed

Not too many years ago a bishop told the story of taking a break in the middle of the day to go to a department store to buy his wife a Christmas present.  A nicely dressed young woman waited on him at the perfume counter.  Because he was working, the bishop was wearing his purple shirt with collar and a blue blazer.  Around his neck was a chain from which hung a large, gold pectoral cross.  The young woman commented on how pretty it looked.  She then asked him if it had any special meaning. 

Lest we be too judgmental of the sales clerk, we might want to remind ourselves that there are people from different eras who would frown upon the cavalier way we use the cross today.  For us, it functions theologically as a symbol of redemption.  It functions devotionally as a sign of God’s great love for us.  It functions spiritually to remind us to pick up our cross daily and follow Jesus.  But for the Jewish people of Jesus’ time, it functioned one and only one way.  It was a political symbol of Roman power and domination.  It was an instrument Rome used to intimidate and humiliate any person or group or movement that threatened the ‘peace’ they brought to the regions they occupied.  This horrific method of execution made a very, very public statement to occupied people, “You really don’t want to ruffle our feathers.” 

Thousands upon thousands of people were crucified by Rome every year.  Typically it would take several agonizing days for a person to die.  It was not unusual for corpses to remain on a cross for days and weeks.  For occupied people living under Roman rule, the way we wear and display crosses today would be for them the equivalent in our day of wearing a symbol of an electric chair.  It was as repulsive to them as Jihadist videos of beheadings are to us.

That the Cross has been transformed in our eyes is a testimony to God’s ability to redeem the absolute worst in life.  We risk losing an appreciation for the magnitude of this great act if we lose sight of how terribly awful the cross really was.

John’s account of the trial and crucifixion leaves no doubt that Jesus is put to death for claiming to be the King of Jews.  More than in the other gospels, in John’s telling it is Jewish leaders who force the issue with Rome’s authority.  Pilate, for his part, is portrayed as a reluctant participant who eventually hands over Jesus to an ugly and murderous mob.    While other gospels place more weight and responsibility on Pilate, all four agree that Jesus is crucified for claiming to be a king. 

There is a second thing to which all four gospels testify.  The kingship of Jesus begins as he reigns on the cross. 

His kingdom begins with an exchange.  On the cross God says to humankind, “I take upon myself all the hurt and all the pain and all the brokenness and all the evil and all the sin of the world.  I forsake none of it.  I turn my back on no one for any reason.  I take it all into myself as the ultimate demonstration of my deep desire to be in a covenant relationship with all that I have created.”  And then God says, “I take into myself all that is bad so that I can pour into you all that is good.  I fill you with my love so that you may love as I love you.  I extend to you forgiveness and grace so that you may offer forgiveness and grace to one another.  I give of myself to you so that you may give of yourselves to one another.”

Years ago I knew a brilliant neurosurgeon who was an incredibly down to earth person.  He talked with me about my work and my interests and the conversation always flowed so naturally.  One day he had to take a phone call from a colleague and immediately launched into conversation of medical terminology that might as well have been a foreign language.  The issues they discussed were completely beyond my comprehension.  It was then that I realized how much my friend took upon himself to be in relationship with me.  I could never ever have picked up on all his medical training so that I could relate to him.

Good Friday proclaims that God does what is necessary to be in relationship with us, what we ourselves can never do.  God in the person of Christ bears all that is broken so that we might live into all that is blessed.  This is the kingdom of God. 

There has been a good deal of conversation this week about Indiana’s religious freedom law.  I can’t speak to other religions, but I believe we followers of Christ are never called to discriminate against a person or group based on our religious belief.  We believe that on the Cross God takes into God’s self all of the evil and the sin in the world and pours into us all that is good.  Our call is not to judge, not to accuse, not exclude, but to welcome, to affirm, and to embrace. 

Look at Jesus’ life.  Look at those with whom he associates.  They are tax-collectors and prostitutes and lepers and people possession by demons and Roman military officials.  He sits at table with these folks and invites them to be his disciples.  He extends God’s love in his day to the very people who would have been the targets of a ‘religious freedom’ bill had there been one.

We are about to engage the Solemn Collects, which are my favorite part of the Good Friday liturgy.  They remind us that as Jesus’ work in this world comes to a close, our work in Jesus’ Name begins.   Like the Cross, the Collects remind us that Christ bears all that is broken so that we might live into all that is blessed. 

