FIRST SUNDAY OF CHRISTMAS

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

Psalm 148

Galatians 4:4-7

Luke 2:22-40

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, you wonderfully created the dignity of human nature and yet more wonderfully restored it. In your mercy, let us share the divine life of the one who came to share our humanity, Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
   and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
   and her salvation like a burning torch. Isaiah 62:1.

Jerusalem is no less in need of vindication and salvation today than it was in the time of the prophet. The city’s religious significance, limited in Isaiah’s day to a small band of Judean exiles, is now global. For Jews, Jerusalem is the City of David, the site of Solomon’s temple, the place where Abraham nearly offered his son Isaac as a burnt offering and, according to some Jewish traditions, the site of creation. For many Muslims, Jerusalem is the third holiest city after Mecca and Medina. It is the place to which the prophet Mohamed was transported during his “night journey.” Of course, Christians know Jerusalem as the place where Jesus entered in triumph, was arrested, crucified and raised from death. Numerous unholy crusades have been launched and brutal wars fought by these faith groups for control of this holy city.

But religion is not the only factor driving the violence infecting Jerusalem and the holy land generally. In fact, for centuries, Jews, Muslims and Christians lived in the region of Palestine peacefully. Then, after centuries of violent persecution culminating in the Holocaust, a group of Jewish leaders finally came to the conclusion that a people without a country is no people and that the world will do nothing to prevent its extermination. So the state of Israel was born in Palestine and, for the first time in centuries, Jews had voice in the global community of nations. Now, in a cruel and ironic twist of fate, Palestinians-likewise a stateless people-are experiencing state sponsored violence at the hands of the Jewish state with little to protect them beyond toothless UN resolutions. The potential for ethnic, cultural and religious violence is always amplified when matters of national sovereignty are thrown into the mix.

And there is the matter of oil. The governments of many Middle Eastern nations with horrendous records of human rights abuses receive western support and a pass on their barbaric conduct because they protect the flow of petroleum from the world’s biggest oil reserves to Europe and the United States. American foreign policy requires balancing support for Israel, its most loyal ally in the region, against the need for stable relationships with oil rich Arab countries. The geopolitical stability resulting from this precarious balancing act comes at the expense of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank who, being stateless, have no government to represent their interests and thus no say in treaties, defense agreements and economic pacts that have profound consequences for their lives.

Meanwhile, the Christian population in Jerusalem, most of which is Palestinian, continues to decrease. Feared by the Israeli government as terrorist sympathizers and distrusted by their fellow countrymen who question their loyalty to the Palestinian cause, Christians are finding it increasingly difficult to navigate the polarities of the region.

Beyond the obvious humanitarian concerns plaguing the middle east, should Christians care about Jerusalem? Does the fate of Jerusalem matter any more than the fate of any other city in the world? Wouldn’t the gospel be the gospel whether Jerusalem thrives or perishes? I think not. The three Abrahamic religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity have this in common: place and time. Our beliefs are grounded in historical events that occurred in specific places. Ours is not a religion of pure spirit divorced from the things of the world. The career of Muhamad, the saga of Israel and the life and death of Jesus and his disciples’ witness to his resurrection are not mere historical accidents illustrative of but not essential to larger moral and spiritual truths. They are intertwined with and inseparable from our teaching, faith and practice. It is no accident either that all three of these faiths intersect at Jerusalem. Though this holy city has been at the center of some very bloody and unholy conflicts throughout history, that should not and need not be so.

The Hebrew Scriptures speak of Zion as a mother whose children include Egypt, Babylon, Ethiopia and Tyer. See Psalm 87. Jerusalem and Mount Zion is to be the source of a salvation that will embrace the whole world:

“In days to come
   the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
   and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
   Many peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
   to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
   and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
   and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
   and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
   and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
   neither shall they learn war any more.” Isaiah 2:2-4.  

The New Testament concludes its witness with a description of the New Jerusalem, which, renewed as it is, remains firmly grounded in the symbols and history of both Israel and the church:

“And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Revelation 21:10-14.

Nonetheless, the holy city is open to all peoples: “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.” Revelation 21:24. There will be no closed border for “[i]ts gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.” Revelation 21:25.

The New Jerusalem is everything the current Jerusalem is not-but might be. Might be if enough Jews, Muslims and Christians own up to all that Jerusalem means to them; if enough ecumenically minded representatives of all three faiths can help us all see beyond the ancient blood feuds, global politics, conflicting claims of sovereignty to a different way of honoring the holy city; if our longing to see a Jerusalem that reflects God’s future prevails over the cycles of retribution that entrap us in our violent past, then we might just catch a glimpse of that holy city God is so eager to give us.

Here is a fine old hymn featuring Jerusalem and all the symbolic, metaphoric and allegoric power it carries. It was written by Johann M. Meyfart in 1626 and translated from the original German into English in 1858 by Catherine Winkworth. It did not make the cut for our more recent Lutheran Hymnals. Would that the holy city of Jerusalem someday reflect in some small measure the mercy of God and the oneness of humanity shared by all of the Abrahamic faiths!

Jerusalem, Thou City Fair and High

1. Jerusalem, thou city fair and high,
Would God I were in thee!
My longing heart fain, fain to thee would fly,
It will not stay with me.
Far over vale and mountain,
Far over field and plain,
It hastes to seek its Fountain
And leave this world of pain.

2. O happy day and yet far happier hour,
When wilt thou come at last,
When fearless to my Father’s love and pow’r,
Whose promise standeth fast,
My soul I gladly render?
For surely will His hand
Lead her with guidance tender
To heav’n, her fatherland.

3. A moment’s space, and gently, wondrously,
Released from earthly ties,
Elijah’s chariot bears her up to thee,
Thro’ all these lower skies
To yonder shining regions,
While down to meet her come
The blessed angel legions
And bid her welcome home.

4. O Zion, hail! Bright city, now unfold
The gates of grace to me.
How many a time I longed for thee of old
Ere yet I was set free
From yon dark life of sadness,
Yon world of shadowy naught,
And God had given the gladness,
The heritage, I sought.

5. What glorious throng and what resplendent host
Comes sweeping swiftly down?
The chosen ones on earth who wrought the most,
The Church’s brightest crown,
Our Lord hath set to meet me,
As in the far-off years
Their words oft came to greet me
In yonder land of tears.

6. The partiarchs’ and prophets’ noble train,
With all Christ’s followers true,
Who bore the cross and could the worst disdain
That tyrants dared to do,
I see them shine forever,
All-glorious as the sun,
Mid light that fadeth never,
Their perfect freedom won.

7. And when within that lovely Paradise
At last I safely dwell,
What songs of bliss shall from my lips arise,
What joy my tongue shall tell,
While all the saints are singing
Hosannas o’er and o’er,
Pure hallelujahs ringing
Around me evermore!

8. Unnumbered choirs before the shining throne
Their joyful anthems raise
Till heaven’s glad halls are echoing with the tone
Of that great hymn of praise
And all its host rejoices,
And all its blessed throng
Unite their myriad voices
In one eternal song.

Source: The Lutheran Hymnal, (c. 1941 by Concordia Publishing House) Hymn # 619. Johann Matthäus Meyfart (1590-1642) was a German Lutheran theologian, educator, minister and musician. The son of a minister, he was born in Jena and studied at the University of Jena from which he graduated in 1603. He went on to study theology at the University of Wittenberg in 1614. In 1633 Meyfart was appointed professor of theology at the University of Erfurt. He served as rector of the university in1634. Throughout his final years he served as a minister at the Predigerkirche (“Preachers’ Church”) where he was buried when he died in 1642. Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878) was an English teacher and hymnwriter. She was born in London to a wealthy silk merchant. Though born into wealth and privilege, Winkworth was an opponent of worker exploitation common to the industrial revolutionary era in which she lived and a fierce critic of British colonialism. She was also an advocate for wider educational opportunities for women and girls.  Winkworth translated the above hymn of Johann Meyfart as well as many other German hymns into English, thereby enriching the worship life of English speaking Lutherans.

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Luke 1:46b-55 or Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26

Romans 16:25-27

Luke 1:26-38

Prayer of the Day: Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. With your abundant grace and might, free us from the sin that would obstruct your mercy, that willingly we may bear your redeeming love to all the world, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Luke 1:38.

A couple of years ago a heated argument exploded over social media among clerics over the merits (or lack thereof) of the then (and perhaps now) popular song, Mary Did You Know[1] The lyrics question Mary, asking if she knew the eventual significance and salvation her son would have for humankind and the miracles he would perform. Some of my colleagues maintained that the song prompts salutary reflection upon Mary and the extent of her insight into the destiny of her holy child. Others felt it amounted to condescending “mansplaining” that denigrated Mary. I happily determined this to be one of the many issues upon which it is quite unnecessary for me form an opinion. If you have not heard the song, I invite you to click the above link and decide for yourself-or not.

I believe it is quite impossible for us to “get inside the head” of Mary the mother of our Lord, or anyone else for that matter. Nonetheless, I am confident that Mary understood what every expectant mother living in Gaza right now knows, namely, that the life of a woman is expandible and a small price to pay for gaining military advantage, advancing ideological agendas and maintaining geopolitical stability. I am sure Mary would not have been surprised by a nation that rewards a rapist and confessed sexual predator with the highest office in the land. She would not have been shocked by government regulation of women’s bodies and health. Mary knew that the world is a dangerous place for women-to say nothing of the infants in their care. She understood the world into which her child would be born-and said “yes, let it be.”

