Easter 2A * May 1, 2011
The Rev. Deborah Magdalene
John 20:19-31
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. (John 14:27) Jesus says this to the disciples at the Last Supper. Christ’s peace is a greeting, a goodbye, an invitation to renewed ministry, and much, much more.
When the resurrected Jesus appears to his frightened disciples huddled together in their locked room he greets them three different times with these words, “Peace be with you.”
We use this greeting, ‘the Peace of the Lord be always with you,’ in our liturgy as we segue from hearing the Word of God to participating in the Holy Communion. The events on Easter Day, in the disciple’s locked and private room, are remarkably similar to what we experience here, week after week, during our service of Holy Eucharist.
We begin with readings from Hebrew and New Testament scriptures reminding us where we have come from and where Christ is asking us to pack up our bags and journey toward.
The sermon should reveal what is hidden in our travel itinerary. Like Jesus, revealing himself to his friends to be the risen Christ, preachers must reveal the Good News embedded in the ancient and familiar words.
It is with fear and trembling that I continue.
After we experience a ‘revelation’, if you will, of Christ’s message for us today, we re-enact Christ sharing his peace with us. Like the disciples, we are in our own private room of prayer and holy dining. And, just as the disciples were required to do, we turn to our neighbor and do likewise.
We greet one another in the name of the Lord, reminding one another that the Peace of God, which passes all understanding, is the powerful force, the Holy and unruly Wind that will change the world. Peace be with you. Abide in peace as you abide in Christ. And take Christ with you as you enter the world outside these doors.
We pass the peace to remind each other that Christ continues to come to us in scripture, is present in our own good works, and is the creative spark of new life in Christ.
Christ comes to each of us through the channels of peace, revealing his divinity in surprising ways, as we hear in today’s gospel. Christ knows how uniquely human is our doubt and unbelief.
Peace be with you – these deceivingly simple words carry with them the promise that our prayers have been and will be answered, our quavering faith fulfilled, and our isolation vanquished.
The disciples gather in their locked room on the evening of the first day of the week. It is still Easter day, the day that begins with Mary Magdalene visiting the tomb and finding it abandoned.
It is in the early hours before dawn when Mary sees that the stone has been rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. She runs frantically to tell the other disciples that something is wrong. For a painful moment in time, she and the disciples remain in the darkness and fear of unbelief. They do not know what the empty tomb means.
As dawn begins to lighten the sky, Peter approaches the tomb to see for himself what Mary claimed was true. He gazes into the empty tomb and still does not understand what he is seeing. In the darkness, he returns to the frightened disciples, while Mary keeps a tearful watch at the empty tomb.
In the revealing light of dawn Jesus appears to Mary, yet she doesn’t recognize her Lord. Her inability to see, or her unbelief, needs only to hear her name called in that sweet, familiar voice to be completely dissolved. She then believes, and runs in haste and with deep joy to tell the other disciples.
They still do not believe her report.
When Jesus finally appears to Peter and the others, it is the evening of that same day. Darkness in John’s Gospel always denotes confusion and unbelief. (It was in the dark of night that Nicodemus approached Jesus with his first questions.) The darkness mirrors the doubt, fear and confusion of the disciples.
Jesus then uses the pivotal words meant to remind them who he really is, “Peace be with you.” Don’t you remember?
His greeting is intended to pull them back in time to their last meal together, shared in this same room, when he promised that he would return to them.
He had said to them, “Peace I leave with you; my [own] peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father.’” (John 14:27-28)
When Jesus shows himself to the disciples it is the fulfillment of the promise he made to them, just a few days before, at the Last Supper. He comes to them in order to abide with them – to call them each by name, to dwell with them in the peace that passes understanding, and to prepare them for their baptism in the Spirit.
John the Baptist testified that, “the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” (John 1:33) This is the moment of the baptism.
But, if we believe the text, Peter and the others still do not understand. It is not until Jesus intimately reveals to them his wounded hands and side that they finally believe, and finally rejoice, as a community, just as he promised that they would.
He reveals himself to them in a way that breaks through the fear and denial so that, through the chinks in their armor, he can blow the Holy Spirit into them, baptizing them in the Spirit, changing them forever more.
Peter had three chances to wake up, smell the coffee, and believe that he was really in the presence of the risen Lord. As we have experienced with Peter, it always takes three times for him to absorb Jesus’ teachings. (John’s gospel ends with the story of Jesus telling Peter three times to “Feed my sheep.”)
Once Peter and the others finally twig to who it is, standing among them, they rejoice, but they do not profess their belief in Jesus’ true nature: the Risen Christ, Son of God, in their very own presence.
That honor is reserved for Thomas. Once we understand how difficult it is for the disciples to understand, who know Jesus so well yet cannot recognize him in this resurrected form, we can have some compassion for Thomas.
Those who are in the room with Jesus need time and some extra help from their teacher in order to fully comprehend the ramifications of what they are seeing. Thomas isn’t there, for one reason or another, and his reaction to the news that they have seen the Lord is the same as the disciples hearing Mary’s report.
“I have seen the Lord!” cries Mary, but they believe her not. “We have seen the Lord!” cry the disciples, but Thomas believes them not. Peter didn’t believe when Mary told him, so why should Thomas believe what he hasn’t seen?
We need to take a step away from this story for a minute to see the full context of this locked room where the revelations take place. We must remember that this gospel was written during a time of great persecution and betrayal. The new Christian movement was literally being disowned by their parents in the faith – the Jewish authorities.
When we hear the words, ‘for fear of the Jews’ we are reminded of the context in which this gospel was written. Early Christian communities were being persecuted, punished, and banned permanently from the synagogues. Church took place in family homes, in rooms that were often locked and guarded for fear that they would be raided and run out of town, or worse.
Much of what we read in this story of Jesus appearing, in his newly resurrected form, to his community of disciples is designed to mirror early Christian worship and prayer.
Christians secretly gathered together in private rooms to share their experiences of Christ in their midst, to read passages of Hebrew scripture, to hear the occasional letter from Christian missionaries, like Paul, and to share in the Eucharistic Feast. From these early meetings evolved our current liturgies of worship and praise.
But fear was an integral part of the early Christian experience. When Christ says, ‘Peace be with you’, he is wiping away fear and replacing it with faith.
God intends for them to be right where they are, doing exactly what they are doing. Just as we, thousands of years later, are acting out our faith in the drama of our familiar liturgy – eager to hear God’s words of Peace to us, so that we can leave refreshed, comforted, and free of fear.
Jesus baptizes them with the Holy Spirit, creating in them a new humanity, reminding us that God created the original Adam, or earth-being, by blowing God-breath into lifeless creatures: inspiring new life.
It is as new life-forms that Jesus sends them out into the world, as he was sent into the world. Just as he revealed himself to the disciples, they are to reveal themselves to others as Christ-bearers. ‘Peace be with you,’ is to become the emblem of bearing Christ, and a sign of the new community.
When we come back to the locked room a week later, it is a Sunday evening. We recognize that this is just like the gathering of Christians on Sundays – a practice already in use during the time this gospel was written, in the late first century.
Thomas is with the disciples when Jesus appears and singles him out. In the midst of all of his friends, Jesus calls him to come and touch the wounds so that he can believe. And that is all it takes. At Jesus’ invitation Thomas falls on his knees and proclaims, “My Lord and my God.”
Each part of the story has presented a different way to perceive the Lord. Mary hears Jesus say her name, Peter and the other disciples see his wounds, and Thomas is invited to actually touch the risen Christ, which is enough to inspire the first proclamation of Jesus’ true nature – Lord and God.
The climax of this story occurs just after Thomas’ witness. Jesus first addresses Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me?” Then, Jesus turns to us, to the readers of this gospel and says to us, gathered here, in this room, “Blessed are you who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
We are the climax of this story because we depend on the hearing the Good News from others. Blessed are we who have come to believe that Jesus came into the world in order save us from ourselves.
The descriptions of the various ways Jesus’ disciples experience his risen form is one of the most compelling proofs of the resurrection. Something powerful happened to Christ’s followers after his death. Each one of them experienced the resurrection in a different way. Each received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in ways that called upon their individual gifts and created new, often powerful and courageous beings.
God raised Jesus from the dead in order to establish once and for all that the birth pangs of death are destroyed. Death no longer has the power to create or control life beyond the grave. Creation is in the hands of God. And it is through God that we receive the gift of the Spirit – the innovative, creative force that calls us to become bearers of Truth.
It is in Peace that we carry the message of hope out into the world. The Peace of the Lord is none other than the power of God, pulling Christ out of the grave in order to bring us life.
May the Peace of the Lord be always with you. Amen.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Easter Vigil, 2011
And God Saw that it was Good
The Rev. Deborah Magdalene
Easter Vigil 2011
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia!
When Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to visit Jesus’ tomb it was the dawn of a new creation. In the twilight of this momentous morning God was doing a new thing. Like the beginning of time, on the first day of the week, when God separated the formless void of chaos and darkness by blowing His Holy Wind over the waters, God again blew a powerful wind deep into the earth shaking it fiercely with the birth pangs of resurrecting Christ, our new light. And God saw that it was good.
Christ is the new light through which we participate in birthing a new world.
The Paschal candle plays a primary role in the Great Vigil of Easter, reminding us that when Christ died our light went out, but with his resurrection at dawn, “on the first day” the light of our own new life with Christ is lit forever, never to go out again.
The two Marys, through their simple act of being present to Christ throughout his suffering and death, never once abandoning him, were the first to hear the Easter message, “Do not be afraid, for He is risen!”
Like the dawn of creation, Christ’s resurrection is the creation of a new form of life: inviting us all to abandon our old ways of thinking in order to follow Christ into an unknown, but abundantly creative and surprising future.
Tonight, we are literally co-creators with God as we bring new life to pass through Christ, in our liturgy. God is doing a new thing which we celebrate through an ancient and mystical midnight service, signifying the end of Lent. Tonight’s great liturgy of Easter pulls us into the present moment, where Christ rises again and leads us all into a new and resurrected life.
Christ’s death and resurrection is a culmination of the ancient Jewish celebration of Passover (or pascha). As God rescued the Hebrew people from the Egyptians at the Red Sea, so God rescues us through the death and resurrection of Christ: the central saving act of God in the New Testament.
God has a habit of creating new things when we least expect it. Tonight we hear the story of our Hebrew ancestors crossing the Red Sea. This parting of the waters is another mirror of the creation story. God’s Holy Spirit-filled wind separated the waters as it had once separated the dark and watery void from the light.
It was in this new light that God beckoned his people to follow Moses into the Promised Land, never again to be bound as slaves in Egypt. Our Christian ancestors in the faith saw in this deliverance of the Israelites an image of our passing through the waters of death into the promised land of our Baptism in Christ.
We participate sacramentally in Christ’s death and resurrection each time we celebrate the Eucharist, but the primary celebration of our Christian year is this Great Vigil of Easter.
During the Vigil the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist come together in dramatic fashion in the celebration of joy that is ours on Easter morn. This night of all nights is also the night of our own salvation, where all who believe in Christ are forever saved from sin and death.
In the words of Leonel Mitchell, in his book “Praying Shapes Believing”, it is “in the baptismal waters [where] sin is washed away and grace [is] given – a grace which establishes, through Christ, a new relationship between God and the race of Adam”.
Tonight we hear the great narrative of our Christian faith from a series of readings out of the Hebrew and New Testaments, plus multiple collects and psalms that draw our attention to Paschal, or Easter, themes. The readings are our final class, or a catechumenate review of Scripture, to prepare us all for Baptism.
This ancient Vigil service contains the passion and resurrection in a single, unitive celebration. Early Christian liturgists and theologians developed this service out of an instinct that the power of God in the resurrection is a mystery that emerges by, through, and in human suffering.
In our participation in the renewal of our baptismal covenant, we are plunged into the water of our own baptismal renewal, before we receive the Eucharist as if for the first time. The effect is powerful.
In the early church, baptism into the body of Christ occurred at Easter, after months (and sometimes years) of catechumenate study. Baptism was seen as the entry point into the great Paschal Mystery which focused their attention on the great redemptive themes of our faith.
