Believing is Seeing

When Jesus’s disciples ask if the man born blind was so born because of his sin, they’re doing what many of us have done at least once. We’ve come against a situation so overwhelmingly tragic that we say something to relieve our secondhand grief without considering how the person actually experiencing the grief will experience our explanation. Jesus puts it another way: We want to know the cause of something that is already in the past, and therefore something we can’t change, although it might temporarily make us feel better if we know who to blame. What matters, Jesus tells his disciples, isn’t the cause, but its purpose, over which we still have some control. I know something of this.

When I was seventeen, my mother (a school principal) took a trip to the Southwest with a friend and teacher at her school. They came to a lookout point at the Grand Canyon. She got too close to the edge, lost her balance and fell. At a memorial service in my large Baptist church, the Pastor — who was close to Mom and normally a wise preacher willing to puncture easy assumptions — said that she had at least died while appreciating God’s gift of the natural world.

Truly I say to you that for most of my college years I was spittin’ mad at God. But as more and more people came into my life who loved me, and in the years since have continued to come into my life, I have found the love of God that remains and endures the randomness of this crazy world. I do not believe in God as puppet master, for God has created this world in freedom, with people and things bouncing off of each other in seemingly random ways. But I do believe in God as the great improviser, always able to open a door in our lives where love can come in. I no longer ask the cause, but I have found the purpose.

The Need Within

It’s good to have a bishop who, in the words of our Baptismal Covenant, exercises the “apostles’ teaching” in such a way that the priests under her authority, and all the people of our diocese, can benefit from her teaching. In her Thursday email, Bishop Mariann articulated the question that many in the time of the American Revolution and perhaps our own time have asked. “Across time and place, people caught in violence ask the same question: Where is God in all of this?

“In church this Sunday, prior to a gospel passage about Jesus as living water, you’ll likely hear the story of the people of ancient Israel struggling to make their way through the wilderness. Having escaped slavery in Egypt, the Israelites are a long way from the promise of freedom. Food and water are scarce, and where we meet them in the text, the people rightfully wonder if Moses had led them into the wilderness to die.

“God then provides water for them, and they keep going, by stages, through the wilderness. Before they continue on, however, they mark the place where they had given up hope, where they had asked one another Is the LORD among us or not? Like Jesus on the cross, where he felt God had forsaken him, I wonder if the places where we lose hope are the most holy of all. There are no easy answers in places of intense suffering; no spiritual platitudes that can take away the pain…When people are asked what enabled them to keep going, sometimes the answer is an experience of God, rescuing them or providing what was needed to carry on. More often, however, the answer is the kindness of another person who stayed with them in the darkest hour. Choosing not to look away is itself an act of faith.”

Mission Reconciliation and Restoration

One of the most important passages of the entire Bible is in today’s reading from Genesis — The LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I shall bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you; and in you all the nations shall be blessed.”

Around four millennia ago, a man and woman we know as Abraham and Sarah heard an unseen God who didn’t claim partial sovereignty of the sun or the sea or the soil telling them to leave their country, their clan for a destination they would only know when they got there. But free from the demands of country and clan, they would be free to claim all the peoples of the earth as their own under the one and only God who has sovereignty over everything.

A 4,000 year line runs from that passage to the only mission statement we need as a church — Q. What is the mission of the Church? A. The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. Our mission from Abraham to today is restoration and reconciliation.

But in our particular country today are a people whose history is officially recognized in the month of February, but I’m not sure how honored it really is, because to runs counter to the majority history. Most of us might see a connection to Abraham and Sarah in our ancestors who chose to come to an unfamiliar land because that seemed better than the alternative of staying where they were. But for African American people, they were brought here, brutally, and then treated brutally for the better part of four and-a-half centuries, with perhaps 1964-65 being the turning point, maybe.

So, when we consider the Church’s mission in that historical context, reconciliation is the end result of restoration. Where unity has been broken, those who broke the unity, or who benefitted from the broken unity, must pursue the restoration of what was broken. Just as our Catechism states that the Church can only “pursue” its mission, not accomplish, so we can only pursue restoration. Some broken things can be put back together; others cannot.

