Starting today, I'm going to have two blogs. The meditations on the Daily Office have been moved to "The Daily Office @ Christ Church." If you have received some spiritual benefit from my meditations, then join me over there in cyberspace. Please bookmark it or save it as one of your favorites on the Internet.
I've felt constrained from blogging on more general issues in the parish and community because I was concerned that anything I posted would quickly get buried under the daily meditations; and many of you who check the blog once or twice a week would miss those more general postings. On this blog, I will continue to post my sermons, and other reflections about twice a week.
That means you'll hear more from me on more issues, questions, and situations than just the meditations. I like to think that I'm creating more opportunities for us to communicate with each other. Notice that "communicate", and "communion" share the same root. When we share the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, we are also, in a sense, communicating with each other. Let's keep that holy communication going throughout the week.
I have just one request. I've made it as easy as possible for folks to comment on my posts by not requring registration. If you do post a comment at either blog as "Annonymous," please sign your post at the end. I'd really like to know who I'm communicating with.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sermon for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time
There is one powerful word that seems to get thrown around far too easily in today’s Gospel reading. Five times Jesus and the Pharisees have a debate over what really defiles. But what is “defilement?” The English word, “defile” comes from the Latin word for “trample.” That makes sense. Based on an internet search, the ways in which we use this word, “defile” make it almost offensive to use in church, or at least the activities described as defiling. To defile a person or thing is to trample on it so much as to deprive it of any value, or shame.On the one hand, that makes today's Gospel hard to understand. Why so much fuss over hand washing? On the other hand, all this attention to such a trivial act makes it easy to explain away today’s debate between Jesus and the Pharisees. They make petty comments about washing one’s hands before eating; Jesus calls them up for their pettiness, wins yet another verbal smack-down with the Pharisees, and we go home satisfied with a story that really has nothing to do with us today. After all, we’re not so petty. Are we? And we’re all here in church on Sunday when we could have slept in a after a night of partying. We certainly haven’t “defiled” anything or anyone, right? If that’s our approach to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then in truth, we do defile the Gospel, by stripping it of its power to change our hearts and our lives for the better.
So, the Pharisees see Jesus’s disciples not washing their hands before they eat, and demand to know why they aren’t following tradition, but are eating with “defiled” hands. Several weeks ago, I had to explain what it meant to be “unclean” in the religious sense that the Jewish people meant. That’s what needs to be done in the case of the word, “defile.” Literally, it means “to make common,” to make something ordinary. Anyone who has seen "Raiders of the Lost Ark" knows that God and the things touched by God were extremely powerful, and never to be mixed with the ordinary things of life. But to their credit the Pharisees wanted to infuse the ordinary with God’s presence. So, they developed various rituals and ceremonies to make the ordinary events of life extraordinary, holy, set apart for worship and thanksgiving.
In truth, the Jews of Jesus’s time weren’t trying to do anything different than what we do. They, and we, look for God in the ordinary places of our life. Then, having found that presence, they and we set apart those times and places because they are holy, infused with God’s presence. It’s why we come here on Sunday morning. It’s why we say prayers in our homes, and why we ask God’s blessings before we eat. Those who have been on Cursillo weekends know how powerfully present God was during that time, and so we develop a rule of life, which we hope to do enough so that it becomes ordinary, yet also holy, so that when we follow that rule, we remember and reconnect with that presence. We periodically reunite with our Cursillo friends to renew our sense of that divine presence.
But any rule or ritual risks becoming ordinary in the way that Jesus and the Pharisees meant by "defile." The liturgies of our life may be comforting. But no man-made ritual or rule can contain the presence of Almighty God. As Rich Mullins sang, our God is an awesome God, and he cannot be contained by any human invention. And if we try, then we have made that thing ordinary. And in that “defilement,” the God we tried to contain slips through our fingers like the air.
But the answer isn’t, therefore, to simply throw out the old rituals. That’s not Jesus’s answer. Look carefully at Jesus’s words. He does not tell the Pharisees they’re wrong to try and make the renewal of life and fellowship at an ordinary dinner something holy. He doesn’t tell them they shouldn’t wash their hands. He does warn them about making human traditions equal to God’s commandment. Then he teaches the crowd what it is that makes things “ordinary.” And it isn’t out there. It isn’t food, or pots or pans. It isn’t the world that is ordinary or defiled. How could anything that God made be ordinary?
It is here, inside us, where the spirit of the ordinary lurks. Look again at Jesus’s laundry list of evil. Some of what he mentions are actions: theft, murder, adultery. But it is, as Jesus says, from within, from the human heart, that sin and evil spread out to the world and hurt those around us. Look at the News on TV and you see what the Evil One would have us think is ordinary: cynicism, anger and rage, good guys and bad guys in a never ending struggle in which neither can ever claim victory.
But we are not ordinary. We are holy, set apart, but we are not to bask in our holiness. If our worship only makes us feel better, then we have made our rituals ordinary. Giving the good news that God is not an angry judge, but the one who loves us no matter what; that’s the evangelism part of our mission statement. Building each other up in knowledge and wisdom about our faith; that’s discipleship. Creating opportunities for us to be a parish family not just on Sunday; that’s fellowship. Serving and helping the poor however they have come to our doors; that’s ministry. And when all that becomes ordinary, then we and this world around us will no longer be defiled, but holy: and the holy will be ordinary and the ordinary holy.
Soon, we will be fed once again with Jesus Christ himself. So nourished and renewed with this holy bread and holy wine, let us confront the forces of defilement – the fearful and cynical, the arrogant and condemning. We are holy, set apart. We are extraordinary.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Friday, 16th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 28:23-31But…but…what happened? Did Paul go before the Emperor? Was he vindicated and freed? Did he get to Spain, as he had told the Romans in his letter that he hoped? Why does Luke end his “orderly account, beginning in his Gospel (Luke 1:3) here? I believe it was because, having been written at least some years later, the author, and his readers, already knew what had happened.
Most scholars believe that Paul arrived in Rome around 60 AD. Luke says at the end that he was under something of a cushy house arrest for two years. Thus, it might have been as early as 62 when he appeared before Nero. Two years later, in 64, a fire devastated much of Rome, and Nero blamed the Christians, thus starting the persecutions that lasted, on and off, for the better part of 300 years. About 30 years later, St. Clement, the Bishop of Rome, wrote this of Paul: “bearing his testimony before kings and rulers, he passed out of this world and was received into the holy places.” Paul may have been a Roman citizen. But I suspect that Nero knew a threat to his pretensions of power when he heard it.
Most scholars believe that Paul arrived in Rome around 60 AD. Luke says at the end that he was under something of a cushy house arrest for two years. Thus, it might have been as early as 62 when he appeared before Nero. Two years later, in 64, a fire devastated much of Rome, and Nero blamed the Christians, thus starting the persecutions that lasted, on and off, for the better part of 300 years. About 30 years later, St. Clement, the Bishop of Rome, wrote this of Paul: “bearing his testimony before kings and rulers, he passed out of this world and was received into the holy places.” Paul may have been a Roman citizen. But I suspect that Nero knew a threat to his pretensions of power when he heard it.
So, anyone reading Luke’s account likely knew that Paul had met his death at Nero’s hand. But is that really the end of the story? Did Jesus’s story end at the cross? Paul, of course, was not Jesus. But we already know that death is not the end of the human story, thanks to Jesus Christ. And look where we started. Jesus promised his disciples at the beginning of Acts: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (1:8). The story of Acts is how that promise of Jesus, that a small band of men and women from an oppressed people living in a Near East backwater, would spread the outlandish story of an executed criminal risen from the dead as God’s only son to the end of the earth. In my first blog on Acts, I said that along the way, those disciples, still thinking in terms of Israel’s national vindication, would travel immense distances in their minds and hearts, as well as geographic. These men and women, who came to be called “Christians,” would change the world, and find themselves changed in their vision of God’s love and purpose for all people.
Two millennia later, the journey continues. The first Christians referred to themselves as “the Way.” Today, we at Christ Church have sent apostles to the end of the earth. We are still learning just how wide is God’s love, and his vision wider than we can imagine. But just as the Holy Spirit guided the first Christians, so the Spirit that comes from God the father and God the Son is as close to us as our breath, gently guiding us and surrounding us with love. Doesn’t that count as a happy ending?
The image to the left is Rembrandt’s rendering of Paul, with a manuscript representing his writings, and the “sword of Faith” protruding from his cloak.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Thursday, 16th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 28:11-22I’m wreaking havoc with the lectionary for the next couple of days. We’re almost at the end of Acts, which in the Daily Office lectionary concludes on Saturday. In order for us to finish on Friday, I’m skipping chapter 27. In that chapter, Paul’s journey to Rome proved to be as arduous as his time in Jerusalem. But God clearly wanted Paul to go to Rome. “And so we came to Rome,” finally.
Of course, in another sense, the journey is just beginning. As tough as it has been for Paul to get here, the toughest part is just beginning. At least until now, he has been able to play Roman off against Jew by virtue of his Roman citizenship, with the support of his fellow Christians. But Paul is also a prisoner of the Roman Empire, soon to face the judgment of the Roman Emperor Nero. Yes that Nero, who would, in a few years, inaugurate the Roman persecution of the Christians by blaming them for the fire that devastated Rome. Of course, there are the local Jews, whom Paul has no reason to expect will be any friendlier to him than they have been anywhere else he’s been.
Finally, there are the Jewish Christians, who are likely to be just as suspicious as Paul as the non-Christian Jews. Paul had already written to them before he had gone to Jerusalem, in the letter that we have today in the New Testament, hoping to allay the concerns of Jewish Christians that he was prepared to throw out the entire Old Covenant for the sake of winning Gentile converts.
