JOHN 1:1-18

The reading you just heard from John is the opening of his Gospel and is John’s version of a birth story. Isn’t that strange? Well, let’s back up a bit and put it in context.

The earliest Gospel was Mark. And what did Mark have for a birth narrative? – – – Right, nothing. Mark’s gospel begins with the arrival of John the Baptist. And Mark’s Gospel always seems to be asking, “Who is this Jesus person?” Towards the end Jesus is called the son of God.

The next Gospel written was Matthew. In this Gospel, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies and the heir to the throne of David. Thus it begins with a genealogy that goes back to David. The birth narrative is all about Joseph, how the angel came to him twice, how the Magi came to visit, how Joseph took his family to Egypt to avoid Herod’s wrath and how Herod murdered all the children in Bethlehem under two. Mary is barely mentioned.

The third Gospel is Luke, who is writing to a gentile audience rather than a Jewish one. In Luke Jesus is the divine/human savior with a universal mission to all people, especially the lowly and the outcaste. This is the birth story we know the best, the one we heard this Christmas. It contains the story of the annunciation to Mary, the same for Elizabeth and Zechariah, the visit of Mary to Elizabeth, and the wonderful songs: of Mary, called the Magnificat; of Zechariah; of Simeon. Luke also includes a genealogy, but it goes all the way back to Adam. Thus Jesus is for all people.

John’s Gospel is written the latest, and it is so different from the first three because John does not so much report events as he tells us what he thinks the events mean. There’s no better example of this than in today’s reading. Instead of any kind of birth narrative we have a theological statement about what the arrival of Jesus into the world means. Not only does John not mention anything about birth, he never mentions Mary by name anywhere and only mentions Joseph a few times as the father of Jesus.

If we look at what these opening lines say, we can see why John doesn’t bother with the kind of detail we get in the other Gospels. “In the beginning . .” is how he opens the first line of the Gospel. And what does that remind you of? – – – – – – Indeed, those are the opening words of Genesis: “In the beginning, when God created the heaven and the earth . . .”

John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Word is capitalized and is translated from the Greek word ‘logos.’ The commentator Barclay goes to great lengths to explain that logos is not just word, but also reason. And we need to remember how it was that God created the world in Genesis 1. He created it by saying words. “Let there be light, and there was light.” For the Jews and the Greeks, words had the power to create.

Throughout the Gospel of John, Word is synonymous with Jesus. Jesus was the word of God made flesh. But the most surprising statements of John come next. “He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What came into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”

This is a claim that Jesus or Christ existed before time and participated in the creation along with God, or is God. In other words, John is proclaiming the full and exclusive divinity of Jesus. Jesus is not just the Messiah and the Savior, he is fully divine. It’s no wonder John doesn’t want to reference his birth or his parents.

Later in this reading John says Jesus came into a world that was already his own, but that people did not accept him. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”

So John would claim that the only way we can become children of God is to believe in the name of Jesus. This is the beginning of the strain of Christianity that essentially says that salvation is based on your belief that Jesus was the divine son of God. Faith in that statement or acceptance of Jesus as your Savior is the means of salvation and makes you a child of God.

As you well know, there is another strain of Christianity that says we are all children of God because we are all part of God’s creation, whether we recognize it or not; that God gave us the gift of free will to accept or reject Jesus and his teachings.

I know from my participation in confirmation classes this year, that this sort of statement drives the young people a bit crazy. They want to know what is true. I’m not sure whether it is a real drive for truth or whether it’s a concern about what to say on quizzes and tests. But I sympathize with them, because it’s so much easier to be told what to hold true than to have to try to figure it out for yourself.

I would guess that many of us hold to John’s position, since that essentially became the orthodox theology of the church. Another way of putting it is that Jesus was absolutely unique and in no way like the rest of us. He could live in this world without sin, he could perform miracles, he could rise from the dead. In our church, believing in him alone has not been enough. We’re also expected to follow his teachings.

But there may be some of us who believe Jesus came to be a role model for us, to teach us how to live and to show us that we are all God’s children, even the least of us. And also to show us that life does not end in death. For such believers, the divinity of Jesus is probably not as important as his humanity.

I expect that we all agree that following Jesus means trying to live as he taught us to live. We all would agree that Jesus was an intensely spiritual person and in close contact with God.

But the most important part of all this is that people of different theological positions can still come together to worship and to break bread and to listen to the stories of our faith. We are so lucky to live in a tradition that allows this.

I’m sure you remember the quip I’ve used before – that whenever three or four Episcopalians gather together there are at least five different opinions. Since there’s so much we cannot be certain about, this is a healthy thing and something to be celebrated. Thanks be to God!

ISAIAH 62:6-12, LUKE 1:1-20

How many times have we heard these words from Luke proclaiming the birth of Jesus? Do we notice each time that the Emperor and the Governor invoked in the first sentence never appear again? Are they only there to set the time frame or is there more to their appearance here?

John Dominic Crossan is a biblical scholar who has spent his life studying the life of Jesus in his specific historical context. Jesus was born during the reign of the Emperor Augustus. He grew up to preach against the empire and to offer an alternative to it.

Crossan contrasts the empire of Rome to the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus. The empire boasts of peace, the famous Pax Romana, through victory. This is a peace that is created by the violence of conquest and maintained through armed might.

The problem is that it doesn’t last, as we can plainly see from looking at history then and since then. Empires can’t last because the violence of their creation always inspires more violence, especially the violence of revolt.

