All posts by revolsen
Life in the Weeds
EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: Faithful God, most merciful judge, you care for your children with firmness and compassion. By your Spirit nurture us who live in your kingdom, that we may be rooted in the way of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“….in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” Matthew 12:29-30.
True, ripping out the weeds is likely to uproot the wheat. Yet there is a downside to letting them grow together until the harvest. The weeds use up moisture and nutrients in the soil that would otherwise nurture the wheat. They will grow up to block the lifegiving rays of the sun. Weeds can become havens for unwanted insect pests. There is no getting around the fact that the weeds are a problem and will continue to be such until the time of harvest. Even then, they are bound to make the harvest a good deal more labor intensive than it would otherwise be. I can understand why the slaves of the householder would prefer to deal with them sooner rather than later.
I think this might be the attraction pre-millennial (“Left Behind”) religion holds for so many. At first blush, the idea of God intervening to rapture the pure in heart out of this evil world, cleansing the earth by means of the “great tribulation,” and bringing back the faithful to rule over a purified planet sounds attractive. The problem, however, is that even the true believers, the pure in heart, those who have “accepted Jesus as personal Lord and Savior” are still sinners. The tendency toward selfishness, suspicion toward God and one another and all the other characteristics that always seem to get us into trouble in this age will be present among those who return in the next to reign over the new world-which will not stay new for long. The line between good and evil does not run neatly along international borders, cultural divides, religious communities or political party membership. It runs right through the middle of every human heart. The weeds are rooted, along with the wheat, in the depths of our souls. Uprooting them cannot help but damage the harvest.
This parable has often been interpreted to mean that we are powerless to deal with evil. Poverty, injustice, racism, war and all the menial day to day evils like road rage, unhelpful telephone menus and double parked vehicles are grim realities of life in this world, the resolution of which must await the final judgment. You can’t eradicate evil, so you just have to learn to live with it. But given this parable’s context within Matthew’s gospel, we know that cannot be the case. Jesus makes clear that his disciples are not called merely to endure evil passively. They are to be “light to the world” and “salt to the earth.” Matthew 5:13-14. Their good works are to “give glory” to God. Matthew 5:16. Jesus sends his disciples to make disciples of all nations so that they may teach the world all that he has taught them. Matthew 28:19-20. Evil is not to be tolerated. Evildoers are to be exposed, denounced and resisted by faithful witness to the truth in word and deed. Judgement of evildoers, however, belongs to God alone. It is not for disciples of Jesus to attempt the separation of wheat from weeds, sheep from goats, righteous from unrighteous. When the church oversteps its authority and usurps this dread responsibility, it never ends well.
Sometimes separation of wheat from weeds is undertaken with the best of intentions and supported by sound moral logic. By way of illustration, allow me a brief hypothetical. You are in command of an elite force of commandos trained in executing rescue missions. You learn that an angry mob of religious fanatics is about to stone a man for expressing his differing religious beliefs. The man is a community leader with a proven record of public service, including the provision of relief for widows and their children. With careful planning, you are convinced that you can rescue the soon to be victim with a minimal loss of human life. By employing the best strategy and state of the art military technology, you succeed in disbursing the mob and rescuing the man destined for death. A terrible act of mob violence against an innocent victim has been prevented. In the process, a few of the perpetrators are killed, including a young man who, though not actually involved in the violence, was actively encouraging it and holding the coats of those preparing to throw stones. All in all, from a military and humanitarian point of view, the mission is successful.
Those of you familiar with the Book of Acts will recognize immediately that this successful military exercise prevented the death of Saint Stephen by killing Saint Paul. The point I am trying to make is that one never knows what one is doing when, for whatever noble reason, a person takes one life in order to save another. What looks to my eye like a weed could well be the seed of God’s future harvest. Good and evil are so inextricably bound together among nations, between individuals and within each human heart that we cannot extricate the latter without mortally wounding the former. No human life can be judged until it has finally come to the end God determines and no one other than God is capable of judging it. There is nothing for it but to live faithfully and bear fruit in the weeds.
Living in the weeds calls for patience. I think there is no greater temptation afflicting good and well meaning people than impatience, a desire to root out evil and injustice by whatever means necessary. The temptation is particularly strong where evil actions threaten the lives and wellbeing of other people, as in my hypothetical. Faithful witness, peaceful resistance and love in the face of hatred are too slow and too ineffective. We prefer measures that get results and get them quickly. What is war, after all, but an attempted short cut to peace? Violence, coercion and intimidation always promise swift resolution to complex problems, but they never deliver. Jesus understands that there are no shortcuts to God’s gentle reign of justice and peace. There is no way to peace but peace itself. Who are the wheat stalks and who are the weeds? I strongly suspect we are all a mixture of both. There is no quick and easy way to cleanse the weeds from the field, from our world or from our hearts. Cleansing comes only through the slow burning fire of repentance that is God’s life giving judgement.
Here is a poem by William Carlos Williams that speaks of a burning that is both painful and redemptive.
Burning the Christmas Greens
Their time past, pulled down
cracked and flung to the fire
—go up in a roar
All recognition lost, burnt clean
clean in the flame, the green
dispersed, a living red,
flame red, red as blood wakes
on the ash—
and ebbs to a steady burning
the rekindled bed become
a landscape of flame
At the winter’s midnight
we went to the trees, the coarse
holly, the balsam and
the hemlock for their green
At the thick of the dark
the moment of the cold’s
deepest plunge we brought branches
cut from the green trees
to fill our need, and over
doorways, about paper Christmas
bells covered with tinfoil
and fastened by red ribbons
we stuck the green prongs
in the windows hung
woven wreaths and above pictures
the living green. On the
mantle we built a green forest
and among those hemlock
sprays put a herd of small
white deer as if they
were walking there. All this!
and it seemed gentle and good
to us. Their time past,
relief! The room bare. We
stuffed the dead grate
with them upon the half burnt out
log’s smouldering eye, opening
red and closing under them
and we stood there looking down.
Green is a solace
a promise of peace, a fort
against the cold (though we
did not say so) a challenge
above the snow’s
hard shell. Green (we might
have said) that, where
small birds hide and dodge
and lift their plaintive
rallying cries, blocks for them
and knocks down
the unseeing bullets of
the storm. Green spruce boughs
pulled down by a weight of
snow—Transformed!
Violence leaped and appeared.
Recreant! roared to life
as the flame rose through and
our eyes recoiled from it.
In the jagged flames green
to red, instant and alive. Green!
those sure abutments . . . Gone!
lost to mind
and quick in the contracting
tunnel of the grate
appeared a world! Black
mountains, black and red—as
yet uncolored—and ash white,
an infant landscape of shimmering
ash and flame and we, in
that instant, lost,
breathless to be witnesses,
as if we stood
ourselves refreshed among
the shining fauna of that fire.
