TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 45:1-7

Psalm 96:1-13

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Matthew 22:15-22

Prayer of the Day: Sovereign God, raise your throne in our hearts. Created by you, let us live in your image; created for you, let us act for your glory; redeemed by you, let us give you what is yours, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

 “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Matthew 22:21.

This text has often been a springboard for discussions about the role of government vs religion; faith and civic responsibility; patriotism and discipleship. Jesus is heard to say that paying taxes is a legitimate exercise of public duty. The state, kingdom or empire, as the case may be, is owed a duty of loyalty and support-unless and until the state’s demands encroach on those made by God. Thus, one must carefully weigh the requirements of the state against what God demands of us. Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.

The emperor, however, demands a great deal. Roman emperors were worshiped as gods and their imperial cult was inseparable from civic displays of national loyalty and patriotism. Refusal to acknowledge the emperor’s divinity was considered treasonous. The religious leaders in Jesus’ day walked a fine line between placating the government of Rome whose legions occupied their land and controlled their nation while trying to remain true to the affirmation made by God through the Prophet Isaiah in our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures: “I am the Lord, and there is no other.”  Isaiah 45:6.

I am not so sure we American Christians are free of that tension. We like to emphasize the “separation of church and state” in proclaiming our freedom from government influence and control. Yet while our government does not legislate any particular religion as such, it surely makes godlike demands. The most significant of these is the mandate to kill. The state alone is entitled to take life in order to uphold its laws, maintain civil order and protect its national interests. The state has the right to conscript its citizens, you and me, to use lethal force to protect its borders, defend its strategic priorities and fight its wars. Of course, just war theory would point out that this power to kill comes from God who establishes civil authority for these very purposes. But that seems to me a tacit admission that the power to kill is outside the scope of human authority and can only be justified by invoking the support of a “higher power.” That “higher power,” however specifically forbade his disciples’ from using lethal force. Thus, taking up the sword is an example of rendering to the emperor the things that belong to God.

A couple of things are worth noting about Sunday’ gospel. First, Jesus does not have a coin. To make his point, he must ask his questioners to produce one. Second, the coin itself is a clear violation of the second commandment forbidding the making of images. Not only so, but the image is that of an imperial figure demanding worship as a god. That Jesus’ opponents actually had such a coin in their possession put the ball squarely back in their court. Theirs is the problem of squaring allegiance to the emperor, whose image they carry on their persons, with their confession that God alone is God. Jesus did not have to respond to their question. As soon as they produced the denarius, they answered it for themselves. They demonstrated that they belong to the emperor. Jesus’ final word to his opponents was not meant to be a response to their question to him. It is rather a wry observation of their having been caught red handed with an idol: “Guess you folks have to figure out how to ‘render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are Gods.'” Of course, Jesus’ opponents knew that all things belong to God and nothing of God’s can belong to the emperor. They cannot explain away their possession of the denarius and so depart in silence.

Once, when I was serving as an assistant to the pastor, I came into the sanctuary on Sunday morning to find a troop of girl scouts practicing a ceremony planed for the beginning of the service. The plan was for the girls to march in formation behind the American flag which would be placed in a stand directly in front of the altar. The congregation would then be invited to stand and join in the pledge of allegiance. I told the senior pastor I wanted no part in this part of the service.

“Why?” he asked in an exasperated tone. “What’s the harm in it?’

The same question was asked of bishop Polycarp prior to his being burned alive for his allegiance to Jesus and his refusal to worship the emperor. “Look,” he was told by some of his companions. “We all know the emperor is not really a god. What’s the harm in burning a little incense on the altar in his name? It’s more a patriotic than religious thing.” Polycarp didn’t see it that way. He would not allow the emperor to inhabit the sacred realm of worship owed to God alone. I am quite sure, he would not have welcomed the flag of the United States into that space either. So it was that I spent the first half of the service that day sitting in the sacristy. My relationship with the senior pastor was a little frosty for a couple weeks after that. But that discomfort hardly compares with being burned to death.

I believe we American Christians would do well to ask ourselves a few fundamental questions: Why do we countenance the presence of a national symbol in sanctuaries dedicated to the worship of the God who shows no partiality among nations? Why are we so easily co-opted into blessing our nation’s wars, honoring its acts of violence and glorifying the taking and sacrificing of human life? Have we become spiritually schizophrenic? How else to explain our singing hymns of God’s gentle reign and the Prince of Peace Sunday morning and then on Sunday evening singing of bombs bursting in air with gusto as war planes stream overhead? What will it take for us to recognize all the things of God we have surrendered to the emperor?

Here is a poem by Ada Limón reflecting on the National Anthem and its dark underside that should give disciples of Jesus pause.

A New National Anthem

The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National

Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good

song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets

red glare” and then there are the bombs.

(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)

Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw

even the tenacious high school band off key.

But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call

to the field, something to get through before

the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas

we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge

could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,

the truth is, every song of this country

has an unsung third stanza, something brutal

snaking underneath us as we blindly sing

the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands

hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do

like the flag, how it undulates in the wind

like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,

brought to its knees, clung to by someone who

has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,

when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly

you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can

love it again, until the song in your mouth feels

like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung

by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,

the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left

unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,

that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,

that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving

into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit

in an endless cave, the song that says my bones

are your bones, and your bones are my bones,

and isn’t that enough?

Source: The Carrying (c. 2018 by Ada Limón; pub. by Milkweed Editions). Ada Limón (b. 1976) is an American poet. Of Mexican-American descent, Limon grew up in Sonoma, California. She attended drama school at the University of Washington, where she subsequently studied theatre. She went on to receive her Master of Fine Arts from New York University in 2001. In 2022 she was named the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States by the Librarian of Congress, the first Latina to be so honored. It was announced on January 30, 2023, that Limon will be writing an original poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper. Scheduled for launch in 2024, the Europa Clipper will be orbiting Jupiter and Limón’s poem will be engraved onto the craft. You can read more about Ada Limon and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 25:1-9

Psalm 23

Philippians 4:1-9

Matthew 22:1-14

Prayer of the Day: Beloved God, from you come all things that are good. Lead us by the inspiration of your Spirit to know those things that are right, and by your merciful guidance, help us to do them, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”  Philippians 4:8.

Truth, honor, justice, purity and delight in these things are in short supply-or so it seems if your focus is on news media of just about every kind. This week brings yet another story of a congress member indicted for corruption. Senator Bob Menendez joins a growing rogue gallery of leaders like Donald Trump, George Santos and Chris Collins-among others. In a world of “alternative facts,” a person who steadfastly lies with impunity in the face of clear and indisputable evidence is praised for “being strong.” Grown men and women in the House of Representatives are behaving like a nursery a school kid threatening to smash all the toys in the room unless he can have them all to himself. Sometimes it seems as though there is nothing left by which to orient our moral compass-if your focus is on what most media consider news.

But Saint Paul’s admonition suggests that perhaps our focus should be elsewhere. Our attention would better be directed away from what makes the news and toward people and events that witness to God’s inbreaking reign. Paul would have us pay attention to examples of truthful speech, honorable actions and lives lived with integrity. Such examples abound. Our spiritual ancestor, Saint Stephen, the first to die for his witness to Jesus, prayed for the very people who were killing him. Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic nurse risked certain death at the hands of the Nazis when she smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto before its destruction. We look for inspiration to Kyla Mueller who dedicated her life to serving vulnerable populations in impoverished and war-torn areas of the world, and who ultimately was murdered by ISIS fighters while she was assisting a hospital caring for Syrian refugees from Aleppo. We can turn to the example of Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero who spoke out against social injustice and violence amid the escalating conflict between the military government of San Salvador and left-wing insurgents that led ultimately to civil war. Romero was shot by an assassin in 1980 while celebrating mass.  

Often, you don’t have to look far for examples of honor, truth, justice and purity. They frequently occur quietly and without fanfare or media coverage. One day my Dad was walking past the home of a neighbor who lived a couple of blocks away. It was a week or so before Christmas, but our neighbor was already taking down his Christmas lights. “Why?” asked Dad. The neighbor pointed to the house next door.

“Mel says he doesn’t like them. Says they keep him awake. He even said he’d call the police on me if I didn’t take them down.”

“He can’t do that!” said Dad. “It’s your house and it’s your right to decorate it for Christmas.”

