SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 66:8-20
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and ever-living God, you hold together all things in heaven and on earth. In your great mercy receive the prayers of all your children, and give to all the world the Spirit of your truth and peace, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

This Sunday’s lesson is Paul’s speech to the Athenians at the Areopagus. The “Areopagus” (“Ares’ Hill” or “Mars’ Hill”) is a low hill northwest of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. The plaque pictured above markes the spot where on this hill a small amphitheater once stood. It was the seat of the earliest aristocratic council of that ancient city which tried capital cases and prosecuted claims of public corruption throughout the classical period of the Greek democracy. During the period of Roman domination in the 1^st Century, the council was responsible for the discharge of significant administrative, religious, and educational functions. The atmosphere was very much like that of a modern university where teachers of various schools of philosophy, politicians and artists gathered.

As was his custom, Paul began his missionary work by visiting the synagogue where expatriate Jews gathered for worship. While the audience Paul found there was sometimes skeptical and even hostile to his preaching, they at least understood what he meant by proclaiming Jesus as Messiah. But when some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers invited Paul to address them and their colleagues in the Areopagus, Paul was suddenly confronted with an audience that had no knowledge or understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures or the God to which they testify. It will not do for Paul merely to proclaim Jesus as Messiah because his audience would immediately ask, “What is a messiah?” If Paul were to assert that Jesus is God’s Son, they would ask, “Which god?” Paul must therefore speak the gospel to the Athenians in language and imagery they will understand from within their own religious backgrounds.

Paul finds his opening in a curious monument “to and unknown god.” Vs. 28. Such a monument can only reflect a recognition on the part of the Athenians that their many temples and shrines do not capture the fullness of deity. Thus, in an attempt to ensure that their worship is complete, they must also offer worship at this shrine to such god or gods that they do not know. This “unknown god,” says Paul, “is the one I come to make known.” Paul goes on to point out the foolishness of imagining that God can be captured in an image or enclosed in a shrine. Certainly, his Epicurean and Stoic listeners would agree with him on that point. Unlike the common folk, these philosophers did not believe in the existence of the Greek gods of the pantheon. Their understanding of divinity was far more complex. Paul even cites some Greek literary figures to illustrate the paradox (Epimenides and Aratus): though God is so near that “in him we live and move and have our being,” nevertheless God seems distant and our efforts to “feel after” God prove futile. Vss. 26-28.

In verses 30-31 Paul comes right to the point. God now commands repentance which is possible because and only because God has revealed his heart and mind in a man though and by whom the world is to be judged. When push comes to shove, Paul must return to his Hebrew scriptural roots and to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ through whom they are properly understood. In the final analysis, Paul does not come to the Areopagus with a competing philosophy, teaching or morality. He comes not to teach the Athenians about God, but to invite them into relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, the unknown and unknowable God becomes known. This knowledge is not theoretical, but relational. It is not principally the nature of God, but the heart of God that Jesus reveals.

This is where Paul loses his audience. The notion that the fullness of God is revealed in a crucified criminal is no less preposterous than that God should dwell in an image of stone. In fact, it is even more preposterous. In the view of antiquity, human desecration of a temple demonstrated the impotence of the god to whom it belonged. If Jesus were truly God made manifest, his death on the cross could not have occurred. Moreover, if God is understood to be the God of all human beings who are God’s “offspring” (Acts 17:28), it makes little sense to insist that he is revealed through a preacher of only parochial significance to an obscure and subjugated race in the backwaters of the empire. If God were to raise someone from death (something few in the 1^st Century doubted that God/gods could do), God would surely have selected someone whose greatness stood out and was evident to the whole world. The cross proved to be an insurmountable stumbling block for Paul’s listeners-as he must have known it probably would be. For the most part, Paul’s sermon drew only mockery and indifference.

“But some joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris.” Acts 17:34. Though it does not appear that Paul was able to establish a functional church in Athens, he managed to make a few disciples. This is another of those many instances in which I would love to know more than what the Bible tells me. I want to know what happened to Dionysius and Damaris. Did they stay in Athens? Did they ever attempt to start a worshiping community on their own? How did they go about being and doing church in their pluralistic environment? Perhaps Luke the Evangelist left these questions unanswered because he wants us to think long and hard about them.

These questions are not merely of academic interest. The isolation I imagine Dionysius and Damaris experienced following Paul’s departure from Athens seems a lot like what many of us believers in the northeastern United States feel on a regular basis. Like these two disciples, we find ourselves in the midst of a culture that is largely indifferent to the church and often hostile to the values of God’s reign it professes. Notwithstanding decades of dedicated ministry, innovative mission initiatives and faithful witness, our numbers decline and churches are closing. On top of all this, the covid-19 pandemic is now preventing us from meeting as the resurrected Body of Christ and robbing us of the sustaining nourishment of the sacraments and the inspiring power of corporate liturgy, prayer and song. How are we to be church under these constraints?

I believe Sunday’s gospel can help us think faithfully about this challenge. “I will not leave you orphaned,” says Jesus. “I am coming to you.” These words are enormously comforting at this time of institutional decline and particularly now as we are finding it impossible to seek Jesus where we have always found him in the past. In truth, nothing has changed. In reality, we have never been the ones to find Jesus. He always finds us. It is, of course, important to understand and believe Jesus’ promise that he will always be present where two or three are gathered in his name, where the good word of the gospel is publicly proclaimed and where the sacraments are offered. But it is critical to remember, too, that the sacraments are a “means” of grace and not grace itself. That is to say, they are gifts to the church given to strengthen its faith and mission. They are not requirements that we must fulfill before God can be present to us. So misconstrued, the sacraments are transformed form gifts of grace into works of the law.