When we as individuals, as families, as dioceses, as parishes, as nations, acknowledge what has been broken — even when we cannot fix it — then like Nicodemus, we are closer to understanding Jesus when he says, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” The Greek can also be translated, “born again,” the more familiar and much misunderstood.

Holy Insecurity

To focus on whether the creation of human beings and their fall into sin historically “happened” just as the story is told in Genesis is an adventure in missing the point. It happened that one species of animals evolved to such intelligence that they could see the world around them, and those they loved, and say in whatever language they had, “How beautiful is all this creation. There must be a Creator.” But then came the moment of choice. Could they trust this Creator? Could they trust their fellow humans? Clearly the answer was no.

The truth of the Genesis creation myth is written in the heart of every man and woman, as it was written on the hearts of the first man and woman who were created in the image of God the moment they realized that they had been created. The truth of Genesis is that the fall from innocence to sin happens to every one of us. Whenever we refuse to accept the gracious limits that our Creator and loving Parent has placed on us, we fall into distrust and sin as surely as the first man and first woman. But in accepting the same human insecurities, and the same earthly limits, Jesus Christ proved for all time that we can trust our loving and most gracious Creator.

Even as the LORD God gives to the first human being the earth “to till it and keep it,” a limit is placed on human power. For the Hebrew word used here literally means "to serve." Human beings are commanded to serve the earth that God has given them. And amid the abundance that God gives us, God gives just one command: Accept your limit, and do not try to gain the same knowledge as God by eating from the tree of knowledge. But God doesn’t say that if they don’t eat of the tree of knowledge, they will live forever. In fact there is a tree of life in the Garden of Eden. And after their fall into sin, God chases the man and woman out of Eden because God is afraid that if they eat of that tree, they then will become physically immortal and be sentenced to an eternity of toil and pain.

And of course, the man and the woman are naked, to each other, to the world around them, and to God. Their knowledge is limited. Their life is limited, and their bodies are limited. They are helpless before God. And yet what a responsibility has been laid on them. Care for the earth, and trust God. Helpless, yet responsible, the man and the woman live in a state of holy insecurity. And into this insecurity comes a very clever snake. You will not certainly die, the snake says to the woman; it’s not certain that you will die: a vague enough promise to divert the woman’s attention away from God’s warning. And then the snake promises that you will be like God. But “like” isn’t good enough when it comes to God. Knowledge they will have, but not the wisdom or power to use it as only God can.

For this man and this woman, as for every man and woman since, it is a question of limitation and trust. Can we accept the limits of our knowledge and power? Can we trust that in life and in death, we are always held in God’s hand? This man and this woman gave the wrong answer. Note that the man has apparently been there the whole time. And so have we. Even our recent history is full of human beings refusing to accept their limits. “Ever since the days of old / Men would search for wealth untold / They’d dig for silver and for gold / And leave the empty holes.” So saith John Anderson in his song Seminole Wind. Many who grew up in the 1960s and early 70s remember the personal happiness that was promised if we followed our bliss and threw off all social restraints. What were they smoking to think that everybody could pursue their own personal happiness without anybody getting hurt in the process? Whether it’s limitless wealth or limitless pleasure, holy insecurity can lead us to reach for them.

Of course, living with the knowledge of our limitations is frightening. To know the limits of our knowledge and power is to know that we live up in the air. If we presume that our homes, our wealth and our lives stand on a firm foundation of our own creation, then we’ll have no idea we are falling until we hit the ground. So, what’s the alternative to a life of illusion, a landscape we paint for ourselves and call reality? Look around you. Look up and see the empty sky above you. Look down and see the ground. And then remember what the Son of God himself said when tempted by the devil to jump off the pinnacle of the Temple: “Do not test the Lord your God.” When you are afraid of not having enough to live on, remember what the Son of God himself said when tempted by Satan to turn stones into bread: “Do not love only by bread, but by every word spoken by God.” When you feel the need to control others, remember what the Son of God himself said when tempted to gain worldly power by worshiping him: “You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”

And finally, when you are afraid of the ultimate limitation, remember what the Son of God said on the cross: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Every human limitation, every human insecurity, Jesus knows first-hand, that we might know his Resurrection first-hand.

