TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

Psalm 78:23-29

Ephesians 4:1-16

John 6:24-35

Prayer of the Day: O God, eternal goodness, immeasurable love, you place your gifts before us; we eat and are satisfied. Fill us and this world in all its need with the life that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” Ephesians 4:1-5.

I recently took part with a group of Christian friends in a discussion about the politicization of Covid-19 vaccination and its negative effects on public efforts to promote the vaccine and other measures designed to stop the spread of the disease. The discussion soon turned to questions about what exactly is “broken” in our system and how we, presumably as Christians, should be addressing it. I have been reflecting on this and other similar discussions for years now. I always come back to another question of my own: who is the “we” in these deliberations?

To illustrate that point, an old joke is often told about the Lone Ranger and his faithful native American companion, Tonto. While riding out on the Badlands in pursuit of outlaws, the two suddenly find themselves surrounded by a large and well armed band of Sioux. The Lone Ranger turns to his partner and says, “This looks like a pretty dangerous situation, Tonto. What do you think we should do about it?” Tonto replies, “What situation? And who is this ‘we’ you’re talking about white man?” Clearly, how you define a problem and, indeed, whether there even is a problem depends on who is asking.

My take? The problem is that our collective belief in America is dying. The “we” who believe in America no longer form the critical mass required to sustain it. It is getting harder and harder to believe in our essential goodness, in our conviction that we are somehow “exceptional,” that we can do whatever we put our minds to as long as we act in concert. Of course, there have always been many folks who never believed in American that way, who didn’t experience it that way and never felt included in the “we” that privileged white folk use as a prefix for “the people.” Their voices are getting stronger, becoming more articulate and finding their way into public discourse as never before. All of that further undermines belief in the old American mythology and makes those of us who desperately want to believe frantic with existential terror. Witness the near hysteria on the part of Republican legislators over including the history of slavery, segregation and systemic racism in school curriculum. They and their constituents view such educational material as “an attack on America.” They are not altogether wrong about that. These hard truths do represent an attack on the American myths in which so many of us would like to believe.

As the America in which we once believed becomes increasingly difficult for more people to accept, the “we” who believe becomes smaller, more isolated, more threatened and more hostile toward unbelievers. America is no longer the grand promise, the idea to which others must be won over. It is the walled fortress needing protection from infiltration by outsiders and pollution by impure influences. The “city on a hill” resembles more a besieged bunker. For the last of the true believers, America is a dying faith that fewer and fewer find credible, a fading ember that must be kept alive by the dwindling faithful, an outdated belief system that needs fabricated history, junk science, bizarre religion and outlandish conspiracy theories to prop it up. The American faith no longer has a critical mass of adherents to make it function. That is a problem for “we” who still hold this faith. For those who no longer do or never did, maybe not so much. For the “we” living at the margins of American society, this loss of faith on our part means only that more people are beginning to recognize the truth about their American experience, a truth they have lived and known for generations.

I would hasten to add that I am not hostile toward this country. Nor am I indifferent to the fate of the United States of America. There is much about this nation that is noble, beautiful and worth preserving. I believe that if the United States found the courage to face the truth about itself so long suppressed, it could emerge a wiser, more just and compassionate nation. I believe that the United States of America might yet, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” I am just not sure there are enough of us left who are even interested in doing that. If we trust each other so little that we need machine guns to protect ourselves from our own elected government and our neighbors; if we cannot even settle on what constitutes matters of simple fact; if our elected leaders are invoking the second amendment against their political opponents; I have to wonder whether a civil, democratic society is even possible.  I am not sure it makes sense anymore to speak of “we” Americans anymore.   

But now I would like to focus on a different “we,” the one about which Paul speaks in his Letter to the Ephesians. This is the “we” who are of one body animated by one Spirit sharing one calling, one faith, one baptism and one God who is “above all and through all and in all.” Our belief system is not grounded in any nation or idea of a nation. Neither are “we” defined principally by national, ethnic or tribal identity. “We” know that “the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as dust on the scales.” Isaiah 40:15. Our own is no exception and no different from all of the other great empires that have had their day and now live only in the annuls of history. “We” believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church which is not a kingdom of this world bent on imposing its sovereignty, but a community witnessing to the just and gentle reign of God. “We” do not see ourselves as separate or antagonistic to any outside our number. “We” do not understand ourselves to be singled out for special privilege, but consecrated as a kind of “first fruits” of everything God is determined to share with all creation. 

I am not convinced that “we” church can or should try to solve America’s existential dilemma, though God knows we have tried. Whether under the banner of the social gospel or through the legislative agenda of the religious right, we protestants have seemed obsessed at times with making America something no nation ever has been or can be. In the process, I fear we have become a good deal more American than we are Christian. Thus, when the foundations of the American empire are shaken, our response is very much like that of the Lone Ranger: What are we going to do about this dangerous situation? Tonto’s response seems just as apropos: “What problem? And who is this “we?” That might well be Saint Paul’s response as also. It seems to me that Saint Paul would urge us, as he does the church at Ephesus, to “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” He would challenge us to become communities able to thrive in a post American world.

None of this is to say that the church should abandon America or American society. As long as we live in the United States, the health and wellbeing of its people, communities and institutions are key to our wellbeing also. Being “in” America and, insofar as it functions as an ordering power for justice, peace and equity, being “for” America is all well and good. But it seems to me that the church can never be “of” America-or any other nation state. To the contrary, it is precisely by our being exclusively the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church that God exposes the temporality and frailty of the nations and the foolishness deifying them. This crucial witness, ever less than perfect in our faith and practice, has been muddled further in American Christianity by our confusion of piety with patriotism, our conflation of the American dream and the reign of God, our mixing of enlightenment metaphors and biblical imagery. Our love for America is surely right, but our faith in American mythology has been tragically misplaced. The sooner we learn that lesson down to the depths of our ecclesiastical souls, the sooner we will become capable of being light to the United States of America-and to the world.

Here is a poem by Claude McKay, a poet whose participation in the “we” of American life was fraught to say the least. It challenges Americans to expand their understanding of who “we” are. It convicts the church on the smallness of its own “we.”   

America

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Source:  Liberator (The Library of America, 1921). This poem is in the public domain. Claude McKay (1889-1948) was born Festus Claudius McKay in Nairne Castle, Jamaica. He came to the United States in 1912 to attend the Tuskegee Institute. McKay was shocked by the racism he encountered in this country and that experience of culture shock shaped his career as a writer and poet. McKay became a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a Black American intellectual, social, and artistic movement centered in Harlem, New York spanning the 1920s. His poetry celebrates peasant life in Jamaica, challenges white supremacy in America and lifts up the struggles of black men and women striving to live their lives with dignity in a racist culture. You can learn more about Claude McKay and read more of his poetry on the Poetry Foundation Website.

EIGHTH SUNAY AFTER PETECOST

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Psalm 23

Ephesians 2:11-22

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Prayer of the Day: O God, powerful and compassionate, you shepherd your people, faithfully feeding and protecting us. Heal each of us, and make us a whole people, that we may embody the justice and peace of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“As [Jesus] went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.” Mark 6:34.

“Like sheep.” That is hardly a complement. Sheep are dependent creatures, having lived under domestication for millennia. They are so helpless that they cannot even right themselves should they happen to get turned on their backs. If all the world’s sheep were released into the wild today, they would surely be on the endangered species list tomorrow. Moreover, sheep are herd animals. They are bred to follow a leader and lost when they have none. That is not how we self made, independent and free thinking Americans like to think of ourselves.