 

Making Sense of the Senceless

This week I was reading a scholarly journal that examined Jesus’ curious command to enter the village and find a colt.  Just as Jesus said, the beast’s owner asked the disciples what they were doing.  “The Lord needs it.”  Their response seems to satisfy him.  The journal presented two possible explanations.  Either Jesus was able to see into the future (what is known as precognition) or he had made previous arrangements with the colt’s owner. 

I think there is a third possibility. 

Jesus is going to Jerusalem to observe the Passover – the festival that celebrates the Hebrew’s exodus from bondage in Egypt.  The city’s population of 40,000 people swelled to nearly half a million for the event.  The festival is conducted against the backdrop of Roman occupation.  Pilate made quite a spectacle of marching columns of extra troops into the city to fortify the garrison at the Temple.  By its very nature, the Passover fuels hatred for the occupation and heightens the hope that a messiah will rise up to lead a revolt.

Messianic fever is especially high at this particular celebration.  People are aware of Jesus and what he has been doing.  Stories of his teaching and his miracles have spread throughout the land.  Whenever someone wanted to proclaim Jesus as the messiah, he ordered that person to be quiet.  For whatever reason, he was not willing to pick up that mantle.  But before entering Jerusalem, something changes for Jesus and the donkey is a clear signal of this. 

Throughout the Scriptures there are many references to the Messiah.  They are familiar not only to Jesus, but to everyone.  Especially well known is Zechariah’s centuries old statement that the king of Israel will ride into Jerusalem on a lowly donkey (9:9).  When the disciples tell the owner that the Lord has need of the donkey, he understands this to mean that Jesus is taking a dramatic, symbolic step to change the fortunes of the Jewish people.

When the crowds see what Jesus is doing they too understand the symbolism.  They begin to shout out messianic verses from the psalms.  They fuel what is happening by waving palm branches as he passes.

Jesus could not have sent a clearer signal that he intends to challenge the powers that be – the Roman rulers who occupy the country and the Jewish leaders who capitulate with them and benefit financially from this arrangement.  That Jesus embraces this role is indisputable.  What he thinks will come of it is not at all apparent. 

On Monday Jesus enters the Temple, overturns tables, and pronounces God’s judgment on the whole corrupt system.  On Tuesday he returns to the Temple and challenges the teaching and authority of its leaders.  Did Jesus think others would rise up and follow him?  He never signals for violence.

On Wednesday a woman anoints Jesus with an absurdly expensive perfume.  His followers are critical for allowing such an extravagant waste.  By then Jesus realizes he will not survive his actions.  He says she is preparing him for his burial.

On Thursday evening Jesus gathers his followers for what he believes will be their final meal together.  After supper they go to a remote location where Jesus becomes unhinged.  He is breaking down in the face of what is obvious to him.  He prays for God to intervene but comes to understand that no such act is going to happen.  Jesus is arrested, put on trial, and crucified before nightfall on Friday.

It is a story that seems to make no sense.  For all intents and purposes Jesus either wanted to die or made a serious miscalculation regarding the consequences of his actions.  Many in the Christian tradition gloss over this reality by saying it was all part of God’s bigger plan and that Jesus, knowing this, lived into it.  More and more I am skeptical of such thinking. 

What I do believe is that God found a way to redeem this awful event, just as God works to bring about redemption and new life in our broken and hurting world.  Without the Resurrection, Jesus’ death, if remembered at all, would have been little more than a tragic blunder by a naïve Middle-eastern teacher from a peasant class.  For the Romans, it would have been just one of many, many torturous executions meant to intimidate an oppressed people into compliance and passivity.  For Jewish leaders it would have been a necessary trade-off; better that one person die alone than 10,000 devotees rise up and die with him.

Jesus, for his part, feels forsaken as he hangs on the Cross and at the end says it is finished as he commends his spirit to God.  For the disciples, this is the end of the road.  They hide in fear behind locked doors and wonder if they can melt into the throngs of pilgrims who are about to make their way home after the Passover.  They wonder if they will be able to return to a normal life in Galilee or if the authorities will come looking for them to punish them for their association with Jesus.

