Dylan's lectionary blog

Proper 15, Year C

Isaiah 5:1-7 OR
Jeremiah 23:23-29
Hebrews 11:29 - 12:2
Luke 12:49-56

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided

father against son
and son against father
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother.
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.

(Luke 12:51-53)

This is one of those Sundays when parishioners are likely to hear either a sermon on the collect or a sermon of the genre to which I refer as "why Jesus didn't actually mean this," perhaps from the sub-genre of "exegesis according to fictitious quirks of ancient languages." Let's give this approach an acronym for convenience's sake: EAFQuAL.

An EAFQuaL approach to this Sunday's gospel would go something like this: "Yes, these words from Jesus sound really harsh to our ears -- not at all what you'd expect from someone whose message is in practically every way consonant with upper-middle-class respectability and good ol' 'family values.' But if you knew the original language of the gospels/that Jesus spoke -- as I do, having been to seminary and all [most preachers neglect to mention that they only took the language in question for a semester or two, if at all, and that they're depending on a dim recollection of someone or another saying something like they're about to say] -- you'd know that the word translated as 'hate' here really means something more like 'to love just slightly less than you love God, but still definitely to respect deeply, telephone frequently, and send flowers at least annually."

Some preachers taking an EAFQuAL approach to a difficult passage of the gospels will use Greek as their ancient language of recourse -- a sensible choice, since that's the language in which ALL of our earliest manuscripts of the canonical gospels are written. Some will go for Hebrew or even Aramaic instead, on the grounds that Jesus was originally speaking one or the other. This is a more creative and gutsy option in some ways, and even more likely to be a bluff: since all of our earliest texts of the canonical gospels are in Greek, any hypothesized Hebrew or Aramaic "original version" is likely to be either someone's guess based entirely on the Greek but assuming (without any particular reason aside from finding the text as it is difficult) that whoever translated the 'original version' into Greek was doing a very, very bad job of it, or someone's citing a MUCH later text that's also much further from the best-attested streams of the manuscript tradition. On the whole, this kind of EAFQuaL is like a game you can play in which you go to an 'automatic translator' web page such as Babelfish, enter the first few lines of the Gettysburg Address in English, have the site translate it a few times into other languages, and then have Babelfish translate that repeatedly mangled text back into English. The results are sometimes hilarious, but they hardly reflect a more reliable 'original text' of the Gettysburg Address than a decent history textbook will give.

As you can gather, I'm not a fan of EAFQuAL, and one of the many reasons I'm grateful to have had opportunity to study Greek and Hebrew is that it helped me realize something that grates on an awful lot of Christians' sensibilities, particularly among the privileged and the prosperous:

Some of Jesus' sayings -- and some behaviors called for in Christian discipleship, in following Jesus -- really ARE difficult. Jesus was not a twenty-first-century, university-educated, landowning husband and father; small wonder, then, that he frequently doesn't talk or act like a twenty-first century, university-educated, landowning husband and father. It goes further than that, though -- I'm NOT saying that one just has to "translate" what was customary among first-century peasants in Palestine to what's customary for us, and that the result will be that Jesus' way of life won't ever prove particularly challenging.

I can't say that because it's not true. Jesus wasn't a very "good" son to Mary his mother, and wasn't even a "good man" in the reckoning of respectable people around him. A "good son" would have stayed home and worked at the family's trade to care for his mother until her death; he wouldn't have gone off galavanting around the countryside. A "good man" would defend the family name and honor if challenged or attacked; he wouldn't be talking about loving enemies, and he wouldn't be disclaiming his family name by saying "those who hear the word of God and do it are my mother and my sister and my brothers" (Mark 3:35 -- and this is how he responds when someone tries to compliment his mother, and him by extension!). And as if all of the above isn't bad enough in conventional terms, Jesus actually encourages other people to leave their homes and families, to allow their family name and honor to be dismantled by others rather than upheld by retaliation, to follow him and to follow his example.

Much as character in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia say that Aslan, the Christ-figure in the series, is "not a tame lion," Jesus is NOT a "good guy" by conventional reckoning. Following Jesus won't make you a "good guy" or "good girl" by most conventional reckonings either. And thus we read a lot in the gospels about forgiving and praying for persecutors -- something you don't need to do if everyone thinks you're a "great guy" or "great gal" and therefore has no desire to oppose your manner of life. How it came to be that so many people would think of Christianity as a ticket to respectability and an affirmation of the "core values" of a society with an vast and growing gap between rich and poor, insiders and outsiders, powerful and marginal, is one of history's most astonishing tricks to me; as with watching an illusionist making the Statue of Liberty 'disappear,' I've got to gasp and say, "I'm watching it, but I don't believe it. This is not the way the universe works, and no matter how much it seems that way, I can't believe it."

All of this may seem like a lengthy digression, and perhaps it is, but I hope at least that it's a useful one to undergo before directly tackling this Sunday's gospel, about which my advice to preachers is:

• Don't try to explain away, apologize for, or do some fancy rhetorical footwork to distract people from just how counter-cultural and difficult this text is. Don't engage in EAFQuAL. Don't say something that boils down to "Jesus didn't really mean this" (or its homiletical cousin, "Jesus didn't really say this, so we can safely ignore it and claim to be better Christians for it" -- a rhetorical strategy that ignores the important but inconvenient point that all historically plausible reconstructions of what Jesus did or didn't say or do depend in the end on the very gospels we're dismissing as less reliable than a historian's paperback). A preacher's job is not to distract the congregation from a biblical text long or skillfully enough for everyone to get away without asking hard questions, and it's not necessarily to make people feel better about their choices (though sometimes a good sermon may have that effect for some or many). If I had to sum up the preacher's job in a sentence, it's to model engagement with biblical texts and current questions in a way that better informs people what discipleship might involve and inspire people to take another step or set of steps to follow Jesus. In my experience, sermons that boil down to "my gut says that Jesus didn't say or mean this; discipleship is pretty much doing what any sensible and decent person would, and not worrying too much about the rest" just don't accomplish much worth doing.
• Do point toward and stay with what's difficult about the texts and about following Jesus long enough for people to really feel it. Remember the maxim -- it often works for teachers, psychotherapists, and preachers alike, I've found -- that "the work starts where the resistance starts." Pointing out how the biblical texts can be difficult to interpret and how discipleship involves facing very real and great challenges both functions as a "reality test" affirming the sanity of observations that intelligent and sensitive people know to be true, such as "there's a lot of beauty, joy, and love in this world, but I have to say that the world doesn't seem to be working as it should." Pausing regularly on Sunday mornings (ideally also in frequent study of scripture and times of prayer during the week, but at the very least starting with the Sunday sermon) to feel how challenging discipleship can be in many situations is a pastoral act that can build some emotional and spiritual muscles that will be very useful when (and it's 'when,' not 'if') the congregation encounters real, undeniable, and painful challenges.
• And though your work isn't done with most texts until you've taken in what can be challenging about them, it also isn't done until you've done your level best to address the question of where the Good News of God's healing and redeeming the world comes in. Personally -- and contrary to what sources such as Left Behind might suggest -- I find eschatology (literally, 'study of the end') to be a great boon in this task. As those who have taken the Connect course (which, by the way, is distributed in an 'open source' manner over the Internet, and is therefore FREE to congregations who want to use it, much as we appreciate contributions of money and effort to improve it) have heard and thought about, our stories -- our pains and joys, our mistakes and what we've learned from them, our dreams and disappointments -- often look different when we see, tell, and listen to them in the context of the larger story of God's making a good world that God loves and is working constantly to heal of the wounds and free it the enslavement that results from our damaging choices in life and relationships. I find that most passages in the lectionary have something to say about how God has redeemed, is redeeming, and will eventually complete the redemption of God's children. When I'm looking for Good News to proclaim, the first questions I ask myself are usually along the lines of how the biblical texts I'm working with fit that pattern. You can see how it would be impossible to see how this step requires a good job with the previous one: you can't see redemption and healing if you don't acknowledge slavery and wounds. I hope that anyone who's heard me preach more than a couple of times would recognize in my work another way I might summarize the preacher's aim: tell a chapter from the story of God's healing the wounded world God loves, and don't stop until you've foreshadowed the end -- the telos for which Creation was intended -- in terms vivd enough to dream.

So that's the pattern I've found most often useful when preaching on particularly difficult texts. How would that pattern look with this Sunday's texts?

In this Sunday's gospel, Jesus tells his friends that following him will cause conflict and division -- even division between families. That's a descriptive statement, and shocking as it is, it's not hard to see the truth of it if you're familiar with what Jesus says and does in the gospels. Imagine for a moment the scene when Peter goes back to his mother-in-law and says, "Hey, mom ... I've got some important news. I'm not going fishing tomorrow morning. I don't know if I'll ever step in a boat or lift a net again. I'm glad that you were healed of that fever, and I hope you don't catch one again, because I have to tell you that I probably won't be around to take care of you or to bury you when you die. See, that man who healed you asked me to follow him as he travels around teaching and healing, and I'm going to do it. I really think that God's kingdom is breaking through in this guy's work, and that's just too important for me to stay here, even to take care of you."

How would you feel if it were your son who said that to you? There's no social security to fall back on if you're Peter's mother-in-law; Peter is the closest thing you've got to that, and he's leaving. I have some idea of what I'd probably feel if I were Peter's mother-in-law: Betrayed. Abandoned. Despised. Shamed. Perhaps even hopeless. I have some idea of the kinds of things I'd say if I were in her shoes too, and a lot of the language I'd be using wouldn't appear in any children's bible. When I found out that Peter AND Andrew were both going, my language would reflect even more anger, grief, fear, and straight-up, no-chaser, and very bitter pain. I think the same would be true of my language if Peter and Andrew had other brothers and I were one of them. I'd want to ask Peter and Andrew how they could do this to all of us, how they think we'll survive without their help with the fishing, and whose prophet would ask a man to walk out on his family. I'd ask Peter and Andrew if this is how they were going to follow God's command in holy writ to honor parents and care for widows (as Peter's mother-in-law most likely was, in my estimation).

Peter's family isn't the only one that would be asking pointed questions or even shouting curses after departing disciples in the wake of Jesus' ministry. It's not at all hard, upon a few close readings of the gospels, to come up with a lot of other people who would be feeling just as hurt, just as angry, and who might attack disciples, even or especially their kin who were following Jesus, with words or more than words. Peace? It's not hard to see how what Jesus brings to such families might be described as well or much better by saying that Jesus brings division and drawn sword. There is a world of hurt behind Jesus' words in this Sunday's gospel.

And yet that's not all that can or should be said about this Sunday's gospel. It's true that Jesus' ministry did and still does dislocate those who follow him from the ways of life and from the relationships they were in. It's true that being extricated from those patterns and those relationships can be painful to all concerned.

It's also true that sometimes, if not often, the only way to find freedom to live in new ways and to form new and healthier relationships is to be extricated or dislocated from the old ones. It's true that Jesus challenges fathers and mothers, and sisters and daughters, husbands and wives to allow Jesus' call to pull them out of those relationships, at least or especially as those relationships are defined by our less-than-healthy world. It's true that Jesus' call in a sense denies those relationships altogether: our mother and our sister and our brothers are NOT those who offer or share a womb or a bloodline, but those who hear the word of God and do it.

That is a circle that can, depending on the choices we make, exclude those who by blood or law are our kin. But that's not the only possible outcome of Jesus' call. It's not the only possible outcome because Peter and Andrew aren't the only ones who have choices. You and I aren't the only ones who have choices. And Peter and Andrew and you and I aren't the only ones whom God calls.