If this all sounds ominous, it should. More on that tomorrow. But today at least, imagine Paul walking toward Rome, still 50 miles away, coming to the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns, and finding a welcoming committee! Christians who have walked 50 miles to welcome Paul as if he was Caesar! Whatever else would happen, Paul knew that he would not be alone. Perhaps, we can endure anything as long as we are not alone. Who are we at Christ Church prepared to go 50 miles out of our way to welcome and reassure that they are not alone?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Wednesday, 16th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 26:22-27:1 Morning Prayer
Most standard translations don’t get Festus’s exclamation right. Why doesn’t anyone want to say that Festus “shouted”? That’s what Luke wrote. Sometimes, translators seem to be in a common conspiracy to drain all human passion out of the Bible. But Paul’s statement in verse 23 was not just offensive, but absolutely shocking to Festus. Remember those Greek and Roman gods you read in Mythology class? Didn’t they sound an awful lot like human beings? Except that they were immortal, and you’re not. Mortality was the one absolute wall dividing the gods from human beings. Think of your mortality as an element of religious faith, then imagine hearing, not just that one man rose from the dead, but that he was only “the first.” Try that thought experiment, and you might understand why Festus reacted with such vehemence.
So, now Paul has succeeded in getting Caesar’s deputy, the man who will explain Paul’s case to Caesar, angry at him. What to do now. Paul expertly plays the Jewish king Agrippa off against Festus. This doesn’t sound crazy to you, does it Agrippa. And if you, a faithful Jew, trust in the Resurrection of the dead, then just believe me when I say that I have seen Jesus, risen from the dead. Agrippa isn’t offended. He’s just cynical. Rather than answer Paul directly, Agrippa deflects Paul’s challenge with wit: So you’re going to make me a Christian now, are you?
Those are two possible responses to the Good News. Which of these responses have you encountered, offense or cynicism? Which would you rather encounter? Offense might get you in a fight. But perhaps offense is more likely to represent the first step toward faith than indifference. At least if someone is offended, they’re engaging you and your words with an open heart; a heart that perhaps got probed deeper than expected. But at least they’re not going to dismiss you with indifference. If they are touched in their heart, then they’ll be thinking about what you said long after you’re gone.
Of course, evangelism, which comes from the Greek for “good news,” needs to actually be good news for the aching heart, not an argument meant to push someone’s button. And it may have been that Agrippa really wanted to believe Paul. But he has very comfortable life, sometimes playing a Roman, other times a Jew. He certainly didn’t want to end up in chains like Paul. We don’t know much about Festus from the secular histories of the time. There’s no way to know what impact Paul’s defense had on him. But I would like to think that it grew on him as he moved on with his life, always nibbling at his heart.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Feast of St. Bartholomew, Apostle & Martyr
Bartholomew’s feast day was officially yesterday, but I’ve transferred it to today, for our weekly Eucharist this evening. This member of the Twelve is identified as Bartholomew in Matthew, Mark and Luke. John’s Gospel does not mention him. But the name literally means “Son of Tolmai.” So it is likely that he went by another name. And in chap. 1, John identifies a “Nathanael” as an early member of the Twelve, but who is not named in the first three gospels. Thus, most scholars conclude that Bartholomew and Nathanael are the same person.
It was Nathanael, stepped in the prophecies of Israel, who recognized that the Messiah was to come from Bethlehem. So, when Philip said, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph,” Nathanael replied, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But when he saw Jesus from a distance, it was Jesus who saw through to Nathanael’s heart and said, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” (John 1:43-51)
The Gospel reading for Bartholomew focuses on Jesus’s promise to the Twelve that they will “sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:30). Certainly John’s Gospel presents Nathanael as a man focused on the redemption of the nation of Israel. And yet, there are reports from the earliest Christian traditions that Bartholomew got as far as India in his preaching of the Gospel, and eventually was martyred in modern-day Armenia on the southern border with Russia. Jesus promised him that he would see things that would expand his vision far beyond national vindication.
If the tradition is correct, then this true son of Israel came to understand that all were sons of God in Christ Jesus, and he lived out that vision to the end of his physical life. Thus it is always with God, expanding our vision of what it means to be saved, and just who is meant to be saved.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Monday, 16th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 26:1-23Morning Prayer
To catch us up, Festus the Roman Governor has agreed to send Paul to Caesar in Rome. But what exactly, is the charge against Paul. It’s clear the Festus that what’s going on here is an internal Jewish dispute. But he can’t just free Paul because to do so would probably cause a disturbance for which he, Festus, would be held responsible to Rome. But he can’t send Paul to Caesar without some explanation.
But now into the drama comes the local Jewish king, Agrippa II, installed by the Emperor. His grandfather was Herod “the Great,” mainly because of his cruelty. His father, Agrippa I had the Apostle James beheaded in chap. 12 of Acts. For Festus, the best thing about Agrippa was that he was Jewish, yet had been educated in Rome. Perhaps he might be able to make some sense of this Jewish dispute in a way that a pagan could understand. That’s why in today’s reading from Acts, Paul is defending himself before Agrippa.
For me, what stands out in Paul’s defense is the phrase that he only now recalls Jesus using: “Saul, Saul! Why are you persecuting me? You are hurting yourself by hitting back, like an ox kicking against its owner's stick” (26:14, Good News Bible). What Jesus was apparently pointing out to Paul was his obstinacy. Now to be honest, that obstinacy didn’t necessarily leave Paul after his conversion (For evidence of that, read his letter to the Galatians, for starters). But it seems to have been the driving passion behind his work before he saw that blinding light on the way to Damascus: “according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee…and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities” (26:4,11).
The problem is that it seems that anger, more than anything, once drove Paul. But anger cannot be enough to sustain one’s faith and sense of purpose in the darker places of our life. In my former life in Washington, a political mentor has a number of “Laws of the Public Policy Process.” One of them is this: “Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics.” Perhaps; but the obstinacy that often accompanies this outrage may also be one of the most destructive forces in our political culture. And speaking from personal experience, “how hard it is to kick against the goads.”
As Christians, we are called to find a place of peace, good will and faith in him who died, and rose, for us. Paul may have occasionally lapsed into obstinacy, but the man who was able to endure all that he endured, without falling back into hatred, was the man standing before Agrippa.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Sermon for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh gains you nothing. The words I speak to you are spirit and life.” (John 6:63)
This verse might seem to refute everything I said last Sunday about the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion. You see, Jesus tells us today that the "the flesh is useless" (New Rev. Standard Version). What difference does it make if Jesus is "really" present? It's his spiritual presence that matters. The flesh means nothing, right? It turns out that too many Christians have thought that and said that for far too long. And before we understand the relationship between spirit and flesh in Holy Communion, we need to bring spirit and flesh back together in our understanding of them. Spirit and flesh are both meant to live forever. If we assume that it is only the Spirit that lives forever, then we have sold short the flesh which the risen Jesus was born in, died in, and lives in today.
Spirit versus Flesh. That has been the great and tragic wrestling match throughout our history as a church. Far too often, our flesh has seemed like an enemy to our souls. And there is no time where our bodies and souls seem more like enemies than at the death of our bodies. When we or someone we love is near physical death, we know that the spirit inside us is not meant for death but for life. And we want that spirit to be free of all that weighs it down. And the body at that time seems like a burden of which we want to be free. It is understandable for us to want that for ourselves and for those we love.
But before you take that leap, look back at that body, which has been the source of so many joys, and ask yourself: Were the 40, 50, 60 or 70 years really "useless?" If the answer is yes, then why were we born at all? If the answer is yes, why did God become a flesh and blood human being? By itself, the flesh gains us nothing. But that does not make the flesh which the risen Jesus was born in, and died in, “useless.” The word that the NRSV translates as “useless” actually means to “profit nothing.” Thus, what Jesus is saying is that by itself, the flesh will not gain you anything lasting, not that the flesh is useless. The Spirit of the risen Jesus will gain everlasting life for our flesh, just as the risen Jesus continues to live in his human flesh.
Every Sunday that we break the bread at this holy table, we relive Jesus’s death for us, for our sins. But what makes this bread more than bread, and this wine more than wine, is that Jesus rose, not just in the spirit but in the body. He appeared to over 500 witnesses. And they became his witnesses, many if not most of them choosing death rather than deny what they had seen. And that testimony was given to the next generation of witnesses. It was between that “handing on” of the testimony from the first generation to the next that our Gospels were written. That is the written testimony. But there is also the testimony that has been handed down from generation to generation, the testimony that Jesus is risen.
And so every Sunday, we repeat Jesus’s words, and his words give spirit and life to this bread and wine. And when we eat Jesus and drink Jesus, it is not a dead Jesus that we consume, but the risen Jesus, who gives us a foretaste of eternal joy, eternal peace, and eternal life. Yes, the flesh must still die. But the risen Jesus who has already passed through death is waiting for our souls. And he will protect our souls until that day when Jesus’s resurrection will be ours as well. That is the promise that we taste each Sunday, that the risen Jesus will give spirit and life to our bodies. All that we suffer, and enjoy, in this physical life is simply a preparation for the joys that will forever be ours.
These are the words of spirit and life that Jesus speaks to us every day of our lives. Where else shall we go?
This verse might seem to refute everything I said last Sunday about the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion. You see, Jesus tells us today that the "the flesh is useless" (New Rev. Standard Version). What difference does it make if Jesus is "really" present? It's his spiritual presence that matters. The flesh means nothing, right? It turns out that too many Christians have thought that and said that for far too long. And before we understand the relationship between spirit and flesh in Holy Communion, we need to bring spirit and flesh back together in our understanding of them. Spirit and flesh are both meant to live forever. If we assume that it is only the Spirit that lives forever, then we have sold short the flesh which the risen Jesus was born in, died in, and lives in today.