Some question the genuineness of Mary’s consent to the will of God. What was left to which she could consent? She was not asked, but told by an angle of God what will happen to her. She will bear a child. How will this happen in the absence of a husband? The answer might sound more like a threat than a promise. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…” Luke 1:35. It is not hard to see how a survivor of sexual assault or abuse might find this gospel text troubling. There is no real indicia of consent here. Nonetheless, this troubling text reflects a truth too often suppressed and denied by Americans like us who like to make much of our freedom, autonomy and agency. The truth is, we do not get to choose the nation, neighborhood or family into which we are born. Events beyond our control set our destinies on trajectories we could never have foreseen. Even the decisions we think we understand sometimes take us in directions we never anticipated. Did any of us married folk know to what we were committing ourselves when we promised to join with our spouse and share with them in all that is to come? Seemingly insignificant choices, such as deciding to skip the book club so as to take in a ball game might lead to life changing encounters. Of course, there are events that are disruptive and life changing by their very nature. Such is the occurrence of pregnancy.

The coming of a child brings about profound changes in the life of couples who will soon find themselves walking a cranky baby late at night instead of sitting with friends around a pitcher of beer at the local sports bar. The advent of a birth threatens to upset the established family constellation and ignite new levels of sibling rivalry. I remember all too well how the birth of my younger sister forced me to realize sooner than I would have liked that I am not the center of the universe or even the sole object of my parents’ attention and affection. And this is under circumstances where the pregnancy is anticipated and welcome. Our gospel text deals with an unplanned, unanticipated and problematic pregnancy, which makes it exponentially more disruptive. It is an event that shatters expectations, hopes and dreams for the future. Mary’s pregnancy will shape her destiny in ways she might not even suspect. Yet, she says “yes, let it be.”

So what are we to make of Mary’s assent? Was it real? Could she have done otherwise? I believe that Mary could have rejected God’s purpose and intent. She did not have to recognize her pregnancy as the work of the Holy Spirit. She did not have to embrace the hope represented in the angel’s pronouncement concerning her child. She might have viewed her pregnancy as a curse, an embarrassment and a roadblock to the way of the life she had been anticipating. To be sure, God would have continued to work God’s will for Jesus without Mary’s consent. But the church, the world and Mary herself would have been poorer for it. As it was, Mary did give her assent and embraced wholeheartedly the promise of hope planted in her womb. She embraced her vocation as the Mother of God, whether she understood it as such or not.

American poet, biographer and journalist Carl Sandburg once said that “a baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.” By extension, one could say that every woman’s fierce determination to care for, nurture and protect her baby, even at the cost of her own life, reflects her faith that it will. It is just this sort of faith required of us in these days when it sometimes feels as though the world is coming apart at the seams. In that respect, nothing has changed. The future looked pretty bleak for Mary and her kinsfolk, living as they did under military occupation run by a governor that did not shrink from killing innocent people worshiping peacefully simply to make a point. See Luke 13:1. Yet Mary was able to say yes to her pregnancy and the seeds of promise it held because she could see beyond the gloom to the day when God “scatter[s] the proud in the imagination of their hearts,” “[brings] down the powerful from their thrones and lift[s] up the lowly,” “fill[s] the hungry with good things” and “send[s] the rich away empty.” Luke 1:51-53. The fact that Mary’s song of praise just cited employes the Greek aorist[2] tense where I employ the future tense emphasizes that God’s future is a present reality even now breaking into our world.

A call to embrace the future is admittedly a big ask. Frankly, I am appalled seeing the political star of a presidential candidate rise higher with every ugly, racist and xenophobic remark he makes. I am horrified by state governments that are regulating women’s bodies to the grave with restrictions on lifesaving medical treatment. I am grieved at attempts by illiterate fanatics like Moms for Liberty to limit our children’s access to works of literature deemed unfit according to their narrow, bigoted and ill-informed world views. I would love just to say, “to hell with it.” I would love to cancel my subscription to the papers I read, turn off the news, grab my camera and spend the rest of my life traipsing around in the national forest taking pictures, savoring the change of seasons and watching birds. But the birth of a child, the birth of this one child convinces me that God has not given up on the world. So how can I?

Here is a poem by Wendell Berry reflecting ambivalence about bringing children into the world and the hope that will not allow for regret.

To My Children, Fearing for Them

Terrors are to come. The earth

is poisoned with narrow lives.

I think of you. What you will

live through, or perish by, eats

at my heart. What have I done? I

need better answers than there are

to the pain of coming to see

what was done in blindness,

loving what I cannot save. Nor,

your eyes turning toward me,

can I wish your lives unmade

though the pain of them is on me.

Source: The Peace of Wild Things, (c. 1964 by Wendell Berry; pub. by Penguin Random House 2018). Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is a poet, novelist, farmer and environmental activist. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. You can read more about Wendell Berry and sample more of his works at the Poetry Foundation website.

  

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[1]  Lyrics written by Mark Lowry in 1984 and music written by Buddy Greene in 1991. The above link is to a recording by Carrie Underwood.

[2] In New Testament Greek the aorist tense describes completed events or conditions in past time. However, it is often idiomatic to use the aorist to refer to present time. Thus, the aorist is used as much or more to denote the quality of action as its location in time.  

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Psalm 126 or Luke 1:46b-55

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Prayer of the Day: Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God, and open our ears to the words of your prophets, that, anointed by your Spirit, we may testify to your light; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.” John 1:6-7.

Who was John the Baptizer? Numerous trees have been felled to accommodate production of scholarly tomes aimed at answering that question. Sadly, this ruthless deforestation has given us little in the way of understanding. For a brief, but thorough discussion of the various theories concerning the origin and message of John the Baptizer and his significance for the early church, see Brown, Raymond E., The Gospel According to John 1-X11, (Anchor Bible Commentary, Vol. 29; c. 1966 by Doubleday). Brown’s commentary remains, in my view, the best overall treatment of the subject in brief. Yet whatever the Baptizer’s message, motive and ministry might actually have been, it is clear that, for John the Evangelist, his role is simply that of testifying to Jesus, the light of the world. As Jesus’ mission and ministry gain momentum, John’s must necessarily wane.

It strikes me that John the Baptizer’s mission as depicted in John the Evangelist’s gospel is a good parable for that of the church. The great pastor, theologian and teacher Karl Barth once said that the church is but the crater left by Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. Or I suppose one could say that, without Jesus, the church is nothing more than a hole in the ground. I think the church is prone to forget that. It seems to me that a lot of what passes for evangelism involves selling the church rather than proclaiming Jesus. Pick up any local periodical, turn to the section advertising religious services and chances are you will find a plethora of ads trumpeting the virtues of the churches placing them. They tout their programs, activism within the community, their heritage and pedigree, their worship styles, their warm and welcoming atmosphere, their progressivism/traditionalism, etc. Very little mention is ever made of Jesus.

Sometimes it seems as though Jesus is largely irrelevant to the life of the church in the view of a good many believers. In the wake of the Trump election in 2016 when anti-immigrant sentiment and fear of undocumented residents was at a fever pitch, I posted on my church’s marquee Leviticus 19:33-34 which reads:

“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

A member of my church approached me following the Sunday service thereafter and asked if we could meet. I agreed, of course and we got together at a local diner. “I think you need to lay off the politics and stick to preaching the Bible,” he told me after an exchange of pleasantries. He regaled me with a long line of talking points which I gather he picked up from Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. “The country is being overrun by thousands of Mexicans thronging across an open border on a daily basis,” “Illegal immigrants are responsible for most of the murders in our country” “Illegal immigrants are taking away our jobs,” etc. I replied that I did not think his information was accurate but that, even if it were, Jesus calls us, in accord with the biblical injunction, to welcome and treat kindly the alien. My exasperated parishioner fairly shouted back, “I don’t care what the Bible says, this is my country and I’m not letting a bunch of wet backs take it away from me!” Sometimes you find yourself at a loss for words-as was I as I asked myself how we got from “Pastor you need to stick to preaching the Bible” to “I don’t care what the Bible says.” When it comes to weighty issues like national security, it seems that Jesus does not even fit into the equation.

Lest anyone think I am singling out conservative Christians, let me share just one more anekdote. Toward the end of my ministry I was attending a workshop sponsored by my church focusing on ways toward spiritual renewal for our congregations. For an hour and a half we engaged in exercises designed to stimulate conversation, discussion and strategizing for church growth. Toward the end of the meeting, one of the facilitators asked if we had any questions or comments about this proposed program. I raised my hand and asked the facilitator whether she was aware that not once during the entire process did the name of Jesus come up and whether that was inadvertent or intentional. (I thought about adding that I was not sure which answer would be the more disturbing). She did not have much of an answer. Another facilitator finally spoke up and said in a decidedly irritated tone, “I don’t think it is necessary to invoke the Trinity after every single paragraph. (For the record, I do not recall any references to God the Father or the Holy Spirit either.)