Yet in spite of our assertions of independence, there are times when we appear incredibly sheep like. The Qanon phenomenon is but the most recent illustration of how even people of considerable intelligence can be led down a rabbit hole into a universe of “alternative facts” having absolutely no relationship to reality. According to a Monmouth University poll, one in three Americans still believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that his victory was stolen by fraud-notwithstanding the certification of that election by all fifty states, sixty court decisions rejecting allegations of fraud and a substantial margin of victory for Joe Biden in both the electoral and popular vote. At a recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a large crowed cheered when a prominent “antivaxxer” jeered the Biden administration’s efforts to promote vaccination against Covid-19. How can thinking people be drawn to accept as facts assertions contradicted by the findings of multiple courts, scientific consensus and plain common sense?

People who are frightened, threatened and lack the conceptual tools to figure out why are low hanging fruit for the unscrupulous “shepherds” described by the prophet Jeremiah in Sunday’s lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures. These shepherds offer feckless sheep exactly what they want-a strong leader with easy solutions to complex problems and, frequently, offering up someone or something to blame for their unhappiness. They put a face on the sheeps’ fears and a target, albeit the wrong one, on which to vent their rage. Of course, these shepherds have no interest in the wellbeing of the sheep. They don’t care that, once they have gotten what they need, the flock is scattered and left vulnerable to predators-or to infection by Covid-19. For them, the sheep are tools to be courted for their votes, fleeced for donations and abandoned. Such is the pitiful condition in which Jesus finds the crowd in Sunday’s gospel lesson. Jesus embraces this crowd and begins “to teach them many things.”

How does Jesus go about that? How does he ween the sheep off their delusions? I think the problem here goes far deeper than the much discussed phenomenon of “fake news.” Although I believe that, on the whole, “main stream” media tend to get the facts right far more often than the so-called news outlets of “conservative” media, this is not just a matter of getting the facts right. It has to do with which facts matter, who is relating them and the audience to which they are presented. Those of us who consume mainstream news (and yes, news from all sources these days is packaged as entertainment for popular consumption) ought to be asking whether Britany Spears’ personal legal, medical and financial woes deserve more attention than the fate of millions of Afghan women who may soon be living under the oppressive rule of the Taliban. Should the world care about the outer space joyride of two aged billionaires? Should the harangues of a defeated former president be given any air space at all? Who decides what gets into the news and the prominence it is given? Who is telling us what is news? Should we be accepting at face value the decisions made about what we see on the screen of our chosen news source?  

I believe that we are all more sheep like than we care to admit. With the ability to get the news (or what we are told is news) in real time, the ability to get immediate weather forecasts and the capacity to keep a minute by minute watch on financial markets, we have become slaves to the font of all this data, our digital devices. We have allowed ourselves to be convinced that we need to be connected 24/7, that we must be available at all times of day or night and that we need to be informed of every breaking development as it transpires. In the process of being on top of everything, we are losing the ability to focus on anything. We have lost the capacity to distinguish between the urgent and the important. We are the people the James the Apostle characterizes as “a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” James 1:6.

The gospel does not tell us specifically the “many things” Jesus taught the people that day. But we know that Jesus taught with an authority grounded in the example of the life he lived, making his the “voice of authority.” We know that Jesus unmasked the hypocrisy of religion that practices piety without pity, judgement without justice and morality without compassion. We know that Jesus called people to share his life shaped by the contours of God’s gentle reign of justice and peace to be lived under the shadow of imperial injustice, violence and cruelty. Everything Jesus ever said flowed from who he was. That is what drew people to him and lent authority to his words. Jesus’ teaching did not consist in the transmission of information, indoctrination or ethical instruction. To be taught by Jesus is to know him, to follow him, to be influenced by friendship with him and shaped by the community of faith in which his Spirit dwells.

Not every significant event is deemed important or newsworthy. Where would CNN and Fox News have been at the dawn of the first century C.E.? I suspect that they might have been in what is now Germany covering Rome’s campaign to expand its empire into northern Europe. Or perhaps they would have been reporting on the massive temple refurbishment project launched by Augustus Caesar in Rome. There was certainly no lack of contentious issues under debate in the imperial senate meriting press scrutiny. But I seriously doubt any news organization would have bothered to report on the birth of a baby to a homeless couple in a Bethlehem barn. Such events are hardly considered newsworthy, but to a mind that has been taught to seek the outbreak of God’s reign in every corner of creation, their true significance becomes visible. What we desperately need and what Jesus offers: “eyes to see” and “ears to hear.” If you want to find the good news, you need to look beyond the headlines.

Here is a poem showcasing a different lens through which we might view the world. It is perhaps similar to the way a mind taught by Jesus might view it.

In Search of Prime Residential Real Estate

I’d like to live in a place
Where you can get a cup of coffee
Without having to specify,
Large, very large, jumbo,
Mocha, Columbian or Java.
Let me make my home
In a place so far from
The nearest metropolis
That you can’t get reception
For network stations
Without a computer
And that with difficulty
As there’s no broadband access.
Let history’s great moments
Make their way to me
Through the lens of local news
And humbly take their place
Beneath those truths
That are timeless,
Real and unchanging.
I want to live on open land
Where nothing obstructs my view
Except the sky.
And let that sky be so wide
And so chuck full of stars at night
That nobody looking up into the heavens
Will ever be able to imagine
That he’s any more important
Than a Spring tulip that’s long gone
Before the end of May.
I want to live among simple folk
Who, like that tulip,
Grow strong and beautiful in their season,
Toil at honest labor till it ends,
Fade with grace when it passes,
And expect nothing in return.

Anonymous

SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Amos 7:7-15

Psalm 85:8-13

Ephesians 1:3-14

Mark 6:14-29

Prayer of the Day: O God, from you come all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works. Give to us, your servants, that peace which the world cannot give, that our hearts may be set to obey your commandments; and also that we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may live in peace and quietness, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, ‘Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words.’” Amos 7:10.

“And Amaziah said to Amos, ‘O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.’” Amos 7:12-13.

Amaziah’s alarm appears strikingly similar to that of Republican legislatures in roughly half a dozen states that have either adopted or advanced bills purporting to take aim at the teaching of critical race theory, an academic approach that examines how race and racism function in law and society. These lawmakers would do well to heed the wise admonition of Victor Hugo: “All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” The notion that theories, ideas and statements of fact can be erased by legislative fiat is as laughable as it is pathetic. But to the terrified psyche of white rage and the party that now embodies it, the truth about racism is a word “the land is not able to bear.”

I am not here to defend, explain or critique critical race theory. Scholars, teachers and preachers far more knowledgeable than me have already done that. I understand it well enough, however, to know that its Republican critics haven’t the faintest idea what it actually is. Here is what else I know:

• The United States Constitution, so far from guaranteeing the Declaration’s bold assertion that “all men are created equal,” counted black Americans as “three fifths of a person,” and that only for purposes determining representation of the states in Congress.
• Ten of the first twelve presidents of the United States were slaveholders.
• The routine separation of enslaved black families, wives from husbands and children from parents, for sale and re-sale was a common commercial practice from colonial times until the end of the Civil War.
• Beating, starvation, rape and torture for the discipline and control of Black slaves was either legal or tolerated by state authorities throughout the southern United States prior to the end of the Civil War.