Immersion into the water is intended as a burial into Christ’s death, followed by a physical rising out of the water as a sign of our resurrection with Christ. We enter the life of the resurrected where time is compressed and the end of time is upon us now, calling us to urgent and new action based in Christ’s love.
The order for Holy Baptism emphasizes God’s role in creation: especially in the Thanksgiving over the Water:
We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water.
Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.
Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage
in Egypt into the land of promise.
In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy
Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death
and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.
We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are
buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his
resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.
It is in the reborn state that we approach the Eucharist. In our Eucharistic Prayer we affirm the relation of God to all of creation. The earliest Eucharistic prayers always included a thanksgiving for God’s creation, echoing the ancient Jewish prayers of thanksgiving.
Eucharistic Prayer II in Rite I includes the line, “for that thou didst create heaven and earth,” and in Eucharistic Prayer A, which we will use tonight, we hear this:
It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and every-
where to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of
heaven and earth.
But chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious
resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the
true Paschal Lamb, who was sacrificed for us, and has taken
away the sin of the world. By his death he has destroyed
death, and by his rising to life again he has won for us
everlasting life.
This prayer, known as the Proper Preface for Easter, contains the images of Christ’s triumph over death, reminding us that suffering does not have the last word.
As the Hebrew people suffered during the years of slavery in Egypt, and as Christ’s followers suffered in their bewildered horror at his painful death, we have a tendency to suffer through our days as if we have not been already saved.
In our weekly liturgy we are asked to gather up our sufferings in order to present them to God as our gift – along with our faith and hope in the new life we receive through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Like the two women at the tomb, the light of Christ beckons us to follow Christ as he awaits us in Galilee. The only way there is through actively reaching out to others to join us in the quest. We are on our way to salvation, and we must spread the Good News.
“Go quickly,” says the angel, “and tell the others, ‘He has been raised from the dead and has gone ahead of you – waiting for you as he leads the way.’” And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day of our renewed life in Christ.
The Rev. Deborah Magdalene
Easter Vigil 2011
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia!
When Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to visit Jesus’ tomb it was the dawn of a new creation. In the twilight of this momentous morning God was doing a new thing. Like the beginning of time, on the first day of the week, when God separated the formless void of chaos and darkness by blowing His Holy Wind over the waters, God again blew a powerful wind deep into the earth shaking it fiercely with the birth pangs of resurrecting Christ, our new light. And God saw that it was good.
Christ is the new light through which we participate in birthing a new world.
The Paschal candle plays a primary role in the Great Vigil of Easter, reminding us that when Christ died our light went out, but with his resurrection at dawn, “on the first day” the light of our own new life with Christ is lit forever, never to go out again.
The two Marys, through their simple act of being present to Christ throughout his suffering and death, never once abandoning him, were the first to hear the Easter message, “Do not be afraid, for He is risen!”
Like the dawn of creation, Christ’s resurrection is the creation of a new form of life: inviting us all to abandon our old ways of thinking in order to follow Christ into an unknown, but abundantly creative and surprising future.
Tonight, we are literally co-creators with God as we bring new life to pass through Christ, in our liturgy. God is doing a new thing which we celebrate through an ancient and mystical midnight service, signifying the end of Lent. Tonight’s great liturgy of Easter pulls us into the present moment, where Christ rises again and leads us all into a new and resurrected life.
Christ’s death and resurrection is a culmination of the ancient Jewish celebration of Passover (or pascha). As God rescued the Hebrew people from the Egyptians at the Red Sea, so God rescues us through the death and resurrection of Christ: the central saving act of God in the New Testament.
God has a habit of creating new things when we least expect it. Tonight we hear the story of our Hebrew ancestors crossing the Red Sea. This parting of the waters is another mirror of the creation story. God’s Holy Spirit-filled wind separated the waters as it had once separated the dark and watery void from the light.
It was in this new light that God beckoned his people to follow Moses into the Promised Land, never again to be bound as slaves in Egypt. Our Christian ancestors in the faith saw in this deliverance of the Israelites an image of our passing through the waters of death into the promised land of our Baptism in Christ.
We participate sacramentally in Christ’s death and resurrection each time we celebrate the Eucharist, but the primary celebration of our Christian year is this Great Vigil of Easter.
During the Vigil the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist come together in dramatic fashion in the celebration of joy that is ours on Easter morn. This night of all nights is also the night of our own salvation, where all who believe in Christ are forever saved from sin and death.
In the words of Leonel Mitchell, in his book “Praying Shapes Believing”, it is “in the baptismal waters [where] sin is washed away and grace [is] given – a grace which establishes, through Christ, a new relationship between God and the race of Adam”.
Tonight we hear the great narrative of our Christian faith from a series of readings out of the Hebrew and New Testaments, plus multiple collects and psalms that draw our attention to Paschal, or Easter, themes. The readings are our final class, or a catechumenate review of Scripture, to prepare us all for Baptism.
This ancient Vigil service contains the passion and resurrection in a single, unitive celebration. Early Christian liturgists and theologians developed this service out of an instinct that the power of God in the resurrection is a mystery that emerges by, through, and in human suffering.
In our participation in the renewal of our baptismal covenant, we are plunged into the water of our own baptismal renewal, before we receive the Eucharist as if for the first time. The effect is powerful.
In the early church, baptism into the body of Christ occurred at Easter, after months (and sometimes years) of catechumenate study. Baptism was seen as the entry point into the great Paschal Mystery which focused their attention on the great redemptive themes of our faith.
Immersion into the water is intended as a burial into Christ’s death, followed by a physical rising out of the water as a sign of our resurrection with Christ. We enter the life of the resurrected where time is compressed and the end of time is upon us now, calling us to urgent and new action based in Christ’s love.
The order for Holy Baptism emphasizes God’s role in creation: especially in the Thanksgiving over the Water:
We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water.
Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.
Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage
in Egypt into the land of promise.
In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy
Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death
and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.
We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are
buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his
resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.
It is in the reborn state that we approach the Eucharist. In our Eucharistic Prayer we affirm the relation of God to all of creation. The earliest Eucharistic prayers always included a thanksgiving for God’s creation, echoing the ancient Jewish prayers of thanksgiving.
Eucharistic Prayer II in Rite I includes the line, “for that thou didst create heaven and earth,” and in Eucharistic Prayer A, which we will use tonight, we hear this:
It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and every-
where to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of
heaven and earth.
But chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious
resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the
true Paschal Lamb, who was sacrificed for us, and has taken
away the sin of the world. By his death he has destroyed
death, and by his rising to life again he has won for us
everlasting life.
This prayer, known as the Proper Preface for Easter, contains the images of Christ’s triumph over death, reminding us that suffering does not have the last word.
As the Hebrew people suffered during the years of slavery in Egypt, and as Christ’s followers suffered in their bewildered horror at his painful death, we have a tendency to suffer through our days as if we have not been already saved.
In our weekly liturgy we are asked to gather up our sufferings in order to present them to God as our gift – along with our faith and hope in the new life we receive through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Like the two women at the tomb, the light of Christ beckons us to follow Christ as he awaits us in Galilee. The only way there is through actively reaching out to others to join us in the quest. We are on our way to salvation, and we must spread the Good News.
“Go quickly,” says the angel, “and tell the others, ‘He has been raised from the dead and has gone ahead of you – waiting for you as he leads the way.’” And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day of our renewed life in Christ.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Be “Perfect”
7 Epiphany, February 20, 2011
Lev 19:1-2, 9-18, I Cor: 3:10-11, 16-23, Mat: 5:38-48
“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy…You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” (Lev 19:2b, 19b)
The Hebrew word for holiness, "kedushah," has spiritual as well as physical connotations. It literally means ‘separate,’ or ‘set-apart’. That which is ‘holy’ is completely or wholly ‘other’ and is suffused with the numinous shimmer of God’s true nature. Holiness is considered to be the very essence of God.
In Jerusalem there were concentric borders surrounding first the Holy of Holies in the inner sanctuary, then the temple itself, and finally the walled city of Jerusalem. People knew when they stepped inside the boundaries of the city of Jerusalem that they were in a place set-apart from the ordinary. They were literally approaching the borderlands between our world and God’s world.
This holiness, or "kedushah," had an inner quality also. When Moses came down from the mountain after speaking with God his face glowed with the residue of holiness. The encounter with God changed his inner nature and set him apart from the Hebrew people. The holiness emanating from Moses was considered fearful and awesome, yet was desired as something everyone could aspire to.
The ancient Hebrew people structured their lives to emulate God’s holiness. By saving the outer portions of their fields for the poor to reap they were not only creating a healthier community but affirmed that in doing these acts they became holy as the Lord their God was holy.
The commandments for moral and ethical behavior were put before the people as a way to become closer to God. God acted ethically and compassionately with them therefore, out of their love for God, they aspired to act likewise.
Jesus asks us to, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mat 5:48) Our culture has so much baggage attached to the word ‘perfect’ that it’s become difficult to see this jewel of Hebrew wisdom. Being perfect, in this case, has nothing to do with perfectionism – that neurotic self-imposed voice that tells us we never do anything right and must try harder and harder to overcome our own mediocrity.
The word used exclusively in Matthew’s gospel stems from ‘telos,’ the Greek word for ‘goal’, ‘end’ or ‘purpose.’ We are to meditate on God’s whole and undivided nature in order to become more whole and undivided ourselves. Instead of telling us to be perfect in human terms, Jesus is telling us that we were created whole and complete in order to remember our origins: the same complete holiness that created us and gave us life.
It is in this sense of ‘being’ as our maker intended us to ‘be’ that we are asked to endure harsh treatment, love our enemies, and pray for those who attack us. Jesus does not mean for us to endure an abusive relationship at the risk of our own and our children’s safety.
These teaching of Jesus use the plural form of the word ‘you’ and are intended to teach a community how to live as a community of God, belonging to God, and desiring to live in holiness with God.
Matthew’s gospel was written at a time when the Christian community was being attacked and persecuted. Jesus’ words of wisdom became the template for passive community resistance against tyranny and evil.
Like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Egyptian people in Tahrir Square, Jesus teaches the beauty of setting ourselves apart from the self-involved cruelty of political systems.
Jesus was raised in a communal culture and spoke to communities of disciples, religious authorities, and common people. It is as a community that we are asked to turn the other cheek, to give away our coat of security and warmth, and to feed the hungry. When Jesus tells us to be perfect it is as a community.
Another way of saying this is, ‘Be whole and undivided among yourselves as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is whole and undivided.’
Paul is asking the Corinthian community to aspire to this same principle. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you… For God’s temple is holy and you are that temple.” (I Cor 16, 17b) Once baptized as a member of the Christian community we become an integral part of the Body of Christ that dwells in, and yet is separate from, the world and its chaos.
Paul is speaking to a fractious and competitive community that has lost sight of the big picture. He reminds them that it is not human leaders who will teach them how to live a Christian life, but Christ himself.
The community is called to be the Body of Christ in a literal way, with each person living into the gifts God gave them. As Christ belongs to God, they belong to Christ. Their communal responsibility is to become one whole and holy container for the Spirit of God that dwells in their midst.
Each of us must find the role that God is asking us to fill in this community. We are not very good at identifying and promoting our own strengths. This is why our culture of individuality clashes headlong into God’s Kingdom community. We can recognize the holy in each other only when we’re not threatened by or jealous of one another.
The early Hassidic sage Rabbi Zusya once said, "When I reach the next world, God will not ask me, 'Why were you not Moses?' Instead, he will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?”
This ancient wisdom bumps up against our American do-it-yourself individualism. The idea that God may have a design for our lives sounds suspiciously like God wants to rob us of our freedom to choose what is best for us. The author of the book titled ‘Bobos in Paradise’, David Brooks, writes that the prime directive of the baby boomer generation is "Thou shalt construct thine own identity."
It is easy to assume that our deepest desires must be obeyed, or we wouldn’t feel them so powerfully. The answer to this dilemma is multi-faceted. Our deepest desires are related to God’s desires for us, but they are in a language we are not accustomed to hearing.
