SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 65:1-9

Psalm 22:19-28

Galatians 3:23-29

Luke 8:26-39

Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, we bring before you the cries of a sorrowing world. In your mercy set us free from the chains that bind us, and defend us from everything that is evil, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask,
   to be found by those who did not seek me.
I said, ‘Here I am, here I am’,
   to a nation that did not call on my name.
I held out my hands all day long
   to a rebellious people,
who walk in a way that is not good,
   following their own devices;
a people who provoke me
   to my face continually…” Isaiah 65:1-3.

The psalm for this Sunday begins with the cry of dereliction echoed by Jesus hanging on the cross: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?” Psalm 22:1. It is a cry that I am sure resonates with parents of the children gunned down at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24^th. So, too, the loved ones of those shot down the week before in a Buffalo, New York shopping center by a white supremacist. I could add to the list millions of people in this country who have been living hand to mouth for decades and now find that their fragile existence has become even more tenuous due to crushing inflation. These words also resonate with the Israelites recently returned from exile to a land ravaged by war and ruled by foreign powers. Their high expectations for a new beginning seemed dashed by the hard realities of life under Persian domination. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” they cry out in despair. Isaiah 64:1.  

Our lesson from Isaiah, part of which is quoted above, is God’s response to Israel’s complaint in the prior chapter. In effect, God replies, “I did come down to you! I’ve been here all the time stretching out my hands to you, calling you, pleading with you. The problem is not that I’m not speaking. The problem is that you are not listening!”

Listening involves more than hearing. Listening creates, in the words of poet, Mary Oliver, “a silence in which another voice may speak.” It requires focus, discipline and patience. I find that the most difficult part of listening is putting what I want to say out of mind. I don’t know about you, but I often find that, when discussing what I believe to be important issues, particularly with those with whom I disagree, I lose a lot of what is being said to me because I am already formulating my response to what is said. I have convinced myself that I already understand the tired, ignorant and fallacious arguments my conversation partner is raising and all that remains for me is to defeat them with the superior knowledge and reasoning I already possess. I don’t believe there is anything I have to learn in this discussion. This isn’t about learning. It is about winning. For that reason, much of our dialogue these days is unfruitful. People are seldom persuaded through argument and debate. Minds are seldom, if ever, changed as the result of a single argument, speech or sermon-much less a post or a tweet. In any event, that has never been the case with me. My mind changes more like an aircraft carrier altering its course than a hydroplane making an abrupt turn. Profound changes of opinion come more through having to wrestle with troubling questions raised by people who have listened to me long enough to understand not only my convictions, but also the life experiences that brought me to those convictions. I have been most profoundly changed by people who speak parabolically rather than strictly rationally.  

Arguments operate as frontal assaults upon our beliefs. They evoke a defensive response and so tend to drive us deeper into our entrenched positions. Jesus understood this well. That is why he seldom allowed himself to be drawn into moral and theological arguments. Instead, he used parables. Rather than pounding on the front door and demanding admission, parables sneak in through the back door. They invite us to recognize ourselves in stories that put flesh and blood consequences upon what we claim to believe. They tend to sow seeds of doubt about our entrenched convictions causing us, over time, to question and, perhaps, abandon them.

Many of our modes of communication do not lend themselves to the art of listening. So much of our public discussion takes place these days over social media where we often know nothing about those with whom we are disputing other than what little they can manage to say about significant issues in tweets and Facebook posts. Such disembodied, one dimensional dialogue tends only to deepen divisions, re-enforce stereotypes and inflame passions. Would it make a difference, I wonder, if you knew that the pro-life activist with whom you are debating online was a woman who lost a pregnancy, but never found a way to grieve that loss through ritual, tradition and communal support typically accompanying the loss of a child? Would it make a difference if you knew how it grated on her to hear the terms “miscarriage” and “loss of a fetus”? Would it make a difference if you knew that the pro-choice advocate you encounter in the chat room was the father of a teen with a pregnancy threating her life and health? Would it make a difference if you knew how this family is agonizing over how to deal with this crisis? If we took the time to listen, not merely to each other’s points of view but to our respective stories, would that change the way we speak to and treat one another?

How, then, do we listen to God? Jesus has answered that question for us. In the gospel of Matthew, he tells us that whatever we have done or failed to do for those regarded as “least” among us, we have done to or left undone for God. Maybe we have spent too much time looking for the God who sits at the controls making things happen down here on planet earth. Maybe we have looked too long and hard for the God who will solve all our problems and make everything come out right. In fact, there is no such god and it is therefore not surprising that those seeking it find nothing and meet only silence. The true God is crying out to us from refugee camps around the world, from the depths of prisons, from slums, from war torn cities and towns, from homeless shelters, from within abusive and dysfunctional families. The true God addresses us in all that God has made; through “weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones.” The true God calls out to us from rivers choaked with sludge, deforested wasteland and dying coral reefs. This God is ready to be found. This God’s arms are outstretched. This God is present and longing to be heard. We need only listen.

Here is the poem by Mary Oliver to which I alluded above and which invites us to prayerful listening.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Source:  Thirst, (c. 2007 by Mary Oliver; pub. by Beacon Press). Mary Oliver was born in 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio. She spent much of her life on Cape Cod and was deeply influenced by poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her work received early critical attention with the 1983 publication of a collection of poems entitled American Primitive. She is a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award. You can read more about Mary Oliver and sample some of her other poems at the Poetry Foundation Website.

HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8

Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15

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.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” John 16:12-15.

This Sunday most mainline churches will celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity, a day on which more heresy will find its way into the pulpit than at any other time of the year. It will all begin with the invocation of God the creator, God the redeemer and God the sanctifier-or some such similar formula. Don’t misunderstand me here. There is nothing wrong with invoking God in these or other words reflecting God’s mighty acts. The problem arises when they get passed off as Trinitarian invocations, which they are not. The terms creator, redeemer and sanctifier (and any other of the many things God does) are not synonyms for Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The former are merely descriptions of what God does. The latter is a testament to who God is.

As Saint Augustine points out, the distinction between the persons of the Trinity exists only within the Godhead. Externally, that is, in God’s dealings with creation and all of its creatures, God is always and only one. Thus, even when the scriptures say that God spoke to Moses or that Jesus raised Lazarus or that the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples at Pentecost, we are to understand that the Trinity is fully present and acting in perfect concert in every case. Thus, to substitute creator, redeemer and sanctifier with the aforementioned terms renders the Trinity a committee of three, each with its own area of responsibility. That hardly comports with Jesus’ words to the effect that “All that the Father has is mine….” and that the Spirit will “take what is mine and declare it to you.”[1]

So who cares? The church, for one. The Nicene Creed was the product of centuries of rancorous ecclesiastical debate over the nature of the relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The Athanasian Creed, following an exhaustive articulation of Trinitarian faith concludes with this withering declaration: “One cannot be saved without believing this firmly and faithfully.” Though it seems to me that opining about anyone’s ultimate salvation is beyond the pay scale of any mortal, the Creed makes a valid point: it matters what you believe about God. I hardly need to catalogue the atrocities that have been committed on God’s behalf by adherents of numerous faiths, Christianity included. That Christians have taken up the sword to defend the church, to defend the faith, to defend the nations in which they happen to reside and to defend themselves against their neighbors and fellow citizens continues to discredit the church’s public witness. Worse still, it reflects a woeful ignorance (or willful disregard?) of the profound significance of Trinitarian faith.