Here's another possible outcome: Peter and Andrew tell Jesus that no prophet of the God of Israel would ask people to ignore the Ten Commandments, and they tell Jesus that on that basis they know precisely what sort of a man Jesus is, and there is no way they'd follow him. They go home and tell their families about what kind of dangerous nutcase the wandering healer turned out to be, and how glad they are that they figured it out. The next morning, they go fishing.

That's not a story that inspires me as a follower of Jesus. Thank God it's not the only other possibility either. Here's another one:

Peter and Andrew tell their families more about Jesus, what he's saying, what he's doing, and what they think that means about what God is accomplishing right now for the world. They talk about the community of people following Jesus and how they care for one another, how their life together is a sign to all of how relationships could be in the world and what might come of it if we believed the kingdom of God was breaking through this world and therefore we could live as though God were king here and now. Peter's mother-in-law, his sisters and all his brothers, and the rest of the family face and go through the break that Jesus talks about in our former relationships. It's only natural for them to grieve sometimes at the passing of old ways of being and to chafe at or stumble in the new relationships that are forming, but they have a new joy, a new peace, a new freedom from anxiety in the living reality that if they have lost a mother-in-law, a son-in-law, a daughter, or a father, they have gained more sisters and brothers than they ever imagined they could have, and had joined a people who would come to fulfill the promise to Abraham of numbering more than the stars of the clear desert sky -- more to care for them and be supported by them, more to love and be loved by than any earthly family could offer. They follow Jesus together, sisters and brothers in Christ.

That's a story that inspires me. It makes me think that perhaps the wounds we suffer following Jesus can, in the context of God's redeeming work, be like the break of a badly healed bone that allows it to become whole again.

Breaking and being made whole. It's core to the story of God's people. We see it in Jeremiah's description of the faithful prophet of God, whose word may be a hammer that breaks but whose witness calls God's people to wholeness. We see it in Isaiah's vision of God's people as a vineyard made desolate by unrighteousness, in failing to recognize God's image in humanity by caring for the poor and in worshipping as gods images of our own wealth and skill. We may not see it by conventional reckonings, with worldly eyes, but we see it through faith, which reminds us of God's faithfulness in the past and of God's redeeming work, ongoing in the present and to be completed in God's time.

It's a story to read and tell over and over until we and our children and parents, sisters and brothers and friends know it by heart, a story that will strengthen us when we're grieving and feel weak, and that will guide us when we're feeling strong. It's a story of pain and tears and brokenness, but it's a story of love, joy, and hope that ends in wholeness, in the world coming to know just how high and broad and deep God's love and blessings for Creation are.

Thanks be to God!

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C

Jeremiah 1:4-10 - link to NRSV text
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 - link to NRSV text
Luke 4:21-30 - link to NRSV text

I want to start this week with a shout-out to the Rev. (congratulations on your ordination!) Gabri Ferrer of All Saints' parish in Beverly Hills, who gave me some of the best advice I've ever received as a leader.

Gabri says that at any given point in time, there are twelve people in the world who hate you, who think that you're what's wrong with the church, with the nation, with the world, and you just might be some kind of incarnation of Satan. So when you meet someone who thinks everything you do is awful, there's no need to panic; just say to yourself, "Oh, s/he must be one of the twelve." And by the time you meet a thirteenth person who has such an unrealistically negative view of you, you can assume that another of the twelve has changed her/his mind about you and now has a less negative view.

Over time, I decided that there's an important corollary to that piece of advice. At any given point in time, there are twelve people who have an unrealistically HIGH view of you -- who think of you as something like Jesus, Gandhi, and Bono all in one wise, all-caring, charismatic package. So when you meet someone who seems to think that about you, there's no need to panic; you can just say to yourself, "Ah -- one of the twelve." And by the time you meet a thirteenth person who seems to feel that way, you can be sure that one of the twelve has changed her/his mind about you, either adopting a more realistic view of your strengths and foibles or -- more likely, in my experience -- becoming one of the twelve who think you're absolute evil.

Any advice for leaders that includes the words, "don't panic" can't be all bad, but I've found the usefulness of this advice to extend far beyond that, especially when exercising leadership in Christian congregations.

Too often, people think of Christianity as a kind of self-improvement program that makes people nicer and more respectable, in particular by encouraging them to follow rules according to a kind of "don't rock the boat if you want smooth sailing" philosophy. And too often, leaders in Christian communities tend to function as if this philosophy were discipleship and institutional smooth sailing were their charge to keep.

But take a look at the extreme reactions that Jesus' ministry provokes in this Sunday's gospel reading. He's just read the selections (and yes, he was very selective in choosing them!) from Isaiah that he's claiming as his mission and the focus of his ministry, and the crowd's immediate response is just the sort of thing ever preacher loves: "All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth." Jesus is, well, bigger than Jesus. Success!

And then look at what's happening just a few lines of text further:

"All in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff." Disaster!

Or is it? Does the crowd's acclaim mean that Jesus was saying and doing "the right thing"? Does the crowd's rage mean that Jesus had said or done "the wrong thing"?

I don't think so on either count. Jesus' selections from Isaiah and his claim that "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" delivered a prophetic and deeply challenging message. If anything, it may have been the case that the crowd's apparent pleasure at his message suggested that they hadn't grasped its implications. But Jesus spells out an important one as he revisits other points in Israel's history when God sent a prophet: prophets of Israel minister to, heal, and empower outsiders -- Gentiles as well as Jews. It would be an understatement to say that this message doesn't go over well with the crowd in Jesus' hometown, but it would be foolishness to suggest that this means Jesus ought not to have delivered it.

