SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 10:44-48

Psalm 98

1 John 5:1-6

John 15:9-17

Prayer of the Day: O God, you have prepared for those who love you joys beyond understanding. Pour into our hearts such love for you that, loving you above all things, we may obtain your promises, which exceed all we can desire; through Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” John 15:9.

Brad is a tall, lanky kid with some troubling mental impairments. On any given Sunday morning you can find him in the narthex pacing back and forth looking for a conversation partner. If you are wise, you will not make eye contact because as soon as you do, Brad will latch onto you and start talking-nonstop. Brad has no sense of personal bubble. He will get right in your face. To make matters worse, he has halitosis powerful enough to slay an ox. Unless you are willing to be less than courteous, you will not escape before the start of the service. If Brad is the first person you meet when visiting our church, you might consider going somewhere else next Sunday.

Sally is generally friendly, cheerful and sociable. But there are days when she comes to church with all the fears and phobias her medication is supposed to keep in check. On those days, she might approach you and ask, “Why are you staring at me? What were you telling that lady about me? I heard the names you just called me! You’re very poor Christian to talk like that about me.” There is nothing you can say to disabuse her of her conviction that you are out to get her. If Sally is the first person you run into when visiting our church, chances are good you will not be back next week.  

Bernie is a crabby octogenarian who comes to church with his daughter. He complains audibly about the slightest noise any child might make, makes rude remarks to anyone sitting in what he imagines to be “his” pew and mutters throughout the service about how he wishes people would speak up so that they can be heard. Bernie’s politics is extreme to the point of falling off the edge of the flat earth. He is not shy about expressing his views as well as his contempt for all who do not share them, which probably includes you. If you have the misfortune of sitting near Bernie on your first visit to our church with your children, you will not come away with a good first impression.

So here is my problem with the notion that the church is supposed to be a “welcoming community.” Every church I have served has people like Brad, Sally and Bernie. They are members of our congregation because nobody else will have them. Nowhere else will anyone put up with their antics. They annoy the hell out of us, too. But they belong to us. They are part of our household of faith. We believe that they are with us because Jesus has called them here. We believe they have things to teach us that we cannot learn from anyone else. So we love them, as difficult as that sometimes is. I am mighty proud (in a Pauline sense of the word) of our church for that very reason. Consequently, if you are to be a part of our church, you must learn to love them too.

As I know I have said before, one of the big mistakes we American protestants make is overselling the church and underselling Jesus. Look to the religion section of any local paper and you will find churches advertising their friendliness, lively worship, community activism, youth programs, couples’ groups, singles groups, quilting groups and all manner of cultural and social events. The programmatic welcome mat is out. My own ELCA advertises itself on our website as a church that “embrace[s] you as a whole person–questions, complexities and all.” What we do not say on that website, though perhaps we should, is that we expect the same in return. If you cannot embrace Brad, Sally and Bernie, then my church is not the place for you. We are not the loving and affirming family you never had. We are not a place safe from insult, hurt and rejection. If you want a community where everyone affirms you, everyone strives to meet your needs, everyone makes you feel comfortable, accepted and at ease, then I recommend Sandals, Club Med or a yoga retreat in the Poconos. Church is not about making you welcome, at ease and comfortable. It is about making you a saint.

Jesus tells his disciples, “[t]his is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:12. It grates on our modernistic ears when Jesus uses “love” and “commandment” in the same breath. Love cannot be compelled, can it? Love should be given freely, spontaneously and without coercion. Otherwise, it is not truly love, is it? That, not to put too fine a point on it, is a bunch of Hallmark crap. The love Jesus is talking about is a matter of action, not words. As John the Evangelist pointed out to us last week, all the pity, compassion and love we might have for our hungry siblings is empty sentimentality if we do not come across with something into which those siblings can sink their teeth.

Love is a spiritual discipline. It develops with practice. Sometimes before you can love someone, you have to act like you do. You need to put up with a lot, forgive a lot, try and fail a lot before you finally begin to know people, learn their stories, understand their struggles and see them for the unique and fascinating individuals they are. It takes a long time before understanding breeds compassion, compassion breeds caring and caring grows into love. Love is not something you fall into. It is like learning a musical instrument. A lot of practice lies between picking up the violin for the first time and the concert performance. Abiding in love is damned hard work. If you are not up for that, church is not the place for you.