Many, if not most, in the Christian tradition associate the Cross with atonement theology – the belief that Jesus had to die on the Cross to take upon himself the punishment for human sin; the notion that we are washed clean by the blood of Jesus.  Obviously, this is an enormously popular perspective reinforced by our liturgy and hymnody.  And while I accept it, it also puzzles me that we as society not currently steeped in animal sacrifice for the atonement of sin turn to this ancient metaphor as our singular and strongest interpretation of Jesus’ death. 

Earlier this week I read something by Anthony Bloom, from his book Beginning to Pray.  It helps me to make sense of the Passion reading in our modern context:

In a world of competition, in a world of predatory animals, in a world of cruelty and heartlessness, the only hope one can have is an act of mercy, and act of compassion, a completely unexpected act which is rooted neither in duty nor in natural relationships, which will suspend the action of the cruel, violent, heartless world in which we live.

What I like about Bloom’s perspective is that it challenges us to move past a child-like understanding of religion focusing on how I am a bad boy whose father is displeased with me to a more adult question of what is required of me and what difference will my actions make.

Jesus’ self-offering inaugurates the Kingdom of God.  From this moment forward there is no turning back.  God’s reign in this world is established, but it is not complete.  You and I build on God’s reign every time we conduct an act of mercy, an act of compassion, a completely unexpected act which is rooted in something beyond our own self-interest.

We would not be here this morning if Jesus had not offered himself in this way and we would not be here this morning if generation after generation of his followers had not offered themselves selflessly as he did. 

We, in our time, are called upon to do our part to continue the reign of God’s kingdom in this world.  Give yourself selflessly to life.  Give and ask nothing in return and you will find two things: first, your life will matter, and second, you will be blessed beyond all measure.

A Covenant of the Heart

The destruction of Jerusalem and exile to Babylon in the 6^th century BC, led the prophet Jeremiah to envision a new kind of covenant between God and God’s people.  Almost everyone believed that the ruinous events that befall the people of Judah were a direct consequence of breaking covenant with God; specifically the covenant with Moses that had been chiseled in stone.  Jeremiah realized that the covenant relied too much on the exterior; that it was too much like public laws guiding behavior by dictating what people may not do.  He dreamed of a new covenant that would come from the interior; a covenant that guides each person to do God’s will.  He described this new way with the phrase “a covenant of the heart.”

This morning we hear the word of God as spoken to Jeremiah:

This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

The Jewish people understood the heart to be the center of a person’s essence.  The heart may be noble or wicked or in transformation.  The author Gail Godwin notes that although the Jews were the first people to arrive at an abstract notion of God and thus forbade images of God, from the very beginning they understood God to have a heart like theirs.  They believed there was a central place in God that can be hurt and angered and softened and even changed.

The psalmists knew that the human heart could be exceedingly evil, but also understood it as a place from which God could speak to a person:

I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel;

my heart teaches me, night after night. (Ps. 16)

You speak in my heart and say, “Seek my face”

Your face, Lord, will I seek. (Ps. 27)

We in the Christian tradition hold that God’s Spirit dwells within us through baptism and is strengthen through Confirmation.  It is God’s Spirit that works in our hearts to guide and direct us.  And this work does not come upon us by force – as if an outside influence was making us to do one thing when our desire is for another.  The Spirit works to change our hearts to desire what God desires, to love what God loves, to act as God acts.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, placed great emphasis on the role of the heart in spiritual discernment.  The Jesuit David Fleming writes this about Ignatian spirituality:

Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me...  We come to know who Jesus is and strive to make him the center of our lives.  We make our decisions within the context of this relationship of love.  It is a relationship of the heart.  Our heart will tell us which decisions will bring us closer to Jesus and which will take us away from him.   

Listening to your heart.  Listening because it will be from heart that God speaks to you.  I like what Tao Te Ching says:

Do you have the patience to wait

till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving

till the right action arises by itself?

I hope that for you our Lenten journey with the ancient covenants has been a time of waiting, of letting the mud settle until the water is clear and the right action arises within you.  Each Sunday in Lent I have given you time at the end of the sermon to ponder in silent contemplation how God is inviting you to live into the covenants in a deeper, more authentic way.  My hope and prayer is that each of us has spent time listening to our hearts in order to hear God say one thing.  And this morning I am going to give you time to commit those things to writing.