Spirit versus Flesh. That has been the great and tragic wrestling match throughout our history as a church. Far too often, our flesh has seemed like an enemy to our souls. And there is no time where our bodies and souls seem more like enemies than at the death of our bodies. When we or someone we love is near physical death, we know that the spirit inside us is not meant for death but for life. And we want that spirit to be free of all that weighs it down. And the body at that time seems like a burden of which we want to be free. It is understandable for us to want that for ourselves and for those we love.
But before you take that leap, look back at that body, which has been the source of so many joys, and ask yourself: Were the 40, 50, 60 or 70 years really "useless?" If the answer is yes, then why were we born at all? If the answer is yes, why did God become a flesh and blood human being? By itself, the flesh gains us nothing. But that does not make the flesh which the risen Jesus was born in, and died in, “useless.” The word that the NRSV translates as “useless” actually means to “profit nothing.” Thus, what Jesus is saying is that by itself, the flesh will not gain you anything lasting, not that the flesh is useless. The Spirit of the risen Jesus will gain everlasting life for our flesh, just as the risen Jesus continues to live in his human flesh.
Every Sunday that we break the bread at this holy table, we relive Jesus’s death for us, for our sins. But what makes this bread more than bread, and this wine more than wine, is that Jesus rose, not just in the spirit but in the body. He appeared to over 500 witnesses. And they became his witnesses, many if not most of them choosing death rather than deny what they had seen. And that testimony was given to the next generation of witnesses. It was between that “handing on” of the testimony from the first generation to the next that our Gospels were written. That is the written testimony. But there is also the testimony that has been handed down from generation to generation, the testimony that Jesus is risen.
And so every Sunday, we repeat Jesus’s words, and his words give spirit and life to this bread and wine. And when we eat Jesus and drink Jesus, it is not a dead Jesus that we consume, but the risen Jesus, who gives us a foretaste of eternal joy, eternal peace, and eternal life. Yes, the flesh must still die. But the risen Jesus who has already passed through death is waiting for our souls. And he will protect our souls until that day when Jesus’s resurrection will be ours as well. That is the promise that we taste each Sunday, that the risen Jesus will give spirit and life to our bodies. All that we suffer, and enjoy, in this physical life is simply a preparation for the joys that will forever be ours.
These are the words of spirit and life that Jesus speaks to us every day of our lives. Where else shall we go?
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Sermon Preview, 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Courtesy of wordle.net, here's a preview of my sermon tomorrow.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Friday, 15th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 24:25-25:12Morning Prayer
Two years. Two years Paul waits in Caesarea while Felix sits on his case, knowing he can’t throw a Roman citizen to the wolves, but not wanting to give the locals an excuse to complain about him to Caesar by setting Paul free. And so Paul waited, and waited. How often did he remember the vision he had seen of his Lord promising him, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome”? He had hoped to be in Jerusalem for only a few days before making his way to Rome. That’s what he had written to the Romans. Two years.
I’m sure that like all of us, Paul wondered how exactly God was going to answer his prayer. He had prayed to go to Rome, and then to Spain, to the western end of the earth. To do that, he needed to be free. But as he sat in Caesarea for those two years, he must have realized that he was going to be a ball batted back and forth between Roman governors and Jewish elders. And even if the new Governor committed a miraculous act of political courage and released Paul, would Paul survive the murderous plots sure to be hatched in Jerusalem?
After two long years of prayer and discernment, Paul had come to understand that God’s answer was going to have to come in a way that Paul might not have picked, but was a clear answer nonetheless. “I appeal to Caesar,” Paul says, playing his last card. He is still a prisoner. And no prisoner wanted to take the chance of incurring the anger of the Roman Emperor wondering why his time had been wasted. But by appealing to Caesar, Paul purchases his ticket to Rome, where he will have the gift of testifying to “the facts” of Jesus Christ the Risen Lord of all things.
As we saints today have learned, so Paul learned: God answers prayer, however long it takes or however unexpected the answer is. Have faith.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Thursday, 15th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 24:1-23Morning Prayer
So today, the Jewish leaders, and their advocate, “one Tertullus,” have arrived in Caesarea to make their case against Paul. Interestingly, Tertullus’s charge that Paul is “one who stirs up riots,” is the same charge laid against Barabbas, the anti-Roman rebel, who was released by Pilate instead of Jesus. And Paul is accused of stirring up riots “among all the Jews throughout the world.” This is a very serious charge to bring before a Roman official, obsessed as the Romans were with peaceful order.
By laying the riot charge against Paul, Tertullus is saying to the Governor Felix that this is not an internal Jewish matter, but one which threaten the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, which the Romans were quite brutal in enforcing. It is also heavily ironic that Tertullus should credit Felix with bringing “much peace” to Judea, since in fact Felix was sitting on a time-bomb that would explode in about a decade with the Jewish rebellion of 66. Paul deftly avoids mentioning his travels throughout Asia and Greece, since they haven’t been very peaceful, and emphasizes his brief time in Jerusalem, where he had not preached at all, but had been in a quiet time of prayer with his fellow Jews. Then again, Paul invokes the debate over resurrection as the real issue here. In effect, Paul is saying to the Roman Governor: this is an internal religious matter among us Jews that need not concern you.
For now, of course, that is true. Paul is not challenging the Roman authorities. But read his letters, in which he regularly refers to Jesus as “Lord,” the same title used to refer to the Roman Emperor. Years later, of course, Christians would be forced to choose between two Lords, Caesar or the Risen Christ. For now, Paul is perfectly content to play up his Roman citizenship for his protection and the opportunity to preach the Good News in Rome.
And so it is 2000 years later. In a hot August, where many voices compete to be heard by the most by screaming the loudest, we who follow “The Way” must always be ready to shift alliances when such shifts give us the widest opening for the Good News of God’s love in Jesus Christ to be heard. There is no “Christian” party that can claim pour permanent allegiance. We the Church stand in judgment of all man-made parties and ideologies. And we need each other, with our different opinions and perspectives, to keep us ever mindful of that truth.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Wednesday, 15th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 23:23-35Morning Prayer
Claudius Lysias was officially known as the Tribune in Jerusalem. His boss, Felix, was the Governor of the region of Syria, which included the modern-day Israel and Syria. Lysias may not understand why Paul was causing so much anger in Jerusalem. But hearing of the plot against him, Lysias sees an opportunity to get this problem off his hands by kicking it upstairs to his superior in Caesarea, about 60 miles away from Lysias in Jerusalem. And he won’t have to hear the Jewish Council yelling at him anymore, at least not about this Paul again, he hopes.
Paul had generally tried to fly under the radar of Roman political authority, never trying to pick a fight with the powers that be, but working around them. It must have seemed strange to Paul to be escorted to the Roman governor with this much Roman protection: nearly 500 Roman soldiers with one job, to protect him. And Lysias’s letter to Felix, reproduced by Luke, repeats a theme that has been sounded often in Luke’s account of Paul’s travels: “I found that he was being accused about questions of their law, but charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment.”
If Acts was written after the failed Jewish rebellion from 66-70 AD, then Luke would most certainly want to make it clear that Christianity was not a threat to Roman authority. At the same time, the reader of Acts would also have seen that this movement, which outsiders called “Christian” but the Christians called “The Way”, was not subservient to Roman authority. Today, we who are part of The Way know that we are not unalterably opposed to any authority, political, financial, and religious. For all things belong to God, and God can work thorough all things to bring about good. But the Good News we have for all our neighbors does not belong to any political party, business, or even a particular church.
In fact, the more we fly under the radar screen of partisanship and polarization, the more we will actually be heard by those who need something deeper than a sales pitch or ideological screaming match—who need love.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Tuesday, 15th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 23:12-24
Morning Prayer
Just as Paul is in prayer and hears Jesus tell him that he will make it to Rome, a boy is going to the authorities with what he has learned of the plot to ambush Paul. Quite a coincidence or what some might call a “Godincidence.” William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury during the Second World War, once said, “When I pray, coincidences happen: when I stop praying, the coincidences stop happening.”
Of course, those 40 Jewish men probably prayed too. When they took their solemn oath not to eat until they had killed Paul, they did it out of a genuine belief that they were doing the will of the God of Israel. This man was undermining the traditions they had maintained at God’s command for thousands of years. Who was this man to set aside those traditions? So what happened to them after the Roman commander found out about the plot? To spoil the plot a little bit. The commander, deciding he’d had enough of this, decided to kick the problem upstairs. He sent Paul to the Roman governor in Caeserea, where Paul would sit for five days, then have a hearing before the Governor, who decided to keep him detained for two years.
Ok, maybe those 40 plotters could wait a few days to fulfill their oath. But two years? What did they do? Did they starve to death, leaving their families alone and penniless? Or did the Priests find a way of releasing then from their oath? I suspect that it was the latter. They would not be the last to have taken a rash oath. I wonder if they appreciated the irony of finding a loophole in the law, even as they condemned Paul for creating loopholes for the Gentiles.
Prayer is powerful. But prayer is a conversation between us and God. I try to incorporate periods of silence in my daily prayers, so that I leave an empty space to hear that still small voice in my head and heart that might occasionally say something quite different from what I might expect God to say. God answers prayer, but as those 40 Jews should have realized, not necessarily in the way we might have expected to God to answer.
Morning Prayer
Just as Paul is in prayer and hears Jesus tell him that he will make it to Rome, a boy is going to the authorities with what he has learned of the plot to ambush Paul. Quite a coincidence or what some might call a “Godincidence.” William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury during the Second World War, once said, “When I pray, coincidences happen: when I stop praying, the coincidences stop happening.”