What can we say? Jesus' manner of life -- his teaching, his healing, his prophetic ministry -- posed a profound challenge to his community. Nor do I think we ought to take this Sunday's gospel as a lesson that he should have restricted those activities to places where or people to whom they'd prove less upsetting. Perhaps one good lesson would be that it can be dangerous to choose a pulpit too close to a cliff, but even that is a trivial and not particularly helpful insight.

And whatever we say about this Sunday's gospel, please let's not say that it is in any way about the small-mindedness of Jews in Jesus' day or any other. It's antisemitic and obnoxious as well as grossly misleading. There was and, I dare say, is a great deal that can be hard about carrying on a prophetic ministry in one's hometown. In Jesus' culture, honor, like all things of value, was seen as being in limited supply; if one person had more, of necessity they must have taken it from someone else. So if Jesus is winning honor and acclaim in his hometown, people are going to be asking from which of his neighbors he was taking it. We may not live in an honor-shame culture, but similar dynamics happen all the time; we behave in community as though honor, appreciation, gratitude, admiration, and love were limited quantities to be guarded jealously, not renewable resources to be offered freely to strangers as well as neighbors and family members -- as freely and graciously as God gives.

That's one of many reasons it can be hard to stay and be a change agent. In some ways, it's a great deal of fun to be a guest preacher: I show up and people buy me dinner, treat me with respect, say kind things about my blog and my sermon, and as a guest I can say a great deal that's challenging without fear of being rushed off any nearby precipices. But I sure miss exercising and growing into ministry in contexts in which our journeys with one another -- our living with one another with our foibles and failing as well as our strengths and triumphs -- make clear just how little of Jesus' ministry among us is about glamor and dazzle and getting the show on.

That's one reason I find Benedictine practice helpful, though by temperament I'm far more Franciscan. I'm attracted to the grand gesture. I think my favorite hymn stanza is from "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross":

Were the whole realm of nature mine
That were an off'ring far too small
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

When I was in college in particular, I had romantic imaginings of being a missionary, living in cultures radically different from my own, radically sharing the poverty of those with whom I journeyed, and in general doing lots of things to which the word "radical" could be attached. A call to long-term overseas missionary work has eluded me to this point, though, and I must say that I've grown a great deal in the challenges of what the Benedictines call "stability."

Stability suggests that we maintain practices of discernment to stay open to a new call, but we minister where we are until such a call is discerned. Sometimes I think there's no discipline harder for a Tigger-like ENFP Franciscan like me. Often I thank God for all I've learned in my inept attempts to exercise and grow in it, though. I've learned that it is in some ways all too easy for many of us to mistake glib showmanship for prophetic ministry unless we are surrounded by people who know one another well and who tell one another the truth, more (or less -- others are allowed flaws too in these communities!) gently and lovingly, to the best of their ability. Neither the embarrassment of undeserved praise nor the pain of being on the receiving end of someone's anger will tell us whether we are where we are called to be or doing what we are called to do. Nor can we draw up a job description for prophetic ministry and run our lives according to it -- had Jeremiah done that (or Moses, or Isaiah, or ...), God's people would have been deprived the voice of the prophet God was calling.

But if we can't measure our ministry by others' reactions, if we're not going to take our cues from either the twelve who think we're Mahatma Bono McJesus or the twelve who want to rush us over the cliff edge, by what do we measure ministry?

St. Paul gives us a helpful suggestion in 1 Corinthians 13 -- a passage written to address how we engage in discernment around the exercise of spiritual gifts in community, not as a guide to romance or marriage. Paul tells us that the measure of all things is love.

If I preach eloquent sermons but don't engage in the hard and rewarding work of 1 Corinthians 13-style love, I'm just making noise. If I inspire my community to increasing stretches of centering prayer and bible study but not to engage with one another and with the world in 1 Corinthians 13-style love, I'm a failure. And if my companions on the journey of faith don't lovingly hold me to love's measure, they have failed me too.

Church growth and psychological fads and charismatic leaders will come and go, as will every sort of real, imagined, or manufactured crisis, and though we do catch glimpses of who we are and what we are called to be in Christ, they are imperfect and passing. But now, amidst whatever else is going on, faith, hope, and love abide. May we abide in increasing fulness in love, the greatest of these.

Thanks be to God!

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C

Jeremiah 1:4-10 - link to NRSV text
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 - link to NRSV text
Luke 4:21-30 - link to NRSV text

I want to start this week with a shout-out to the Rev. (congratulations on your ordination!) Gabri Ferrer of All Saints' parish in Beverly Hills, who gave me some of the best advice I've ever received as a leader.

Gabri says that at any given point in time, there are twelve people in the world who hate you, who think that you're what's wrong with the church, with the nation, with the world, and you just might be some kind of incarnation of Satan. So when you meet someone who thinks everything you do is awful, there's no need to panic; just say to yourself, "Oh, s/he must be one of the twelve." And by the time you meet a thirteenth person who has such an unrealistically negative view of you, you can assume that another of the twelve has changed her/his mind about you and now has a less negative view.

Over time, I decided that there's an important corollary to that piece of advice. At any given point in time, there are twelve people who have an unrealistically HIGH view of you -- who think of you as something like Jesus, Gandhi, and Bono all in one wise, all-caring, charismatic package. So when you meet someone who seems to think that about you, there's no need to panic; you can just say to yourself, "Ah -- one of the twelve." And by the time you meet a thirteenth person who seems to feel that way, you can be sure that one of the twelve has changed her/his mind about you, either adopting a more realistic view of your strengths and foibles or -- more likely, in my experience -- becoming one of the twelve who think you're absolute evil.

Any advice for leaders that includes the words, "don't panic" can't be all bad, but I've found the usefulness of this advice to extend far beyond that, especially when exercising leadership in Christian congregations.