Source: American Religious Poems, Edited by Harold Bloom & Jesse Ruba (c. 2006 by Library Classics of the United States, New York, NY) pp. 195-198. William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician. He was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. His father was born in England but raised from the age of 5 in the Dominican Republic and his mother came from Puerto Rico. The Caribbean culture of his family had an important influence on Williams. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician. He practiced pediatrics and general medicine at Passaic General Hospital. He served as chief of pediatrics from 1924 until his death. You can read more about William Carlos Williams and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
The Lost Art of Listening
SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, we thank you for planting in us the seed of your word. By your Holy Spirit help us to receive it with joy, live according to it, and grow in faith and hope and love, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“Listen!” Matthew 13:3.
I have heard and preached more sermons on Jesus’ parable of the sower and the seed than I can remember. Most of them skate dangerously close to allegory, thereby missing the parable. Jesus himself must resort to allegory for the sake of his witless disciples. For you see, a parable is like a joke. You either get the punch line and respond with laughter, surprise or perhaps outrage, or you sit scratching your head and wondering what you missed. The disciples evidently need an explanation of the parable. Jesus could have been none too happy about that. It was kind of like someone in the audience asking a stand up comedian to explain his joke. It’s a clear sign that the act is bombing. The parable, it turns out, is not an allegory describing different kinds of hearers-though I suppose one could expound it that way. It is a good deal simpler than that. In fact, it can be summed up on one word: Listen.
Listening is a rare skill these days. Perhaps it always was. That is unfortunate because without it, communication is severely compromised. I have a feeling that much of the time most of us fail to hear what others are trying to tell us or see matters from their perspective. Nowhere is that more evident than in our dialogue over race. I notice a tendency among those of us who identify as white to fill up the conversation with demonstrations of our own lack of prejudice, as though that were the issue. We have no end of stories to share about our black college buddies, coworkers and neighbors with whom we have “always gotten along just fine.” The issue, of course, is not how we are getting along but how our conversation partners are getting along-which is frequently not “just fine.” I sense a deep seated fear on the part of us white folk of learning that the schools from which we graduated with fond memories, the police whose presence gives us a sense of comfort and security, the government institutions over which we feel entitled to have a say and the workplaces we experience as opportunities for professional advancement, financial security and comradery are the same places people of color often experience and have memories of loneliness, exclusion and hostility. Intentionally or not, we are sending a clear message: We don’t hear you and we don’t want to hear you.
Sometimes listening requires one to look past the words in order to find the message. It was in the first or second year of my ministry, just about a week after Christmas, that Gene came bursting into my office in a fit of rage. “I told you I wanted to have ‘Hark the Harald Angels Sing’ in the candle light service,” he practically shouted. I pointed out that I had included more than a few of the Christmas favorites he requested and that, even on Christmas, there are only so many carols one can sing. That did not placate Gene. “Pastor, we have sung that hymn every Christmas for as long as I have been in this church. There was no reason for leaving it out this year.” I apologized and assured Gene that I would definitely work it in next Christmas. “Fine,” said Gene. “But I might not be here next Christmas.”
As it turned out, Gene had been diagnosed with an inoperable, untreatable heart ailment that was worsening with each month. This confrontation was not about Christmas, planning the candle light service, the selection of hymns or any other churchly matter. It wasn’t about me and my pastoral leadership. This was a man trying to tell me that he was dying, that his time was limited and that he was struggling to hang onto and savor every scrap of everything that brought back precious memories, that was solid and predictable, that made his life meaningful. But before I could hear Gene, I had to get past my defensiveness and insecurity, factors that almost caused me to miss an opportunity to speak a word of grace. “Seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.” Matthew 13:13.
For centuries we have lacked eyes to see and ears to hear the cries of our planet, increasingly stressed by our ruthless exploitation. This summer, clouds of smoke from wildfires in Canada blocked the sun and fouled the air of our northern cities. Rising ocean temperatures generated storms ravaging the south with tornadoes, floods and lethal heat. As these disasters wreak havoc on our lives and foreshadow global upheavals for millions word wide, still, right wing leaders scoff at the very idea of humanly induced climate change and clamor for access to the few remaining wild sections of our earth for more deforestation, strip mining and “development.” “Drill baby, drill!” as the Republican conventioneers chanted a decade ago. Or, as conservative pundit, Ann Coulter is known to have said, “Take the earth and rape her.” Meanwhile, God’s good earth cries out for deliverance and warns of the consequences of our heedless consumerism. “Seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.” Matthew 13:13.
As Jesus points out, there are plenty of things that get in the way of listening. The internet is bristling with posts seemingly designed more to elicit outrage than spread useful information. Nothing dims the capacity to listen more than righteous (or unrighteous anger). Like the very devil, it sweeps away one’s capacity to focus, empathize and keep an open mind. Given that much of the news we get these days comes in the form of soundbites, Facebook posts, five minutes of mainstream media discussion and tweets, it should not surprise us that much public knowledge, including knowledge of the Bible and religion, is wading pool shallow. As such, it forms a poor foundation for developing mature and enduring understanding. God knows that, in this information age, there is no shortage of distractions keeping our minds running in a thousand different directions, many of which lead nowhere. Among all of the hysteria, misinformation, distractions and hostility, Jesus invites us to be attentive to the Word that, as the prophet Isaiah reminds us, “shall not return to [God] empty, but [] shall accomplish that which [God] purpose[s], and succeed in the thing for which [God] sent it.” Isaiah 55:11.
A better way is waiting to be seen. A hopeful word is waiting to be heard. But in order to receive it, we must be schooled in the art of listening. Here is a poem by Robert King about listening. The subject here is insects, but the call to listen could as well be directed to the voices of those among us whose cries for justice and compassion fail to rise above the noise of pop culture, consumer advertising and political rhetoric. The injunction to listen could as well be aimed at the shrieking winds, roaring wild fires and crumbling ice fields of a planet being murdered by the bottomless pit of human greed. The need for listening extends to the growing cries of angry individuals who lack the language and conceptual tools needed to articulate their pain. Above all, the call to listen invites us to be attentive to the signs of God’s inbreaking reign in the midst of all this. Listen!
Listening
Now glory be to good
things singing around us
in the darkness, listen.
Listen: inside the crickets’
scalloped chirping, scrapers
trilling against dry files,
the grasshoppers rasping
from their stalks, the sticks
and thin strings of katydids,
cicadas drumming thickly
in the thick trees vanishing
into the throbbing dark,
we listen until we’re not
listening. Our ears fizz
with their electric persistence.
We do not care insects see-saw
In the hazardous guessings of sex,
Or that cicadas have churned
for years under the earth, or
that in the dark, large world
they are leagues apart, singing
to find each other, themselves.
The world is all alive
is all we know, something
thrilling the air, a murmer
reminding us of every
summer we remember,
something awake all night
which numbs, soothing us under.
Sleeping, or bodies cool.
Only the crickets insist.
Is it? Is it? they ask all night
and answer, It is. It is.
Source: Poetry, July 1988. Robert King (d. 2017), founder of the Colorado Poets Center, was born in Denver, Colorado. He received his bachelors degree in English from the State University of Iowa and returned to Colorado, where he earned a masters degree in American Literature from Colorado State University. He earned his Ph. D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. He taught for three years at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and then took a position at the University of North Dakota where he spent the bulk of his career teaching English and creative writing. In 1971 he was named Outstanding Professor at that institution and received the UND Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1996. He also lectured frequently at the University of Nebraska and the University of Northern Colorado. You can read more about Robert King and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
The God who Is God.
SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: You are great, O God, and greatly to be praised. You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Grant that we may believe in you, call upon you, know you, and serve you, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
The Lord is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all,
and his compassion is over all that he has made. Psalm 145:8-9.
This refrain echoes throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and finds expression throughout the New Testament as well. The God portrayed in the Bible hates nothing that God has made. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Ezekiel 33:11. God would have God’s salvation reach the end of the earth. Isaiah 49:6. It is God’s will that all should reach repentance and be saved from the destructive power of sin. II Peter 3:9.
Sadly, I have spent a good deal of my ministry disabusing people of contrary perceptions of God. I have encountered several young people who left the church because they were convinced, for one reason or another, that the God preached from the pulpit had nothing for them but condemnation and threats of punishment. I have met more than a few people who have grown up in a church that compelled them to hide or deny their sexual identities because they were deemed sinful. In short, the church has often proclaimed a god who is vindictive and merciless, quick to anger, abounding in wrath, a god whose default posture toward creation is anger, disappointment and contempt. This is a god who cares more about obedience to its rules than the people it created; a god who throws a fit over a same sex relationship but cares not a flying fruitcake about government policies that impoverish thousands of people. I have said before and will say again, there is no such God. Nor should there be.
Nevertheless, I hasten to add that God’s love for creation cannot simply be equated with our human notions of love. God is God and we are not. God’s ways are not our ways and those ways do not always comport with liberal, protestant, ever white, ever polite notions of progressive ethics. God is entitled to do things forbidden to us mortals. Most importantly, God is entitled to take human life-and does just that. “Turn back, you mortals,” says the Lord in the 90th Psalm. Psalm 90:3. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return,” pastors intone as they impose ashes on our forehead. God means to make an end of us all. Nobody gets off this planet alive. For our part, we human beings are forbidden from taking human lives. Moreover, as Martin Luther points out, the commandment forbiding murder does not merely preclude violence. It imposes a positive duty to go out of our way and do everything possible to assist our neighbors to live and to thrive.
God alone is entitled to execute retributive justice, whereas we are not. As Saint Paul reminds us, “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord.” Romans 12:19. While the psalmists often cry out to God, begging for vengeance to be carried out against their enemies and frequently let God know in graphic terms how they would like to see it done, they wisely leave that task in God’s capable hands. Once again, God’s ways are not our ways. As the Prophet Jonah had to learn, God’s view of who deserves punishment for what, when and on which terms does not comport with our myopic views on the subject. The justice we human beings are called to practice is distributive rather than retributive. It is a justice that calls for protection of the most vulnerable in our midst, the equitable sharing of earth’s bounty and reverant respect and care for creation.
Judgment, like retribution, also belongs to God. Is it possible that a person becomes so thoroughly depraved that the Creator no longer recognizes the divine image in the creation and says, “I never knew you; go away from me”? Because Jesus raises that prospect, we would be foolish to dismiss it. But that question must remain introspective: To what extent am I being formed by Jesus and his community of faithful disciples? What are the demonic influences that threaten to shape my character in ways inconsistent with God’s gentle reign? Is the image of Christ recognizable in the way I live? As far as others are concerned, it is presumed that all people, even those who appear completely depraved to our eyes, are the object of God’s love and capable of redemption. Thus, Jesus warns his disciples, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” Matthew 7:1.
One might well wonder why a God who is good and almighty does not intervene to prevent the catastrophic suffering witnessed by us on a daily basis. Indeed, if God is good and all that God made is good, why do these catastrophes occur in the first place? I do not pretend to have answers to these questions, but there are some counterquestions that I believe can help us think about this conundrum. Once God speaks the words “let there be,” is God still all powerful? Can God still be omnipotent once something other than God is called into existence? Is creating the universe a little like bringing a child into the world? Once a child is born and begins to grow, its parents might have hopes, dreams and expectations about its future, but every parent knows that a child has a will of its own. Its life often follows a trajectory its parents find distressing, disappointing and perhaps devastating. In many circumstances, intervention is difficult and can sometimes do more harm than good. Parents sometimes find themselves feeling as helpless as they are concerned. Is it the same with God and God’s creation? Are there limits to how much a loving God can do for a wayword world?
It seems that a degree of randomness is woven into the fabric of creation. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was planted among all the other good trees in the Garden of Eden. So, too, the serpent was a creation of God no less than any other living thing. We are told that it was “subtle,” but not that it was evil. The potential for things to go very wrong has been present from the beginning. Our world is not a safe playground. Lightning strikes the good as well as the wicked. Tornadoes demolish churches along with porn shops. A drunk driver hits a school bus, kills and injures numerous children and walks away without a scratch. Genetic irregularities cause birth defects, crippling diseases and premature death. Could God have made a universe without such devastating randomness? I don’t know. But I wonder what a universe without randomness would be like? I wonder what life would be like if everything went according to plan? What would it be like to live without surprises? Discoveries? Unanticipated endings? Is it possible to have love without heartbreak? Joy without sorrow? Anticipation without disappointment?
Of course, there is human evil and horrors that we bring upon ourselves. Could God not intervene to prevent the worst of these horrors? If God is God, could not God have stopped Hitler in his tracks? Diverted the airplanes away from the Twin Towers and Pentagon on 9/11? Prevented war from breaking out in eastern Europe? Again, it is not clear to me what God could or could not have done in response to these horrors. Again, did God surrender God’s omnipotence by the act of creation? I don’t know about that. What I do know is that God does intervene to save us from our self destructive instincts and acts-though not in the way we might wish. We might prefer a God who steps in and “fixes” things for us; a God who has the power to make us behave ourselves. We have had leaders like that throughout history. They are called dictators and the price they extract for the order, safety and stability we crave is steep and bloody. Is that what we desire from God? Stalin on steroids?
Whatever we might want from God, it is clear that God has no interest in ruling the world through coercive power. God does not want a world that behaves because it is terrified to do otherwise. God desires a world that obeys because it knows that its Creator loves it and wills for it abundant life. That appears to be the point of the Flood Story in Genesis. At the end of the story, as Noah, his family and the animals he preserved emerge from the ark and the scent of Noah’s sacrifice rises to God’s nostrils, God declares:
“I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.
As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night,
shall not cease.” Genesis 8:21-22.
In sum, God is saying “No. I will not be that kind of God. This is not the way in which I will reign over my good creation.” Does God become angry? Is God wrathful? To be sure. But, once again, God’s anger is not to be equated with human wrath that is fequently petty and vindictive. Human anger is all too often the engine of vengeance and retribution. God’s wrath is directed at human injustice and the consequent suffering it inflicts upon humans. It is not directed against humans themselves. God is angry for us, not at us.