Of course, those 40 Jewish men probably prayed too. When they took their solemn oath not to eat until they had killed Paul, they did it out of a genuine belief that they were doing the will of the God of Israel. This man was undermining the traditions they had maintained at God’s command for thousands of years. Who was this man to set aside those traditions? So what happened to them after the Roman commander found out about the plot? To spoil the plot a little bit. The commander, deciding he’d had enough of this, decided to kick the problem upstairs. He sent Paul to the Roman governor in Caeserea, where Paul would sit for five days, then have a hearing before the Governor, who decided to keep him detained for two years.
Ok, maybe those 40 plotters could wait a few days to fulfill their oath. But two years? What did they do? Did they starve to death, leaving their families alone and penniless? Or did the Priests find a way of releasing then from their oath? I suspect that it was the latter. They would not be the last to have taken a rash oath. I wonder if they appreciated the irony of finding a loophole in the law, even as they condemned Paul for creating loopholes for the Gentiles.
Prayer is powerful. But prayer is a conversation between us and God. I try to incorporate periods of silence in my daily prayers, so that I leave an empty space to hear that still small voice in my head and heart that might occasionally say something quite different from what I might expect God to say. God answers prayer, but as those 40 Jews should have realized, not necessarily in the way we might have expected to God to answer.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Monday, 15th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 22:30-23:11Morning Prayer
“It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial” (Acts 23:6)
To catch us up, The Roman Tribune had had enough of Paul starting a riot every time he opened his mouth, and was about to have him whipped (that is, tortured) to find out what his real agenda. At that point Paul played the trump card of his Roman citizenship. Less than 100 years earlier, Mark Antony had granted Roman citizenship to some Jews who had supported his military campaigns. Thus, not only was Paul a citizen of Rome, but his citizenship was inherited, at least as far back as his father, and maybe his grandfather. Once, informed of this fact, the Roman commander’s treatment of Paul improved dramatically.
Hoping to calm things down, the commander convenes the ruling council of Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, for Paul to address them. Unfortunately, when Paul can’t say one sentence without getting smacked in the face, then civil debate isn’t much of a possibility. So, Paul decides to play two political arties off against each other.
The Sadducees were the party of priests, descending from Moses’s brother, Aaron. The Pharisees were the part of teachers and reformers. The other main difference between them was that the Sadducees only considered the first five books of the Bible to be authoritative, while the Pharisees considered the prophetic books (such as Isaiah and Ezekiel) to also be authoritative. If you looked only to the “Pentateuch,” then there didn’t seem to be much basis on which to conclude that there was any afterlife for human beings. This life alone was God’s gift to us. It is in the later prophetic writings that the Jewish people began to glimpse the possibility of Resurrection, which the Pharisees did. By invoking the Resurrection of the dead, Paul starts an argument between the Sadducees and Pharisees. That’s probably not what the Roman commander wanted, but it kept the Council from condemning Paul.
Just to be clear, Paul means our resurrection, not just Jesus’s. His Resurrection is just the first. Ours is the last to come. Resurrection is not just the escape of our souls from the prison of the body. Our bodies are as much gifts of God as everything else he gives us. When will that happen? Why so long? Well, 2,000 years isn’t really that long if we are people who believe in life for eternity. In the meantime, we are to treat our bodies as the gift that God has given us, and in the words of Jess Jackson, keep hope alive.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Sermon for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time
“The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51)
In one way, the Gospel of John is the ultimate chick flick. It's about three hours of Jesus talking, and talking and talking. On the other hand, most of Jesus's talking isn't getting him any love. For most of these three hours, "the Jews" are just getting madder and madder at Jesus. This long chapter six has had the same effect on Christians. Is Jesus saying that the bread and the wine really is his physical body and blood, or is he really saying that the bread and wine are symbols of his spiritual presence? And just like "the Jews," we Christians have argued among ourselves and had a grand adventure in missing the point. We have argued so much about the bread and wine that we have forgotten that most real presence of Jesus is in each and every single one of us.
So, back to the chick flick. Jesus has been talking for the last four weeks, with one Sunday yet to come. And all his talking has hit a wall with his fellow Jews. Even his disciples are clueless. First he feeds 5,000, to which the people respond, Oh Jesus we love you and we want to make you our King. To which Jesus responds, No, you really just want me to give you more bread. But Moses gave us bread in the wilderness, they come back with. No, Jesus corrects them, God gave your ancestors the bread and then they died. You need the bread of everlasting life. So can you give us this bread, they ask? Sure, Jesus answers, I'm that bread. You don't really mean that, do you Jesus? Oh but I do, Jesus says today. Unless you chew and gnaw on my flesh, and consume every ounce of my blood, you're dead. The Greek word translated as "eat," really means to chew. The language is shocking, but it is the language that Jesus uses. That's why we keep the reserved sacrament in the aumbry, and why we keep a candle lit whenever there is consecrated bread and wine in there. Jesus holds nothing back when he gives himself to us. And as long as that lamp is lit, then know that Jesus is here.
One mistake that too many Christians have made through the centuries has been to try and improve Jesus’s explanation. Transubstantiation, consubstantiation, transsignification, are all long words that human beings have invented to try and make sense of Jesus's words today. The doctrine of the Real Presence is not a philosophical insight, or a scientific theory. It is a mystery that is revealed to us, which we accept on the basis of our trust in Jesus Christ. Perhaps the truest words ever spoken about the Real Presence may have been the briefest. The words belong to Queen Elizabeth I, who when asked for her opinion, simply said, "Twas God the word that spake it, He took the bread and brake it; And what the word did make it; That I believe, and take it." We trust Jesus’s word that he is as close to us as our own tongue, our own stomach, our own heart.
Another mistake that Christians have made through the centuries is that they have focused too much on Jesus being really present in the bread and wine. Yes, when we eat this bread and drink this wine, we receive Jesus’s Body and Blood. But for what? Is the point that Jesus is present in the bread and wine, or that Jesus is present in each of us? Perhaps we focus on the altar because, if we begin to reflect on what Jesus shares with us, that sharing will not stop until we die. “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” Jesus says. Each Sunday, we relive Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples. More than that, we relive his Passion, his death on the Cross, and his Resurrection from the tomb.
When we share the bread, we share in his death, by which he gave his life for the life of this world. And when we share the wine, his life flows through us, giving new life to this broken world. Can we focus so much on the altar, the aumbry, the music and the chasuble, that we forget to die? The death of those we love, our own death, those things must come. But to share in the bread of life is also to die daily, to fear, to anger, to grief. Those are all a kind of death, because fear, anger and death feed on hopelessness and loneliness. The Good News is that when we share the bread, then Jesus shares our small deaths. We are not alone. And when we share the wine, then Jesus brings new life out of our small deaths: new relationships, new hope, new joy.
Jesus is really and truly present, in this bread and wine given for our eternal life, and in all our joys and hopes, our grief and our anguish. For His word spake it; He took the bread and brake it; so what His word has made it, believe and take it.
In one way, the Gospel of John is the ultimate chick flick. It's about three hours of Jesus talking, and talking and talking. On the other hand, most of Jesus's talking isn't getting him any love. For most of these three hours, "the Jews" are just getting madder and madder at Jesus. This long chapter six has had the same effect on Christians. Is Jesus saying that the bread and the wine really is his physical body and blood, or is he really saying that the bread and wine are symbols of his spiritual presence? And just like "the Jews," we Christians have argued among ourselves and had a grand adventure in missing the point. We have argued so much about the bread and wine that we have forgotten that most real presence of Jesus is in each and every single one of us.
So, back to the chick flick. Jesus has been talking for the last four weeks, with one Sunday yet to come. And all his talking has hit a wall with his fellow Jews. Even his disciples are clueless. First he feeds 5,000, to which the people respond, Oh Jesus we love you and we want to make you our King. To which Jesus responds, No, you really just want me to give you more bread. But Moses gave us bread in the wilderness, they come back with. No, Jesus corrects them, God gave your ancestors the bread and then they died. You need the bread of everlasting life. So can you give us this bread, they ask? Sure, Jesus answers, I'm that bread. You don't really mean that, do you Jesus? Oh but I do, Jesus says today. Unless you chew and gnaw on my flesh, and consume every ounce of my blood, you're dead. The Greek word translated as "eat," really means to chew. The language is shocking, but it is the language that Jesus uses. That's why we keep the reserved sacrament in the aumbry, and why we keep a candle lit whenever there is consecrated bread and wine in there. Jesus holds nothing back when he gives himself to us. And as long as that lamp is lit, then know that Jesus is here.
One mistake that too many Christians have made through the centuries has been to try and improve Jesus’s explanation. Transubstantiation, consubstantiation, transsignification, are all long words that human beings have invented to try and make sense of Jesus's words today. The doctrine of the Real Presence is not a philosophical insight, or a scientific theory. It is a mystery that is revealed to us, which we accept on the basis of our trust in Jesus Christ. Perhaps the truest words ever spoken about the Real Presence may have been the briefest. The words belong to Queen Elizabeth I, who when asked for her opinion, simply said, "Twas God the word that spake it, He took the bread and brake it; And what the word did make it; That I believe, and take it." We trust Jesus’s word that he is as close to us as our own tongue, our own stomach, our own heart.
Another mistake that Christians have made through the centuries is that they have focused too much on Jesus being really present in the bread and wine. Yes, when we eat this bread and drink this wine, we receive Jesus’s Body and Blood. But for what? Is the point that Jesus is present in the bread and wine, or that Jesus is present in each of us? Perhaps we focus on the altar because, if we begin to reflect on what Jesus shares with us, that sharing will not stop until we die. “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” Jesus says. Each Sunday, we relive Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples. More than that, we relive his Passion, his death on the Cross, and his Resurrection from the tomb.
