16th Wednesday after Pentecost (9.19.2012): In the Name of Jesus...Come Out!

Psalm 72; Job 42; Acts 16:16-24; John 12:20-26

From Psalm 72:
4 He shall defend the needy among the people; he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor.
13 He shall have pity on the lowly and poor; he shall preserve the lives of the needy.
17 May his Name remain for ever and be established as long as the sun endures; may all the nations bless themselves in him and call him blessed.

 In today's lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Silas cause trouble in the Name of Jesus: they ruin some people's "hope of making money" (16.19).

 The problem is, the people making money are owners of a girl who is possessed with a spirit of divination. She brings "her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling" (16.16). Their money-making, or as Aristotle calls it in The Politics, χρηματιστική (chrematistics) was a far cry from an exchange of goods for an appropriate price towards the end of supporting the activities necessary to living. They were masters of the art of accumulating coinage...for the sake of accumulating coinage (see The Politics, I.ix-x).

 From the lesson from the Acts, their motives in making money are not what causes Paul to pray in the Name of Jesus, casting the spirit of divination out of the girl, rather it is her constant, annoying cries: "These men [Paul and Silas] are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation" (16.17). After days of her screaming, Paul gets annoyed, turns around, and says: "I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And it came out. Along with the owners' chance to accumulate coinage.

 Paul and Silas are accused of disturbing the peace, and thrown into prison.

 
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

 
The Gospel reading from St John gives us some perspective: "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor" (12.24-26). Jesus is on his way to die. Jesus is calling us to make hard sacrifices, ultimate sacrifices.

 Pardon my back-tracking into the Hebrew Bible: Job has learned this lesson a very hard way, but he too has learned that the way to abundant living is the way of suffering and sometimes requires standing our ground against those who would speak “counsel without knowledge” (Job 42.3).



 My questions are: whose profitable economic opportunities are we willing to ruin? And, will it take us getting annoyed before we speak, in the Name of Jesus, against spirits that seem to be speaking truthfully about God but that ultimately allow for harmful, unnatural chrematistics--accumulating wealth for its own sake--to keep persons made in the image of God under the yoke of unethical economic practice? Or maybe a more probing question is: does our way of life take as a given the unethical treatment of human beings? Does our way of life assume that accumulating currency is at least one of the goals of life? Aristotle explains that this lifestyle is a marker of someone who views bodily pleasure as the goal of life, and so they order their whole life around earning excess currency in order to be able to afford luxuries (The Politics, I.ix.1257b40 and following).

 In the Letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul exhorts us to labor and work honestly with our own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy (4.28). Our excess is to be shared.

Something about the spirit of divination and fortune-telling is unnatural and ungodly, just like the art of accumulating wealth. I’m not quite sure of the correlation yet, but I think they are put side by side in the Acts story for a reason. Could what passes for politics in our country be labeled divination, or fortune-telling? Just like the girl in the story, our politicians scream (sometimes literally) what is true, all the while encouraging practices—like fortune telling—that rely on humans manipulating natural resources in order to achieve what is unnatural: an unlimited accumulation of wealth, an unrealistic progressivism. (The Politics, I.ix.1257b25)  Then they engage in actual fortune-telling: if you vote for me, our nation will prosper. I will create jobs. I will create a stable economy. I will create a Utopic State. If claiming to be able to create jobs isn’t equivalent to claiming to be able to work magic, I don’t know what is. What they could say is: If you vote for me, I will perpetuate our culture of accumulating wealth for wealth’s sake. I will work against nature to manipulate into existence various “hopes of making money” (Acts 16.19) that are a far cry from honestly working with your hands to secure the basic necessities for living and some extra to share with those who are needy (Ephesians 4.28).

Let us look at our culture in America. The cries of "and may God bless America!” ring in our ears, day after day, especially in these last months before our national election. But they are crying for the wrong reasons. Maybe it's time we turn around and exorcise the spirit that has her in bondage. It will cause trouble. It will disturb the peace. And we will most certainly ruin someone's "hope of making money" (Acts 16.19) in our unsustainable culture, maybe even our own.


Let us go forth in the Name of Christ.
Thanks be to God!

Participating in Holy Love

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD. You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18

This is the Word of God.
Thanks be to God!