At the time Jesus lived almost all the agricultural land in Palestine was owned by three families. A country of family farmers had become a country of sharecroppers. The three families lived in Jerusalem, and for them, the best use of the crops was for export to Rome. This often meant that the families in villages like Nazareth did not have enough to eat.

Crossan says that Jesus offers us a different kind of peace, peace that comes through justice. In the Kingdom of God, everyone has enough, no one is exploited for profit, competition is replaced by cooperation and everyone has a fair chance to succeed. Everyone helps care for those who cannot care for themselves.

This is the contrast used by Isaiah in tonight’s reading when he says, “The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies, and foreigners shall not drink the wine for which you have labored. . .”

So Luke invokes the names of the foreign rulers, but tells a story of a teen aged mother from the farming village of Nazareth, who is bearing a child after a long journey. And then he turns to the shepherds in the field, who have even less status than Mary. They do not have to register because they are literally of no account. And it is to them that the angels appear – not to the powers that be, but to the lowest of the lowly.

The angels begin with “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

And they end “being joined by a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,’” and peace on earth.

In another passage from Isaiah, the one we hear so often sung in the Messiah, the child is called the Prince of Peace. “His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice . . .”

Surely you will have noticed some similarities between the time of Jesus and our own. When Isaiah exclaims, “The people who live in darkness have seen a great light.” We can feel the need for that light too.

As in the time of the first Isaiah, as in the time of second Isaiah, like the shepherds, like people in all the ages since, we need a great light. We need to hear the words of Jesus proclaiming the message of peace through justice, a new and better way to live our lives and order our social and political life.

As we mourn for the children and adults gunned down in Newtown, let us not forget the children of Syria growing up in the middle of a civil war. As we watch our Congress deadlocked once again, let us not forget the people of Somalia who have been murdered by their own government. As we see our own culture becoming more violent, more unable to carry on civil discourse, let us not forget the many young people across the globe who are coming of age in this interconnected world and are quick to work together to solve problems and to reach out to those in need.

The birth of the baby Jesus every year expresses the return of the light into a darkened world. It’s a new chance to start again and to become more mindful of the light that is already shining in our world.

Tonight, let this church in this place be the manger where new light enters the world. Let us embrace the child born in our midst. We have, each and every one of us, come from far and wide to be here together to greet him, as families always gather to welcome their new babies.

Let us gather the Christ child into our arms and hearts tonight and then go forth to encourage our families, our neighbors, and our communities to welcome him too. AMEN

ADVENT 3, C

Luke 3:7-18

Imagine this: there have been rumors all over town about some wild woman preacher who is calling on people to repent and baptizing them in the Rainy River. So we all decide to go out there after church one lovely warm Sunday to see what she has to say. We join a crowd of people sitting on the river bank. The preacher stands up and speaks.

“You are nothing but a bunch of snakes in the grass. Who sent you here? Repentance without amendment of life is meaningless. Do not console yourself by saying you go to church every Sunday. Oh no! God can always find more church goers. Even now the ax is hanging over your head. If you do not put your own life in order and show that forth in how you act in the world, that ax will surely cut you down and you will be cast into the fire.”

Well! How would you respond to that? How many would walk out offended and how many would stay to ask the question John’s crowd asked, “What then should we do?” For after all the fire and brimstone, John now responds much as Jesus might. Suddenly the tone and temper of his words change. “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”

Notice, that John does not ask them to give away all they have, but only to share the excess of their belongings. We, as the congregation of Holy Trinity, and as individuals do give a lot away, but how much excess is left? That’s a typical Advent question, isn’t it. Not how well have I done this year, but rather, where have I fallen short.

John’s advice to the tax collectors and the soldiers is also astute. He doesn’t suggest they change jobs, even though their jobs are seen as part of the oppression of the people. Rather he advises that they carry out the job in a way that is not oppressive. Sure, the whole system is based on passing on the wealth of the country to Rome, and it’s rigged so that the tax collectors and soldiers will dig even deeper to line their own pockets. Remember the cry, “We’ve always done it this way!” John says NO – no excuses. If you oppress others then your repentance is worthless.

So John’s message is share the wealth, be fair and honest, do not abuse your power. These are the actions of people who have truly repented and are living a new life. Think for a moment what it might mean if everyone took this seriously. The current debate in Washington and the mess we may be in if it can’t be resolved would not be a problem.

This week Lee Grim gave us a reprint of an article by Jim Wallis, an Evangelical pastor who strongly believes in the kind of action urged by John today.

He says, “The biblical prophets say that a nation’s righteousness, or integrity as we might say, is determined by how they treat the poorest and most vulnerable; and Jesus said how we respond to the least of these is indicative of how we respond to him. That’s because the poor and vulnerable are the monitors of how everybody else will ultimately be treated. History shows how quickly and easily human dignity can be compromised by economic and political powers – and protecting the most vulnerable is the only way to safeguard us all.”

If we let the powers that be usurp what little power or privilege the poorest of the poor have, the powers that be will eventually do the same to us. Remember the poem by Pastor Niemoller?

“First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

So what Jim Wallis is saying is that the people on the bottom of the heap must be protected in order to protect ourselves. John says we must share our excess. Harder to hear, but no less real.

Today’s reading concludes with John returning to threats of judgement. He claims there will be someone coming after him who is more powerful, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, rather than water. Fire is usually considered something that refines and purifies. But it’s also hot and suggests great pain. Often people who have been through great trauma, or near death experiences, will talk about it as walking through the fire.