Jesus leaves his disciples with a “new” commandment: to love even as they have been loved by God. It cannot be overstated that love in this sense is not a human sentiment. It is the glue that holds the Trinity together. The Holy Spirit, says Augustine, is the love binding the Father and the Son. As such, it pre-exists creation and, for this reason, Saint Paul calls it eternal. I Corinthians 13:13. Eternal life, then, is to “know God” and Jesus Christ whom God has sent. John 17:3. Jesus’ disciples are “sent” into the world that God so loved just as was Jesus. John 20:21. The trinitarian love at the heart of the Godhead plays out in human history through the faithful life, obedient death and glorious resurrection of Jesus. In Jesus God is on the receiving end of all the worst humanity can throw. But this God, instead of retaliating, raises up the crucified Son and offers him back to the world-which will undoubtedly crucify him again. God overcomes evil by confronting it with love, love without limit and love without end. We might find it hard to imagine that love alone is any match for AR-15s, tanks and long range missiles. But, as we have seen, love is eternal. That means God has all eternity to work with and God is nothing if not patient. The power of God is the patience of God. Against that patience, evil must finally wear itself out.  

This brings me to my final point, namely, that Christian pacifism is grounded in the Trinitarian understanding of God. There is no hierarchy within the Trinity; no coercion; no conflict. God is complete in God’s self and needs nothing besides God. Yet, as the hymn so eloquently says, “the universe of space and time did not arise by chance, but as the Three, in love and hope, made room within their dance.” “Come Join the Dance of Trinity,” by Richard Leach, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, # 412. Love is, after all, making room for another to be. Of course, when you do that, you take a risk. Couples who make room in their lives for a child experience profound pain when that child rejects their love, makes harmful decisions or suffers injury or death. Yet we continue to have children “in love and hope.” When they hurt us, we forgive them. When they disappoint us, we continue to love them. When they are in danger, we put our own lives on the line to save theirs. We do this because, after all, we are created in God’s image and God is the one who takes the risk of declaring “Let there be.” To take a human life, for any reason, is to insist that someone God has let be should not be. It is as simple as that.

Of course, it bears repeating that pacifism is not the same as passivism. Jesus was hardly passive in the face of oppression, injustice and poverty. His life and ministry consisted of confronting the engines of imperial oppression and its devastating effects on those deemed “the least” in the human family. Yet violence, coercion, threats and manipulation were not arrows in Jesus’ quiver. Neither should they be for Jesus’ disciples. As the Father is one with the Son in love, so should believers be one among themselves. John 17:26. As Jesus was in the world as one who chose death over killing, so should his disciples be in the world. John 17:11.

It is difficult to be a pacifist in these days. It is hard not to respond viscerally when witnessing the brutality of Putin’s Russia against its neighbor, Ukraine. Again and again I have been asked, “So you think the Ukrainians should just lie down and let Russia take their country?” My only response is to say that I have no guidance to give concerning what Ukraine or NATO or Russia should or should not do. But I know that disciples of Jesus, be they Russian, Ukrainian or American, should not take human lives. Jesus refused to allow his disciples to raise the sword in his defense. So if violence in defense of God’s only beloved Son is not justified, how, quite literally in God’s name, can we ever justify it?

Here is a poem by Michael J. Bugeja I have cited previously. It bears repeating as it gives the doctrine of the Trinity its due.

Trinity 

I God

You have distinct dimensions. They are we:
Encyclopedias and alphabets
Of the Big Bang, exobiology,
Inhabitants on multitudes of planets.

Our light cannot escape your gravity.
The soul is linked to yours, a diode
Through which we must return as energy
Until we flare like red suns, and explode:

We try to reconstruct you with an ode
Or explicate your essence line by line.
We canonize commandments like a code
Etched within the DNA. If we’re divine,

Composing simple poems, making rhymes,
Then what are others in this paradigm?

II Son

Then what are others in this paradigm
If not superior? We’re grains of sand.
You have a billion planets to command
With technologies that attained their prime
Before we left the alluvial slime
For land and land for trees and trees for land
Again. These chosen beings went beyond
The boundaries and laws of space and time
To greater meccas. What miracles do
They require? How many stars, their Magi?
Who, their Pilot? When, their Armageddon?
Were we made in God’s image and they too?
Do you save sinners on Alpha Centauri,
All the nebular rosaries of heaven?

III. Spirit

All the nebular roasries of heaven
Are bounded by the lace of your cosmic string.
The unifying force, interwoven
In the clockwork of space-time, is a spring:

One moment we live here and the next, there.
The universe has edges off of which
No one will fall. Because you’re everywhere,
Its seam appears the same from every stitch:

The father sparks the singularity.
We breed like godseed in the firmament.
The Son forgives so that eternity,
Your sole domain, becomes self-evident:

Together you complete the trinity.
You have distinct dimensions: they are we.

Source: Poetry, March 1994 pp. 316-317. Michael J. Bugeja was born in Hackensack, New Jersey and received his B. A. from St. Peter’s College. He earned his M.S. from South Dakota State University and a Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University. He currently teaches magazine writing and ethics at Ohio University at Athens, Ohio. He has published several collections of poetry and was a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Fiction. He was also named honorary chancellor of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. You can learn more about Michael J. Bugeia at this Amazon link and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] I am mindful of the concern that terms such as “father” and “son” carry a gender bias some find troubling. Much of this problem stems from our English language in which gender is exclusively linked to sexual identity. Such is not the case for the biblical languages. While I welcome invoking God with feminine images and addressing God with feminine pronouns (or plural for that matter), I am not prepared to dispense with the Trinitarian formula set forth in our creeds, our liturgy and hymnody. That said, I think it is possible to speak of the Trinity in other ways that distinguish the persons of the Godhead while affirming God’s oneness, such as, for example, as “Speaker, Word and Voice.” It is possible to be sensitive without being sloppy and imprecise.   

PENTECOST SUNDAY

Genesis 11:1-9

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

Acts 2:1-21

John 14:8-17; 25-27

Prayer of the Day: God our creator, the resurrection of your Son offers life to all the peoples of earth. By your Holy Spirit, kindle in us the fire of your love, empowering our lives for service and our tongues for praise, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. John 14:26.

Over the years I have often been accused of being a “liberal” or a “conservative” or asked to declare myself one or the other. I hesitate to respond to such queries or accusations and often find myself equivocating. That isn’t because I am afraid to own up to my convictions. It is more that I feel as though I am being asked to sign a blank check. I am not sure those terms mean much of anything anymore. They are more tribal identifiers than descriptions of what a given person believes. People who press these questions are usually asking, “Are you in my tribe?” “Are you one of my people?” “Are you on my side.” I cannot honestly say that I am conservative or liberal when so confronted because I don’t know exactly what I am signing on to. There was a time, of course, when the terms “liberal” and “conservative” actually had content. Furthermore, they were not mutually exclusive. If I am allowed to return to what conservatism and liberalism actually mean, I am probably both in roughly equal parts .