To be sure, God will overcome the world, but not by a show of shock and awe. God will overcome the world by gaining its trust, winning its heart, persuading it to believe God’s promise to bring to fulfillment its deepest yearnings for wholeness. To do that, God put’s God’s skin in the game. “The Word became flesh,” John the Evangelist tells us, to “dwell among us.” John 1:14. The Word dwells among us, not as a king, president or dictator, but as a child born to a homeless couple, a refugee from political violence and a victim of a corrupt criminal justice system. Jesus experienced human life at its worst, human beings at their most depraved and the world at the height of its cruelty-and gave his life to it just the same. Jesus was the best God had to give the world. When the world rejected and killed him, God raised him up and offered him back again. God continues to offer us Jesus and will do so until we recognize in him the face of a God who “is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” God’s power is God’s pateince. God’s might is God’s refusal to be drawn into the vortex of retribution that has characterized so much of human history. God defeats evil by outlasting it.
Here is a poem by the mystic, Mechthild of Magdeburg, that testifies to the heart of the God professed in the Scriptures.
God’s Absence
God speaks to the soul
And God said to the soul:
I desired you before the world began.
I desire you now
As you desire me.
And where the desires of two come together
There love is perfected.
Source: Beguine Spirituality (The Crossroad Publishing Company, Inc., 1989) Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207-1282) was monastic and mystic born to a noble Saxon family. At age 12 she had the first of several visions. In 1230 she left her home renouncing all claim to wealth and privilege to join a Beguine order at Magdeburg. There she seems to have risen to a position of authority in the community. She became acquainted with the Dominicans and became a Dominican tertiary, studying many of the Dominican writers. It was her Dominican confessor, Henry of Halle, who encouraged and helped Mechthild to compose The Flowing Light. Mechthird’s criticism of church dignitaries and their religious laxity along with her claims to theological insight by reason of her visions aroused ecclesiastical opposition. Some clerics called for the burning of her writings. In old age Mechthird lost her sight and found herself alone and the object of much criticism. Around 1272, she joined the Cistercian nunnery at Helfta, where she was given protection and support in the last years of her life. You can read more about Mechthild of Magdeburg and sample more of her writings at the Poetry Foundation website.
Hospitality-Simply Another Word for Gospel
FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: O God, you direct our lives by your grace, and your words of justice and mercy reshape the world. Mold us into a people who welcome your word and serve one another, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Matthew 10:40.
Jesus presumes on hospitality. Success of the mission upon which he sends his disciples in the verses previous to our reading depends on their finding a welcome among the people they meet. Jesus expects that his disciples will be welcomed by the curious, the generous, the hopeful and open minded. He is counting on hospitality.
In this respect, Jesus is thoroughly grounded in traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures. At the dawn of history Abraham and Sarah welcomed three strangers travelling in the heat of the day with shade, water for their tired feet and the best meal of which they were capable. They had every reason ignore or turn away these visitors. The world was a dangerous place during the bronze age. For all they knew, these three strangers might have been bandits or representatives of the nearest city state come to run them out of the jurisdiction. Instead, they opened their home, their larder and their hearts and, as the author of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews tells us, ended up “entertained angels without knowing it.” Hebrews 13:2.
Of course, Jesus is well aware that he is sending his disciples out into an inhospitable world. Alongside the example of Abraham and Sarah is that of Sodom and Gomorrah. The citizens of these two towns met the same strangers so lavishly entertained in the tent of Sarah and Abraham with threats of gang rape. Jesus knows that his disciples will be “sheep into the midst of wolves.” Matthew 10:16. He warns them that they “will be hated by all because of my name.” Matthew 10:22. The disciples can expect that their good news will be met with rejection. They can expect that doors will sometimes be slammed in their faces. They are not to be dismayed, nor are they to seek retribution. They simply move on to the next town. What might the church of today look like if only more missionaries of the 19th and 20th Centuries had taken the same approach rather than riding the coattails of colonialism?
Hospitality to strangers is an integral part of the church’s life. As noted above, the Letter to the Hebrews urges us to “show hospitality to strangers.” Hebrews 13:2. Saint John commends Gaius the elder for welcoming, housing and providing for strangers. III John 5 Throughout the Middle Ages, monasteries afforded hospitality to pilgrims, travelers and the wandering homeless. Today refugee sponsorship and resettlement are important ministries of the church-and increasingly so given that, as of the end of 2021, no less than 89.3 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence and human rights violations. USA for UNHCR Website.
It is against this back drop that I wish to reflect on two events that transpired over the last couple of weeks. One was the tragic loss of the Titan submersible in which five people were lost. The other was the sinking of a packed migrant boat off the coast of Greece in which at least seventy-nine people were lost and dozens more missing. In the case of the submersible, which was carrying four billionaires and a nineteen-year-old son of one of them, the United States Coast Guard and governments from around the world conducted an extensive search sparing no expense and employing the most advanced equipment. The migrant boat received aid only after it had gone down, having previously been seen in distress. The fate of the submersible was televised non-stop by all major news outlets. The migrant tragedy got only a passing notice. Sadly, while the loss of the submersible was a unique event affecting a few adventurers who willingly assumed a substantial risk, the fate of the migrants off the Greek coast is but one among many such tragedies affecting thousands of individuals whose decision to put to sea had little to do with thrill seeking and everything to do with a desperate effort simply to remain alive. The juxtaposition of these two shipwrecks makes painfully clear which lives matter and which do not; which deaths are newsworthy and which are not significant enough to make the obituaries.
We are reminded by these events that the world today is no more hospitable to sojourners, refugees and aliens than it was in the days of Abraham and Sarah. The hardline stance of Europeans and North America against migration from Africa in the fist instance and Central and South America in the case of the United States has left persons threatened by war, gang violence and starvation little choice but to embark on dangerous journeys by land and sea in the hope of finding sanctuary. The cruelty of these policies rivals that of Sodom and Gomorrah. We who stand on what we deem our side of the border would do well to contemplate the fate of those two cities and consider whether we are not earning for ourselves the same judgment. God has a particular concern for the refugee, the stranger, the people without a country. See Psalm 107:4-9; Leviticus 19:33-34.
There is a reason why hospitality to strangers has been woven into the fabric of Torah and constitutes a core practice of the church. It is simpy another word for “gospel.” As we learn from the book of Genesis, all human beings spring from the same descendants, share the same blood and are all alike made in God’s image. As the Book of Revelation makes clear, it is God’s intent to reunite the human family in a new creation consisting of every tribe, nation and tongue under heaven. In addition to embodying the practices of Jesus, the ministry of hospitality serves as a witness to the gentle reign of God Jesus proclaims and God’s gracious will that God would have done on earth as in heaven. Jesus tells us that one criterion under which the nations of the world will be judged is the degree to which they welcome strangers. Matthew 25:35. As the visible presence of Christ’s Body on earth, the people of God are to live into God’s future. The people of God are to be, in the words of Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm, a demonstration plot for God’s kingdom. Jesus teaches us that hospitality invites transformation, builds trust, births friendship, overcomes prejudice and extends visit by visit the just, gentle and peaceful reign of God. To reject the stranger is to reject Christ, resist the work of the Holy Spirit and rebell against God’s gracious will for creation.
It is for this reason that we sponsor, resettle and assist refugees and migrants seeking entry into our country. That is why we advocate for open borders. It is why our churches seek to become places of sanctuary and safety for LGBTQ+ folk in states that have adopted violent, repressive and discriminatory laws that put them in jeopardy. It is why we strive to remove from our worship, language and practices all that would become a stumbling block for someone who might be open to Jesus and the kingdom he proclaims. As the GEOCO commercial says, “it’s what you do” when you follow Jesus.
