THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT
Prayer of the Day: Eternal God, your kingdom has broken into our troubled world through the life, death, and resurrection of your Son. Help us to hear your word and obey it, and bring your saving love to fruition in our lives, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” I Corinthians 10:1-3.
By ancestors, Saint Paul means the children of Israel. Of course, as the church in Corinth was made up of both Jews and gentiles, the analogy was at least for some metaphorical-as it is for all us non-Jewish disciples of Jesus. We have been incorporated into a story that was not ours to begin with and becomes ours only by the grace of God in Jesus Christ who brings those of us who were “far off” into the commonwealth of Israel. Ephesians 2:13. We are the adopted children of Sarah and Abraham and the siblings of Jacob’s descendants who were delivered by God from slavery in Egypt, led through the wilderness for forty years and finally brought to the frontier of the promised land. Paul insists that there is much we can learn from these, our spiritual ancestors and their experiences.
Other cultures and religions recognize, perhaps better than us Christians, that we live in the shadow of our ancestors. Reverence for the departed and the recognition of their ongoing influence in our lives is very much a part of traditional African religion as well as American indigenous faith. Rituals invoking the memories of the dead give recognition to the reality that our parents, teachers and leaders shape who we have become-for better or worse. For better or worse, we live in the world they have made for us and are constrained by the consequences of their actions. The wise neither blame their ancestors for all that is wrong with their lives, nor worship them as infallible heroes. Instead, they accept their ancestors for who they were and seek to understand and grow from their wisdom while learning from their poor decisions and mistakes. We are both the proud legacy and the shameful product of those who have gone before us or, to put it in the language of Martin Luther, “at once both saint and sinner.”
Saint Paul tends to focus on Israel’s failures and shortcomings.[1] He warns the Corinthian church about the dangers of idolatry, immoral conduct, faithlessness and ingratitude. These sins are not merely matters of personal morality-though they are that too. They are beliefs, attitudes and conduct that undermine the common good, poison relationships and breed mistrust. Just as the community of Israel was plagued with sins that impeded its progress and sometimes came close to destroying it altogether, so the infighting, partisanship, jealousy, divisiveness and moral laxity within the church of Corinth were hindering the Spirit of God from forming the mind of Christ within it. These sins stood in the way of the church’s becoming all that God would have it be and hindering God’s purpose of uniting all the world such that God might finally be “all in all.”
The church is a pilgrim people. Our problem is that we have forgotten that. We have become too much at home in the Americana landscape where our churches grace the skyline of every city. We have become emotionally attached to ancient buildings and institutions that have long outlived their usefulness. Like the children of Israel, we long for the fleshpots of Egypt, forgetting that the past we long for was actually a land of bondage and oppression. We tend to look upon the past decades when sanctuaries were packed on Sunday, when Sunday school classes were overflowing and membership was on the rise as a golden age. We forget that these same churches existed quite comfortably with racial segregation, judged harshly single parents, condemned persons in love with another of the same sex and silenced anyone who dared question the morality of America’s wars and acts of oppression. I can remember enough about this supposed “golden age” of American Protestantism to know that however large, prosperous and institutionally vigorous we might have been, our faithfulness left much to be desired.
That leads me to Paul’s point. It is important to learn from the past, but not to idolize it. I am currently reading a book entitled A New History of the American South.[2] It consists of several articles by various authors covering the history of the American south from the indigenous civilizations that inhabited the land prior to European colonization up to the present. Unlike the sanitized version of American history I leaned in elementary and middle school, the authors tell the full story of our government’s ruthless removal of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands, the brutality of the slave trade, the betrayal of Black Americans with the failure of reconstruction following the civil war and the pervasiveness of systemic racism throughout the Jim Crow era that was no less prevalent in the northern states. The authors also reflect on how this history continues to shape our country today.