“True,” said our neighbor. “But I decided that, before doing anything else, I’d go over and talk to Mel. You know, try to figure out what his problem is. I mean, I never had any trouble with him before. So I did. Talked to him, I mean. And did you know he was in a Nazi concentration camp? Still has one of those tattoos on his arm. The rest of his family, they didn’t make it out. Can you imagine? Anyway, those lights shining in his room, for some reason they bring back awful memories. They make him shaky and scared. It’s so bad he can’t sleep. So I decided to take them down. No big deal. I mean what the heck. Christmas isn’t about making people miserable, is it?”

Of course, our neighbor could have insisted on keeping his lights up. If the police had been called, they would surely have sided with him against Mel. It was his right to celebrate his holiday. A lot of so called Christians would say that it was his duty to stand up for his right to express his faith, that he had an obligation to preserve our nation’s “Chistian heritage” against the efforts of unbelievers to “silence us.” We have come to the point where the language of “rights” is the only tongue in which we know how to speak. Every dispute we have comes down to a matter of whose rights control. That is why so many of our disputes never get resolved amicably. Rights can only define what we are entitled to do. They cannot instruct us in what we should do. Only love can do that. Sometimes love compels us to forego the exercise of our rights for the wellbeing of our neighbors. My neighbor, whose name I can no longer recall, was a model of a justice grounded in something greater than rights. It was a justice that was true, honorable and pure.

Whether enshrined in historical narratives or hidden under the routines of everyday living, truth, honor, justice and purity are all around us. It is important for us to recognize them, acknowledge them and reflect on them. What occupies our hearts and minds and imaginations forms the lens through which we view the world and the building blocks of our character. Saint Paul understood, as should we, that focusing on what we are against only transforms us into the mirror image of our foes. It is all well and good to be antiracist, antifacist, against patriarchy and homophobia. But Paul would remind us that we cannot be defined merely by all that we are against. He would challenge us to contemplate the reign of God and long for the mind of Christ to be formed in us that we might learn to live under it. Focusing on what is true, beautiful and good supplies the Holy Spirit with the tools required to form in us the mind of Christ.

Here is a poem about beauty, joy and purity thriving in an unlikely place.

Roses in the Subway

The ground beneath us rumbles

As the crowded cars roll by.

The old bag lady mumbles.

A cranky baby cries.

The weeping of a saxophone

Cuts through the stagnant air.

A million soulless drones head home

Their faces worn with care.

None stops to drop a dime

Into the frail musicians case.

Everyone is pressed for time

And loath to break the pace.

This cavern deep beneath the ground,

Which knows no night or day,

Is where the wretched folk are found

Who have no place to stay.

Yet in these very bowls of hell

She hums a merry tune.

The fragrance of her wares dispel

The stench with scents of June.

Her smiles chase the blues away,

Her laughter mocks the gloom.

She sells roses in the subway,

Places flowers on the tomb.

Source: Anonymous

SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jonah 3:10-4:11

Psalm 145:1-8

Philippians 1:21-30

Matthew 20:1-16

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and eternal God, you show perpetual lovingkindness to us your servants. Because we cannot rely on our own abilities, grant us your merciful judgment, and train us to embody the generosity of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

As I write these lines, the United Auto Workers union is commencing an unprecedented strike against automakers General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. This is one of many labor disputes leading to strikes throughout the country including those threatened or in progress against UPS, Hollywood producers, Hormel and Kaiser Permanente. The growing shortage of workers in nearly all sectors resulting from numerous demographic shifts has strengthened unions and the workers they represent, giving them an upper hand they have not experienced in decades. The tables appear to have turned. I see evidence of that in the “Help Wanted” signs hanging in the windows of businesses from my own little town of twenty-seven thousand to the large metropolitan centers like Boston. Gone are the days when employers sneered at their employees seeking a living wage and minimal benefits with the words, “Be glad you have a job!” “You can be replaced,” and “You’re a dime a dozen.” Workers and their labor, due largely to their current shortage, are finally gaining recognition for their true value that has been lacking for a very long time.

Such was not the case for the workers in Jesus’ parable found in Sunday’s gospel. Clearly, there was a labor surplus such that day workers filled the market place hoping to be hired early for a full day’s wage. Still, they were desperate enough to work wherever, for whoever and for as long as they had the opportunity for whatever they might get paid. They were in no position to strike. This is as it should be according to the American religion of capitalism. Value is measured strictly in monetary terms. The market determines the value of everything from apples to human beings. If you are too sick, too weak, too old or too crippled to do a day’s work in the vineyard, well, the market has spoken. You lack sufficient value to be kept alive. Doing so would not be cost effective-and that, after all, is what capitalism is all about. The moral perversity of all this is made painfully clear in a terse but poignant paragraph from John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath:

“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from the orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates-died of malnutrition-because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.”

The story Jesus tells follows what must have been a well understood and predictable pattern. The owner of the vineyard hires what must have been the best, strongest and most promising workers in the early hours of the day. Later, he comes back to hire others who are promised only that they will be paid “whatever is right.” That, of course, will be determined by the owner of the vineyard. Jesus’ audience likely uttered a collective groan at this point. Clearly, the owner is taking advantage of the workers’ desperation. He knows they need to work and that with each passing hour their anxiety is growing. He knows he can get their labor on the cheap. The last group of workers to be approached is asked, perhaps with a note of sarcasm and condescension, “why do you stand idle all day?” The only answer they can give is the same answer every unemployed person gives when asked why they are not at work. “No one has hired us.” These, too, are sent into the vineyard with the same seemingly vacuous promise.

But then, Jesus’ parable takes a remarkable turn. The owner of the vineyard not only pays first those who worked last and least. He pays them a full day’s wage. He breaks the cardinal rule of capitalism by paying his employees more than their labor is worth. Maybe he is just a poor businessman. Or perhaps he understands that the workers are more than the sum of their capacity for increasing profit. Perhaps the owner of the vineyard understands what we Americans, brainwashed as we are by the religion of capitalism, fail to comprehend. That a living wage is not a privilege. It is a human entitlement. Simply by being human one is entitled to eat, to be sheltered, to receive medical care, to be treated with dignity and respect. The United States Constitution may not say that. Jesus, however, makes clear in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel that the nations are to be judged, not by how economically efficient they have been, but by how well or poorly they treated the most vulnerable among them. At the court of final judgment, appeals to constitutional law will not avail. A higher law controls.

Understand that I am not advocating “socialism” over “capitalism” or “command economies” over “market economies.” Truth is, I distrust anything that has an “ist” or an “ism” at the end of it. I am not opposed to “markets” or “business” or “free enterprise” per se. What I do oppose, as does Jesus, Moses and the Hebrew prophets, is raising the “Market” to the level of a deity that can be trusted to produce a just society; business designed to produce profit at the expense of the public good, the environment and the most vulnerable among us; and unrestrained greed and accumulation of the earth’s good gifts in the hands of a few. What God demands of us is an economy that works for everyone. While I am glad to see the growing strength of the labor movement in our nation, I am grieved that workers must strike for what their employers ought to recognize is their just entitlement. I am grieved that employers’ hearts have grown so cold and hard that hitting them in the pocket book is the only way they can be moved. I am grieved that so many of us still harbor such mean spirited resentment and contempt for those unable earn a living wage who must depend upon our compassion and generosity to make ends meet.

The only material good for which Jesus ever taught his disciples to pray was for “this day’s bread.” That, along with clothing and shelter, should make us content. I Timothy 6:8. Our problem is that we crave a great deal more. We imagine that our efforts and accomplishments entitle us to more. We have bought into the American cultural lie that one has a right to accumulate as much as one is able to amass without breaking the law. Therefore, in a world where God’s will is done, where all are entitled to their daily bread-and no more, those of us who have become accustomed to “more” cry foul. We imagine that our “rights” are being violated by the loss of what we were never intended to have in the first place and the resulting equitable treatment of our neighbors. When it becomes clear that God would have all people enjoy daily bread, regardless their earning potential, degree of work or accomplishment, the daily bread God has freely given us looks paltry and poor in our hands. Rather than giving thanks, we grumble at the seeming unfairness of it all. The coming of God’s kingdom looks more like a threat to us than the wonderful promise and gift that it is.

Here is a poem that playfully explores the great wealth to be had in having everything while owning nothing.