Dissemblers, Pretenders, or Confessors

Another Ash Wednesday, another liturgical cycle, the wheel turning round again from last year, the same readings, the same invitation to a holy Lent, the same ashes, the same reminder of our dying, the same litany of penitence, the same confession. I understand if it might seem like the same old same old. Does Lent feel like fighting the same fears, the same sins, year after year; or does it seem as though old sins just get replaced by new ones? Has that liturgical wheel turned you forward, or do you feel like you’re spinning in place? Do you feel a little hypocritical? Perhaps we’re all like the hypocrites that Jesus seems to set up as a straw man. But that may not be near as bad as we think it is.

Our English word — hypocrite — is not so much a translation as a transliteration of the Greek word — hupokrates — which literally means — actor. Some actors you can’t trust. They want you to think that they agree with you when they really want to take advantage of your trust and you are simply an object for them to manipulate and betray to their own advantage. Those are dissemblers and are what we generally think of as hypocrites.

But other actors might be sincerely trying to learn their lines, hoping to become the role they’re playing. You might also call them pretenders, pretending to be something that they want to be. I suspect the praying hypocrites that Jesus referred to were more pretenders than dissemblers. I suspect that’s what most of us are. I like to think that Jackson Browne sang for all of us: I wanna know what became of the changes / We waited for love to bring / Were they only the fitful dreams / Of some greater awakening?…Caught between the longing for love / And the struggle for the legal tender / Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring / And the junk man pounds his fender…Are you there / Say a prayer for the Pretender.

This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to become more than pretenders. This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to go into our room, shut the door, and pray to our Father who is present in that secret place,, so secret that it is often a secret to ourselves, our breaking and wondering hearts, trying to understand who we really are to the One who made us. This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to cease dissembling, and move beyond pretending. This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to begin becoming a confessor.

Our Lord invites us to begin unveiling our selves, as best we understand our selves, and in that unveiling, trust that our one Father who sees us in secret will look back at us, not to condemn, but to enlighten, and forgive. “And if,” in the words of The Exhortation from the Book of Common Prayer, “you need help and counsel, then go and open your grief to a discreet and understanding priest, and confess your sins, that you may receive the benefit of absolution, and spiritual counsel and advice; to the removal of scruple and doubt, the assurance of pardon, and the strengthening of your faith.” Scruple, by the way, is that specific pain of the conscience, from which God gives us relief.

In traditional religious language a penitent is the person who confesses, and the “confessor” is the one who hears, and pronounces God’s forgiveness. As we unveil our selves more and more to our self, and to our God who sees in secret, then the more we shall all be able to unveil our selves to each other, our hopes, our disappointments, our burdens, our fears. And those who come to us searching, with all those same feelings and scruples, will find reason to say, as the Romans said of the Christians, “See how they love each other!”

Pretenders we may be, but that’s a lot better than dissembling. This holy Lent, let us trust more deeply our Father who sees all in secret, and who loves us in secret, to make us all confessors.

Acknowledging the Holy

To be clear, this last Sunday after Epiphany is not the Feast of The Transfiguration. That’s on August 6th. The Episcopal Church always appoints the Transfiguration on the Sunday before Lent because of what happened six days earlier. Jesus acknowledged for the first time that he was the Messiah, the Christ, the Chosen King of Israel. Then shockingly he also said for the first time that he would go to Jerusalem, be killed, then raised.

For Jesus’ first disciples, this combination of events was both incomprehensible and terrifying. Perhaps we the latest generation of disciples have heard this story enough times that we can hold on to the happy ending. But I suspect that knowledge doesn’t necessarily lessen our apprehension of the coming Lenten journey with Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross, as we prepare to examine ourselves and wonder what we might have to give up besides chocolate. So on this last Sunday before Ash Wednesday we are given a glimpse of the fullest reality of Him who is leading us to Jerusalem so that along this journey we will recognize him with us wherever we are, not just in this holy place of worship.