I know some folks will object that, if the church is about what Jesus would have us do, you know, justice, peace, reconciliation, advocacy, etc., it should not matter whether we reference him by name. Not according the John’s gospel. “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine,” says Jesus, “neither can you unless you abide in me.” John 15:4. If we are not grounded in Jesus, we are just dead wood. As it turns out, Jesus’ way into justice, righteousness and peace is radically different from typical human means for pursuing them. The way to overcoming evil and achieving the good passes through persistently returning compassion and forgiveness for violence and hatred. Following Jesus means refusing, as did Jesus, to resort to violence or coercion, even in self defense, to achieve some greater good. That is what differentiates Jesus’ way from that of so many others pursuing noble ends. For most of the world, the ends justify the means. According to Jesus, the ends are the means.

That important distinction has never been more crucial than today, when we find Orthodox Christian Ukrainians and Orthodox Christian Russians killing each other over their respective national claims of justice. Today it is not uncommon to see churches flying Israeli flags while Christian students sport Palestinian flags-as though justice depends on the side taken in these homicidal conflicts. Noticeably absent from the heated arguments among Christians over who did what to whom, who is in the right, and how, if at all, the United States should be involved is any reference to Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount or the “new” commandment to love without restraint. When I attempt to bring Jesus into such arguments, I get the usual response, “So are you saying the Ukrainians should just let Russia walk over them? Do you think Israel should just ignore brutal terrorist attacks on its citizens? Should the Palestinians passively submit to the brutal occupation of the Israeli government?” My response is always the same. I am not telling any country or people what to do about anything. But I believe Jesus tells his disciples how they ought to conduct themselves. Quite simply, they must be outspoken against injustice, tirelessly advocating and caring for the oppressed and, in the face of violent opposition, accept that justice, truth and peace are worth dying for-but nothing is worth killing for.  

Professor Stanley Hauerwas has said that Christians are those people whose lives make no rational sense apart from Jesus’ resurrection. Therein lies my defense of pacifism. Christians worship a messiah whose life mirrored what he preached in the Sermon on the Mount. That life ended, quite predictably, in his being persecuted, rejected and put to death. That much confirms what most the rest of the world believes: “Nice guys finish last.” Jesus was, to use the words of a certain former president who shall remain nameless, “a loser” and anyone following him must be doubly so. But God raised Jesus from death and that changed everything. Turns out, the losers are those on the wrong side of history. Those who imagine that it does not matter how you treat the illegal immigrant, the prisoner, the uninsured, the homeless, the victims of the all powerful market, the refugees seeking relief in our country and all the rest of the “least” among us find themselves at the end struggling to explain their conduct. So, if asked how I can maintain a position of unqualified non-violence in the face of aggressive evil, why I can hold my home country wide open to all seeking refuge there, where I get the idea that all people are owed by their governments food, shelter and medical care, my answer is “because Jesus-not Caesar, not General Patton, not Ronald Regan, not anyone of power, fame or influence-was raised from the dead.” At the end of the day, that is the only answer I have and the only one I really need.

Maybe I go a bit overboard by saying that the church without Jesus is just a hole in the ground. Churches do perform a lot of socially useful and beneficial services. But so do a lot of other civic organizations. Moreover, truth be told, there is not much churches do that governments, schools, hospitals and international aid organizations cannot do even better-and should be doing. There is just one exception: we are the people who witness to Jesus. No other organization does that. We are the people who embody, however imperfectly, the new way of being human to which Jesus calls us. The way of Jesus is a long one. It calls for patience. As Saint Peter reminds us, it is not God’s will that any should perish, but that all should come to eternal life. II Peter 3:9. We often lack the kind of patience required to wait with Advent anticipation for a day when all people (and I do mean all) are reconciled. Wars spring from lack of patience. Destroying our enemies seems a much quicker and easier way to peace and security than trying to reconcile with them-and perhaps losing our lives in the process. But the way in which Jesus leads us is the slow, difficult, painful and frustrating way of reconciliation. It is the way of the cross. We are here to warn the world that the violent, dishonest and unjust means it would employ to achieve a quick and easy peace, meet just objectives and establish a longed for security lead only to death and destruction. As counterintuitive as it may seem, only the slow way of the cross leads to life.  

Advent
 
They say the hour’s getting late
The day of judgment will not wait.
Soon the dawn of doom will come
And darkness swallow up the sun.
So turn from earth your wandering eye
And fix your gaze upon the sky;
So when the Son of Man comes again,
He’ll find among us faith in men.

Yet if the end does not come soon,
We might yet colonize the moon,
Set our flags in the sands of Mars,
From there set sail for distant stars.
Given ten thousand years or more,
We might break down the last closed door,
And with your great machines transverse
The breadth of this whole universe.

Still, however far we roam,
No matter where we make our home,
We’ll meet again at each new shore
The Galilean troubadour
Whose troubling song will hound our race
In every coming time and place.
If God the end of time should save
For people in this distant age,
Will the Son of Man e’en then
Find among us faith in men?

Source: Anonymous

SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Isaiah 40:1-11

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13

2 Peter 3:8-15a

Mark 1:1-8

Prayer of the Day: Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming strengthen us to serve you with purified lives; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight” Mark 1:3.

As with Mark the Evangelist’s gospel generally, the account of John the Baptizer’s appearance and message is tersely stated. In the illustrative words of the Prophet Isaiah, John comes to “prepare the way of the Lord,” to proclaim a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” The other gospels tell us more about John’s preaching and ministry, but I prefer to stick with Mark’s stark portrayal. Mark’s gospel frequently leaves us plenty of space to ponder the mysteries recorded on its pages, room for the imagination to fill in the blanks.

The story spills out of an ancient proclamation by the prophet who saw in the turbulent geopolitical clash of empires in the sixth century the hand of Israel’s God working liberation for his exiled people in Babylon, creating for them the opportunity for return to their ancestral land, opening up the way into a new beginning. That good news might not have seemed particularly good to many of the Babylonian exiles. They had been living in Babylon for half a century. To the younger generation, Babylon was the only home they had ever known. Over time, these captive peoples had become accustomed to living in a foreign land that was gradually becoming less foreign. Many of the exiles had settled into a comfortable existence. Some had even attained a degree of prominence in Babylonian society. Why leave the comfort and security of an established existence only to start over again in a land full of ruined cities and inhabited by peoples who would be none to happy about their arrival?

Clearly, the people would need a change of heart. That is where the preaching of repentance comes in. In common parlance, the word “repent” conjures up images of sorrow, remorse and breast beating. While repentance might indeed invite such a response, that is not what it is. To repent, in simplest terms, is to “turn around.” It involves a radical change of direction as the result of being confronted with a completely new reality. The prophet would have Israel know that history is not finally driven solely by the emperors and their armies. God is at work in the clash of superpowers causing even human wrath and malice to serve God’s purpose and rebound to God’s praise. Psalm 76:10. John would have us know that, under the shadow of Rome’s cruelty and brutal occupation of Israel, God is working yet another act of liberation for God’s oppressed people, the “least” of humanity.

John’s call to repentance is therefore more than a plea for personal moral and spiritual reform. It is an invitation to turn away from life lived under the fear of tyrants, a life lived in a state of compromise with the machinery of oppression and acceptance of the status quo as inevitable. It is a call to begin living into the reality that God, not Caeser, is Lord; that God is the God who choses and liberates slaves and brings great empires and their privileged beneficiaries to naught; that the power vaunted by the kingdoms of this world is finally impotent. Living as though all of this were true will likely place one on a collision course with the imperial forces that maintain order by the threat of crucifixion. But as Mark’s gospel will show us as his story unfolds, that threat is as empty as the tomb on Easter morning.

Volumes have been written by scholars and critics about how alien the Bible is to the modern mind. Whereas we view events through the lens of news media obsessed with real time reporting and getting the facts straight, the biblical authors and editors were chiefly concerned with getting the meaning of events right and fitting them into the grand narrative of God’s redemptive work for Israel and the Church. We scrupulously divide our libraries into fiction and nonfiction sections. Biblical authors recognized that truth is more than the sum of the facts. They did not draw such fine distinctions between truth as revealed in historical recollection and that expressed through hymns, poems, preaching, parable and fable. We, by contrast, find it hard to imagine living without those distinctions.

All that being said, I do not believe our difficulty with the Bible arises from the historical and cultural distance between the Biblical writers and ourselves. Our chief difficulty is the sociological distance between us. The Hebrew scriptures grew out of the ashes of a nation militarily crushed and whose people were driven off their ancestral land into exile. The New Testament was the product of small communities on the margins of society practicing an illegal religion in the shadow of an oppressive empire. These people worshiped a God who chose slaves over the sons of empire, “sinners” over the moral authorities, outcasts over the pillars of society, the poor and vulnerable over the wealthy and privileged. The power of their God was made known not by the strength of its patron’s armies, but in the “weakness” of God’s love for the poor, vulnerable and persecuted. I Corinthians 1:18-31.

Since the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine, the larger part of the church has served as the official religion of empires and nation states. As such, it has been tasked with grounding the nation in divine mandate, aligning faith in God with allegiance to country and enforcing national/community standards of morality. In so doing, the church has all too often morphed into precisely the kind of institutional machinery that crucified its Lord. Such was the cost of institutional success. But there was just one problem: the Bible. This book testifying to God through the struggles of slaves, outcasts, the impoverished and persecuted was a poor fit for the religion of empire designed to protect wealth and privilege. That is why the church’s imperial career was forever being punctuated with various monastic movements, sectarian schisms and sporadic efforts to return it to its life of discipleship.