When we share the bread, we share in his death, by which he gave his life for the life of this world. And when we share the wine, his life flows through us, giving new life to this broken world. Can we focus so much on the altar, the aumbry, the music and the chasuble, that we forget to die? The death of those we love, our own death, those things must come. But to share in the bread of life is also to die daily, to fear, to anger, to grief. Those are all a kind of death, because fear, anger and death feed on hopelessness and loneliness. The Good News is that when we share the bread, then Jesus shares our small deaths. We are not alone. And when we share the wine, then Jesus brings new life out of our small deaths: new relationships, new hope, new joy.
Jesus is really and truly present, in this bread and wine given for our eternal life, and in all our joys and hopes, our grief and our anguish. For His word spake it; He took the bread and brake it; so what His word has made it, believe and take it.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Friday, 14th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 22:1-22It’s easy to read this part of Acts with a sense of hopelessness. Paul can speak to them in their language; he can trot out all his credentials. But say the one word, “Gentiles,” and the crowd loses all perspective: So, you are preaching to the Gentiles. Now we know that all the charges are true, that you want to destroy all that makes us Jewish, God’s chosen people. Read the 5th chapter of Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians, and you’ll see how hard he tried to make his Gentile protégés more Jewish. But his listeners are incapable of accepting anything Paul says about his mission to the Gentiles. They only want to believe the worst, and are incapable of having their minds changed by anything as inconvenient as facts.
Paul is speaking to a righteous people with centuries of grievances and resentments against the world which has either ignored them or oppressed them. They are so sure of their righteousness, and the Gentiles’ unrighteousness, that salvation can only mean vindication for themselves and punishment of the Gentiles. But even worse than this has been the shoe on the other foot for nearly 2,000 years. How many mobs of “Christians” have Jews had to face, culminating in the Holocaust. True, it was anti-Christian Nazis who perpetrated that atrocity. But they had centuries of anti-Jewish Christian polemic as a foundation for their policy of isolation, and eventual extermination of the Jews.
The painting to the left is by Marc Chagall, and is entitled, “The White Crucifixion.” Jesus is wearing the Jewish prayer shawl, and he is surrounded by the images of persecution, many of which Chagall saw as he grew up in Russia. Surrounding Jesus are the pogroms where local Jews saw their houses and synagogues burned, were forced to leave their homes. And when the Russian Czar was overthrown, the Communists with their blood-red flags simply continued the persecution. Christians also viewed redemption as a game of vindicated and punished, of winners and losers, with the Jews as the losers. But God is not interested in picking winners and losers. Salvation, as I said yesterday, is not a zero-sum game. If Paul, the ultimate enemy of Christianity, could become its greatest champion, then we all should see our enemies as potential friends.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Thursday, 14th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 21:27-40He almost made it. The seven days of ritual purification were almost done. Then Paul likely wouldn’t be seen in the Temple, with his mere presence an incitement to riot. But while it doesn’t say, I think we can assume that Paul made it back to Jerusalem, as he had hoped, in time for the great Jewish festival of Pentecost. That was when the people of Israel celebrated the giving of the law to Moses. Israelites zealous for the law had come from distant parts. And having seen Paul and a Gentile together, they were ready to assume the worst; that Paul had brought this Gentile where no non-Jew was to be brought.
It’s really a miracle that the mob didn’t kill Paul before the Roman Tribune got there with his troops. Still, the last thing the Tribune wants to do is to try and comprehend an incomprehensible quarrel among these strange people. I’m reminded of the cartoon where a frog agrees to carry a scorpion across the water, because of course the scorpion would sting the frog and drown with him. Of course that’s exactly what the scorpion does. Why did you do that, the frog cries. Now we’ll both drown! It makes no sense! You forget, the scorpion said, this is the Middle East. Little has changed.
The path of least resistance is to slap chains on Paul, and then figure out what he’s done to disturb the fragile quiet. Paul’s path of least resistance might be to play the card of his Roman citizenship, and get out of there alive. But Paul has never been known for taking that path. So first, he shows the Tribune that he can speak educated Greek, which gains him just enough respect to get his request granted. The he speaks enough Hebrew for the crowd to accept, for now, that he is one of them.
Tomorrow, Paul will proceed to do what he has done wherever he has travelled. He will speak to his brother Israelites, and try to persuade them the God’s promises are not a zero-sum game. The redemption of Israel is not meant to come at the expense of the Gentiles. But neither is the redemption of the Gentiles meant to come at the expense of Israel. Salvation is not an either/or game, where God sticks it to the enemies of the righteous as a reward to them. Salvation is both/and. It is about the vindication of the righteous and the redemption of the unrighteous. We’ll see how successful Paul is tomorrow.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Wednesday, 14th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 21:15-26
Morning Prayer
“Then they said to Paul, ‘You observe, brother, how many thousands of converts we have among the Jews, all of them staunch upholders of the law: it is said that you teach all Jews in the gentile world to turn their backs on Moses, and tell them not to circumcise their children or follow our way of life.’” (Acts 21:21, Rev. Eng. Bible)
And these are the Christians. Yep, Paul has gone from the frying pan of riots and opposition in Asia and Europe right smack-dab into the fire of Jerusalem. Well, we’ve read the story for ourselves. The truth is that Paul said no such thing. He has never told the Jews to abandon their traditions. He has only sought to clear a path for the Gentiles and save them (particularly the men) from a burden which the Jewish males never had to undergo, having been circumcised at birth. But these new Christians are “staunch upholders of the law,” or literally, “zealous for the law.” And for the zealots of any age, subtlety is never a virtue. Either circumcision is so important that every Christian must be circumcised, or it doesn’t matter, in which case nobody should be circumcised.
The truth is, that the “Truth” is not simple. Last evening, I preached on the tension living fully the life of the body which God has given us, and detaching ourselves from our body, but not forgetting that our bodies are God’s gift to us. The head spins. Detachment implies self-denial. Yet to live fully into God’s gift of the body is the ultimate self-fulfillment. Wait, you mean that we must seek self-denial and self-fulfillment? Well, we do call a man our Lord who said, “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it” (Luke 17:33). I think that Christian truth is so paradoxical because it envisions a time when all things that seem so contradictory to us, like body and soul, will be reconciled. The final triumph of God’s justice will not be a division of the universe into the “good place” and the bad place.” As we sang last Sunday:
A new creation comes to life and grows
As Christ’s new body takes on flesh and blood.
The universe restored and whole will sing
Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.
Let us patiently give that truth time to unfold.
Morning Prayer
“Then they said to Paul, ‘You observe, brother, how many thousands of converts we have among the Jews, all of them staunch upholders of the law: it is said that you teach all Jews in the gentile world to turn their backs on Moses, and tell them not to circumcise their children or follow our way of life.’” (Acts 21:21, Rev. Eng. Bible)
And these are the Christians. Yep, Paul has gone from the frying pan of riots and opposition in Asia and Europe right smack-dab into the fire of Jerusalem. Well, we’ve read the story for ourselves. The truth is that Paul said no such thing. He has never told the Jews to abandon their traditions. He has only sought to clear a path for the Gentiles and save them (particularly the men) from a burden which the Jewish males never had to undergo, having been circumcised at birth. But these new Christians are “staunch upholders of the law,” or literally, “zealous for the law.” And for the zealots of any age, subtlety is never a virtue. Either circumcision is so important that every Christian must be circumcised, or it doesn’t matter, in which case nobody should be circumcised.
The truth is, that the “Truth” is not simple. Last evening, I preached on the tension living fully the life of the body which God has given us, and detaching ourselves from our body, but not forgetting that our bodies are God’s gift to us. The head spins. Detachment implies self-denial. Yet to live fully into God’s gift of the body is the ultimate self-fulfillment. Wait, you mean that we must seek self-denial and self-fulfillment? Well, we do call a man our Lord who said, “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it” (Luke 17:33). I think that Christian truth is so paradoxical because it envisions a time when all things that seem so contradictory to us, like body and soul, will be reconciled. The final triumph of God’s justice will not be a division of the universe into the “good place” and the bad place.” As we sang last Sunday:
A new creation comes to life and grows
As Christ’s new body takes on flesh and blood.
The universe restored and whole will sing
Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.
Let us patiently give that truth time to unfold.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Tuesday, 14th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 21:1-14 The seminary geek term for what Agabus did is “symbolic prophetic action.” There are numerous examples in the Old Testament of such prophecy. In fact, this kind of action had more to do with “prophecy” than the fortune-telling that often gets confused with genuine prophecy. Prophecy was not about forecasting the future. It was about announcing the judgment and will of God. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Agabus was acting out what God had determined, and by acting it out, Agabus actually was guaranteeing the truth of his prophetic action.
After such a dramatic action, it is no surprise that Paul’s friends beg him not to go to Jerusalem for fear of his life. But Paul is ready “to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” In the face of this determination, all his brothers and sisters can say is, “Let the will of the Lord be done.”
But what exactly is that will? Does Agabus actually say that Paul will die in Jerusalem? No. I suspect that Agabus himself assumed that Paul would die. But Agabus only says that Paul will be bound and handed over to the Gentiles. In fact, that is what happened. The prophecy will be fulfilled. But remember that hanging over this story is the promise spoken by the greatest prophet of all: “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” So said Jesus at the beginning of Acts. And that promise must still be fulfilled. And to hint at the ending, it is by going to Jerusalem that Paul will see Jesus’s promise fulfilled in him.