You might think that Moses was getting ready to go up the mountain and receive the Ten Commandments on those “tablets of stone.” Actually, God has already given Moses the Decalogue and the Law governing the people of Israel. Over the next forty days Moses will receive detailed instructions on the construction of the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle, or portable sanctuary carried under a tent that will go wherever the Israelites go until a temple is finally built hundreds of years later. The rest of the story is that after a while the Israelites got antsy waiting for Moses and decided to make their own holy object to assure themselves of God’s presence, the golden calf, really a bull.

Completing the Covenant

My New Testament professor in Seminary highlighted ch. 5, v. 17 — Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill — as the key verse in Matthew’s Gospel. Nearly 50 times Matthew either quotes or alludes to what we call the Old Testament. Matthew mentions himself as the tax collector who would have been estranged from the Jewish community, a collaborator with the Roman Empire and idolater wallowing in Roman coinage with Caesar’s image. And yet Jesus reached out to Matthew, went to his home for dinner. Jesus welcomed Matthew without strings attached and then called him to repentance as he called other tax collectors and “sinners” to repentance after being their friends without strings attached.

No other disciple would have felt within himself the chasm between his previous estrangement and his reconciliation to the people of Israel that only Jesus could bridge. Thus, no other disciple would have wanted as much to emphasize the continuity between that community’s teaching, or “law” and the Good News of God’s love revealed by Christ Jesus. And more so than Paul, who many Jews felt had turned his back on the Judaism in which he was raised; while understanding that Jesus’ Good News was for all people – even Roman centurions – Matthew wanted those Gentiles who came to Christ to understand the story of Israel that Jesus came to fulfill, and into which we have been adopted.

“Once you were not a people,” according to 1st Peter, “but now you are God’s people.” There are many peoples with their stories of triumph and tragedy, rise and decline. But there is only one people in whom all those stories can be redeemed from their futility; a people who began with a man and a woman named Abraham and Sarah, to whom God said, “all nations on Earth will be blessed because of you.” We need to understand the law and the prophets of the Hebrew Bible because it was Jesus’s Bible, the purpose of which he came to complete.

When Jesus said to his then-Jewish disciples, “You are the salt of the earth…you are the light of the world,” who else would he be referring to but the nations of the earth that God had promised their ancestor Abraham would be blessed because of him? Not just In Matthew’s Gospel is it clear that Jesus had a harsh critique of the Judaism of his time. He believed that the religious leaders of his people were sitting around in their chosenness waiting for their God to destroy their Roman enemies when they should have been reaching out to them as Jesus reached out to the “sinners.”

Nearly two millennia later, the movement that Jesus started has changed. The late Reverend Richard Halverson, Chaplain to the U.S. Senate from 1981 to 1995, summarized those changes thus: In the beginning the church was a fellowship centered on Jesus. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. Finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise. To these descriptions I might add words like empire, civilization. And in truth, we have been as overly self-protective as Jesus felt his community had become.

But always lurking, ready to critique our pretensions and hypocrisies, is the Covenant that God first made with Abraham then Moses, and the Prophets who keep calling us to renew that Covenant. “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers [who themselves couldn’t fast because they were serving their masters who were fasting]. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist…Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?…Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.”

Here are the Law and the Prophets that Jesus came to complete. Here Is the tasty salt and the warm light that Jesus calls us to be for all the peoples of the world, not just ourselves. This is the Christ Jesus of the Old and New Covenant, one and the same, that Matthew knew him to be.

Congratulations

Jesus’s beatitudes are neither impossible imperatives, nor irrelevant idealization. They are indicatives of what God has done that retain their prospectiveness. Between the indicative and prospective is where we are truly blessed.

“Blessed” translates the Greek markorios which translates the Hebrew asher, “happy.” So, “Happy are the poor in spirit” — But as these “blessings” are prospective, we should also hear, “Congratulations to those who know their need of God, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven (a paraphrase of “poor in spirit” that captures the more personal meaning). Congratulations to the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth…Congratulations to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice, for they shall be filled…Congratulations to those who are persecuted in the cause of righteousness, for the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

When we invest our financial resources, we get a prospectus. These beatitudes are a prospectus for prospective blessings, for Jesus as much as for us. This is only chapter five. He would respond to provocation after provocation with gentleness or meekness. He would hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice as no other human could. No human before or since would be as persecuted as he was in the hope of God’s kingdom. Jesus has received the reward of resurrection, but his success in bringing us into the kingdom of Heaven remains prospective for him precisely because it remains prospective for us.