The most remarkable testimony to the Bible’s heart and soul resides in the Black church in the United States. It is hard to imagine an enslaved people showing any interest in or desire to know the religion of their enslavers. Yet African American persons brought to this country as human cargo and born here into slavery, despite their being forbidden from learning to read and write, internalized the Bible and recognized in it, not a religious tome sanctifying the status quo, but a revolutionary text on liberation from oppression. They were able to see themselves and their struggles in the biblical saga in a way that their white contemporaries could never have done. For more on that, see Bowens, Lisa M., African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance and Transformation, (c. 2020, Erdmans Publishing Co.).

I believe that those of us who have known only privilege, who have never been driven out of our homes at gunpoint, who have never faced forced labor or starvation, who have never known a day of homelessness, who have never been discriminated against, who watch the carnage occurring throughout the world on televisions and computer screens have a difficult time seeing ourselves in the biblical drama. I think perhaps that is what lies behind the Sunday School material with which I grew up showing Jesus as white and his disciples as bearded, white guys in bathrobes. We needed this religious artwork to see ourselves in the biblical story because we could not recognize ourselves in the text. Praying for daily bread hardly makes sense when you already have bread for the next month in the pantry. Turning the other cheek hardly registers where nobody is throwing any punches at you. Praying for persecutors is hard when you do not have any. So we spiritualized the Sermon on the Mount. We turned salvation into a private individual matter of accepting Jesus as one’s personal savior, an event having nothing to do with outside “worldly” matters. We transformed bearing the cross of Christ from suffering persecution for one’s witness to the reign of God into a mere metaphor for a nagging relative, a bothersome neighbor or a bad back. How else can you make the Bible’s message relevant to the privileged?

Well then preacher, are you saying that the Bible has nothing to say to those of us you call “privileged”? Are you telling us that God has no interest in us? No. Quite the contrary. John’s message is focused on us with laser sharpness. “Prepare the way of the Lord”-means for those of us who know only privilege, dismantling the structures of oppression that keep those people for whom God has a special concern in misery. Relinquishing privilege is the way in which we repent, turn around, go in a radically new direction. There are many concrete ways to go about this, both individually and corporately. For example, see Open Letter to the ELCA Presiding Bishop and Synodical Bishops: A Modest Proposal for Reparational Tithe. By becoming attentive to the Bible’s witness to the One we confess as God, even more opportunities for repentance will reveal themselves.

Here is a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar recognizing in the Exodus the struggle of his people in America.

An Ante-Bellum Sermon

We is gathahed hyeah, my brothahs,
In di howlin’ wildaness,
Fu’ to speak some words o comfo’t
to each othah in distress.
An’ we choose fu’ ouah subjic’
Dis—-we’ll ‘splain it by an’ by;
“An’ de Lawd said, “Moses, Moses,”
An’ de man said, Hyeah am I.'”

Now ole Pher’oh, down in Egypt
Was de wuss man evah bo’n,
An’ he had de Hebrew chillun
Down dah wukin’ in his co’n;
‘Twell de Lawd got tiahed o’ his foolin’,
an’ sez he: “I’ll let him know’
Look hyeah, Moses, go tell Pher’oh
Fu’ to let dem chillun go.”

“An’ ef he refuse do it,
I will make him rue de houah,
fu’ I’ll empty down on Egypt
All de vials of my powah.”
Yes, he did—-an’ Pher’oh’s ahmy
Wasn’t wurth a ha’f a dime;
Fu’ de Lawd will he’p his chillum,
You kin trust him evah time.

An’ you’ enemies may ‘sail you
In de back an’ in de front;
But de Lawd is all aroun’ you,
Fu’ to ba’ de battle’s brunt.
Dey kin fo’ge yo’chains an’ shackles
F’om de mountains to de sea;
But de Lawd will sen’ some Moses
Fu’ to set his chilun free.

An’ de lan’ shall hyeah his thundah,
Lak a blas’ f’om Gab’el’s ho’n,
Fu’ de Lawd of hosts is mighty
When he girds his ahmor on.
But fu’ feah some one mistakes me,
I will pause right hyeah to say,
Dat I’m still a-preachin’ ancient,
I ain’t talkin’ bout to-day.
But I tell you, fellah christuns,
Things’ll happen mighty strange;
Now, de Lawd done dis fu’ Isrul,
An’ his ways don’t nevah change,
An’ de love he showed to Isrul
Wasn’t all on Isrul spent;
Now don’t run an’ tell yo’ mastahs
Dat I’s preachin’ discontent.

‘Cause I isn’t; I’se a-judgin’
Bible people by dier ac’s;
I’se a-givin’ you de Scriptuah,
I’se a-handin’ you de fac’s.
Cose ole Pher’or b’lieved in slav’ry,
But de Lawd he let him see,
Dat de people he put bref in,
Evah mothah’s son was free.

An’ dah’s othahs thinks lak Pher’or,
But dey calls de Scriptuah liar,
Fu’ de Bible says “a servant
Is worthy of his hire,”
An’ you cain’t git roun’ nor thoo dat,
An’ you cain’t git ovah it,
Fu’ whatevah place you git in,
Dis hyeah Bible too’ll fit.

So you see de Lawd’s intention,
Evah sence de worl’ began,
Was dat His almight freedom
Should belong to evah man,
But I think it would be bettah,
Ef I’d pause agin to say,
Dat I’m talkin’ ’bout ouah freedom
In a Bibleistic way.

But de Moses is a-comin’,
An’ he’s comin’, suah and fas’
We kin hyeah his feet a-trompin’,
We kin hyeah his trumpit blas’.
But I want to wa’n you people,
Don’t you git too brigity;
An’ don’t you git to braggin’
“Bout dese things, you wait an’ see.

But when Moses wif his powah
Comes an’ sets us chillun free,
We will praise de gracious Mastah
Dat has gin us liberty;
An’ we’ll shout ouah halleluyahs,
On dat mighty reck’nin’ day,
When we’se reco’nised ez citiz’
Huh uh! Chillun, let us pray!

Source: Johnson, James Weldon, The Book of American Negro Poetry (c. 1922 by Harcourt Brace & Company). Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was one of America’s first influential African American poets. He grew up in Dayton, Ohio where he lived with his widowed mother. His poetic skill became evident already in high school. The only black student in his class, he was elected class president and class poet. Though he was never able to obtain a college education, he read voraciously. His early poetry gained the admiration and respect of influential poets such as James Whitcomb Riley. With the support of Orville Wright, then in the publishing business, Dunbar was able to publish his first book of poetry. His popularity continued to grow and in 1896 he was invited for a six month reading tour in England to present his poetry. He returned in 1897, married fellow writer Alice Ruth Moore and took a clerkship position in the U.S. Library of Congress, a job that left him time to continue his writing career. Tragically, Dunbar’s physical and psychological health began to deteriorate in 1902, leading to his eventual divorce. He became fatally ill in 1905 and died in February of the following year.

You can find out more about Paul Laurence Dunbar and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Isaiah 64:1-9

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Mark 13:24-37

Prayer of the Day: Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. By your merciful protection waken us to the threatening dangers of our sins, and keep us blameless until the coming of your new day, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“[God] will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I Corinthians 1:8.

OK. It was cheesy, simplistic, inconsistent with astrophysics and woefully lacking in cinematic effects judged by today’s standards. But it was hopeful, idealistic and forward looking. I am speaking of the original Star Trek series that aired on NBC from 1966-1969. Its producer, Gene Roddenberry, managed to create a universe in which racial, ethnic and geopolitical strife had been overcome on a planet earth united and playing a leadership role within the fictional United Federation of Planets. There were, to be sure, continuing vestiges of prejudice to be addressed. In one episode, Captain Kirk must remind a crew member, suspicious Vulcan first officer Spack’s loyalty, that “bigotry will not be tolerated on this ship.” Yet even this testified to the show’s forward looking world view.  Yes, there were still sexist stereotypes, i.e., female officers attired in miniskirts and usually in subordinate positions. True, the twenty-third century communicators were clunkier than our 1990s flip phones, to say nothing of the smart phone. But the overall message still rings clear. The future lies in global unity, scientific inquiry and ever increasing understanding of the universe.   

Watching the re-runs today, it is hard for me to imagine this series catching on in today’s culture. Perhaps that is why the subsequent Star Trek series tended to be darker, more cynical and less hopeful. So far from a future characterized by a united globe pressing forward to encounter new civilizations where “no man has gone before,” ours is a world where, at home and abroad, the cries of “nation first” and anti-global sentiment are on the rise. Argentina is the latest nation to succumb to fascist populism, joining nations in eastern Europe. Fascism has largely taken over the Republican party[1] and appears poised to seize power in the upcoming election. The old gods of nation, race, blood and soil have all but swallowed up hope for a peaceful and united planet. Indeed, “globalism” is now the major hobgoblin of the populist right.