Net Worth

I own the golden sunlight
breaking over the pines.
I own my neighbor’s pansies
growing neatly in spaced lines.
I own the orange harvest moon
that hangs above the hills.
I own the sparrows that come to feed
at the seed troughs on my sills.
I own the pathway through the woods
that leads down to the river.
I own the song the waters sing,
the pebbles they deliver
as on their journey to the sea
they run their endless course.
They haven’t time for worry,
nor the patience for remorse.
I own the nighttime sky
and every star on its dark vale.
I own the mighty ocean
where the ocean liners sail.
Someday I will be through
with checkbooks, funds and property.
I’m sure that once I’m broke
the world will have no use for me.
Creditors will seize my goods,
the tax man take my home.
And once they have these trifles,
then they’ll leave me on my own.
With all distractions gone
and not one penny in my plate,
at last I’ll have the leisure
to enjoy my vast estate!

Source: Anonymous

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Ezekiel 33:7-11

Psalm 119:33-40

Romans 13:8-14

Matthew 18:15-20

Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, enliven and preserve your church with your perpetual mercy. Without your help, we mortals will fail; remove far from us everything that is harmful, and lead us toward all that gives life and salvation, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes,
   and I will observe it to the end.
Give me understanding, that I may keep your law
   and observe it with my whole heart.
Lead me in the path of your commandments,
   for I delight in it.” Psalm 119:33-35.

Those who have the patience to read this 176 verse Psalm from beginning to end know that it is an extended prayer for deeper understanding of Torah. The entire Psalm revolves constantly around the Torah experienced by the psalmist as reliable guide, faithful companion, relentless judge, purifying fire and source of endless joy. It weaves together the life experiences of friendship and betrayal, triumph and tragedy, grief and joy, fear and faith, the challenges of youth and the approach of old age. The psalm paints a magnificent portrait of life woven into and shaped by Torah and the psalmist’s desire for an ever deeper understanding of it.  

Much is lost in translation through the rendering of “Torah” as “law” in our English bibles. Torah is far more than a dry set of laws, statutes and ordinances. For Israel, Torah is the shape of the covenant; “the mode of God’s life giving presence.” Brueggemann, Walter, The Message of the Psalms, Augsburg Old Testament Studies (c. 1984 by Augsburg Publishing House), p. 40. It is “a launching pad form which to mount an ongoing conversation with God through daily experience.” Ibid. p. 41. Still, “[i]t is Yahweh who is the portion of the speaker (v. 57), not the Torah nor one’s keeping of the Torah.” Ibid. The psalm affirms Torah as the medium through which prayer is made possible. As a rabbi friend once remarked, “Torah is the rope in an extended tug-of-war. We continue to pull on it because we firmly believe there is One on the other end with whom we are in constant tension.”

The psalmist’s understanding of spiritual maturation through engagement with Torah runs counter to our American modernist aversion to rules, regulations and “formal ritual” as antithetical to true spirituality. “I’m spiritual, not religious,” a visitor to my church once told me-and she was hardy the first or only one I have met expressing that sentiment. Of course, that statement makes no rational sense on its face. If you are talking about spirit or spirituality, that is inescapably religions. So, too, what is religion about if not spirituality? I understand, of course, that many people seeking spiritual engagement have not been able to find it in the church. I also agree that faith and spiritual growth involve more than mere ascent to creedal and doctrinal formulae, rote recitation of liturgies and going through the actions of worship. You cannot swim in an Olympic sized rectangular depression if it doesn’t hold any water. On the other hand, 660,430 gallons of water dumped randomly on the ground is not likely to materialize as a working pool. If you are going to swim, you need both water and something to hold it, give it form, depth and direction.

This is where religious practices and disciplines come in. They are not, to be sure, ends in themselves. Think of them rather as well worn paths which generations have followed faithfully. They are maps revealing the lay of the land and giving us a sense of where we are. They are the means by which the “highways to Zion” are engraved upon our hearts through the recitation of liturgies, the singing of hymns, the reading of scriptures and faithful preaching. These practices are not static, remaining unchaged throughout history. Like a snowball rolling downhill, they accumulate richer and deeper meanings as they are contemplated and re-interpreted by each succeeding generation. Religious practices unite us with past generations and current members of our faith communities. They give us a language with which we can share, discuss, question and explore this ultimately inexplicable mystery we worship. When we engage in religious practices with our whole selves, they form in us the “mind of Christ” so that the “body of Christ” can become visible to the world.

The God we worship is as complex as the world God created. A lifetime is not long enough even to scratch the surface of that mystery we call God. For this reason, I am not particularly concerned that my congregation’s worship might not be intelligible to someone unfamiliar with our faith or that they might not be able “to relate to it” after attending one of our Sunday Eucharists. I would not expect such a person to understand us after little more than an hour. Our scriptures, creeds and liturgy are deep, layered and complex. Like everything else worth learning, becoming fluent in the language of faith takes time, patience and commitment. I don’t apologize for that. Physicists do not apologize for the complexity of the universe. Why should we apologize for the complexity of the One who made it? Language teachers do not apologize to their students because conjugating verbs and declining nouns is difficult and boring. Why should we apologize because understanding the language of faith requires the learning of narrative, poetry, song, symbol and ritual? If Christianity were something I could pick up after sitting through a single worship service, I wouldn’t be interested in it. Any faith that can be distilled on a bumper sticker isn’t worth giving up a peaceful Sunday morning with a good bagel, cup of coffee and the New York Times.

Here is a poem by Howard Nemerov about learning, the creative tension between study and experience that might reflect in some measure our psalmists dance with the Torah.

Learning the Trees
 
Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn
The language of the trees. That’s done indoors,
Out of a book, which now you think of it
Is one of the transformations of a tree.

The words themselves are a delight to learn,
You might be in a foreign land of terms
Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome,
Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth.

But best of all are the words that shape the leaves—
Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform—
And their venation—palmate and parallel—
And tips—acute, truncate, auriculate.

Sufficiently provided, you may now
Go forth to the forests and the shady streets
To see how the chaos of experience
Answers to catalogue and category.

Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree
May differ among themselves more than they do
From other species, so you have to find,
All blandly says the book, “an average leaf.”

Example, the catalpa in the book
Sprays out its leaves in whorls of three
Around the stem; the one in front of you
But rarely does, or somewhat, or almost;

Maybe it’s not catalpa? Dreadful doubt.
It may be weeks before you see an elm
Fanlike in form, a spruce that pyramids,
A sweetgum spiring up in steeple shape.

Still, pedetemtim as Lucretius says,
Little by little, you do start to learn;
And learn as well, maybe, what language does
And how it does it, cutting across the world

Not always at the joints, competing with
Experience while cooperating with
Experience, and keeping an obstinate
Intransigence, uncanny, of its own.

Think finally about the secret will
Pretending obedience to Nature, but
Invidiously distinguishing everywhere,
Dividing up the world to conquer it,

And think also how funny knowledge is:
You may succeed in learning many trees
And calling off their names as you go by,
But their comprehensive silence stays the same.

Source:  The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (c. 1977 by Howard Nemerov, pub. by The University of Chicago Press). Howard Nemerov (1920-1991) was an American poet. He was twice Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. He also won the National Book Award for Poetry, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize. Nemerov was raised in New York City where he attended the Society for Ethical Culture’s Fieldston School. He later commenced studies at Harvard University where he earned his BA. During World War II he served as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force as well as the United State Air Force. He was honorably discharged with the rank of Lieutenant and thereafter returned to New York to resume his writing career. Nemerov began teaching, first at Hamilton College and subsequently at Bennington College and Brandeis University. He ended his teaching career at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was elevated to Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of English and Distinguished Poet in Residence from 1969 until his death in 1991. Nemerov’s poems demonstrated a consistent emphasis on thought, the process of thinking and on ideas themselves. Nonetheless, his work always displayed the full range of human emotion and experience. You can find out more about Howard Nemerov and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 15:15-21
Psalm 26:1-8
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

Prayer of the Day: O God, we thank you for your Son, who chose the path of suffering for the sake of the world. Humble us by his example, point us to the path of obedience, and give us strength to follow your commands, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink…”

Saint Paul, Romans 12:19-20.

“I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

President George W. Bush to a crowd in New York following the attack on the World Trade Center, 2001.

“God bless America. God damn Afghanistan. You bastards are all going to die.”

Spray painted on the side of a van parked in Ridgewood, New Jersey the Sunday after September 11, 2001.

Vengeance has been with us from the dawn of our species. Cain vengefully murdered his brother, Abel, and was driven into exile by fear of vengeance. A generation later, the first love song recorded in the Bible is laced with boasts of vengeance:

“Lamech said to his wives:
‘Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
   you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
   a young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
   truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.’” Genesis 4:23-24.

