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.