God speaks to us in conundrums, labyrinths, dreams, and metaphors. I still remember clearly my childhood desire to be an actress. From the age of five until I was in high school it was all I thought about. I knew without a doubt that God wanted me to act. When I bumped into my first real road block I concluded that I must have gotten the message wrong.
At the age of fourteen I landed the role of Wendy in Peter Pan. But when an accident put me on crutches the director (wisely) had to choose another, more nimble, Wendy. I interpreted my broken heart as God trying to tell me to choose something a little easier to accomplish in life. I was sure that God didn’t want me to feel as badly as I did.
I grew up with the adage, “You can be anything you want to be. You just have to want it badly enough.” I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to be popular. I wanted to be the star. And I wanted it to be easy. I wasn’t prepared to suffer. The ironic thing that I couldn’t have known at the time, is that suffering is what we human beings do best.
Until we embrace the truth that no matter what we think we want in life, all choices involve suffering, we will be wandering around in the spiritual desert. It is how we deal with our own and others’ suffering that separates the truly wise from the ordinary whiner and complainer. The Corinthians were whiners. We are encourage to do better than that.
God did not create us to suffer but, with God at our side, to transform suffering into new life. No one teaches this better than Jesus. The verses we heard from our Gospel today come after the Beatitudes and are meant to be an extension of them.
These pithy wisdom sayings of Jesus are the essence of the road less traveled. They are the exact opposite of normal human desires as they are the epitome of ancient Semitic wisdom.
The desert fathers and mothers of the fourth century interpreted being perfect as, “Being perfectly humble in your recognition of who made you.” The ancients knew that we can’t even come close to behaving and thinking as God would have us behave and think. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
It is in trying to act as God would have us act that we bless other’s lives with holiness. This was one of the many reasons I felt called to join a religious order. I thought that if I were living with a group of people who committed themselves to daily prayer and service I might finally be acting as God wanted me to act. Maybe I was, but I was also trying to escape the voice inside my head which told me that I was never good enough.
I confused perfectionism with Christ’s call to be perfect. There is nothing wrong with joining a religious order as a valid way to live a life closer to God. But my own sticky wicket was the discovery that life lived within a closed community of women is just as ordinary and flawed as any other life, only much more intense.
I constantly bumped up against my interior ‘behavior police’ who constantly nagged, “These sisters aren’t doing it right! Why does one get away with being grouchy all the time and another with dominating the conversation? Why do the sisters always talk about each other behind their backs, blah de blah de blah.”
I was thrown right smack up against the same issues that plagued me before I entered. My desire to be perfect was deflected onto everyone else in my vicinity because of a neurotic wish that they should behave perfectly – like nuns should! As long as I stayed focused on them I avoided the hard work that God was calling me to do.
I eventually realized that my only escape was to shine that piercingly neurotic spotlight on my own behavior and begin to accept that I didn’t have a clue how to behave with humble tenderness toward my sisters or myself.
I turned toward scripture and spiritual writings, and I found a wise spiritual director. I began to grow up spiritually.
I still struggle with my interior behavior police directing my attention toward others’ mistakes rather than my own pride, but I have developed a healthy sense of humor about my own foibles and missteps.
Just as the ancient Hebrew people set apart what was holy from the mundane sludge of everyday life, we can set apart our spiritual life in Christ. We can set aside a times to pray and mediate on God’s whole and healthy desire for us.
We can consider ourselves part of a holy enterprise and therefore cherished by God. As Christ’s own beloved people we can allow ourselves to have an inner shift – an awakening to the joy of belonging to God.
We make things much too difficult for ourselves. We belong to Christ as Christ belongs to God. We can stop and think before allowing ourselves to be directed by our habits and compulsions. And we can learn to be spiritual people living a spiritual life – focused and aiming constantly toward our holy and undivided Christ.
Lev 19:1-2, 9-18, I Cor: 3:10-11, 16-23, Mat: 5:38-48
“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy…You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” (Lev 19:2b, 19b)
The Hebrew word for holiness, "kedushah," has spiritual as well as physical connotations. It literally means ‘separate,’ or ‘set-apart’. That which is ‘holy’ is completely or wholly ‘other’ and is suffused with the numinous shimmer of God’s true nature. Holiness is considered to be the very essence of God.
In Jerusalem there were concentric borders surrounding first the Holy of Holies in the inner sanctuary, then the temple itself, and finally the walled city of Jerusalem. People knew when they stepped inside the boundaries of the city of Jerusalem that they were in a place set-apart from the ordinary. They were literally approaching the borderlands between our world and God’s world.
This holiness, or "kedushah," had an inner quality also. When Moses came down from the mountain after speaking with God his face glowed with the residue of holiness. The encounter with God changed his inner nature and set him apart from the Hebrew people. The holiness emanating from Moses was considered fearful and awesome, yet was desired as something everyone could aspire to.
The ancient Hebrew people structured their lives to emulate God’s holiness. By saving the outer portions of their fields for the poor to reap they were not only creating a healthier community but affirmed that in doing these acts they became holy as the Lord their God was holy.
The commandments for moral and ethical behavior were put before the people as a way to become closer to God. God acted ethically and compassionately with them therefore, out of their love for God, they aspired to act likewise.
Jesus asks us to, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mat 5:48) Our culture has so much baggage attached to the word ‘perfect’ that it’s become difficult to see this jewel of Hebrew wisdom. Being perfect, in this case, has nothing to do with perfectionism – that neurotic self-imposed voice that tells us we never do anything right and must try harder and harder to overcome our own mediocrity.
The word used exclusively in Matthew’s gospel stems from ‘telos,’ the Greek word for ‘goal’, ‘end’ or ‘purpose.’ We are to meditate on God’s whole and undivided nature in order to become more whole and undivided ourselves. Instead of telling us to be perfect in human terms, Jesus is telling us that we were created whole and complete in order to remember our origins: the same complete holiness that created us and gave us life.
It is in this sense of ‘being’ as our maker intended us to ‘be’ that we are asked to endure harsh treatment, love our enemies, and pray for those who attack us. Jesus does not mean for us to endure an abusive relationship at the risk of our own and our children’s safety.
These teaching of Jesus use the plural form of the word ‘you’ and are intended to teach a community how to live as a community of God, belonging to God, and desiring to live in holiness with God.
Matthew’s gospel was written at a time when the Christian community was being attacked and persecuted. Jesus’ words of wisdom became the template for passive community resistance against tyranny and evil.
Like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Egyptian people in Tahrir Square, Jesus teaches the beauty of setting ourselves apart from the self-involved cruelty of political systems.
Jesus was raised in a communal culture and spoke to communities of disciples, religious authorities, and common people. It is as a community that we are asked to turn the other cheek, to give away our coat of security and warmth, and to feed the hungry. When Jesus tells us to be perfect it is as a community.
Another way of saying this is, ‘Be whole and undivided among yourselves as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is whole and undivided.’
Paul is asking the Corinthian community to aspire to this same principle. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you… For God’s temple is holy and you are that temple.” (I Cor 16, 17b) Once baptized as a member of the Christian community we become an integral part of the Body of Christ that dwells in, and yet is separate from, the world and its chaos.
Paul is speaking to a fractious and competitive community that has lost sight of the big picture. He reminds them that it is not human leaders who will teach them how to live a Christian life, but Christ himself.
The community is called to be the Body of Christ in a literal way, with each person living into the gifts God gave them. As Christ belongs to God, they belong to Christ. Their communal responsibility is to become one whole and holy container for the Spirit of God that dwells in their midst.
Each of us must find the role that God is asking us to fill in this community. We are not very good at identifying and promoting our own strengths. This is why our culture of individuality clashes headlong into God’s Kingdom community. We can recognize the holy in each other only when we’re not threatened by or jealous of one another.
The early Hassidic sage Rabbi Zusya once said, "When I reach the next world, God will not ask me, 'Why were you not Moses?' Instead, he will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?”
This ancient wisdom bumps up against our American do-it-yourself individualism. The idea that God may have a design for our lives sounds suspiciously like God wants to rob us of our freedom to choose what is best for us. The author of the book titled ‘Bobos in Paradise’, David Brooks, writes that the prime directive of the baby boomer generation is "Thou shalt construct thine own identity."
It is easy to assume that our deepest desires must be obeyed, or we wouldn’t feel them so powerfully. The answer to this dilemma is multi-faceted. Our deepest desires are related to God’s desires for us, but they are in a language we are not accustomed to hearing.
God speaks to us in conundrums, labyrinths, dreams, and metaphors. I still remember clearly my childhood desire to be an actress. From the age of five until I was in high school it was all I thought about. I knew without a doubt that God wanted me to act. When I bumped into my first real road block I concluded that I must have gotten the message wrong.
At the age of fourteen I landed the role of Wendy in Peter Pan. But when an accident put me on crutches the director (wisely) had to choose another, more nimble, Wendy. I interpreted my broken heart as God trying to tell me to choose something a little easier to accomplish in life. I was sure that God didn’t want me to feel as badly as I did.
I grew up with the adage, “You can be anything you want to be. You just have to want it badly enough.” I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to be popular. I wanted to be the star. And I wanted it to be easy. I wasn’t prepared to suffer. The ironic thing that I couldn’t have known at the time, is that suffering is what we human beings do best.
Until we embrace the truth that no matter what we think we want in life, all choices involve suffering, we will be wandering around in the spiritual desert. It is how we deal with our own and others’ suffering that separates the truly wise from the ordinary whiner and complainer. The Corinthians were whiners. We are encourage to do better than that.
God did not create us to suffer but, with God at our side, to transform suffering into new life. No one teaches this better than Jesus. The verses we heard from our Gospel today come after the Beatitudes and are meant to be an extension of them.
These pithy wisdom sayings of Jesus are the essence of the road less traveled. They are the exact opposite of normal human desires as they are the epitome of ancient Semitic wisdom.
The desert fathers and mothers of the fourth century interpreted being perfect as, “Being perfectly humble in your recognition of who made you.” The ancients knew that we can’t even come close to behaving and thinking as God would have us behave and think. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
It is in trying to act as God would have us act that we bless other’s lives with holiness. This was one of the many reasons I felt called to join a religious order. I thought that if I were living with a group of people who committed themselves to daily prayer and service I might finally be acting as God wanted me to act. Maybe I was, but I was also trying to escape the voice inside my head which told me that I was never good enough.
I confused perfectionism with Christ’s call to be perfect. There is nothing wrong with joining a religious order as a valid way to live a life closer to God. But my own sticky wicket was the discovery that life lived within a closed community of women is just as ordinary and flawed as any other life, only much more intense.
I constantly bumped up against my interior ‘behavior police’ who constantly nagged, “These sisters aren’t doing it right! Why does one get away with being grouchy all the time and another with dominating the conversation? Why do the sisters always talk about each other behind their backs, blah de blah de blah.”
I was thrown right smack up against the same issues that plagued me before I entered. My desire to be perfect was deflected onto everyone else in my vicinity because of a neurotic wish that they should behave perfectly – like nuns should! As long as I stayed focused on them I avoided the hard work that God was calling me to do.
I eventually realized that my only escape was to shine that piercingly neurotic spotlight on my own behavior and begin to accept that I didn’t have a clue how to behave with humble tenderness toward my sisters or myself.
I turned toward scripture and spiritual writings, and I found a wise spiritual director. I began to grow up spiritually.
I still struggle with my interior behavior police directing my attention toward others’ mistakes rather than my own pride, but I have developed a healthy sense of humor about my own foibles and missteps.
Just as the ancient Hebrew people set apart what was holy from the mundane sludge of everyday life, we can set apart our spiritual life in Christ. We can set aside a times to pray and mediate on God’s whole and healthy desire for us.
We can consider ourselves part of a holy enterprise and therefore cherished by God. As Christ’s own beloved people we can allow ourselves to have an inner shift – an awakening to the joy of belonging to God.
We make things much too difficult for ourselves. We belong to Christ as Christ belongs to God. We can stop and think before allowing ourselves to be directed by our habits and compulsions. And we can learn to be spiritual people living a spiritual life – focused and aiming constantly toward our holy and undivided Christ.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Isa 9:1-4, 1 Cor 1:10-18, Mat 4:12-23
January 23, 2011
The Rev Deborah Magdalene
Two weeks ago tomorrow President Barak Obama gave a eulogy for the innocent victims of the recent massacre in Tucson. He gave words of comfort to grieving families, friends, and coworkers; he summarized the lives of the dead, giving us all a better idea of their common humanity; and he encouraged Americans to refrain from blaming those who think differently from us.