Paul reminds us, however, that vengeance is not a human prerogative. God alone is entitled to execute vengeance. The Hebrew scriptures make this point repeatedly. The psalmists cry out for God to execute vengeance against their enemies. They are not shy about telling God exactly how they would like to see their enemies punished. Often the psalmists’ expressions of their desired vengeance are spelled out in appalling detail:

“Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
   the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down!
   Down to its foundations!’
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
   Happy shall they be who pay you back
   what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
   and dash them against the rock!” Psalm 137:7-9  

Nevertheless, the psalmists leave the business of actually doing vengeance in the hands of God where it rightly belongs.

As it turns out, God is usually not inclined to carry out vengeance. God imposed neither the death penalty nor incarceration without possibility of parole in sentencing the first murderer, Cain. Moreover, God put God’s mark of protection on Cain so that no one else would take it upon themselves to seek revenge against him either. As the prophet Jonah had to learn, God’s ideas about who deserves to be punished for what and how and when are often very different from our own myopic views on the subject, colored as they often are by the pain of our wounds. Unlike ourselves, God is,

“is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
   and relents from punishing.” Joel 2:12-13.  

Revenge is sweet in the imagination. In real life, not so much. The vengeance promised and, to a large degree, delivered under President Bush did not bring back the victims of the 9/11 attacks. It did, however, lead to a baseless attack on a nation that was not involved in those attacks resulting in the deaths of 4,492 Americans and countless more Iraqi civilians. The war in Afghanistan resulted in the death of 2,402 American soldiers and, again, the death of civilians in multiples of that number. The Iraq war opened the door for the rise of ISIS. Afghanistan ended in a calamitous retreat leaving that country war torn, poorer and in the hands of the very ones who made it a haven for terrorists in the first place. The lust for revenge, our seemingly deep seated need to “settle the score” and “end it once and for all” draws us like moths to a flame into endless cycles of violence and death. What we ought to have learned from history is that revenge is a dish best foregone.

Jesus understood this well. That is why he declined the devil’s invitation to usurp the glory of the world’s kingdoms-and the raw power to crush one’s enemies that comes with it. That is why Jesus teaches us to “turn the other cheek” rather than return blow for blow. That is why he firmly commanded his disciples not to use the sword in his defense. That is why, instead of retaliating against the world that rejected and crucified the only begotten Son, God raised the Son from death and offered him again to this recalcitrant world. In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God breaks once and for all the cycle of vengeance. God proves too strong to be sucked into that toxic cycle.

This strength of God appears as weakness to those still caught up in the cycle of vengeance. But to a world convinced that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, Saint Paul counters that the only way to stop a bad guy, with or without a gun, is to refuse his invitation to engage on his terms. We will not give to the enemy power to ignite hatred in our hearts or to stain our hands with blood. To lose our lives in this way is, as Jesus points out in Sunday’s gospel, to gain our lives. To preserve our lives at the cost of becoming the mirror image of what we hate is to lose them. Of course, this “weakness of God,” to use Saint Paul’s term (I Corinthians 1:25), is nonsensical to those who have been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the creed of retribution or, again to cite Saint Paul, “conformed to this world,” (Romans 12:2) that they lack the conceptual tools required to imagine any way other than vengeance or the threat of it to repel evil.

Paul’s message to us this Sunday could hardly come at a better time. For the first time in our history, a former president is being indicted for serious crimes he allegedly committed before, during and after his presidency. Anybody who follows me with regularity knows that I am no friend of Donald Trump. Part of me is gleeful about his legal woes. Finally, the man who managed all his life to evade the law, abuse his power, all the while treating his employees, his country and even his supporters with contempt, is “getting his.” Part of me would love to see the man paraded out of the courtroom in cuffs to be fitted with an orange jump suit and plastic sandals. But to what end? To make him suffer? To inflict on him the pain I know he has inflicted on others? To see him “cut down to size”? However cathartic that might be for me, it will surely not end the animosity and polarization into which Donald Trump and his supporters have brought us. If anything, convicting and incarcerating Trump will only heighten the distrust of his followers for our government, its laws and its institutions. It will, as vengeance always does, evoke a hostile and vengeful response-and the cycle will continue. Make no mistake about it, I want Donald Trump and his co-conspirators to be held accountable. I want them to answer for their actions and I want their lies, conspiracies and crimes to be exposed. Most of all, I want to see them made to take responsibility for their actions.  But that is something far different than mere punishment.

I am not sure what I am proposing here. Perhaps it means making Donald Trump’s release from incarceration contingent on his agreement, under strict supervision, to work with Habitat for Humanity for the provision of affordable housing. Perhaps it means making Rudy Giuliani’s release contingent upon his agreeing to work with agencies providing legal services to those unable to afford them. Am I letting them off the hook to easily? If the objective is punishment that fits the crime, undoubtedly so. But what if punishment is not the objective? What if the objective is restitution in whatever measure is possible? What if the objective is reconciliation and peace? In short, I am not suggesting anything different for Trump and his co-defendants than what I have always advocated for persons convicted of crime, namely, that they be made to take responsibility for the harm they have caused, forgiven and given the opportunity for redemption. As an added bonus, the state would be spared the substantial cost incarcerating them.

Supporters of Donald Trump complain that the United States Department of Justice has been “weaponized” against them and that Trump is the victim of political retribution. I have not seen a scrap of evidence to that effect. Still, it is a fact that our criminal justice system in the United States is essentially punitive in nature. Those on the receiving end of it experience it as a “weapon.” A conviction frequently results in incarceration and, upon release, severely limits one’s options for housing, employment and travel. To be branded a “criminal” is to be stigmatized, loathed and excluded. Furthermore, it should not be lost upon us that the weapon of criminal justice falls most heavily and disproportionately upon persons of color, particularly young Black men. Public media reinforce this perverse concept of criminal justice. A popular police drama refers in its opening lines to police and prosecutors as participants in the “war on crime.” Our numerous police dramas regularly televised for public consumption frequently portray “criminals” as entirely depraved, dangerous and deserving of whatever fate they suffer. They are enemies deserving no pity, no mercy, no empathy.

In fact, however, “criminals” are ordinary people who, like us, make bad decisions, do and say harmful things and manage to do a lot of damage in the process. The only difference between them and us is that their harmful conduct happens to be against the law. None of us, I am sure, would want to be judged by the meanest, ugliest and most hurtful thing we have ever done. So, in the spirit of the “Golden Rule,” we ought not to withhold from persons convicted of crime the same consideration we would wish for ourselves: forgiveness and an opportunity for redemption. As hard as it is for me to say so, that goes for Trump & Company as well.

Here is a poem by George Horton Moses reflecting on the carnage of the American Civil War and the cost of retributive justice wrought by violence.

 Weep

Weep for the country in its present state,

And of the gloom which still the future waits;

The proud confederate eagle heard the sound,

And with her flight fell prostrate to the ground!

Weep for the loss the country has sustained,

By which her now dependent is in jail;

The grief of him who now the war survived,

The conscript husbands and the weeping wives!

Weep for the seas of blood the battle cost,

And souls that ever hope forever lost!

The ravage of the field with no recruit,

Trees by the vengeance blasted to the root!

Weep for the downfall o’er your heads and chief,

Who sunk without a medium of relief;

Who fell beneath the hatchet of their pride,

Then like the serpent bit themselves and died!

Weep for the downfall of your president,

Who far too late his folly must repent;

Who like the dragon did all heaven assail,

And dragged his friends to limbo with his tail!

Weep o’er peculiar swelling coffers void,

Our treasures left, and all their banks destroyed;

Their foundless notes replete with shame to all,

Expecting every day their final fall,

In quest of profit never to be won,

Then sadly fallen and forever down!

Source: “Words for the Hour”: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry, edited by Faith Barrett; (c. 2005 by University of Massachusetts Press).

George Moses Horton (b. 1798 d. 1882?) was born into slavery on a North Carolina tobacco plantation in Chatham County. From the time he was a child, Horton composed poetry. Though unable to read or write, he had a remarkable memory in which he retained his verse. Horton was sold in 1815 to another owner who sent him on trips to Chapel Hill where he befriended students from the University of North Carolina. Recognizing his talent, his new friends urged him to pursue writing and donated books to assist him in his efforts to educate himself. A university professor’s wife tutored him in grammar and promoted his work to local publishers. In 1829, Horton published his first book of poetry. His hope was to purchase his freedom with his earnings on this work, but that plan never came to fruition. He subsequently published two more books of poetry gaining him the distinction of being the only enslaved person ever to publish. Early in 1865, Horton left his enslaver’s farm and joined the Union army. Following the end of the Civil War, he moved to Philadelphia. The exact date and the circumstances of his death remain unknown. You can read more about George Moses Horton at the Poetry Foundation website.