Too often, people think of Christianity as a kind of self-improvement program that makes people nicer and more respectable, in particular by encouraging them to follow rules according to a kind of "don't rock the boat if you want smooth sailing" philosophy. And too often, leaders in Christian communities tend to function as if this philosophy were discipleship and institutional smooth sailing were their charge to keep.

But take a look at the extreme reactions that Jesus' ministry provokes in this Sunday's gospel reading. He's just read the selections (and yes, he was very selective in choosing them!) from Isaiah that he's claiming as his mission and the focus of his ministry, and the crowd's immediate response is just the sort of thing ever preacher loves: "All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth." Jesus is, well, bigger than Jesus. Success!

And then look at what's happening just a few lines of text further:

"All in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff." Disaster!

Or is it? Does the crowd's acclaim mean that Jesus was saying and doing "the right thing"? Does the crowd's rage mean that Jesus had said or done "the wrong thing"?

I don't think so on either count. Jesus' selections from Isaiah and his claim that "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" delivered a prophetic and deeply challenging message. If anything, it may have been the case that the crowd's apparent pleasure at his message suggested that they hadn't grasped its implications. But Jesus spells out an important one as he revisits other points in Israel's history when God sent a prophet: prophets of Israel minister to, heal, and empower outsiders -- Gentiles as well as Jews. It would be an understatement to say that this message doesn't go over well with the crowd in Jesus' hometown, but it would be foolishness to suggest that this means Jesus ought not to have delivered it.

What can we say? Jesus' manner of life -- his teaching, his healing, his prophetic ministry -- posed a profound challenge to his community. Nor do I think we ought to take this Sunday's gospel as a lesson that he should have restricted those activities to places where or people to whom they'd prove less upsetting. Perhaps one good lesson would be that it can be dangerous to choose a pulpit too close to a cliff, but even that is a trivial and not particularly helpful insight.

And whatever we say about this Sunday's gospel, please let's not say that it is in any way about the small-mindedness of Jews in Jesus' day or any other. It's antisemitic and obnoxious as well as grossly misleading. There was and, I dare say, is a great deal that can be hard about carrying on a prophetic ministry in one's hometown. In Jesus' culture, honor, like all things of value, was seen as being in limited supply; if one person had more, of necessity they must have taken it from someone else. So if Jesus is winning honor and acclaim in his hometown, people are going to be asking from which of his neighbors he was taking it. We may not live in an honor-shame culture, but similar dynamics happen all the time; we behave in community as though honor, appreciation, gratitude, admiration, and love were limited quantities to be guarded jealously, not renewable resources to be offered freely to strangers as well as neighbors and family members -- as freely and graciously as God gives.

That's one of many reasons it can be hard to stay and be a change agent. In some ways, it's a great deal of fun to be a guest preacher: I show up and people buy me dinner, treat me with respect, say kind things about my blog and my sermon, and as a guest I can say a great deal that's challenging without fear of being rushed off any nearby precipices. But I sure miss exercising and growing into ministry in contexts in which our journeys with one another -- our living with one another with our foibles and failing as well as our strengths and triumphs -- make clear just how little of Jesus' ministry among us is about glamor and dazzle and getting the show on.

That's one reason I find Benedictine practice helpful, though by temperament I'm far more Franciscan. I'm attracted to the grand gesture. I think my favorite hymn stanza is from "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross":

Were the whole realm of nature mine
That were an off'ring far too small
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

When I was in college in particular, I had romantic imaginings of being a missionary, living in cultures radically different from my own, radically sharing the poverty of those with whom I journeyed, and in general doing lots of things to which the word "radical" could be attached. A call to long-term overseas missionary work has eluded me to this point, though, and I must say that I've grown a great deal in the challenges of what the Benedictines call "stability."

Stability suggests that we maintain practices of discernment to stay open to a new call, but we minister where we are until such a call is discerned. Sometimes I think there's no discipline harder for a Tigger-like ENFP Franciscan like me. Often I thank God for all I've learned in my inept attempts to exercise and grow in it, though. I've learned that it is in some ways all too easy for many of us to mistake glib showmanship for prophetic ministry unless we are surrounded by people who know one another well and who tell one another the truth, more (or less -- others are allowed flaws too in these communities!) gently and lovingly, to the best of their ability. Neither the embarrassment of undeserved praise nor the pain of being on the receiving end of someone's anger will tell us whether we are where we are called to be or doing what we are called to do. Nor can we draw up a job description for prophetic ministry and run our lives according to it -- had Jeremiah done that (or Moses, or Isaiah, or ...), God's people would have been deprived the voice of the prophet God was calling.

But if we can't measure our ministry by others' reactions, if we're not going to take our cues from either the twelve who think we're Mahatma Bono McJesus or the twelve who want to rush us over the cliff edge, by what do we measure ministry?

St. Paul gives us a helpful suggestion in 1 Corinthians 13 -- a passage written to address how we engage in discernment around the exercise of spiritual gifts in community, not as a guide to romance or marriage. Paul tells us that the measure of all things is love.

If I preach eloquent sermons but don't engage in the hard and rewarding work of 1 Corinthians 13-style love, I'm just making noise. If I inspire my community to increasing stretches of centering prayer and bible study but not to engage with one another and with the world in 1 Corinthians 13-style love, I'm a failure. And if my companions on the journey of faith don't lovingly hold me to love's measure, they have failed me too.

Church growth and psychological fads and charismatic leaders will come and go, as will every sort of real, imagined, or manufactured crisis, and though we do catch glimpses of who we are and what we are called to be in Christ, they are imperfect and passing. But now, amidst whatever else is going on, faith, hope, and love abide. May we abide in increasing fulness in love, the greatest of these.

Thanks be to God!