A lot of my colleagues describe our inability to celebrate the Eucharist during this time of pandemic as a “fast.” I don’t think that analogy is particularly helpful. Fasting is spiritual discipline. It is a practice I may choose to sharpen awareness of my dependence on God’s provision and deepen my compassion for those whose hunger is not temporary and is not a choice. But I do not choose to refrain from public worship and the sacraments because I believe it will bring any spiritual benefit to me. Quite the contrary! I choose to refrain because I care deeply about the health and safety of my neighbors and, in these circumstances, love requires me to put my neighbors’ welfare ahead of my own spiritual hunger for corporate worship and the nourishment of holy communion. I can do that because I believe Jesus’ promise to send the Spirit of Truth and I know that the fulfilment of that promise does not depend on my being able to worship publicly or to receive communion.

So how does a struggling church sustain its life and mission in this time of pandemic induced isolation? How do we carry on without the liturgical practices that form and define our faith, enabling us to live in a culture of unbelief? I believe the words of Bishop Alan Gates, Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, are instructive:

“The church defines a sacrament as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’–something that we can see, or taste or touch, which communicates to us the ineffable grace and love of God. Through history the church has identified particular capital-S sacraments.  But those in no way limit the sacramental quality of an infinite number of other experiences we may have.”

The bishop goes on to describe a number of instances in which human encounters, though not “sacraments” strictly speaking, are “filled with the spirit of our Lord: with his priorities, his love and his ministry.”  These include meals, coffee breaks or book club discussions carried out virtually on Facetime or Zoom. You can read the letter in full at this site. So, too, Peter W. Marty describes how a young woman arranged with the activities director of an assisted living center for her children to visit with the residents. Of course, the children were not able to enter the facility, but they stood outside the residents’ windows and played tic-tac-toe with them using erasable markers on the window panes. He also relates a story about neighbors who lived for years in the same cul-de-sac but seldom spoke and never socialized. During the course of their quarantine, however, they began coming out every evening to sit at the end of their respective driveways and share a “happy hour” with cocktails and conversation. See The Christian Century, May 6, 2020, p. 5. We are not alone. Even in the midst of this isolating experience of quarantine, Jesus sends his Spirit to forge new bonds of friendship and bring new intimacy to existing relationships. There is sacramental holiness to be found everywhere-if we but have eyes to see it. We have not been left “orphaned.”

The home is one place where sacramental grace is found. To be sure, being quarantined with family twenty-four/seven can fray family relationships. But it can also give rise to experiences of healing, deepening and strengthening those bonds. In the spirit of Mother’s Day, here is a poem by Maya Angelou celebrating the nurturing bond between mother and daughter.

The Mothering Blackness

She came home running
back to the mothering blackness
deep in the smothering blackness
white tears icicle gold plains of her face
She came home running

She came down creeping
here to the black arms waiting
now to the warm heart waiting
rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face
She came down creeping

She came home blameless
black yet as Hagar’s daughter
tall as was Sheba’s daughter
threats of northern winds die on the desert’s face
She came home blameless

Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (c. 1971 by Maya Angelou, pub. by Random House Inc., 1994)

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.

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, your Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Give us grace to love one another, to follow in the way of his commandments, and to share his risen life with all the world, for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’” John 14:5-7.

Much to the consternation of my Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor, I became very much involved with a Roman Catholic youth organization in my teenage years. The program was run by a young, charismatic and deeply caring youth director who was able to connect with me in a way that no one in my congregation could. Consequently, I frequently found myself in that church’s parish hall consisting mainly of a large assembly room where most of the youth activities took place. That room was accessed by a hallway lined with offices for the church’s staff. Each office had a plaque with the favorite Bible verse of its inhabitant. Conspicuously absent from the lineup was the office of the priest, Father McMurphy. There was no direct access to his office. To reach him, you had to go through the office of the chief parish administrator, a severe, no nonsense gatekeeper whose door plaque bore the following line from the above cited verses: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

I share that recollection because it is precisely the interpretation too often given this verse. Rather than the door through which the sheep are free to enter, Jesus is portrayed as the gate keeper restricting access to the door. Consequently, all who do not know, fail to recognize, refuse to acknowledge or lack trust in Jesus have no access to God. That, of course, led to endless consternation among young people in my circle. “What about babies that die before they can be baptized?” “What about people who never hear the gospel of Jesus Christ?” “What about people whose only exposure to Christianity has been mistreatment and exploitation?” “What about people who are warm, caring, compassionate and active in doing good but, for whatever reason, don’t believe in God?”

All of this goes to show how dangerous it is to take a single passage of scripture out of its context and treat it as an absolute proposition in itself. We should have known better. After all, John the Evangelist told us at the very beginning that Jesus is the light sent to “enlighten everyone.” John 1:9. God so loved “the world”-not just Christians-that God sent the Son, not to condemn the world but to save it. John 3:16-17. Jesus himself informs us that he has “other sheep” that have yet to be brought into the fold and that he himself will see to that. John 10:16. The whole point of Jesus’ abiding among his disciples is that, through their life and mission, “the world may believe” God’s love manifested to Jesus’ disciples in the sending of God’s Son. John 17:20-21. As we heard in last week’s gospel, Jesus is the “gate for the sheep,” not the gatekeeper. John 10:7. It is not God’s intent to rescue a few souls from the deck of a sinking ship. God means to save the ship. God is at least as faithful as the US Army Rangers whose motto is “no one left behind.”

That said, there is a scandalous particularity about the good news preached by the church. John’s gospel begins with the assertion, “no one has ever seen God.” John 1:18. Once again, context is essential. These words are not directed to outsiders. It is not as though we are saying to Muslims, Buddhists and persons of other faiths that they know nothing of God. Rather, John is reminding his audience of believers that they know nothing of God apart from what God has revealed to them through Jesus Christ. In short, this passage and the one cited above are designed to form and direct the disciples’ thinking and speaking about God. Disciples are not to begin with their notions, beliefs and metaphysical understandings of God to figure out where Jesus fits in. Rather, they begin with Jesus and, in communion with him, learn of the Father.