I wonder if some of us of a certain generation presumed the continuation of material blessings, or equated the successes of our liberal political and economic order with the kingdom of Heaven. Did we forget how utterly we need God? Did we think we might avoid persecution in the cause of righteousness and justice? Did we suppose, as one author speculated in the 1990s, that History would end with us?

Apology for Paul

In case you haven’t heard this before, according to the Outline of Faith in our Book of Common Prayer, the Church’s mission is to “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” Seems clear, even obvious. But is it?

Looking only at the four Gospels: Jesus certainly seems to have envisioned an outreach to the nearby Samaritans, but they claimed descent from Jacob, which made them at least partial Israelites by blood. He occasionally commended the faith of Gentiles, the Roman Centurion whose servant Jesus healed, the Syro-Phoenician woman whose daughter Jesus healed after he called the Gentiles dogs. But when he sent the Twelve Apostles on mission trips, he ordered them not to go to the Gentiles but only to the lost sheep of Israel. It is clear from the Book of Acts that the earliest disciples of Jesus, all Jewish, stayed in Jerusalem because they assumed that what Jesus wanted them to do was to get all their fellow Jews to accept that Jesus was the Christ, God’s Chosen King, and then go to the Gentile nations.

Apparently, Jesus didn’t think they were moving fast enough. So, he chose the most unlikely person: Saul, whose “zeal,” by his own admission, to wipe out the Jesus movement was torturous and murderous — Saul, Saul, it must hurt you to kick against those spiked sticks like an ornery cow. What are you so afraid of? In one blinding instant, Saul realized that everything he thought God wanted him to do was wrong. What else had he been wrong about? Who else had he dismissed as “other?” (And if Jesus could get through to Saul, then we can pray that Jesus might yet to get through to some Immigration officers who will hear in the blinding light, “This is Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up for I shall send you.”)

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female – for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). This is the core of the Gospel that Jesus gave the man who, when he began his mission travels outside of the Holy Land, became known as Paul. It was Paul who pushed the Church beyond the boundaries of ceremonial laws, like circumcision, because those could not be justified by the new covenant that Jesus made with all people and sealed by his blood. And within the hierarchal and patriarchal strictures of his world, Paul pushed against them as best as he thought he could get away with.

Recognition Equals Peace

“And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have told you this so that you may find peace in me. In the world you will have hardship, but take courage: I have conquered the world.”

Among the “Various Occasions,” for which a collect and readings are provided in the Book of Common Prayer, is For Peace. Throughout this day we have fasted and prayed for peace in, and among, the nations. As one body we have just prayed that God will kindle in every heart the true love of peace. The true love of peace is more than claiming a prize for a temporary ceasefire. It is also more than the gratification of righteous anger. The true love of peace is kindled in every single human heart recognizing the image of its creator in every other human heart.

The catch is recognition. In chapter one, John writes, “He was in the world and the world came into being through him, and the world did not know him.” The Word who was with God and was God, through whom all things were made, came to their human creatures, and they failed to recognize their Creator. Why? We trust the surface of what we see more than the unseen “maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”

The Rock of Love Prevails

We have bookend Feasts this Sunday and next. Today, January 18th, is the Feast of the Confession of St. Peter. Next Sunday the 25th is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Since 1908, the week between these feasts has been observed in many churches including ours, as the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, that we might do better in working toward Jesus’s prayer to his Father before his arrest: That we might be one as he and the Father are one.

Today, we honor the confession that you have heard from the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus has taken his disciples far from their home among their own people to a city built by Gentiles for Gentiles, originally named Panion, for the Greek God Pan, half goat half man. Caesar Augustus gave the city to the same Herod who would try to have Jesus killed. Then, Herod’s son, Philip, rebuilt the city and renamed it Caesarea Philippi, for the then-current Caesar, Tiberius, and himself. See how “tight” they were?