Skin in the Game

Due to numerous commitments this week, I have been unable to publish a freash article. Hopefully this reflection on Sunday’s lessons published three years ago remains timely.

TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 56:6-8

Psalm 67

Romans 11:1-2; 29-32

Matthew 15:10-28

Prayer of the Day: God of all peoples, your arms reach out to embrace all those who call upon you. Teach us as disciples of your Son to love the world with compassion and constancy, that your name may be known throughout the earth, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!” Romans 11:1.

This sentence is perhaps the most important for us followers of Jesus to elevate in this age of increasing antisemitism. Incidents of antisemitism, including assault, vandalism and harassment, increased by more than a third in just one year and reached nearly 3,700 cases in 2022. “Antisemitic incidents in the US are at the highest level recorded since the 1970s” By Krystina Shveda, CNN. Sadly, hostility toward Judaism and violence toward Jews have been prevalent throughout the history of the church. It continues to find expression in many sectors of Christianity today. Proponents of anti-Jewish sentiment often point to the New Testament and Saint Paul in particular in support of their hateful views. For this reason, I think it is essential that we understand Paul’s relationship to Judaism and the nature of his mission to the gentiles.

If you were to attempt striking up a conversation with Paul about Christianity, he would not have the foggiest notion what you are talking about. That is because Christianity did not exist during Paul’s lifetime and ministry. There was a “Jesus movement” within Judaism. Paul, though initially hostile toward the movement, ultimately became associated with it. Thus-and this is critically important-Paul was not a convert from Judaism to Christianity. He was a faithful Jew who found in Jesus’ faithful life, obedient death and glorious resurrection a deeper understanding of Israel’s covenant with its God. Paul never says “I was a Jew” or “I used to be Jewish before I saw the light.” To the contrary, he states clearly and proudly, “I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.” Asking Paul whether he was a Jew or a Christian would be like asking someone from New Jersey whether they are American or New Jersian.

Paul did not understand the church as an alternative to Israel. But he did believe that the God of Israel was also the God of all people, that is “the gentiles.” As he saw it, the salvation accomplished by Jesus opened up the covenant relationship God had with Israel to all nations. His vision was not for Jews to abandon their covenant relationship with God. Rather, his hope was for Jesus to be the open door through which the gentiles, formerly estranged from God, could enter into and become a part of the sacred covenant promises entrusted to Israel. As a corollary, Jesus was to be a porthole through which Israel would recognize God’s purpose of uniting people of all nations under a single covenant relationship. Paul never dreamed that he was starting a religion new and different from the one in which he grew up.

We learn much about Paul’s ministry from the Book of Acts, which was written decades after Paul’s death and at a time when relations between the Jesus movement and other strands within Judaism, particularly the Pharisees, was becoming increasingly adversarial. Nonetheless, it is clear that Paul saw his missionary journeys as an extension of his Judaism. Wherever his travels took him, Paul consistently went first to the synagogue or other Jewish worshiping communities in the area. Sometimes, he found a receptive audience. At times, he met opposition.

It is important to keep in mind that, outside of Palestine, the line of demarcation between Jew and gentile was more attenuated. Jews in Greece and Asia Minor typically spoke Greek and were heavily influenced by the surrounding Hellenistic culture where they lived among diverse peoples with whom they joined together in civic events and conducted business. Intermarriage between Jews and gentiles was common. Gentiles were frequently involved to various degrees in the life of the synagogue. Paul seems to have had a large degree of success with gentile audiences, probably those who had had some relationship with and knowledge of Judaism.

One might get the impression from reading Paul’s letters, particularly his epistles to the Romans and Galatians, that he had a deep antipathy to Torah (translated from our Greek New Testament as “law”). But that is not the case. Paul had no problem with Jews being observant of Torah and the traditional practices that grew out if it. Indeed, he appears to have been observant himself. But he had a big problem with the imposition of these many practices upon gentile converts to the Jesus movement. Paul insisted that God’s call, both to Israel and to the gentiles through the Jesus movement, must be answered by faith, not obedience to any code of behavior. In this, Paul was thoroughly consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures:

“It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 7:7-8.

“for not by their own sword did they win the land,
   nor did their own arm give them victory;
but your right hand, and your arm,
   and the light of your countenance,
   for you delighted in them.” Psalm 44:3.

Paul also insisted that God’s mercy and forgiveness is not premised on perfect obedience. Again, this is entirely consistent with Israel’s faith. The understanding that Israel would fall short of what God commands was built into the fabric of the Torah which provided for sin offerings through which the community and individuals were given the opportunity to turn from their wrongdoing and find reconciliation with God and with one another. Torah was thus a redemptive and community building instrument of grace. However, when Torah ceases to be viewed as God’s gift to human beings and is understood instead as a requirement human beings must fulfill in order to qualify for God’s salvation, it becomes a curse. As Paul saw it, the insistence by some within the Jesus movement that gentiles received into the church by baptism needed to comply with all the religious and cultural norms governing Judaism, circumcision in particular, had precisely that effect. For some within the Jesus movement and other strands of Judaism as well, this was a bridge too far. Thus, the polemic we find in Paul’s letters does not reflect a dispute between Judaism and Christianity (which did not yet exist!), but a conflict within the Jesus movement between those who felt that gentile converts should observe all essential aspects of Torah, including circumcision, and Paul with his supporters who were convinced that baptism into Jesus Christ was sufficient.

Though the Jesus movement eventually parted company with the Jewish community, it is important to understand that this was a gradual process. We know that disciples of Jesus attended worship in synagogues well into the second century. It was not until the church became the official religion of the Roman Empire following the rise of Constantine the Great that the split became final. Armed with the might of empire, the church was now in a position to attack its opponents, Jews, heretics and pagans alike with more than theological arguments. Notwithstanding the specific affirmation in our creeds that Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate,” the death of Jesus was increasingly placed squarely and solely on the shoulders of the Jews. In the centuries that followed, Jews experienced the full weight of Christian supremacy in the form of discrimination, pogroms, inquisitions culminating in the Holocaust.

Our problem is that us disciples of Jesus, the Jew from Nazareth, have forgotten how we were once outsiders who received a gracious invitation to Israel’s covenant home. We forgot that we are guests and began acting as though we own the whole house. We would do well to heed Saint Paul’s warning that we “wild olive branches,” who have been grafted into the cultivated olive tree that is Israel, can as easily be cut away if we start putting on airs. Romans 11:19-21. We, the invited guests, have even gone so far as to evict our hosts! For centuries, the doctrine of superssessionism, the notion that Judaism has been displaced by the superior religion of Christianity, has been elevated to the level of orthodoxy. As a result, Jews in America have been targeted for conversion, pressured to “assimilate” and subjected to discrimination, defamation and scapegoating.   

That this vicious and irrational hatred of Jews continues to be a powerful and dangerous force in American culture is undeniable. This calls for, among other things, a strong theological reassessment of the church’s teachings concerning Judaism. We need to emphasize the church’s symbiotic relationship with the people of Israel, the community that gave birth to our faith. I must confess that I do not fully understand the arguments made by Saint Paul in the nineth through eleventh chapters of Romans. I do not understand what Paul means by “a hardening coming on a part of Israel” (Romans 11:25) or how Paul’s “magnifying” his ministry to the gentiles is supposed to make his fellow Jews “jealous” or what he expected that to accomplish. Romans 11:14. What I do know is that, in the midst of these arguments, Paul still refers to all Israel as his “fellow Jews.” Romans 11:14. I do know that he was convinced that the “full inclusion” of Israel in God’s design meant life for the world. Romans 11:15. I do know that Paul is convinced that “all Israel will be saved.” Romans 11:26. Thus, according to the New Testament witness generally and that of Saint Paul in particular, the reign of God proclaimed by Jesus is the one proclaimed by the ancestors and the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures for the people of Israel. By God’s sheer act of grace in Jesus Christ, the gentiles have been invited to participate in that glorious, mysterious and hopeful promise.