In verses 8-11, Jesus responds to Philip’s frustrated demand: “show us the Father.” Jesus then makes the startling assertion that he is all the God there is to be seen. In so doing, Jesus turns everything we thought we knew about God on its head. He delivers the news Friedrich Nietzsche was to bring us nineteen centuries later: God is dead. To a large extent, Nietzsche was right. The God who sits at the apex of the universe pulling the switches that make things happen does not exist. The God who manipulates everything from pandemics to the weather in order to reward good and punish evil does not exist. The God who is driving history toward the rapture, the great tribulation and a final violent divine conquest of our planet does not exist. The only God who does exist pours out God’s very life blood to reconcile the world to God’s self. God saves the world by loving the hell out of it-at great cost to God’s self and to the community of disciples formed by that love. That is all.

Such an image of God is not particularly comforting to those of us who are looking for a divine protector who will take our part and make everything turn out right. Our preference is for a “strong God,” just as it seems the world is becoming increasingly attracted to “strong men” as national leaders. We cannot rid ourselves of the primitive belief so aptly expressed by the NRA: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” By that measure, God is the one with the biggest and most powerful gun.

St. Paul has a different view of power that I think is more in line with what our gospel is talking about. “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God,” says Paul. I Corinthians 1:18. What kind of power is revealed in the cross? To folks like the NRA, the cross is indeed foolishness. Indeed, it proves the truth of their motto. The cross is what happens to people foolhardy enough to “put away their swords.” It’s proof positive that “nice guys finish last.” Not so, argues the apostle. This so called “weakness” of our God who refuses to defend himself and responds to violence with a healing touch is actually God’s greatest exercise of power. God is too powerful to be sucked into the vortex of retributive violence in which families, tribes, nations and peoples are helplessly trapped. God’s heart is too mighty to be tempted with the use of coercive force to accomplish God’s purposes. God is too strong to be baited into retaliating against us-even when we crucify the only beloved Son-the best God had to give us. As it turns out, Jesus is God being God in the most graphic, concrete and powerful way. This God who is love is God. There is no other.

Our temptation always is to settle for a lesser god, a god who is merely a projection of ourselves on a divine scale, a god who deals with us and our world as we would deal with it if we were God. We are constantly tempted to look beyond Jesus to a god more amenable to justifying the means we think are necessary to achieve the ends we believe are good. We are enticed by the image of a god whose purposes are perfectly aligned with our patriotic instincts, our clan loyalties and our economic self interest. We seek a God who is “on our side,” rather than the God who is on the side of the stranger, the poor and, worst of all, on the side of our enemies. We look for a god with power to do what we believe must be done, but in Jesus we find a God whose loving power would transform us into the people we must become in order to show the world how deeply it is loved. This God may well appear weak and ineffectual to a world in thrall to “strong men,” military parades and firearms. The God revealed in Jesus might not appeal to a church accustomed to having the societal respect, financial support and political clout to press its agendas. But this God’s non-coercive, patient and determined love is the only force powerful enough to save us.

Here is a poem by Langston Hughes that lays bare the poverty of our metaphysical assumptions about divinity and, whether the poet intended or not, makes room for us to imagine the God who is life and love.

God

I am God—
Without one friend,
Alone in my purity
World without end.

Below me young lovers
Tread the sweet ground—
But I am God—
I cannot come down.

Spring!
Life is love!
Love is life only!
Better to be human
Than God—and lonely.

Source: The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, (c. 1994 by the Estate of Langston Huges; pub. by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.) Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was an important African American voice in the “Harlem Renaissance” of the 1920s. Though well-educated and widely traveled, Hughes’ poetry never strayed far from his roots in the African American community. Early in his career, Hughes’ work was criticized by some African American intellectuals for portraying what they viewed as an unflattering representation of back life. In a response to these critics, Hughes replied, “I didn’t know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too.”  Today Langston Hughes is recognized globally as a towering literary figure of the 20^th Century. You can read more about Hughes and discover more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website (from which the above quote is taken).

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

Prayer of the Day: O God our shepherd, you know your sheep by name and lead us to safety through the valleys of death. Guide us by your voice, that we may walk in certainty and security to the joyous feast prepared in your house, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

A late friend and former parishioner, upon learning that he had been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of pancreatic cancer, told me “nothing has changed. I’ve always known there were plenty of trains out there and one of them was bound to hit me sooner or later. Now I just know the number of the one with my name on it.” My friend’s words, spoken long before the coronavirus was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, have a contemporary ring to them. In a very real sense, nothing has changed for us. Even in the midst of life, we are in death. Covid-19 has simply brought that stark reality into sharper focus.

The words of the Twenty-Third Psalm also have a contemporary ring. Safety and danger, peace and conflict, light and darkness, life and death are all juxtaposed, contrasted and reconciled within this short piece of poetry. The shepherd leads the sheep to “green pastures” and “still waters.” Yet the “paths of righteousness” along which the sheep are led pass through “the valley of the shadow of death.” The shepherd “prepares a table for the sheep,” but that table is set “in the presence” of their “enemies.” To be sure, the psalm offers the assurance of God’s comforting presence. But that presence comes to us in the midst of a dicey existence.

There is one more thing to keep in mind. In the Bible, sheep are not adorable little pets. They are commodities. At some point, they will be sent to slaughter. David, the putative author of the Twenty-Third Psalm, knew that and so did Jesus when he referred to himself as the “good shepherd.” Just as the shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, so the sheep must lay down their lives for their shepherd:

“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.” John 15;18-21.

Of course, not all of Jesus’ disciples died as martyrs. It is probably safe to say that most of us will not perish under the sword of persecution. But perish we surely will. There is a train out there with our name on it, whether it be covid-19 or another number. Now that our mortality is placed for us in such sharp relief, what are we to make of it?

I believe the last episode in John’s gospel can help us with that. There Peter is told that he will be imprisoned and die for Jesus’ sake-a good word for him. Recall that Peter had promised to undergo that very fate just days before-and lost his nerve when the opportunity came. So Jesus was, in effect, giving Peter another chance to make good on his promise, an opportunity to redeem himself. But then Peter goes on to inquire about another of Jesus’ disciples identified only as “the one Jesus loved.” “What about him?” Peter asks. Jesus politely replies that it is none of Peter’s damned business. Peter is to follow Jesus and leave off with speculating about the destiny of others. John 21:18-23.