Let me tell you what God has put in my heart:

• In order to live more fully into God’s covenant with all creation through Noah, I am exploring with city officials ways that I can volunteer to pick up liter once a month along a section of our city streets.
• In order to live more fully into God’s covenant with the human family through Abraham, I have signed up to receive updates from the Anglican Church’s Network for Inter Faith Concerns (nifcon).  This ministry provides news and insights that are different and deeper than what we hear from secular media outlets.  They provide a more comprehensive perspective on events that affect and shape our human family.
• I order to live more fully into God’s call to be representatives and ambassadors through the covenant with Moses, I am committing myself to treat with dignity and respect every person who calls or comes to the office looking for financial assistance.  It is not that I am rude to these folks, but perhaps short and dismissive.  I can do better.
• And finally, I acknowledge that I am a covenant breaker, no different than the Hebrew people in the wilderness who were bitten by poisonous snakes and stood in need of healing.  I have defined myself and allowed my self-image to be shaped by people close to me who have rejected me rather than by God’s love for me.

These are the things that God has put on my heart during this Lenten season.  These are concrete ways I can live more fully in covenant with God. 

What about you?  What is God speaking in your heart?  There is a handout in your bulletin that gives you an opportunity to write out what your heart is saying.  I will give you some time now to ponder your response.  When finished, I invite you to come forward and put your sheet in the basket in front of the Cross on the table.  It will be a tangible sign of the covenant we each make with God this Lenten season.

 A Covenant of the Heart

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, 2015                                                        St. Paul’s Church, Suffolk, VA

This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.    - The Prophet Jeremiah

Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me...  We come to know who Jesus is and strive to make him the center of our lives.  We make our decisions within the context of this relationship of love.  It is a relationship of the heart.  Our heart will tell us which decisions will bring us closer to Jesus and which will take us away from him.     - David L. Fleming, SJ on the Spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola

To more fully live into God’s covenant with Noah and all of creation, my heart is inviting me to…

To more fully live into God’s covenant with Abraham and all his descendants, my heart is inviting me to…

To more fully live into God’s covenant with Moses and all the people of Israel who are called to represent God in the world, my heart is inviting me to…

It is on my heart that I have broken covenant with God by…

I repent and look to the Cross for forgiveness and healing.

A Snake for Covenant Breakers

Confession time.  Let me tell you about the single worst liturgical mistake I have ever made.  Now, I know what you are thinking: is there one glaring example that stands head and shoulder above all the rest?  Well, in fact, yes there is.  I had been ordained for just three weeks.  Through a myriad of circumstances you really don’t want to hear about – but let me tantalize you by saying they involved the rector being on vacation and a blind supply priest – it fell to me to lead the post-communion prayer of thanksgiving after everyone had received communion.  A simple task, you say to yourself, but the degree of difficulty was heightened by the fact that I did not have an actual prayer book in my hands.

No problem, I thought to myself.  I’ll get it started and everyone will join in and take over.  “Let us pray,” I said.  No, there is one post-communion prayer in Rite 1 and two in Rite 2 and all three begin slightly differently: 

· Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee for feeding us…

· Eternal God, heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us…

· Almighty and everliving God, we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food…

Well, I managed to cobble together an opening sentence that combined elements of all three: something like, “Eternal and everliving Father, we most heartily give thanks for accepting us with spiritual food…”  At that point I ran out of words to say and hoped the congregation would take it from there.  That was my plan.  Given that I had launched into a prayer never before spoken in the English language, no one joined in for all the obvious reasons.  An awkward, dead silence filled the worship space.  The lay Eucharistic minister took matters by his own hands, hurdled the altar rail (no mean feat in full robes), riffled the choir stalls, found a prayer book, and tossed it to me.  I fumble for the page, found it, and said, “Turning to page 361, let us pray”: “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed.”  That was the exact moment I committed to myself never again to be responsible for leading any kind of worship without a prayer book in my hand!

As a clunking segue, let me say how much I enjoy humoring you with my worst liturgical mistake, but be certain of this: I will not speak of my worst moral failure, my most ethical lapse, or my single deepest spiritual fault.  Some things are too personal, too vulnerable, too frightening, too vivid, too real.

Throughout our Lenten journey we have been hearing stories of Old Testament covenants:

· God’s covenant with Noah and all of creation, the sign of which is the rainbow.

· God’s covenant with Abraham and all his future descendants that we all will be one family with a common ancestor.