First Sunday of Advent, Year C

Jeremiah 33:14-16 - link to NRSV text
Psalm 25:1-9 - link to BCP text
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 - link to NRSV text
Luke 21:25-36 - link to NRSV text

It's a strange accident of history that the apocalyptic texts in our scriptures were written to encourage tiny minorities at their society's margins to greet the tribulations they witnessed not with panic, but with confidence that God was working out God's purposes for peace, joy, and justice -- and that these same texts seem now (e.g., in the Left Behind series) to be read even more often among prosperous and powerful majorities as if they were written for people like them, and they are used mostly to point to current events with the loud message that people should panic, that God intends to bring chaos, agony, and unprecedented bloodshed to the world. And what these pseudo-apocalyptic visions want us to do in response isn't to change the world, but to retreat to an interior experience that will help us to leave it behind before God leaves us behind. That isn't the God I know.

I think one of the fundamental exegetical mistakes leading to this bizarre and not at all helpful trends in reading apocalyptic texts is along the lines of one advocated by the "Alpha" curriculum: namely, the profoundly unhelpful suggestion that all scriptural passages should be read as if they were a love letter written to us personally. Texts like our readings for this Sunday are an excellent case study as to why this is an approach that can go beyond fruitful to the point of being dangerous.

If I read a text like Jeremiah 33:14-16 as if it were a love letter from God to me, I might be tempted to say that the promise God made and is fulfilling is for me, and people like me. I might be tempted to define "people like me" in whatever way popped most naturally into my head, which would be very likely to be the ways in which my culture most often segregates people. I might be tempted to think of "justice" and "righteousness" as being whatever MY culture says is just and right relationship. And if all of this is God's love letter to me, I might be inclined to think of this promise as being a promise to vindicate my way of life, whatever that is, or whatever the dominant culture says it should be. I might be tempted to think that God sent and is sending Jesus so to vindicate the Americans, the industrious, the educated, the respectable. Uncritical reading of these texts -- a phenomenon that seems to be pretty common in my culture, as people at the very center of power appropriate them to claim that their approach, no matter how destructive it is, will be vindicated by God, and too many of my peers don't talk about them at all, lest we all be made uncomfortable in the process -- has turned the message of the prophets upside-down.

Let's turn it up again.

If you haven't done this, or haven't done it in a while, it would make a marvelous Advent discipline to take a look at the sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. to see what he did with these texts, with eschatology -- the study of what kind of climax God intends and is bringing about for human history. If you want to work in the long term as an agent of what God is doing in the world, you need a solid eschatology. You need -- we need -- to hold on as much as possible to the "big picture" view of God's work among us.

Otherwise, it's just too darn easy to do what a great many people are trying to get us to do: namely, to monitor the news breathlessly for every twist and turn, every hint of disaster. This gives us the privilege of being the first to panic every time some new development bodes the disaster that so many tell us is impending. I don't think many of us fool ourselves into thinking we can stop the disaster, but this constant vigilance promises us the illusion (not really a very convincing one even at its strongest, I think) of control -- at least that we can be the first to know we were right, and things really did go exactly where we said that handbasket was headed, albeit perhaps even more quickly than we said they'd get there.

But really, where is the joy in that? Where are the characteristics of the Spirit's fruit among us -- not only joy, but peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, generosity, faithfulness, and self-control? Competing to drop the flags declaring that somebody finished the race to the lowest we can go sounds a lot more like the conceited, envious, competitiveness St. Paul characterizes in Galatians 5:13-26 as the very opposite of what the Spirit brings.

Read MLK's sermons, and you'll see a very different use of eschatology -- one a lot closer to Jeremiah's, the Psalms', and Luke's. Eschatology -- the "big picture" of what God is up to in the world -- is what lets the poor and those suffering at the margins know that their struggle is far from over when the powers that be say it is.

These texts are say that however many people point to disasters as evidence that Creation itself is destined for disaster, God made the world for a different purpose, and God is faithful in bringing God's purposes about. Apocalyptic texts take a serious, Technicolor look at everything going on in the world -- all the suffering and fear, all the fireworks the powers that be have to offer -- and envision what Creation's true end is, what God made this world for, the redemption for which the world groans and that God lovingly poured and is pouring out God's Self to bring about.

When I think about these apocalyptic scenes, I remember Mike. Mike was in a small group bible study I was a part of some years back. The group was a very healing place for me to be, particularly at that point in my life -- I was full of questions and turmoil, and the group lovingly received all of that. I struggled some with Mike, though. He always had a smile and a hug and an encouraging word, and it struck me sometimes as a naïve, sugar-coated kind of way to be in the world. It was great for him that he could think that everything was about love, I thought, but I imagined that he couldn't possibly be that way if he'd seen real suffering, if he really understood what kinds of things were going on in the world that would make any sane person (I thought) bitter. And then one day Mark told a story he hadn't told before. He talked of his service in World War II, and in particular of the day when he and his company came upon and went into an airplane hangar, and came upon some of the first evidence Americans would see of the Holocaust.

I never looked at Mike the same way again. When I looked in his eyes, that night and every time I saw him after then, I saw something I hadn't bothered to look for. He'd seen the very worst that the world and humanity at their worst could produce, and he made a choice. He could have accepted what he saw there as the final word in the world's story. It certainly fit the picture the world paints of an apocalypse -- what the world looks like when the cover is taken off -- complete with smoke and stink and flames. But Mike was a person of deep faith -- of the kind of faith I want to grow into. He looked at all of that destruction, that gash at the heart of humanity itself, and said to himself, "... and God so loved this world that God gave the only-begotten Son." It underscored just how much God was redeeming, how immeasurable the height and breadth and depth of that redeeming love was and is.