What I find most interesting is the church’s role in this history. The church can be found on the wrong side of every issue, justifying the institution of slavery, participating in the cultural genocide of indigenous peoples, siding with corporate bosses ruthlessly exploiting child labor and providing a religious framework for segregation. But the church can also be found following the way of Jesus. The Black church built and sustained lively communities of faith under the clouds of discrimination, economic exploitation and the constant threat of lynching. Faith communities like the Society of Friends regularly assisted enslaved persons seeking to escape bondage and find freedom in the northern states and Canada. Some pastors and their congregations fought to educate child laborers who would otherwise lack the opportunity for obtaining basic literacy. Like the history of ancient Israel, that of the church is a mixed bag. Our past can be a source of inspiration and encouragement, but equally as well it can serve as a warning against blindness, arrogance and prejudice capable of derailing our discipleship.
It is well to remember during this season of Lent that Disciples of Jesus are a people on the move. Jesus’ call to “follow me” would not make much sense if he were not going somewhere. When you are going somewhere new, however, you do not leave the old behind. You carry it with you. Disciples of Jesus carry the past in their liturgy, prayers, hymns and preaching. Their spiritual ancestors speak through the medium of worship, sometimes encouraging, sometimes instructing and sometimes warning them. You can think of the faith we confess as a snowball that gathers mass as it rolls downhill. It gathers meaning, significance and nuance through each generation’s efforts to understand, follow and testify to Jesus’ way of the cross. As I have often said before, we never read the Bible alone. Even when reading it privately, we read in the company of the Biblical saints, the teachers of the early church, Saints Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Thomas a Kempis, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Gustavo Gutierrez, John Cobb, Phyllis Trible, Douglas John Hall, parents, mentors, numerous Sunday school teachers, pastors, colleagues and friends. We recognize their triumphs, failures, wisdom and temptations as our own. In that sense, those of us who follow Jesus today have a much richer and diverse treasury of learning and wisdom to guide us. We still do not know where we are in our journey to God’s future reign or what the path in front of us holds. Nevertheless, our ancestors have left behind a wealth of spiritual resources for the journey.
Here is a poem by Rena Pries illustrating how a now landless, oppressed and dispossessed people continues to live and anticipate a better day through song, dance and memory.
Welcome to Indian Country
Where is Indian Country?
It’s everywhere we stand.
It’s anywhere we dance.
It’s where the earth loves
the feel of our feet.
Welcome to Indian Country.
What does that mean?
It means this is where
we lift our voice in song
and make a joyful drumbeat
so our hearts can sing along.
Welcome to Indian Country.
This beloved country here,
where we honor our ancestors
by growing stronger every year,
by making laughter the answer
that wipes away our tears.
Welcome to Indian Country.
What does the future hold?
In uncertain times like these
we reach for words like hope
and things we can be sure of—
sunrises, beauty, and love.
Welcome to Indian Country.
It’s everywhere we dance and
where the feast is truly grand.
Welcome to Indian Country.
Now give us back our land!
Source: Poetry (September 2022). Rena Priest is the Washington State Poet Laureate and a citizen of the Lhaq’temish [Lummi] Nation. She earned an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the recipient of an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award and of fellowships from Indigenous Nations Poets and the Vadon Foundation. She currently resides near her tribal community in Bellingham, Washington, where she was born and raised. You can read more about Rena Priest at the Academy of American Poets website and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.
[1] This and other passages taken out of context have lent support to the supercessionist fallacy, namely, that the Hebrew Scriptures portray the story of Israel as one of failure and faithlessness. The church, according to this misguided belief, is the “new” Israel that replaces the “old” Israel. Faith in Jesus is the “new” covenant that displaces the “old.” In fact, however, Paul views the gospel not as the invalidation of Israel’s covenant with its God, but the opening up of that covenant to the gentiles. We are actually invitees, though we often act as if we were the masters of the house! As the sordid details of the Corinthian church spelled out in Paul’s letters make clear, the church is no more successful in its pilgrimage of faith than was Israel. For both communities, the sojourn of faith is a story of both courageous faith and spell of unbelief; moments of triumph and instances of failure. Both communities are sustained, not by their own faithfulness to God, but by God’s faithfulness to them.
[2] A New History of the American South, (Edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Laura F. Edwards & Jon F. Sensbach; c. 2023 by The University of North Carolina Press).
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 