I meet a lot of folks these days who accuse the church of hypocrisy because we do not live up to the love we profess. In such encounters, I feel very much like Inigo Montoya from the movie, The Princess Bride, who famously said “[y]ou keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” If Christians are hypocrites because they do not meet the standard of love to which they aspire, then every Olympic athlete competing for gold, but who comes away with silver or bronze instead is a hypocrite. Every student who ever aspired to get an A but managed only a B is a hypocrite. Hypocrites, according to this warped understanding, are people with high aspirations pushing them to become better, stronger and more courageous than they are. In fact, however, hypocrites are those who claim to have reached aspirational goals that they have not actually met. They are people who pretend to be better than they truly are. To be sure, there are hypocrites in the church as there are everywhere else. But in defense of hypocrites, I will say they have at least enough of a moral compass left to be ashamed of the failures they try to cover up. More revolting than hypocrites are those who admit to having no standards and take a cynical pride in mocking those who do by remarking, “well, unlike all the hypocrites, at least I’m honest!” Here the words of Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld ring true: “Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.”

A more honest (dare I say less hypocritical?) portrayal of the church (are you listening ELCA?) would be to say that we are a community of flawed people who have been embraced as whole persons–questions, complexities and all by a God who loves us completely, freely and unconditionally. We strive, often with only limited success, to love as we have been loved, to follow Jesus in giving ourselves to humble service and truthful witness in word and deed. We invite you to join us on our journey to becoming the people our God would have us be. But be prepared for hurt feelings, insults, rejection and misunderstanding. That is all part of abiding in love with people who have not yet got it quite right, but are getting there little by little. This is boot camp for learning love. Are you up for that?

Here is a poem by Julia Kasdorf about church and the way love is learned, practiced and grows.

What I Learned from my Mother 

Source: Sleeping Preacher (c. by Julia Kasdorf, 1992; pub. by University of Pittsburgh Press). Julia Kasdorf (b. 1962) is a Poet, essayist, and editor. She was born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania and received her BA from Goshen College. She earned an MA in creative writing and a PhD from New York University. She is the editor for the journal, Christianity and Literature and author of several books of poetry. You can find out more about Julia Kasdorf and read more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 8:26-40

Psalm 22:25-31

1 John 4:7-21

John 15:1-8

Prayer of the Day: O God, you give us your Son as the vine apart from whom we cannot live. Nourish our life in his resurrection, that we may bear the fruit of love and know the fullness of your joy, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.” John 15:1-2.

John Haig lived across the alley from the house in which I grew up. He was a tall, strong, dower man who mostly kept to himself. John took great pride in his house and yard. His hedges were always trimmed, the lawn mown and God help any weed that might dare poke up its head in John’s garden. In addition to his impressive stands of azaleas, rhododendrons and rose bushes, John grew grapes. That was quite a feat in my western Washington home. The weather, the soil and everything else about our climate is wrong for grapes. Though neither my folks nor, I suspect, anyone else in the neighborhood would ever have told John to his face, we were convinced that his vineyard project was doomed to failure. But we were wrong. Somehow, John got his grapes to grow and to yield a fruitful harvest each year.

One of my earliest memories of John Haig was watching him tend his grapes. Each fall in October or early November he would come out carrying a pair of shears that looked for all the world like medieval torture implements. With these fearful tools he cleared away the dead vines and cut the live ones down to a fraction of their original length. There was not a hint of gentleness in John’s pruning. To the contrary, there was a certain ruthless determination in his work. One could almost pity the poor vines facing the coming winter wounded, diminished and bare. For that reason, I am not so sure Jesus’ words in Sunday’s gospel are all that reassuring. It is no fun getting pruned, not for grape vines and not for the church.