Literally speaking, a conservative is one who desires to conserve. To be conservative is to believe that what has happened in the past is worth remembering. What we have learned in the past is worth preserving. Because I am conservative in this sense, I continue to consult with the likes of Ignatius of Antioch, Athanasius, Augustine of Hippo, Irenaeus of Lyons, Ignatius of Antioch and the other women and men who throughout the ages have reflected deeply on and articulated our faith. I believe their insights are as valuable and important today as ever. Because I am conservative, I believe the ecumenical creeds should be a prominent part of every worship service. They reflect centuries of the church’s best thinking about the scriptures’ testimony to the God we worship. As a conservative, I favor hymns, liturgy and music that are deeply layered, nuanced and have stood the test of time. I should add that I am not overly concerned about whether a first time visitor to my church can easily understand our worship. Any faith that can be sized up in an hour’s time probably isn’t worth having. I care less about what is relevant and more about what is and always has been true, beautiful and good. Not everything that is trending on Google is worthy of one’s attention. To be conservative is to believe in the Holy Spirit and be confident that the Spirit continues to remind us through centuries of testimony what Jesus has said and done.

By contrast, to be liberal is to be generous and, in particular, generous in one’s understanding of all points of view. It is to recognize that, being finite, we each occupy a unique space in history, a particular cultural milieu and imbedded biases that govern our thinking. I am liberal because, though I affirm the canonical scriptures as the source and norm of the church’s faith and life, I recognize that they are not the sole source of truth. Because I agree with Saint Augustine’s affirmation that truth exists, that it is knowable, that our senses are capable of perceiving it and our minds are capable of understanding, I welcome scientific discoveries. I am not threatened when they challenge established church dogma, but rather welcome such instances as opportunities to think more deeply about the meaning of our faith and its implications. Liberals do not see the creeds as boxes neatly containing the sum of all truth, but rather as portholes through which we gaze at a mystery finally beyond understanding. To be liberal is to recognize that, however much we might admire and learn from great teachers and theologians of the past, we also acknowledge their shortcomings, blind spots and biases. To be liberal is to welcome the testimony of persons historically excluded from the church’s moral and theological deliberations, recognizing that they are essential in assisting us to repent of our sins, correct our erroneous views and deepen our understanding of the good news that is Jesus. In short, to be liberal is to believe in the Holy Spirit and that the Spirit is still calling us to greater faithfulness through the testimony of contemporary prophets, preachers and teachers.

Jesus tells his disciples that the Holy Spirit will teach them everything, which means that they do not yet know everything-any more than we do. If the church really were in possession of the whole truth, there would be no need for the Spirit. As it is, “we see in a mirror dimly” and “know only in part.” I Corinthians 13:12. We need the Spirit to guide us into “all the truth.” John 16:13. There is no inconsistency between learning from teachers of the past and honoring our traditions on the one hand, and openness to the prophetic voices addressing us today, often from those historically neglected or rejected, on the other. Though it works through humanly constructed institutions and agencies, Saint Paul reminds us that the church is a body-The Body of Christ. It is organic, not inert; evolving, not static; living, not dead. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8. No such guarantee is made regarding the church!

Here is a poem by Wendy Videlock that might well serve as a Pentecost prayer for the church.

Change

Change is the new,

improved

word for god,

lovely enough

to raise a song

or implicate

a sea of wrongs,

mighty enough,

like other gods,

to shelter,

bring together,

and estrange us.

Please, god,

we seem to say,

change us.

Source: Poetry (January 2009). Wendy Videlock is a writer, visual artist, teacher, and a life-long student of the world.  She lives in Palisade, Colorado. Her books include Nevertheless (San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2011), Slingshots & Love Plums (San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2015), The Dark Gnu (San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2013), and a chapbook, What’s That Supposed to Mean (New York, NY: EXOT Books, 2010). You can read more about Wendy Videlock and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 16:16-34

Psalm 97

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

John 17:20-26

Prayer of the Day: O God, form the minds of your faithful people into your one will. Make us love what you command and desire what you promise, that, amid all the changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joy is found, your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17:21-23.  

Jesus prays that his disciples will be one. He would have his church prefigure what God intends for all people, nations and tribes. The day will come when “God is all in all.” I Corinthians 15:28. God smiles at the border walls, frontiers and barbed wire we erect to protect our sovereignty-because God is thinking of how much fun it will be to knock them down. Those who cry “America first,” and all others throughout history who have pounded their chests boasting of their empires, most of which are now relics of past history, are living in the past. Disciples of Jesus are called to live in God’s future where there is but one Sovereign and one kingdom encompassing all peoples of every nation, tribe and tongue.

Of course, that does not comport with the church as we know it. The “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” is as much an article of faith as the Incarnation and the Resurrection. What we see is a church that has been riven with divisions from its inception. We are divided on matters of doctrine. We are divided by nationalist loyalties that, sadly, are larger than our loyalty to Jesus. We are divided by the fault lines of class distinctions, disparity of wealth and racial identity. We have allowed these differences to become larger than what should be our common commitment to Jesus. Instead of a counter-cultural alternative to human life as it is lived under the worldly machinery of violence and oppression, the church is often simply a microcosm of that world.  

While I lament this state of affairs, I have to confess that I am part of the problem. There are plenty of Christians with whom I have no desire to be one. I don’t want to be associated with a community of faith that rejects my daughter’s ministry because she is a woman. I don’t want to be one with a community of faith that rejects the families of my LGBTQ+ friends and family. I don’t want to waste my breath trying to talk to Christian communities that swallow hook, line and sinker the crackpot conspiracy theories churned out by right wing crazies. It is hard enough maintaining a semblance of unity among people whose understanding of the Christian faith is roughly the same as my own. I am part of a community that has struggled and still struggles with accepting the ministry of women, welcoming gay, lesbian, transgender and nonbinary folk and recognizing the need for dismantling white supremacy. I have no desire to take any backward steps in order to refight those battles all over again, especially when we still have so much further to go. The advice of Anita from West Side Story is appealing to me: “stick to your own kind.”

But Jesus, not Anita, is Lord of the Church. His prayer that we might all be “perfectly one” controls, unappealing as it may be to my tastes. That means we, that is, I have to try overcoming our divisions. To be perfectly honest, though, I don’t even know how to begin this task. I Know that trying to conduct a dialogue along the contours of our differences is unlikely to be productive. Nothing either of us has to say is likely to move us from our entrenched positions. We have reached a degree of polarization in which we find ourselves in tribes, like minded in groups insulated from one another and receiving our news, getting our socialization and obtaining religious training from completely different sources. We cannot even agree on common facts, much less find common ground.   