Obama said, “It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
Those words carried light into my heart, and made me grateful that I wasn’t listening to a political speech, like I’d expected, but a sermon: a crafting of words chosen to illuminate the good news of hope in humanity, and faith in God’s power to help us change old behaviors.
Obama quoted Job to describe the suddenness of the attack in Tucson, “When I looked for light, then came darkness.” The whole verse reads, “But when I looked for good, evil came; and when I waited for light, darkness came.” (Job 30:26)
The people lined up to meet Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords that Saturday were there because of an active interest in their representative – to make real their little corner of Arizonan democracy. The last thing they expected was the sudden darkness of senseless tragedy.
In times of shock and grief we have an instinct to do something to make the hurt go away. Obama encouraged everyone to use that ‘do-something’ energy to do the hard work of “[Becoming] willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.”
Challenging old assumptions – sounds strikingly like the language of Martin Luther King Jr. On September 16, 1963, King said in his “Eulogy for the [3] Young Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing” in Birmingham, Alabama,
“God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. And history has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city… The spilled blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience.”
This theme of God’s light breaking-in to transform heartbreaking, evil and unjust circumstances is what runs through our church season of Epiphany.
The first line of the Psalm for today says it well, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?” (Ps 27:1) We must always be attentive to the inbreaking of God’s grace in our human history.
God has a habit of breaking-in to the world’s chaos and creating light. In God’s world, “Let there be light,” is not a past event, but an ongoing process of creation. Where there is darkness God will create light.
The rainbow after the flood is the magical light-filled promise of God’s new covenant with his people. The light emanating from Moses’ burning bush and the pillar of light that guides the Hebrew people through the wilderness are examples of the inbreaking of God’s transparent clarity and power in times of struggle. God actions are not obtuse.
God speaks to us with the clarity of light. But we have to walk through some dark, difficult, and depressing times before the light can break through. This is why we repent of our shortsightedness and clumsy self-centeredness before we can feel the inbreaking of light through God’s forgiveness.
Isaiah cries out, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them has light shined.” (Isa 9:2)
Here the prophet is encouraging the Hebrew people who lived in the areas in and around Galilee in the 8th century before Christ. They were overtaken by the Assyrians and had lost all control over their own lives. The lands of Zebulun and Naphtali were the Assyrian names given to the areas in and adjacent to first Century Galilee.
Isaiah prophesies that the Assyrian oppressor will fall and that the Hebrew communities of faith will be restored. The troubled people of Galilee will gain control over their lives, will be able to worship their God freely, and will have no need to fear any more. “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?”
In Paul’s letter to the troubled community of Corinth, he warns of the same dissensions that trouble Americans after the shooting in Tucson. Different factions are trying to gather momentum and overpower each other in their bids for supremacy. The impulse to do something creates chaotic and pointless posturing and resentment. Human behavior hasn’t changed much in two thousand years.
Paul believes that any factions competing for power are in blatant denial of the light and truth of the gospel. “Was Paul crucified for you?...Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?...Has Christ been divided?” (1 Cor 1:13)
Paul is striking them with his sarcasm in order to wake them up and shake them. All that matters to Paul is that they understand the radical message of the cross.
“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor 1:18) This is one of the most famous quotes of Paul that encapsulates the new saving grace of the death of Christ.
Jesus died as a common criminal in direct opposition to the belief that the Messiah was coming as a powerful leader in this world. Jesus in fact came to us as the inbreaking of God’s world into ours, turning everything upside down and sideways. The power of Christ is the power of transformation – not takeover.
Because of the brutal way Jesus died the majority of faithful Palestinian Jews couldn’t get their heads around the transformation of God’s promise to them. They could not reconcile that God’s emissary died the most shameful and public death of an enemy of the people.
Paul emphasizes the cross for a reason. It is only through embracing the complete humiliation of being a fragile human being and dying a death that terrifies the most faithful Jews that he could expose the radical love of God.
This is a love that follows us down into the grave, embracing all that is lost and hopeless, in order to raise us up in the full sunlight of God’s forgiving grace.
Paul knows that if the Corinthians had fully realized what Jesus did for them they would drop all their self-centered arguing and posturing and fall down on their knees in awe. There is no need to follow anyone but Christ. Paul doesn’t want followers, and he ridicules their desire to follow anyone but Christ. He wants believers who know what a precious gift they have been given.
esus brings eternal life to those who believe. The promise that the Kingdom of God is near – that because we believe that Christ is the Son of God and that he rose from the dead – the Kingdom of God has now entered our lives and has the power to change old behaviors. In God’s Kingdom we never have to fight our way to the top of the pile.
Fighting for political power, for human attention, or for religious popularity is another way of saying that you have lost the central message of Christ. Christ came to us in order to bring us the prism of new light. Nothing is the same when you keep your eyes glued to the wisdom of Christ’s saving power.
The ramifications of getting caught up in crowd mentality are nothing short of denying the message of the gospel. Our guide for behavior is our faith that God will guide us in no less a way than God guided Jesus – through the most painful work we can imagine in order to bring us out into the light.
When Jesus called the fishermen Peter, Andrew, James and John, he was calling them to a new vocation. He called it, “Fishers of men.” But he never tells them, or us, exactly how we go about this kind of fishing.
Do we brag that we have the best church in town? Do we attract believers by inventing new and exciting programs? Do we call all our old friends who used to come here and ask why we haven’t seen them recently? Do we walk door-to-door and share with the neighborhood our stories of salvation?
Jesus never tells us to do any of that. But he does say, “Follow me.” Follow me and I will move you through darkness to a great light; for you are sitting in the region and shadow of death and cannot see that the light has dawned.
It is only through repentance of our old habits that keep us stuck and unable to see the Christ-light in the faces of those who love us – it is through repentance of our inability to consider a radical change in our lives – it is through repentance of our attitudes of hopelessness and our exaggerations of doom and gloom that we can relax and feel God’s blessings and love forgive us and set us free at last.
Jesus began his ministry in Galilee. Matthew emphasizes that this was to fulfill Isaiah’s prophesies. Jesus came to Galilee to live as God’s light of justice and reconciliation. When he says ‘Follow me’ he doesn’t promise that it won’t hurt. But he does promise that through our transformed lives we will not only see light, but will bring light to others. “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?”
God did not let bad things happen to the innocent people in that shopping center in Tucson two weeks ago. But God can salvage souls by showing us the way through painful times.
Nine year-old Christina Taylor Green was born on 9-11 in the year two thousand and one. She was one of 50 children born in the United States on that day. President Obama wisely used the story of her brief life to illustrate the saving power of hope.
Because Christina had such an unusual gratitude for the gifts God had given her he encouraged us to not let her death be the last word. Christina was fascinated by the world of politics and believed that she could make a difference in the world.
Obama said, “I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.”
The Good News that Jesus brings us all is that we have to work hard to discern God’s will for our communities. It is through the hard work of doing justice, bringing reconciliation, and acting abiding love that we bring light to our communities and to one another. “The LORD is our light and my salvation; whom then shall we fear?” We need fear no one.
January 23, 2011
The Rev Deborah Magdalene
Two weeks ago tomorrow President Barak Obama gave a eulogy for the innocent victims of the recent massacre in Tucson. He gave words of comfort to grieving families, friends, and coworkers; he summarized the lives of the dead, giving us all a better idea of their common humanity; and he encouraged Americans to refrain from blaming those who think differently from us.
Obama said, “It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
Those words carried light into my heart, and made me grateful that I wasn’t listening to a political speech, like I’d expected, but a sermon: a crafting of words chosen to illuminate the good news of hope in humanity, and faith in God’s power to help us change old behaviors.
Obama quoted Job to describe the suddenness of the attack in Tucson, “When I looked for light, then came darkness.” The whole verse reads, “But when I looked for good, evil came; and when I waited for light, darkness came.” (Job 30:26)
The people lined up to meet Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords that Saturday were there because of an active interest in their representative – to make real their little corner of Arizonan democracy. The last thing they expected was the sudden darkness of senseless tragedy.
In times of shock and grief we have an instinct to do something to make the hurt go away. Obama encouraged everyone to use that ‘do-something’ energy to do the hard work of “[Becoming] willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.”
Challenging old assumptions – sounds strikingly like the language of Martin Luther King Jr. On September 16, 1963, King said in his “Eulogy for the [3] Young Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing” in Birmingham, Alabama,
“God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. And history has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city… The spilled blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience.”
This theme of God’s light breaking-in to transform heartbreaking, evil and unjust circumstances is what runs through our church season of Epiphany.
The first line of the Psalm for today says it well, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?” (Ps 27:1) We must always be attentive to the inbreaking of God’s grace in our human history.
God has a habit of breaking-in to the world’s chaos and creating light. In God’s world, “Let there be light,” is not a past event, but an ongoing process of creation. Where there is darkness God will create light.
The rainbow after the flood is the magical light-filled promise of God’s new covenant with his people. The light emanating from Moses’ burning bush and the pillar of light that guides the Hebrew people through the wilderness are examples of the inbreaking of God’s transparent clarity and power in times of struggle. God actions are not obtuse.
God speaks to us with the clarity of light. But we have to walk through some dark, difficult, and depressing times before the light can break through. This is why we repent of our shortsightedness and clumsy self-centeredness before we can feel the inbreaking of light through God’s forgiveness.
Isaiah cries out, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them has light shined.” (Isa 9:2)
Here the prophet is encouraging the Hebrew people who lived in the areas in and around Galilee in the 8th century before Christ. They were overtaken by the Assyrians and had lost all control over their own lives. The lands of Zebulun and Naphtali were the Assyrian names given to the areas in and adjacent to first Century Galilee.
Isaiah prophesies that the Assyrian oppressor will fall and that the Hebrew communities of faith will be restored. The troubled people of Galilee will gain control over their lives, will be able to worship their God freely, and will have no need to fear any more. “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?”
In Paul’s letter to the troubled community of Corinth, he warns of the same dissensions that trouble Americans after the shooting in Tucson. Different factions are trying to gather momentum and overpower each other in their bids for supremacy. The impulse to do something creates chaotic and pointless posturing and resentment. Human behavior hasn’t changed much in two thousand years.
Paul believes that any factions competing for power are in blatant denial of the light and truth of the gospel. “Was Paul crucified for you?...Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?...Has Christ been divided?” (1 Cor 1:13)
Paul is striking them with his sarcasm in order to wake them up and shake them. All that matters to Paul is that they understand the radical message of the cross.
“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor 1:18) This is one of the most famous quotes of Paul that encapsulates the new saving grace of the death of Christ.
Jesus died as a common criminal in direct opposition to the belief that the Messiah was coming as a powerful leader in this world. Jesus in fact came to us as the inbreaking of God’s world into ours, turning everything upside down and sideways. The power of Christ is the power of transformation – not takeover.
Because of the brutal way Jesus died the majority of faithful Palestinian Jews couldn’t get their heads around the transformation of God’s promise to them. They could not reconcile that God’s emissary died the most shameful and public death of an enemy of the people.
Paul emphasizes the cross for a reason. It is only through embracing the complete humiliation of being a fragile human being and dying a death that terrifies the most faithful Jews that he could expose the radical love of God.
This is a love that follows us down into the grave, embracing all that is lost and hopeless, in order to raise us up in the full sunlight of God’s forgiving grace.
Paul knows that if the Corinthians had fully realized what Jesus did for them they would drop all their self-centered arguing and posturing and fall down on their knees in awe. There is no need to follow anyone but Christ. Paul doesn’t want followers, and he ridicules their desire to follow anyone but Christ. He wants believers who know what a precious gift they have been given.
esus brings eternal life to those who believe. The promise that the Kingdom of God is near – that because we believe that Christ is the Son of God and that he rose from the dead – the Kingdom of God has now entered our lives and has the power to change old behaviors. In God’s Kingdom we never have to fight our way to the top of the pile.