By participating in communion with one another, we actually participate in communion with God, because God is not lacking in any regard in being ever oriented in the posture we call Love. As such, God is the source of the Love shown by God's people: the People of God love because God is the LORD: the holy, ever-faithful covenant One who enters into relationship with God's people, making them holy.

The Latin text, Ubi Caritas comes to mind. Here is a beautiful musical setting by Ola Gjeilo, superbly interpreted by Charles Bruffy, conducting the Phoenix Chorale:

Here is the Latin text and an English translation:

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.

      Where charity and love are, God is there.

congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.

       The love of Christ has gathered us together.

Exultemos et in ipso juncundemur

        Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Timeamus et amemus Deum Vivum.

         Let us revere and love the living God.

Et ex corde dilagamus nos sincero.

         And from a sincere heart let us love one another.

Amen.

         Amen.

Perhaps you could read the Latin text as saying that wherever you see expressions of what we call love, then those expressions must be from God. Or whenever we feel attraction to other persons, then however we act on that attraction--what many people call love--is a True expression of Love, is godly, and healthy.

I think this interpretation is faulty. Or at least it falsely equates Love with desire and acting on desire in and of themselves as Love. I think the Truer meaning of the text is that charity and love are the signals of God’s presence, the source of True Charity and Love. Love is not an emotion. God's essence can be described as being Love, and we embody the Love of God as God moves in and through us to Love God and Love each other truly, for the glory of God.

Congregavit nos in unum…

We do not come together to make love, but rather, Christ has called us together—regardless of our differences and misunderstandings—with His love. And we are to rejoice and be glad in this gathering, this Love that is outside ourselves and calls us outside of our selves. And when we rejoice in this true Love, this God, we cannot but revere and love this Love, our Living God, who creates in us a sincere heart from which we can truly participate in the Love of Christ, by the Spirit’s power, one to another, as this Love—bigger than us and bigger than our particular culture and our false definitions of love—gathers us together into God’s Self of Love.

I would ask your forgiveness for my inability to describe someone as ineffable as God, but that would be silly.  Could my writing be better? Yes, absolutely. We'll have to see if any future editing I do of this post actually gets any closer to approximately refering to reality, but until then, I pray I've gotten as close as I can at this moment.

God, draw us into Yourself and for Yourself.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

15th Shabbat after Pentecost: Pass the Peace, Please!

May the Peace of Christ be always with you!


Three years ago, I began to worship with a small Episcopal parish church at their said service of Holy Eucharist on a weekly basis. Before long, the Passing of the Peace became a very meaningful moment in the Liturgy for me. It became an object of sincere anticipation, as well a source of joy, which I lived off of, and for, the entire week between Eucharists. I can remember discussing with various people who went with me just how meaningful it was to them as well. It seemed to be a highlight of the service for many of my friends as well as for me. Looking back, I see that I am hooked on the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but I think that the Passing of the Peace was what I first latched on to as something that signalled that something Beatiful, Good, and True was going on.

Think about the deep theological, and therefore, Real Life, implications:

after confessing our sin--that which separates us from God and each other--to God, we hear a declaration of the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, and follow it up by exchanging signs of that Peace: handshakes, huggs, kisses of peace. It doesn't matter who you are, or even if you know anyone else present. Christ died for all, Christ has borne all of our sin and suffering and rejection, and our peace is in Christ's Body. Therefore, we show outwardly what is the inward Reality. Because of the size of the small congregation that gathers at the 8:30 service, everyone can pass the peace to everyone. We all know and feel that Christ has reconciled us all to God and each other, before we commune together, before we offer our gifts, and ourselves, with Christ, on the altar.

In our culture of opposing factions, of a deeply-seated divide between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, old and young, the Church of Jesus Christ proclaims the Gospel: God saves us from our sin--all that is wrong and hurtful that separates us from God and each other--through the reconciling work of Jesus Christ and the enabling power of the Holy Spirit to live into our own forgivness and to forgive others as we have been forgiven.

I have a question for Christian communities which do not currently include a Passing of the Peace in their Sunday morning ritual, or order of worship, etc.:

 Might a meaningful, intentional practice of confession, a proclamation of forgiveness, and a passing of Christ's peace be a way forward through the mire of lies our culture feeds us: that we have irreconcileable differences, that the other "just doesn't understand", that we deserve to hold others at arm's length because they have hurt us?

I think it might.