What I find particularly interesting is John’s commentary on the rationale for Jesus’ informing Peter about his ultimate destiny. “[Jesus] said this to indicate the kind of death by which [Peter] would glorify God.” John 21:19. Even what Paul calls “the final enemy,” is transformed by Jesus into a gift. Death constitutes the one last opportunity we have to glorify God, to bear witness to the hope that is within us and offer encouragement and inspiration to others. Viewing death as an opportunity is nearly impossible for a death denying culture like ours. There is no place for it in the way we live our lives. We plan our careers, we plan our retirements and we plan for the distribution of our wealth after we have died. But who plans for death? We go out of our way not to use the “D” word, employing flowery euphemisms, like “expired,” “passed on,” “entered eternal rest” and the like. We typically hide the dying process from the rest of life in hospital rooms and the hospice section of nursing homes. We need living wills and health proxies to make sure medical practitioners do not employ extreme measures to keep our hearts beating and our lungs pumping long after nearly all brain function has ceased and the prospect of recovery is nil. Our medicine is adept at prolonging life, but inept at dealing with the end of it. In medical terms, a dead patient amounts to failure.

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.

I am not suggesting there is any merit in morbid preoccupation with death (and yes, the church of the middle ages did go a bit overboard with that). But I do believe that our persistent denial of death robs us of much joy, comfort and hope that comes with recognizing and accepting it for what it is: the end of a mysterious and wonderful gift that we have been given, namely, life. Part of what makes life precious is the knowledge that it is finite. Much of what makes life meaningful is the recognition that it is brief and what we choose to do with each minute of it matters. It will matter in the end how compassionately we have treated one another, especially those among us regarded as “the least.” Eternal life does not begin after death, but long before it. Eternal life, it turns out, is life lived in communion with Jesus and his devotion to the gentle reign of God. So the question is, how much of the life you have lived today is “eternal”? How much of it matters from the standpoint of God’s reign? Would your death today witness to a life that has been lived eternally?

Here is a poem by George Herbert inviting us to think differently about death.

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.

Kierkegaard’s Ghost

(News that’s fake, but credible)

The White House announced today that President Trump is invoking the Defense Production Act for the mass production of tanning salons to treat corona virus infection. Presidential press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters today that the president is becoming increasingly impatient with the slow pace of progress toward developing treatments and vaccines for covid-19.  “The president believes we can substantially cure covid-19 patients if we simply expose them to high levels of ultraviolet radiation” said McEnany. She went on to explain that the administration has determined that far too much taxpayer money has been wasted on equipment such as respiratory ventilators, masks and field hospitals. “If we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, we can kill the virus without drugs, hospital beds, oxygen or any of the other expensive gadgets these state governors keep asking for. All we need is tanning salons.” McEnany pointed out that Florida has already put this strategy into practice merely by opening its beaches. “All they have to do now is take all the sunblock off the shelves.”

Earlier today in one of his many press briefings relative to the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump advocated the use of ultraviolet light as well as common cleaning agents for the treatment of covid-19 patients. “Look,” he told reporters, “this isn’t rocket science. We know bleach kills the virus on contact. So all we need to do is get the bleach inside whoever is infected. We have the cure right under the kitchen sink. So why are we paying all these clowns in white coats?”

The president’s remarks were met with skepticism by most Democrats and outright criticism by medical experts throughout the country. Though the Ghost has reached out to acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf for comment, no reply has been received to date. We also attempted to interview NIAID Director Anthony Fauci. Our reporters pursued the doctor into the men’s lavatory of the press room but could not locate him. Our investigators reported, however, that some violent head banking was heard from within one of the stalls along with words to the effect of “I hate my f@#$ing job!”

Meanwhile, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has reported a steep increase in cases of domestic poisoning over the last twenty-four hours that appears to have been caused by ingestion of household cleaning products. “We are monitoring the situation closely and trying to get a handle on the demographics involved,” said CDC Director Robert Ray Redfield Jr. “At this time, it appears to be primarily a “red state” phenomenon.”

Note: The CDC wishes to emphasize that it is an extremely bad idea to ingest soap, bleach and other household cleaning materials.

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FAKE NEWS ALERT: The above article is satirical. The events it describes didn’t happen.  “There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn’t necessarily a lie even if it didn’t necessarily happen.” John Steinbeck

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35

Prayer of the Day: O God, your Son makes himself known to all his disciples in the breaking of bread. Open the eyes of our faith, that we may see him in his redeeming work, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” Luke 24:21.

“But we had hoped….” There are so many tragic endings to this sentence. We had hoped this treatment would finally arrest Mom’s cancer. We had hoped that this time the pregnancy would take. We had hoped that rehab would finally put our son on the path to recovery from addiction. Our gospel places us in the company of two people whose hopes for Jesus, for Israel and for the future of creation have been dashed. Though the scriptures do not tell us why these two disciples were going to Emmaus, I strongly suspect that they were on their way back home. In any event, it is obvious from their remarks that they had given up on Jesus. They were done with the reign of God Jesus proclaimed and ready to put the whole sad affair behind them.

I strongly suspect that, for Lutheran preachers anyway, the emphasis on our gospel reading will fall upon verse 35 wherein the two disciples, returning from their walk to Emmaus, tell those remaining in Jerusalem how Jesus revealed himself to them in the “breaking of the bread.” We Lutherans are pretty emphatic about the “real” presence of Christ in the elements of bread and wine. And that for good reason. For Martin Luther, the true presence of Jesus in Holy Communion was an inescapable corollary of justification by faith. The availability in the sacrament of forgiveness for sin and the promise of eternal life depends not on the worthiness, faith or understanding of the recipient, but on God’s promise to be present in a redemptive way. Faith is not a requirement for the efficacy of the sacrament. To the contrary, the sacrament generates and sustains faith.