Here is a poem by Remi Kanazi from the perspective of the refugee, stranger, sojourner, outcast.
Refugee
I.
she has never
seen the sea
sunlight imprinted
on her father’s skin
waves crashing
at his feet
smile tattooed
underneath boyish grin
snapping pictures
with closing eyelids
her father’s face
flush on recollection
the same waves that had
clenched like an angry jaw
at his mother pushed him
forward like a train car
watched his neighbor drown
tears streaming
eyes connecting
screams muffled
as inhalation
suffocated lungs
muscles weary
skin pruning
barely a boy
knowing he would
never return
his neighbor
an older man
born in Akka
looked dapper
at dinner parties
looked helpless that day
his body revolting
against death
a pool intent
on swallowing him
so many stroking
to get on boats departing
who’d have known this gulf
would be their deathbed
II.
she has been beaten
ID checked
body thrown to the ground
fists and feet pummeled
fractured hip, shoulder broken
heart, too many times
tear gas inscribed on her lungs
she wrote back on her breath
that the canister’s defeat is near
III.
these fields are ours
she told me
before the Europeans
and Brooklynites
before the swimming pools
army jeeps and barbed wire
before the talks, roadmaps
and Swiss cheese plans
before declarations rewrote history
those hills met footprints
and that can’t be erased
like village massacres
can’t be erased
like broken bones policies
can’t be erased
like the screams ringing
in her father’s ears
can’t be erased
we are the boat
returning to dock
we are the footprints
on the northern trail
we are the iron
coloring the soil
we cannot
be erased
Source: Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine, Remi Kanazi (c. Haymarket Books, 2015). Remi Kanazi (b.1981) is a Palestinian-American poet, writer and community organizer currently living in New York City. He is the editor of anthologies of hip hop, poetry and art and the publication Poets for Palestine. He is the author of two collections of poetry. Kanazi’s political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world, including the New York Times, Salon, Al Jazeera, and BBC Radio. He is a Lannan Residency Fellow and is on the advisory board of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
Faithfully Disturbing the Peace
FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: Teach us, good Lord God, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, except that of knowing that we do your will, through Jesus Crist, our Savior and Lord.
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Matthew 10:34-36.
Today was Juneteenth, a day that was established just last year as a federally recognized holiday by the United States Congress. Juneteenth commemorates the day on which federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. Thankfully, we have reached a point at which we acknowledge publicly the dark history of slavery in our nation and the point at which it was formally terminated. Sadly, it took us over two hundred years of slavery, a century of Jim Crow, a relentless fight by Black citizens to obtain the civil liberties the rest of us take for granted, a pandemic laying bare the stark discrepancies that still exist between Black and white citizens in terms of health care, credit and land ownership and the murder of an innocent Black man by a police officer in order to get there. Truth be told, we still are not there.
Coincidentally (or not) I have been reading The 1619 Project, a book that expands upon the Sunday, August 18, 2022 New York Times special magazine bearing the same title. To make a long story short, the magazine article sought in an abbreviated way to shed light on the pivotal role played by the institution of slavery in the formation of our country, the perpetuation of white supremacy throughout the country and especially in the American south for over a century thereafter and the continuing detrimental effects of systemic racism in contemporary American society. As one might expect, the project met with sustained backlash. U.S. Senator Tom Cotton introduced a bill in the United States Senate entitled the “Saving American History Act.”[1] Similar legislation has been introduced in several Republican dominated states.[2] Suffice to say, there is a determined effort by a significant part of white America to prevent this dark aspect of our nation’s history, too frequently excluded and downplayed in our nation’s mythology surrounding its origins, from coming to light.
Coincidentally (or not), Sunday’s gospel speaks directly to our penchant for self deception and falsification, personal and collective:
“…nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” Matthew 10:26-27.
To be a disciple of Jesus is to speak the truth, even when it disturbs the peace, even when it elicits hostility, even when it divides churches, splits families and ends friendships. Discipleship is about speaking the truth even when you feel you cannot do it articulately, even when you wish there were someone else that could speak better, even when your voice is shaking. And the truth is that systemic racism infects our educational institutions, our workplaces, our system of justice and, not least, our churches. It is a truth of which we have always been vaguely aware. But the election and presidency of Donald Trump have made unavoidably clear the breadth, depth and persistence of white supremacy and the pain it inflicts on people of color every second of every day. Indeed, that much needed clarity might be the one and only positive contribution of the Trump legacy.
Naturally, I applaud efforts such as the 1619 Project to tell the American story and the story of American Christianity[3] truthfully. But public witness only takes us so far. As Jesus noted, a prophet is without honor in the prophet’s own home and among the prophet’s own people. Yet that is precisely where the witness to truth is most needed. There are, of course, potent reasons for letting Uncle Ned’s racist remark pass without comment in the interest of not spoiling Thanksgiving dinner for everyone else. There is an argument to be made against introducing the issue of racial justice to a congregation that is struggling to sustain itself financially and is already divided and demoralized. One might question the wisdom of a denominational church body already in decline and hardly able to maintain its own ministries tithing a substantial portion of its income to support Black churches as a step toward reparations owed by American society as a whole. Given the fragility of our families, congregations and the churches of which they are a part, we might rather settle for peace at home, peace in the congregation and peace in the ecclesiastical household than the peace won through the hard work of doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God. But the peace of silence comes at a terrible price, a price that is paid by victims of exclusion, intimidation and violence required to maintain it.
If it was not clear to us before, the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and all that followed should convince us that evil does not go away simply because we choose to ignore it. The people we witnessed storming our capital two years ago chanting racist and antisemitic slogans, displaying hangman’s nooses and flying the confederate flag of racism testify to the sickness of our culture and the pervasiveness of the lies our nation has been telling itself about itself for the last couple of centuries. The false mythology of America that we learned in school as history, a mythology that has ignored, downplayed and minimized the role of racism and the creed of white supremacy, needs to be exposed.
Unfortunately, the people who most need to hear the testimony given voice in the 1619 Project are not likely to read it. Many of them are ingesting a steady diet of right wing propaganda from the likes of Fox, One America News and Truth Social. Nevertheless, they have neighbors like you and me. They have family members like us. They use the same nail salons and barber shops we do and frequently attend the same churches. You might not change Uncle Ned’s mind at the Thanksgiving dinner table. But by calling him out on his racism, you let the rest of your family-including impressionable children-know that his bigotry is not acceptable and has no place in your home. You may not sway the loudmouth in the barbershop, but by speaking out, you might well open the minds of others standing by or encourage those who might have been fearful of speaking up.
As for preaching the truth about America’s racism to the church, what is the worst that could happen? You might lose members. You might lose your job. But while you are thinking about that, thing about this: In the sixth chapter of John’s gospel Jesus went from an adoring congregation of over five thousand to a following of twelve in a matter of days. The truth does not always win converts. Sometimes it makes enemies. Despite what our churches say on their marques about everybody being welcome, if the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers would feel welcome and comfortable in your church, you are probably not doing your job. The good news that God’s limitless love does not recognize borders, require documentation, distinguish on the basis of humanly concocted categories of race, have any regard for class or respect for cultural measures of worth and achievement is mighty bad news for white people desperate to hang onto their societal privilege. But these are the words of eternal life. Those who do not recognize them as such are the ones who need most to hear them.