• Lynching was not an isolated occurrence, but happened routinely and claimed the lives of at least 3,446 African Americans between 1882 and 1968. Federal and state authorities routinely declined to investigate, prevent, specifically outlaw or prosecute these murders.  
• In June of 1921 mobs of white residents, many of them deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked Black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the ground and from private aircraft and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district—at that time the wealthiest Black community in the United States- leaving 36 dead and hundreds hospitalized with injuries.
• In 1932 the U.S. Public Health Service knowingly withheld life saving antibiotics to Black victims of syphilis in order to study the advanced effects of the disease.
• Until 1967, interracial marriage between Black and white persons was illegal in nearly half of the states of the U.S. and punishable by imprisonment.
• The historic (and still existent) practice of “redlining” and systemic discrimination in housing against persons of color which, incidentally, our former president practiced with regularity and was prosecuted during his years as a real estate baron, prevented generations of black families from purchasing homes, thereby depriving them of the chief means of achieving wealth and financial security.

Furthermore, none of these facts were taught throughout my educational experience from kindergarten to high school nor that of my children. What we got was a “whitewashed” version of American history that neglected or, where neglect was impossible, downplayed the story of African Americans in the building and development of our nation. Those of us who grew up believing this sanitized, nationalistic version of the American saga naturally feel unsettled by these truths. They threaten to destroy our illusions of innocence. They are words we are “not able to bear.” But for the sake of our nation’s healing, to make way for repentance and open the door to a better future, they must be spoken.

The words of a prophet are frequently hard to bear. As we learned from last Sunday’s gospel reading and lesson from Ezekiel, speaking words from God will trigger opposition. Prophecy is a dangerous profession. It got Amos deported. John the Baptist lost his head. What are we prepared to lose for the sake of proclaiming the gentle reign of God in a world of nations, rulers and peoples that are not receptive to it? Are we prepared to make enemies for Jesus’ sake? I am not convinced that we are. Our ELCA website boldly declares that “Liberated by our faith, we embrace you as a whole person–questions, complexities and all.” We are fond of making the blanket assurance that “there is a place for you” in our church. I don’t believe we can fairly make that representation-nor should we. If the likes of Stephen Miller, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and their supporters feel comfortable and at home in our church, we are not doing our job. If the MAGA hat wearers find us welcoming, I have to wonder, how prophetic is our preaching? If we are not making any enemies, I have to wonder whether we are making genuine disciples.

Truth is, you can’t follow Jesus without making some enemies along the way. That reality is illustrated in the life and ministry of Clarence Jorden, founder of Koinonia Farm. The Farm was formed as an intentional Christian community established in the State of Georgia back in 1942. Jordan intended for it to be a “demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God.”  For him, this meant a community of believers sharing life and following the example of the first Christian communities as described in the Acts of the Apostles. In order to bear witness to the church as a family in which there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, Koinonia was constituted from its inception as a place where African Americans lived side by side with their white sisters and brothers. Not surprisingly, Koinonia Farm was a frequent target of Klan hostility and government initiated opposition in the deeply segregated south. In his book, Unleashing the Scripture, Duke University professor of religion and ethics Stanley Haueraus relates a story about Koinonia Farm and its founder, Clarence Jordan.

Shortly after Koinonia was founded, Georgia’s state attorney general made several attempts to outlaw the community, confiscate its property and evict the residents. Clarence Jordan sought the help of his brother Robert Jordan, a prominent lawyer with political aspirations. Clarence asked Robert to take on the defense of Koinonia Farm. According to a passage from a book written by James McClendon, the following exchange took place:

“Clarence, I can’t [represent you]. You know my political aspirations. Why, if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I’ve got.”

“We might lose everything too, Bob,” [Clarence replied.]

“It’s different for you.”

“Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, ‘Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ What did you say?”

“I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.”

“Could that point by any chance be—the cross?”

“That’s right, [Clarence]. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I’m not getting myself crucified.”

“Then, [Bob], I don’t believe you’re a disciple. You’re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you’re an admirer and not a disciple.”

“Well now, [Robert replied] if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn’t have a church, would we?”

“The question is” Clarence said, ‘Do you have a church?’”

That’s a good question for us at this juncture. Do we have a church that is the Body of Christ placing itself between the jaws of injustice and its victims? Or are we a community of admirers of Jesus willing to follow him “up to a point” short of the cross? Is peace and harmony within the ecclesiastical household more precious than the peace of Christ that breaks down the hostility between members of the human family? Are we so fearful of dividing the church over the gospel of Jesus Christ that we are willing to settle for unity grounded in something less? What does faithfulness to Jesus look like in the face of concerted efforts to defend white supremacy by undermining voting rights and manipulating public education curricula?

Maybe it’s because I am getting old and losing my filters. Or perhaps I am just too damn tired of being part of a “community of moral deliberation” that never evolves into concrete teaching or action. Or maybe being retired and professionally bullet proof has made me reckless and irresponsible. Attribute whatever motives you like. But what I am now going to say will probably not go down well in some quarters. Though I commend our ELCA leaders for condemning racism and publicly apologizing to our African American siblings for our complicity in their oppression, I wonder why they cannot go the extra mile to challenge us to practice within the Body of Christ the “equity” St. Paul calls for in his second letter to the Corinthian church by making concrete financial reparations to black churches? Not only have we benefited from their oppression, but we have also been enriched by their hymnody, preaching and prophetic witness (See II Corinthians 8:8-15). Is it too much to ask that we now employ our vast financial resources in supporting these churches in their struggle to rebuild their communities?

I have been told by some of our leaders that we need more dialogue, education and anti-racist training before embarking on such a bold initiative. I don’t have anything against any of those things-except that we have been doing all of that from as far back as the 1970s when I started seminary and the needle hasn’t budged. I understand that, given our polity, ELCA bishops cannot mandate, legislate or compel the church to do anything. But as pastors, teachers and theologians they can and should be telling us what we ought to be doing. The same goes for us pastors of congregations.

Will such bold preaching and admonition trigger a backlash? Will it result in more congregations leaving the ELCA? Will it put the position of pastors in danger? Will we wind up making enemies both within and outside of our church? Perhaps. But as long as our heads remain on our shoulders, we shouldn’t be heard to complain. It goes with the territory.

Here is a poem by Charles Mackay on the virtue of having enemies.

You Have no Enemies?

YOU have no enemies, you say?
Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.

Source: This poem is in the public domain. Charles MacKay (1814-1899) was a Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter. He was born in Perth, Scotland. His father was a bombardier in the Royal Artillery. His mother died shortly after his birth. In 1830 he began writing in French in the Courrier Belge and sent English poems to a local newspaper called The Telegraph. In May 1832 he moved to London where he found employment in teaching Italian to the future opera manager, Benjamin Lumley. Mackay engaged in journalism throughout his time in London. In 1834 he was an occasional contributor to The Sun. From the spring of 1835 till 1844 Mackay was assistant sub-editor of The Morning Chronicle .In the autumn of 1844, he moved to Scotland, and became editor of the Glasgow Argus, but resigned in 1847. He returned to London and worked for The Illustrated London News in 1848 and became editor in 1852. Mackay visited North America in the 1850s, publishing his observations as Life and Liberty in America: or Sketches of a Tour of the United States and Canada in 1857–58 (1859). During the Civil War he was a correspondent for The Times. Mackay was twice married—first, during his Glasgow editorship to Rosa Henrietta Vale by whom he had three sons and a daughter. His second marriage was to Mary Elizabeth Mills, likely a previous servant in the household.

SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Ezekiel 2:1-5

Psalm 123

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Mark 6:1-13

Prayer of the Day: God of the covenant, in our baptism you call us to proclaim the coming of your kingdom. Give us the courage you gave the apostles, that we may faithfully witness to your love and peace in every circumstance of life, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” II Corinthians 12:7-10.