Mike was no preacher, but his ability to see that "big picture" -- that it is the immeasurable height and breadth and depth of God's love for which the world was made and which is the world's telos or end -- is what I see when I read or hear the sermons of Martin Luther King, or Desmond Tutu, or of others who know what Creation's end is, and who are preaching apocalyptically, removing the cover of these times to show where they fit in God's time. Apocalyptic is that prophetic keeping "eyes on the prize," so we can not just hold on, but keep pressing toward the goal with deep, unshakable joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, generosity, faithfulness, and self-control. It's what enables us to look upon ugliness in this world and see how much room there is for God's grace to rush in, God's power to work. It enables us to say with open eyes and open hearts, "All the paths of the LORD are love and faithfulness / to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies" (Psalm 25:9). It's what gives us hope and power to pray as Paul did in 1 Thessalonians, seeing joy, connection, love, and wholeness in the midst of persecution and threats of more.

Luke wrote of Jesus telling of sun, moon, stars, and the earth in distress, and he knew of what he wrote. He was writing after Roman armies had marched into and devastatingly seized Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, defiled the Holy of Holies, crushed the hopes of many who had thought that this uprising with the sword was God's own doing, and God's vindication of those who took up the sword to defend Jerusalem was at hand. Luke wrote to Christians at a time when their refusal to take up arms to defend Jerusalem was bringing rejection and persecution from kin and neighbors as well as the ongoing ire of Roman authorities who saw Christians as troublemakers who stirred up slaves and fractured families. That's the setting in which Luke writes of Jesus telling his followers to look to the fig tree.

My friends Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh point out the fig tree is among the last to bloom in Palestine. Jesus says that it is amidst all of these disasters -- all of these frightening events the world says make panic and scrambling to protect oneself and one's family is the only appropriate response -- that should prompt us to think of the fig tree. It blooms, and we know that the end that is near is the end of winter, of violence, of suffering, of shame. Luke wrote to people who were very much and in the present tense wondering how they might "have the strength to escape all these things that will take place," and his answer is this:

They take place before the coming of the Son of Man, before Jesus' coming to complete his work among us, and that coming is beyond the powers of this world to prevent. It is more wondrous than the words of this world to describe. It is the vision that gives us the strength, the hope, the courage to carry on, and to do so experiencing the abundant life even now that is breaking into the world in Jesus' word. Luke's community saw their world crumbling, and in the midst of that, with hearts "not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life," caught a glimpse of God's kingdom come near. When we are willing to confront the suffering around us truthfully and serve as agents of God's hope in the midst of that, God gives us grace to glimpse it too -- and the height and depth and breadth of what God is bringing about that we can glimpse together will keep us grounded when everything else starts to shake. These times in God's timeline are the hour of redemption, an opportunity to experience participate in what God is doing in bringing peace, freedom, and wholeness to the world God made and loves.

Thanks be to God!

Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year B

Jeremiah 31:31-34 - link to NRSV text
John 12:20-33 - link to NRSV text

"Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out."

That's what Jesus says in this Sunday's gospel. It's quite a statement. I wonder how we might live, what choices we'd make, if we were going to live into this more deeply. What would it mean to say that the "one day" of the prophets was NOW? What would it mean if the "ruler of this world" will be driven out NOW?

For one thing, I think it would mean that it's time to stop kissing up to all prior candidates and all wannabees for the title of "ruler of this world." It's astonishing how often we get sucked into some path we didn't exactly choose, but seemed like the thing to do -- the respectable thing, the thing that successful people do, the thing that responsible people do -- and then structure every other choice around this one unchosen and unfulfilling fact. Or maybe our master has been some idea of self-sufficiency, of somehow accruing enough money or status to be "free" to do what we want, get what we want, be who we want to be, but it never seems to be quite enough -- we discover new ways in which we are vulnerable, and try to get more money or status to make it go away, but then discover we're still vulnerable, and we start the cycle over again. As U2 puts it, "you can never get enough/of what you don't really need" ("Stuck In a Moment," All That You Can't Leave Behind).

Well if the time is now, there's no reason to remain stuck in all that. The old boss -- all the old bosses -- are GONE. Their power was illusory, and now even the illusion is passing away. That's what we mean when we say "Jesus is Lord." That's why all of this talk about "the judgment of this world" is GOOD news -- because, as I've preached about before, the judge is Jesus, the one who loved us enough to give his very life for us. "The judgment of this world" is not a gorefest like the Left Behind books; it's the culmination of Jesus' work on earth, the end of everything that separates us from one another and from God. We expect nothing less than that, the answer to our prayer that God's kingdom would come and God's will be done -- on earth as it is in heaven.

And nothing else has hold on us.

Are you waiting to use your voice, your power, your life for justice until you've got the education, the money, the institutional clearance, the world's permission to be heard? Well there's no line, no waiting, if the time is now. If there's something you're passionate about, some possibility that has ignited your imagination to make some corner of the world a little more like the visible sign of God's love, God's peace, God's justice, and God's blessing, you need no permission from the rulers of this world. Those who use the power they have to maintain their privilege would like nothing better than for you to sit back and wait for their authorization, but you don't need it:

Now is the judgment of this world.

In these last days of Lent, we start looking ahead to Holy Week, toward Jesus' journey to the Cross. We're invited to read texts that have Jesus talking about what's going to happen, what he's going to accomplish in Jerusalem. This is clearly a solemn time. Jesus' disciples in this Sunday's gospel picked up on that. They knew something big was coming, but they didn't know what, and they were anxious and afraid. And these are days of great anxiety for many in our world. There are wars and rumors of wars, elected and unelected men of power being cast down. There are changes afoot, and there are plenty of self-appointed prophets of doom ready to tell us that we SHOULD be afraid, that we need to stay the course, toe the line, do what they tell us lest something even more terrible fall upon us.

But what if Jesus is right?

If Jesus is right, then we don't need to fear. We need to follow. When Jesus is lifted up, he draws ALL people to him -- the Greeks who just now are telling Philip they want to see Jesus and the Pharisees who fear he's stirring up the people, the prophets of doom and the peasants just trying to get by. The God Jesus proclaimed, the God who created the universe, is still drawing the universe toward the justice for which it aches. That God is calling.