I believe Saint Paul would be horrified if he could see what has become of the church he worked so hard make a witness of reconciliation and unity for Jews, gentiles, slaves, free, men and women of every nation. I believe that if we take seriously what Saint Paul actually taught and what the New Testament proclaims concerning Jesus and his mission, we will share that outrage and recognize not only our complicity in the historic violence against Jews, but our obligation to struggle against the vestiges of that sad legacy as it continues to rear its ugly head in acts of violence today. We need to state with clarity that it is not the mission of the church to make Jews into Christians, assimilate them into our nominally Christian culture or denigrate their faith in order to legitimize our own. When we can finally look respectfully and gratefully to our Jewish neighbors with gratitude for the spiritual legacy from which our own faith was born, acknowledge that the covenant God made with them is as valid as it ever was and recognize that the hope of the Jewish people expressed in their faithful obedience to Torah and the hope expressed in our discipleship to Jesus are one in the same, perhaps we will one day see the realization of Paul’s vision.

Here is a poem by Eve Merriam that gives us a snapshot of what it is like for a Jewish child growing up in America.

Jew

Babies have no special history.

Born, you were rosy and round, gurgled like any other,

horizon was mother’s breast and father’s chucking finger;

peeped from your bunting, saw only the friendly sky.

Crawling, the world enlarged to father’s watch

fat as a golden moon in the fairy tale;

innocent blocks spelt out no tattling word,

and even raised to high-chair the scene was cheery:

nursery walls in pink or charming blue,

Jack and Jill the only handwriting there.

While you were yet young, however, the swag was stolen.

You were blamed.

At school the children stumbled over your name;

you were never the Prince in games. Always your nose

made you Rumpelstiltzkin or the Dwarf.

Your father’s cap was queer. (But freckles are queer,

too, and red hair, and your father drinks too much!)

No matter. The money was never found, let’s call him Ike the

          Thief.

Ike, modern clubmember of the Lost Tribes of Israel:

lost, yes, but not your ancestry.

It was glittering swag: never found,

All those million years: and you’re to blame of course.

Oh I grant

they could have blamed the snake in Eden, the apple,

or even the dirty goat grazing on the garbage;

rain might have been the victim, earthquake, or suspect fire,

indigestion, dreams, roses, or constipation.

But they chose the Jew. Surely your rabbi

read you the Hebrews where God’s anointed race?

Now how would you like to take yours: mixed or straight?

We are sorry to inform you our enrollment is complete.

No Dogs or Jews Allowed. 

Someday when the swag is found, you can cancel kike

and nigger, wop, hunky, chink, and okie.

But just now the chances look very slim;

the swag is either underground too deep

to drill, or too high for the heavenliest plane.

Maybe, quite sensibly, it was never even lost,

but they myth continues, a colossal Judge Crater,

Kidd’s map, the virgin birth, life on the moon.

Source: Poetry, (September 1941) Eve Merriam (1916-1992) was an American poet and writer. Born in Philadelphia, she was one of four children of Russian Jewish immigrants. She graduated with an A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1937 and then moved to New York to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University. Merriam’s first book, Family Circle was published in 1946. For this work she won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Her book, The Inner City Mother Goose, written in the aftermath of the urban uprisings of 1968-69, was one of the most frequently banned books of all time. It was the inspiration for the Broadway musical, Inner City. The play was revived in 1982 under the title Street Dreams. Merriam published over thirty books over her career and taught at both City College and New York University. You can read more about Eve Merrian and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.  

ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

I Kings 19:9-18

Psalms 85:8-13

Romans 10:5-15

Matthew 14:22-33

Prayer of the Day: O God our defender, storms rage around and within us and cause us to be afraid. Rescue your people from despair, deliver your sons and daughters from fear, and preserve us in the faith of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” I Kings 19:11-12.

If the phrase, “sound of sheer silence” appears to be a contradiction, it is only because we assume that silence is nothing more than the absence of sound. Saints and mystics of many different faiths know, however, that nothing could be further from the truth. Monastic communities that make it central to their spiritual practices know that silence is often the womb in which more profound wisdom, clearer insight, deeper discernment and more penetrating vision is conceived. Thomas Merton once remarked that “in silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.” He goes on to point out that:

“For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.” The Power and Meaning of Love, Thomas Merton(c.Sheldon Press 1976).

We Americans live in a silence averse culture. Our malls, doctors’ offices, and transportation stations hum with display screens and pumped in music. Radios and televisions play non-stop in many of our homes. Our parties and gatherings are permeated by endless chatter. I believe that much of this exists to spare us from the awkwardness and discomfort of silence. After all, silence is discomforting. It is every host’s duty to ensure that lively chatter flows unceasingly among the guests. If talk at the dinner table should hesitate, the host must step in to fill the uneasy silence by “making conversation.” A host failing to do so would be considered rude and inept. Silence is the antithesis of sociability.

It is not noise alone that keeps silence at bay. Much of what we digest in our reading or viewing on various media drives silence from our minds and hearts. The white heat of our politics and cultural discourse often prevents the discerning consideration of deep moral concerns that can happen only in the depths of silence. Much of our civil discourse these days comes in the form of angry and snarky posts, tweets and messaging that only illicit the same in reply. We talk over each other because we are so cock sure we know what our conversation partner is saying, that it is entirely wrong and that we have the arguments to defeat him. Before one is finished talking the other is already concocting a counter-argument. It is all reminiscent of the lines of Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence:

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening

If ever there was a man who needed the refuge of silence, it was the Prophet Elijah. There is a back story for our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures. Elijah had been in exile for months as Israel’s King Ahab and his Queen Jezebel were systematically eradicating the worship of Israel’s God, destroying God’s places of worship and replacing the worship of God with the near eastern religion of Ba’al worship. At God’s direction, Elijah came out of hiding and confronted King Ahab. He challenged the King to assemble the prophets of Ba’al to offer a sacrifice to their god. Elijah, for his part, would build an altar for sacrifice to the God of Israel. Neither would light a sacrificial fire. Both would wait for their respective deities to do the honors. The god that answered by fire, lighting its altar, that god would be known as God indeed. To make a very long and entertaining story short, Israel’s God sent fire to consume the offering on Elijah’s altar. Ba’a’l was a no-show.

Such a dramatic demonstration ought to have settled the matter. For a short time, it seemed to have done just that. Ahab was convinced. Jezebel, the true power behind the throne was not impressed. She vowed to avenge the humiliation of her god with Elijah’s blood. Once again, Elijah was on the run. We find him curled up in a cave wanting to die. When God asks him what he is doing in such a pitiful state, he replies, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” I Kings 19:10. You cannot fault Elijah for feeling that way. He has been living all alone in exile. He alone was willing to challenge the royal household’s adultery at the risk of his life. Now, everything he thought he accomplished has come crashing down all around him and, once again, his is all alone.

But in truth, Elijah was not alone. Once he managed to get beyond the noise of his enemies, the noise of his seeming failure, the noise of savage winds, earthquakes and fires, he learned that there were seven thousand people left in Israel that, like him, were “very zealous for the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel.” He also learned that God had more work for him to do. Most importantly, he learned that he will no longer be alone in his work. He is to anoint Elisha as his companion and successor. This is no rosy forecast. The redemption of Israel is going to be a long, difficult and violent road. It is obvious that Elijah will not see the end of that road in his life time. But in the shelter of holy silence, with all distractions without and within put aside, Elijah is finally able to see a way forward for himself and his people.

Saint John of the Cross reminds us that “it is best to learn to silence the faculties and cause them to be still, so that God may speak,” Once you get over your discomfort with silence, you find it liberating. There is comfort in knowing you cannot and need not control the powerful currents sweeping around you. There is peace in knowing that you need not have all the answers to all of your questions. There is freedom in knowing that you do not have to have an opinion on everything and that it is not always necessary that you speak your mind. There is huge potential for healing, reconciliation and peace when you finally learn that it is often enough just to listen and understand without passing judgment or giving advice. There is power greater than any earthquake, wind or fire in the sound of sheer silence.

Here is a poem by Billy Collins about silence, the many contexts in which it occurs, its power and its fragility.

Silence

There is the sudden silence of the crowd

above a player not moving on the field,

and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase

before it strikes the floor,

the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it,

the silence of the moon

and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,

the silence of the window above us,

and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning

which I have broken with my pen,

a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house—

the silence before I wrote a word

and the poorer silence now.

Source: Poetry (April 2005). William James (Billy) Collins (b. 1941) is an American poet. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He was a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York from which he retired in 2016. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 to 2006. In 2016, Collins was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Since 2020, he has been teaching in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. You can read more about Billy Collins and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.         