These fascist ideologues have one thing in common. They are all convinced that the future is in the past, a place in time when all was right with the world and to which we need somehow to get back. Call this “againism.” There was a time before LGBQT+ folk came out of the closet and ruined the institution of marriage; a time before black men forgot their place and started taking our jobs, filling up our television screens with their faces and started dating our women. There was a time when English was the only language you ever saw on a sign. There was a time when the way a man chose to discipline his family was his own damn business and the cops, school teachers and nosey social workers didn’t interfere. There was a time when women respected their men, dressed like women and stuck to the woman’s natural work of homemaking instead of trying to wear pants to a man. That golden age, that time when the country was great, has been stolen from us and we have to take it back. We have to make America great “again.” If you have any doubts about precisely what that means, the leader of the Republican party made that very clear to us on his media platform, Truth Social:  It means to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”[2] Only then will America be great-again.

Againism is, of course, a dead end. A future in some imaginary past is not in the cards. It won’t happen. There are too many of us vermin to extinguish, no matter how many of us are killed in the service of futile efforts to get back to “again.” Adolph Hitler couldn’t bring back the mythical golden age of Aryan supremacy and neither can that sad little Mussolini wannabe down in Mar-a-Lago. That might seem like cold comfort and, by itself, it is. But there is more. There is a future. It is not in the past and it belongs to the God who raised Jesus from death. Unlike the “againist” longing for a purified nation, untainted blood and changeless cultural norms which is so lame and fragile that it must be defended by border walls, racial gerrymandering and the banning of books, God’s future is radically inclusive, culturally diverse and wide open:

“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying,
‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’
And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, singing,
‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’” Revelation 7:9-12

Hanging onto that vision of inclusiveness and global kinship is difficult in times like ours when it seems as though our world is dissolving into nationalism, tribalism and sectarian violence. It was no less so for Jesus’ disciples who weathered the final days of their nation’s occupation and brutal destruction. I can well understand their wanting Jesus to tell them “when will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are to be accomplished?” Mark 13:4. But Jesus will not give them either a map or an itinerary. Not only will the temple of Jerusalem be destroyed, but there will be wars, rumors of war, earthquakes and famines. These events will convince many that the end must be near. They are mistaken. No one knows the “when.” Not even Jesus. Mark 13:32. What Jesus does know and what he tells his disciples is that there will be a long road of suffering during which they must bear witness to the just, gentle and peaceful reign of God he proclaims in the midst of rival kingdoms each bent on dominance and control. Those who cling to that vision, who endure to the end will be saved.

All of this might sound bleak, but there is more than a glimmer of good news in all of this. Jesus tells us that all of these dread events are not death throws, but birth pangs. God is at work forging a new creation in the midst of this troubled world. Just as God turned a violent, oppressive and cruel Egyptian empire into the womb within which the people of Israel were birthed and freed, just as Jesus’ death and resurrection transformed the Roman Empire’s symbol of terror into a sign of victory, so you can be sure that God will turn the violence of our nation’s and the world’s racism, xenophobia, patriarchy and homophobic violence into yet another demonstration of its utter impotence. That might take some time. But God has all eternity to work with.  

Ultimately, today’s gospel is, above all else, hopeful. I think that is the right note on which to enter the season of Advent. After all, the failed religion of “againism” is a religion of despair and desperation. It is a religion that lives in terror of the future and spends itself in a fruitless effort to keep it at bay. The good news Jesus brings assures us that the future is not to be regarded with dread, but embraced in hope, a hope enabling one to endure until it is finally realized in its fullness.

Here is a poem that speaks elequently of hope by Emily Dickenson. It sounds the hopeful note on which we ought to enter this new church year.

Hope is a Thing with Feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, (c. 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; edited by Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.) Emily Dickinson (1830-1866) is indisputably one of America’s greatest and most original poets. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, she attended a one-room primary school in that town and went on to Amherst Academy, the school out of which Amherst College grew. In the fall of 1847 Dickinson entered Mount Holyoke Female Seminary where students were divided into three categories: those who were “established Christians,” those who “expressed hope,” and those who were “without hope.” Emily, along with thirty other classmates, found herself in the latter category. Though often characterized a “recluse,” Dickinson kept up with numerous correspondents, family members and teachers throughout her lifetime. You can find out more about Emily Dickinson and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] I fear my Republican friends might take offense to this characterization of their party. Too bad. You have demonstrated again and again that, as much as you might loath Donald Trump, as long as the clear majority of your party supports him, you will support him also. With the exception of former New Jersey governor Chris Christi, every single Republican nominee pledged to support Donald Trump should he be nominated by their party-and to pardon him of every crime he might be found guilty in the unlikely event they themselves should be elected. If you haven’t the courage and initiative to fix up your home, don’t complain that people criticize you for living in a dump.   

[2] To be fair, Donald Trump’s campaign representative, Steven Cheung, pointed out that these remarks were not threatening in the least. Those who are concerned about Trump violently attacking his opponents are suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” What Trump really meant to say of his political opponents, says Cheung, was that “their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” Whew! I feel so much better now!

SUNDAY OF CHRIST THE KING

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Psalm 95:1-7

Ephesians 1:15-23

Matthew 25:31-46

Prayer of the Day: O God of power and might, your Son shows us the way of service, and in him we inherit the riches of your grace. Give us the wisdom to know what is right and the strength to serve the world you have made, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”

No, it doesn’t matter that the least happen to be “collateral damage” incurred while taking out a legitimate military target. It doesn’t matter that the least happen to be on death row for horrendous crimes committed against innocent people. It doesn’t matter that the least were sent to die for high sounding principles like “democracy,” “freedom,” or “national security.” It won’t do to protest that the poor are poor by reason of their own laziness, bad decisions and lack of initiative. There can be no distinction between the least on our side of the border and the least on the other. No one will be heard to argue that there was no room in the budget to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, care for the sick or assist the prisoner and that, of course, the deficit had to be reduced somehow. The nations, all the nations, will be judged under just one standard: how well or poorly they treated the least among us.

This parable of Jesus is just that, namely, a parable. Like all parables, its focus is not on some event in the the distant future. Instead, it directs the disciples to the way Jesus would have them live in the moment. It is, first and foremost, a reflection of the life Jesus lived in the shadow of political violence, imperial oppression and ruthless economic exploitation. It is a life that honors God’s priorities and takes the shape of the cross in a world whose priorities are entirely different. It is life grounded in God’s eternal priorities and in which Jesus invites his disciples to share.   

That brings me to a further point. The parable is directed to the disciples, those who have been called by grace, redeemed by grace and set apart by grace as witnesses to Jesus and the kingdom he proclaims. Theirs is the privilege of testifying, in deed as much as in word, to God’s priorities in the world. As it happens, God’s priorities are those persons deemed the lowest priority among us. Note well that in this parable of the final judgment nothing is said about how many times a person has been married or to whom, what their sexual orientation is or is not, whether any of them has ever had an abortion, what their race or nationality might be, whether they have the proper documentation to live where they are living, what their religious commitments are, whether they have a criminal record, how they voted in the last election or any of those other “culture war” obsessions that posses so much of the deviant, sick and sadly dominant strains of America Christianity. One can only conclude from Jesus’ parable that God does not give a flying fruitcake about any of that crap-and neither should his disciples.

What disciples do care about are the least among us. That includes the millions in this richest of nations living in poverty, food insecurity and without adequate medical care because that clown[1] show known as the U.S. Congress must balance the budget on their backs. It includes the children dying violent deaths daily in Gaza, South Sudan and Ukraine at the expense of nationalism at home and the national interests of superpowers abroad pouring money and weapons into these conflicts. It includes millions of kids in our broken foster care system. It includes millions of incarcerated persons who, if they ever gain release, will enter into a society that stigmatizes them in ways that practically ensures their failure to rebuild their lives. It includes millions living in refugee camps all over the world who are hated, feared and unwanted everywhere. Jesus assures us that these are God’s priorities. They should be the priorities of his disciples, his church.     

The Sunday of Christ the King brings the liturgical year to a fitting close. At the end of the day, we are reminded that we have one Sovereign to whom we pledge allegiance. Jesus stands with those deemed “least.” As he taught us, where he is, there should his servants be. John 12:26. During a senatorial debate in 2021, Senator Raphael Warnock proclaimed that he was a “Matthew 25 Christian.” I have heard others use that term also. Frankly, I was not aware that there was any other kind. Jesus was always crystal clear that the commandment to love God and neighbor was “the first and greatest.” Mark 12:29-31. He was clear in his teaching that treatment of all people in the way we would be treated constitutes the heart and soul of the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:12. Thus, the parable of the judgment simply reinforces what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount and lived throughout his ministry. Loyalty to Jesus and submission to God’s gentle reign as it is revealed in his obedient life, faithful death and glorious resurrection trumps all other commitments.

In our American context, we are confronted with numerous ideologies cloaked under the sheep’s clothing of patriotism, morality and religion. Some of them come from the radical fringe, making their way into the mainstream of our politics and culture. Others are already deeply imbedded in American orthodoxy. They reflect priorities entirely different from those of God’s reign revealed in Jesus Christ. We live under a government promoting, implementing and enabling unjust, inhumane and cruel policies that have devastating impacts on the poorest, sickest, hungriest and most vulnerable among us and around the world. Faithfulness to Jesus is faithfulness to these victims of “our way of life.” If we are not Matthew 25 Christians, then we are simply not Christians.

Here is a poem by Gilbert K. Chesterton. It was set to music and included in the Lutheran Book of Worship published in 1978. For reasons I cannot fathom, it failed to make the cut for our subsequent hymnal, Evangelical Lutheran Worship. That is unfortunate because I can hardly imagine a more appropriate hymn for the Sunday of Christ the King in this day and age.