These days, however, we are not breaking bread together as a gathered community. Our posture is more that of the disciples on the road with their dashed hopes than the disciples at the table recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread. That isn’t a comfortable place for Lutheran believers like me. This discomfort has led many of my colleagues to seek ways of celebrating Holy Communion “virtually” on line, live or by way of prerecorded liturgies. I don’t want to engage in arguments over the legitimacy of these efforts. But I have to wonder whether they do not reflect, at least in part, a diminished understanding of the real presence of Jesus. Jesus was no less present to the disciples on the road where they failed to recognize him than he was at the table where they did. The sacrament is not a commodity we need to get our hands on in order for Jesus to be present for us. It is rather a gift through which that saving presence is mediated in a way that nourishes and strengthens the community of believers.

“While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” Luke 24:15.

It is not my intent to minimize or discount the importance of the sacraments for the life of the church. But I think we need to be reminded that, even as we are prevented at this time from seeking Jesus through these means of grace, Jesus never stops seeking us. He meets us on the road, even when we are separated from the rest of the community, even when we have given up and are moving away from him. Jesus seeks us even when we are not looking from him. Can we recognize this time of separation from our sanctuaries as an opportunity to encounter Jesus on the road? Can we see this time of “fasting” from Holy Communion as an opportunity to sharpen our awareness of Jesus’ presence in our day to day lives? Is this a time for discovering holiness in places where it has always been, but our eyes have been kept from recognizing it? It may be that Jesus is walking with us even now-and we just haven’t seen him yet.

Here is a poem by Elizabeth Bajjalieh who met God “on the road.”

I Met God on a Train Last Week

Bumbling along
As the night sky rose like fire
And the iron angels
Stuck staccato like twigs on the ground
Propped up, reaching out to the masses

And I was on the train
With a man I’d never met
And his brother, wailing to the side

My heart was a rock
Falling through my chest
And they spoke to me
With malt liquor
Singing from their tongues

We spoke
Of God
Of writing
Of Love
And of loss

And he spoke of Hope
And he told me
To hold on
As bittersweet pills
Dissolve in the pit of my gut

He told me
To hold on

These were not the words
I was ready to hear
From slurred strangers on the train

But to speak of God
With a man
Who preached from a pulpit
Of worn plastic CTA seats
Is the closest
I have ever been
To a revelation
Amongst rocks
Amongst sand
Amongst water
Amongst twigs
And iron angels

Source: Friends journal, January 27, 2020. (c. 2020 by Elizabeth Bajjalieh) Elizabeth Bajjaleih is the Interim Advocacy Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. She is a graduate of Loyola University in Chicago and has a long history of social service, including advocacy for LJBTQ rights and promotion of peaceful and just resolutions to conflicts in the middle east. She currently lives in Palatine, Illinois.

Recently, our Dear Leader admonished us that “we cannot let the cure [for the Covid-19 pandemic] become worse than the disease,” meaning that we can’t allow trivial concerns about human life jam the wheels of American commerce. Texas Republican lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, has suggested that he and other grandparents should be willing to risk their health and even lives in order for the United States to “get back to work” amid the pandemic. Indiana congressman, Trey Hollingsworth, told a radio-show host that it’s Congress’s job to sit Americans down and explain to them that dying in a pandemic isn’t as bad as the havoc said pandemic is wreaking on the economy. “We are going to have to look Americans in the eye and say, ‘We are making the best decisions for the most Americans possible…And the answer to that is unequivocally to get Americans back to work, to get Americans back to their businesses.” Meanwhile, in several cities throughout the country people are flooding the streets in outright violation of social distancing orders to demonstrate that no government and no risk to anyone else’s life is going to interfere with their doing whatever the hell they want to do-all with the encouragement of your beloved Dear Leader.

Hey, you all might be right. For my own part, I’m OK with giving my life for the greater good of the nation. If you tell me it’s my patriotic duty to fall on my sword for the future economic well-being of my grandchildren, who am I to flee from this solemn duty? It’s not as though I have an excuse for shirking my civic obligations like, you know, bone spurs. What’s more, I’ve had a good life these last sixty-four years with few regrets. Sure, I’d like to live a bit longer, but who doesn’t? Everybody’s life ends sometime, and I have to admit that dying in a pandemic is no worse and a good deal better than a lot of other ways I can imagine. Being retired, I’m not contributing much to the economy anymore so it’s obviously in the public interest that I expire before becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security.

But I think if you are going to “look Americans in the eye,” and ask us to make the ultimate sacrifice, you should be honest enough to tell us the whole truth about the size of that sacrifice and how the sacrificial burden will be distributed. You should tell the American people that “opening America up for business again”  while this pandemic is peaking isn’t just a matter of vacating nursing home beds and ridding the country of usless old codgers like me. You should tell the public that you are also putting at risk 2.25 million people with Type I diabetes, like my thirty year old daughter. You will be putting at risk 1.8 million cancer patients whose immune systems are compromised by the treatments they are receiving. Not that it should matter, but sixteen thousand of those patients are children. You should be clear that you are also offering up the safety of 1.5 million Americans with some form of lupus whose medications suppress their immune system and make them more vulnerable to infection and less likely to recover. You should also make clear that you are offering up the 380,000 pre-mature infants born each year in the United States whose underdeveloped immune systems make them especially vulnerable to infection. The cost of prematurely “opening America up for business” will also place 6 million pregnant women at risk for injury, complications at birth including spontanious abortion and miscarriage . Not that you care one wit for these women, but I was under the impression Republicans were hell bent on making sure the unborn get born. I guess dispensing with unborn life is OK as long as it greases the wheels of commerce. Nice to know you have your priorities straight. Not that Black lives have ever mattered to you, but Black Americans, who are being infected and killed at a disproportionate rate across the country from covid-19, will be shouldering a disproportionate share of this noble sacrifice you are asking us to make.

You know full well this isn’t just a matter of finishing off those of us who are “on their last legs anyway,” to use words of a distinguished member of the Fox News brain trust. If you are calling upon the American people to sacrifice big for the economy, you should be telling them that they are not merely being asked to offer up their aged grandparents. Americans must be prepared to give up their siblings, their children, their unborn and their own health and safety.