Fighting for political power, for human attention, or for religious popularity is another way of saying that you have lost the central message of Christ. Christ came to us in order to bring us the prism of new light. Nothing is the same when you keep your eyes glued to the wisdom of Christ’s saving power.
The ramifications of getting caught up in crowd mentality are nothing short of denying the message of the gospel. Our guide for behavior is our faith that God will guide us in no less a way than God guided Jesus – through the most painful work we can imagine in order to bring us out into the light.
When Jesus called the fishermen Peter, Andrew, James and John, he was calling them to a new vocation. He called it, “Fishers of men.” But he never tells them, or us, exactly how we go about this kind of fishing.
Do we brag that we have the best church in town? Do we attract believers by inventing new and exciting programs? Do we call all our old friends who used to come here and ask why we haven’t seen them recently? Do we walk door-to-door and share with the neighborhood our stories of salvation?
Jesus never tells us to do any of that. But he does say, “Follow me.” Follow me and I will move you through darkness to a great light; for you are sitting in the region and shadow of death and cannot see that the light has dawned.
It is only through repentance of our old habits that keep us stuck and unable to see the Christ-light in the faces of those who love us – it is through repentance of our inability to consider a radical change in our lives – it is through repentance of our attitudes of hopelessness and our exaggerations of doom and gloom that we can relax and feel God’s blessings and love forgive us and set us free at last.
Jesus began his ministry in Galilee. Matthew emphasizes that this was to fulfill Isaiah’s prophesies. Jesus came to Galilee to live as God’s light of justice and reconciliation. When he says ‘Follow me’ he doesn’t promise that it won’t hurt. But he does promise that through our transformed lives we will not only see light, but will bring light to others. “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?”
God did not let bad things happen to the innocent people in that shopping center in Tucson two weeks ago. But God can salvage souls by showing us the way through painful times.
Nine year-old Christina Taylor Green was born on 9-11 in the year two thousand and one. She was one of 50 children born in the United States on that day. President Obama wisely used the story of her brief life to illustrate the saving power of hope.
Because Christina had such an unusual gratitude for the gifts God had given her he encouraged us to not let her death be the last word. Christina was fascinated by the world of politics and believed that she could make a difference in the world.
Obama said, “I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.”
The Good News that Jesus brings us all is that we have to work hard to discern God’s will for our communities. It is through the hard work of doing justice, bringing reconciliation, and acting abiding love that we bring light to our communities and to one another. “The LORD is our light and my salvation; whom then shall we fear?” We need fear no one.
The Baptism of Christ
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Rev Deborah Magdalene
In the movie, ‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou,’ three men escape from a chain gang and begin an epic journey through the South, looking for an illusive hidden treasure. At one point in their journey, as they are walking through a dimly lit forest, they begin to hear the sound of many people singing:
“As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good ol' way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way!”
The fugitives hide among the trees and watched transfixed as a large group of men and women, dressed completely in white, hurry toward a ravine where a large, lazy southern river winds its way through the forest.
“O sisters let's go down
Let's go down, come on down
O sisters let's go down
Down in the river to pray.”
Then, continuing to sing, one man wades into the river and beckons the first woman in line to come into the water. With a forceful shove on her shoulders, the preacher pushes the woman down into the water and holds her there for a breathless moment.
The force of a gale propels the woman up out of the water shaking and sputtering with new life. She has no time to catch her breath as another woman approaches, ready for her turn to be shoved into the water. And so it goes, as everyone takes their turn to be baptized in the river.
Suddenly, one of the fugitives breaks free from their hiding place among the trees and pushes his way through the people-in-white and into the river, presenting himself eagerly to the preacher. The preacher looks him in the eye, recognizes his desire, and shoves him into the water.
Up he comes shouting jubilantly “I been saved! I been saved!” while his friends shake their heads in disbelief. What looks like foolhardiness to them is a true epiphany for the baptized man. Throughout the rest of their journey he remains a changed man. He thinks about his actions and worries about the helpless. It was a new being that rose up out of that lazy river.
This last Thursday was the Feast of the Epiphany, and the first day of the season of Epiphany. This is when we traditionally celebrate the arrival of the wise men, guided on their journey by a bright and luminous star, to Christ’s manger in Bethlehem. The foreign wise men traveled hundreds of miles in order to see a tiny prophet who would reach across boundaries and bring all nations together in peace.
When the magi visited the baby Jesus it was a foretelling of the future of Christianity. Because of Jesus, all nations would be invited to recognize the true nature of God. When the magi leaned in to worship the infant Jesus they recognized something new coming into the world.
This is what the word ‘epiphany’ means: a breaking-through of divinity into human understanding… a ‘showing’ or an appearance of God’s true nature in the midst of the darkness of our struggles, disappointments, and fears.
The word ‘epiphany’ can also mean a “perception of truth by means of a sudden intuitive realization.” We’ve all experienced an epiphany. Cartoons illustrate a light-bulb turning on suddenly in the bubble over someone’s head – that ‘aha’ moment when everything becomes clear and Popeye has a new idea.
This ‘new idea’ shines through the ministry of Christ throughout the season of Epiphany – unique manifestations of God’s nature as seen through the saving humanity of Jesus.
We traditionally celebrate the baptism of Christ on this first Sunday after the Epiphany. It is at the River Jordan that the immensity of Jesus’ ministry to the people of God is made clear to him. As he rose up out of the meandering waters of the Jordan River “suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.” (Mat 3:16)
As Matthew tells the story, this is the first time that Jesus hears the voice of God, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” (Mat 3:17) It is only after the baptism and this anointing by the Spirit of God that Jesus begins his public ministry.
In his novel, ‘The Last Temptation’, Nikos Kazantzakis explores how Jesus might have suffered before his baptism by John. He imagines that as Jesus reached adolescence he began to experience crushingly painful headaches that accompanied frightening ideas about his own death and the suffering of his people.
Except for the pain, these experiences were all shadowy and indistinct. The teenaged Jesus felt the deepest part of his being struggle with these bizarre visions that came from an even deeper and mysterious place within him. It was not until his meeting with John the Baptist that Jesus discovered the truth of his destiny.
Matthew emphasizes that it takes two important figures coming together in righteousness in order to complete God’s plan. The Baptizer immediately recognizes the holy nature of Jesus and begins to back away from him in humility. “No, no, it is you who should be baptizing me!”
But Jesus draws John back to him with the words, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." (Mat 3:15) And so the baptism becomes a dual act, an obedient coming-together of the baptizer and the baptized, setting the stage for God to show himself to Jesus.
The word, ‘righteousness’ is very important to Matthew. He uses either the word ‘righteous’ or ‘righteousness’ repeatedly throughout his gospel, drilling the concept it represents into our understanding.
So. What does ‘righteousness’ mean to Matthew? Joseph is called ‘righteous’ when he takes his dreams seriously and agrees to wed Mary and make a home for the Christ child. Jesus teaches that those who hunger and thirst for ‘righteousness’ are blessed and will be fed. (Mat 5:6) He says again, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and all that you truly need will be given to you. (6:33)
Righteousness can mean justice, uprightness, and redemption. It can be an attitude or an action. When we comply with God’s righteousness it implies that we are working, with unified attitude and action, toward the completion of God’s work on earth. We are literally bringing in the Kingdom of God with God.
Jesus and John the Baptist work together as equals, conforming their actions to God’s righteousness. This public moment becomes the template for all future baptisms in the name of Christ.
When the priest helps the child of God emerge from the water bath, they have participated together in the birth of a new being. For Christians, each time we witness a baptism we remember not only the moment of Christ’s own baptism, but his death on the cross.
Like the preacher in the movie, the cross shoves Jesus into the darkness of the river of death, where he stays long enough for us all to lose hope. Then, in complete alignment with God’s righteousness, Christ rises from the depths of the grave as a new and radiant being.
This is our promise, as baptized members of Christ’s family. Like Jesus, we know that we are beloved by God, and that we now share his new and radiant life in our lifetime and in the next.
Baptism is where it begins. Eternity is where it continues. It is the water that is our physical and outward reminder that we are part of God’s plan.
The oil used to seal the new Christian is a reminder of the epiphany of God to Jesus. As Jesus heard the voice of God, we hear the voice of the priest saying, ‘You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.’ (BCP p.308)
This public act of adoption into Christ’s family was so important to the early Christians that it became part of their earliest creeds. In fact, in the reading we have today from Acts we hear an early form of this creed in Peter’s speech to Cornelius and his family:
“You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ-- he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” (Acts 10:36-38)
Peter’s speech reminds us of the close link between Christ’s baptism in the water, followed by the sealing of the Holy Spirit. And at the end of Matthew’s Gospel he makes clear that the mission of the new Church is inseparable from baptism.
After the resurrection, Jesus appears to his closest followers, saying powerfully, ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And lo, behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mat 28:19-20)
Jesus and John the Baptist showed us how to align ourselves with God’s righteous plan for his world. It is in baptism that we celebrate the new life we have in Christ as we are joined to Him and adopted as God’s own children forever.
Whether or not we remember the event, at our baptism God takes up residence in our hearts, willing us daily to pay attention to the holy and righteous purpose of God seeking to live through our attitudes and actions.
Like Christ, our ministry begins at the moment of our baptisms.
We belong to God, and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We are all gathered at the river, looking forward to the day when we will rise with Christ to life eternal.
The Rev Deborah Magdalene
In the movie, ‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou,’ three men escape from a chain gang and begin an epic journey through the South, looking for an illusive hidden treasure. At one point in their journey, as they are walking through a dimly lit forest, they begin to hear the sound of many people singing:
“As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good ol' way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way!”
The fugitives hide among the trees and watched transfixed as a large group of men and women, dressed completely in white, hurry toward a ravine where a large, lazy southern river winds its way through the forest.
“O sisters let's go down
Let's go down, come on down
O sisters let's go down
Down in the river to pray.”
Then, continuing to sing, one man wades into the river and beckons the first woman in line to come into the water. With a forceful shove on her shoulders, the preacher pushes the woman down into the water and holds her there for a breathless moment.
The force of a gale propels the woman up out of the water shaking and sputtering with new life. She has no time to catch her breath as another woman approaches, ready for her turn to be shoved into the water. And so it goes, as everyone takes their turn to be baptized in the river.
Suddenly, one of the fugitives breaks free from their hiding place among the trees and pushes his way through the people-in-white and into the river, presenting himself eagerly to the preacher. The preacher looks him in the eye, recognizes his desire, and shoves him into the water.
Up he comes shouting jubilantly “I been saved! I been saved!” while his friends shake their heads in disbelief. What looks like foolhardiness to them is a true epiphany for the baptized man. Throughout the rest of their journey he remains a changed man. He thinks about his actions and worries about the helpless. It was a new being that rose up out of that lazy river.
This last Thursday was the Feast of the Epiphany, and the first day of the season of Epiphany. This is when we traditionally celebrate the arrival of the wise men, guided on their journey by a bright and luminous star, to Christ’s manger in Bethlehem. The foreign wise men traveled hundreds of miles in order to see a tiny prophet who would reach across boundaries and bring all nations together in peace.
When the magi visited the baby Jesus it was a foretelling of the future of Christianity. Because of Jesus, all nations would be invited to recognize the true nature of God. When the magi leaned in to worship the infant Jesus they recognized something new coming into the world.
This is what the word ‘epiphany’ means: a breaking-through of divinity into human understanding… a ‘showing’ or an appearance of God’s true nature in the midst of the darkness of our struggles, disappointments, and fears.
The word ‘epiphany’ can also mean a “perception of truth by means of a sudden intuitive realization.” We’ve all experienced an epiphany. Cartoons illustrate a light-bulb turning on suddenly in the bubble over someone’s head – that ‘aha’ moment when everything becomes clear and Popeye has a new idea.
This ‘new idea’ shines through the ministry of Christ throughout the season of Epiphany – unique manifestations of God’s nature as seen through the saving humanity of Jesus.