Much ink has been spilt in speculation over what Saint Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was. I don’t believe there is any way of knowing precisely what the apostle is talking about. Whatever it was, Saint Paul felt that his “thorn” was getting in the way, hampering his ministry and making him less effective than he might have been. Though he prayed for its removal, God let it be known to him that the thorn was there to stay. God’s grace is sufficient to sustain the apostle’s ministry, notwithstanding the apostle’s shortcomings. The effectiveness of the Word and the Spirit, not the apostle’s, must be the basis of the apostle’s confidence.

I am not sure that I have anything comparable to Paul’s “thorn.” But over the years I have discerned many things about myself that hampered the effectiveness of my ministry. Some of them I was able to change. Others, not so much. For example, I wish my preaching voice were a little more like James Earl Jones and less like Woody Allen. I wish I could rid myself of my blinking habit. I wish my teeth were straighter. All of these things would make me a stronger presence in the pulpit and in every aspect of public ministry. But God in God’s wisdom called me with a set of flaws without fixing them. As a result, I have often prayed, “God, I’m not up to this task. But it looks like I’m the only preacher this congregation has. So you will have to make due with me.” Somehow, God always did.

Perhaps that is how it is supposed to be. God knows we have seen more than a few mega church pastors, bishops and high profile church leaders succumb to financial improprieties, sexual misconduct and even predatory behavior. Even small steeple preachers like me have been guilty of such behavior. I don’t pretend to understand any individual case of such deplorable conduct, but I do know that power, even such power as the pastor of a small church holds, is seductive. Having people place their trust and confidence in you, come each week to hear what you have to say and invite you into the most significant times in their lives-it’s a rush. It is easy, so very easy, to forget that it’s not about you. It is easy to forget that you are a flawed and broken human being called to be a servant to other flawed and broken human beings and that you are, as Saint Paul points out, merely a “clay jar” carrying the healing balm of the gospel you need no less than everyone else. II Corinthians 4:7. So it is that Saint Paul and I have our “thorns” constantly getting in our way and tripping us up so that we can’t let our egos get in the way of what God is trying to accomplish through us. We need to be “weak” in order for God to be strong.

Paul needed his thorn in order to be a faithful minister of Jesus Christ. Any man who has the hutspah to tell people to immitate him has got to have one hell of an ego. So, too, I suppose my tenorous voice, blinking eyes and imperfect smile helped remind me that my ministry was not about me. My flaws made it harder for me to forget that such success as I saw in my ministry came from the faithful support of many devoted parishoners, the partnership of lay leaders who stood behind me when I needed them most and who were not afraid to tell me when they felt I was on the wrong track and, most importantly, the Spirit of God at work among us. Thanks to my many imperfetions, I can look back on over thirty-five years of ministry accomplished by the Holy Spirit in which I was privileged to take part. And thanks to my flaws, my ego didn’t mess things up too much.

Here is a poem by Edward Rowland Sill illustrating that it sometimes takes fools, clowns and those deemed laughing stocks to speak truth to power in all its purity.

The Fool’s Prayer  

The royal feast was done; the King

Sought some new sport to banish care,

And to his jester cried: “Sir Fool,

Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!”

The jester doffed his cap and bells,

And stood the mocking court before;

They could not see the bitter smile

Behind the painted grin he wore.

He bowed his head, and bent his knee

Upon the Monarch’s silken stool;

His pleading voice arose: “O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

“No pity, Lord, could change the heart

From red with wrong to white as wool;

The rod must heal the sin: but Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

“‘T is not by guilt the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;

‘T is by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

“These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end;

These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust

Among the heart-strings of a friend.

“The ill-timed truth we might have kept–

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?

The word we had not sense to say–

Who knows how grandly it had rung!

“Our faults no tenderness should ask.

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;

But for our blunders — oh, in shame

Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

“Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool

That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!”

The room was hushed; in silence rose

The King, and sought his gardens cool,

And walked apart, and murmured low,

“Be merciful to me, a fool!

Source: This poem is in the public domain. Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1847) was an American poet and educator. He was born in Windsor, Connecticut and graduated from Yale in 1861. There he was chosen as Class Poet. He engaged in business in California for about six years before entering Harvard Divinity School. He left his studies there to accept a position on the staff of the New York Evening Mail. Sill taught at Wadsworth and Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio from1868 until 1871, after which he became principal of Oakland High School in Oakland, California. From 1874 to 1882 Sill taught English literature at the University of California, but resigned in 1883 due to failing health and returned to Cuyahoga Falls. He devoted the rest of his life to literary work until his death in 1887. You can read more about Edward Rowland Sill at PoemHunter.com.

FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Lamentations 3:22-33

Psalm 30 

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Mark 5:21-43

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and merciful God, we implore you to hear the prayers of your people. Be our strong defense against all harm and danger, that we may live and grow in faith and hope, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” Mark 5:30-31.

If you are crowd averse as I am, you can perhaps understand the disciples’ reaction to Jesus’ inquiry. I have stood on many a crowded subway car shoulder to shoulder with people I have never seen before, bumping against them, feeling the heat from their bodies and covering my face to avoid droplets from their coughs and sneezes. Under these circumstances, you don’t smile, speak or even make eye contact with these strangers. You just wait for your stop and, when it finally comes, you get out of that car as fast as you can. You seldom think about or try to imagine that each person in that car has a name, a story and unique reason for travelling with you in the same direction at the same moment in time. Perhaps that is because people placed in such close proximity to so many other people feel pressed, violated and slightly claustrophobic. As a result, they become withdrawn and defensive. Or it may be that such intimate knowledge of so many individuals, each with their own triumphs, tragedies and dreams would simply crush us.

To Jesus, the woman with the ongoing vaginal discharge of blood was no anonymous face in the crowd. She had a face, she had a story and a desperate need, the depth of which not even she was aware. Her medical condition rendered her perpetually ritually “unclean.”  Leviticus 15:25-28. Accordingly, she would have been forbidden to touch anyone or anything that might come into contact with someone else, as this would render them unclean. Leviticus 15: 26-27. Obviously, she should not have been out and about in a tightly packed crowd like the one following Jesus. Furthermore, a woman’s intentionally touching the clothing of a strange man was, at best, a breach of propriety and etiquette. Small wonder, then, that she did all she could to remain unseen.

Jesus, however, will not allow this woman to slip out of his sight unacknowledged, unknown and as soulless as another body in a subway car. He knows the woman needs to know that she is known and that she has been healed of more than her medical condition. She needs to know, as does everyone present, that she is, and always has been, a precious child of God-a person Jesus addresses as “daughter.” Her touch does not render Jesus unclean, but he declares that she is and always has been clean in every respect.  

Hopefully that was not lost on the other desperate actor in this story, Jairus. Jarius, it should be noted, was a ruler of the synagogue. As such, he may have supervised worship services. Clearly, however, he held a position of honor and leadership in the Jewish community. Nineham, D.E., Saint Mark, The Pelican New Testament Commentaries (c. 1963 D.E. Nineham, pub. by Penguin Books, Ltd.) p. 157; Taylor, Vincent, The Gospel According to St. Mark, Thornapple Commentaries (c. 1966 by Vincent Taylor, pub. by Baker Book House) p. 287; Cranfield, C.E.B., The Gospel According to St. Mark, Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary (c. 1959 Cambridge University Press) p. 183. He would have been responsible for teaching and upholding religious standards in the community, including those governing ritual purity. He probably would not have approved of this woman going about in public in her condition of “uncleanness.” Perhaps his presence with Jesus was one of the reasons the woman was so fearful about being exposed.