So, when Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Jospeh, asks his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” They are in Caesar’s shadow. It took courage for Simon, Son of Jonah, to answer, “You are the Messiah,” God’s Chosen King and, “the Son of the living God.” No one else has had the guts to use the “M” word. Simon had to be standing on something other than his personal opinion. And so Jesus says, “You are rock, and on this rock I will build my church,” the rock being the faith and courage that Jesus makes clear was entrusted to Peter by Jesus’s Father, not his personal possession

Baptismal Solidarity

Here’s a little Seminary inside lingo, 1st Isaiah and 2nd Isaiah. Before chapter 40, it’s clear that the original prophet Isaiah was writing about Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah when it was still being ruled by the descendants of David. Starting at ch. 40, it’s equally clear that more than 100 years later, someone was inspired by God to update Isaiah for the Jewish people in their Babylonian exile.

While fearing the worst, 1st Isaiah still hoped that a good King would rule with personal righteousness and justice for all people, starting with the people of Judah. 2nd Isaiah understood that an exiled nation wouldn’t be able to act like a King. So in ch. 42, we read the first song about the “Suffering Servant,” whom Christians would interpret as a foreshadowing of Jesus. But before we jump to Jesus, we should be clear about who 2nd Isaiah identified as the Suffering Servant: not just one King but the Jewish people as a whole. And instead of a single King crushing “bruised reeds,” that is, their enemies, and snuffing out “dimly burning wicks,” that is, their lives, the entire Jewish people were to be “light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners.”

Five centuries later, the Jewish people were effectively in exile under Roman occupation. And for many, the first step to ending that exile was to confess how they had failed to trust God’s promises for them and keep their covenant with God, by being baptized by John, neither of which Jesus needed to confess. But I don’t believe that Jesus was being baptized because he personally had to get right with God, but in a way to get right with us. Jesus’s baptism was an expression of his solidarity with us, even in our unrighteousness and injustice, our sin. And if Jesus is in solidarity with us even in our sin, then he is never out of solidarity with us, even unto death.

The Elusive One

The Magi would likely have been astrologers, “wise men” of their time from the nation of Persia (modern day Iran) and Zoroastrians, a more recently developed monotheistic religion. As the Persian empire swallowed up the Babylonian empire several centuries earlier, the Zoroastrians came into contact with Judaism through the exile community. These magi would likely have known at least something of this ancient monotheistic people.

These astrologers, discerning patterns in the night sky that symbolized a great King coming out of Israel, naturally assumed that this royal baby had been born in the Capital city of Jerusalem. But the Jews alone understood that kings are not demigods, and that Israel's greatest once and future Davidic king would come from his birthplace, humble Bethlehem. But to know that, you had to know all the prophets, even the “minor” ones like Micah, quoted in today’s Gospel. The Wise Men discerned patterns in the stars that that got them a long way toward the King of the Jews; but to actually find him they still had go through the Jews.

As it was two millennia ago, so it is still that there is no salvation without the Jews and the covenant that the one God made with them so long ago. In that Covenant, God promised that they would be God’s people to bring all the nations of the world to them. Their required response, also quoting Micah, was to be faithful; to love justice, to do mercy, and to walk humbly with their God. And down to this day, that remains their promise and required response toward all the peoples.

Grace Lurking

There are ghosts lurking in our Bible readings this second Sunday after Christmas. I’m not sure this is a metaphor. The Gospel reading tells us part of the aftermath of the event we will celebrate this Tuesday, January 6th: The Epiphany (manifestation) of our Lord to the Magi, and by extension, to all the peoples of Earth. Having snuck out of Judea by a less traveled road, which would take King Herod longer to figure out, the Magi gave Joseph extra Mk time to intuit that the visit of such exotic Gentile travelers would attract unwanted attention.

But between the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt as asylees, and their return five years later, are the ghost verses 16-18: “Then Herod, seeing that he had been fooled by the wise men, was furious, and sent and killed in Bethlehem and its surrounding district all the male children who were two years old or less, according to the time he had been careful to ask the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, lamenting and much weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted because they are no more.’”