Shabbat Shalom:  may the whole Peace of which the Sabbath serves as a sign and prophecy for those who choose to remember and observe it, the Peace of the Messiah, always be with you!


For a discussion of the implications of remaining faithful to a proclamation of Jesus' reconciling work in the midst of the culture war of our times, see Christ the Reconciler: A Theology for Opposites, Differences, and Enemies, by Peter Schmiechen. And for a history of ideas that has led, in part, to the seemingly irreconileable nature of today's cultural discourse, see Alisdair MacInyre's After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory.

3rd Shabbat after Pentecost, 2012: Mysterious, green hope.

Mark 4:26-34

This week, many congregations in the Church across the globe will listen for the Spirit's voice in the Gospel according to St. Mark in two parables of Jesus in which planting, harvesting, and growth are featured. "To what can I compare the Kingdom of God?", Jesus asks. It has something to do with the way the earth brings forth fruit on its own, while the farmer is going on about the farmer's own business: sleeping, eating, etc. The next thing the farmer knows, the harvest is ready--having sprung out of the earth, budded, and flowered, all while the farmer was unaware--and he goes in for the gathering immediately. In another short parable that sounds a whole lot like a prophecy of Ezekiel's (17:22-24), Jesus talks about a tiny mustard seed, the huge garden plant that it will turn into, and all of the shelter and sustenance it will end up providing. All from a tiny mustard seed. And that's what we can compare with God's way of doing things. It's what we are praying for when we say,

Thy will be done,
Thy kingdom come,
on Earth as it is in Heaven.

For about three years, I've claimed the first of these two parables as my favorite of all of Jesus' parables. It might be because it's the first one I memorized to tell to a children's Sunday School class, and I mediatated on it intensely for a week and had some great theological discourse that followed with some spiritually astute first through fifth graders (then again, what child do you know that isn't spiritually astute?)  Or it might actually be because it is so hopeful. I should say, the Spirit gives me so much hope through this parable.

The Kingdom of God is growing. The Spirit is on the move. Just as the farmer is completely unaware of what is going on just underneath the surface of the soil, oftentimes, we are clueless as to what God is up to, just under the surface of our lives. But like the farmer, we plant, and then we go about our business. And all the while, growth is happening. The seed sprouts, the leaves form, the heads of grain ripen. And before we know it--we've actually been sleeping, eating, and living life, and have missed many of the details--the harvest is ready to be gathered, and immediately (thank you, St. Mark) the farmer puts the scythe to the fields. Mysterious, green hope. Thanks be to God.


For the fruit of all creation,
thanks be to God.
gifts bestowed on every nation,
thanks be to God.
For the plowing, sowing, reaping,
silent growth while we are sleeping,
future needs in earth's safekeeping,
thanks be to God.

In the just reward of labor,
God's will is done.
In the help we give our neighbor,
God's will is done.
In our worldwide task of caring
for the hungry and despairing,
in the harvests we are sharing,
God's will is done.

For the harvests of the Spirit,
thanks be to God.
For the good we all inherit,
thanks be to God.
For the wonders that astound us,
for the truths that still confound us,
most of all that love has found us,
thanks be to God.

---

Words: Fred Pratt Green
Words © 1970 by Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188.


God: You are,
      and You are growing your Kingdom,
      and we don't even know it.
Forever sustain us with Your hope,
       and fascinate us with Your mystery,
       and green us for Your eternal Life.
Praise be to You: Father, Son, and Spirit.
       Amen. Amen. Amen.

Monday of Eastertide II

This is a prayer I wrote as a facebook status after morning worship this past Sunday. It embodies much of what I believe the Spirit has been teaching me lately, and the hope God has been forming within me, even as I have been becoming more and more painfully aware of and agitated by the gods of our current cultural milieu:

GOD, in our time of unease and social unsurety, may we ask better questions! By Your Truth, set us free to love and serve You, with gladness and singleness of heart. Help us to enter into the Joy of the knowledge that our ontological location as Christians is in the New Life of the Resurrection of Your Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Remind us that we are not our own, to do with as we would like, but that we are your creation, your Joyful servants, through Whom you are acting to redeem all of Creation. May our unruly desires and affections be revealed as what they are: hindrances to your Gospel. And may we, with all Your saints, ever enter into the Joy prepared for us, beginning now in the eternal abundant Life promised to all who abide in Your Son, by the indwelling of your Holy Spirit. Awaken us to your will for our lives: to live righteously, soberly, and in loving communion with Yourself and each other. Sharpen and illumine our minds to consider carefully the effects of our social choices, that our works may please you, and that we may do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with you, rejoicing in the power of your Resurrected Son, who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns and Loves, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

An Holy Lent: Second Sabbath of Lent, 2012

So far, this Lent has been a bit different than any of the others I have observed.