It’s an experience that is heavy enough to mark a point in life after which everything is different, and the experience of getting there has changed the way they see, or think, or feel. While many things are lost in the experience, new things are also gained. Most of us have had some sort of similar experience, if not so extreme. I remember a cancer survivor once saying, “It may sound odd, but my cancer was a great gift to me.”

John then goes on to use the metaphor of threshing. The one coming after him has a winnowing fork in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

This is at one level a judgment proclamation. Jesus is coming and will separate the wheat, that is, the good fruit, or the people who have truly repented, from the chaff, that is, the bad people who have not. And the image is of the bad ones burning in unquenchable fire.

My problem with most judgment proclamations like this is that they are put forth in terms that are sure to frighten us. I don’t like anything that is fear based, and I don’t believe it really works to keep us in line, because we end up resenting the control it imposes on us. It’s like being led around on a leash rather than being able to make our own choices. But fear is a powerful motivator, and it is used frequently by those in authority to keep folks in line – another reason I don’t like it!

But if we use the same metaphor that John uses here and apply it to our house-cleaning task this Advent, I find it very useful. Here we are the ones wielding the winnowing fork. As we examine our own lives and our own hearts, we use the winnowing fork to separate the good stuff from the bad. We keep the good and pitch the bad, cutting it out, shoveling it out, whatever, in order to clean house, to make a path for God to enter. This is the time to throw open the windows and open the doors to our inner lives in order to let light shine in the dark places and to clear out the junk.

It’s the junk that gets in the way of sharing what we have. A big part of the junk we need to get rid of is fear. Fear of not being good enough, fear of others, fear of death, fear of living life abundantly, and whatever other fears holds us back. The rest of the junk we want to cut out and throw away are the daily sins that have become habit – whether it’s selfishness or greed, whether it’s overeating or addiction, whether it’s hanging on to old hurts or anger.

Think of these things as underbrush that blocks the light, that blocks God’s pathway to us and vice versa, and that tends to grow and expand into whatever space is available. Our job in Advent is to cut it down, brush it out, and try to amend our lives so that it doesn’t grow back to clog our souls. AMEN

ADVENT 2

Baruch 5:1-9, Luke 3:1-6

Last Sunday marked the beginning of the church’s new year. And this year we will be reading mainly from the Gospel of Luke. The first chapter is about the birth of John, the second is about the birth of Jesus, and today we begin with the third chapter, when John appears in the wilderness.

The opening sentence sets the time and place of John’s appearance – in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, Emperor of Rome, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was ruler of Galilee, etc. Thanks to my husband who knows Roman history, this translates to 29 CE.

This opening carries much more weight for Luke’s audience than it might for us and it serves multiple purposes. It puts John in a particular historical context, both for them and for us.

But for them it also makes a direct connection to the past and clearly marks John as another in a long line of prophets. If you check out the opening of the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, Zepheniah, and Micah, they all start in this way and most of them also say “the Word of God came to ________.”

The other purpose served by this list of who was in charge at the time, including the names of the high priests, was to contrast their high status to the very low status of John, who was wandering around in the wilderness. Why didn’t the word of God come to Caiaphas or Annas, the high priests? Like the prophets before him, John is here to speak the truth to power, and the priests of this time were hand in glove with the Roman rulers who were oppressing the people of Israel.

The fact that John was preaching near the Jordan was not just because he was baptizing, but also because it suggests connection to the Exodus. The people entered the Holy Land by crossing the Jordan, and by baptizing in the Jordan, John is giving them another chance to straighten up and fly right.

The very concept of wilderness is always suggestive, certainly as a contrast to civilization. Sometimes it stands for danger and chaos, but in the gospel of Luke it is a place of testing, withdrawal, prayer and miracles, perhaps a place removed from a civilization that was not what God wanted for his people.

So John appears in the wilderness “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Then we hear a direct quote from Isaiah 40, the beginning words of the 2nd Isaiah, who lived and preached in Babylon during the Exile.

This quote was originally talking about the return of the people to Jerusalem, much as we heard it in the reading from Baruch this morning. The image is of a highway through the wilderness making it easy for the people to walk home to Jerusalem.

But John’s cry to prepare, while it echoes the return from Exile, is also a cry to prepare for the coming of Jesus. It’s a warning that God is coming into the world and we’d better be ready. The first step is repentance.

To repent is to turn around, to change direction, to forego our usual behavior and create new ones directed by or to God. This is the reason that Advent is supposed to be a time of quiet reflection and personal assessment. Most of us have been baptized, but the need for self-reflection, confession, and repentence is an on-going process. It takes center stage at this time of year when we await the return of Jesus, the coming of God to dwell among us.

One of the commentators on this passage shared a wonderful story of her mother. Whenever company was coming to the house, she got down on her hands and knees to straighten out the fringe on the rugs in her house. The daughter pointed out that just one brush from a shoe would mess it up again, but Mom was unmoved.

Think about your own preparations for the holidays. How much care do you take to clean, cook lovely food, bake goodies? How many little things do you fix, like light bulbs, doors that squeak, or outlets that don’t work? How much special decorating do you do?

What I notice in this season is how much stuff I have to pick up and put away when company is coming. You know, books, newspapers, ingredients that are for next week’s baking, batteries for the Christmas presents, CD’s, tapes, cat toys, etc. that just haven’t been put away and ironing that hasn’t gotten done.