Early this year I learned that the church in which I was baptized and spent my early childhood closed its doors. The church from which I received my first call and served for my first five years of ministry met the same fate in the mid nineties. Four congregations within my conference closed during the last ten years of my ministry. In the United States of America, the church as we have known it is vanishing. My own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recently established a “Commission on a Renewed Lutheran Church,” the purpose of which is to reconsider statements of purpose for the church and its organizational structure. Finally, reality is setting in. Our leaders are at last acknowledging that our denomination, as currently constituted, is no longer sustainable. This is all very sad.  The congregations to which I refer were once vital communities of discipleship, witness and service. They bore much good fruit in their time. Over the last century, our church has developed global ministries that have provided disaster relief, anti-hunger programs, immigration assistance to refugees and many other important mission initiatives. Given our diminishing membership and support, it is possible that we might not be able to conduct these ministries in the near future or that the levels of our support for them will be drastically reduced. This season of pruning is a painful one.

I must admit that I do not much like the idea of having a God like John Haig coming after us with his iron shears. The only consolation here is that John Haig loved his grape vines just as God loves the church. John knew, as did Jesus, that grape vines left untended and unpruned are unlikely to survive the winter cold and probably will not bear fruit worth harvesting. In order to be fruitful in the coming year, the vines need to be pruned back. Unfruitful branches have to be loped off. Dead wood must be cut out. If the vine is to live, thrive and be fruitful, it must be cut down to within an inch of its life.

I believe that, too often, the church has measured its worth and success in terms of its influence within society, its ability to build and expand its institutions and its membership growth. In reality, however, these very markers of success point to areas of potential spiritual weakness. The exalted status enjoyed for much of the last century by the church in American culture is due in no small part to our willingness to play the role of upholding white middle class morality, blessing our nation’s wars and promoting patriotism as a spiritual virtue. Our pride in our institutions has often led to a reluctance to criticize, reform and re-center them on the good news of Jesus’ Christ. Our lust for growth has often led to our selling the church and all the programs, perks and benefits it can bestow rather than calling people to the privilege and challenge of discipleship with Jesus. As a result, we have ended up with a lot of unfruitful branches and dead wood. We need a good pruning and, if my instincts are correct, that is exactly what we are getting. Perhaps when we have been shorn of everything except the good word of the gospel, we will finally be small enough, poor enough and weak enough for God to make good use of us.

What makes Jesus’ unnerving words about the season of pruning hopeful is the fact that this season is, after all, a season. As such, it points invariably forward. There is for the pruned vine a “whither.” The day will come when, warmed by the sun, fed by the soil and watered with the spring rains, the vine will spring up renewed, strengthened and ready to bear fruit. We can know with certainty, then, that whatever shape, size and makeup the church may have in coming generations, it will be precisely the church God needs to proclaim the good news of Jesus and the reign of God for which he lived, died and continues to live.

Here is  poem by Robert Frost speaking to the melancholy of a season’s end, yet offers a faint hint of promise.

Reluctance

Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost, (c. 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.) pp.29-30. Born in 1874, Robert Frost held various jobs throughout his college years. He was a worker at a Massachusetts mill, a cobbler, an editor of a small town newspaper, a schoolteacher and a farmer. By 1915, Frost’s literary acclaim was firmly established. On his seventy-fifth birthday, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in his honor. The State of Vermont named a mountain after him and he was given the unprecedented honor of being asked to read a poem at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Through the lens of rural life in New England, Frost’s poetry ponders the metaphysical depths. His poems paint lyrical portraits of natural beauty, though ever haunted by shadow and decay. You can learn more about Robert Frost and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 4:5-12

Psalm 23

1 John 3:16-24

John 10:11-18

Prayer of the Day: O Lord Christ, good shepherd of the sheep, you seek the lost and guide us into your fold. Feed us, and we shall be satisfied; heal us, and we shall be whole. Make us one with you, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” I John 3:17.