Perhaps, then, at least when it comes to dialogue, we need to focus less on issues and more on the individuals with whom we speak. Maybe we need to adopt a more inquisitive and less apologetic posture. Instead of responding to an argument with a counter-argument, we might try asking, “how did you come to that belief?” As a good friend often reminds me, no one is ever only one thing. There is a story that goes with each person. There are events, traumas, triumphs and failures, fears and hopes that bring us all to where we find ourselves. And somehow, all of us who bear the name “Christian” find ourselves associated with Jesus of Nazareth. If there really is a way forward to unity for this fractured mosaic of institutions, gatherings and individuals we claim to be Christ’s body, then it must be found in our common humanity where we encounter the Word made flesh and try to make sense of him.

Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that differences can be swept under the carpet or that some “middle ground” can be found. We may not be capable of healing our rifts. But by listening, by learning one another’s stories, by opening our hearts to one another, we give the Holy Spirit an opening. And once the “God factor,” is introduced into the equation, who can predict what the outcome will be?

Here is a peom by Emiy Dickenson describing the way we might begin to dialogue toward oneness within the Body of Christ.

Tell all the Truth, but tell it Slant

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

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

SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 16:9-15

Psalm 67

Revelation 21:10, 22—22:5

John 14:23-29

Prayer of the Day: Bountiful God, you gather your people into your realm, and you promise us food from your tree of life. Nourish us with your word, that empowered by your Spirit we may love one another and the world you have made, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.” John 14:28-29.

The Feast of the Ascension is, alas, one of those unmovable observances, meaning that, unless it falls on a Sunday, it gets lost somewhere during the last couple of weeks of Easter. That is a shame. The ascension of Jesus to the right hand of God the Father is a central feature of our creeds and crucial part of the gospel narrative. This event establishes Jesus’ faithful life, obedient death and glorious resurrection as a truly cosmic event. This Jesus is shown to be that word “upholding the universe.” Hebrews 1:3. He is the one “for whom and by whom all things exist.” Hebrews 2:10. “In him,” says Saint Paul, “all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17. Through Jesus God works “to reconcile to himself all things.” Colossians 1:19-20. As the words of a recent hymn proclaim, “Christ is alive, no longer bound to distant years in Palestine; but saving, healing here and now, and touching every place and time.” “Christ is Alive! Let Christians Sing,” Brian A. Wren (pub. by Hope Publishing Co. c. 1975) Hymn # 389 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, (c. 2006 by Augsburg Fortress Publishers). Jesus, we must be clear, is not anybody’s “personal savior.” He is the savior of the world. The church is not the privileged and exclusive owner of salvation. It is the people entrusted with announcing it and testifying to it.

This word comes at a time when the world seems to be coming apart at the seams. The brutal mass killing this week in Buffalo, New York has exposed once again the ugly face of white supremacy that is now the dominant unifying principle in one of our two major political parties. We find ourselves teetering on the brink of world war between nuclear powers. Our best scientists world-wide are warning us that we are on a trajectory of ecological ruin. Against this grim backdrop of disintegration, the ascension narrative reminds us that the world, indeed, the universe is held to together by God’s Incarnate Word. The nail pierced arms of Jesus hold God’s beloved world together against all the forces threatening to tear it apart. Whatever evil we might do-and we can do plenty-we cannot break God’s loving embrace of all God has made.

Our lesson from Revelation rounds out the Ascension witness in its graphic visual imagery of the consummation of the age. The world spoken into existence by God’s word “Let there be…” continues by the Spirit’s animation and is guided by God the Father’s providential grace toward the eternal embrace of Trinitarian love.

To say that Jesus is at God’s right hand is to say that Jesus is now everywhere. He is not gone, but more intensely present than ever before. Whatever God does is done in and through Jesus. That is to say, we can no longer speak of God apart from God’s Son or speak of God’s acts apart from reference to Jesus. For disciples of Jesus, every effort to understand God prior to, after or without Jesus ends in idolatry. That is why, when a disciple of Jesus picks up the Bible, the disciple reads every word through the lens of Jesus, allowing nothing “to draw our eyes away from him.”

Here’s a poem by Joyce Hernandez speaking to the narrative of the Ascension.

When Jesus early rose and breathed
The pungent air of new-dug earth,
Passed the stone, and passed the flesh,
Passed the mourners of his death,
(and left them dazed, but following)
He rose with such a limpid flight
As wind or wings could only clutter,
And left no scratches on the world,
No broken twig or parted cloud,
To draw our eyes away from him.

(c. 1972 by Joyce Hernandez) Joyce Hernandez is a teacher, nurse and poet living in Yakima, Washington. Her publications include The Bone Woman Poems (c. 2009, pub. by Allied Arts and Minuteman Press). She is also, coincidentally, my sister.

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 11:1-18

Psalm 148

Revelation 21:1-6

John 13:31-35

Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, you teach us that without love, our actions gain nothing. Pour into our hearts your most excellent gift of love, that, made alive by your Spirit, we may know goodness and peace, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35.

Anyone familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures knows that the commandment to love is not new. It is a central tenant of the Torah. Leviticus 19:18. Moreover, as illustrated in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, the commandment applies as much to the stranger, the foreigner and the outsider as it does among God’s chosen people. Leviticus 19:33-34. Such love is not to be construed as mere sentiment or as some unachievable ideal. It is central to human thriving. As the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning observes, “[w]e cannot live, except thus mutually [w]e alternate.” The commandment to love is “new” only in the sense that it was actualized in human flesh within time and space by the Incarnate One. Henceforth, it cannot be said that divine love is humanly impossible.

But it’s damned hard. For one thing, love is dangerous. It got Jesus killed. Jesus warns us that the same fate may well await those who follow in his footsteps. John 15:18-20. Furthermore, even when love is not lethal, it can hurt like nothing else. Nobody is capable of wounding me like those I most love. A stranger can insult me, criticize me and call me all manner of demeaning names and it won’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. But when someone I trust betrays me, someone I admire criticizes me, someone I care deeply about turns away from me-that hurts. Perhaps that is why appeals to blood, soil, race and nation are so appealing to so many. Maybe that is why remarks such as “charity begins at home” resonate with us. By keeping the circle about those we love and trust small and well defined, we reduce the chance of getting hurt.

For most of us disciples, love does not take the shape of martyrdom in terms of a violent death. It is more like being nibbled to death by ducks. Church leaders, who thought they were agreeing to a three year term on the council, find out instead that they have been sentenced to life without parole when no one steps forward to take their place when the term ends. And for all that, they frequently receive more criticism than praise for their sacrifice. There are plenty of Church musicians who seldom know a Sunday when someone doesn’t complain about the choir anthem or which hymns are or are not being sung. There are pastors who find themselves held personally responsible for declining membership, sermons that rub people the wrong way and decisions of their national church over which they have little control. And of course, there is no shortage of stories about people who have been judged, rejected and deeply wounded by the words and actions of church people. Church is not for the faint of heart. I can understand why so many people leave it in disgust. Churches are typically not communities in which you find the kind of love Jesus is speaking about.