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 55:1-5

Psalm 145:8-9;14-21

Romans 9:1-5

Matthew 14:13-21

Prayer of the Day Glorious God, your generosity waters the world with goodness, and you cover creation with abundance. Awaken in us a hunger for the food that satisfies both body and spirit, and with this food fill all the starving world; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Ho, everyone who thirsts,
   come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
   come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
   without money and without price.” Isaiah 55:1.

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Timothy Beal’s book, “When time is short.” (c. 2022 by Timothy Beal, pub. by Beacon Press). Beal is a professor of Religion at Case Western University and the author of several books and essays on religion and culture. Calling to our attention the warnings of climate change scientists to the effect that our degradation of the earth’s oceans, forests, atmosphere and ecosystems has reached the point at which it is impossible to reverse the consequences of global warming, Beal invites us to reflect soberly on the very real possibility that we have engineered our own extinction as a species. Given that very real possibility (which Beal at some points seems to press as a certainty), we must face honestly the evils of racism, colonialism and nationalism that brought us to this point. More importantly, we need to accept the inevitability of our collective extinction (whether immanent or not) and consider how we will spend the rest of our collective existence “doing what matters” as a species on the brink of oblivion.

I have some reservations about this book. Beal speaks eloquently about humanity’s inescapable participation in the web of life characterized as “the wild.” Eating and being eaten, birth and death, evolving as a species and passing into extinction are all inextricably bound together in this mystery we know as life. As much horror as it inspires, this is all “perfectly natural” and presumably good. I wonder, however, whether Beal has thought through the implications of what he is saying. Does he understand what human extinction would look like? Can he really imagine the horrors that would engulf the globe as vast swaths of the earth become uninhabitable for human beings and millions of square miles of previously fruitful soil can no longer produce the food on which we rely? Does he realize that the first to die will be those whose lives are already so thoroughly focused on living from one day to the next that they can scarcely afford to ruminate on our collective demise? How do we focus on “what matters” when what matters is the wellbeing of our neighbors whom we cannot help any more than we can help ourselves? Can we in any sense see human extinction for what, in reality, it will mean and call it “natural” or “good”?  

I also have to take issue with Beal’s characterization of western Christianity as “death denying.” Granted, there is plenty of anthroprocentric hubris and contempt for the natural world that has infected the church of the west. But I would place that more at the feet of the Enlightenment and its enthusiasm for colonialization. You can hardly call the church of the middle ages, much less the New Testament church, death denying. During our Ash Wednesday service we impose ashes on our foreheads with the words: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” That is about as frank a declaration of human mortality as can be made. You can argue that a lot of Christians do not take it to heart, but you cannot fault our liturgy, hymns and preaching, which are not lacking when it comes to the topic of human mortality. So, too, Christian dogma has always acknowledged the finitude of our species and our planet. We do that with a vengeance on the first Sunday of Advent where the “little apocalypse,” found in various forms in all three of the synoptic gospels, is front and center. Beal’s call to focus on what matters finds expression in the second epistle of Saint Peter:

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?” II Peter 3:10-12.

Finally, I am not convinced that climate change, however severe, will result in human extinction. I am convinced that somehow, in some fashion, our species will survive. The question is, who among us, in what form and at what cost? How will we respond to millions of climate refugees whose homelands are no longer habitable? As far as my own country is concerned, I know the answer. We will meet them with barbed wire. We will set traps across the rivers bordering our land to drown them and boot those who still manage to get through, men, women and children back into the waters to die in order to protect our turf and our way of life. How do I know this? Because that is precisely what we are doing now, when we can easily absorb the refugees coming to our shores, when we could actually use these people and the skills they bring to supplement our shrinking work force. Imagine, then, what we will do when accepting refugees will call for sacrifice, for a change in the level of comfort in which we now live.

The people of God are called to a different response, however. They are called, the prophet reminds us, to offer food, water and sanctuary without cost. That is a difficult word to speak in today’s antiimmigrant climate and will become increasingly so as the consequences of global warming become ever more severe. If you are among those who think that we cannot hope to meet the flood of climate refugees with the resources we have and that we will only end up overfilling the life boat to the point where it capsizes and we all drown, you are not alone. Jesus’ disciples felt the same way when they were confronted with a crowd of five thousand hungry people and had on hand only a few loaves and fishes. Quite understandably, they reasoned that parting with what little food they had would not satisfy the hunger of the crowd, but it would surely impoverish them. Yet remarkably, the disciples discovered that when they were able to let go of their meager resources and place them into the hands of Jesus, they accomplished more than they imagined possible. That is the answer we make to the Trumps, the DeSantises, the “America First” crowd espousing the survivalist mentality.

I think Saint Peter hits the nail on the head. In view of all that is coming upon the earth, what sort of people ought we to be? On the other side of the climate crisis, will it be said of the church that we sat wringing our hands, issuing preachy-screechy social statements and sending relief packages to those dying on the other side of our border while trying to carry on with ecclesiastical business as usual? Generations hence, will the ELCA (assuming there still is such a thing) be issuing an apology for its complicity with “the destroyers of the earth”? (See Revelation 11:18). I continue to pray that the church in this country will finally recognize that it is more than a chaplaincy service to the United States; that it will give up on its misbegotten mission to christianize America; that it will finally discover that being the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church spanning every national border is enough. I hope that we will find the spiritual maturity, the moral courage and theological depth to be the Body of Christ in the midst of a culture bent on crucifying him anew. I hope that we will not be conformed to the ways of our politics, civil religion and culture but be transformed into a people willing to “offer up our bodies as a living sacrifice” in defense of those condemned to death by the frantic violence and neglect of a nation bent on preserving itself. Romans 12:1-2.

Here is a poem by Robert Frost raising in a simple way the question of how humanity might meet its final hour.

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost, (c. 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.) p. 33-34. Born in 1874, Robert Frost held various jobs throughout his college years. He was a worker at a Massachusetts mill, a cobbler, an editor of a small town newspaper, a schoolteacher and a farmer. By 1915, Frost’s literary acclaim was firmly established. On his seventy-fifth birthday, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in his honor. The State of Vermont named a mountain after him and he was given the unprecedented honor of being asked to read a poem at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Through the lens of rural life in New England, Frost’s poetry ponders the metaphysical depths. His poems paint lyrical portraits of natural beauty, though ever haunted by shadow and decay. You can learn more about Robert Frost and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

I Kings 3:5-12

Psalm 119:129-136

Romans 8:26-39

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Prayer of the Day: Beloved and sovereign God, through the death and resurrection of your Son you bring us into your kingdom of justice and mercy. By your Spirit, give us your wisdom, that we may treasure the life that comes from Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

It is not surprising that Solomon should seek wisdom in his prayer to the God who visits him in his dreams. He describes himself as “but a little child” who has inherited his father’s throne and must now reign over “a great people that cannot be numbered or counted for multitude.” The geopolitical landscape of the ancient near east was no less dangerous and complex than the global landscape of today. Peace and prosperity were maintained by strategic military alliances, trade agreements and treaties governing the use of land passages and waterways. Each nation had its own vital interests and ambitions. Israel’s wellbeing, indeed, its very existence as a nation state, required a leader capable of navigating these dangerous waters, avoiding its reefs and shoals.

The wisdom for which Solomon prays, however, is not the wisdom of politics and statecraft. Instead, he prays for wisdom to discern “between good and evil.”  That is precisely the wisdom God promises Solomon. Significantly, however, God does not simply open up Solomon’s brain and pour wisdom into his head. Instead, God points Solomon to the place where wisdom can be found. You will obtain wisdom, God tells Solomon, if only you “walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments.” That way of wisdom is spelled out more specifically in our Psalm reading for this Sunday, wherein the psalmist declares that the “unfolding of thy words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.” The psalmist goes on to tell us that “with open mouth I pant, because I long for thy commandments” and pleads with God, “teach me thy statutes.”  The psalmist prays, “keep steady my steps according to thy promise, and let no iniquity get dominion over me.”

Wisdom is not to be confused with mere knowledge. It is not obtained through the acquisition of information. Knowledge can unlock the secrets of the atom. Wisdom guides us in how we can use that information in life giving ways. Knowledge defines the parameters of what we are capable of doing. Wisdom guides us in determining what we ought to do. Knowledge consists of learning facts that exist independently. The earth orbits the sun whether we are aware of that fact or not. Wisdom, however, does not exist in a vacuum. It is relational. Wisdom is acquired by having one’s character shaped and molded by living faithfully within the community of God’s covenant people. Wisdom is not taught in the classroom, inscribed on the pages of a book or programed into any app. It is not imparted overnight. It is won little by little over a lifetime, one triumph, one tragedy, one love, one heartbreak, one friendship, one betrayal at a time. Wisdom is not commensurable with intellect. A genius can still be a fool, while many persons I have know with severe mental impairments radiate profound wisdom.  