Jesus publicly commends the woman for her faith and dismisses her with a benediction, calling her “daughter.” I wonder if these words were not also directed at Jairus, who summoned Jesus to save the life of his own daughter. The message here is obvious: “Jairus, I am about to have mercy on your little daughter. See to it that you show some compassion toward mine.” In short, I believe these stories, the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the “daughter” with the discharge of blood, are intimately related. Together, they force us to re-evaluate everything we think we know about what is “unclean,” taboo, immoral, socially unacceptable and untouchable.

When Jairus is informed that his daughter is dead, he is admonished by Jesus not to fear, but to believe. He is challenged to be confident, as was the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, that nothing deemed unclean or untouchable by any law, custom or ritual is beyond Jesus’ cleansing touch. Jairus will need such faith. Jesus will soon take the hand of his daughter’s dead body-yet another breach of ritual purity (Numbers 19:16)-and raise her to life.

The gospels don’t tell us whether Jairus took this lesson to heart, but we should. Everyone has a story. Some have more of the trappings we associate with happiness and fulfilment. But even these seemingly happy stories can take a tragic turn-such as when your little daughter dies. Other stories are filled with heartache from beginning to end-yet somehow radiate a joy that transcends the worst of circumstances. There are stories filled with meanness, cruelty and hate, yet even these are capable of redemption. Some of their elements may yet be woven into the fabric of God’s coming reign of peace. Every story, however soiled it may seem in the telling, is holy. That is because it is not beyond the healing touch of Jesus.

Here is a poem about a life lost through neglect and indifference that seemed not to matter. The poet does not tell us how or under what circumstances the life of this young child or infant was taken. He may have been “collateral damage” from some military operation. He might have been killed in the crossfire of a dispute of which he was not even a part. He might have simply been allowed to starve in a squalid refugee camp while waiting for asylum. But his story, though forever unwritten, is still holy and to us who might have given him the gift of life, unknown and unknowable. It illustrates how every human story of which we remain ignorant impoverishes us.  

Missing Person  

You’ve never met this little one,

nor will you ever see him play

at children’s games beneath the summer sun

on this or any other day.

His drawings will remain unknown,

his songs and poems lost,

the seeds of his ideas, thoughts unsewn,

forever bound in winter’s frost.

The friends he might have had

can’t know they’ve been deprived.

They know too little to be sad,

or feel the crater in their hearts

he could have filled had he survived.

No one will catch his knowing glance,

the fire in his eyes.

No heart will ever know romance

with this young land beneath the evening skies.

All he ever was is what he might have been.

What we’ve lost we’ll never comprehend.

And that is fitting judgment for the sin

of indifference toward this child

whose life, just begun, is at an end.

Anonymous

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Job 38:1-11

Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Mark 4:35-41

Prayer of the Day: O God of creation, eternal majesty, you preside over land and sea, sunshine and storm. By your strength pilot us, by your power preserve us, by your wisdom instruct us, and by your hand protect us, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Mark 4:38.

The ocean is often employed as a metaphor for trials and tribulations of life. Consider, for example, the old favorite “Jesus, Savior Pilot Me.” Here on Cape Cod those terrors are frequently anything but metaphoric. This week Michael Packard, a fifty-six year old lobster diver, suffered a broken leg after having been swallowed by one of our humpback whales. Thankfully, these gentle giants, that feed principally on plankton, have no taste for human flesh. Thus, after twenty seconds in the whale’s mouth, Mr. Packard was ejected just as a cyclist might spit out a fly. He is now qualified to be enrolled along with Jonah and Geppetto as one of the few people swallowed by a whale that lived to tell about it.

With the exception of our reading from Paul’s Second Letter to the church at Corinth, the lessons for this Sunday all speak in some fashion about the sea and its terrors. In language echoing Babylonian mythology, the Book of Job speaks of God’s triumph over the sea and God’s power that “proscribed bounds for it.” Job 38:10. The psalm recounts the terror of seagoing pilgrims caught in a storm. In our Gospel we find the disciples in a similar predicament crying out to Jesus, “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” Mark 4:38. The ancient Israelites were not seafarers. They did not willingly take to the water. Only once in the Bible do we read about an Israelite taking a sea voyage. That story is recited in the Book of the aforementioned Jonah-and it did not end well.

Our love, fear and fascination with the sea is, I believe, grounded in what it tells us about ourselves. We are small, vulnerable and the universe does not care if we live or die. I experienced something of what the disciples must have been feeling one day out on Puget Sound fishing with my Dad. Dad was in most respects a cautious man. You would never find him scuba diving, hang gliding or scaling cliffs. He always admonished us kids not to take foolish risks with our lives. “A cheap thrill sometimes comes with a steep price,” he told us many times. But when it came to fishing, Dad threw caution to the wind. He would forge his way into whatever waters he had reason to believe the fish were lurking with the obsessive passion of Captain Ahab.

On this particular day the weather was calm, though the sky was dark and cloudy. We were already much further out in the water than anyone in a twelve foot aluminum boat with a five horsepower motor had any business being. Dad could see seagulls circling over a patch of water some distance out. He reasoned that the gulls were after herring that, in turn, had been driven to the surface by king salmon pursuing them. If we could get ourselves over to where the seagulls were, we stood a good chance of getting our limit. Dad was right about the fishing. It was great. In fact, we were so busy pulling fish out of the water that we failed to notice the wind picking up. Only when the waves started rocking the boat did it occur to us that we had best get ourselves back to shore.

On this particular day, Dad allowed me to run the outboard motor and steer the boat-quite a thrill for an eleven year old boy. Though his expertise was now sorely needed in the stern, there was no way we could risk changing position under these rough water conditions. So it fell to me to start the engine and steer us back to shore. I pulled the starter cord several times, but the engine would not start. It was then we realized that it was probably out of gas. While Dad took the oars and kept the bow into the waves so that we would not capsize, I struggled with the gas can and the cap on the motor. This ordinarily simple task proved nearly impossible with the boat pitching around in the waves. I am sure I lost more gas in the Sound than I managed to get into the tank. At one point I shouted out in rage, terror and frustration, “Can you just hold still for a goddam minute?” I don’t know who I thought I was talking to. But I recall how it suddenly occurred to me that the sea didn’t care. There was no malice in the waves. The Sound wasn’t “out to get us.” It was just doing what the sea does and we happened to in its way.

Obviously, Dad and I survived this adventure. I eventually got the engine going and, with Dad’s coaching, managed to maneuver the boat back to shore. We arrived home shaken and chastised, but alive and well. I couldn’t have told you where my faith was at that instant anymore than the disciples were able to answer Jesus’ question to the same effect. But in retrospect, I understand the mortal danger we were in and appreciate more fully our deliverance in which, I believe, God had a hand. I hasten to add that there was nothing here I would call miraculous, if by that one means an unexplained, unnatural and unexpected occurrence that could only be attributed to divine intervention. My father’s skill at the oars, his coaching and my following directions were clearly instrumental in getting us safely to land. While the water was rough that day, I’ve seen worse. Had the wind increased a bit more, this story might have ended tragically for us. So there was an element of “dumb luck” as well. Nevertheless, I am convinced that there was also a “God factor” in, with and under all of that to which I owe my life.