But the church is not the place you come to find love. It’s the place you come to learn love. You can’t learn to love people different than yourself if you surround yourself with people like you. You can’t learn forgiveness if you surround yourself with people who don’t offend you. You can’t learn to love your enemies if you insist on surrounding yourself with friends. So if you are looking to find in the church the loving, accepting and affirming family you never had; or if you are looking to find in the church a safe place where you can’t get hurt, you are bound to be disappointed. The church has never been such a place. It is, instead, a place where people chosen by Jesus are brought together. They might not be people who like each other. They might not be people who agree with one another. They might not be shining examples of kindness, compassion and dedication to justice. But if we believe what Jesus is telling us in John’s gospel, the church is made up of people chosen by him. John 15:16. That means, hard as it may be to swallow, everyone in every congregation is there because Jesus called them. Everyone in my congregation has something to teach me that I cannot learn from anyone else.

Once again, I understand why people give up on the church. I have been tempted to give up on it more than once in my life. But just about the time I am ready to throw in the towel, something happens to change my mind. The meanest, most bigoted and seemingly heartless person in the congregation knocks my socks off with a selfless act of heroism, courage and kindness. A congregation hopelessly turned in upon itself discovers a new purpose and is renewed by responding to a critical need in its neighborhood. The young person I thought would never darken the church door again after confirmation expresses an interest in ministry. Somebody tells me about how something I said or did that I cannot even remember inspired them in a transformative way. These things don’t happen very often. But they happen just often enough to convince me that the love released into the world through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is real and active in the church.

Here is the poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning to which I alluded above.

Love

We cannot live, except thus mutually

We alternate, aware or unaware,

The reflex act of life: and when we bear

Our virtue onward most impulsively,

Most full of invocation, and to be

Most instantly compellant, certes, there

We live most life, whoever breathes most air

And counts his dying years by sun and sea.

But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth

Throw out her full force on another soul,

The conscience and the concentration both

Make mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole

And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,

As nature’s magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.

Source: This poem by Elizabeth Barret Browning is in the public domain. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was held in high regard throughout her lifetime surpassing nearly all other female poets of the English speaking world eclipsing even the work of her poet husband, Robert Browning. She had a formative influence upon American poet, Emily Dickinson who hung her portrait in her bedroom. Browning was highly skilled in multiple languages reading voraciously the Greek and Latin classics as well as the Hebrew Scriptures. Though the beneficiary of a privileged upbringing, she was a passionate advocate for the oppressed on the issues of slavery, child labor and the exploitation of colonized peoples. You can read more about Elizabeth Barrett Browning and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 9:36-43

Psalm 23

Revelation 7:9-17

John 10:22-30

Prayer of the Day: O God of peace, you brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great shepherd of the sheep. By the blood of your eternal covenant, make us complete in everything good that we may do your will, and work among us all that is well-pleasing in your sight, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” Revelation 7:9-10.

Saint Paul reminds Timothy that “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” II Timothy 3:16-17. Yet in every age, particular scriptures percolate up to address with new urgency the unique circumstances of the times. I can think of fewer passages than this speaking with greater clarity to the oneness of the human family and God’s desire to unite that family as one holy people without regard to “nation, tribe, people or language.” Furthermore, I can think of no period in my lifetime when that message needs to be heard more than the last decade over which we have witnessed in our own country and throughout the world a rising tide of nationalist, populist and racist sentiment often advancing under the banner of Christianity. Under these circumstances, says the Lutheran World Federation in its introductory statement to a collection of thoughtful essays on this subject, “[c]hurches are called to reflect more deeply on their public role in view of populist exclusionary policies. In a situation where populist movements misappropriate Christian rhetoric to justify their aspirations, churches cannot remain silent, but need to resist exclusionary strategies.” Introduction by Eva Harasta and Simone Sinn to Resisting Exclusion: Global Theological Responses to Populism, (pub. by Evangelische Verlangsanstalt GmbH, Leipzig, Germany, under the auspices of The Lutheran World Federation) p. 11.

Of course, it is hard to “resist exclusionary strategies” when you are part of them. And it is hard to deny that Christians in the United States are neck deep in the politics of exclusion as anyone watching news clips from the January 6, 2021 insurrection can attest. Recall the flag at the head of the mob proclaiming “Jesus is my Savior and Trump is my president.” Recall the large wooden cross that stood near the gallows constructed for then vice president, Mike Pence. Recall Rev. Franklin Graham’s bold assertion that Donald Trump’s electoral victory in 2016 was by the will and act of God. Many of us would argue that this is not the Christianity we believe, teach and confess. But the public, particularly those people without much in the way of religious commitment or involvement, frequently do not recognize such fine distinctions. They see the symbols and rhetoric of our faith woven into the hateful ideology of Trumpism and draw the conclusion, quite reasonably, that the two are one. Moreover, as much as we mainline protestants talk the talk of inclusion, we are far from successful in walking the walk. We remain overwhelmingly “white.” Despite our acceptance of women as pastors and priests, these women continue to face obstacles of stubbornly patriarchal institutional frameworks. Though we claim on a national denominational level to welcome persons of all sexual identities, there remain many congregations that are far from welcoming. As long as these conditions persist, the credibility of our prophetic witness to God’s inclusive reign will suffer.

This Fourth Sunday in Easter has become known as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” I am not sure whether that is so because the lectionary texts happen to focus on the theme of shepherds and sheep or whether the observance of the day dictated the texts. However one resolves this chicken/egg question, we are left with a day on which we are invited to consider what it means for Jesus to be our shepherd. That is the single most important question for disciples of Jesus. Yet much of what passes for Christianity these days has more to do with “culture war” issues than Jesus and his priorities. I doubt Jesus has any interest in bullying LGBTQ+ families into silence, banning books about slavery and Jim Crow in public schools so as not to hurt the feelings of white people, placing the bodies of women under state control or putting up plastic images of the holy family in the same public parks from which flesh and blood homeless people are chased away. Nor do I believe that congregations consisting in the main of straight, white, upper middle class Americans reflects the kind of Church Jesus had in mind when he sent his disciples to make disciples of all nations. The sad truth is that most of what passes for Christianity these days has little to do with Jesus.

But Jesus has his spokespeople-and they are not all in the church. I recently came across a website run by He Gets Us. I have no idea who these people are and cannot vouch for them except to say that they seem to “get” Jesus in a way that a lot of us in the church don’t. A message on their site states:

“Jesus understood what life was like for people in his day — especially for the marginalized. He was drawn to those on the fringes because he was one too: An immigrant. Homeless. Arrested. Bullied. Through it all, Jesus welcomed outcasts, stood up for women, hung out with troublemakers, even befriended enemies. He did it because of his radical love, empathy, and acceptance for all of us…Jesus’ radical compassion stands in stark contrast to all current hate and intolerance.”

The group claims not to be affiliated with any church or denomination, though it is the initiative of a charitable foundation controlled by the Church of the Servant in Oklahoma City. How passing strange it is that we need a group outside the church to clarify for the world who Jesus is. Have we really gotten Jesus so terribly wrong that he can no longer be recognized among us? Has the cross become so empty of meaning that it can be hijacked by racist mobs? Has the Bible become no more than a rabbit foot for authoritarian leaders exploit for photo opps? Is Jesus nothing more than the embodiment of white American middle class respectability? These are not rhetorical questions, nor are they of recent vintage. They are as old as Jesus’ query to his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” As Saint Peter learned, the answer cannot be given in a glib one line response. It must be revealed within communities for whom Jesus is Shepherd; communities that read the Bible through the prism of Jesus; communities in whom the mind of Christ is formed through worship, prayer, generosity and service; communities that understand themselves to be resident aliens with no true citizenship anywhere but under the reign of God Jesus proclaims; communities that know the only way to serve God is to serve, rescue, heal, advocate for and stand with those deemed “least” among the human family.