We traditionally celebrate the baptism of Christ on this first Sunday after the Epiphany. It is at the River Jordan that the immensity of Jesus’ ministry to the people of God is made clear to him. As he rose up out of the meandering waters of the Jordan River “suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.” (Mat 3:16)
As Matthew tells the story, this is the first time that Jesus hears the voice of God, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” (Mat 3:17) It is only after the baptism and this anointing by the Spirit of God that Jesus begins his public ministry.
In his novel, ‘The Last Temptation’, Nikos Kazantzakis explores how Jesus might have suffered before his baptism by John. He imagines that as Jesus reached adolescence he began to experience crushingly painful headaches that accompanied frightening ideas about his own death and the suffering of his people.
Except for the pain, these experiences were all shadowy and indistinct. The teenaged Jesus felt the deepest part of his being struggle with these bizarre visions that came from an even deeper and mysterious place within him. It was not until his meeting with John the Baptist that Jesus discovered the truth of his destiny.
Matthew emphasizes that it takes two important figures coming together in righteousness in order to complete God’s plan. The Baptizer immediately recognizes the holy nature of Jesus and begins to back away from him in humility. “No, no, it is you who should be baptizing me!”
But Jesus draws John back to him with the words, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." (Mat 3:15) And so the baptism becomes a dual act, an obedient coming-together of the baptizer and the baptized, setting the stage for God to show himself to Jesus.
The word, ‘righteousness’ is very important to Matthew. He uses either the word ‘righteous’ or ‘righteousness’ repeatedly throughout his gospel, drilling the concept it represents into our understanding.
So. What does ‘righteousness’ mean to Matthew? Joseph is called ‘righteous’ when he takes his dreams seriously and agrees to wed Mary and make a home for the Christ child. Jesus teaches that those who hunger and thirst for ‘righteousness’ are blessed and will be fed. (Mat 5:6) He says again, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and all that you truly need will be given to you. (6:33)
Righteousness can mean justice, uprightness, and redemption. It can be an attitude or an action. When we comply with God’s righteousness it implies that we are working, with unified attitude and action, toward the completion of God’s work on earth. We are literally bringing in the Kingdom of God with God.
Jesus and John the Baptist work together as equals, conforming their actions to God’s righteousness. This public moment becomes the template for all future baptisms in the name of Christ.
When the priest helps the child of God emerge from the water bath, they have participated together in the birth of a new being. For Christians, each time we witness a baptism we remember not only the moment of Christ’s own baptism, but his death on the cross.
Like the preacher in the movie, the cross shoves Jesus into the darkness of the river of death, where he stays long enough for us all to lose hope. Then, in complete alignment with God’s righteousness, Christ rises from the depths of the grave as a new and radiant being.
This is our promise, as baptized members of Christ’s family. Like Jesus, we know that we are beloved by God, and that we now share his new and radiant life in our lifetime and in the next.
Baptism is where it begins. Eternity is where it continues. It is the water that is our physical and outward reminder that we are part of God’s plan.
The oil used to seal the new Christian is a reminder of the epiphany of God to Jesus. As Jesus heard the voice of God, we hear the voice of the priest saying, ‘You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.’ (BCP p.308)
This public act of adoption into Christ’s family was so important to the early Christians that it became part of their earliest creeds. In fact, in the reading we have today from Acts we hear an early form of this creed in Peter’s speech to Cornelius and his family:
“You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ-- he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” (Acts 10:36-38)
Peter’s speech reminds us of the close link between Christ’s baptism in the water, followed by the sealing of the Holy Spirit. And at the end of Matthew’s Gospel he makes clear that the mission of the new Church is inseparable from baptism.
After the resurrection, Jesus appears to his closest followers, saying powerfully, ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And lo, behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mat 28:19-20)
Jesus and John the Baptist showed us how to align ourselves with God’s righteous plan for his world. It is in baptism that we celebrate the new life we have in Christ as we are joined to Him and adopted as God’s own children forever.
Whether or not we remember the event, at our baptism God takes up residence in our hearts, willing us daily to pay attention to the holy and righteous purpose of God seeking to live through our attitudes and actions.
Like Christ, our ministry begins at the moment of our baptisms.
We belong to God, and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We are all gathered at the river, looking forward to the day when we will rise with Christ to life eternal.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Ordination Sermon
December 3, 2010, in honor of Nathan Ritter and David Carletta's ordination
Numbers 11:16-17, 24-25 Phil. 4:4-9 John 10:11-18
Desmond Tutu once said, “There is nothing a Christian can claim of personal significance. Everything that I am, that I do, everything that I have ultimately is corporate...If you stand out in a crowd it is only because you are standing on the shoulders of others.”
This Episcopal service of ordination appears to make two individuals and their call to priesthood very significant and the focus of our attention. Just the opposite is true, actually.
We are here to rejoice in the new life Christ has given us. We are here to sing God’s praises and to pray for grace in our lives and in the lives of others. We are here to listen to the Word of God read in our midst. And we are here to dig into the Scripture a little bit to see how it can enlighten our journeys and inform our ministries.
Later, we will share a sacred meal together so that, as a community, we can feed the Body of Christ before we head back into a hungry world.
Oh yes, and before the Eucharistic meal begins, God willing, we will all participate in the ordination of Nathan and David to the sacred order of priests. Just remember, they are standing on the shoulders of all the Christian communities that have had a hand in their formation.
The readings we’ve just heard make clear that this business of leadership in the church is a communal affair. The only significant focus of our worship this evening is God. The readings make clear that there are some very important skills that a new leader should have in his bag of tricks.
Let’s begin with Moses.
Before Moses was told to gather the seventy elders, he complained bitterly to God that he couldn’t carry the people of Israel all by himself. “I am not able to carry all these people alone, for they are too heavy for me,” Moses whines. “If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once – if I have found favor in your sight- and do not let me see my misery.” (Num 11:15)
Moses could be a little melodramatic. What God tells him is one of the most important lessons that a leader can learn: stop complaining and acting like a martyr and go out find some other leaders to help you. One of the most common traps that a priest falls into is thinking she must do this job perfectly, and absolutely must do it alone.
From the looks of it, Moses never even gave a passing thought to the abilities of his fellow leaders. They were right there under his nose. They were called ‘elders,’ which, when translated into Greek, is presbyteros, the word used to refer to the evolving role of a priest in early Christian writings.
Ignatius of Antioch, martyred in the year 107, wrote frequently of the threefold church order of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. While the roles of bishop and deacon were very clearly laid out, there was still much ambiguity around the role of a priest.
Like the elders selected by Moses, the earliest Christian elders functioned as an integral part of a community. They were communally a chosen people – a people destined to worship God continually, and to remember who they belonged to: God. Leaders served the purpose of reminding them whose they were.
The early Christian communities believed that the onus of responsibility and leadership fell on them all equally. The First Letter of Peter makes clear, “…for you are [all] a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.” (1Peter 2:9)
It is a common misconception that our hierarchical structure in the Episcopal Church is intended to make some people holier than others. It may look that way sometimes. Just look at the regalia of tonight’s ceremony. Majestic vestments and props; regal processions; dramatic bowing of heads and laying on of hands; and heavenly voices singing with the king of all instruments – the mighty organ. It all hearkens back to medieval ceremonies.
All of this pomp and circumstance signifies a grand event that demands our attention. What is happening here tonight is not the crowning of two new princes, but the humble acceptance of our very human role in God’s magnificent Kingdom.
We, like the early Christian communities, go to great lengths to remember the holy presence of God in and among us. The medieval echoes of our ceremony serve to focus our attention on the ethereal and numinous nature of the risen Christ in our midst. Our senses are alerted to an altered reality. God is worthy of praise and adoration, and the primary reason for our being here tonight.
Our leaders are but trusted servants, fellow workers, and humble sheep among sheep; which brings us to the Gospel lesson for today.
The Gospel of John was written so that those who listened to the Word would “come to believe” that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and the son of God. The gospel’s cyclical nature winds in and around itself, kneading the listener into the dough of a new community, rising out of their Jewish heritage.
Theoretically, when we arrive at the tenth chapter about the Good Shepherd we have acquired certain listening skills. For instance, we have learned that the gospel itself was written to be the place where one actually encounters the risen Lord.
Like the apostles who first saw, and then believed, we readers of the Fourth Gospel have a real encounter with Christ through the words themselves. Because of the mystical and poetic nature of this gospel we can have an experience of Christ among us comparable to those who actually knew him.
When Jesus tells his disciples, “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep,” (John 10:14-15) we recognize, once again that the words circle around themselves in direct imitation of the Prologue to John’s gospel.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2) The proclamation, “I am the good shepherd,” directs us to the nature of Jesus’ relationship with God his Father. Jesus was sent by God to be the only shepherd of God’s sheep.
In John’s Revelation we hear, “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." (Rev 7:17)
All the illusions clergy have about being the good shepherd are misguided. In fact, they are dangerous. If any of us model ourselves on the Good Shepherd we run the risk of self-aggrandizement. We are not the Good Shepherd, Jesus is. Our attention is better spent on trusting God to guide our clumsy sheep behavior.
Like Isaac, offered on the altar as a sacrifice to God, Jesus lays down his life in the gateway of the sheep’s fold. No one can harm us without encountering Christ first. It is through grace that we count ourselves among Christ’s flock.
As our shepherd, Jesus seeks each of us out and calls us to our ministry in the church. We all have the responsibility of reminding each other that Christ is our shepherd, so we shall not be afraid.
This is such a paradigm shift from thinking that our pastors are supposed to be the good shepherds. In the Episcopal Church that I grew up in, we took for granted this skewed model of leadership.
As one of our professors at General Seminary said, the old model for ministers and congregations was, “My job is to minister and yours is to congregate.” So little was expected of us we were lulled into believing that we actually had no work to do. Just show up!
What would the apostle Paul think of this?
In the letter he writes to the church in Philippi, Paul is excited beyond belief that the community is working so hard without him. This is the model of leadership that we are trying to regain in the twenty-first century.
A good leader rejoices in the leadership skills of his community, and sends them out to do the same. Leaders raise up new leaders, who in turn raise up new leaders, who raise up yet more new leaders. And God rejoices.
“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4) Paul reminds his friends that, like a shepherd with his flock, “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” (4:6)
With these words, Paul states the primary responsibility for every leader in God’s church: “In everything, by prayer and with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”
Which brings us to the distinctly Anglican practice of prayer, the Divine Office. The Office marinates us in the psalms that were so dear to Jesus, and makes our prayer a deeply engrained habit.
The daily recitation of psalms and beautifully written Anglican prayer helps bring our focus back to the Word of God. In spite of the fact that there are so many other things you can get done in the time it takes to pray the Office, we believe that the activity of daily prayer is actually pleasing to God.
Praying the Office is pleasing to me because my soul becomes quiet as my mouth recites the beautiful words. The ordinands just promised that they
“believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.”
What better pastime than to spend time daily with the words so necessary for our salvation?
When Paul says to imitate him, it is his immersion in prayer, coupled with the joy he finds in Jesus that he wants to see mirrored around him. Imitate a deep prayer practice, and seek the joy that comes from serving Christ and you will live into Paul’s idea of ministry.
All baptized Christians have a responsibility to lead, minister, and witness to their faith. We bear witness to Christ by leading lives of integrity and faith, always mindful that it is up to us to work for reconciliation in our world, and to witness to our faith in the risen Christ.
And now, David and Nathan, would you please stand up?
If you would, please, take a look around at whose shoulders you are standing on.
They have just promised to uphold you in your ministry. Remember that and hold them to it. You are here because of them.
And now, a reminder from the prophet Micah: “Remember all that the Lord requires of you; to do justice, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (Heb 13:20-21)
Numbers 11:16-17, 24-25 Phil. 4:4-9 John 10:11-18
Desmond Tutu once said, “There is nothing a Christian can claim of personal significance. Everything that I am, that I do, everything that I have ultimately is corporate...If you stand out in a crowd it is only because you are standing on the shoulders of others.”
This Episcopal service of ordination appears to make two individuals and their call to priesthood very significant and the focus of our attention. Just the opposite is true, actually.
We are here to rejoice in the new life Christ has given us. We are here to sing God’s praises and to pray for grace in our lives and in the lives of others. We are here to listen to the Word of God read in our midst. And we are here to dig into the Scripture a little bit to see how it can enlighten our journeys and inform our ministries.