That question haunts me. One of the few regrets I have in life is that Sesle and I never took in a foster child. I have encountered a number of foster children who have found their way into loving and secure homes where they were able to thrive. But I have also encountered too many who have languished in group homes where they have received little in the way of personal attention, were compelled to wear ill fitting clothing and lacked sufficient space and privacy. I have encountered children with physical and emotional problems who were bounced from one foster care family or facility to another without ever receiving the care they needed. We could have taken in one or more of these children, but we did not. There were good reasons for that. We had three children of our own, after all. We had serious health issues in our family that were taxing on us and jobs demanding long hours and weekends in the office. Still, the truth is that we had the resources, we had the space and we could have made the time. So I have to ask myself, how does God’s love abide in me?

Hunger, poverty and the injustice that gives rise to these scourges have always been high priorities in my giving, volunteerism and ministry. Yet when I drive into Boston for doctor appointments (a frequent occurrence these days), I routinely drive past dirty and disheveled men and women with their soggy cardboard signs reading, “unemployed, three kids,” “hungry, haven’t eaten in days,” “need money for meds.” There are good reasons for not stopping. For one thing, I don’t carry much cash these days and I doubt I could readily get my hands on what little I have from behind the wheel. Furthermore, stopping on a busy street in Boston can easily result in an accident. Besides, these folks have problems bigger than I can solve with a few bills. Better to make a check out to the local charity and let the professionals deal with these people. Yet the truth is, I could pull over to the curb for the few minutes it would take to hand someone a few dollars. These folks are not asking me to solve all their problems-just the immediate one, namely, a meal. Moreover, the professionals are not out on the street where I meet these folks, but I am. So, again, I wonder how does God’s love abide in me?

These are just a few instances in which I could have helped a brother or sister[1] in need-but did not. My life experience reflects all too accurately the attitude that appears to have been taking hold in the faith community John addresses. It is an attitude that has taken hold in a world where nations guard their borders with guns, dogs and barbed wire against people desperate to find food, shelter and sanctuary. It is an attitude prevalent in communities like mine that resist affordable housing with law suits, letter writing campaigns and ballot initiatives. It is an attitude that has taken hold in congregations guarding their assets, facilities and resources against the needs of the communities in which they reside and against the call from the church at large to support global mission and ministry. How does God’s love abide in us, who are part and parcel of this tightfisted world?

Author, philosopher and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel warns us that the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. The Nazis nearly succeeded in murdering the Jews of Europe because too many people simply did not care enough to stop them. I fear that, in much the same way, the hard won protections people of color have fought to put into law opening a way out from under the suffocating oppression of systemic racism will soon be erased because too few people care. I fear that women will increasingly be denied critical reproductive health care because it is simply not important enough to protect. I fear that transgender teens, already at risk for self harm and suicide, will lose access to the care and treatment they need due to misguided laws championed by religious extremists and implemented by state legislators eager to placate them, all because too few of us care. What matters to the American people, we are told repeatedly, are “kitchen table issues.” That may be the case. Just as so many people in Europe looked the other way as the Jews were being dispossessed and murdered, so too many of us Americans will be content to sit in the security of our kitchens stuffing our faces with roast beef, offering perfidious prayers while our siblings in the human family suffer. In the words of poet Robert Frost, “I think I know enough of hate/ To say that for destruction ice/ Is also great/ And would suffice.”  

How does God’s love abide in me? I think that the only comfort to be derived from this haunting question is that it haunts. If we are asking ourselves this question, it can only mean that our hearts have not yet turned to ice and that love for our siblings has not yet grown cold. It can only mean that there is yet some stirring of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. It can only mean that we are still capable of recognizing the voice of Jesus calling to us from people who desperately need the help, support and advocacy we are capable of offering. While the hour may be late, it is not too late, as long as we have life and breath left in us. Now, more than ever, we need to heed the Spirit posing to us this haunting question: How does God’s love abide in me?  

Here is the poem by Robert Frost to which I alluded above.