· God’s covenant with Moses and the people of Israel calling them to be ambassadors who live life by the 10 Commandments.

Today we don’t encounter another covenant, only a consequence of being in a covenant relationship.  Today we encounter the inevitability of failure; of failing to live into the promises and vows we make to be in relationship with God.  Today we face head on the reality of sin, of things done and left undone, in thought, word, and deed.

The story of the snake bites in the wilderness and the healing power of a bronze serpent most likely would have faded into Old Testament obscurity had not Jesus tied his life to it metaphorically – “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.”  For Jesus, the wilderness story is deeply revealing of the meaning of his own act on the Cross.

Let me provide some background on this curious episode.  After Moses led the Exodus out of Egypt, the people of Israel spent years wandering in the Sinai wilderness.  It was a barren land with few resources, yet God gave water to drink and food to eat.  The ‘eatable’ substance God provided was called ‘manna’ – a Hebrew word meaning, “what is it?”  Aptly named, this flaky, sticky stuff (imagine having nothing to eat for forty years other than something like communion wafers) was the only food the people had for years on end.  Go figure, they grew sick of it and literally retched to get it down.  You can imagine that they complained bitterly and God, like the chef at a fine restaurant, did not take kindly to criticism of the menu.

The King James Version of the bible says that God sent “fiery serpents” among the people that bit them.  Other translations just say “venomous snakes”.  What exactly these things were is a real mystery.  But no matter, the people were dying and they reason it is because they offended God.  They ask Moses to pray for forgiveness.

Now, this is where the story really gets interesting if you are a fan of the Hebrew language.  God tells Moses to make an image of a serpent and mount it to a pole.  Whoever looks at the snake will be healed, God says, and whoever does not will die.  Notice that God doesn’t specify what material to use in crafting the image.  Moses, as if humored by the absurdity of it all, elects to make the snake out of bronze.  Now, he could have chosen any material – wood (easy to chisel), stone (he had already worked with it on the Commandment tablets), but in play on words, Moses decides to make the snake (nehash in Hebrew) out of bronze (nehoshet).  He makes a nehash nehoshet and do you know what, it works! 

The instrument of rejection, judgment, and punishment becomes the means of forgiveness, redemption, and healing because God’s power works through it.  The people of Israel hung on to that nehash nehoshet for centuries as a sacred reminder of God’s goodness, but destroyed it once people began to believe that it, not God, had mysterious, healing powers.  After that, Hebrew theologians became embarrassed by the details of the event and when the poet of today’s psalm set out to write a song of praise, he or she sanitized the story by omitting the weird serpents and snake pole, saying only that the people were afflicted and God spoke a word so they would be healed.  Most likely the story would have slipped into obscurity had not Jesus breathed new meaning into it.

So, on our Lenten journey with God’s covenants – covenants that serve to remind us of God’s invitation to be in relationship with God and one another- here is what we learn from today’s readings: we fail, we fall short, we do not live up to our part of the bargain.  And God, though God’s infinite graciousness and love, continues to invite us into relationship.  And the sign of this invitation is the Cross.

For us, the Cross is a one-time event.  It happened in a particular place – Golgotha, which lies just outside of the old city of Jerusalem – at a particular moment in time – the best estimate is on the Friday before the Passover in what we now refer to as the year 33 AD (give or take).  But for God, who exists beyond time and for whom all moments in chronological time are always present, the Cross is ever-present.  Just as the rainbow exists to remind God never again to destroy the world in anger, the Cross is always before God as a symbol of God’s deep desire to take our failure and our shortcomings into God’s self in order to foster a covenant relationship with us.

Today we add to the rainbow ribbons (reminders of God’s covenant with all creation), the paper figures (God’s covenant with the entire human family), and the tablets (God’s call to each of us to live as examples and witnesses of God’s dream for all people) a simple wooden cross.  It serves as a painful reminder that each one of us is a covenant breaker; that each one of us has embraced what God has offered, committed ourselves to it, and then come up short – though thought, word, and deed; through things done and left undone.  As the Cross stands in judgment, it also speaks of invitation: “Come back to me,” God says through it.  “I love you.  I always have.  I always will.  Make a small step toward Me and you will find Me waiting to embrace you with open arms.”  When we look at the Cross we see our failures.  When God looks through the Cross at us God sees people God wants to be in covenant relationship with.