Of course at this point, neither Paul nor anyone else knows that. They have been given just enough information to make them think twice. Can they trust the will of the Lord enough to push ahead. I often think that God gives all of us just enough information to make sure that following the will of God is not a blind leap in the dark, or a naïve skipping along the Yellow Brick Road. God gives us just enough knowledge, so that to follow his call is an act of faith, of trust in God’s promises and God’s power to fulfill those promises.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Monday, 14th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 20:17-38“For never have I avoided proclaiming all of God’s plan to all of you.” (Acts 20:27)
And now, back to our story. After Athens, Paul continued to preach the Gospel in southeastern Europe fir a number of years. But eventually, he decided that he needed to go back to where it all started, Jerusalem. And he is desperate to get there in time to celebrate Pentecost with the rest of the Church. So today, we find him back in Asia (or the western coast of modern-day Turkey) with 30 days to go before Pentecost. He had spent more time in Ephesus than any other city, and it is fitting that he make this “farewell” address to the Ephesians.
But why “farewell?” Why all the tears? Why will they never see Paul again? First, Paul has made it clear elsewhere that he wants to go to Rome, and form a base from whence he can speak the Good News in Spain, and this fulfill Jesus’s promise that his witnesses would go “to the ends of the earth” (For them, standing on the western coast of Spain and looking at the vast Atlantic Ocean would have seemed just that). So, the next time he travels, he will look for a more direct route to Rome over the Mediterranean.
But then again, he might not get out of Jerusalem alive. He has certainly earned the anger of zealous Jews throughout his travels, who are convinced that he is bent on destroying their religion. In going to Jerusalem, he is going into the belly of the beast. But none of that matters to Paul, because it was never about him. But it has always been about God’s “plan.” It’s odd that most translations don’t get the Greek right here. Many speak of God’s “counsel.” Others say, “will, “or “purpose.” That is at least closer to the truth that Paul is not referring to anything he has done or said in response to God’s request. God had a plan, to which Paul did respond. But God’s plan never depended on Paul, nor does it ever depend on any of us.
Churches spend a lot of time trying to discern what sorts of ministries they should “do.” But the first question that Christians must always ask themselves is this: What is God doing, in my life, in the life of the church, in the life of the community? I’ve heard this so much that it’s threatening to become a cliché. But it’s true nonetheless. You wanna make God laugh? Tell him your plan. More clearly than anything else, I see God creating a multigenerational community at Christ Church. We need to respond the gifts of God in the community of all ages. I see the gifts of wisdom, and the gifts of passion. How will we channel those gifts in such a way that builds up our own community, and the community around us?
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Feast of the Transfiguration (and Holy Baptism)
“Moses and Elijah…appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”An explanation is in order. Going back to the 1st Millennium, the Feast of the Transfiguration has been celebrated on August 6th. And our Book of Common Prayer allows this, and a few other midweek feasts, to be transferred to the closest Sunday. It is fitting to celebrate the Transfiguration of our Lord on this special day for Parker and his family. Just as Jesus begins his "departure" to Jerusalem, so it is that today Parker begins a departure of his own.
Today, Mark and Melanie, Nicholas, Russ and Lili, are his companions on this journey. But today Parker picks up another companion, Jesus. And as these few years pass, there will be more and more days when Jesus is his only companion, as he considers the baptismal promises being made for him and whether to make this covenant more fully his own. Be assured that, as our Prayer Book states, the bond established between God and Parker is “indissoluble”: incapable of being dissolved. Trust that wherever Parker is, he will never be alone.
It's even more fitting to celebrate Baptism and Transfiguration together when we consider this "departure" that Moses and Elijah were discussing with Jesus. A journey? Yes, but much more than a journey. To use the Greek word translated as "departure," we can say that they discussing Jesus's exodus. When we think of the Exodus, we think of those marvelous events by which God liberated the people of Israel from their Egyptian oppressors. But that was only the beginning of their departure or Exodus. In our baptismal prayer, we are reminded that it was through the waters of the Red Sea that the children of Israel were delivered out of bondage in Egypt and set by God on a journey.
So it is with Parker, who will pass through his own little Red Sea, and will begin his departure, his Exodus to a land promised by God. That is God's final promise to his chosen people. The first promise is of God's presence. In the years to come, Parker will hopefully know that divine presence just as the prophet Elijah, when he was alone, heard the still small whisper in his heart. For now, we who receive Parker into the household of God must be that still small whisper. Through our love, Parker will hopefully come to know the love of God, without which none of us would have the strength to love at all. Eventually, we will have to let Parker hear that still small voice himself. But not yet.
What is the destination of this “departure” or exodus? Luke makes very clear where Jesus is departing to. Just a few verses later, he writes that Jesus "set his face toward Jerusalem." And a few chapters later in Luke's Gospel, Jesus will cry out, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!" His baptism is his passion, which he will undergo in Jerusalem. All of us on this exodus are searching for passion, that mix of joy and pain that will seize our hearts and persuade us that this gift of life is truly worth living. Those who were saved on Pentecost heard the truth, of their sin and Jesus Christ as the sacrifice for that sin. But it wasn't just a truth that attracted them and led them to be baptized. It was also an experience of God, a passion for God that made sense of suffering and offered greater joys than they had ever known.
No human institution can program that kind of passion. All we can do is make sure that we open as many doors as we can for that passion to sweep in to the hearts of all God's children, 5 or 75. And if you haven't gotten the hint, passion is not the same thing as happy. And “Cowboy” churches wowing children with real horses and singing, "Happy trails to you," aren't the same thing as passion, or the Exodus. When Parker finds the thing for which he is willing to live and suffer, he will have found his passion, and his departure will be complete. Let all the household of God, by our love for him, open to Parker the door through which he will find the passion of the Risen Christ.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Friday, 13th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 17:16-34I suspect Paul was a little relieved that he got off of Mars Hill, where the Aeropagus was located, with nothing worse than being made fun of. Remember that when I started this series on Monday, I pointed out that by seeming to preach “foreign gods,” Paul was being accused of the same thing for which the Athenians had sentenced Socrates to death. Still, it is sad to see this city, so full of wisdom and cynicism, be so unresponsive to the Good News. Paul may have found a few believers. But clearly, he failed to build a church, a community that would have the power to change the culture of Athens.
But what about us? Where is our Mars Hill? Where do we need to look for the altars to unknown gods as a common base of agreement from which we can then tell the Good News of Resurrection? But most importantly, what barriers are we putting on ourselves and the story we have to tell? That really is the first question we need to ask ourselves before we try to persuade someone else that we actually have good news for them.
For some, there is the Mars Hill of science, where true beauty is found in this world, and the observations of that beauty. Far too many people have heard the message of Resurrection as a rejection of this world, or as a trump card against the death that pervades this world, so that Christians can ignore this world and focus on the next. Paul made it clear that this world is, indeed, beautiful, because God made it so. And the Resurrection of Jesus was not an escape from the physical world, but the beginning of this world’s redemption from death. The Resurrection is for all of us, and we need to look for the sprouts of resurrection all around us, in the beauty of this world, the wonder of life and the mystery of love.
For some, there is the Mars Hill of individual freedom against all the powers of the world that would control us in the pursuit of their agendas. We Americans are very jealous of our freedom, and suspicious of institutions claiming to look out for our good, so long as we accept their version of our well-being. We the Church are more than an institution. We are the Body of Christ, Jesus’s hands and feet, arms and legs, carrying Jesus’s love to those who need it. But we are also an institution, with bills to pay and goals to reach. And we still have a position of privilege in this society that can make us complacent. I remember being at the ecumenical Palm Sunday service this year, and hearing the Preacher complain about there not being enough people there, and all the people who weren’t coming to church, and therefore, weren’t being saved. Perhaps we should ask those people why they don’t come to church, and let their answers sink in, rather than complain about their absence.
Mars Hill is out there. And so is the Risen Jesus, with those who need to hear, not agendas or finger-wagging sermons, but Good News.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Thursday, 13th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 17:22-34, Part 2
Morning Prayer
Well, it seems Paul had the Stoics and Epicureans with him (or at least not stoning him) for awhile. That is, until he comes to the heart of his message: “He has given proof of this to everyone by raising that man from death!” The response – ridicule: “When they heard Paul speak about a raising from death, some of them made fun of him.” But what exactly, was the source of the Athenians’ shock and extreme skepticism?
In our own time, I suspect that the main source of resistance is the assumption that such a thing is impossible. Our powers of observation have increased so much that it our view of “reality” is often limited by our senses. Only that which can be verified through the senses can be real. And resurrection seems to be unverifiable. Now, in fact, I believe that an objective investigation of the events surrounding Jesus’s death, the empty tomb, and the disciples’ outlandish claims, for which they were prepared to die, actually leads to Resurrection as the most likely cause of the Easter story.
But, this skepticism isn’t the source of the Stoics’ and Epicureans’ scoffing. Remember that the Epicureans believed that the gods, if they existed, had no involvement with this world. So, happiness in this world was the most you could hope for. Stoics believed that divine reason was in all things, and they sought to free themselves of emotion and be in harmony with this divine reason permeating all things. Either way, they believed that this life was it. The Epicureans’ motto was: Live today for you shall be dead tomorrow. For the Stoics, it was: Don’t be seduced by your emotions, or else you will blow your opportunity to find peace and harmony with the divine in this world; then you’ll be dead and far away from this world.
Either way, their only hope for happiness or peace was to be found now. Paul’s suggestion that life continued after physical death, and that happiness was possible after physical death, was the most outrageous thing he could have said. Does that mean that happiness in this world doesn’t matter at all? Does that mean that this life is unimportant? Sadly, I suspect that the answer which too many in the Church have given is, Yes. This body becomes a prison, for which death becomes a release into “heaven,” where we are finally happy. That isn’t what the first Christians meant by Resurrection. More on that tomorrow.
Morning Prayer
Well, it seems Paul had the Stoics and Epicureans with him (or at least not stoning him) for awhile. That is, until he comes to the heart of his message: “He has given proof of this to everyone by raising that man from death!” The response – ridicule: “When they heard Paul speak about a raising from death, some of them made fun of him.” But what exactly, was the source of the Athenians’ shock and extreme skepticism?