Here is a poem by Maya Angelou that speaks of what disciples of Jesus recognize as the reign of God and the way along which the Good Shepherd would lead us.

A Brave and Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

Source: Maya Angelou, The Complete Poetry, (c. 2015 by the Estate of Maya Angelou; pub. by Penguin Random House, LLC.) Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was a multi-talented American poet, author, singer, dancer and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and was credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She is perhaps best known for her well known autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1969. The book earned her the National Book Award. Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2010. You can read more about Maya Angelou and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 9:1-20

Psalm 30

Revelation 5:11-14

John 21:1-19

Prayer of the Day: Eternal and all-merciful God, with all the angels and all the saints we laud your majesty and might. By the resurrection of your Son, show yourself to us and inspire us to follow Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’” John 21:18-19.

As dark as these words appear, they are good words for Saint Peter. Peter famously vowed to go with Jesus to prison and to death-only to deny him when he was presented with the opportunity to do just that. But Jesus will not deny Peter. Jesus assures Peter that our God of the second chance will give him another opportunity to put his life on the line for Jesus. He will have another chance to glorify God and God’s reign of peace though imprisonment and death.

Aside from their obvious context, these words of Jesus strike a nerve with me. Perhaps it is because over my forty years of ministry I have seen so many people grow old, lose their health, their stamina and their cognitive abilities. I have seen so many once strong, independent men and women rendered helpless in old age, needing others to make important decisions for them with which they are not always happy. Or maybe these words strike me with increased urgency because I am entering into the autumn years of my own life. Whatever the reason, these words of Jesus to my namesake speak to me in a personal way and bring home what I have always known on an intellectual level but struggle with existentially, namely, that the day will come when “someone else will…take you where you do not wish to go.” Unless I die suddenly as a result of accident or some traumatic medical event, such as heart attack or stroke, I will experience physical and mental decline in the coming years. At some point, my wife and I will be unable to live independently in this home we built together. At some point, we will become dependent on others for transportation, housekeeping, meal preparation, dressing and personal hygene. This is not where I want to go. But it is clearly where I am headed.

Nobody likes to contemplate the end of one’s own life. Perhaps that is why we never speak of the end as such. We speak in glowing terms of retirement and the “golden years.” “Independent living” communities, an Orwellian term describing living arrangements for persons who have lost or are losing their capacity to live independently, have increased geometrically over the last two decades. Advertisements abound for medications that are supposed to improve memory, exercise routines that stave off the effects of aging and lotions designed to erase years from our faces. We tell each other stories about one hundred year old men and women who are still climbing mountains, as though this were achievable for anyone with enough discipline, determination and the right dietary/exercise regimen. But that is not way most of us will end our lives.

It was not always so. During medieval times, death was at the very center of life. According to church teaching, the whole purpose of life was to prepare for death. Participation in worship and the sacraments was understood as a process of formation, readying one for a “good death.” Time was measured in saint’s days marking the death of biblical and post biblical heroes of faith. The landscape was dominated by parish churches and towering cathedrals which were the sites of local graveyards. The faithful were challenged to so live that in death their hope and confidence in the resurrection and eternal life might glorify God. Death was surrounded by familiar communal rituals and symbols of comfort and hope. It was sad, to be sure, but not terrifying and hopeless.  

Over the last few centuries, however, the cultural influence of religion in defining the meaning of life and death has receded. Discussion of all the reasons for this is beyond the scope of any single article. Suffice to say, there no longer exists a strong cultural consensus about what constitutes a “good life” or what “meaning,” if any, life has. Yet despite the demise of faith, death remains. In the absence of the myths and religions that once made sense of death, nothing is left but, to use Dillon Thomas’ words, “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”[1] That is, by and large, what medical science has done. Improvements in medicine, the availability of health care to more people and a deeper understanding of how the human body works and how it can be maintained have decreased infant mortality worldwide and pushed the average life span to historic lengths.[2] No one has to convince me that modern medicine is a blessing. I have medical science to thank for the fact that members of my immediate family are living normal active lives rather than residing in the cemetery. But for all that medicine can do for us, it cannot change the stubborn fact of human mortality.

In his book, Being Mortal,[3] Dr. Atul Gawande explores the role medicine plays in our experience of dying and finds it wanting. The goal of medicine, Gawande points out, is healing. Medical doctors are trained to “fix” their patients. To its credit, modern medicine has extended the average life span by decades, eradicated diseases that formerly killed millions and enabled persons with medical conditions that would have killed them in childhood a century ago to live normal lives. But there is no cure for mortality. A discipline designed to heal, repair and extend life is ill-equipped to assist people who can no longer be “fixed.” Too often, medical treatment has served to prolong suffering, foster false hope and create unrealistic expectations while providing no meaningful relief. Gawande writes in his Epilogue:

“Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone. Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits, and the potential value of this power was the central reason I became a doctor. But again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

“If to be human is to be limited, then the role of caring professions and institutions-from surgeons to nursing homes-ought to be aiding people in their struggle with those limits. Sometimes we can offer a cure, sometimes only a salve, sometimes not even that. But whatever we can offer, our interventions, and the risks and sacrifices they entail, are justified only if they serve the greater aims of a person’s life. When we forget that, the suffering we inflict can be barbaric.” p. 259-260.

That, of course, brings us to the question of what “the greater aim” of our life is. As far as disciples of Jesus are concerned, John’s gospel is clear on that point. “[T]his is eternal life, that they may know….the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom [God has] sent.” John 17:3. This “knowing” is more than just theoretical understanding. It is relational. To know God is to be drawn into the love that binds the Trinity as One, love that is the very essence of God. John 17:20-24. And because God is love, love alone is eternal, as Saint Paul reminds us. I Corinthians 13:13. Eternal life, then, is not so merely by virtue of its duration, but because of its quality. A life grounded in love participates in what is eternal, what is real and what outlasts our mortal existence. Such a life, as well as the death in which it ends, glorifies God.

So the question I ask myself is this: How can I ensure that I will die well? I cannot do that anymore than I can ensure that I will live well this day. What I can do is give myself to the ancient practices of discipleship: worship, prayer, witness and generosity. I can pray that God will grant me grace to exist in love; to care for, serve and advocate for my neighbors near and far; to live gently on the land loving its creatures, reverencing its network of living and non-living communities; to live joyfully, thankfully, generously and obediently within my creaturely limits, trusting God to manage what is beyond those limits. I can pray along with the Psalmist that God will grant me a “heart of wisdom” that I might “order my days” and that the work of my hands might be established. Psalm 90. I can pray that something of my life might be graciously woven into the fabric of God’s new creation and so glorify God. I pray that when I draw my last breath, I will know the company of the Good Shepherd, the peace that passes all understanding, the love of family and friends and the prayers of the church as I pass through the valley of shadow into the light of God’s nearer presence.