Of course, we all know that not every encounter with the sea ends as well as it did for the disciples, me and my Dad. The ocean floor is littered with boats that did not make it back to shore. One can pray for God’s deliverance from the storm and give thanks for it, but one can never presume upon it. When deliverance does occur, it needs to be seen in a larger context. No matter how dramatic and remarkable an act of deliverance may be, it amounts to nothing if the benefactor fails to recognize it for what it is. Deliverence is nothing more or less than the gift of more life, more opportunities to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God. It is this for which Noah and his family were rescued from the great flood; Israel brought through the sea to freedom from slavery in Egypt and the church called through the waters of baptism into Jesus Christ, sanctified and commissioned. Divine deliverance from the dangers of the sea is really no different than waking up in the morning. But such dramatic experiences can serve to remind us that each new day is in reality just such a miraculous deliverance. This morning you have been given the gift of another day, the day which the Lord has made for you to rejoice and be glad in it. So, then, what will you do with this day that you did not earn, do not deserve and have no right to expect another like it on the morrow?   

It is also important to recognize that deliverance from storms and other catastrophes are only temporary reprieves. One day there will come a storm you will not survive. The One who gives us our lives ultimately claims them back again. That reality should hold no terror for those who know that One as “Abba Father,” the God who numbers our hairs and has the burning desire and the determination to give far more than is taken. So in every storm, whether it be one of the many I pass through during the course of my life or the last, “In every high and stormy gale/
My anchor holds within the veil.”

Here is a poem about the terrifying power of the sea by Cleopatra Mathis, a power that puts us in our proper place of awe and thankfulness.

The Sea Chews Things Up

When I woke, the waves had gone black,
turning over the macerated
curd of the ocean bottom, heaving its sludge
onto the beach. Some storm far out, I thought,
had ravaged the sea, stirred up its bed,
sent the whole mess flying to shore.
At my feet I found a grave of starfish,
broken and gnarled among the fleshy
snipes and heads. Every shade of death
covered the sand. It looked hopeless
in the pale day but for the birds,
a congress of gulls, terns, and the rarest plovers,
calm for once, satiated, a measure of
the one law: this sea will claim it all—
feed them, catch them, grind their complicated bones.

Cleopatra Mathis (b.1947) was born in Ruston, Louisiana. Her father left when she was just six years old and she was raised by her Greek mother’s family. Her grandmother ran the family café. Mathis received her bachelor’s degree from Southwest Texas State University in 1970 and spent seven years teaching public high school. It was during this period that Mathis became interested in poetry. She went back to school to earn her M.F.A. from Columbia University and graduated in 1978. Since 1982 Mathis has been the Frederick Sessions Beebe Professor in the English department at Dartmouth College where she is also director of the Creative Writing Program. In addition, she is a faculty member at The Frost Place Poetry Seminar. You can read more about Cleopatra Mathis and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Ezekiel 17:22-24

Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

Mark 4:26-34

Prayer of the Day: O God, you are the tree of life, offering shelter to all the world. Graft us into yourself and nurture our growth, that we may bear your truth and love to those in need, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

 “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” Mark 4:26-29

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” Mark 4:30-32.  

The most common tree on the Outer Cape region of Cape Cod is pitch pine. It isn’t the most beautiful or majestic evergreen, but I must confess that it has grown on me just as it has on the rest of the Cape. This scrappy, scraggly tree is perfectly adapted to our acidic, well-drained and sandy soil. The National Seashore that occupies most of the Outer Cape is dominated by forests of pitch pines, floored with a cushiony layer of needles and covered with scrub oak, beach plumb and hardy species of undergrowth that I can’t begin to name. It wasn’t always that way. The Cape was once dominated by dense cedars that blocked out the sunlight, leaving little opportunity for the smaller deciduous trees and shrubs to gain a foothold. You can still find a few patches of woods like these that have managed somehow to resist the pitch pine invasion. The forest around the Cedar Swamp Trail in the National Seashore at Marconi Beach is one such example.

The pitch pine was imported by European settlers. It’s pitch was used to make tar and turpentine as well as charcoal. The wood from these trees was used for firing steam engines and for brickyards. Once introduced on the Cape, pitch pines gradually began to dominate the landscape. Eventually, what was once a mixture of cedar forest and scrub land transitioned into pine forest. Ecologically, the Outer Cape is a place entirely different from the one on which the Pilgrims landed in 1620.

All of this brings me to Jesus’ two parables. The first is unremarkable. It reflects a reality of which every farmer and gardener is aware. You can prep the soil, plant the seeds at just the right depth and properly spaced. You can weed and water. But the growth is a matter beyond your control. Drought, blight, insect pests, flooding or hail can frustrate your best laid plans for a bountiful harvest. So it is with the reign of God. Disciples can seed the kingdom of God, but only God can bring it to fruition in God’s own way and in God’s own time.

By contrast, the parable of the mustard seed speaks not about the ordered practice of agriculture, but about the chaotic infestation of weeds. Though the mustard plant has always had its culinary uses, nobody in First Century Palestine would have planted it deliberately on any precious plot of arable soil. Like the pitch pine, the mustard bush is bent on dominating the field. It will transform your vegetable garden into a bird sanctuary.

Can we speak of the Kingdom of God as an invasive species? Is it like a non-native plant that sets down its roots, grows, spreads and finally transforms its environment? The analogy is a little discomforting, given that the pitch pine’s introduction to Cape Cod is tied up with the history of colonialism. I have no doubt Jesus’ comparison of God’s approaching reign with an infestation of weeds raised more than a few eyebrows as well. But maybe that is the point. The progressive Protestantism, in which I was raised, has always viewed the Kingdom of God as the endpoint of human development. From the darkness of barbarism, the light of Christ raises church and society up to a greater level of enlightenment. The realm of government, family and work are the arena for transformation of human existence along the arc of justice toward which the universe bends. The garden is, after all, a work in process. But what if God is not interested in the progress of the garden we envision? What if God has something entirely different in mind? What if the order, structure and patterns of regularity we reflexively defend are not the foundation for a fruitful harvest, but the servants of systemic oppression? What if revolution, not evolution is God’s intent?

In addressing these questions, a few things need to said. First, the reign of God is not to be identified with the church. It is the church’s mission to proclaim the reign of God, to bear witness in word and deed to that reign and, to the extent humanly possible, to embody that reign in its communal life. But the church is part and parcel of the current global environment and as much in need of transformation as the rest of it. If we forget that, we run the risk of equating ecclesiastical growth, programmatic success and societal influence with the transformative work of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t about us and what we are doing. It is about what God in Christ is doing. As theologian and preacher Karl Barth put it, the church is the crater left by Jesus’ death and resurrection. If we are not pointing to Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims, we are just an empty hole in the ground.

Second, just as we dare not equate the church and its programs with God’s reign, so too we cannot confuse our own views of what constitutes progress in the direction of God’s reign with what God actually wills. We have seen for the last few decades the corrupting effect of alliances between religion and political agendas. We know all too well the tragic consequences of the church and its representatives seizing the levers of power to make history come out right and so hasten the coming of God’s reign. Jesus rejected the use of imperial force to bring about God’s reign and so should his disciples. This is so because, as Jesus points out, we know neither day nor the hour of the kingdom’s revealing. Nor can we begin to guess the means God is using to bring it about. I don’t suggest for one moment that the church or disciples of Jesus individually are to be politically neutral (as though such a thing were even possible!). In politics, as in everything else, disciples of Jesus are called upon to love their neighbors, especially those deemed “least” in the human family. I think I have some understanding of what that should look like and the actions I need to take in order to bring it about. But I don’t have the advantage of seeing the universe from God’s long range perspective with which my own well meaning efforts might not be in concert and might even be opposed. Thus, I can never blithely assume that “I am on the Lord’s side.” I can only pray that the Lord is on mine and that through my faithful work, God is working a change in my cultural environment.