Fire and Ice

Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost, (c. 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.) p. 220. Born in 1874, Robert Frost held various jobs throughout his college years. He was a worker at a Massachusetts mill, a cobbler, an editor of a small town newspaper, a schoolteacher and a farmer. By 1915, Frost’s literary acclaim was firmly established. On his seventy-fifth birthday, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in his honor. The State of Vermont named a mountain after him and he was given the unprecedented honor of being asked to read a poem at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Through the lens of rural life in New England, Frost’s poetry ponders the metaphysical depths. His poems paint lyrical portraits of natural beauty, though ever haunted by shadow and decay. You can learn more about Robert Frost and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

[1] I am aware that many biblical commentators assert that Saint John is principally concerned with the faith community to which he writes and that “brother or sister” refers to fellow believers within the community. I am not convinced that is so. Nonetheless, whatever John may have intended in this context, we know that Jesus never limited our duty of love to any group or community. Just as God lavishes God’s good gifts on all people regardless of merit, so disciples are called to reflect that same love to all people, even the enemy. Matthew 5:43-48.

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 3:12-19

Psalm 4

1 John 3:1-7

Luke 24:36b-48

Prayer of the Day: Holy and righteous God, you are the author of life, and you adopt us to be your children. Fill us with your words of life, that we may live as witnesses to the resurrection of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” Luke 24:46-48.

So ends the Gospel of Luke-and so continued its sequel, the Book of Acts where Luke tells the story of how the church, which began as a local Jewish movement in Palestine, expanded into the heart of the Roman empire with the dream of reaching the end of the known world. The path was fraught with linguistic differences, class distinctions, legal barriers and cultural differences. Saint Paul and his missionary companions and contemporaries were compelled to deal with difficult questions as they sought to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to communities of the Jewish diaspora that had never heard of Jesus and knew nothing of his ministry. So, too, they struggled to make that good news intelligible to non-Jewish audiences that did not know the ancient scriptural narratives about Israel’s God and had no idea what a “messiah” was.

It was not smooth sailing. Saint Paul insisted that his gentile converts be received into the church as they were, without having to undergo circumcision or observe the ritual and dietary requirements of Israel’s faith tradition. From Paul’s perspective, the good news that is Jesus welcomed everyone into God’s redemptive covenant on the same terms, namely, through faith in God’s promises. Faith in Jesus alone made disciples of Jew, gentile, male, female, slave, free, citizen and non-citizen. After all, Abraham’s faith saved him before Israel, circumcision and the Torah existed. Why should more than faith be required to save anyone else?

Paul, however, experienced stiff resistance from within the church. In his letter to the Galatian church, he recounts a dispute he had with Saint Peter and Saint James over their segregation in table fellowship between Jewish and gentile believers. This practice outraged Paul. If there is but one Body, how can there be two tables? This was a point on which Paul could not compromise. As far as he was concerned, the integrity of the gospel was at stake. For many Jewish believers, both within and outside the church, Paul’s radical invitation for gentiles to enter into Israel’s covenant relationship with God without requiring their participation in Israel’s faith traditions was a bridge too far. Luke’s account in the Book of Acts indicates that Paul’s openness to receiving gentile believers led finally to his arrest, imprisonment and journey to Rome in chains to be tried before the emperor’s tribunal.

Being a life-long Lutheran, I have always tended to side with Paul. If there is one thing every Lutheran agrees on, wherever on the spectrum of high church, low church, conservative or liberal we may fall, it is this: Salvation is by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ. God’s gifts of forgiveness, sanctification and eternal life can never be earned. They can only be received with gratitude and joy. Of course, I still subscribe to that assertion. But I have also developed a more sympathetic view of Paul’s critics. They were concerned, rightly I believe, that the good news of Jesus Christ was losing its grounding in the scriptures and traditions of Israel. Paul’s critics believed that the faithful life, obedient death and glorious resurrection of Jesus could never be understood rightly apart from its Jewish roots. Without the stories of the matriarchs and patriarchs, Moses and the Exodus, the Torah and the testimony of the prophets, “faith in Jesus” too easily becomes a mere abstraction. It is too readily reduced to mere intellectual assent to a doctrinal proposition.

Saint James recognized this danger and addressed it pointedly:

“But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith without works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.” James 2:18-26.