Jesus warns us not to fear human retaliation, but rather to fear God. Fear of God does not go down well in my ever white, ever polite progressive protestant tradition. But it strikes me that if we really did fear God, there would be a lot less other things to fear-such as ruining Thanksgiving dinner, creating an uncomfortable scene at the nail salon, offending one of the church’s biggest contributors or failing to be re-elected bishop. Indeed, if these are the only consequences we face for telling the truth, we should count ourselves blessed. Throughout history and to this very day many have paid and continue to pay a higher price. Jesus tells us frankly that speaking truthfully about what the rest of the world would rather ignore, deny or erase will bring us into the same struggle to which he gave his life. He reminds us, however, that all who lose themselves in that struggle will find themselves. Matthew 10:39. The truth, painful as it is, makes us free.
Here is a poem by Denise Levertov dismissing the peace which is merely tolerance of evil.
Goodbye to Tolerance
Genial poets, pink-faced
earnest wits—
you have given the world
some choice morsels,
gobbets of language presented
as one presents T-bone steak
and Cherries Jubilee.
Goodbye, goodbye,
I don’t care
if I never taste your fine food again,
neutral fellows, seers of every side.
Tolerance, what crimes
are committed in your name.
And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,
blood donors. Your crumbs
choke me, I would not want
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped
by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never
falter: irresponsive
to nightmare reality.
It is my brothers, my sisters,
whose blood spurts out and stops
forever
because you choose to believe it is not your business.
Goodbye, goodbye,
your poems
shut their little mouths,
your loaves grow moldy,
a gulf has split
the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking
another way.
We shan’t meet again—
unless you leap it, leaving
behind you the cherished
worms of your dispassion,
your pallid ironies,
your jovial, murderous,
wry-humored balanced judgment,
leap over, un-
balanced? … then
how our fanatic tears
would flow and mingle
for joy …
Denise Levertov (1923–1997) never received a formal education. Nevertheless, she created a highly regarded body of poetry that earned her recognition as one of America’s most respected poets. Her father, Paul Philip Levertov, was a Russian Jew who converted to Christianity and subsequently moved to England where he became an Anglican minister. Levertov grew up in a household surrounded by books and people talking about them in many languages. During World War II, Levertov pursued nurse’s training and spent three years as a civilian nurse at several hospitals in London. Levertov came to the United States in 1948, after marrying American writer Mitchell Goodman. During the 1960s Levertov became a staunch critic of the Vietnam war, a topic addressed in many of her poems of that era. Levertov died of lymphoma at the age of seventy-four. You can read more about Denise Levertov and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.
[1] This bill never became law.
[2] One interesting permutation of these measures is a relentless effort to keep “CRT” out of public schools. CRT is an acronym for Critical Race Theory, a catch all phrase for a diverse group of legal scholars whose writings explore the relationship between race, racism and power as it pertains to the evolution of American law. Though I am neither a legal scholar nor an expert on Critical Race Theory, as a law school graduate I have some familiarity with it. As with any scholarly movement, there are many diverse and sometimes conflicting voices within it. There is no one single “theory.” Moreover, anyone with the slightest understanding of what Critical Race Theory actually is and more than two brain cells to rub together has to know that it is not being taught to primary or secondary students. Thus, legislation to put an end to this non-event is rather like outlawing the keeping of unicorns within city limits.
[3] The 1619 Project includes an essay by Anthea Butler on the Black church and the critical role it has and continues to play in the struggle for freedom, equality and civil liberties that has defined African American existence in the United States. See 1619 Project, (c. 2021 by The New York Times Company) pp. 335-353. That an enslaved people were able to take the religion and Bible of their captors, liberate it from its Constantinian captivity to the instrumentality of oppression and recapture the radical message of the Exodus, the Return from Exile and the Cross and Resurrection of the Messiah for the downtrodden is one of the most remarkable facts of history.
Promises, Promises
SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: God of compassion, you have opened the way for us and brought us to yourself. Pour your love into our hearts, that, overflowing with joy, we may freely share the blessings of your realm and faithfully proclaim the good news of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“So Moses came, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. The people all answered as one: ‘Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.’ Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord.” Exodus 19:7-8.
We know that the people of Israel kept this promise only imperfectly-as do all of us who make big promises. No doubt the people were sincere. I have no doubt that Saint Peter was sincere when he told Jesus that he was ready to go to prison or even death with him. I have no doubt that every couple joined in marriage are perfectly sincere when they promise to “join with [one another] and share in all that is to come.” But for one reason or another, we often end up breaking the promises we make.
There are many reasons promises get broken. Sometimes it is a matter of overestimating one’s own degree of courage, strength or ability. Sometimes circumstances over which one has no control make keeping a promise impossible. Sometimes the conditions under which the promise was made change such that keeping the promise under those changed conditions would be hurtful, unethical or unjust. Sometimes a promise is made recklessly and without due consideration for the consequences that might follow to third parties. Better to renege on such a promise than follow through and cause injury or harm to unsuspecting and uninvolved persons.
Sometimes people make promises they know they cannot keep. Yours truly promised his children when they were small that he and their mother would always protect and keep them safe. Of course, I knew that I was not being entirely truthful. As much as I would have liked to think otherwise, I knew there were many things from which I was powerless to protect my children, even when they were small and always at home. Yet I continued to give them the assurance of my protection because I believed then and continue to believe that children need and deserve to feel safe, secure and free from danger. I figured that, should the unthinkable happen, should one of my children be traumatized in some way despite my best protective efforts, I would simply have to cross that bridge when, God forbid, I came to it. You might call this promise an act of faith. I knew I might not be able to keep it, but trusted nonetheless that God would be present either to do what I was unable to do or help me pick up the pieces of a shattered promise I failed keep.
This last Sunday our congregation confirmed its one confirmand, a remarkably mature and articulate thirteen-year-old whose moving statement of faith left us in awe. During the rite of confirmation, the confirmand is asked to affirm her baptismal vow “to trust God, proclaim Christ through word and deed, care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace.” That promise is every bit as weighty as the Israelites’ commitment to fulfill all the commandments delivered to them by Moses. It is also a promise the church manages to keep about as well as Israel was able to keep the commandments. For that reason, the response to the inquiry is: “I do, and I ask God to help me.” We know all too well that the promises we make are too big for us to keep on our own. We know that we have no idea what keeping our baptismal vow will require of us, whether we will have the courage and stamina to remain faithful in times of trial or how we will manage to go on in the face of failure, tragedy and trauma. In all those circumstances, however, we cling to the promise that God will be there for us.
I think perhaps that is what I meant when I promised to protect my children. I might not be able to keep them from getting hurt, getting their hearts broken or making bad decisions. But I can be there for them. I can love them. Love takes shape in different ways under different circumstances. Sometimes love is tender, supportive and gentle. Sometimes love must be tough. Sometimes love intervenes to change a dangerous life trajectory. Sometimes love must take a step back and let events take their course. Always love forgives. Always love leaves the door open. Always love persists.