So what kind of environmental changes would I hope to see the nearness of God’s reign bring about? I would like to see an environment where racial slurs-even the dog whistle kind-no longer find a place in public discourse. I would like to see an environment where all lives really do matter so that people of color no longer have to work so hard convincing the rest of us that theirs do. I would like to see an environment where political candidates who make their case with reasoned arguments and without resorting to falsehoods, insults and wise cracks are rewarded with electoral victories. This is hardly utopian and far short of the glory of God’s kingdom to which the scriptures testify. But it would be a better environment than we now have. It would be a better environment in which to live, work and raise our families. And if enough of us feel the impact of God’s approaching reign, if enough of us can be convinced that the way things are is not the way they have to be, if enough of us start believing that there is a better way to be human, who knows? We might wake up one day to find the ecological landscape changed.

Here is a poem by Bin Remke illustrating how linguistic, cultural and family influences shape us and transform us along with our communities. Can you see the Holy Spirit at work in these media striving to plant the seeds of a better environment in which to be human?  

The Melting Pot

“Who are you to tell us how to live or why,
et cetera?”   No Man, of course, and not so tall   
as is the current fashion, nor smart enough
in the acceptable modern way, to enthrall

the crowd with stories of my life among
the savages where I was home and growing
baffled day by day, raging through the night
as if it were new music I made, groaing.

It came to me today at lunch, the sound
of women in the next booth, a voice like
Aunt Odile’s—whom I never knew well
nor did I like her, but not her spite

but her voice like home-grown fame, a touch
gravelly, a considerable groan itself, it seemed.
They spoke outmoded French around me, never
to me, except to taunt, I thought.   She leaned

above me, on those visits, speaking to Mother
in their private French, laughing.   A boy
surrounded by the sound of foreign tongues
knowing what wasn’t meant for him:   toy

temptations, suggestive coils of syllables.
I learned Latin, for Mass, and did love
its terrific laddered randomness:   
The Blessed hovering Virgin above

every station of a boy’s new path, hormonal
disharmonies, her praises sung into hundreds
the first Tuesday of every month: and yet
Latin could not expose such shreds

of glittering flesh as I found in French,
not like the living tongue whose tip twined
into an Uncle’s mustache as he leered
at the wrong Aunt and winked and a fine

distance crystallized loud there, then
gone. Crashing like German. Father’s family
spoke clear English among the bayous, boys
and girls of immigrants accentless happily

German through two wars, not counting
Civil.   I had the tongue for arithmetic
and spoke it beautifully.   I loved to count:   
precision’s a tempting career, clicking

into a future like an abacus ignoring
all those accents around.
I never learned the luck of any
but English, bland and bound.

But only yesterday I heard a word
the mechanic said in Czech
to his cousin—shop rag—clearly centered
in a welter of incomprehension, the wreck

of my car at their wretched mercies:   shop
rag.   And he wiped his hands and cried   
for me, shrugging like a cousin would.
I wrote a check. I drove home, or tried.

So does it count?   Am I a man of passion or
child of comprehension?   “Father of little lusts
driving myself home who thinks:   Buy some
sentiment, a little like love and she must

speak French this time. She longs
for you, you know; it isn’t just the money.
America loves you for yourself alone”
and so I go for professional help, honey-

blond hair and a disposition like
a happy banker, whose French for dear
sounds like dog; the cost of living
is going up, loving her here.

Source: Massacre of Innocents, (c. 1995 by Bin Ramke; pub. by University of Iowa Press). Bin Remke (b. 1947) was born in Port Neches, Texas. He began writing poetry while an undergraduate at Louisiana State University from which he graduated. He earned his master’s degree from University of New Orleans and his Ph.D from Ohio University. Remke taught at Columbus College in Georgia for several years and he edited the University’s Press’s Contemporary Poetry Series. He currently teaches at the University of Denver. You can read more about Bin Remke and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Genesis 3:8-15

Psalm 130

2 Corinthians 4:13—5:1

Mark 3:20-35

Prayer of the Day: All-powerful God, in Jesus Christ you turned death into life and defeat into victory. Increase our faith and trust in him, that we may triumph over all evil in the strength of the same Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’” Mark 3:22.

Demonizing one’s opponent is as old as the Bible. The scribes in this Sunday’s gospel use demonization to “shut Jesus down.” “Sure,” they say. “He casts out demons and works miraculous cures. That’s easy when you are in league with the devil.” Once they have put Jesus in the devil’s camp, they can safely dismiss everything he does and says. Why would you waste time arguing with the devil? Why would you believe anything that comes from the mouth of one possessed by the devil? No need to engage with Jesus, think about his parables, wonder at the healing power at work in him or consider his remarkable claim that God’s reign has drawn near. He is of the devil. You don’t negotiate with the devil; you don’t talk to the devil and you certainly don’t listen to the devil. The devil is the enemy of all good. The only appropriate response is to silence him.

Demonization is still very often the method of choice in our politically polarized culture. One’s political opponents are not merely people whose policies are misguided, whose priorities are distorted or whose leadership skills are wanting. They are intrinsically sinister. They are “squads” of non-white women manipulating a senile president elected by fraudulent means. Their goal is to undermine America, replace “American values” (whatever those are) with the values of “multiculturalism” (whatever they are). Our opponents are bound and determined to take our guns, bibles and lightbulbs; to implement Sharia law, build cancer causing windmills, slow down our toilets and take God out of the pledge of allegiance.[1] Just as you don’t negotiate with the devil, you don’t negotiate with people whose goal is your destruction. Compromise in this circumstance only drives you closer to capitulation. So you fight your opponent, giving no quarter. You block them at every turn. Such is the politics of demonization in which everyone finally loses because nothing of importance gets done.

Of course, religion makes good use of demonization as well. And we are a good deal less subtle about it. Ecclesiastical history is stained with the blood of victims demonized as heretics and infidels. The Inquisition, the Thirty Years War and the church’s complicity in the Holocaust are just a few illustrations making the point. Jesus had to fight his own disciples’ impulse to demonize more than once in his ministry. When his disciples wanted to call down fire from heaven to “nuke” a Samaritan village that refused to welcome Jesus, Jesus had to rebuke them. Luke 9:51-56. When the Apostle John wanted to silence a man casting out demons in Jesus’ name because “he was not following us,” Jesus had to remind him that “anyone who is not against us is for us.” Mark 9:38-40. The “other” is not necessarily the “enemy.” Moreover, even when one chooses to be an enemy of a disciple of Jesus, the disciple is instructed not to be an enemy in return. Luke 6:27-32. No one, however horrendous their words and conduct may be, is beyond the redemptive reach of God’s love.   

Jesus has some harsh words for his demonizing opponents: “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin. Mark 3:28-29. There has been no shortage of debate over exactly what constitutes “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.” For my part, I believe it is the sin of demonization. Demonization puts an end to any possibility of argument, discussion, reconciliation and peace. It cuts off all lines of communication. When persuasion, compromise and coexistence are off the table, there remains but one solution: silencing, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Once you classify someone as “of the devil,” no insult, act of cruelty or violent attack is off limits. Demonization effectively closes the door to the Spirit’s call for repentance, reconciliation and peace.