The above passage is the least favorite among us Lutherans. Indeed, Martin Luther is known to have referred to the Letter of James as “an epistle of straw.” But I believe James points to a danger that Paul may have failed to appreciate and that has, in fact, done great damage. Abstraction is not the only evil to arise from divorcing the gospel of Jesus Christ from its Jewish roots. Though hardly what Saint Paul intended, as the rift between the church and the synagogue grew, the New Testament began to be understood by the church as a repudiation rather than a commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures. Naturally, this implied a repudiation of Judaism as well. Read in the context of a gentile church now recognized as the religion of the empire and separate from the Jewish community, the gospels, and the Gospel of John in particular, take on a decidedly darker interpretation of Judaism. Rather than the beloved community of Israel in whose traditions Jesus understood himself and was understood by his disciples, “the Jews” become opponents of Jesus, enemies of the gospel and “Christ killers.” Luther’s vile rants against the Jews remain a painful and disgraceful stain on my own spiritual heritage as does our complicity in Europe’s horrendous history of antisemitic violence culminating in the Holocaust. However misguided they may have been in many respects, I believe that Paul’s critics were onto something important. Perhaps if Paul had been more attentive to and less confrontational with his critics and Martin Luther less dismissive of Saint Jame’s epistle, we might all have ended up in a much better place.   

To be clear, I do not believe that Paul intended to divorce the gospel of Jesus Christ from its Jewish roots. Neither do I believe James is suggesting that salvation is a reward to be earned by works of the law or that faith is not enough to make faithful disciples. Like Paul, James recognized that “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” James 1:17. That would include faith. But James would have us know that faith is always embodied in the lives of the faithful. It is not a doctrinal proposition. Faith is a habit of the heart on full display throughout the Hebrew Scriptures in the lives of the faithful-both patriarchs and prostitutes. “The Jews” are not Jesus’ enemies. They are his people, his family, his siblings and his disciples. Without their witness, we can never properly understand and follow Jesus. That is why, prior to commissioning his disciples to preach the gospel to the whole world, Jesus “opened their minds to understand the scriptures,” which at this point could only have been the “the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms.” Luke 24:44-45.

For the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ and for the sake of our spiritual siblings in Judaism, we need to recapture in our liturgy, preaching and teaching the centrality of the faith in which Jesus lived, the traditions that shaped his life and ministry and the people of whom he was a member and who he loved. Here is a poem by Karl Shapiro reflecting the pain inflicted upon the Jewish people as a result of our flawed readings and interpretations of the scriptures.

Jew

Source: Poetry, (August 1943). Karl Jay Shapiro (1913-2000) was an American poet. He was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He attended the University of Virginia during the 1932-1933 academic year. In a critical poem reflecting on his experiences there, he remarked that “to hurt the Negro and avoid the Jew is the curriculum.” He continued his studies at the Peabody Institute, majoring in piano. He attended Johns Hopkins University from 1937 to 1939. In 1940, he enrolled in a library science school associated with Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, where he was also employed. Shapiro served as a United States Army company clerk during World War II in the Pacific theater. During this time, he wrote many of the poems that propelled him into recognition. Shapiro never completed an undergraduate degree. Nonetheless, he was retained at Johns Hopkins as an associate professor of writing from 1947 to 1950. From 1950-1956 he served as editor of Poetry and as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and at Indiana University. In 1956 he left the editorship and taught English at the University of Illinois while editing the Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He thereafter moved to the University of California, Davis, where he became professor emeritus of English in 1985. You can read more about Karl Shapiro and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

1 John 1:1—2:2

John 20:19-31

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, with joy we celebrate the day of our Lord’s resurrection. By the grace of Christ among us, enable us to show the power of the resurrection in all that we say and do, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” Acts 4:32.

Along with Jesus’ urging the rich young man to “sell all that you have and distribute to the poor” and his command to the disciples generally to “sell your possessions and give alms,” this account of the early church’s disregard for private ownership is one of the most difficult for American Christians to digest. That is because it runs contrary the most sacred tenant of our religion of capitalism. Without private ownership, the argument goes, there can be no commerce, trade, economic growth or production of wealth. History has demonstrated repeatedly that command economies do not work. Efforts to construct national economic systems or religious communities on the basis of common ownership have failed repeatedly.[1] Thus, whatever the early church in Jerusalem may have done in its infancy cannot be taken as a model for imitation.