God’s promise is that God will never stop loving the world God made and the people for whom God bled and died. God’s love is sometimes like being in “God’s bosom safely gathered.” It sometimes takes the shape of judgment and rebuke. But whether in grace or judgment, God is always there “for” us-never against. God will always be there to forgive and help us put back together the broken pieces of our failed promises. Unlike our promises, God’s are unbreakable. As our Psalm for Sunday reminds us,
“For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures for ever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.” Psalm 100:5.
So we are bold to affirm again and again the promises made in our baptismal vows. We continue to make promises to one another. After all, our human communities are held together by promises and our confident hope in their fulfilment. Beyond that, all creation is held together by the God whose faithfulness to God’s promises never fails.
Here is a poem about faithfulness by Emma Lazarus.
Rosh-Hashanah, 5643
Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled,
And naked branches point to frozen skies.—
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold,
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn
A sea of beauty and abundance lies,
Then the new year is born.
Look where the mother of the months uplifts
In the green clearness of the unsunned West,
Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts,
Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light;
Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest
Profusely to requite.
Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all.
The red, dark year is dead, the year just born
Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob,
To what undreamed-of morn?
For never yet, since on the holy height,
The Temple’s marble walls of white and green
Carved like the sea-waves, fell, and the world’s light
Went out in darkness,—never was the year
Greater with portent and with promise seen,
Than this eve now and here.
Even as the Prophet promised, so your tent
Hath been enlarged unto earth’s farthest rim.
To snow-capped Sierras from vast steppes ye went,
Through fire and blood and tempest-tossing wave,
For freedom to proclaim and worship Him,
Mighty to slay and save.
High above flood and fire ye held the scroll,
Out of the depths ye published still the Word.
No bodily pang had power to swerve your soul:
Ye, in a cynic age of crumbling faiths,
Lived to bear witness to the living Lord,
Or died a thousand deaths.
In two divided streams the exiles part,
One rolling homeward to its ancient source,
One rushing sunward with fresh will, new heart.
By each the truth is spread, the law unfurled,
Each separate soul contains the nation’s force,
And both embrace the world.
Kindle the silver candle’s seven rays,
Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers,
The garnered spoil of bees. With prayer and praise
Rejoice that once more tried, once more we prove
How strength of supreme suffering still is ours
For Truth and Law and Love.
Source: Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings (c. Broadview Press 2002)
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) is most famous for the words inscribed on the Statute of Liberty from her poem, The New Colossus:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Lazarus was one of the first successful and publically recognized Jewish American authors. She was born in New York City to a wealthy family. She began writing and translating poetry as a teenager and was publishing translations of German poems by the 1860s. Lazarus was moved by the fierce persecution of her people in Russia, a frequent topic of her writings, as well as their struggles to assimilate into American culture. You can sample more of Emma Lazarus’ poetry and read more about her at the Poetry Foundation website.
Discipling the Nations
HOLY TRINITY
Prayer of the Day: Almighty Creator and ever-living God: we worship your glory, eternal Three-in-One, and we praise your power, majestic One-in-Three. Keep us steadfast in this faith, defend us in all adversity, and bring us at last into your presence, where you live in endless joy and love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19-20.
The American author, Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) once said that “to be good is noble. To teach another to be good is more noble still-and a lot less trouble.” I think of that quote often when I read the bold social justice proclamations by churches like my own. It is all well and good for the church to speak truth to power, to expose, challenge and call for the eradication of systemic racism in government, education and commerce. But when it comes from a church that has been and still is overwhelmingly white, has benefited historically and continues to benefit from white privilege and whose ecclesiastical wealth far exceeds that of most Black churches with which we claim to united-it tends to lack credibility. The cruel, unjust and heartless society we purport to condemn might well throw our own Bible back in our faces with the admonition to “remove the log” from our own eye before attempting to open theirs. Matthew 7:1-5.
In Sunday’s gospel, Jesus utters what we have come to call “the great commission.” He sends his disciples out to “make disciples of all nations.” Well, no he doesn’t. The English translation, “make disciples,” does not capture the meaning conveyed in the original Greek text. Jesus is not commanding his disciples to make the nations into something called disciples. In the Greek, there is no noun, “disciple.” Instead, “disciple” is the verb, the engine of the sentence. Thus, the command is to “disciple all nations.” It involves “teaching them to obey everything” that Jesus has commanded. That is done as much by preaching as example. “Let your light so shine among others that they see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16. Witness to the nations comes from the heart of a community formed by the Sermon on the Mount. One might call this a community that “practices what it preaches.” But I prefer to say that it is a community whose preaching flows from its faithful practices.
The implication is clear. You have to be a disciple in order to make one. The original disciples became such by following Jesus and the way is no different for us. Churches are to be furnaces in which disciples are formed for witness and service. Our American churches, however, have undergone some formation of their own in a context that makes discipling difficult. Most of us do not view our churches as families into which we are born through baptism. We tend to view them as voluntary organizations of which we are willing members. It is all transactional. I join the church of my choice and receive certain benefits and privileges in return. These include a place to be married and buried; a place to baptize and confirm my kids, a place that offers me some socialization and entertainment. If my church does not give me everything to which I believe I am entitled, or another church down the road offers better preaching, better hymns or better programs, I am out the door. Why should I stay at a church that does not speak to me, that does not meet my needs or comport with my expectations? In accord with our capitalist instincts, we Americans build churches designed to market religious commodities rather than calling people to become fishers for people. Accordingly, our churches produce consumers rather than making disciples. So the question is, how can our churches better become and be disciples of Jesus in our contemporary setting?
I have two thoughts. First, we can become truly diverse. That is particularly important in a society built on a foundation of systemic racism and permeated with hateful ideologies grounded in white supremacy. The rise of Donald Trump and his capture of the Republican party has laid bare the extent and depth of racial hate in our land. The murder of George Floyd and the scandalous disparity in access to medical care and other services between whites and non white citizens have made plain the terrible cost the centuries of racial injustice impose. Diversity is not some trendy new byword. It is at the heart of the good news we proclaim. From its inception, the gospel has been proclaimed as a good word for “the nations” and the church has been understood as made up of “all nations, tribes and tongues.” Never has the need to proclaim in word and deed the common humanity of all people and God’s love for all people been more urgent.
In one sense, we already are diverse. Christians in the United States are heavily represented by almost every ethnicity. Sadly, however, we are divided by denominational loyalties often reflecting the same racial/ethnic fault lines plaguing society as a whole. We tend to seek out and welcome our own kind. We mainliners have been aware of that for decades and have been trying to remedy the malady through intentional outreach to people of color, aggressive recruiting of minority persons for ministry and formulae for ensuring that a certain percentage of our elected leaders are non-white. Yet as well intentioned as these efforts are, they do not address the systemic societal framework of racial discrimination that determines where we live, where we go to school, who we meet, with whom we socialize, what career opportunities are open to us and, yes, where we go to church. Trying to remedy racism by integrating the church is rather like trying to end air pollution by changing your furnace filter.