Have you ever thought about the Cross in this way; as a snake on a pole revealing all that you have done wrong or failed to do and yet still being the means of healing and grace?  As we continue on our covenant journey through Lent, I will give you a few moments of silence to ponder where you have come up short.  I am not talking about the rookie liturgical mistakes in life, but our deep moral, ethical, and spiritual failures; the things we may not even be able to speak to another person.  The Lord God tells us to name it, to claim it, and to look at the Cross and be healed.  Be healed.  Know that it is you, but let it go.  Let it go and begin to serve again our Lord God with gladness and singleness of heart.

 

 

 

A Covenant with a Chosen People

Sylvia was in church every Sunday, but her husband was another story.  On good years Stan made it to a service on Christmas Eve or Easter.  You can imagine the rector’s response when Stan was sitting in the pew next to Sylvia on the Third Sunday in Lent.  After the service the rector said to Stan that is was nice to see him, and more than just a tad surprising.  Stan said to priest, “I may not be in church often but you need to know that my wife and I are committed to living our lives based on the 10 Commandments.”  The priest was pleased, but somewhat shocked, and said, “Well, I can see it in Sylvia, but, to be quite frank, I am more than a little skeptical about you.” “Pastor, it is true,” said Stan, “Sylvia keeps eight of them and I keep the other two.”

Through today’s Old Testament reading we encounter the third covenant in the bible: the covenant between God and Moses.  By way of review, on the First Sunday in Lent we learned about God’s covenant with Noah – a covenant with all of creation – and we pondered our Noah-like call to care for every living thing on the planet.  Last week we learned about God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah – a covenant with the entire human family – and we pondered our responsibility to create relationships with all people that mirrors God’s desire for all of us who come from a common ancestor.

Central to the covenant with Moses are the 10 Commandments.  You may be interested to know that the Hebrew translation for the 10 Commandments is Asereth ha-Dibroth, which means “the ten words”, “the ten sayings”, or “the ten matters.”  The English name “Decalogue” follows the Greek and means “ten words”.  It wasn’t until the publishing of the Geneva Bible in 1560 that we find the first reference to the “tenne commandments”.   Far from most popular depictions of large slabs of stone, scholars believe the tablets themselves would have been about the size of a sheet of legal paper and weighed no more than a few pounds each.

A long time ago a rabbi counted all the commandments in the Law of Moses – both the positive things we are to do and the negative things we are to avoid – and came up with 613 distinctive commandments.  While many of them strike us as irrelevant today, the 10 Commandments still seem to be foundational to life itself.  Four of the commandments define our relationship to God and six describe our relationship with one another.  When Jesus was asked to name the most important commandment of all – the one to keep in all of the 613 – he famously replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the others.” 

Like the other two covenants before it, God’s covenant with Moses is actually a covenant with more than just one individual.  It is a covenant with a specific group of people who are called to live life in a certain kind of way; a way that embodies the 10 Commandments. 

Here is what we need to pay attention to regarding the covenant with Moses.  It does not describe God’s relationship with all of creation nor is it made with the entire human family.  It sets up a relationship between God and those people who were freed from bondage in Egypt and led out into the wilderness.  The covenant with Moses, through which the 10 Commandments are issued, defines how this group of people is to live with God and with one another.

These folks – Hebrews – came to think of themselves as the Chosen People because God picked them to be in a special, unique relationship.  Some people associate being chosen with privilege and prestige.  They may even assume it implies superiority compared to others: “We are better than you” or “God loves us more than you.”  But being chosen is not that.  Rather, it implies responsibility.  It involves being given a task.  St. Paul used the metaphor of an ambassador to describe it.  God’s chosen people were called to live life in a way that helped everyone else to make sense of life.  They were to be lights in a dark and godless world.  They were to be exemplars of all that God dreams for the human family and for creation.

Professional sports teams are always trying to find veteran players who can provide leadership.  They need people who can show the younger players what it takes to be a winner, who can help rookies understand what it looks like to be a professional.  A particular veteran may be added to a team not because he is at that peak of his career or the most skilled or athletic person on the team, but because he can embody for everyone else what it means “to take care of your business”; a phrase often associated with being a professional athlete.