O God of Earth and Altar

O God of Earth and Altar
Bow down and hear our cry
Our earthly rulers falter
Our people drift and die
The walls of gold entomb us
The swords of scorn divide
Take not thy thunder from us
But take away our pride

From all that terror teaches
From lies of tongue and pen
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword
From sleep and from damnation
Deliver us, good lord

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall
Bind all our lives together
Smite us and save us all
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith and free
Lift up a living nation
A single sword to thee

Source: Gilbert Kieth Chesterton (c. 1906), printed in the Lutheran Book of Worship (c. 1978 by Lutheran Church in America; The American Lutheran Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada; the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) Hymn No. 428. Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist and literary/art critic. He was born in Campden Hill in Kensington, London. He is perhaps best known popularly for his creation of the character Father Brown, the priest-detective who appears in several of his short stores. The character has given rise to several adaptations for television in the United Kingdom and in the United States. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an orthodox Christian. Baptized and raised Anglican, Chesterton ultimately came to identify more with Catholicism, to which he finally converted. His literary works are laced with interchanges reflecting moral and religious themes. Perhaps his best known work of fiction is the clever and fast moving novel, The Man who was Thursday. Chesterton loved to debate and often engaged in friendly public disputes with such personages as George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow. Chesterton delivered a series of radio talks over the BBC, about forty per year, from 1932 until his death four years later.  Near the end of Chesterton’s life, Pope Pius XI invested him as Knight Commander with Star of the Papal Order of St Gregory the Great. The poem recited above was written by Chesterton in 1906. If you would like to take a listen to the hymn version, click on this link.

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[1] When I say clown, I am thinking Pennywise rather than Bozo.

TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18

Psalm 90:1-12

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Matthew 25:14-30

Prayer of the Day: Righteous God, our merciful master, you own the earth and all its peoples, and you give us all that we have. Inspire us to serve you with justice and wisdom, and prepare us for the joy of the day of your coming, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“So teach us to count our days
   that we may gain a wise heart.” Psalm 90:12.

Counting our days is about the only way to acquire a “wise heart.” It has been said that we learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history. Those of us who are parents should understand that. We ache to see our children making the same mistakes, falling into the same traps and chasing the same illusory promises of happiness that entangled us in our younger days. We would like to warn them of their peril and so spare them the heartaches we endured. Perhaps we have tried. But they are convinced we don’t understand, that we can’t possibly know what they are going through, that we just “don’t get it.” They spurn the hard won wisdom we would share with them. I see their point. After all, we have left them a dying planet, a nonfunctioning government and a world on the verge of potentially catastrophic wars. And now we presume to wag our moralistic fingers in their faces and impart to them our wisdom? I can hear the collective younger generational sigh already: “Give me a break!”

The truth is, wisdom is the product of learning from mistakes. Where there is no freedom to make mistakes, there is little learning and no maturation of wisdom. That point is made with blunt clarity in a saucy little song written by Susan Gibson and made famous by the country western trio, The Chicks.[1] The song Wide Open Spaces reflects the feelings of a young woman leaving home to start a new life in an unidentified western place. It is a place with “wide open spaces” representing a plethora of possibilities, choices and paths. It is a place wide enough to allow for making “the big mistakes.” As the young woman is brimming with excitement and expectation, her parents express the fear and anxiety parents typically feel as they watch their young, inexperienced and vulnerable children venture out into what they know is a dangerous world. We remind our children to do the common sense things like “check the oil,” but the weightier lessons in love, moral responsibility and vocational direction can only be learned the way we learned them, that is, by experience. The kindest thing we can do for our children is give them enough space to make mistakes.

Jesus would have his disciples know that faith gives them the freedom to make mistakes. I believe that is what the parable of the talents in Sunday’s gospel is all about. We might be tempted to pity the poor fellow in the parable who hid his talent in the ground rather than investing it. He had so little to work with compared to his fellow servants. He was afraid of losing that with which he had been entrusted. How could he know that the years ahead would bring a bull market? What if the market had gone south and his fellow servants had lost everything? If that had been the case, he could proudly bring forth his talent and boast of his prudence and care-unlike his risk taking companions. The worst you can say about this poor fellow is that he was “risk averse.” Depending on the state of the economy, that could well be the best strategy. We might view him as simply a victim of market vagaries. But that is a misreading of the parable. Note well that the master does not commend the two servants who increased their holdings for their success and business acumen. Instead, he commends them for their faithfulness. Faithfulness is all that is required of the disciple. God will see to the success.

The servant who hid his master’s money in the ground says to his master, “I knew you to be a ‘harsh man’.” But was that really the case? The servant says, “I was afraid” and that says it all. Perhaps it is because he saw his master, and everything else for that matter, through the lens of fear that he viewed him as a punishing tyrant rather than one who had enough confidence in him to place his own money under his care. The servant was so afraid of making a mistake, so terrified of failing, so fearful of doing something wrong that he did not do anything at all.

Jesus would have us know that ours is a God who gives us plenty of “wide open spaces” to make the “big mistakes.” To be clear, this is not a license to be reckless and irresponsible. It is a recognition, however, that we are creatures who learn the meaning of friendship through disappointment and betrayal; we learn love through heartbreak; we learn about the beauty and complexity of our world by having our simplistic notions about it shattered again and again; we learn to know our God by discovering, through sometimes bitter experience, that we cannot make a mess of our lives bigger than God is able to clean up.

This is incredibly good news for people like me who are by nature “risk averse.” It is incredibly good news for college seniors who are beginning to wonder whether they chose the right major, the right career or the right job offer. It is good news for two people about to enter into a lifelong relationship-and sometimes wonder whether they are doing the right thing. It is good news for a church about to launch an untried program of mission and ministry. The worst that can happen is that you will make a mistake-which means you will have the opportunity to “gain a wise heart.”

Here is the text of the song Wide Open Spaces written by Susan Gibson and performed by the Chicks cited above:

Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about?
Who’s never left home? Who’s never struck out?
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl’s dreams no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out West
But what it holds for her, she hasn’t yet guessed

She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

She traveled this road as a child
Wide-eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won’t be coming back with the rest
If these are life’s lessons, she’ll take this test

She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes
She knows the high stakes

And as her folks drive away, her dad yells, “Check the oil!”
Mom stares out the window and says, “I’m leavin’ my girl”
She said, “It didn’t seem like that long ago”
When she stood there and let her own folks know

She needed wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes (wide open spaces)
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes (wide open spaces)

Source: Susan Gibson (c. Pie Eyed Groobee Music). Susan Gibson is a singer/song writer who works out of Wimberly Texas. She was born in Fridley, Minnesota. She has released six solo albums and was the lead singer for the country western band, The Groobees. You can read more about Susan Gibson and her music on her official website. The Chicks (formerly The Dixie Cicks) are an American country music band from Dallas. The band currently consists of Natalie Maines (lead vocals, guitar) and sisters Martie Maguire (vocals, fiddle, mandolin, guitar) and Emily Strayer (vocals, guitar, banjo, Dobro). The Chicks have won thirteen Grammy Awards. Days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Natalie Maines told a London audience that the Chicks did not endorse the war and were ashamed of President George W. Bush. The remarks triggered boycotts in the United States and a backlash from fans. Still the group’s popularity continued to grow. By July 2020 the Chicks had become the best-selling all-woman band and best-selling country group in the United States.

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[1] Formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, the group dropped the Dixie label following the murder of George Floyd and the civil rights demonstrations that followed.

TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Amos 5:18-24

Psalm 70

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Matthew 25:1-13

Prayer of the Day: O God of justice and love, you illumine our way through life with the words of your Son. Give us the light we need, and awaken us to the needs of others, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“But let justice roll down like waters,
   and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Amos 5:24.

More than half of U.S. adults believe the United States Constitution is inspired by God, according to a 2022 Faith in America survey released in March by Deseret News and Marist Poll. Even those who do not equate the document with holy writ still maintain that it represents America’s best hope for achieving and maintaining a just and righteous society. When I was admitted to the New Jersey State Bar and that of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, I took an oath to “defend the constitution.” Again, the underlying assumption was that, as the supreme law of the land, the constitution assures our liberties, equal treatment under the law and protection from government oppression. In fact, the constitution does no such thing.

Here are some facts about the constitution that cannot be gainsaid. First, it was a document drafted by wealthy white men. Second, the liberties it secured were principally for wealthy white men. The belief expressed in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” meant just that. All men-except slaves who were considered three fourths of a person and that only for determining the number of representatives allowed for each slaveholding state. Women were denied the right to vote in elections until a little more than a century ago. The personal and property rights of indigenous peoples were not included among “all men.” Slavery, patriarchy and genocide lived quite undisturbed under the constitution for centuries. The gains achieved in the areas of civil rights, equal treatment under the law and due process throughout American history have been won through political and legal battles by those determined to expand the scope of the constitution’s protections beyond those contemplated by the “Founding Fathers.” Those opposing them routinely invoked the constitution in opposition to these expansios of legal protection. Thus, when you hear people arguing that the constitution should be interpreted in accord with its “original intent,” they are simply saying that the constitution should be construed to protect the interest of wealthy, white men.