These are mostly our secular activities and duties. What about our spiritual ones? I think that clearing a path through the wilderness is a wonderful image for the great task we are asked to take up in this season: looking at our lives, asking where we are falling short, what in our lives is blocking our spiritual growth or our relationship with God. Just as I stand in the doorway and look at a room to see if all is in order, so should I look at my soul. What is or is not in order?

Christmas planning always involves to-do lists, more so with each passing year. Self-examination should also include a to-do list, one we should write down and refer to often as a reminder of what we need to do to be prepared spiritually and to stay prepared.

And as the story of John suggests, we should also examine our culture, our institutions and our communities. What is there about our life at Holy Trinity that aids our spiritual growth? What is there that stands in the way?

Assessment of this sort must be the beginning of repentance. And why does this reading say we should repent? Because “the Lord is coming and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

When God comes to dwell with us, what might he save us from: oppression, fear, worry, injustice, war, famine, pestilence, and spiritual death, to name only a few. Part of our self-examination this season might be to ask what we personally need to be saved from: jealousy, self-centeredness, pettiness, gossiping, hurtful or hateful talk, whatever keeps you from living life abundantly as God would wish you to do.

So as you go about your many preparations for Christmas, be mindful always of the inner preparation that goes along with it and that deserves at least as much close attention as having a clean house. Repentance creates a clean soul to go along with your clean house. Never forget that amongst your holiday guests, God will also be present, and she might be wearing white gloves!

Advent 1, C1 Thessalonians 3:9-13, Luke 21:25-36

Today’s lesson puts me in mind of my Boy Scout days. (Don’t bother to check your hearing or my mental status, I said Boy Scouts. The Girl Scouts had less interesting activities where I was growing up. With a name like Sam and a father who was the scoutmaster, well, you get the idea. And there really was not a gender box to check on that form…)

Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life. Dissipation – I had to look it up – is the sense of nausea and general ill health of the sort generally associated with over-indulgence. We are asked to wrestle our natural inclination towards avoidance, towards self-induced numbness and live in awareness within that tension of fear and hope. Theologian Jürgen Moltmann, referencing his own book Theology of Hope says, “I tried to present the Christian hope no longer as such an ‘opium of the beyond’ but rather as the divine power that makes us alive in this world.” (emphasis added)

Be aware. This does not suggest the hyper-vigilance of the hunker down mentality, but rather a sense of mindfulness. Awareness of self, neighbor, God and environment and the relationship amongst all of them

Pray. Perhaps the easiest to ignore in the list, and arguably the most important. This is our communication, our lifeline, our hope. It is our constant cue to mindfulness of God in whom we live and move and have our being.

May the Lord make us increase and abound in love for one another and for all…And may he so strengthen our hearts in holiness that we may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Amen.

Christ the King, B

Revelations 1:4b-8, John 18:33-37

Sometimes the most important question is the question not asked. Maybe it’s not socially acceptable to ask it. Too probing or not politically correct. Maybe it seems like everybody else knows the answer already, so you can’t quite bring yourself to speak up. Or maybe, like me, the really crucial question doesn’t even occur to you until hours or days or weeks later, usually in the middle of the night, accompanied by a smack on the forehead and a profound sense of “duh”.

The Gospel reading today is composed almost entirely of questions, but (in my opinion) we didn’t get to hear the most important question. It’s not because the question didn’t get asked. Pilate asked it. The arrangers of the lectionary left it out.

Pilate and Jesus are going back and forth; ostensibly a trial, although it’s not always entirely clear who is trying whom. “Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” There ends the lesson. The passage, however, continues. “Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’”

The bible doesn’t give us tone of voice, so it’s not entirely clear if Pilate asks this question dismissively, ironically or contemptuously. You know how people do. With the corner of one lip turned up just that little bit and that sneer in their voice. Or maybe (and this is not a popular notion, you understand), maybe somewhere deep inside Pilate responds to something in Jesus that turns the world as Pilate has always known it upside down. Pilate is a powerful Roman ruler of a notoriously difficult to control part of the world. The rules he lives by are brutal, but quite simple. If a man claims to have any power which the empire did not give to him, that man is subversive and a danger to the empire. Kill him. If a man upsets the delicate balance of power-sharing with the local authorities, he is a danger to Pilate’s control. Kill him. These are the truths that Pilate knows. Still, over and over he tries to find a way out of killing Jesus. What if the truth that Jesus offered; offered freely to his prosecutor and judge, made Pilate ponder the validity of the truths he’d always known?

“What is truth?”

Such a simple question, but people spend lifetimes looking for it. Scientists, theologians, philosophers, poets, students, and those of us who just live our ordinary lives from day to day. Religious institutions used to serve as a bastion of truth. The priests or rulers in power declared “Truth” and everyone else adjusted their world view around that. Some religious groups and people still operate that way. For most of us our day to day truths have been adjusted by science – the earth is round and revolves around the sun, gravity, speed of light, conservation of energy and matter – that sort of thing. Science’s burgeoning understanding of the world has given us a great gift. That gift is limited to facts and theories. It is true. It is not Truth. Truth, with a capital T, includes these facts, but is not limited to them. As poet and priest John O’Donahue says, “There is a relentless search for the factual and this quest often lacks warmth or reverence. At a certain stage in our life we may wake up to the urgency of life, how short it is. Then the quest for truth becomes the ultimate project. We can often forage for years in the empty fields of self-analysis and self-improvement and sacrifice much of our real substance for specks of cold, lonesome factual truth.” It can be frightening to move on from those cold, concrete, verifiable, secure facts to delve into the depths of the truth that Jesus offers. Neither science nor religion are truth, in and of themselves. They are human constructs designed to help us understand the underlying truth.