While the failures of command economies and “common purse” communities are lifted up repeatedly in defense of capitalism, capitalism’s own failures are frequently underplayed or flatly denied. Yet if the test for an economic system’s success is whether it “works,” then the next question must be, “for whom does it work?” Clearly, capitalism did not work for the indigenous communities in the Americas driven off their land by industrial hunger for land, water, minerals, petroleum and timber. It did not work for thousands brought to this country as slaves, whose labor turned the United States into an economic powerhouse, but who have been systematically excluded from the resulting benefits. Capitalism did not work to preserve the world’s forests, oceans, rivers and lakes from ruthless exploitation and environmental harm. It did not protect communities throughout the rust belt from collapse into poverty when their labor skills became obsolete or could be purchased more cheaply overseas by the industries around which those communities were built and upon which their livelihood came to depend. Capitalism does nothing for those among us who are too impaired, too sick or too old to be “gainfully employed” as that term is variously defined in terms of marketability. Capitalism is about one thing: profit. If the financial statements are in the black and the shareholders happy, nothing else matters.

Though I have taken a couple of graduate level courses in economics, I am hardly an authority on the subject.[2] Nonetheless, the Bible has a few things to say about economics-and they do not support the unfounded claims of sovereignty made by modern nation states or the claims of individuals to any absolute right of property ownership. First and foremost, “the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” Psalm 24:1. When Adam and Eve were placed in the garden of Eden, they were not endowed with ownership. They were simply given the job of “tilling and keeping it.” Genesis 2:15. So, too, the people of Israel were not given sovereign control over the land of Canaan. They were given the privilege-and the accompanying responsibilities-of dwelling in it.[3] This privilege was not a “right.” It could be, and was for a time, revoked.[4] That surely throws into doubt the purported “rights” of modern nation states to regulate into non-personhood those who seek to share the land they claim as “theirs.”

Second, it follows that an individual’s possession of land or personal property is contingent. As the hymn says, “All that we have is Thine alone, a trust, O Lord from thee.” Or, as Saint Paul says, “What have you that you did not receive? If then, you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift.?” I Corinthians 4:7. Despite what prosperity gospel preachers would have us believe, wealth is not a sign of God’s favor or approval. Saint James reminds us in graphic terms that wealth and privilege are the result of ruthless exploitation of one’s fellow human beings. James 5:1-6. So what can be said of us who are rich? Those of us who have benefited from systemic racism, segregation and oppression? What is to be said for people like me who have managed to live well and accumulate enough wealth to retire comfortably? The answer lies in our lesson from Acts. Our wealth can be deemed a blessing only if it is put to the use of blessing others. The fact that we have within the Body of Christ people who struggle to put food on the table, people who cannot obtain adequate medical care, people who lack adequate shelter more than suggests that people like me are not doing an adequate job of managing what has come into our possession. I think the biggest impediment to the church’s witness is the fact that the church remains a microcosm of the rest of the world’s huge disparities between haves and have nots.  

You might be asking why it is that I confine my analysis to the Body of Christ, the church. Does not any of this apply to society as a whole? It does. The parable of the Last Judgment makes clear that “the nations” as well as individuals will be judged by how well or poorly they have treated the most vulnerable persons in their midst. Matthew 25:31-46. The church in Acts understood that very well. But they did not proclaim that word to the nations by way of preachy-screechy social statements condemning poverty, racism and injustice. They did it by practicing distributive justice, inclusion and care for the vulnerable within their midst. By their very existence they demonstrated that living under the reign of terror imposed by the empire, racial/cultural animosity, hunger and poverty is not the only way to be human. The church in Acts, by its very being, cried out “Hey world, it doesn’t have to be this way!”