Later, we will share a sacred meal together so that, as a community, we can feed the Body of Christ before we head back into a hungry world.
Oh yes, and before the Eucharistic meal begins, God willing, we will all participate in the ordination of Nathan and David to the sacred order of priests. Just remember, they are standing on the shoulders of all the Christian communities that have had a hand in their formation.
The readings we’ve just heard make clear that this business of leadership in the church is a communal affair. The only significant focus of our worship this evening is God. The readings make clear that there are some very important skills that a new leader should have in his bag of tricks.
Let’s begin with Moses.
Before Moses was told to gather the seventy elders, he complained bitterly to God that he couldn’t carry the people of Israel all by himself. “I am not able to carry all these people alone, for they are too heavy for me,” Moses whines. “If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once – if I have found favor in your sight- and do not let me see my misery.” (Num 11:15)
Moses could be a little melodramatic. What God tells him is one of the most important lessons that a leader can learn: stop complaining and acting like a martyr and go out find some other leaders to help you. One of the most common traps that a priest falls into is thinking she must do this job perfectly, and absolutely must do it alone.
From the looks of it, Moses never even gave a passing thought to the abilities of his fellow leaders. They were right there under his nose. They were called ‘elders,’ which, when translated into Greek, is presbyteros, the word used to refer to the evolving role of a priest in early Christian writings.
Ignatius of Antioch, martyred in the year 107, wrote frequently of the threefold church order of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. While the roles of bishop and deacon were very clearly laid out, there was still much ambiguity around the role of a priest.
Like the elders selected by Moses, the earliest Christian elders functioned as an integral part of a community. They were communally a chosen people – a people destined to worship God continually, and to remember who they belonged to: God. Leaders served the purpose of reminding them whose they were.
The early Christian communities believed that the onus of responsibility and leadership fell on them all equally. The First Letter of Peter makes clear, “…for you are [all] a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.” (1Peter 2:9)
It is a common misconception that our hierarchical structure in the Episcopal Church is intended to make some people holier than others. It may look that way sometimes. Just look at the regalia of tonight’s ceremony. Majestic vestments and props; regal processions; dramatic bowing of heads and laying on of hands; and heavenly voices singing with the king of all instruments – the mighty organ. It all hearkens back to medieval ceremonies.
All of this pomp and circumstance signifies a grand event that demands our attention. What is happening here tonight is not the crowning of two new princes, but the humble acceptance of our very human role in God’s magnificent Kingdom.
We, like the early Christian communities, go to great lengths to remember the holy presence of God in and among us. The medieval echoes of our ceremony serve to focus our attention on the ethereal and numinous nature of the risen Christ in our midst. Our senses are alerted to an altered reality. God is worthy of praise and adoration, and the primary reason for our being here tonight.
Our leaders are but trusted servants, fellow workers, and humble sheep among sheep; which brings us to the Gospel lesson for today.
The Gospel of John was written so that those who listened to the Word would “come to believe” that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and the son of God. The gospel’s cyclical nature winds in and around itself, kneading the listener into the dough of a new community, rising out of their Jewish heritage.
Theoretically, when we arrive at the tenth chapter about the Good Shepherd we have acquired certain listening skills. For instance, we have learned that the gospel itself was written to be the place where one actually encounters the risen Lord.
Like the apostles who first saw, and then believed, we readers of the Fourth Gospel have a real encounter with Christ through the words themselves. Because of the mystical and poetic nature of this gospel we can have an experience of Christ among us comparable to those who actually knew him.
When Jesus tells his disciples, “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep,” (John 10:14-15) we recognize, once again that the words circle around themselves in direct imitation of the Prologue to John’s gospel.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2) The proclamation, “I am the good shepherd,” directs us to the nature of Jesus’ relationship with God his Father. Jesus was sent by God to be the only shepherd of God’s sheep.
In John’s Revelation we hear, “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." (Rev 7:17)
All the illusions clergy have about being the good shepherd are misguided. In fact, they are dangerous. If any of us model ourselves on the Good Shepherd we run the risk of self-aggrandizement. We are not the Good Shepherd, Jesus is. Our attention is better spent on trusting God to guide our clumsy sheep behavior.
Like Isaac, offered on the altar as a sacrifice to God, Jesus lays down his life in the gateway of the sheep’s fold. No one can harm us without encountering Christ first. It is through grace that we count ourselves among Christ’s flock.
As our shepherd, Jesus seeks each of us out and calls us to our ministry in the church. We all have the responsibility of reminding each other that Christ is our shepherd, so we shall not be afraid.
This is such a paradigm shift from thinking that our pastors are supposed to be the good shepherds. In the Episcopal Church that I grew up in, we took for granted this skewed model of leadership.
As one of our professors at General Seminary said, the old model for ministers and congregations was, “My job is to minister and yours is to congregate.” So little was expected of us we were lulled into believing that we actually had no work to do. Just show up!
What would the apostle Paul think of this?
In the letter he writes to the church in Philippi, Paul is excited beyond belief that the community is working so hard without him. This is the model of leadership that we are trying to regain in the twenty-first century.
A good leader rejoices in the leadership skills of his community, and sends them out to do the same. Leaders raise up new leaders, who in turn raise up new leaders, who raise up yet more new leaders. And God rejoices.
“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4) Paul reminds his friends that, like a shepherd with his flock, “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” (4:6)
With these words, Paul states the primary responsibility for every leader in God’s church: “In everything, by prayer and with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”
Which brings us to the distinctly Anglican practice of prayer, the Divine Office. The Office marinates us in the psalms that were so dear to Jesus, and makes our prayer a deeply engrained habit.
The daily recitation of psalms and beautifully written Anglican prayer helps bring our focus back to the Word of God. In spite of the fact that there are so many other things you can get done in the time it takes to pray the Office, we believe that the activity of daily prayer is actually pleasing to God.
Praying the Office is pleasing to me because my soul becomes quiet as my mouth recites the beautiful words. The ordinands just promised that they
“believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.”
What better pastime than to spend time daily with the words so necessary for our salvation?
When Paul says to imitate him, it is his immersion in prayer, coupled with the joy he finds in Jesus that he wants to see mirrored around him. Imitate a deep prayer practice, and seek the joy that comes from serving Christ and you will live into Paul’s idea of ministry.
All baptized Christians have a responsibility to lead, minister, and witness to their faith. We bear witness to Christ by leading lives of integrity and faith, always mindful that it is up to us to work for reconciliation in our world, and to witness to our faith in the risen Christ.
And now, David and Nathan, would you please stand up?
If you would, please, take a look around at whose shoulders you are standing on.
They have just promised to uphold you in your ministry. Remember that and hold them to it. You are here because of them.
And now, a reminder from the prophet Micah: “Remember all that the Lord requires of you; to do justice, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (Heb 13:20-21)
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Something's Coming
Advent 1, November 28, 2010
The Rev Deborah Magdalene
Something’s coming. Heaven is leaning in to earth, people are gazing expectantly at the stars, and the earth is paying attention to something intangible – something electric and fascinating – something full of promise and new life; beyond the reach of our own imaginations.
Something is coming that will change forever the way we perceive ourselves in the world. No longer will we be the center of our own universe. Gone will be feelings of anger and resentment, self-doubt and humiliation, and the pain of being betrayed by someone you trusted more than yourself.
No more will we have to expend energy to defend ourselves in a world that feels out of control. We won’t be encouraged to cheat, to take shortcuts, or to tell white lies. We won’t give up our faith out of distraction and boredom, but will believe once again that hard work and agape love really can change the world.
Something is coming that will validate every kind deed we have ever had the grace to perform as it reassures us that compassion is more powerful than tightfisted stinginess.
Something is coming that will forever keep us close to the heart of God, and that will help us to know that all the suffering we have ever experienced served a purpose unique to each of us. Because of our struggle we now have gifts of the Spirit that will forevermore enrich the Kingdom of God.
Something is coming that will turn terrorism and deceit into interreligious dialogue and farming cooperatives….or as Isaiah says, will “turn turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; [where] nation shall not lift up sword against nation” and nevermore will we learn how to war. (Isa. 2:4)
The words of Isaiah help us to yearn for righteousness with every fiber of our being. He is speaking to a people who are beaten down by struggle and who wander aimlessly in the wasteland, forgetting who they really are. He lights a fire under them by simply naming the heavenly truths they yearn for.
If we lived every day with a full awareness of how deeply we hunger for a meaningful life for ourselves and our loved ones it would shatter our self-composure.
We are not built to withstand such vivid and high frequency yearning for long periods of time. We go into denial and busy ourselves with easier tasks. We have short attention spans for difficult issues. We turn on the TV, turn up the stereo and mute the dull throb of our own yearning for justice, fulfillment, and peace.
The theme of our readings for today is a vibrant and annoying wakeup call. It jolts us into readiness for the Advent of Lord, where we wait for a humble birth while focused on our need for a Savior.
In order to understand our Christian season of Advent we must remember that what we wait so impatiently for has already come. We are in a time of already/not yet. Christ is here and is coming. It’s a divine conundrum that calls us to examine ourselves and our faith.
The word ‘advent’ means ‘coming.’ But what is coming is not anything of this world. We live in a world of microchips and phone apps; of online ordering and unending lines at the Verizon store. We are not wired, so to speak, to look for the advent of a world beyond our imaginings.
What Isaiah writes about is the coming of a supernatural event. One that will make every hair on your head stand up at attention and will send chills rippling down your spine. There will be no credits or commercials at the end of this event, but the beginning of a world beyond our imaginings. The end will be the beginning.
Isaiah’s words are about the coming of a new age of consciousness….a cosmic trip out of the land of slavery and oppression into a time of everlasting felicity.
The voice of the prophet Isaiah cries out that God is coming to “teach us his ways that we may walk in his paths.” (Isa. 2:3b) He paints a picture of a New Jerusalem – one that rises out of the rubble of destruction and abandonment to become the center of the universe – a place where all nations of the world will come in humility to learn a new way of living.
The picture we have from Isaiah is of a Kingdom that rises as the highest place on earth; rising to a point where it touches heaven. Every nation in the world will flow gently and peacefully across paper-flat geography toward and up the slopes of this new kingdom on a mountain.
The Hebrew word, ‘naharu’ means to "flow like a river," and to "shine in joyful radiance." We can picture all of the world’s people flowing like a river uphill toward God’s light. The desire for supremacy and power is replaced with humble acceptance of a benevolent and creative majesty beyond their imaginings. It is this humility in the face of a love beyond understanding that causes them to shine in joyful radiance.
What they yearn for now is to be taught how to live with such unexpected fulfillment. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” (Isa 2:3)
The psalm for today is called "A Song of Ascents," intended to be sung by a band of pilgrims climbing the heights of Jerusalem and entering "the house of the Lord." With the psalmist we are invited to know the dwelling place of God's presence, where war is transformed into dances of love.
A useful way of understanding a transformation of this magnitude is
through art. In 1957 a musical written by Arthur Laurents, with music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim opened on Broadway. The story was a reworking of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Set in the projects of New York City, “West Side Story” was a smashing success.
The tale is of a love that transcends the human conditions of poverty and abuse; racism, jealousy, and even death. We watch, knowing that the end will be tragic, and yet needing to see the reenactment of this divine love between two innocents.
Tony, a working-class white boy is drawn into a state of alert readiness by a supernatural pulling on his heartstrings. The air has changed, his dreams are more vivid, and he wakes with a lump in his throat. He goes through the motions of his life as if it belongs to someone else. His friends don’t interest him anymore and he is buzzing with a new energy that he tries to understand through song:
“Could be! Who knows?
There's something due any day;
I will know right away, Soon as it shows.
It may come cannonballing down through the sky,
Gleam in its eye, Bright as a rose!
What comes is an unexpected, powerful, and forbidden love with Maria, the Puerto Rican immigrant sister of the leader of a rival gang. Like the Gospel story, the tale of powerful, life-changing love ends in death and disillusionment.
But in the death we see a mirror of our own foolishness and are left with a desire to stop hating each other and become more open to learning new ways of being with each other.