Your call for us to sacrifice ourselves for the padding of your wallet is a big ask. Still, I am sure the American people will heed that call from their Dear Leader-except those whose grandparents mean more to them than a little more money in the bank; those who have cancer, lupus, are pregnant, have a premature child in the NICU, people of color;or  anyone who is related to anyone who has cancer, lupus, is pregnant, has a premature child in the NICU or is a person of color; or anyone who loves and cares for anyone who has cancer, lupus, is pregnant, has a premature child in the NICU or is a person of color; or anyone who thinks that they might one day have cancer, lupus, be pregnant, have a premature child in the NICU…in other words, anyone with an ounce of human decency.

With apologies to Jesus and the Evangelists, “the economy was created for human beings, not human beings for the economy.” There is a reason why “life” comes before “liberty” and the “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. Without it, the other two aren’t worth a rat’s petunia.  So yes, you can gladly have my life. But the lives of children, my grandchildren, all of the wonderful people in my life for whom infection with Covid 19 would likley result in serious injury or death? Let me put this in terms even a Republican can understand: You can have those lives for your money when you can pry them from my cold, dead fingers.

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 2:14, 22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
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,[1] Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” John 20:19.

This Easter has seemed more like Passover to me. Rather than celebrating in a sanctuary surrounded by believers, we had our Easter celebration at home as a family. While the angel of death breathed its threats of sickness and death over all manner of media and the death statistics climbed throughout the world, we ate our meal with the hope and expectation of salvation-a life both here and in the days to come that is more than mere survival. Though alone in our home, we knew that we were recalling and reliving the same narrative shared by millions of households like our own. So though very much alone, we were far from lonely. This night was for us unlike all other nights.

Perhaps that was something like what the disciples were experiencing on that first Easter Sunday spent sheltering in place behind locked doors. Their fear was justified. Rome had few compunctions when it came to dealing with persons it considered a threat to its dominance. Jesus’ crucifixion made that quite clear. People known to have been closely associated with Jesus were wise to keep a “safe social distance” from everyone else on the street. Yet into the heart of this den of fear, Jesus appears with a massage: “Peace be with you.” Peace in the midst of mortal danger.

Peace is the antithesis of fear. Peace is the posture of a heart that rejects fear in favor of faith. And let us be clear, faith is not to be confused with foolhardy recklessness. Religious leaders who encourage their congregations to meet for worship, notwithstanding the danger of increasing the risk of infection for themselves and others, are not demonstrating faith. To the contrary, they have fallen prey to the devil’s timeless invitation to “prove their faith” by throwing themselves from the pinnacle of the temple into the hands of God’s protecting angels. Jesus rebuked that temptation and so should we.

At the same time, however, faith does not shy away from taking risks for the sake of one’s neighbor. That is why we have grocers, garbage collectors, lab technicians, nurses, doctors, police officers, firefighters, soldiers and ambulance drivers who are exposing themselves daily to infection by coronavirus in order to maximize safety for the rest of us. That is why several small businesses in my community are taking out loans to continue the salaries and benefits of their workers during the current shut down. Disciples of Jesus understand that caring for their neighbors, especially those considered “the least” among us, puts them at risk-and they are at peace with that.

This is indeed an age when, as poet Wendell Berry tells us, “it seems too difficult to think of the life of a man grown whole in the world, at peace and in place.” Yet that is precisely who Jesus was and is. For Jesus, his heavenly Father’s determination to redeem the world was more real than the powers intent on ruining it. He understood that eternal life, that is, living out concretely the love binding the Trinity as one and that spills like healing balm into all of creation far surpases the mere prospect of survival. Knowing Jesus is to leave behind the craven fear that sets us at each other’s throats and diminishes our common humanity. It is to be at peace.

To Think of the Life of a Man

In a time that breaks
in cutting pieces all around,
when men, voiceless
against the thing-ridden men,
set themselves on fire, it seems
too difficult and rare
to think of the life of a man
grown whole in the world,
at peace and in place.
But having thought of it
I am beyond the time
I might have sold my hands
or sold my voice and mind
to the arguments of power
that go blind against
what they would destroy.
I leave that behind.

Source: Poetry, June 1967, p. 130. 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.

[1] The term “Jews” here is better understood as the “religious leaders of Judea.” Other than Pontius Pilate and possibly the “royal official” in Chapter 3, everyone in John’s narrative is a Jew.

RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10

This year Easter Sunday will fall at the apex of a pandemic the likes of which few of us have seen in our lifetimes. As we rise to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the death count from Covid-19 will likely be at its peak. The Sunday on which we usually anticipate packed sanctuaries, our churches will be empty and we will be shut up in our homes. This is a national calamity like no other. On the evening of the 9/11 attacks, we flocked to the church where we found comfort in worship, prayer and the warmth of human embraces. This national crisis compels us to stay far away from each other, avoiding human contact. The coronavirus appears to have rendered ineffective the church’s most powerful agents of healing: the Word calling us into assembly, the sacrament of our shared holy meal, the consolation of the community, the redemptive power of congregational singing and the corporate witness of the gathered people of God in a singular time and place pointing to the larger communion of saints we confess.[1]

Then again, perhaps this Easter is a lot closer to conditions on the first Easter morning. There was no church that day. The disciples were all missing in action and Matthew doesn’t tell us whether they were all together or whether they were scattered across Judea when they hid in the shadows. Unlike Mark and Luke, Matthew says nothing about why the two women were going to the tomb. There is no mention of bringing spices to embalm Jesus’ body. Were they going simply to weep at the graveside? Or is it possible they had an inkling the story of Jesus had not yet come to a close? Is it possible the women came to the tomb not in despair, but in hope? Is it possible they did not come that first Easter morning expecting to find a dead body? I don’t have answers to these questions. But over the years I have learned that the gospels seem more intent on evoking the right questions than giving us the right answers.