This last week after Pentecost, the end of our church year, marks Christ the King Sunday. The Feast of Christ the King was instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI to remind Christians that their allegiance was to their spiritual ruler, Jesus the Christ, as opposed to their earthly ruler, a post claimed in Pope Pius’s neck of the woods at that time by Benito Mussolini.

Last week, as we brought ordinary time to a close, we heard about apocalyptic visions. Next week gives birth to Advent and the sacred cycle begins anew with the new church year. To celebrate the promise of the new year we will hear about, you guessed it, apocalyptic visions. To quote Suzanne Guthrie, “Apocalypse, although associated with the sun darkening, the moon not giving its light, the stars falling, earthquakes, and fire and destruction, literally means “unveiling.” The lifting of the veil, opening the curtain. Revealing. Revelation… At the heart of the apocalyptic season Jesus reigns from a cross. It is the end. It is the beginning. His death is the catastrophic end that begets new life.”

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come.” Christ Jesus reigns eternal, but what is this strange kingdom? Jesus indicates that his kingdom, his truth is present in everyone who listens to his words. The kingdom lives where Jesus’s truth lives. Jesus offered Pilate the chance, offers us the chance, to face the truth, about ourselves, our relationships, our world, our faith, and ultimately our actions. In the end Pilate took the expedient way. He took the sensible, practical path, following brutal, merciless rules – just like everybody who was anybody always did. Will we take the easy way? Or do we dare to lift the veil, open the curtain, face truth? God’s truth.

We’ll continue the service in a few minutes with the words of the Nicene creed, a statement of faith. The first Christian creed was much simpler. It said, “Jesus is Lord”. Those words got early Christians killed. Chances are at least fair to middlin’ that they won’t get us killed. Nonetheless, if we would live the words – not just speak them, but live them – we must be open to the transformative nature of truth.

Later we will come to this table together and pray, “Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the Bread” We must know as we pray, that we do not choose the simple path. We are joining our lives to that of the servant King, Jesus. We are asking to help bring forth the kingdom of truth, love, and justice. It is not the way of the world, but it could be….

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was, and who is to come.
Amen.

PROPER 28 B

Daniel 12:1-3, Mark13:1-8

Today and in the coming weeks you will be hearing some lessons that fall into the category of Apocalyptic writings. Apocalyptic means “unveiling” or revealing, in the sense of revealing something that has been hidden.

Most apocalyptic literature, at least in the Bible, has to do with what Dominic Crossan calls the “Great Cleanup.” This is when God is going to step in and clean up the earth, bringing a new creation where justice and peace reign.

Apocalyptic messages are most often given in the form of visions, dreams, or prophecy of future events, often the so-called end-times or the 2nd coming of Christ and the Last Judgment.

Such passages come to us especially in Daniel, in Mark 13, in the corresponding passages in Luke and Matthew, and most fully in the Book of Revelation.

I know that there’s a lot about the end-times roaming the airways and even the book publishing business these days, and you’ve probably heard various predictions about the world ending on a given date. So let me lay out the issue in broad terms.

Like so much else in the Bible, it seems to me that there are two basic ways of reading these passages. If you read them literally, you will see them as a precise prediction of future events. If you read them as metaphor or as a literary device, you will see them as a commentary on the contemporary situation disguised as the future. This is a long standing literary device used to mask criticism of present powers so that the author will not be strung up.

The literal view focuses its readers on the future and promises that God will fix all that’s wrong in the world. All we have to do is wait and behave so that we will be saved. It also tends to foster some competition between various groups who claim they will be saved, not to mention quite a few false prophets.

The metaphorical view focuses it’s readers on current injustices so that they can help to do something about them. It encourages us to work to change our current society to make it more like the Kingdom of God Jesus described for us.

Both versions do cry out for a world where justice and peace reign. Both should give hope to people suffering oppression.

I used to avoid the Book of Revelation because the visions are so far out, and often so violent, that I just didn’t get it. Then I heard Rev. Steve Shaitberger do a presentation on it that helped me understand it a bit. He used the second approach, looking at it as an indictment of the Roman Empire, written almost in code that the early Christian community would understand but that the Roman authorities would not.

Think of some of the literature we know that functions that way: 1984, Animal Farm, Erehwon, also one or two of Margaret Atwood’s novels. By placing the action in the future or in some other reality, the authors can freely but indirectly comment on the present.

If you want to hear passages like the ones from Daniel and Mark we read today discussed in the literal manner, I suggest you tune in to my favorite televangelist, the Rev. Jack Van Impe and his lovely wife Rexella.

Meanwhile, let’s look at what Jesus is saying in Mark. The disciples are awed by the Temple in Jerusalem, and from all accounts it was massively impressive and stunning to behold. When they comment on it, Jesus replies by saying “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Usually this has been taken to be a prediction of the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. But I think it’s an extremely ‘safe’ prediction. Are not most buildings or any other creation of man eventually thrown down? How many endure for ages, much less forever?

Then Jesus and the disciples go over to the Mount of Olives, from which there is a magnificent view of the Temple Mount. Some of the disciples ask him when this will be, presumably when the Temple will be thrown down.