The advent of Jesus is a love story that doesn’t end. Like ‘West Side Story’ the Good News of Christ opens out hearts to the possibility of a life lived in an altered state of reality – one that expects miracles to happen and dreams to come true.
In the already/not yet world of today’s Christianity we live in a state of suspended animation. Christ has come. Christ will come again. We can withstand the strain of waiting, knowing how deeply we yearn for justice and reconciliation by turning our wills and our lives over to the care of a God who wants to guide us in every move we make and breath we take.
Because we believe that the resurrection really took place; that Jesus was able to conquer death and walk among us as a new creation; because we return to Scripture to remind ourselves that we were created for a purpose; because we are Children of the Resurrection we await the coming of Christ with assurance that it is while we wait that the miracles occur.
It is in this age of already/not yet that Christians have been saying their prayers and willing themselves to be led by a power greater than themselves; a power that sees possibilities for life where we see only defeat and death.
It’s this unexpected new life that comes to those who believe that grows the Kingdom of God among ordinary slobs like us. Who could guess that that such a motley crew would be destined for such happiness?
Like the Jerusalem Pharisees and the upstart Christian community, who both drew on the prophet Isaiah to support their point of view, God’s love unexpectedly opened the hearts of the most unlikely candidates for a new way of seeing the world.
God pulled believers in his Christ from the holiest of Jews and from the margins of Jewish society; then through the unbelievable miracle of his Son’s resurrection, reached outside the boundaries of Judaism to make disciples out of the Gentiles.
Faith in Christ:
“Who knows?
It's only just out of reach, Down the block, on a beach,
Under a tree.
I got a feeling there's a miracle due, Gonna come true,
Coming to me!”
It’s this personal message of unexpected salvation that we all hunger for. There is a miracle coming, and it’s coming to me!
Jesus teaches about the necessity of watchfulness. “So as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” In other words, all of a sudden, out of the blue, dark clouds and torrents of rain will descend on the unprepared and take us away forever. The only ones left behind will be like Noah and his family, saved from the deadly flood because they paid attention to God.
Unlike the ‘Left Behind’ series, the ones who are left after the apocalypse are the faithful remnant – Noah’s family, safe in their wooden boat. In the Gospel for today Jesus is predicting what will happen at the Second Coming.
He is not trying to scare the disciples, but is imploring them to pay attention and to work hard. Just because Jesus works as hard as he does doesn’t mean that we can slack off and not contribute to our own resurrection.
“Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming…you must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (Mat 24:42 & 44)
We keep awake through hard work and learning how to practice agape love. We focus on our need for a Savior with every breath we take. Is there something we can do to help Christ bring in the Kingdom? How will we know what to do? How do we make wise and loving choices in life? How do we stop hurting each other?
We must examine ourselves and our faith. Advent is a time to turn down the volume, build a fire in the fireplace and sit quietly in the presence of our Lord who is already here and not yet come.
“Could it be? Yes, it could.
Something's coming, something good,
If I can wait!
Something's coming, I don't know what it is,
But it is Gonna be great!”
Christmas comes whether we are ready or not. But the Incarnation of God’s own Self on earth becomes reality when we learn to embody our share of the Holy. The ‘something’ that is coming is none other than our own decision to make each day a testament of our faith; to pull out our Prayer Books and remember how to yearn for a better life. Holiness comes through our participation in God’s plan for this world, on this day, in this city, through the work of our hands and our hearts.
Maranatha. Our Lord has come. Come Lord Jesus.
The Rev Deborah Magdalene
Something’s coming. Heaven is leaning in to earth, people are gazing expectantly at the stars, and the earth is paying attention to something intangible – something electric and fascinating – something full of promise and new life; beyond the reach of our own imaginations.
Something is coming that will change forever the way we perceive ourselves in the world. No longer will we be the center of our own universe. Gone will be feelings of anger and resentment, self-doubt and humiliation, and the pain of being betrayed by someone you trusted more than yourself.
No more will we have to expend energy to defend ourselves in a world that feels out of control. We won’t be encouraged to cheat, to take shortcuts, or to tell white lies. We won’t give up our faith out of distraction and boredom, but will believe once again that hard work and agape love really can change the world.
Something is coming that will validate every kind deed we have ever had the grace to perform as it reassures us that compassion is more powerful than tightfisted stinginess.
Something is coming that will forever keep us close to the heart of God, and that will help us to know that all the suffering we have ever experienced served a purpose unique to each of us. Because of our struggle we now have gifts of the Spirit that will forevermore enrich the Kingdom of God.
Something is coming that will turn terrorism and deceit into interreligious dialogue and farming cooperatives….or as Isaiah says, will “turn turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; [where] nation shall not lift up sword against nation” and nevermore will we learn how to war. (Isa. 2:4)
The words of Isaiah help us to yearn for righteousness with every fiber of our being. He is speaking to a people who are beaten down by struggle and who wander aimlessly in the wasteland, forgetting who they really are. He lights a fire under them by simply naming the heavenly truths they yearn for.
If we lived every day with a full awareness of how deeply we hunger for a meaningful life for ourselves and our loved ones it would shatter our self-composure.
We are not built to withstand such vivid and high frequency yearning for long periods of time. We go into denial and busy ourselves with easier tasks. We have short attention spans for difficult issues. We turn on the TV, turn up the stereo and mute the dull throb of our own yearning for justice, fulfillment, and peace.
The theme of our readings for today is a vibrant and annoying wakeup call. It jolts us into readiness for the Advent of Lord, where we wait for a humble birth while focused on our need for a Savior.
In order to understand our Christian season of Advent we must remember that what we wait so impatiently for has already come. We are in a time of already/not yet. Christ is here and is coming. It’s a divine conundrum that calls us to examine ourselves and our faith.
The word ‘advent’ means ‘coming.’ But what is coming is not anything of this world. We live in a world of microchips and phone apps; of online ordering and unending lines at the Verizon store. We are not wired, so to speak, to look for the advent of a world beyond our imaginings.
What Isaiah writes about is the coming of a supernatural event. One that will make every hair on your head stand up at attention and will send chills rippling down your spine. There will be no credits or commercials at the end of this event, but the beginning of a world beyond our imaginings. The end will be the beginning.
Isaiah’s words are about the coming of a new age of consciousness….a cosmic trip out of the land of slavery and oppression into a time of everlasting felicity.
The voice of the prophet Isaiah cries out that God is coming to “teach us his ways that we may walk in his paths.” (Isa. 2:3b) He paints a picture of a New Jerusalem – one that rises out of the rubble of destruction and abandonment to become the center of the universe – a place where all nations of the world will come in humility to learn a new way of living.
The picture we have from Isaiah is of a Kingdom that rises as the highest place on earth; rising to a point where it touches heaven. Every nation in the world will flow gently and peacefully across paper-flat geography toward and up the slopes of this new kingdom on a mountain.
The Hebrew word, ‘naharu’ means to "flow like a river," and to "shine in joyful radiance." We can picture all of the world’s people flowing like a river uphill toward God’s light. The desire for supremacy and power is replaced with humble acceptance of a benevolent and creative majesty beyond their imaginings. It is this humility in the face of a love beyond understanding that causes them to shine in joyful radiance.
What they yearn for now is to be taught how to live with such unexpected fulfillment. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” (Isa 2:3)
The psalm for today is called "A Song of Ascents," intended to be sung by a band of pilgrims climbing the heights of Jerusalem and entering "the house of the Lord." With the psalmist we are invited to know the dwelling place of God's presence, where war is transformed into dances of love.
A useful way of understanding a transformation of this magnitude is
through art. In 1957 a musical written by Arthur Laurents, with music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim opened on Broadway. The story was a reworking of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Set in the projects of New York City, “West Side Story” was a smashing success.
The tale is of a love that transcends the human conditions of poverty and abuse; racism, jealousy, and even death. We watch, knowing that the end will be tragic, and yet needing to see the reenactment of this divine love between two innocents.
Tony, a working-class white boy is drawn into a state of alert readiness by a supernatural pulling on his heartstrings. The air has changed, his dreams are more vivid, and he wakes with a lump in his throat. He goes through the motions of his life as if it belongs to someone else. His friends don’t interest him anymore and he is buzzing with a new energy that he tries to understand through song:
“Could be! Who knows?
There's something due any day;
I will know right away, Soon as it shows.
It may come cannonballing down through the sky,
Gleam in its eye, Bright as a rose!
What comes is an unexpected, powerful, and forbidden love with Maria, the Puerto Rican immigrant sister of the leader of a rival gang. Like the Gospel story, the tale of powerful, life-changing love ends in death and disillusionment.
But in the death we see a mirror of our own foolishness and are left with a desire to stop hating each other and become more open to learning new ways of being with each other.
The advent of Jesus is a love story that doesn’t end. Like ‘West Side Story’ the Good News of Christ opens out hearts to the possibility of a life lived in an altered state of reality – one that expects miracles to happen and dreams to come true.
In the already/not yet world of today’s Christianity we live in a state of suspended animation. Christ has come. Christ will come again. We can withstand the strain of waiting, knowing how deeply we yearn for justice and reconciliation by turning our wills and our lives over to the care of a God who wants to guide us in every move we make and breath we take.
Because we believe that the resurrection really took place; that Jesus was able to conquer death and walk among us as a new creation; because we return to Scripture to remind ourselves that we were created for a purpose; because we are Children of the Resurrection we await the coming of Christ with assurance that it is while we wait that the miracles occur.
It is in this age of already/not yet that Christians have been saying their prayers and willing themselves to be led by a power greater than themselves; a power that sees possibilities for life where we see only defeat and death.
It’s this unexpected new life that comes to those who believe that grows the Kingdom of God among ordinary slobs like us. Who could guess that that such a motley crew would be destined for such happiness?
Like the Jerusalem Pharisees and the upstart Christian community, who both drew on the prophet Isaiah to support their point of view, God’s love unexpectedly opened the hearts of the most unlikely candidates for a new way of seeing the world.
God pulled believers in his Christ from the holiest of Jews and from the margins of Jewish society; then through the unbelievable miracle of his Son’s resurrection, reached outside the boundaries of Judaism to make disciples out of the Gentiles.
Faith in Christ:
“Who knows?
It's only just out of reach, Down the block, on a beach,
Under a tree.
I got a feeling there's a miracle due, Gonna come true,
Coming to me!”
It’s this personal message of unexpected salvation that we all hunger for. There is a miracle coming, and it’s coming to me!
Jesus teaches about the necessity of watchfulness. “So as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” In other words, all of a sudden, out of the blue, dark clouds and torrents of rain will descend on the unprepared and take us away forever. The only ones left behind will be like Noah and his family, saved from the deadly flood because they paid attention to God.
Unlike the ‘Left Behind’ series, the ones who are left after the apocalypse are the faithful remnant – Noah’s family, safe in their wooden boat. In the Gospel for today Jesus is predicting what will happen at the Second Coming.
He is not trying to scare the disciples, but is imploring them to pay attention and to work hard. Just because Jesus works as hard as he does doesn’t mean that we can slack off and not contribute to our own resurrection.
“Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming…you must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (Mat 24:42 & 44)
We keep awake through hard work and learning how to practice agape love. We focus on our need for a Savior with every breath we take. Is there something we can do to help Christ bring in the Kingdom? How will we know what to do? How do we make wise and loving choices in life? How do we stop hurting each other?
We must examine ourselves and our faith. Advent is a time to turn down the volume, build a fire in the fireplace and sit quietly in the presence of our Lord who is already here and not yet come.
“Could it be? Yes, it could.
Something's coming, something good,
If I can wait!
Something's coming, I don't know what it is,
But it is Gonna be great!”
Christmas comes whether we are ready or not. But the Incarnation of God’s own Self on earth becomes reality when we learn to embody our share of the Holy. The ‘something’ that is coming is none other than our own decision to make each day a testament of our faith; to pull out our Prayer Books and remember how to yearn for a better life. Holiness comes through our participation in God’s plan for this world, on this day, in this city, through the work of our hands and our hearts.
Maranatha. Our Lord has come. Come Lord Jesus.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)