Mark Twain is credited with observing that, “To be good is noble. To teach another to be good is more noble still-and a lot less trouble.” I do not believe that press statements from bishops, social statements adopted by church assemblies or campaigns to generate cookie cutter letters to congress move the societal needle much. Particularly is this so when their origin is a largely white, slightly left of center, upper middle class denomination from which such activities are expected. But what if the church were to begin being the kind of change it likes to advocate? What if American churches like my own Lutheran Church in America took the affirmative step of making reparations to Black churches doing ministry in communities hard hit by systemic racism?[5] What if our larger, suburban, wealthier churches began subsidizing the staff of smaller, poorer urban and rural congregations? What if our churches made a commitment to ensure that no family in any of our congregations would ever be without shelter, no individual would ever go hungry, no elderly person left abandoned in an institution, no one baptized in our church would ever die alone? If the Book of Acts is any indication, such action would lend “great power” to our “testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.” Acts 4:33. Maybe, just maybe our world might catch a glimpse of the reign God desires for us and begin to understand that the way of unrestrained greed and consumption that is capitalism is not the way things have to be.

Here is a poem by Roberta Hill Whiteman posing the question: “what makes property so private?” Who owns what and by what right?

Philadelphia Flowers

Source: Philadelphia Flowers (c. by Roberta Hill Whiteman; pub. Holy Cow! Press, 1996). Roberta Hill Whiteman (b.1947) is an Oneida poet from Wisconsin. She lived with her family on the reservation and also in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Hill earned a BA in creative communication from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, an MA in fine arts from the University of Montana, and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. Hill married Ernest Whiteman, an artist, who illustrated her first collection of poetry. They have three children. Hill is currently an Associate Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a recipient of the 1991 Wisconsin Idea Foundation’s Excellence Award. You can read more about Roberta Hill Whiteman and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

[1] There are some notable exceptions. Monastic orders have existed for millennia holding to the belief that all goods are held by and for the community and its missions. Faith communities such as the Bruderhof have maintained themselves for decades on the basis of shared ownership and corporate responsibility for the sick, elderly and dependent among them. Keeping such communities healthy and intact requires an extraordinary degree of discipline and commitment to a shared vision of life together and agreed upon conventions of conduct and accountability.  

[2] For the record, I am not against business, commerce or markets. Markets serve a useful purpose enabling us to employ our skills and knowledge to obtain the goods we need and earn our livings. Capitalism, however, elevates the market to the metaphysical status of a godlike force, insisting that it can, if left to its own devices, deliver a just, prosperous and livable society. It teaches that the engine of greed can fuel the best possible good for all people. That, according to Saint Paul, Saint Augustine and Martin Luther, to mention just a few, is madness.

[3] Though the command given to the human race in Genesis to “fill the earth and subdue it” has been the source of much mischief, we need to recall that the Hebrew word “CABASH” translated in Genesis 1:28 as “subdue” is the same word employed in God’s command for Israel to subdue the land of Canaan. Numbers 32:22; Numbers 32:29; Joshua 18:1. The subjugation of the land meant more than merely driving out Israel’s enemies. Very specific commands were given to Israel directing the people to care for the land and its non-human inhabitants. For example, trees were to be spared from the ravages of war. Deuteronomy 20:19-20. Egg producing birds were to be spared from slaughter. Deuteronomy 22:6-7. The sabbath rest, mandated for all human beings from king to servant, extended also to animals. Exodus 23:12. Moreover, the land itself was to be given a year’s sabbath rest from cultivation every seven years. Exodus 23:10-11. God was worshiped not only as the provider for human beings, but for all living creatures. Psalm 104:10-23. The Bible is big on ecology. In fact, insofar as the New Testament declares that God’s goal for the universe is the reconciliation of the world in Christ (II Corinthians 5:19), you could say that the Bible is all about ecology.

[4] It is worth noting that, following their return from exile in Babylon to the promised land, an event attributed to God’s mercy and forgiveness, the people of Israel were once again allowed to live in the land of Canaan. Israel was not, however, permitted to exercise sovereignty there. The privilege of dwelling in the land does not come with the power to dominate it.  

[5] See Open Letter to the ELCA Presiding Bishop and Synodical Bishops: A Modest Proposal for Reparational Tithe.