Strangely, Jesus answers by first warning them against false prophets. Then says, “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. . .nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes and famines. . .”

Once again, I have to say that these are rather safe predictions. When have these things not been going on, at least since man became man? Later in this same chapter Jesus does make a specific prediction, After the suffering, “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. . .Truly I tell you this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.

So Jesus predicts that what we call the second coming of Christ will happen before his generation has passed away. Of course, we know that did not happen, and 2000 years later it still has not happened. Why? Jesus tells us this himself shortly after this prediction. “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father.”

That’s the basic problem with focusing on the future, or arguing about salvation, or claiming to know what happens when we die. The truth is that no one can know anything about such things for sure. Yes, we all have our opinions, but opinions are not the same things as facts.

And all the predictions and speculations merely keep us from paying attention to the world around us, where injustice is still all too common and where people are suffering, often needlessly, because our systems and institutions are so often rigged in ways that don’t treat everyone equally.

The clearest message Jesus gives us in this reading is this: Do not be alarmed. This is the way the world tends to be, but we can work to change it. God helps in this task by sending the Holy Spirit to guide and help us, and through the teachings of Jesus about how to clean up the world.

As Dom Crossan concludes about the great cleanup, “God won’t do it without us, and we can’t do it without God.” You wouldn’t guess it from the daily news, but there are recent studies that show that worldwide there has been a significant reduction in violence over the last few centuries.

None of us can remake the world, but all of us can participate in moving our society towards less violence, greater justice, and greater peace. Our job is not to worry about the future, but to do what we can today. AMEN

Proper 27, B
Mark 12:38-44

There’s a farmer in southern Minnesota who took excellent care of his land and his animals. He kept the animals clean and well fed. He was such a good farmer, in fact, that when his birthday came around, his chickens and his pig wanted to do something nice for him in return. The chicken said, “I know what we’ll do. We will give him breakfast in bed.” The Pig said, “Good idea! What will we give him?’ The chicken replied,”We’ll give him bacon & eggs.” The pig cried out, “Hold on! That’s OK for you, for it is an occasional contribution, but for me, it is total commitment!”

The gospel story today has traditionally been read as a celebration of total commitment, giving all that you have and all that you are. Living a life based on faith and giving, contrasted with false piety and buying status. It is the story of the widow’s mite. We typically hear very little about the scribes, almost in passing really, as a contrast to the widow’s noble behavior. It’s possible that we hear so little about those scribes because, generally speaking, the people giving the sermons are sitting in the most prominent seats, walking around in long robes and spouting long prayers. The robe wearing, prayer spouting prominent seat sitters don’t get such a good rap in this story.

The commentaries I read this week suggest a new take on the story concentrating more on those self aggrandizing, house devouring scribes. These commentaries propose that Jesus’s take on the situation, rather than heaping praise on the widow, is a lament against the system that would allow her to give more than she can, as the system marches merrily along, fiscally and socially rewarding the perpetuators of the system. If this story were in the news, their proposal for headlines, rather than “Widow Gives Her All For The Cause” would instead be, “Pompous Imposters Pressure Penurious Pensioners”. Some even criticized the widow for her role in perpetuating the abusive system that claimed her last two copper coins.

This widow lived in a system that rendered her essentially invisible. We are in Jerusalem now. We have jumped right over Palm Sunday and are looking at events in the week before Jesus’s execution. In fact, this observation is the last in Jesus’s public ministry according to Mark. These events take place in the temple. For a very long time, the temple lay in ruins, well, half ruins anyway. Herod has had it restored to all of its former glory, a fitting house for the Glory of God, no longer an embarrassment to the faith of the people. Or is it? Jesus challenges its virtue – house of God or not. It has become a monumental erection to the glory of the hierarchy, built on slave labor; built on the willing and unwilling contributions of the impoverished and marginalized.

We are not immune to systems and cultures that warp our perspectives. We just survived an election. Whatever your thoughts about the results or the process, understand that 6 billion, billion with a “B”, dollars were spent on campaigning for that election, an election in which both parties spent a great deal of time talking about the economy, but neither had much to say about abject poverty. Yet roughly 46.2 million people in the US live in poverty (2011 Census information). About 1.5 million American children are homeless each year (according to a 2009 study by the National Center on Family) Fewer than one-third of adults and one-half of children with a diagnosable mental disorder receive mental health services in a given year. In spite of a decades old agreement by the world’s wealthiest countries to give 0.7% of their gross national income to international development aid annually, in 2008 the United States gave just below 0.2% of its gross national income. God’s children live without clean water, adequate food, civil rights, shelter, medicine, representation. How does the system, the culture allow us to not see the tragedy?

Back to the widow. Unnoticed, alone, impoverished, she gave everything. Jesus lamented the system, but I think his life and his words show us he valued her commitment. To quote D. Mark Davis, “In a profound way, she is acting with nobility and self-sacrifice and she is contributing toward an unjust system. She is giving all that she has and she is abetting a system that will take away all that she has. It is truly a tragic situation facing the widow, because her means of practicing true piety is at the same time a system that is devoid of justice and will, in turn, exploit her.” Jesus honors the widow’s willingness to give, without honoring the system that would take the last penny from a widow. To quote Suzanne Guthrie, “The old widow trusts in God. The old widow loves God. Jesus, a holy fool himself, understands this foolish love. In the economy of the sacred this love is reckoned to her as righteousness.” The widow teaches how to give. Her giving foreshadows Jesus’s own willingness to give everything, up to and including his life for the sake of others. Mere days later, Jesus will give his life for something corrupt and broken: for all of humanity, that all humanity might know abundant life.