Those people invited into a covenant relationship with God through Moses were tasked with helping others understand what it means to take care of the business of life; not by going around and pointing out to everyone else what they were doing wrong, but by living themselves in a way that was right.  It is like the old quote attributed to St Francis: “Preach the gospel at all times and only when necessary use words.”

Along with our Jewish brothers and sisters, we in the Christian tradition are inheritors of God’s covenant with Moses.  Thomas Cranmer, the architect of the first English Book of Common Prayer in 1549, believed that if the people of England could recite in their own language the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds, the Lord’s Prayer, and the 10 Commandments then most of the time they would know the right thing to do and would do it.  This is why these three feature so prominently in our worship life.  And it is why many older Episcopal churches have tablets like the ones we have in our chapel where all three are written out and in plain view for the congregants.

We Episcopalians enter into a covenant with God through baptism.  It tasks us with a responsibility to live our lives in a manner which we believe witnesses to what God desires of all people:

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

I will, with God’s help.

Our baptismal covenant stands not in opposition to the 10 Commandments or to Jesus’ summary of the law, but as focused expression of both.  The more we say these words the more they form us and give us a language to express what we believe God dreams for us.  Through our baptism we are called and empowered to be ambassadors, lights, beacons, examples.  We use our religion not as a club to beat over the head those who do not live as we do, but as a witness to all that is good and healthy and full of life as God intends.

Today we add to our emerging Lenten display the image of the tablets.  The rainbow ribbons remind us of God’s covenant with Noah and all of creation.  They invite us to ponder our Noah-like role to care for every living thing.  The paper figures remind us of God’s covenant with Abraham, a covenant that binds together the entire human family by bringing us forth from a common ancestor.  They invite us to ponder our responsibility to live into God’s dream for all people.  And today we add the tablets – a reminder of the covenant of Moses where we are tasked to live in this world in a way that embodies all that it is good and godly.

I will give you a few moments of silence to reflect on what you are already doing to live into the covenant with Moses and also to ponder what one thing you might commit to doing to take the next step in being a faithful ambassador and witness.

A Covenant with the Human Family

God said, “You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  No longer shall your name be Abram [which means “noble father”], but your name shall be Abraham [which means “father of many”]; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations…  As for Sarai [a name which means “princess”],… Sarah shall be her name [which means “mother of nations”].”

This is God’s covenant promise with Abraham. 

Perhaps you recall from last week that a covenant is an agreement between two people or parties who desire to be bound in a deep, committed relationship.  It declares the blessings of being in covenant as well as stipulations about behavior.  God’s covenant with Noah, which we heard last week, expressed God’s deep desire to be in relationship not only with Noah, but also with all of creation.  I left you with the charge to engage in prayerful discernment around what you can do to exhibit a Noah-like care for every living thing on the planet.

Abraham’s covenant shifts our focus from creation to something else.  Some traditions within the Christian faith emphasize God’s command to Abraham, “Walk before me, and be blameless.”  Certainly there is something good in our Puritanical roots that linger even today.  Today’s New Testament reading shows how St. Paul places the focus on faith.  Abraham believes God’s promise even though he and his wife are childless and well past the years for giving birth.  Is this what we should take away from Abraham’s covenant – the call to be blameless and to have faith in the improbable – or is there something else here, something that we have been overlooking for quite some time?

I think there is.  We find an important clue about it in the new names God gives to Abraham and Sarah.  These names reveal God’s dream for the human family, that we, though diverse, might all trace our lineage to a common ancestor and live together in one accord.  The great faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have Abraham as an ancestor.  We are family, all of us, but it does not take much of a glance at the news to recognize that we are highly dysfunctional.

This past week, members of ISIS raided thirty-three Assyrian villages and took hostage as many at three hundred Christian refugees.  It is part of a systematic effort unfolding in multiple locations around the globe to control and kill members of religious minorities by driving them from their homes, enslaving women, and destroying houses of worship.  It follows on the heels of the beheading twenty-one Egyptian Christians, which follows on the heels of the attack on a kosher grocery in Paris (where seventeen people were killed) and the attack of the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine (killing twelve).

Clearly, this is not what God envisioned for the multitude of nations tracing their origin back to Abraham.  In fact, God must weep.  And lest we Christians play the martyr card too quickly, we need to acknowledge three things.  First, over the long course of human history, there have been many, many times when we have been the ones who brutally persecuted religious minorities.  Second, to the degree that the United States and Western Europe are Christian nations, we have flaunted our military supremacy in Arab countries without thinking through the impact it would have on Muslims around the world.  And third, ISIS is not just a movement against Christians or the west.  It also targets Jews, Shiite Muslims, and other religious minorities. 