Do you wonder why the United States Congress cannot manage to do what churches, school boards and municipal townships do routinely every day, namely, pass a budget? Do you wonder why a single member of the Senate can hold up military promotions and paralyze whole sections of the defense department? Do you wonder why the majority of the populous favors stronger gun legislation, protection of abortion rights and universal health care, though none of these measures sands a snowball’s chance in hell of ever becoming law? Do you wonder why the people of the United States popularly elected Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, but got George Bush and Donald Trump instead? The answer is that our government was designed to work that way. Our government is designed to make change as difficult and burdensome as possible. A single senator can employ the filibuster to delay or prevent legislation altogether. The requirement that significant legislation needs a supermajority of the Senate paralyzes government when, as currently, both houses of congress are narrowly divided. The procedure for amending the constitution is cumbersome, making fundamental changes sought by a clear majority of the country’s population nearly impossible. In sum, the constitution has created a government that is anti-majoritarian and highly resistant to change. Who benefits most from suppressing change? People who enjoy privilege under the status quo, which are, you guessed it, wealthy, white men.

I am not simply dismissing the American experiment in democracy. I gladly acknowledge that our nation’s founders were brilliant thinkers and courageous leaders who broke new ground in the practice of government that, in turn, made way for unprecedented liberty, justice and opportunity for our nation and for countries throughout the world. For that we owe them a debt of gratitude. But we would be foolish to deny that they were nevertheless people of their age formed by patriarchal, class and white supremacist biases. We would be equally foolish to deny or ignore the ways in which those biases have been built into our system of government and continue to function oppressively. It is the job of prophets, such as our friend Amos, to expose the machinery of injustice in their social environments and, more importantly, to reveal God’s holy alternative, namely, to “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

American mainline churches, such as my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, are typically long on preachy-screechy social statements condemning injustice and calling for reform, but short on reflecting or acting upon those same injustices within their own polity. That is because, historically, we were all founded and financed to a large degree by wealthy white men. The American church as a whole, in all of its diverse denominational forms, is but a social and political microcosm of the nation as a whole. It need not be so. While reshaping American culture might appear to be beyond our ability altogether, reshaping ourselves is clearly not. The Book of Acts gives us a model for what our life together in the Body of Christ might look like:

“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” Acts 2:44-47.

I am not suggesting that congregations become communes. I maintain, however, that there is much we could do to create equity among pastors and congregations. For example, 20% of the pastors in my church are paid well below the church’s salary guidelines. This reflects, in turn, a substantial number of congregations unable to pay their pastors in accord with those guidelines. From a corporate standpoint, we might say, as did a member of our Board of Pensions two decades ago, that “there are congregations that need to come to grips with the fact that they can’t afford a pastor.” ELCA News, 3/17/2003. Saint Paul had a different view. When the Judean churches were experiencing famine, he spearheaded a drive to collect offerings from his churches throughout the Medetteranean basin to relieve those churches. As he explained it:

“I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance.” II Corinthians 8:13-14.

I have served and been a member in small churches for all of my life. I know that, due to a number of factors, many of them are struggling to maintain themselves. I can testify, however, that they are lively, vibrant centers of discipleship and service to their communities. Determining that they are “not sustainable” in terms of what they are capable of paying their pastors and thus unfit for anything but dissolution and/or merger while their assets are absorbed by larger, richer and more “sustainable” congregations is not the way of the gospel. Saint Paul’s approach was precisely the opposite. The abundance of well endowed churches should be shared with those churches that are struggling-and their pastors. Not privilege or right of ownership, but equity within the Body of Christ should control.

Our churches also reflect the contours of our segregated society. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once observed, “11 o’clock in Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hours, in Christian America.” Not surprisingly, the lion’s share of wealth, resources and opportunities are centered in white churches. There may not be much appetite in the U.S. Congress for considering reparations for these disparities. But there should be no such reluctance within the Body of Christ. I have suggested one way in which our churches might begin the work of reparations leading to genuine unity and reconciliation. See Open Letter to the ELCA Presiding Bishop and Synodical Bishops: A Modest Proposal for Reparational Tithe. Some synods of my church have taken on the important work of making available to persons of color the training, education and exposure to our ministries, thereby preparing them for future leadership. See Jehu Jones Mission-NJ Synod-ELCA. These measures might seem all too small. Still, we have to start somewhere.

Sometimes I think that we suffer from an acute failure of imagination. Nothing changes because we are convinced that nothing can change. We cannot imagine a world different from what we know. We cannot free ourselves from the cultural assumptions about national sovereignty, the sanctity of property rights, the limits of human nature and the necessity of violent state action to achieve peace that shape our world view. The New Testament church was unable to topple the Roman Empire and I doubt that the contemporary church is capable of dismantling single handedly the oppressive structures of oppression in the United States. But, like the ancient church, we can become communities where justice and righteousness are practiced, however imperfectly. I find inspiring communities such as the Bruderhof communities, Reba Place Fellowship and Koinonia Farm. These communities are not necessarily models for what every congregation can or should be. Nevertheless, they spark our imagination, challenge our jaded assumptions and enable us to glimpse in some small measure a day when “justice roll[s] down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Here is a poem by Langston Hughes which I believe expresses the kind of prophetic imagination capable of envisioning justice and righteous, the likes of which the prophet Amos proclaims.

Daybreak in Alabama

When I get to be a colored composer

I’m gonna write me some music about

Daybreak in Alabama

And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it

Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist

And falling out of heaven like soft dew

I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it

And the scent of pine needles

And the smell of red clay after rain

And long red necks

And poppy colored faces

And big brown arms

And the field daisy eyes

Of black and white black white black people

And I’m gonna put white hands

And black hands and brown and yellow hands

And red clay earth hands in it

Touching everybody with kind fingers

Touching each other natural as dew

In that dawn of music when I

Get to be a colored composer

And write about daybreak

In Alabama.

Source: Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (c. 1926 by Alfred A. Knopf, pub. by Random House, LLC, 1990). Langston Hughes was an important African American voice in the “Harlem Renaissance” of the 1920s. Though well-educated and widely traveled, Hughes’ poetry never strayed far from his roots in the African American community. Early in his career, Hughes’ work was criticized by some African American intellectuals for portraying what they viewed as an unflattering representation of back life. In a response to these critics, Hughes replied, “I didn’t know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too.”  Today Langston Hughes is recognized globally as a towering literary figure of the 20^th Century. You can read more about Hughes and discover more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website (from which the above quote is taken).

ALL SAINTS SUNDAY

Revelation 7:9-17

Psalm 34:1-22

I John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, you have knit your people together in one communion in the mystical body of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant us grace to follow your blessed saints in lives of faith and commitment, and to know the inexpressible joys you have prepared for those who love you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” I John 3:2.

Duck Creek Cemetery is a historic cemetery located in my now home town of Wellfleet, Massachusetts. It is situated at the intersection of Route 6 and Cahoon Hollow Road-just a long block from my street. The cemetery has been in use since the early 1700s and is the final resting place of many of Wellfleet’s early settlers, some of whom were Revolutionary War veterans. All of the stones and monuments are weathered and worn, some so thoroughly that the inscriptions have been altogether erased. Those remaining are, for the most part, terse. They give the names, dates of birth and death of those resting beneath them. Often they display a favorite bible verse or line of poetry. A few provide glimpse of the deceased’s story. For example, the stone pictured below of Elisha Higgins indicates that he died in a ship wreck. He was the son of Elisha and Rebecca Higgins. Dated 1830, the stone bears the following verse:

“My body in the wreck was found

And now lies buried beneath the ground.

From the raging sea my spirit did fly

To reign with God beyond the sky.”

The rest of his family is also buried in the vicinity.

Recently there has been some backlash against cemeteries. The cost of traditional burials has increased substantially over the years, leading many of us to seek less expensive alternatives, such as cremation. Some folks object to the inordinate waste of space for the dead when there is a critical shortage of affordable housing for the living.[1] There also seems to be a movement away from traditional funeral and burial rites. Many of my friends and family members are opting for scattering of their ashes over the ocean or at some place that is meaningful to them. Others prefer “green burials” in which bodies are returned to the earth without embalming to be naturally re-absorbed into the biosphere.

I do not wish to disparage anyone’s decisions in these matters. But my own preference is for burial on ground that has been sanctified for that purpose. I tend to agree that the cost of embalming, caskets and burial vaults is excessive and wasteful. For that reason, I plan to be cremated and to have my remains interred at the columbarium behind my church. There are two reasons for my decision: the communion of saints and the resurrection of the body. As to the first, we need a reminder that we present disciples of Jesus are but a tiny part of a great parade of saints through time. We need to be reminded that the walk of faith we take from cradle to grave has been well traveled by many millions who have lived faithfully and died well in the faith we confess. The graveyards surrounding churches that once commonly served as a sign, symbol and reminder of that reality have all but disappeared. Our columbarium and those of other churches built over the last decade seek, in part, to reclaim that symbolism.

Burial should also be a testimony to our faith in the resurrection of the body. The grave is not, as is often said in common parlance, “the final resting place.” To be sure, the human body finally does decompose and return to the earth from which it was made. To be sure, there comes a time when even the headstone forgets the name inscribed upon it. But our faith insists that there is One who does not forget. Resurrection faith insists that God is bringing the physical universe into something totally and radically new. Moreover, we believe that it is the will and purpose of God that we share in this “new heaven and new earth.” For that, we will need a body. Think of it: we experience everything through the bodily senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Our bodies are what differentiate us from one another and make us recognizable. For that reason, a body should be treated with reverence and respect in death. It should be planted in or on the earth with the same tenderness as one plants a seed, because that is, in effect, what we are doing in burial.