The “Rachel” in this case is one of Jacob’s wives, and one of the mothers of the nation of Israel. The ghosts lurking here are what the Church calls The Holy Innocents, the “collateral damage” between God and those forces of accusation and hatred that we call satanic. The Church has long commemorated them on December 28th.

Who’s your Abba

As we come to the end of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, and the Creed that bears its name, our readings this first Sunday after Christmas make clear that only because he is “of one being with the Father” can Jesus the only begotten of God make us children of God and heirs of eternal life, not slaves of God. The Nicene Creed is not a set of intellectual propositions about God. It is our adoption certificate.

“But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believed in his name, who were born not from blood, or from the will of the flesh, or from human will but from God himself.” (Jo 1:12-13). This assertion becomes almost scandalously concrete in the First Letter of John, the same John, son of Zebedee and brother of our own James, to whom this Gospel is attributed. We are children of God, John says, “because God’s seed remains in [us],” in the original Greek, sperma. The Common English Bible uses a more modern term of which the ancients were unaware, but which makes the same point, “DNA.” A metaphor to be sure, but still a statement that our adoption by God through Jesus Christ is thicker than blood.

Hope is the Gift, Patience is the Cost

We are good Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians here at St. Monica and St, James. So, when our Bishop Diocesan speaks, we listen. On Monday, Bishop Budde emailed a meditation entitled, “The Cost and Gift of Hope at Christmas.” There’s a paradox: How does a gift have a cost? In her email, Mariann relayed the question that she is most often asked these days: Bishop, what gives you hope? 

“To be people of hope is to risk disappointment;” she responded, “to be people of hope demands that we place ourselves in seemingly hopeless situations; to be people of hope is to courageously face an uncertain future.” That is certainly a cost of hope. And the gift? “The deepest, most lasting hope doesn’t depend on us alone; it comes as a gift to receive and to share…we celebrate Jesus’ birth every year, no matter what, as a reminder that God comes to us, and is with us, no matter what. With God, we needn’t pretend to be hopeful. At Christmas, God invites us to open our hearts to receive hope, and to practice hope, leaning on the sacred traditions that inspired our ancestors to keep the light of hope alive and pass it onto us.”

This night, we celebrate that the Creator of the Universe courageously placed themself in an uncertain future, so vulnerable and powerless that his situation might have seemed hopeless. And when God sent their divine messengers to announce the birth of the only King Chosen of God, they did not go to those whose wealth and power made hope unnecessary. They went to shepherds, who had to feed their sheep wherever they could find pasture. Not surprisingly, those who claimed some of that pasture as their exclusive property resented those who fed the sheep from their property, even though they might later buy some clothing made from those sheeps’ wool. Yet it was to shepherds, whose testimony was considered unreliable, who were the first to be given the greatest news ever, before or since, an everlasting King and Lord of peace, and good will toward all people of peace.

Legacy

More than any other Gospel, Matthew’s, the most Jewish of the Gospels, refers to Jesus as “Son of David.” When we say that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, we are saying, first, that he is the Chosen King of Israel, the heir of Israel’s greatest king, David. And God had made a promise to him: “Your dynasty and your kingdom will be secured forever before me. Your throne will be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). David’s descendants did rule in Jerusalem for nearly four centuries. They didn’t always live up to their ancestor’s legacy. In today’s reading from Isaiah, his descendant Ahaz is pretty gutless. No, no, I don’t want to tempt God by asking for a sign, especially if that sign tells me I’m making a big mistake.

Finally, in 587 B.C., the last Davidic King in Jerusalem watched as his sons were executed by the Babylonians, and then was blinded and taken away in chains. About 70 years later, the Persians conquered the Babylonians, and their King allowed the exiles to go home to Jerusalem. But there was only one king in the Persian Empire. And so for another five centuries, David’s descendants lived with the legacy of God’s promise, and how they had failed to trust that promise. And no doubt, they clung to the hope of that promise, not just for themselves but for their people as well.