In our own time, I suspect that the main source of resistance is the assumption that such a thing is impossible. Our powers of observation have increased so much that it our view of “reality” is often limited by our senses. Only that which can be verified through the senses can be real. And resurrection seems to be unverifiable. Now, in fact, I believe that an objective investigation of the events surrounding Jesus’s death, the empty tomb, and the disciples’ outlandish claims, for which they were prepared to die, actually leads to Resurrection as the most likely cause of the Easter story.
But, this skepticism isn’t the source of the Stoics’ and Epicureans’ scoffing. Remember that the Epicureans believed that the gods, if they existed, had no involvement with this world. So, happiness in this world was the most you could hope for. Stoics believed that divine reason was in all things, and they sought to free themselves of emotion and be in harmony with this divine reason permeating all things. Either way, they believed that this life was it. The Epicureans’ motto was: Live today for you shall be dead tomorrow. For the Stoics, it was: Don’t be seduced by your emotions, or else you will blow your opportunity to find peace and harmony with the divine in this world; then you’ll be dead and far away from this world.
Either way, their only hope for happiness or peace was to be found now. Paul’s suggestion that life continued after physical death, and that happiness was possible after physical death, was the most outrageous thing he could have said. Does that mean that happiness in this world doesn’t matter at all? Does that mean that this life is unimportant? Sadly, I suspect that the answer which too many in the Church have given is, Yes. This body becomes a prison, for which death becomes a release into “heaven,” where we are finally happy. That isn’t what the first Christians meant by Resurrection. More on that tomorrow.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Wednesday, 13th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 17:22-34, Part 1
Morning Prayer
Today, and tomorrow, we read Paul’s speech to the Athenians. Today, the focus is on the ways in which Paul, and we, can listen to worldviews that sound strange to us, and yet find in them a hint of the God who first revealed himself to Israel, and then through his Son Jesus Christ.
Let’s remind ourselves of Paul’s audience. Yesterday, we read of two schools of philosophy, whose supporters Paul got into an argument with. Boiled down, the Epicureans and Stoics had two fundamentally different understandings of God’s relation to the world. For the Epicureans, if God even existed, he certainly wasn’t involved in any way shape or form with the created world. For the Stoics, God was a force of reason that was in all created things. In short: For the Epicureans God was nowhere; for the Stoics God was everywhere.
What Paul says, basically, is, you’re both right and you’re both wrong. First, he agrees with the Epicureans who found all the shrines in Athens to be a waste of time. The only one that comes anywhere near the truth is the altar “To an Unknown God.” For many people, God is found in mystery. It is easier to say what God is not, than to say what God is. And with the Epicureans, Paul agrees that God cannot be contained within “temples made by human hands.”
But Paul then agrees with the Stoics that the God who made the world is not distant from it. Indeed, God is as close to us as the breath he gave us. "We too are his children,” Paul quotes a Greek poet. And for Paul, that means “all races of people” have the breath of God within them.
Today, too many people assume that science and faith are incompatible, indeed, are mortal enemies. But in fact, it was the Jewish and Christian belief in one God, separate from creation, which made science possible. Why study the cosmos, or the seasonal crops, if they were governed by the will of gods. If the world around us was subject to the arbitrary will of divine beings, then what consistent principles could we deduce from observing the world? Once it was understood that God was separate from the world, then it became possible to observe the world around us, and see consistency, to understand the rules by which physical things exist.
Back to Paul’s speech: he began, not by challenging the Athenians’ errors, but by looking for a common base of agreement. Yes, he will jump off that base in ways that shock his listeners. But before you tell anybody why they’re wrong, it helps that medicine go down easier if you first listen to them, and affirm where they’re right. That was Paul’s “evangelistic” strategy in Athens, and it should be ours today.
Morning Prayer
Today, and tomorrow, we read Paul’s speech to the Athenians. Today, the focus is on the ways in which Paul, and we, can listen to worldviews that sound strange to us, and yet find in them a hint of the God who first revealed himself to Israel, and then through his Son Jesus Christ.
Let’s remind ourselves of Paul’s audience. Yesterday, we read of two schools of philosophy, whose supporters Paul got into an argument with. Boiled down, the Epicureans and Stoics had two fundamentally different understandings of God’s relation to the world. For the Epicureans, if God even existed, he certainly wasn’t involved in any way shape or form with the created world. For the Stoics, God was a force of reason that was in all created things. In short: For the Epicureans God was nowhere; for the Stoics God was everywhere.
What Paul says, basically, is, you’re both right and you’re both wrong. First, he agrees with the Epicureans who found all the shrines in Athens to be a waste of time. The only one that comes anywhere near the truth is the altar “To an Unknown God.” For many people, God is found in mystery. It is easier to say what God is not, than to say what God is. And with the Epicureans, Paul agrees that God cannot be contained within “temples made by human hands.”
But Paul then agrees with the Stoics that the God who made the world is not distant from it. Indeed, God is as close to us as the breath he gave us. "We too are his children,” Paul quotes a Greek poet. And for Paul, that means “all races of people” have the breath of God within them.
Today, too many people assume that science and faith are incompatible, indeed, are mortal enemies. But in fact, it was the Jewish and Christian belief in one God, separate from creation, which made science possible. Why study the cosmos, or the seasonal crops, if they were governed by the will of gods. If the world around us was subject to the arbitrary will of divine beings, then what consistent principles could we deduce from observing the world? Once it was understood that God was separate from the world, then it became possible to observe the world around us, and see consistency, to understand the rules by which physical things exist.
Back to Paul’s speech: he began, not by challenging the Athenians’ errors, but by looking for a common base of agreement. Yes, he will jump off that base in ways that shock his listeners. But before you tell anybody why they’re wrong, it helps that medicine go down easier if you first listen to them, and affirm where they’re right. That was Paul’s “evangelistic” strategy in Athens, and it should be ours today.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Tuesday, 13th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 17:16-21, Part 2 Yes, I know this was the reading yesterday. But Paul’s encounter with the Athenians has much to say to us, and requires a lot of unpacking. Yesterday, I gave some historical background. Before we get to what Paul said in the Aeropagus, we need to understand the thread he needed to run between the two philosophies mentioned in the reading.
You could say that many atheists who believe – wrongly – that modern science has ruled out God’s existence are successors to the Epicureans. Basically, the Epicureans believed that our physical senses were the only source of knowledge and the sole criteria by which we could judge what was “true.” Epicurus himself didn’t go to the trouble of denying the existence of gods, but he adamantly rejected the notion that they had anything to do with the world we live in. He also rejected the concept of immortality. In such a world, pleasure and freedom from fear were the most we could hope for.
Stoics were a little bit like the “New Agers” of today, though probably not as emotional. Unlike the Epicureans, they believed that the divine was the force of reason, which was present in all things. Thus there was a divine law of nature, and of conscience or duty. And the duty of all people was to live in harmony with nature, which as I just said, contained the divine.
When we read Paul’s speech for the first time tomorrow, we’ll see how he tries to draw on each tradition, take what he can affirm from both, while also challenging both with the Good News of the Risen Jesus. Tune in tomorrow. This time, I promise we’ll get to it.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Monday. 13th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 17:16-21
Morning Prayer
In the Daily office Lectionary, ch. 17 of Acts was read over the weekend. But Paul’s confrontation in Athens is too important, and too deep, to ignore. So, we’ll be spending at least a couple of days on this passage.
Athens. If you have any sense of history, the mere mention of that city should make you pause. Rome may have had the Empire. But their culture – even their gods – were basically borrowed from the Greeks. Greece’s Zeus was Rome’s Jupiter; Greece’s Aphrodite, Rome’s Venus; Greece’s Odysseus, Rome’s Ulysses; and so on. Athens: the birthplace of drama, democracy, philosophy. No city had a prouder intellectual heritage than Athens. So, on the one hand, many “foreigners,” hungry for the food of wisdom, made their way to Athens, and no doubt, brought many different “idols,” and “new” ideas. A very cosmopolitan place, Athens was, always open to the “latest novelty” (v. 21, Rev. Eng. Bible).
On the other hand, Athens was already an old, old city, with the cynicism that can come with old age, and very protective of its heritage. Athens was the city of philosophers that had condemned the father of philosophy to death. And for what crime had Socrates been condemned? Infecting the minds of Athenian youth with “foreign divinities.” So when the Athenians said of Paul, “He would appear to be a propagandist for foreign deities” (v.18, REB), that was no innocent comment, but an accusation. And the Aeropagus was a court. For all the Athenians’ love of new ideas, the cynicism of their old age also made them very resistant to new ideas that hadn’t been vetted through the old wisdom. And in one of the plays written by Aeschylus, the god Apollo had himself dedicated the Aeropagus, telling human beings that when they died, and their blood was spilled, there was no resurrection.
This is Paul’s challenge as he begins to address the Athenians: to present this new idea of resurrection, clearly a challenge to the wisdom of Athens, but in a way that builds on the wisdom that Athens has received, so that Paul will not share the fate of Socrates. Tune in for tomorrow’s episode.
Morning Prayer
In the Daily office Lectionary, ch. 17 of Acts was read over the weekend. But Paul’s confrontation in Athens is too important, and too deep, to ignore. So, we’ll be spending at least a couple of days on this passage.
Athens. If you have any sense of history, the mere mention of that city should make you pause. Rome may have had the Empire. But their culture – even their gods – were basically borrowed from the Greeks. Greece’s Zeus was Rome’s Jupiter; Greece’s Aphrodite, Rome’s Venus; Greece’s Odysseus, Rome’s Ulysses; and so on. Athens: the birthplace of drama, democracy, philosophy. No city had a prouder intellectual heritage than Athens. So, on the one hand, many “foreigners,” hungry for the food of wisdom, made their way to Athens, and no doubt, brought many different “idols,” and “new” ideas. A very cosmopolitan place, Athens was, always open to the “latest novelty” (v. 21, Rev. Eng. Bible).