I have not really settled on a particular discipline, neither in terms of adding a specific spiritual practice nor in abstaining from any particular food or drink item, or any specific pattern of fasting. Rather, I have been making sporadic choices to abstain in particular situations, whether it be a dessert that I suddenly have a desire for, or for a soft drink or tea during the week.

I have been rather lax in my reading for philsophy club, so I have resolved to keep up in my reading of the Odyssey. Perhaps that committment will result in an interesting blog post about connections I begin to experience between Lenten themes and Odysseus' journey home.

Today, however, I believe I have received a certain clarity about the particular focus God is calling me to this Lent. Truthfully, it has been coming for a while now, but it was brought into focus for me as I read Part I of Marva J. Dawn's Sexual Character: Beyond Technique to Intimacy this morning. I have wanted to read this book ever since I first saw it in her list of works on the cover of Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for the 21st Century Church, and today I am confirmed in my desire to read it.

So many of the same threads run throughout her works; her clarion call to listening to the authority of God and the place of God's Stories in the shaping of the countercultural character of God's people are but two that resonate with me. And so, I'll end this post with this passage from the ending of Part I of Sexual Character, which has to do with more than just sexual character, but with Christian character in general, and the responsibility of the Church, and every member of the Church in participating with God in the formation of Christian character via the engagement of Christian ethics:


"The main task of ethics is to enable us to ask better questions about the issues of our day. An ethics of character is especially helpful because it gives us tools to ask new questions out of its comprehensive inclusion of means and ends, rules and narratives, models and virtues, personhood and community. Especially important is the fact that an ethics of character enables us to ask new question out of the grace of God. We seek virtues and behaviors, not because we ought to, should, or must, but because they are modeled for us in Jesus, whose Spirit empowers us to follow in his way. We choose to live according to the design of the Creator becasue he invites us to the delights of such truthfulness. Moreover, we can invite others to participate in those choices, too, because we know that thereby they will be happier, more fulfilled, more whole.

This book is just a beginning. I pray that you will go beyond it to ask better question about sexual character, to develop a Christian community that nutures godly sexuality, to offer hope to those who are drowning in our society's toxic sexual milieu."

That's so Lent.


God, ever being, do Lent in us.
And, lift us by your Spirit to behold the face of your Son, Jesus, Christ,
so that we may be made into his likeness, from glory to glory,
and be shining lights in the darkness of the world around us.
We remember your Son's blood shed for us, and pray in his name,
the Name of our Salvation: Jesus, the Christ.
Amen.

Christmastide 2011-2012: Clueless Righteousness

This is the manuscript to a "Spoken Meditation" I shared with my church, First Baptist-Morganton, NC, on the first Sunday after Christmas, which also happened to be New Year's Day, as well as the celebration of The Circumcision and Holy Name of Jesus, The Holy Family, as well as the Solemnity of Mary, God-Bearer.

The Scipture lessons for the service that morning were:
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Revelation 21:1-6a
Matthew 25:31-46

O God, you make us glad by the yearly festival of the birth of your only Son Jesus Christ. Grant that we, who joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, may with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our Judge; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (from The Book of Common Prayer, a collect for Christmas)

As I was listening to the passage from the Gospel of Matthew yesterday, something caught my attention that has never caught my attention before. Not only did it change the direction of this homily slightly, but it also changed the way I understand, or do not understand, this story.

“What? There’s nothing puzzling about this story!”, one might say. “You feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. If you do, you get to be called ‘righteous’ and are sent to eternal life. If you don’t, well, you just get sent to ‘eternal punishment.’”

I do not think this assessment shows evidence of a fair hearing of this story. That summary might be what we expect to hear. It is a pretty popular image: the sheep and goats divided at the end of time when the Son of man comes in glory, the righteous and unrighteous dealt out their just, eternal rewards. And of course, we are the righteous ones in the story.