Cemeteries remind us that we are part of a larger narrative stretching back generations to the prophets and apostles of Holy Scripture. They remind us of who we are: “Beloved, we are God’s children now.” But they also direct our gaze forward. “Very truly, I tell you,” says Jesus, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” John 12:24. As Paul points out, “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.”  I Corinthians 15:36-38. The cemetery testifies to God’s assurance that, what in our little lives we can but begin, God will complete and weave into the fabric of a new creation. It is not a final resting place. It is ground in which we plant seeds of hope.

Here is a poem by Don Thompson giving voice to the evocative power of a cemetery.

Oak Grove Cemetery

Just enough rain an hour ago

to give the wispy dry grass some hope,

turning it green instantly.

This place has been abandoned,

the old faith overgrown, confused

by brambles,

and in these hard times,

its upkeep cut from the budget.

But we walk, soaked to the knees,

making our slow pilgrimage

among gravestones, speaking

blurred names back into the world.

Source: The Cortland Review, (# 66,2016) c. 2016 by Don Thompson. Don Thompson (b. 1942) is an American poet born in Bakersfield, California. He has lived in the southern San Joaquin Valley for most of his life. Thompson has published six books of poetry and was the recipient of the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize in 2008 for his book, Back Roads. He retired recently from a teaching position at a nearby prison. He and his wife, Chris, currently live on her family’s cotton farm. You can learn more about Don Thompson and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] It seems to me that the same argument could be made against public parks, flower gardens, playgrounds and green spaces. I am all for affordable housing, but I don’t believe it has to come at the expense of public space dedicated to enjoyment of nature, play or, for that matter, honoring the memory of our departed loved ones.

TWENTY SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Leviticus 19:1-2,15-18

Psalm 1

I Thessalonians 2:1-8

Matthew 22:34-46

Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, you are the holy lawgiver, you are the salvation of your people. By your Spirit renew us in your covenant of love, and train us to care tenderly for all our neighbors, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

 “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40.

“You like to quote all the lovey dovey passages in the Bible to convince me that the Bible is all about God’s love. But you overlook the passages about God ordering the slaughter of Cannan’s women and children, the stoning of people caught in adultery and the killing of those caught worshiping other gods. If you look at the Bible honestly, you have to agree that it is full of barbarism and violence.” So says one of my atheist acquaintances.

“You like to quote all the passages about what God loves. But you never talk about parts of the Bible that describe what God hates-like sin. You never talk about judgement and eternal punishment. That’s in the Bible too. You need to teach and preach the ‘whole counsel’ of God.” So says one of my conservative evangelical acquaintances.

Both critics are correct in one sense. I do not consider that all sections and passages of Scripture have equal weight. Neither did Jesus. He, as well as his opponents, recognized that the whole of scripture must be interpreted through the “Great Commandments,” that is, to love God with all one’s heart, soul and mind and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. On these two commandments, says Jesus, “hang all the law and the prophets.” In truth, the two commandents are one. There is no other way to love God than to love one’s neighbor. As the Apostle John points out, one who does not love the sibling that one has seen, cannot love God who cannot otherwise be seen. I John 4:19-21. John’s gospel, a portion of which you will be reading if your congregation is celebrating Reformation Sunday, takes this proclamation to its ultimate conclusion. Jesus says, “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” John 8:32. And we know that, in the final analysis, the truth is not a single fact, doctrine or philosophical principle. The truth is a person. “I am the way, the truth and the life,” says Jesus to his disciples. The truth is found in “abiding” with Jesus in his life giving mission for the world. John 15:1-11.

My critics also point to a potential pitfall. While disciples of Jesus interpret the scriptures through the lens of Jesus, they do not interpret Jesus apart from the scriptures. Jesus is a First Century Jew steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. His heart and mind were formed by listening to readings from those scriptures, praying the psalms, observing the feasts of Tabernacles, Passover and Atonement. It is impossible to understand rightly the life and teachings of Jesus and the preaching of the early church without reference to Hebrew Scriptures. The New Testament, best understood as an interpretive commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures, represents the earliest witness we have to Jesus. It consists of documents the church, chiefly through the practice and experience of its many congregations, ultimately found to be faithful and reliable in their testimony to Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims and therefore authoritative for the church’s witness and teaching. Extracting Jesus from the biblical environment in which he understood himself and was understood by the early church leaves us with little more than a phantom.

I sometimes worry that those of us who identify as mainline protestants work too hard at smoothing off the rough biblical edges that offend our progressive white, ever polite and culturally squeamish sensibilities. In many instances, the common lectionary omits (frequently without notice) words of Jesus, sections of the prophets and passages of the epistles that offend our liberal sensibilities. I am not suggesting that all biblical material belongs in the lectionary and I am not a fan of presenting Bibles willy-nilly to Sunday school children. See The Bible: Handle with Care and Keep out of the Reach of Children.  But I think it is a mistake for us to ignore biblical material that is offensive, troublesome and out of sync with what we believe to be true and salutary.

The Bible is as messy, complicated, contradictory, shocking and offensive as the world we live in. It is the world in which Jesus lives and from which he comes to meet our own. We need to get to know Cain, Hagar, Tamar, the anonymous sex slave of the Levite in the Book of Judges who was brutally gang raped and murdered as much as we need to learn about Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, Ester, Ruth, Ezrah and Nehemiah. We will surely meet them in our mission and ministry. We need to hear the vengeful and angry words of the psalmists living through the savage destruction of their land and cruel exile. Doing so will shed light on the tragedies we are witnessing in Palestine today and similar conflicts throughout the world. To be a disciple of Jesus is to know and to feel the anguish, outrage and trauma of injustice and oppression. Love that flees from the hard human realities revealed in the pages of scripture is hardly capable of taking shape in the real world of today. It is nothing more than a sentimental ideal.

It takes more than commitment to an ideal to love our world. It requires instead an abiding allegiance to the One who is love and who does love the world-with all its unlovable cracks, crevices and perverse faults. Real love must be strong enough to reach out the hand of friendship, even when it gets a nail driven through it for its trouble. It must outlast the hatred, indifference and resistence it invariably meets in a world such as ours. That is the love on which everything in the Bible hangs.

Here is a poem by Norman Dubie narrating love within a community of lepers that approximates the hard nosed love God has and desires for the world, the love on which hangs “all the law and the prophets.”

The Pennaceese Leper Colony for Women, Cape Cod: 1922

(for Laura)

The island, you mustn’t say, had only rocks and scrub pine;
Was on a blue, bright day like a blemish in this landscape.
And Charlotte who is frail and the youngest of us collects
Sticks and branches to start our fires, cries as they burn
Because they resemble most what she has lost
Or has little of: long fingers, her toes,
And a left arm gone past the elbow, soon clear to her shoulder.
She has the mouth of sea perch. Five of our sisters wear
Green hoods. You are touched by all of this, but not by us.
To be touched by us, to be kissed! Sometimes
We see couples rowing in the distance in yellow coats.

Sometimes they fish with handlines; we offend
Everyone who is offended most
And by everything and everyone. The five goats love us, though,
And live in our dark houses. When they are
Full with milk they climb the steps and beg that
They be milked. Their teats brush the steps and leave thick
Yellow trails of fresh milk. We are all females here.
Even the ghosts. We must wash, of course, in salt water,
But it smarts or maybe even hurts us. Often with a rope
Around her waist Anne is lowered entirely into the water.
She splashes around and screams in pain. Her screams
Sometimes carry clear to the beaches on the Cape.

For us I say so often. For us we say. For us! We are
Human and not individual, we hold everything in common.
We are individual, you could pick us out in a crowd.
You did. This island is not our prison. We are not kept
In; not even by our skin.

Once Anne said she would love to be a Negro or a trout.

We live without you. Father, I don’t know why I have written
You all this; but be proud for I am living, and yet each day
I am less and less your flesh. Someday, eventually, you
Should only think of me as being a lightning bug on the lawn,
Or the Negro fishing at the pond, or the fat trout he wraps
In leaves that he is showing to someone. I’ll be

Most everything for you. And I’ll be gone.

Source: The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems 1967-2001 (c. 2001, Copper Canyon Press). Norman Dubie (b. 1945) is an American poet born in Barre, Vermont. He is the author of twenty-eight collections of poetry. Dubie is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry Magazine and the Modern Poetry Association and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Award. He currently teaches in the graduate Creative Writing Program of Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. You can read more about Norman Dubie and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

¹  In 1905, Penikese (spelled by the poet “Pennacesse”) Island in Buzzard’s Bay off Cape Cod was designated as the site of the first (and only) leper colony in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Throughout its sixteen years of operation, thirty-six victims of Hansen’s disease, commonly referred to as leprosy, lived on the isolated island with a handful of caregivers. The onsite doctor, Frank Parker, M.D. and his wife, Marion, went to great lengths to make their patients comfortable. Their small staff provided good food, fresh air, exercise, entertainment and nursing. At that time, the disease bore the curse of stigma and social ostracism, largely due to public belief that it was highly contagious. The Penikese colony closed in 1922.