Today is Veteran’s Day. Today we remember before God a group of men and women who were willing to give everything, including their lives, for others. History has proclaimed some wars “justified”, some not. As Christians, we surely abhor the very concept of violence and anger and destruction. We follow the God of creation, abundant life and love. But war is not yet out-loved, power still corrupts, and men and women still offer their own lives to stand up for those who need protection. We honor these people. We pray for peace. We honor the widow. We work for justice. We honor Christ. He asks that we give ourselves, that ALL God’s people might know abundant life. It’s about life. It’s always about life…

If you would live according to the Gospel, abandon yourself simply and entirely to the action of God. (Jean-Pierre de Caussade 1675- 1751)

PROPER 26, B

Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Mark 12:28-34

If there is any possible way to sum up the entire Judeo-Christian message in a few words, we have it today in Mark’s Gospel. Let’s begin with the Old Testament reading, where we hear Moses addressing the Hebrew people before they cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. He is pleading, encouraging, ordering them to obey God’s commands, “so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Imbedded in this speech is the central command of Judaism, one that precedes many Jewish prayers, and is called the Shema. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone (or the Lord is one). You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

Moses goes on to say they should tell this to their children and their grandchildren, they should recite it night and day, and they should “bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Have you even seen a picture of an Orthodox Jew at prayer? They wear a little box in the middle of their foreheads and wrap something around their hands. Even reformed Jews often place a Mesusah on their doorposts or just inside their front door. All these items have inside of them a small piece of paper with the Shema written on it. What a potent reminder of who they are and to whom they belong!

We hear this prayer again in today’s Gospel story. Jesus is in the temple during the week of Passover and has been disputing with some Sadducees. A scribe, having overheard some of this discourse, asks Jesus, “Which commandment is the greatest of them all?”

Jesus replies, “The first is ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

I’m repeating this part of the Gospel for several reasons. I’m sure it sounds very familiar to you because for some time now we have been saying exactly this just before confession in our service. It’s an optional practice, but I like to include it because it connects us to our Jewish roots and because it so neatly summarizes what the requirements are to live a Christian life.

The first command clearly comes from Deuteronomy. The second comes from Leviticus. Notice that there are several ways in which Jesus changes the original. He combines the love of God with the love of neighbor in a new way. He also changes the Shema by adding “with all your mind.”

I see this as extremely small but extremely significant. As you all know, there are people who process things emotionally first, and there are others who process things intellectually. This tendency seems to be hard-wired. Some of us are inclined to do it only one way. I’ve always been a head person, and it took a lot of time and work to learn to process in another way. I’m still more mind than heart, but more balanced than in years past.

Jesus understood that we need to love God with all our faculties, all of which are important and should be developed as best we can. None of them should be disdained.

So, what does it mean to love God? Surely we are not talking about any sort of erotic love. I’m sure that for some people love of God is a powerful emotional feeling, but for others it may be more a matter of giving their trust to God, of turning their lives over to God. This may well include a sense of surrender, of turning their lives, their worries, and their fears over to God. In either case, awe and gratitude are surely a part of it.

So does it mean the same thing to love your neighbor? I don’t thing so. For one thing love of God is something given from a subordinate to a superior. Love of neighbor is a peer-to-peer relationship.

Notice that Jesus does not say, “Love your neighbor as you love your God.” That would be idolatry. Rather love your neighbor as yourself. This speaks of equality, doesn’t it? We are all children of God and as such deserve a certain respect and dignity. To love your neighbor as yourself is just a restatement of the golden rule. It is not asking you to surrender your life to them. In other words being a doormat is not only not required, but it would not be loving yourself equally with the other person. No one is meant to get the better of the other.

The other difference is that we love God because God loves us, or as a response to God’s love for us. Not so with our neighbors, at least not necessarily. I’ve had neighbors I loved, and some — not so much. That’s OK. We don’t have to like them all, nor entertain them all, nor confide in them all. But we owe them the dignity and respect due to any child of God, even when we hate the way they behave. After all, they may eventually learn better, if not in this life, then maybe in the next.

Loving our neighbor as ourselves means that we will not judge them, condemn them, or cast them out, in any of the forms that might take. That sort of judgment is God’s job. We can’t help making judgments for ourselves – who to have for friends, how to live our lives, what ethical stances we want to take, but we must not make those same judgments for others. We surely don’t like it when someone wants to make them for us, do we?

Did all of you grow up as I did, saying frequently to my parents, “But that’s not fair!” I seem to remember having a highly developed sense of fairness when I was young. This, combined with love of neighbor, creates an adult demand for justice. This demand for justice may begin with ourselves, but also flows out to all our neighbors, if we love them as ourselves.

Why? Because it’s obvious that it isn’t fair that I have everything I need and more, while some people don’t have enough. We may argue about how to fix this, but I think we can agree on the basic premise. Oh yes, some people don’t work as hard as I do, but I know that some work way harder and still can’t get ahead. Giving them charity is only a stop=gap. Justice is giving everyone a chance to at least have enough, so that children are not going to school hungry, so that parents have time and energy to talk to their children, so that one illness or one automotive failure does not put a family under.