Now, what I had planned to do was try to drive home the point that we are failing to live up to the standards Jesus speaks of: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting those in prison. Because of course, we all—or at least most of us—fall short. We fail to do the most basic of things that this story tell us Jesus will be checking off his list at the end of time. And I was going to try to encourage us to recommit ourselves to doing those most basic of things, looking to the baby in the manger as the perfect example of how Jesus really was God’s self made into a vulnerable, hungry, thirsty, alien, naked, frail, outcast of a human being: “the least of these.” The least of all.

So hopefully, we would have gone out from this place ready to seek out those in need of ministry and minister to them as ministering to Christ. Seeing Jesus in every full, hydrated, welcomed, clothed, cared for, visited person to whom we ministered.

But the funny thing is, (and this is what I realized yesterday) if we would do exactly that: go out--strategically, intentionally “on mission,”—serving Jesus in the least of these, all of a sudden, we are nowhere to be seen in this story.

Because when Jesus tells the righteous—the sheep—that they have indeed been ministering to him when they minister to the least-of-these, their response is one of cluelessness: “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food?” They are just as clueless as the ones who failed to minister to the least-of-these, who say: “Lord, when was it that we did not take care of you?”

They are all clueless. And that’s what I realized yesterday.

So I also realized that I could not encourage us all to make our lists of what to do, entitled ‘how to serve Jesus in the least-of-these’, and then go about strategically building the Kingdom of God. At least not on the basis of the scriptures we have read this morning. So. What do we do with this Gospel reading?

***

About those other scriptures.

In Isaiah, the prophet exults, rejoices in God and in God’s promises of hope. Even though the fulfillment is not here yet. In fact, he admits that things are not yet what they should be, but also says that he will not keep quiet, he will not rest, until things are made right and salvation shines like a burning torch.

And if you go back and look at that prophecy, the righteousness and praise are not manufactured or performed out of duty by the faithful. Rather, they organically spring up…like a garden causes the seeds planted to spring up. You also see evangelism in this text: all the nations see the righteousness and praise of God. There is also clothing going on in the Isaiah text. But this time, it is God who is clothing God’s people with righteousness. Isaiah doesn’t make his own robe of righteousness. He also doesn’t lose hope because God’s promises haven’t all been fulfilled yet. Rather, he rejoices in the hope that consummation is coming…

That’s what I see in the Revelation passage: the consummation of God’s promises. Jesus, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, of the Father’s love begotten, brings what was started in the manger and on the cross to completion. No tears, no death, no mourning, crying, nor pain, “for the first things have passed away.”

But we’re not there yet. We’re somewhere in the middle: between Isaiah and Revelation. We’re here with this story from the Gospel of Matthew. I think this story is telling us, among other things, how God is inviting us to be involved as God moves all of Creation from Isaiah’s prophecy to Revelation’s fulfillment. Point A to point B. But the text is more descriptive than prescriptive. It doesn’t really tell us how to get from point A to point B. It tells us that at the end, there are those called “righteous” who enter into eternal life, and those who are not, who enter into eternal punishment. But it also tells us that the righteous (just as much as the unrighteous) were clueless about the fact that in serving the least, they were serving Jesus Christ. They were clueless to the fact that they were being righteous.

So, what are we supposed to do with that? How do we minister to the least-of-these, and in so doing, serve Jesus, all the while without knowing it?

I don’t think I have an exact answer.

But I guess what I’ve learned by meditating on these Scriptures is that I don’t think you can treat the Gospel and the life inside God’s kingdom like a system where you check off your list and certain things happen. The Christian life is not a business, not a system to be governed by a board…of any kind.

I guess Mary figured something like that out too…that with God, you can’t expect the expected…sometimes you have to let the Spirit overshadow you and say “yes” to what God is doing inside of you.

It’s a good thing that our spiritual life doesn’t end when we walk out these doors. Because I think we all need to be wrestling with what these Scriptures call us to do, and who these Scriptures call us to be. And just maybe, while we’re wrestling with these Scriptures, celebrating the inconceivable mystery of the Incarnation, and the Holy Spirit is shaping us to be people who love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, just maybe, we will end up being righteous…and we won’t even know it.

Amen.


Come dearest Child into our hearts and leave your crib behind you.
Let this be where the new Life starts for all who seek and find you.
To you be honor, thanks, and praise for all your gifts this time of grace!
Come conquer and deliver this world and us forever! Amen!
-Fred Pratt Green, 1986