On the other hand, Athens was already an old, old city, with the cynicism that can come with old age, and very protective of its heritage. Athens was the city of philosophers that had condemned the father of philosophy to death. And for what crime had Socrates been condemned? Infecting the minds of Athenian youth with “foreign divinities.” So when the Athenians said of Paul, “He would appear to be a propagandist for foreign deities” (v.18, REB), that was no innocent comment, but an accusation. And the Aeropagus was a court. For all the Athenians’ love of new ideas, the cynicism of their old age also made them very resistant to new ideas that hadn’t been vetted through the old wisdom. And in one of the plays written by Aeschylus, the god Apollo had himself dedicated the Aeropagus, telling human beings that when they died, and their blood was spilled, there was no resurrection.
This is Paul’s challenge as he begins to address the Athenians: to present this new idea of resurrection, clearly a challenge to the wisdom of Athens, but in a way that builds on the wisdom that Athens has received, so that Paul will not share the fate of Socrates. Tune in for tomorrow’s episode.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Sermon for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Ephesians 4:1-16
It was only this week that I realized I had started a sermon series, and didn’t know it. I spent most of last week reading through our three readings from Holy Scripture, trying to decide which one to focus on. It was only on Friday that I bothered to look back at my last few sermons, and realized that I’d been preaching on Ephesians ever since we started reading it four weeks ago. Truly, the Word of God speaks through me, even when I don’t know how fully that is happening. It’s even more important that we continue the journey we’re on with Paul and the Ephesians, because today marks a major transition, a shift in Paul’s dialogue with the Church in Ephesus. In the past 3 weeks, we have soared through the universe with Paul. We’ve heard about our destiny. We’ve heard about reconciliation, and we’ve prayed to know the love of Christ which is itself beyond knowledge.
But the true subject of Ephesians, which we finally get to today, is the Church: what makes the Church “Christian” in any recognizable sense, and how the Church is to continue being the “Body of Christ,” when its members are so diverse and of different viewpoints. In the first three chapters, Paul has been reminding his fellow believers, Jew and Gentile, of what it is that makes them one church, one body united in love. In a sense, Paul has been reminding the Ephesians of first principles. Now, he begins to take these principles and apply them to their everyday practical life as a community as they – and we – continue on that journey.
Three Sundays ago, we heard that God knew us and loved us long, long before we were born, or even imagined by any human being. We also heard that our destiny is in God’s hand, wherever we wander. Yes, we all have wandered away from God’s destiny. But two Sundays ago, we heard that God-in-Jesus will go with us wherever we wander. He is with us, calling us to accept our responsibility for the wrong choices we have made, and also to accept that by his death, he has reconciled us to God and to each other, and has set us back on the right road together. Last Sunday, we heard that all our supposed “knowledge” is like a blindfold leading us off the path again if it is not based on the love of Christ for all. So: all that said, what does all this mean for the Church in Ephesus, or for us? Having laid out the principles, Paul now begins to tell his Ephesian readers what to do with this knowledge.
First: maintain unity while respecting diversity. Note how many times Paul uses the word, “one,” in this one sentence: one body, one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. If we are not one in the Church, how can we claim to have been reconciled to God and each other. And yet, it is also true that God destined all of us for adoption as his children. So, each one of us has a destiny, chosen by God, not human beings. That is part of what Paul means when he says that some in the church have been gifted as apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Now most of those “job descriptions” seems to fall into the exclusive purview of the ordained ministers of the Church. But all can teach. All can lay hands on the sick for healing. All can spend some time with a lonely person confined to a nursing home, or shut inside their own home. Ministry in the church is shared, not hoarded by the insecure and power-hungry. Particularly as the needs of our elderly parishioners increase, we all will need to make sure that they do not become isolated.
Second: speak the truth, not for the sake of having the "right" answer and proving your neighbor "wrong," but so that in love you both may find the right answer. Now, to be fair, Paul is clear that there is truth and untruth, “trickery, craftiness, deceitful scheming.” Love is not the opposite of truth, but in truth, the two complement each other. For the last three Wednesdays, I’ve been leading a summer bible study playfully called, “The Bible, not a straitjacket.” The serious point I’ve tried to make is that the Bible is not a record of God’s dictation, on which we are to be tested. The Bible is that medium through which God has been engaging us in a conversation for thousands of years. God has spoken. We have responded the best that we could hear in our particular culture and circumstances, to which God has responded again and again.
This Wednesday, we’ll be talking about how that conversation has continued since the Gospels; and how, sometimes, what we thought we had heard God say turned out to be wrong. How do we hold to the truth when our understanding of the truth can be so subject to our presumptions and rationalizations? If you remember nothing else today, please remember this. If you think your neighbor is wrong, make sure you know why your neighbor is wrong before you tell them. And always remember that any “truth,” which is not spoken in love is untrue.
Well, it seems that rather than clearing things up, Paul has just given us more paradox. Maintain unity and diversity. Speak truth in love. But Paul has already put us on notice. We are in the business of reconciliation. When the world creates “wedge issues” to divide us, we the Church must reject crafty schemes designed to divide. When the world tells us that Truth is hard-hearted and Love soft-headed, we the Church must point to our Lord, whose most courageous stand for truth was to go to his death for love of his people. We are not a social club, a business, a political party. We are the Church, the Body of Christ, given for a broken world.
It was only this week that I realized I had started a sermon series, and didn’t know it. I spent most of last week reading through our three readings from Holy Scripture, trying to decide which one to focus on. It was only on Friday that I bothered to look back at my last few sermons, and realized that I’d been preaching on Ephesians ever since we started reading it four weeks ago. Truly, the Word of God speaks through me, even when I don’t know how fully that is happening. It’s even more important that we continue the journey we’re on with Paul and the Ephesians, because today marks a major transition, a shift in Paul’s dialogue with the Church in Ephesus. In the past 3 weeks, we have soared through the universe with Paul. We’ve heard about our destiny. We’ve heard about reconciliation, and we’ve prayed to know the love of Christ which is itself beyond knowledge.
But the true subject of Ephesians, which we finally get to today, is the Church: what makes the Church “Christian” in any recognizable sense, and how the Church is to continue being the “Body of Christ,” when its members are so diverse and of different viewpoints. In the first three chapters, Paul has been reminding his fellow believers, Jew and Gentile, of what it is that makes them one church, one body united in love. In a sense, Paul has been reminding the Ephesians of first principles. Now, he begins to take these principles and apply them to their everyday practical life as a community as they – and we – continue on that journey.
Three Sundays ago, we heard that God knew us and loved us long, long before we were born, or even imagined by any human being. We also heard that our destiny is in God’s hand, wherever we wander. Yes, we all have wandered away from God’s destiny. But two Sundays ago, we heard that God-in-Jesus will go with us wherever we wander. He is with us, calling us to accept our responsibility for the wrong choices we have made, and also to accept that by his death, he has reconciled us to God and to each other, and has set us back on the right road together. Last Sunday, we heard that all our supposed “knowledge” is like a blindfold leading us off the path again if it is not based on the love of Christ for all. So: all that said, what does all this mean for the Church in Ephesus, or for us? Having laid out the principles, Paul now begins to tell his Ephesian readers what to do with this knowledge.
First: maintain unity while respecting diversity. Note how many times Paul uses the word, “one,” in this one sentence: one body, one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. If we are not one in the Church, how can we claim to have been reconciled to God and each other. And yet, it is also true that God destined all of us for adoption as his children. So, each one of us has a destiny, chosen by God, not human beings. That is part of what Paul means when he says that some in the church have been gifted as apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Now most of those “job descriptions” seems to fall into the exclusive purview of the ordained ministers of the Church. But all can teach. All can lay hands on the sick for healing. All can spend some time with a lonely person confined to a nursing home, or shut inside their own home. Ministry in the church is shared, not hoarded by the insecure and power-hungry. Particularly as the needs of our elderly parishioners increase, we all will need to make sure that they do not become isolated.
Second: speak the truth, not for the sake of having the "right" answer and proving your neighbor "wrong," but so that in love you both may find the right answer. Now, to be fair, Paul is clear that there is truth and untruth, “trickery, craftiness, deceitful scheming.” Love is not the opposite of truth, but in truth, the two complement each other. For the last three Wednesdays, I’ve been leading a summer bible study playfully called, “The Bible, not a straitjacket.” The serious point I’ve tried to make is that the Bible is not a record of God’s dictation, on which we are to be tested. The Bible is that medium through which God has been engaging us in a conversation for thousands of years. God has spoken. We have responded the best that we could hear in our particular culture and circumstances, to which God has responded again and again.
This Wednesday, we’ll be talking about how that conversation has continued since the Gospels; and how, sometimes, what we thought we had heard God say turned out to be wrong. How do we hold to the truth when our understanding of the truth can be so subject to our presumptions and rationalizations? If you remember nothing else today, please remember this. If you think your neighbor is wrong, make sure you know why your neighbor is wrong before you tell them. And always remember that any “truth,” which is not spoken in love is untrue.
Well, it seems that rather than clearing things up, Paul has just given us more paradox. Maintain unity and diversity. Speak truth in love. But Paul has already put us on notice. We are in the business of reconciliation. When the world creates “wedge issues” to divide us, we the Church must reject crafty schemes designed to divide. When the world tells us that Truth is hard-hearted and Love soft-headed, we the Church must point to our Lord, whose most courageous stand for truth was to go to his death for love of his people. We are not a social club, a business, a political party. We are the Church, the Body of Christ, given for a broken world.
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