Wow, when I read this lesson on Monday I thought I’d have nothing to say about it and here I am on my soapbox again. I suppose that is a reflection of the centrality of this statement to Christian life. If you don’t know or care anything about the details of the Bible, if you don’t give a fig for the fine points or any points of theology, if you just want to live a good life without a lot of thought, just remember the two commandments Jesus gave us: love God, love your neighbor as yourself. That’s enough. AMEN

PROPER 25, B

Mark 10:46-52

This story of healing blind Bartimaeus just outside Jericho marks the end of Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem. The very next thing in Mark’s Gospel is the Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem.

Last week I mentioned that this healing story and one back in Chapter 8 act as brackets around the three times Jesus tries to tell the disciples what he will face in Jerusalem. In the first story, which does not come up in the lectionary, Jesus also heals a blind man, but there are a number of differences from the Bartimaeus story.

One, the man has no name and he is brought to Jesus by others, whereas Bartimeaus cries out to Jesus on his own, even when the crowd tries to silence him. Two, Jesus uses spit and his hands to accomplish the first healing whereas to heal Bartimaeus he only says that he is healed. Three, in the first story, the healing only works partially to begin with; Jesus has to work on the man twice before he can see clearly. And fourth, Jesus sends the first man home, whereas Bartimaeus immediately follows Jesus.

I think that the bracketing of these stories in which Jesus heals physical blindness act as a commentary on the blindness of the disciples that is not a physical blindness, but rather a spiritual blindness. This is emphasized by Bartimeaus calling Jesus, “Son of David,” clearly a Messianic name.

What do I mean by spiritual blindness? Well, it’s opposite is spiritual sight or insight, a kind of wisdom or understanding that does not rely entirely on our five senses. Why is this sort of understanding so difficult for the disciples and for us?

1. We have a fixed and likely flawed map in our minds of what the world is like. This is sometimes called one’s worldview. It seems to be far easier to force the data we collect to match our own worldview than it is to revise the map when the data doesn’t match.

For instance, for the disciples, what is hard to comprehend is that Jesus is going to Jerusalem to his death. That doesn’t fit their expectation of a Messiah. They see his death as a defeat rather than the ultimate in servanthood.

For us, the difficulty is encountering miracles like healing. If some wanderer were to show up in I Falls healing people I suspect our first reaction would be to assume the person is a charlatan, a fake. When I first encountered this kind of healing, one that I was sure was authentic, I had to revise my worldview – no matter how difficult that was.

2. We are children of the Enlightenment and live rooted in a materialist culture. The enlightenment began the Age of Science, in which the scientific theory took hold. This says that to prove anything you have to have experiments that are repeatable and that always turn out the same. This requires data from the five senses only. As a result, other ways of knowing things were cast out – dreams, intuition, meditation, etc. are all deemed highly unscientific.

The resulting culture, one which we are still pretty much imbedded in, does not value any way of knowing beyond the scientific. This is what is meant by a materialist culture. It’s not about our buying habits but rather about what we accept as true. To quote Morton Kelsey, an Episcopal theologian who taught at Notre Dame, “We in the West live in an age which has doubts about people’s ability to reach out of the physical and material world and touch anything at all.”

So while the disciples accepted the miracles of Jesus without question, we would do just the opposite. While they cannot accept his coming death, we can, because we know that it has already happened in the material world.

3. One of the other causes of spiritual blindness is that we have learned to compartmentalize, maybe also a result of the Enlightenment. By compartmentalizing I mean this. We go to church on Sunday to practice our religion and learn about the Bible, but that’s Religion. It has nothing to do with what happens on Monday through Saturday. That’s business, or life, or living in the real world.

That’s what’s going on when people say that politics and religion have nothing to do with each other, in spite of the fact that almost all of Jesus’s teaching and actions had direct political meaning and implications. My brother became a Roman Catholic in his mid twenties and has gone to church every Sunday of his life since and he’s now 79. He sees nothing wrong with the hate talk of people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. That’s compartmentalizing. How can you follow Jesus and think its OK to encourage people to hate one another?

4. The last and maybe greatest reason for spiritual blindness is just not paying attention. I think all of us have problems with this at least part of the time. We get so busy, so worried, so distracted, so caught up in our duties and occupations that we don’t have time to even think about what we’re doing, much less pay attention to our spiritual well-being. I’ve talked about cultivating mindfulness before, and it may be the most important thing we can do to strengthen our spiritual insight.

When we’re not paying attention, there is never any need to think about things, no need to revise our opinions, no need to revise out world view or even our own behavior. We just keep on keeping on. It may be a cop out or it may just be habit, but it’s hard to change once we get caught up in it.

The only antidotes I know to spiritual blindness, whether due to our worldview or due to compartmentalization, or due to mindlessness, are the well known spiritual practices of prayer, meditation, daily reading, reflection, and taking the time to pay attention to what’s going on around us. We must find a way to shut off all the noise of daily living and find a way to live into silence.

It is only in having spiritual experiences, ones we recognize as such, that we can begin to expand our material worldview to include a spiritual reality. And sometimes we have to just live in hope that insight will come, even if it’s not right away.

From what we read in Acts, the disciples improved over time. We can too, even though we each seem to have our own timetable. There’s no point in whining because I wish I’d been as far along the way as Sam is, when I was her age. Better to accept that I’m a late bloomer and get on with learning whatever I can while I can.

No matter where we are in our journey of faith, God loves us and encourages us to grow so that our lives here and now may reflect God’s Kingdom. AMEN