Here is a poem by George Herbert that speaks both the harsh reality of death and the confident faith with which it can be met.

Death

Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,

                           Nothing but bones,

      The sad effect of sadder groans:

Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

For we considered thee as at some six

                           Or ten years hence,

      After the loss of life and sense,

Flesh being turned to dust, and bones to sticks.

We looked on this side of thee, shooting short;

                         Where we did find

      The shells of fledge souls left behind,

Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.

But since our Savior’s death did put some blood

                           Into thy face,

      Thou art grown fair and full of grace,

Much in request, much sought for as a good.

For we do now behold thee gay and glad,

                           As at Doomsday;

      When souls shall wear their new array,

And all thy bones with beauty shall be clad.

Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust

                           Half that we have

      Unto an honest faithful grave;

Making our pillows either down, or dust.

Source: This poem is in the public domain. George Herbert (1593 –1633) was a Welsh-born poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. He was born into a wealthy family and raised in England. He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge where he went with the intention of becoming a priest. Instead, he became the University’s Public Orator. His skill attracted the attention of King James I through whose patronage he entered the Parliament of England. There he served for about a year. Following the death of King James I, Herbert gave up his secular ambitions and took holy orders in the Church of England. He spent the rest of his life as the rector of a small parish in Salisbury. You can read more about George Herbert and sample more of his poems at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, by Dylan Thomas.

[2] Though, of course, the distribution of these benefits among the world’s people have been grossly unequal and inequitable!

[3] Gawande, Atul, Being Mortal (c. 2014 by Atul Gawande; pub. by Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company LLC).

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 5:27-32

Psalm 118:14-29

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20:19-31

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and eternal God, the strength of those who believe and the hope of those who doubt, may we, who have not seen, have faith in you and receive the fullness of Christ’s blessing, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” John 20:19.

It has been a violent Holy Week. In addition to the ongoing carnage in Ukraine, we have seen seven people killed and scores more wounded in mass shootings here in the United States. Pope Francis referred to this holiest of Christian days as an “Easter of War,” in his address from the Vatican. Yet Jesus comes to us as he did to his terrified disciples hiding behind locked doors to say “Peace be with you.” This salutation sounded no less dissonant then than it does today. The disciples were living under a military occupation force whose willingness to employ torture and crucifixion to “keep the peace” had just been made graphically apparent. The world was no less dangerous on Easter morning than it was the week before.

So what are we to make of this “Peace” with which Jesus meets us? Peace has many meanings in common parlance. It can mean simply the absence of violent conflict-such as we experienced during the days of the “cold war.” It can refer to resolution of a conflict by means of cease fire, treaty or alliance. Peace can refer to an inner condition of the self, such as a sense of wellbeing, acceptance of conditions and circumstances of one’s life or the result of a spiritual connection with the divine, the universe, the spirit world, the force-or whatever. But none of those definitions seem to fit here. Though Jesus has been raised, nothing has changed on the street. The people who had it in for Jesus are still out there. Roman forces are still occupying Judea. The war in Ukraine continues to escalate. People are being gunned down in our shopping malls and our political and religious leaders counter with “thoughts and prayers.”

The peace Jesus imparts is nothing like the peace we long for. In fact, Jesus tells us flat out that he is not interested in our kind of peace. “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth?” asks Jesus rhetorically. “No, I tell you, but rather division; for henceforth in one house there will be five divided against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” Luke 12:51-53. By peace, Jesus does not mean anything like the “peace of Rome” imposed by the sword. Jesus does not want the kind of peace made by ignoring and smoothing over a racist remark made by uncle Harry so as not to “spoil Thanksgiving dinner.” Jesus has no interest in the peace white supremacist politicians are trying to make through legislation erasing from our school curriculum every trace of Black American experience by banning books, threatening teachers and encouraging disruption of local school board meetings. Jesus does not approve of peace made by and for bigots through effectively denying the existence or legitimacy of LGBTQ+ families. Jesus stands with the prophet Jeremiah in refusing to “heal[] the wound of my people lightly, saying ‘peace, peace’ where there is no peace.” Jeremiah 6:14.   

The peace to which Jesus calls his disciples is “not such as the world gives.” John 14:27. It is not quickly or easily achieved. The peace of God is not made by sweeping conflict under the rug. It cannot come without acknowledging and addressing systemic racism that permeates our culture, including the church. The peace of God cannot come without our facing the sexist and patriarchal structures that continue to disfigure the personal, educational and professional growth of women and girls. Peace will not come without our coming to grips with the ongoing ecological ruin of our planet by the ruthless greed of a capitalist society. Peace without justice is no peace at all. Jesus will tolerate no shortcuts when it comes to peacemaking.

Moreover, as Jesus warns us, living in and making this peace does not come without risk. Rev. Franklin Graham found that out when he got reamed on social media for having the audacity to call upon Christians to pray for Russian president, Vladimir Putin.[1] Society of Friends, Mennonites and the other peace churches have known for generations the hatred, ridicule and sometimes violence that can result from urging love for those our nation has declared “enemies.” When you reach out the hand of friendship across national, tribal, ideological lines you risk getting a nail pounded through it. But if peace, real peace, reconciling peace is to prevail, disciples of Jesus must be as willing to put their lives on the line for it as soldiers are to put their lives on the line for nation, blood and soil.

Here is a poem/hymn by William Alexander Percy that speaks eloquently to the peace of God Jesus proclaims and offers.

They Cast Their Nets in Galilee

They cast their nets in Galilee
Just off the hills of brown;
Such happy, simple fisher-folk,
Before the Lord came down.

Contented, peaceful fisherfolk,
Before they ever knew
The peace of God that filled their hearts
Brim-full, and broke them too.

Young John who trimmed the flapping sail,
Homeless, in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net,
Head down was crucified.

The peace of God, it is no peace,
But strife closed in the sod.
Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing–
The marvellous peace of God.

Source: Episcopal Hymnal (1982) (Hymn 661). William Alexander Percy (1885 – 1942) was a lawyer, planter,and poet from Greenville, Mississippi. His autobiography Lanterns on the Levee (Knopf 1941) became a bestseller. His other works include the text of the above hymn and the Collected Poems (Knopf 1943). Percy spent a year in Paris before going to Harvard for a law degree. After returning to Greenville, Percy joined his father’s law firm where he practiced until 1916 when he joined the Commission for Relief in Belgium. He served in Belgium as a delegate until the withdrawal of American personnel upon the US declaration of war in April 1917. He served in the US Army in World War I, earning the rank of Captain. From 1925 to 1932, Percy edited the Yale Younger Poets series and published four volumes of poetry with the the Yale University Press.

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[1] Everyone who follows me with regularity knows that I am no admirer of Rev. Franklin Graham, the brand of Christianity he preaches or the hateful political agendas he has promoted under the cover of religion. Nonetheless, he is right as rain in saying that we ought to pray for our enemies and persecutors. That is about as central to Jesus’ teaching and example as anything can come. To follow Jesus is to believe that God hates nothing that God has made, that all human beings bear the image of their maker and that God’s Spirit is capable of transforming even those in whom that image has become extremely distorted.   