A colleague shared this prayer with me.  He offered it at the beginning of a parish’s Lenten program, but I think it speaks eloquently not only for God’s dream for that faith community, but also of God’s deep desire for the multitude of nations that have one common ancestor:

Gracious God, thank you for the diversity of human beings that surround me on every side.  In the ideas, in the hopes, in the dreams, and in the struggles of those who share this earthly life, let me find that through a community of human beings I am made fuller and more alive.  Let the fullness given by community give me the courage to offer my own unique self with humility to the lives of others.  As we all share in the life that you have so graciously given us, may we be the lights of your love to one another.  Amen.

It is a prayer that is expressive of God’s dream for all people, but it is not the reality in which we live.

Some people are saying that America should engage in a holy war as Jihadists extremists.  I do believe that America needs to help those threatened countries and people who want to defend themselves against this expression of evil, but if anything I believe we are called to wage a holy peace.  Our words, our prayers, our actions need to have as their goal not the eradication of those who oppose us and not the elimination of those we fear, but living into the covenant promise that God made with Abraham.  Is there a more important belief in our time than faith in God’s promise that Abraham would be the ancestor of many nations?

Given the world we live in, that would take radical faith indeed.  And some people are doing it.  Last Saturday in Norway, more than one thousand people formed a “ring of peace” outside Oslo’s main synagogue.  It was an event organized by young Muslims in response to recent events around Europe and it took place in sub-zero temperatures.  One organizer said the gathering was intended to show that “that Islam is about love and unity.”  Another stated “We want to demonstrate that Jews and Muslims do not hate each other… We do not want individuals to define what Islam is for the rest of us.”  I find it heartening that there are people out there of all faiths who understand why God brought forth our nations from a common ancestor. 

Another person who understood this was Kayla Mueller, the young American aid worker who was killed on February 6 by on airstrike on the ISIS camp where she was being held hostage.  She wrote this four years ago in a letter to her parents:

“I will always seek God.  Some people find God in church.  Some people find God in nature.  Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering.  I’ve known for some time what my life’s work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.”

She lived out these words by volunteering with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and Amnesty International.  After college she went to India to work in an orphanage and also gave assistance to Tibetan refugees.  She went to Israel to help with African refugee resettle in that country and joined a movement that led her to sleep in front of Palestinian homes threatened with demolition by bulldozers.  Returning to her home in Arizona in 2011, she went to work at a treatment center for HIV/AIDS patients and also worked in a shelter for homeless women.  Kayla was all about waging non-violent holy peace.  

In December 2012, Kayla Mueller moved to a location near the Syrian border in Turkey to help with the refugee crisis.  She wrote home, “For as long as I live, I will not let this suffering be normal.” In August of 2013 she was taken hostage by ISIS after visiting a hospital.  During her imprisonment her biggest concern was not for herself, but for family and friends who were suffering for her. 

When I hear the words of Jesus in today’s gospel reading to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me, most of the time I realize I have only the thinnest and most idealized understanding of what this might mean for my life.  But when I look at Kayla Mueller I realize that she understood to the fullest degree possible what it meant for her.  One person wrote that she “is a martyr not because she was killed for her beliefs but because she was willing to live by them at any cost.”  That helps you and me to find a new place to start.  How am I going to live by my beliefs perhaps not at any cost, but at least at a great cost, or maybe even at some cost?

This morning we add to the rainbow in our emerging Lenten display cut-out paper dolls.  The rainbow reminds us of God’s covenant with all creation.  The paper figures represent the multitude of nations that God has brought forth out of a single person. 

What do you do already to live into God’s covenant dream for the entire human family?  What else might you do?  Perhaps you might write a prayer as beautiful as the one I read earlier.  This, I think, is a powerful way to counteract the very understandable response of fear that grows with each day’s headlines.  Perhaps you will find a place to offer your time, talents, and treasure in a way that brings you into contact with the wonderful “diversity of human beings that surround you on every side.”  Perhaps there is something else.  I will give you a short moment of silence to wait and listen to allow God to put something on your heart.