The days are surely coming. God wants to inscribe God's just and liberating word on our hearts, and all, from the least to the greatest, will know it, experience it, celebrate it.

What if the time is now?

Thanks be to God!

Second Sunday after Christmas, Year A

Jeremiah 31:7-14 - link to NRSV text
Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23 - link to NRSV text

It's hard to appreciate the full impact of the stories about Jesus' birth without entering into the brutality he confronted even as an infant as well as the vulnerability a peasant family like Jesus' experienced. Last week, I recommended Richard Horsley's book The Liberation of Christmas, and this week I'd like to echo that recommendation -- that book is what really got me thinking about what Luke and Matthew are telling us in their narratives of Jesus' birth and infancy, and I'm referring to it extensively this week.

So what kind of a ruler was Herod the Great, Jesus' rival for the title of "king of the Judeans"? The first-century Jewish historian Josephus documents Herod's struggles to secure his territory, which he eventually did with extensive help from Roman troops. He thanked his benefactors not only by taking on titles like "Admirer of Rome" and "Admirer of Caesar," but by undertaking extensive building projects -- temples, gymnasia, statues, and even whole cities (Sebaste and Caesarea) named after the emperor. "Since he was involved in expenses greater than his means," Josephus writes, "he was compelled to be harsh toward his subjects, for the great number of things on which he spent money as gifts to some caused him to be the source of harm to those from whom he took his revenues" (Antiquities 15.365, as cited in Horsley, pp. 43-44).

The more the people chafed under Herod's rule, the more repressive it became:

No meeting of the people was permitted, nor were walking together or being together permitted, and all their movements were observed. Those who were caught were punished severely, and many were taken, either openly or secretly, to the fortress of Hyrcania and there put to death. Both in the city and in the open roads there were men who spied upon those who met together. ... Those who obstinately refused to go along with his practices he persecuted in all kinds of ways. As for the rest of the populace, he demanded that they submit to taking a loyalty oath, and he compelled them to make a sworn declaration that they would maintain a friendly attitude to his rule. Now most people yielded to his demand out of complaisance or fear, but those who showed some spirit and objected to compulsion he got rid of by every possible means.
— Antiquities 15.366-369, as cited in Horsley, p. 47

These words came immediately to my mind when I read a story yesterday about rendition, the practice of forcing detainees onto a jet to be taken secretly from a country in which harsh methods of torture are banned to a country in which they're allowed. What a world we live in! I wonder what would happen if we put even half the ingenuity, technology, and resources into finding ways to get disaster relief to the incomprehensibly high number of people affected by yesterday's tsunami as we put into striking back at those suspected to be our enemies. The powers and the principalities of this world would drive us by fear to violence, by greed to indifference, and by disasters like the Asian tsunami to the conclusion that the world itself is cruel and senseless.

What a world we live in! Is it naive to hold on to hope and to speak of salvation in such a world?

Not at all, if we take the stories surrounding Jesus' birth seriously. We're too often tempted to reduce the scenes surrounding Jesus' birth into an adorable tableau of children transformed into shepherds with tea towels on their heads, a scene as peaceful as it is heartwarming. But the gospel stories of Jesus' birth were very clear about just how great and how oppressive the powers and principalities were from which Jesus came to save us. I think that when we gloss over that, we're tempted to view the darknesses of our own world through the lens of self-pity, and to conclude that the problems we face are greater than those faced before, perhaps even greater than Jesus' power to redeem and make whole.

That isn't true. Jesus was born into a world ruled by a Caesar who spent resources glorifying himself as "savior of the empire" that would better be put to use in saving his subjects from poverty, famine, or Rome-supported client rulers like Herod. Jesus was born as "king of the Judeans" in a Judea ruled by another who claimed that title, and who would stop at nothing to hold on to it. He was born to a people who had been delivered from slavery in Egypt, but ruled by a king who drove him and his parents back there as refugees. Christ our savior wasn't in the dark about the extent of the problems we face in the world, but his faith in the God of Israel who called him was such that he knew no darkness could hold out against the Light that has come into the world.

Sometimes we think that we have to enter into denial to hold on to hope, but that isn't true. Hope is not saying that problems don't exist or that they're not serious; it's keeping deeply in touch with the more fundamental truth that the whole universe was created in love and is destined for love. When we do that, when we make the decision to seek God's will in the midst of turmoil, then the power of the tempest teaches us how much more powerful our Redeemer is, and we can find peace amidst the storms.

The greatest gift we can give our children is not a fleeting illusion that "all is calm, all is bright" -- they're far too observant to be taken in by that for long, especially if we don't believe it ourselves. We give a far greater gift to our children by teaching the the meaning of compassion -- that great tragedy and great need are met by greater love. We teach them the meaning of hope -- that we recognize both the darkness and the fundamental truth that the deepest darkness must give way when it meets light. That's something we have to be deeply in touch with ourselves to pass along to our children, and to share with our world.

So I was pleased to see Joy Carroll Wallis' recent call to put Herod back into Christmas. I'm grateful to Matthew for telling us that Jesus knew the oppression of Egypt. How else would Jesus be able to lead us in Exodus? And I believe that Jesus came to do that. There is no Egypt, no Herod, no Caesar, who can stand against the testimony that we offer that Jesus is Lord. There is no need so great and no pain so deep that it can't be met with greater compassion and healing through Christ our savior. The world was made for love, and the redemption of the world comes as God's gift through Christ, poured out freely by grace. But in Christ, we have the opportunity to accompany Jesus to see the redemption of the world firsthand, to experience the love which is the primal force of Creation as our touch and our generosity minister Jesus' healing and grace to a world that, though it is in darkness, has seen a great light -- the Light of the World, dawning anew in Christmas.

Thanks be to God!