These times demand of us a faith that looks for hope in the graveyard. This year Easter comes to us, not as the triumphant conclusion to Holy Week, but as a longing for sunrise in in the middle of a Lenten nighttime that seems to have no end. For many in our midst, Easter will be the promise to which they cling as the darkness of death overtakes them. For many, Easter will be the strength required to stand at the window of an isolated ICU wing and bid a last farewell. The glib phrase that I hear again and again over numerous media, namely, “We’ll all get through this together,” rings false. No, we will not all get through this together. Some will be separated from us and we will have to find a way of going on without them.

This adds a note of urgency to the importance of preaching the promise of Easter. I am not sure we always do that as boldly as we should. Many preachers of my generation have been greatly concerned that preoccupation with eternal life will somehow divert us from addressing evils and injustices in the here and now. If we get our pie in the sweet by and by, why concern ourselves with the trials of this passing world? So the argument goes. The late Marcus Borg, a teacher and theologian I greatly respect, argued in one of his last books that Christianity is losing members and influence because its preaching and teaching are mired in antiquated language and a world view that no longer makes sense to Twenty-First Century people. “Heaven” is one of the concepts he finds unintelligible to modern thought. Borg declares that he has no need for the promise of personal resurrection from death and that “We die into God…that is all I need to know.” Speaking Christian, Borg, Marcus, (HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., c. 2011), p. 201.

Is that really enough? For my own part, it might be. I have lived for sixty-four happy years. That’s not particularly old by my demographic. Of course I would like to live a bit longer. But who doesn’t? I have had a long and happy marriage. I have seen my children grow up into mature, kind and productive adults. I have had two fascinating careers that have been challenging, exciting and deeply rewarding. Whatever regrets I have pale in comparison with life’s many rewards. So, yes I suppose I could simply “die into God” and be content. But what about my grandson, Parker, who lived for only a day in a PICU incubator? What about the millions of children who live for only a few years knowing little more than sickness, abuse and an aching hunger? What about all the Black Americans who knew only slavery and never got to see the inauguration of Barack Obama? For those whose last breath is a prayer of thanksgiving, dying into God might be sufficient. But for those whose final word is a cry of lament, not so much.

An episode in John Updike’s first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, raises this very question. Updike’s story takes place in a state run home for the destitute elderly overseen by prefect Stephen Conner. Conner is a product of the New Deal. He believes in the inevitability of human progress through social evolution and the perfection of governmental institutions. Conner becomes engaged in a conversation among the residents about the afterlife. He shares his vision of “heaven on earth” formed in a future society where illness is overcome by advanced medicine; pollution eliminated through harnessing atomic power; and oppression defeated through the spread of democracy. Mrs. Mortis, one of the residents, asks him whether this heaven on earth will come soon enough for her to see it. Conner responds: “Not personally perhaps. But for your children, your grandchildren.”

“But not for ourselves?”

“No.” The word hung huge in the living room, the “o” a hole that let in the cold of the void.

“Well, then,” Mrs. Mortis spryly said, “to hell with it.”

Updike, John, The Poor House Fair, (c. 1958 by John Updike, pub. by Random House).

I share Mrs. Mortis’ sentiments. If we cannot say confidently to a bereaved parent that what God began in the birth of their Child God will complete and weave into the fabric of a new creation, then we don’t have much of anything worthwhile to say. If the unsatisfied longings of billions for justice, peace, freedom and life never find fulfillment in God’s future, then for too many that future will have been a cruel hoax. A robust Easter faith is not a flight from reality. There was nothing more real than the tomb to which the two Marys were drawn on that morning of our Lord’s resurrection. But I think the women sensed what the gospel goes on to tell us: the tomb is not the only reality and it’s not the last word.

The Easter proclamation is a reminder that the threat of death is finally as empty as was Jesus’ tomb. That doesn’t make dying easy or erase pain of grief. St. Paul does not tell us that death isn’t real, but he does tell us that it has lost its fatal sting. We are not told that we shouldn’t grieve. Rather, we are told not to grieve as those who have no hope. I can endure the pain of separation I am bound to feel at home on Easter Sunday because I have the joyful expectation of being together again at some point in the not too distant future with my siblings in Christ. I can endure losing the ones I love because I believe they are not lost to the God who raised Jesus from death. I can endure the end of my own life because I believe that I will remain within the communion of saints who anticipate the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. I take infinite comfort and joy from the above image of Jesus breaking death’s gates and leading Adam, Eve and all their descendants into the sunshine of a new creation. Easter is different this year. But it is still Easter. The Lord is risen. Alleluia!

Here is a poem by Sister Maris Stella that preaches the resurrection with greater power than many a sermon I have heard on the topic!

Resurrection

from the deep sea wrack
from the green light under the sea
from the coral caves men will come back

on mountain tops where
dropped from the air
or hurled
against the world
their bones grow cold
among the old
rock-frost above the tree-line
they will rise up with the divine
breath breathed into them again
as on the first of men
Adam, newly conceived of clay
on the sixth day
God breathed even somewhere Adam will rise
opening again his eyes
on the world to find
nothing much changed but of a mind
that he was blind before
Abel, first-slain
having lain
longer in the earth than any other man
and Eve with the look of the new Eve
upon her but still Eve
they will rise up having
the terrible trumpets blown
would cry: this is doom

this is doom

who will record the innumerable horde

in hope to see
what publican will mount into a tree

what wind what weather what bird
will shout unheard
against the sound

of whole tribes and families growing up out of the ground

what earth does ever spring
is only a hindt of the thing. 

Source: Poetry, April, 1943, pp. 24-25. Sister Maris Stella (1899-1987) was born Alice Gustava Smith in Alton, Iowa. She graduated from Derham Hall High School in 1918. Two years later she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Joseph and took the name Sister Maris Stella. Smith received her undergraduate degree from the College of St. Catherine with majors in English and music. Shortly after receiving her degree, she became a faculty member of the college. She earned her master’s degree in English at the University of Oxford. After returning from Europe she resumed her teaching role in the English Department at St. Catherine’s. She became a popular creative writing teacher as well as a poet-in-residence.