Yet I believe there is a way out of our ethnic captivity. If we are prepared to acknowledge that the church is a single body as Saint Paul teaches us; if we acknowledge that when one part of the body is injured, the whole body suffers; if we follow Saint Paul’s example in urging his gentile churches to contribute out of their abundance to meet the need of the famine stricken churches of Judea; then it seems to me clear how the wealthier mainline churches, like my own, should respond to the Black churches and missions that are struggling on the front lines against racism and economic injustice. The wealth our national church, synods and congregations have tied up in real estate, sitting in endowments and planted in banks can fuel the fight for racial justice and equity while providing a powerful witness to what the reign of God looks like. I suggested one step in that direction in my “Open Letter to the ELCA Presiding Bishop and Synodical Bishops: A Modest Proposal for Reparational Tithe.” Such action will not desegregate our churches overnight. But it will send a clear message that we mean what we said in our “Declaration Of The ELCA To People Of African Descent.”
I am convinced that remedying the systemic injustice that has and continues to oppress people of color in general and African Americans in particular will require an effort on the level of the New Deal or the Marshall Plan. There is currently little appetite for any such effort in American government and I doubt more screechy preachy church social statements calling for it will alter that disinterest. So perhaps it is time we started to be the change we keep calling for. Maybe it is time for bishops and church leaders to stop acting like CEOs of failing corporations answering to their shareholders, put on their grownup pants and start challenging their churches with concrete proposals for doing with our own assets what we are calling our representatives to do with their constituents’ tax dollars. In the Book of Acts, it was the example of the disciples’ acts of mercy and their selfless lifestyle as much as their preaching that won the hearts of so many to the New Testament church. Who can tell whether the corporate example of a church doing justice within itself will influence the larger society to do likewise?
My second thought is global. As I write this article, Orthodox Christians are daily killing each other by the hundreds in eastern Europe in the bloodiest European conflict since World War II. This is but the most obvious example of an idolatry infecting the church throughout the world. The fact that we are prepared to engage in lethal conflicts pitting Christian against Christian shows that our loyalty to the gods of blood, race, nation and soil takes precedence over out baptismal vows to love our neighbors, near and far, as ourselves. The frightening rise of nationalist/populist movements worldwide has been well documented by the Lutheran World Federation’s study, Resisting Exclusion: Global Theological Responses to Populism, (pub. by Evangelische Verlangsanstalt GmbH, Leipzig, Germany, under the auspices of The Lutheran World Federation). Never has it been more important for the church to assert its catholicity, its claim that ultimate loyalty belongs to Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims and that no nation, government or other human authority must take precedence over the great commandments to love God above all else and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. In a world on the edge of disintegration and global war, the church is called to be the visible sign of Christ’s Body, the Incarnate Word that holds creation together against all the hateful ideologies, nationalistic ambitions and ancient blood feuds threatening to rip it apart.
We need a new ecumenical movement to build a united global church. I understand how difficult that would be and that ecumenism has failed in the past to produce meaningful unity. But I think that is in large part due to our fixation on differences in doctrine and practice. Let me be clear. I believe doctrine is important. I believe discussions about worship, the sacraments, our creeds and ethical concerns are important and worth having. But should they be allowed to get in the way of our common basic assertion that the human family is one and that through the lens of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection there can be no hierarchy of value when it comes to the worth of human lives? And can we credibly make that assertion when our national loyalties trump our loyalty to Jesus and his gentle reign? Do we stand a chance of discipling the nations when we will not disciple ourselves? Can we teach the nations to observe all that Jesus commanded when we ourselves have no intention of following those commands?
I know that these two thoughts of mine are not new, that smarter people than me have articulated them with greater clarity, that better people than me have struggled to bring them to fruition and that the prospects of their taking root now are no greater than in the past. But I can’t help thinking that, perhaps, if enough of us begin loving Jesus and the reign of God he lived and died for more than our institutions, more than our sanctuaries, more than our comfortable traditions, more than our countries, more than life itself-God’s Spirit might once gain make use of us to “turn the world upside down.” See Acts 17:6.
Here is a poem by Denise Levertov about the kind of peacemaking that resembles the discipling I believe our gospel lesson is talking about.
Making Peace
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
Source: Breathing the Water (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1987) Denise Levertov (1923–1997) never received a formal education. Nevertheless, she created a highly regarded body of poetry that earned her recognition as one of America’s most respected poets. Her father, Paul Philip Levertov, was a Russian Jew who converted to Christianity and subsequently moved to England where he became an Anglican minister. Levertov grew up in a household surrounded by books and people talking about them in many languages. During World War II, Levertov pursued nurse’s training and spent three years as a civilian nurse at several hospitals in London. Levertov came to the United States in 1948, after marrying American writer Mitchell Goodman. During the 1960s Levertov became a staunch critic of the Vietnam war, a topic addressed in many of her poems of that era. Levertov died of lymphoma at the age of seventy-four. You can read more about Denise Levertov and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.
An Open Letter to Amanda Gorman
Dear Ms. Gorman:
I read about how you felt “gutted” upon learning that a Florida school banned your poem, The Hill We Climb, for use in elementary school teaching and removed it from the elementary section of the school library. While I can understand your reaction, I think you should be pleased. My junior collage professor of Latin verse once told us that “poetry is by nature subversive and invites repression in countries throughout the world, but not the United States. In this country, the government does not censor poetry-because it knows Americans never read it.” You managed to do what my professor thought impossible, namely, get Americans interested in poetry, so much so that for the first time they are trying to ban it! Kudos on that score.
You should be encouraged by that Florida school’s ban. After all, poetry that is harmless is bland and boring. A poem that does not touch a nerve, unsettle the mind, challenge the status quo and make us a tad uncomfortable is like diet Coke. It’s just not the “real thing.” Your poem paints a bold and truthful portrait of what is, yet challenges us to dream of what might be. Naturally, that is upsetting to those of us who like things the way they are or who long for a return to some bygone era when America was “great” (as though that were even possible!). For those of us convinced that any sort of change amounts to our loss and that there is nothing for us at the crest of the hill, poems like yours strike a note of fear and anger. Sometimes, though, you have to open a wound in order to clean it and make healing possible. The ire evoked by your poem in that Florida school illustrates that it is doing exactly what a poem should.
Finally, nothing promotes a work of literature quite as effectively as a ban. You can be sure that, as soon as elementary school children learn that your books are forbidden, they will flock to them like flies to honey. Bans on literature do not work. They never have. Every society that has ever tried to ban literature has been on the losing side of history. Florida’s efforts to ban literature, censor teachers and stifle discussion of uncomfortable topics demonstrate that it has already lost the battle. Such futile measures make painfully clear that the champions of censorship know their ideologies, prejudices and worn out beliefs cannot withstand reasoned discussion and debate. Censorship is the last desperate, panicked attempt of a stagnant and dying society to save its collapsing order from the hurricane of revolutionary change. It will fail today as it always has in the past.
So, be comforted. Time is on your side. The future belongs to you. Your poem will be recited long after Ron DeSantis has been relegated to the dustbin of discarded demagogues like George Wallace, Lester Maddox and Strom Thurman. Truth, beauty and goodness cannot be banned.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 