EASTER SUNDAY

Acts 10:34-43

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

1 Corinthians 15:19-26

Luke 24:1-12

Prayer of the Day: O God, you gave your only Son to suffer death on the cross for our redemption, and by his glorious resurrection you delivered us from the power of death. Make us die every day to sin, that we may live with him forever in the joy of the resurrection, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Acts 10:34-35. 

Saint Peter understands that God knows no partiality. In so doing, he declared the ancient gods of nation, blood and soil dead. He declared all claims of national sovereignty null and void. Whatever salutary purpose humanly drawn borders might serve, they cannot be invoked to deny anyone access to safety, nourishment, shelter or any other basic human need. Henceforth, people are judged by how their actions square with what is acceptable to God. The “nations” will be judged solely by how well or poorly they treat the most vulnerable in their midst. See Matthew 25:31-46. Once that sinks in, the world cannot help but know that its priorities have to change!

Alright. But what does any of this have to do with Easter Sunday and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? Everything. Understand that nobody in the First Century doubted the power of God (or the gods) to raise someone from death. The ancients did not suffer from the conceptual handicaps imposed on us moderns who find resurrection incompatible with our mechanistic view of the universe. The resurrection of Jesus was not remarkable insofar as what happened, but to whom it happened. Our religion would look very different had God raised Alexander the Great, Augustes Caesar, Peter the Great, Winston Churchill, General Patton or some other great personage. In fact, however, God raised the man who never wielded a weapon, never wore a crown, never held any political office or aspired to any position of leadership. The one God raised was poor and belonged to a people having no substantial legal standing with the government under which he lived. God raised the one who had the audacity to confront the might of empire and the machinery of oppression armed only with words and and acts of mercy and peace. And he lost. He was rejected by the leaders of his people, deserted by his disciples and executed by the state. Jesus was, by every reasonable standard of success, a failure.

But Saint Peter would have us know that it is not our judgment that counts, but the judgement of God. In raising Jesus from the death sentence we impose upon him and people like him, our judgments about right and wrong, power and powerlessness, justice and injustice, rights, privileges and entitlements are overturned. This Jesus, says Saint Peter, “is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.”

The resurrection of Jesus is meaningless unless you know about the life Jesus lived and the way he died. So it is that Saint Peter begins by pointing out to his audience how “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” He then went on to declare that Jesus was duly executed by state authority, thereby letting his hearers know in no uncertain terms that the good Jesus did was an intolerable afront to the powers that be. His death was therefore entirely predictable. It is what happens when powerless people speak truth to power. That much is hardly surprising. What shocked Peter’s audience is the assertion that God raised this Jesus, that God is not on the side of the global, societal or ecclesiastical winners, but on the side of the vulnerable, the outcast, the refugee, the sick and the homeless. “God,” Saint Peter tells us, is not who we thought God was. God’s priorities are not what we thought they were.

This is good news because it means neither the powers that wield the specter of death nor even death itself need be feared. And how much more so our lesser fears. Jesus’ resurrection is good news because there is a lot of crap we don’t have to worry about anymore. We don’t have to worry about what college we do or do not get into. We don’t have to worry about getting to that much coveted Nirvana of “financial security.” We don’t need to worry about what we look like in the latest style or whether we are wearing anything close to the latest style. We don’t need to sleep behind locked doors with a loaded revolver next to the bed. We don’t have to worry about whether the nation we live in has enough bombs and missiles to protect itself. We don’t need to obsess over who other people love and marry or any of those other culture war issues that get so many so called Christians’ underwear in a bunch. We don’t need to agonize over the past or fret about the future. That frees us up for what matters.

And what matters? How about the 6.6 million refugees worldwide who are living in refugee camps in squalid conditions without any nation or people willing to claim them as its own? What about the forty-five hundred children confined in adult prisons exposed to ruthless abuse on a daily basis? What about the LGBTQ+ kids in Florida and other states now subject to legislatively approved bullying and exclusion? The list could go on to include aged and infirm persons institutionalized in substandard long term care institutions; homeless folks who are prohibited by law from begging for their subsistence; and many others who have been deprived of even a voice to cry out for justice. These are the priorities for which Jesus’ resurrection frees us up to address with undivided attention.

Here us a prayer/poem by Michel Quoist reflecting the radical reorganization of priorities occasioned by Jesus’ resurrection.

Lord, I Have Time

I went out, Lord.
People were coming and going,
Walking and running.
Everything was rushing:
Cars, trucks, the street, the whole town.
People were rushing not to waste time.
They were rushing after time,
To catch up with time.
To gain time.

Good-bye, Sir, excuse me, I haven’t time.
I’ll come back. I can’t wait. I haven’t time.
I must end this letter–I haven’t time.
I’d love to help you, but I haven’t time.
I can’t accept, having no time.
I can’t think, I can’t read, I’m swamped, I haven’t time.
I’d like to pray, but I haven’t time.

You understand, Lord,
They simply haven’t the time.
The child is playing,
He hasn’t time right now…Later on…
The schoolboy has his homework to do,
He hasn’t time…Later on…
The student has his courses,
And so much work…Later on…
The young married man has his new house;
He has to fix it up…He hasn’t time…Later on…
The grandparents have their grandchildren.
They haven’t time…Later on…
They are ill, they have their treatments,
They haven’t time…Later on…
They are dying, they have no…
Too late!…They have no more time!

And so all people run after time, Lord.
They pass through life running–
Hurried, jostled, overburdened, frantic,
And they never get there. They haven’t time.
In spite of all their efforts
They’re still short of time,
Of a great deal of time.
Lord, you must have made a mistake in your calculations,
There is a big mistake somewhere.
The hours are too short.
Our lives are too short.

You who are beyond time, Lord,
You smile to see us fighting it.
And you know what you are doing.
You make no mistakes in your distribution of time to men.
You give each one time to do what you want him to do.
But we must not lose time,
waste time,
kill time,
For it is a gift that you give us,
But a perishable gift,
A gift that does not keep.

Lord, I have time,
I have plenty of time,
All the time that you give me,
The years of my life,
The days of my life,
The days of my years,
The hours of my days,
They are all mine.
Mine to fill, quietly, calmly,
But to fill completely, up to the brim,
To offer them to you, that of their insipid water
You may make a rich wine
Such as you made once in Cana of Galilee.
I am not asking you tonight, Lord,
For time to do this and then that,
But for your grace to do conscientiously,
In the time that you give me,
What you want me to do.

Source: Quoist, Michel, Prayers (c. 1963 Sheed & Ward, Inc.) Translated by Agnes M. Forsyth and Anne Marie de Cammaille. Michel Quoist (1921-1997) was ordained a priest in1947. A French Catholic of the working-class, Quoist reveled in presenting Christianity as part of gritty daily reality, rather than in forms of traditional piety. He was for many years pastor to a busy city parish in Le Havre, France serving a working class neighborhood and developing ministries to young people through Catholic Action groups. Prayers, the book from which the above poem was taken, has been translated from the original French into several languages including Hungarian, Polish, Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish and English.