Lately, artificial intelligence (AI) has been very much in the news. It came to my attention recently through an e-mail from a very dear friend who asked me if I had any thoughts about the “meteoric rise of AI.” I had to confess that I had not given AI much thought. Perhaps I have been remiss in this regard. Many scientists, engineers and medical experts have been expressing concerns about AI, its potential effects on education, our health, particularly that of children, the job market and our society generally. How do people of faith evaluate and respond to these concerns? Perhaps our readings for this Sunday can give us a window into that meteoric rise and what it might mean for us.

First off, the issue of delegating human thought is not entirely new. Back in my third grade year, the Pee Chee was a standard requirement. It was a black and yellow folder with images of young people playing football, tennis or basketball. It had two wings, one for holding lined paper and the other for placement of completed homework assignments. Significantly, it also had a multiplication table printed on the inside flap with which you could find the answer to multiplication problems involving integers from one through twelve. My third grade teacher hated that table with a passion comparable to Cotton Mather’s hatred of the devil. She felt that these diabolical tables discouraged memorization that would, in turn, cripple our progress in learning higher mathematics. The first task we were given on the first day of school was to take our scissors, cut the multiplication table out of our Pee Chees and throw it away.

Instead of throwing my multiplication table away, I taped it to the inside of my desk where I could easily consult it. I never felt that I was cheating when using the table. I understood fully well the basic arithmetic functions required for higher level computations. Exercising those functions repeatedly seemed silly when the answer was available right in my desk. Why let memory games take time and energy away from solving complicated equations? The same goes, I suppose, for calculators and other computation devices. They can be said to free our minds from mundane mental tasks so that we can focus on higher levels of thinking and doing. Nothing wrong with that as far as I can see.

The internet took us to new levels. When I first began practicing law, electronic legal databases and the internet platforms making them available were in their infancy. Legal research for small firms like mine was slow and labor intensive. We did legal research by sending first year associates down to the county law library to pour over hundreds of volumes of case law and state statutes. Composing a legal memo on a single issue could take weeks. Within five years following my date of hire, internet libraries like Westlaw and Lexis became widely available at a reasonable subscription fee. They made it possible to research an issue under the law of all fifty states and the federal government with a few keystrokes. In twenty minutes you could have a list of links to all the court decisions published from the formation of the country to the last twenty-four hours. That was a significant development, doing much to level the playing field between small firms like mine and the big city firms with their own large, expansive and fully staffed law libraries.

Of course, the internet has been a mixed bag. Though it has put more information at our fingertips than any generation before us, it has also been a vector for dangerous misinformation, conspiracy theories and violent ideologies. The internet has built bridges of knowledge and understanding between diverse communities and people who would otherwise never have crossed paths. It has also allowed racist groups throughout the world to find one another and unite in their violent and hateful acts. The internet opened new frontiers of knowledge and exciting media for sharing it with school age children, thereby enriching their educations. At the same time, social media has proven toxic to our children, exposing them to cyber bullying, stalking by online predators and radicalization by extremist groups. As with all human knowledge and achievement, wisdom is required to ensure that the internet is experienced as blessing rather than curse.

In the last year it seems that AI has taken a quantum leap. Not only are computers able to accumulate, organize and analyze data faster and more efficiently than humans. They are now capable of using their data to compose music, teleplays, fairy tales, student essays and answers to test questions. Computers have, without human direction and on their own initiative, undertaken the learning of languages and assimilation of information deemed helpful to their tasks. To say that they have minds of their own probably overstates the case. Still, their emerging management capabilities are beginning to transform the work place by, among other things, eliminating jobs. These effects are being felt throughout our workforce and not only by administrative assistants, librarians, accountants and others who manage information or crunch numbers. One of the concerns raised in the current Hollywood writer’s strike is the potential use of AI to replace script writers for performers and actors. I hasten to add here that the same has been true for every technological advance. The printing press ended the scrivener’s guild. The industrial revolution displaced numerous crafts. Makers of buggy whips, fountain pens and typewriters can testify to the pain that comes with technological advances.

Still, there is something different about the most recent developments in AI. It is one thing for machines to take over menial tasks that free us up to be more productive in other ways. It is one thing to rely on computers for collecting and organizing data for our analysis. We can even live with computers conducting rudimentary analysis of data for us. But it is a little unnerving to have them writing our speeches, producing paintings in the style of Van Gogh and composing music on par with Mozart. One cannot help but wonder, will the day come when humans have nothing to do but oil the machines and watch them work? Or will the machines learn to service themselves and decide that we humans are an unnecessary nuisance? This is truly the stuff of science fiction along the lines of the Matrix and Terminator movies.   

I am not convinced that computers are even close to achieving anything like human consciousness. Nor do I think they are malevolent in and of themselves. I don’t lose much sleep worrying that they will take over the world. However advanced they may be, computers do only what they have been programed to do. Even where they discover new and more efficient ways to do what they are programed to do, they still are doing what they are programed by us to do. That is what worries me. Our culture is rife with systemic inequality, racism and injustice. The last thing we need is technology to run our discriminatory justice system, our inequitable banking systems and our deeply racist law enforcement systems more efficiently.  

Allow me to illustrate. An AI program designed to manage our nation’s healthcare system-such that it is-could prove to be a nightmare. That is not because the computer might get it wrong, but because it would probably get it right. Currently, our healthcare system consists of doctors for whom medicine is a marketable and profitable commodity. It is run by insurance companies which make money by charging as much premium as the law will allow and providing as little coverage as they can get away with. It is under the sway of pharmacology companies that make money by selling their wares for as much as they can. The people the system is supposed to serve are, in reality, serving the system-assuming they have health insurance or lots of money. An AI program managing such a system would naturally do what our system is already doing now, namely, providing as little healthcare as possible for the highest price while seeking to deny as many claims as possible in order to maximize profit. The only difference is that AI would do the job with greater ruthless efficiency.  

Of course, a different kind of healthcare system with priorities different than the corporate bottom line could also benefit from AI. Computers could assist us in identifying communities underserved by doctors and hospitals and suggest ways to improve access to high quality care for these communities. AI can enable doctors, nurses and social workers to interface virtually with persons for whom traveling to appointments is difficult. Computers can respond initially to an individual’s health inquiries and point that person to nearby providers who might be of assistance in diagnosing and treating them. For a healthcare system in which the health and welfare of all people is paramount, AI has huge potential for improving medical care and treatment.     

In the end, AI will only be as good for us as we are wise. From the day the first human picked up a stone and recognized that it could as easily grind his corn as smash his neighbor’s skull, we have been faced with the same urgent need for wisdom, which alone can protect us from ourselves and our inventions. The monsters we see in AI are only a reflection of the ones lurking in our souls. Like Solomon, we find ourselves in possession of something bigger than ourselves, something that offers tremendous promise and potential for good, but also something that could hurt us badly if we fail to manage it properly. Let us hope that we find the humility of Solomon to pray for the wisdom that AI might become for us a blessing.

Here is a poem/song by Denny Zager and Rick Evans. It paints a grim picture of human destiny, our dependence on our technology and our relationship with the planet. It might very well prove prophetic. Yet the way of wisdom offers us an alternative.

In the Year 2525

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find

In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545
Ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing to chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine’s doing that for you

In the year 6565
Ain’t gonna need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube, whoa, whoa

In the year 7510
If God’s a-comin’ he ought to make it by then
Maybe he’ll look around himself and say
Guess it’s time for the Judgement day

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He’ll either say I’m pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again, whoa, whoa

In the year 9595
I’m kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He’s taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothing, whoa, whoa

Now it’s been 10, 000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man’s reign is through

But through eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it’s only yesterday

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may thrive

In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth…

Source: Musixmatch (for non-commercial use only). Denny Zager and Rick Evans were partners in an American rock-pop duo. They were active during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Zager was born in February of 1944 in Wymore, Nebraska. Evans was born in January of 1943 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Evans died in February of 2018. Zager now lives in Lincoln, Nebraska where he builds custom guitars. Zager and Evans are best known for the above hit song premiering in 1969. The song became a number one hit single, the only one the group ever had. You can hear a recording of the song at this link.