Let me be clear about one thing. While disciples must never demonize another human being, they must always uncover, bring to light and condemn demonic ideologies-and that might very well alienate those who hold them. The call to reject demonizing one’s opponent does not suggest one should tolerate the opponent’s demonic beliefs. Nor should it be used as a cover for false moral equivalencies and “what-aboutism.” To state but one example, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive congressperson whose views you might not endorse, is not simply the flip side to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s harassment of teenage gun violence survivors, blatant antisemitism and outright lies. Racism, bullying and dishonesty are not simply alternative political positions deserving of respect in what some leaders of my church like to call “our community of moral deliberation.” You don’t give oxygen to racist ideologies and crackpot conspiracy theories by “deliberating” over them. There is quite frankly nothing over which to deliberate. Nothing to discuss. The only faithful response when confronted by a demon is to cast it out.[2]

That said, it is critical to distinguish between the demon and the possessed. People enslaved to demonic ideologies, hostile as they often can be, are not the enemy. Saint Paul reminds us that “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12. The devil, of course, would prefer that we believe our enemy is of flesh and blood. Nothing pleases the devil more than to see us at each other’s throats, rending each other’s flesh and shedding each other’s blood. But Jesus knows better and so should his disciples. Those possessed by the hateful ideologies of white supremacy, nationalism and sexism are to be pitied, not hated. We are called upon to liberate them from bondage, not to destroy them.

It helps to recall, as a good friend once reminded me, that “nobody is ever only one thing.” People in bondage to hateful ideologies are frequently angry, frightened souls. Those whose marriages are failing, whose careers are heading south or who have experienced other painful reversals in life are primary hosts for demonic ideologies. Such ideologies put a face on their fears, provide a target for their pent up anger and give meaning to their unexplained suffering. As such, they function as a sort of sick type of religion. In my own encounter with such persons, I have sometimes found it helpful to get them talking about themselves, their struggles and experiences rather than getting drawn into a dead end argument with their weird belief systems. When you do that, you discover that beneath the strident bigotry they project, there is a world of hurt and insecurity-as well as an openness to being heard and understood. But to get there, you sometimes have to go around to the back door or find a side enterance.

The minute we lose sight of our enemies’ humanity, the image of God in them that no evil can completely erase, we have demonized them. In so doing, we hand the devil a victory by allowing ourselves to be transformed into the mirror image of what we claim to despise.

Here is a poem by Wendell Berry I have cited before and do so again here. Berry illustrates how forgiveness saves us from becoming the “monsters” we see in our enemy, destroys the enemy’s power over us and sets us at liberty to recognize the enemy’s humanity.

Enemies

If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.

Source: Indivisible: Poems for Social Justice (c. Wendell Berry, 1994; pub. by Norwood House Press, 2013). Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is a poet, novelist, farmer and environmental activist. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. You can read more about Wendell Berry and sample more of his works at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] Incidentally, I think God would be just fine with the last proposal.

[2] For more on this, see my “An Address to Supporters of Donald Trump in the Spirit of ‘Golden Rule 2020’”

HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY

Isaiah 6:1-8

Psalm 29

Romans 8:12-17

John 3:1-17

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. 

There will probably be more heresy preached this coming Sunday than in all the church year as preachers throughout the world teeter between proclaiming a god that is a committee of three and a god that is one, but has three suits in the closet. This comes about, in my opinion, as a result of well meaning but misguided efforts to “dumb down” the doctrine of the Trinity. Rather than repeat my rant of a few years ago addressing that issue, I will simply reference it here. I prefer to focus on our Psalm for this Sunday-the topic of which is God’s voice.

This Psalm is disturbing. The “voice” of God is portrayed largely as a destructive force, breaking cedars, stampeding terrified animals and belching forth storms of lightning and thunder. This is not the kindly deity who manages the universe in such a way as to make everything come out right for every individual. God did not make the world a safe playground with padded play equipment, no sharp corners and plenty of foam flooring on which to land. You can get hurt out here.

The hazard of living in God’s good but wild and unpredictable world was brought home to me last week when Sesle, my wife of thirty-eight years took a fall while engaging in competitive sport at a local gym. This accident left her with near total paralysis. She is currently in rehab working to regain movement and strength. The doctors tell us her prognosis is good, but that there are no guarantees. What strikes me is the complete randomness of it all. How remarkable-and terrifying-it is that one’s life and the lives of all who love them can be so thoroughly disrupted and transformed in a matter of seconds. God’s voice shatters the cedars, but the psalm says nothing about the people upon whom the splinters might have fallen. Perhaps that is to remind us that our little lives are far more frail, vulnerable and subject to erasure than we imagine. That is a hard word to hear.

So, was God responsible for Sesle’s injury? I don’t believe God caused, willed or allowed this to happen; not as punishment for sin or to impart some lesson or to accomplish some greater good. There is nothing good about human suffering. Nothing. It just plain sucks. God is not the author of pain. Nevertheless, there is one sense in which you could say that God is responsible. As I said before, God did not create a safe world. God created a world that is beautiful, mysterious and filled with possibilities. This is a world where you can find love, accomplish great things and acquire wisdom. It is a place where you can work hard and play even harder. But it is also a world that can break your heart, hand you some stinging disappointments and crush your dreams. It is a world that offers unlimited joys and unimaginable sorrows. Is it possible to have one without the other? Is the risk of freak accidents causing crushing injuries and events like the Holocaust worth creating a universe with such randomness in it? I have wondered about that a lot over the last week.

In any event, God has determined that the risk of making such a world was worth taking and that this world, in which so much has gone so terribly wrong, is worth saving. So determined is God to see through the work begun in the opening chapter of Genesis that God sends God’s only beloved Son to be born into, grow up in and die upon this beautiful, wonderful and dangerous world-knowing full well the probable outcome. Moreover, God will not accept rejection. Rather than retaliating against the world that murdered the Son, rather than giving up on a world bound and determined to reject God’s love, God raises the rejected Son from death and offers him back to the world again. God continues to offer him and always will, because in God’s view, we are worth it.

So while I acknowledge that God is in this sense responsible for Sesle’s injuries, God is not indifferent to them. I believe that the God who knows when each sparrow falls, is grieved over the suffering of this, his child. I also believe that, just as God is in the storms that shatter cedars, God is present in the cellular reactions that heal wounded nerves and muscles, in the caring hands of doctors, nurses and therapists, in the prayers of the faith community and in the healing outpouring of the Holy Spirit promised in baptism. So I am riding this emotional roller coaster clinging to that promise, the promise that God sent, continues to send and always will send the Beloved Son.

Here is a hymn/poem from the Lutheran Hymnal, the book of hymns and liturgy for the church in which I was raised. It is sung to the tune of Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia. Sadly, it did not make the cut for subsequent Lutheran hymnals. I still find it of enormous comfort at times like the one I am going through now.

Be Still My Soul

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heav’nly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,
And all is darkened in the vale of tears,
Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,
Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.
Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay
From His own fullness all He takes away.

Be still, my soul: the hour is hast’ning on
When we shall be forever with the Lord.
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Source: The Lutheran Hymnal, (c. 1941 by Concordia Publishing House) #651. This poem is in the public domain. Katharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel was born in Germany in 1697. Little is known about this remarkale woman. Her name suggests that she came from an aristocratic family. She was associated with a Lutheran religious house in the town of Köthen, though her name does not appear in the house records. There are in existence several letters written by her between 1750-52 to Heinrich Ernst, Count Stolberg. There is some suggestion in the correspondence that, rather than being in a religious house, von Schlegel was a member of the court of the duke of Anhalt-Köthen where Johann Sebastian Bach was musical director from 1717 until 1723. She also corresponded with August Hermann Francke, a prominent Lutheran clergyman, philanthropist and Biblical scholar. The date and place of her death are unknown. Von Schlegel wrote a number of hymns in the spirit of early Pietism. Among English speakers, her best known hymn is the above printed “Stille mein Wille, dein Jesus hilft siegen” written in 1752. This 1855 translation is by Jane Borthwick.