When the angel calls Joseph, “Son of David,” he isn’t telling him anything he doesn’t already know. He has known it from his earliest memories, as his parents taught him the glories of his legacy, and later of their failures. His betrothed, Mary, was to give him the next heir of that legacy of loss, and hope. But once she was pregnant, and not by Joseph, that would not be possible, for the heir had to be of David’s blood in order to be David’s son. Joseph could divorce her quietly, as the Gospel says, or he could have her publicly tried for adultery and stoned to death. That might satisfy his bruised masculine ego. But within his limited understanding, it is to Joseph’s credit that he chose the more charitable option initially.

We call this 3rd Sunday of Advent Gaudete Sunday and we break out the more festive Rose vestments. The more traditional theme of this 3rd Advent Sunday is Heaven, while the more contemporary theme is joy, as in Gaudete, “Rejoice.” On the one hand, Heaven is beckoning John the Baptist. On the other hand he has little reason to rejoice.

He’s in prison on the order of Rome’s handpicked local king, Herod, who has one job: keep the Galilean locals pacified enough that Caesar doesn’t have to order an expensive surge of Roman soldiers into the area. But when we heard from John last Sunday, he was nowhere near Galilee where Herod ruled. He was down south in the desert by the Jordan River much closer to Jerusalem. And the bulk of his preaching was about personal repentance. Yeah, he talked about someone greater than himself coming. But he didn’t say who that greater person might be, nor when he might actually come. He didn’t use the M-word — Messiah — God’s Chosen king, not with the Roman garrison only 10-15 miles west in Jerusalem. So, last Sunday, we left John biding his time.

So what happened? What’s John doing in Sepphoris, Herod’s capital in Galilee, over 100 miles north of where John was last week? According to Matthew, the grown-up Jesus came to John in the desert to be baptized, and John recognized who he really was — I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me — For now this is the proper thing to do — Jesus replied. I suspect that John sensed something of what Jesus saw, the sky opening, the Holy Spirit like a dove dive-bombing on him, and a voice like thunder.

The Good News of Judgment and Peace

Last week I mentioned the traditional and the newer themes for the four Sundays of Advent—Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell—and Hope, Peace, Joy, Love. So, is the theme for this Second Sunday of Advent Judgment or Hope? Yes. There are ways to see judgment, then repentance, that don’t leave us feeling like we need to make a bunch of New Year’s resolutions (Advent being the start of the liturgical year), many of which we know we won’t end up keeping. But this Advent, I invite you give up “judgment”—but not responsibility.

This world that our holy and gracious God created in their infinite love is not a court, with God as a combined prosecutor, judge and executioner waiting to ambush us. Judgment is the moment where we are surprised by an unexpected insight, perhaps caught up short, but also made aware of just how gracious our God is. If you were ever judged and felt no grace, that judgment was not about God.

So, to accept judgment and repent is not first and foremost to make a checklist of all the things we’ve done wrong and try not to repeat them, only to fail more often than succeed. It means to change your heart, your mind, your purpose; to look within yourself and ask where you need to trust God more and not turn to some emotional crutch. Then it means to trust God to take what you can change, and by God’s grace, do the rest of the changing for you. And if, as John the Baptist says today, “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham,” then God can certainly change us.

Advent Endurance

The advent, or “coming,” that is referred to in the liturgical season of Advent is not the first coming of the Messiah, the one we celebrate on December 25th, but the apocalyptic second coming referred to in today’s Gospel. So, the traditional themes of the four Sundays of Advent are Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Perhaps not wanting to be seen as Advent grinches, many churches have instead emphasized Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.

In truth you can’t have one without the other. You can’t hope for what you already have. To hope for something assumes its absence. But at the same time, to speak only of the more final themes risks freezing us in a perpetual state of fear and inadequacy. The Good News of today’s Gospel is not of Jesus’s absence, but of his enduring presence with us, the Saved who remain, and with whom Jesus remains.

At first hearing, and with the imprint of “Left Behindism” on our brains, we might think that Jesus is describing the “Rapture:” The man taken from the field and the woman taken from grinding meal are the “saved” whom the Son of Man has come to take back with him, leaving the sinners behind. But Jesus compares this to the Flood story in Genesis, in which the “taken” were destroyed by the flood, with Noah and the righteous few kept safe in the Ark.