[1] Yes, of course we have Facebook streaming, U Tube and Zoom. But without wading into the morass of argument over the appropriate use of such tools for worship, let me just say that, for me, a computer screen is a lame substitute for a gathering of people who give you a face to face smile, punch your arm and slap you on the back.

PALM/PASSION SUNDAY

Matthew 21:1-11
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 26:14-27:66

Prayer of the Day: Everlasting God, in your endless love for the human race you sent our Lord Jesus Christ to take on our nature and to suffer death on the cross. In your mercy enable us to share in his obedience to your will and in the glorious victory of his resurrection, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

There are no heroes in the Passion narrative. Judas betrays Jesus. Peter denies Jesus. All the disciples desert Jesus at his arrest, leaving him to be summarily tried and executed. Pilate, the agent of Roman justice abandons Jesus to the whims of a lawless mob and, in typical all American presidential fashion, denies all responsibility for the travesty of justice over which he presides. The crowd, which days ago was welcoming Jesus with shouts of praise, now cries out for his lynching. This is a story in which the worst human instincts play out-on the part of government, the church and the people. No heroes. Just traitors, cowards, deserters, corrupt political leaders and out of control mob violence.

The remarkable thing is that every year we congregate to tell these unflattering stories on ourselves. We do that because the good news of Jesus Christ is that we worship a God who loves the world at its worst. If the crucifixion of God’s only beloved Son cannot provoke God to give up on us, spurn us and retaliate against us, what will? Nothing, says St. Paul. “For I am convinced,” says Paul, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39.

The cross is good news, but it presents us with a challenge. I recently completed my reading of a document published by the Lutheran World Federation entitled Resisting Exclusion: Global Theological Responses to Populism. This nearly 300 page book is a collection of essays written by Christian theologians from all over the world reflecting on the rise of populist movements and their influence on government. As a whole, the document paints a bleak picture of nations drifting toward control by leaders and parties espousing nationalistic, racist, patriarchal and culturally exclusive ideologies. As the adoring crowd that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with shouts of “Hosanna!” was so easily persuaded to cry out just days later for his crucifixion, it seems large numbers of people world wide are being seduced into accepting the simplistic world view of an “us against them” universe where it takes a strong and autocratic leader to make things right. Sadly, we in the United States are not alone with our mob of sheep-like citizens frightened by a changing world they don’t understand and eager to yield their allegiance to “the only one” who can “make America great again.” The world so desperately wants a savior to believe in! So desperate, in fact, that it will overlook obvious character flaws, deny plain facts and swallow the wackiest of conspiracy theories to keep its faith alive. The old alliances and global institutions which, with all their faults, managed to maintain a semblance of world order, are now losing support from the nations that built them and falling apart just when we they are most needed.

In the face of all this, I’m sorely tempted simply to give up. I am tempted to retreat into the safety of my retirement just as the disciples retreated into the shadows after Jesus’ arrest. I am tempted to betray the call to take up the cross. I am tempted to sit on the sidelines of the mob since I am not the one being lynched and there is probably nothing I can do to stop the spectacle anyway. I am tempted to hide from my grandchildren the truth about the world they are about to inherit from me and, like the poet’s chirping realtor, rush them past all its defects insisting all the while that, for all its faults, it’s got “good bones.”

But I can’t do that because I worship a God who refuses to give up-and refuses to let me give up. “God so loved the world…” says John the Evangelist. John 3:16. God still loves the world-even after it took the best God had to give it and threw it back in God’s face. So who am I to say things are hopeless? Who am I, who have suffered, sacrificed and given so little, to give up on the world for which God poured out God’s very life blood? Giving up, giving in and running away are not options. Disciples of Jesus are called upon to face the truth about themselves and the world in which they live-in all of its frequently ugly particulars. But they are challenged to do so through the lens of the cross by which all things are transformed.

As hard as it is to hear, the Passion Narrative is one of hope. Hope, it must be understood, is not optimism. We are in the midst of a pandemic. The medical experts are giving us little cause to be optimistic. For many of us, the sun will not come out tomorrow. We will not all get through this together. Many of our hospitals are on the brink of collapse. The doctors, nurses and medical specialists we need to run them are exhausted and getting sick. Meanwhile, our leaders contemplate sacrificing the most vulnerable members of our society, the aged, the sick and the poor on the altar of the economy. Our government is failing us. Our civic values are failing us. The church is failing us. From where I sit, there doesn’t appear to be much reason for optimism. But I continue to hope because we have a God who has not given up on us, because I know that our worst day is already behind us, because I know that as long as we reject Jesus, God will keep raising him up, offering him back to us and chipping away at our stubborn resistance. Though I live in a world that speaks a resounding “no” to God’s gentle reign of justice and peace, I have been claimed by a God who won’t take “no” for an answer.

So I continue to pray that God’s kingdom will come and God’s will be done on earth as in heaven. I continue to watch out for the welfare of my neighbors, work to ensure that the most vulnerable in my neck of the woods are protected, sheltered and fed. I encourage my grandchildren to look forward to the future because I know that the future belongs to the One who raised Jesus from death. That’s not much. Nevertheless, as story of the Loaves and Fishes illustrates, God doesn’t need much to accomplish great things. The world is God’s project and it ends with God being “all in all.” That will probably take some time. But the God we worship has all eternity to work with.

Here is the poem by Maggie Smith to which I alluded above. It reflects a soulful assessment of a world too broken for optimism, but which cries out for hope.

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Source: Waxwing magazine (Issue IX, Summer 2016) (c. 2016 by Maggie Smith) Maggie Smith (b. 1977) is an American poet, freelance writer, and editor who lives in Bexley, Ohio. She was born in Columbus, Ohio and received her Bachelor of Arts from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1999, and then went on to receive her Master of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University in 2003. Smith served as the Emerging Writer Lecturer for Gettysburg College from 2003 to 2004 and went on to take a position as an assistant editor with a children’s trade book publisher where she became an associate editor. She left her position, however, to do freelance work. You can find out more about Maggie Smith and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.