Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

Job 19:23–27a
Psalm 17:1–9
2 Thessalonians 2:1–5, 13–17
Luke 20:27–38

Prayer of the Day: O God, our eternal redeemer, by the presence of your Spirit you renew and direct our hearts. Keep always in our mind the end of all things and the day of judgment. Inspire us for a holy life here, and bring us to the joy of the resurrection, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord

As I am presently out of the country and unable to post an entry for this week, I offer my reflections on these texts from six years ago. If they haven’t improved with age, I hope at least that they have not gotten overly stale.  

The Sadducees in this week’s gospel lesson were probably more interested in ridiculing and humiliating Jesus than learning anything new about the resurrection of the dead (something they didn’t believe anyway). Even so, the questions they raise are genuine concerns for people who do believe in the resurrection. Will I be raised as the same individual I am today, with all of the same experiences and memories? What will happen to the memories I would give anything to be rid of? Will I recognize and be recognized by the people I have loved? What about people I would rather never see again in this life or the next? And, yes, what about my marriage? Will a lifelong relationship that has come to define me amount to nothing in the new creation?

I used to dismiss these concerns as empty and pointless. After all, we are probably no more able to comprehend life on the other side of the resurrection than a caterpillar is able to imagine life as a butterfly. So why bother puzzling over questions that nobody can answer and probably don’t matter anyway? If God can be trusted to raise the dead, can’t God also be trusted to iron out all the resulting complications? While the left side of my brain continues to assure me that questions about life after resurrection are indeed beyond the reach of my intellect and imagination, my right brain has become restive. Whether it is due to the growing body of evidence for my own mortality, the recent deaths of my parents or a combination of both, I find myself more sympathetic toward people seeking a better understanding of what eternal life entails. Thirty-two years of ministry has also convinced me that the church must speak to these concerns. If we remain silent, we abandon the field to tarot card readers, boardwalk mediums and ever popular TV spiritualists of the John Edward variety. They are only too happy to exploit grief, loneliness and uncertainty for their own personal gain.

Our creeds confess “the resurrection of the body.” Understand that biblical faith knows nothing of an eternal soul. Whatever we are made of-body, soul, mind, spirit or anything else-all of that ceases to exist at death. If there is life beyond the grave, it is not because some eternal part of us survives death and continues to exist in some form thereafter. The Bible knows nothing of any “spirit world.” The only hope there is for life after death is God’s promise to breathe life back into the lifeless dust we have become. The gospel therefore does not promise an escape from death. There is no way around death; there is only a way through it. The way through death is union with Jesus in his own death: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Romans 6:5.

A good friend of mine once told me that he views death as nothing more than “passing through a door into heaven.” While I admire the confident faith that I know lies behind that assertion, I cannot agree with the assertion itself. I pass through any number of doors on any given day and they seldom have any effect on me. I carry through each door all of the same prejudices, grudges, ignorance and nastiness that I was born with or picked up over the years. If I simply carry all that with me into the new creation, it won’t be new for very long. Something has to happen to me before I can live peaceably under the gentle reign of God. Before I can live in the new creation, I have to become a new creation myself. That won’t happen through gradual moral improvement. Nothing short of death and resurrection is required. What is raised from death must necessarily be qualitatively different from what has been consigned to death. I must be raised as a new person capable of loving as I am loved. It won’t be “the same old me.”

Something of that death and resurrection is what should be happening with repentance, confession and forgiveness. Martin Luther calls it “drowning the old Adam.” St. Paul describes it in this way: “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what is ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:14. The important thing to remember here is that the new person is God’s project from beginning to end. Repentance and confession are not spiritual exercises that transform us. Rather, they are the tools by which the Holy Spirit accomplishes the good work of our re-creation. We cannot even know what that work will look like in the end. As St. John puts it, “we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we shall be like [Christ] for we shall see him as he is.” I John 3:2. That might not be everything we would like to know, but it is enough.

There is one other concern that comes up frequently in my discussions with people about death and dying. What exactly happens at death? Do we go directly to heaven or do we remain in death until the last day when the dead are raised? Again, I used to be more dismissive of these concerns. Who knows? What difference does it make? When you are dead, ten days might as well be ten-thousand years. But I sense that there is more here than idle curiosity. I think we are looking for assurance that we and our loved ones who go before us will be held together somehow even in death. Thus, although the Hebrew Scriptures generally do not acknowledge any sort of life after death, still Israel believed that God was somehow present even when “my flesh and my heart may fail…” Psalm 73:26. When Jesus responded to his opponents’ denial of the resurrection, he did so by citing God’s self identification as “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Luke 20:37. He then went on to point out that God “is not God of the dead but of the living; for all live to him.” Luke 20:38.

I do not know exactly what it means for the dead to “live to God.” I don’t believe for one moment that it refers to some ethereal “spirit world” made up of disembodied souls. Again, there is not one scrap of scriptural support for the pagan notion of an immortal soul. But, in addition to the resurrection of the body, our creeds confess “the communion of saints.” The author of Hebrews speaks of the Old Testament heroes of faith as “a cloud of witnesses” surrounding us with encouragement and support. I don’t know how to reconcile faith in the “resurrection of the body” with our confession of the “communion of saints,” but I believe we need to hang onto both these expressions of our faith without surrendering one to the other.

Personally, I don’t have any need to understand how it all fits together. I don’t need to know how it works. After all, I don’t understand how my computer is printing these words on the screen before me as I type them on the keyboard; nor do I understand how it will eventually spew them out onto the World Wide Web. All I know is that my computer has always faithfully performed these tasks for me in the past and most likely will keep on doing so. But for those of you who might benefit from more conceptual clarity, I share with you the reflections of author and theologian Robert W. Jenson from the second volume of his Systematic Theology:

“The key insight is a simple one: a saint now in heaven is not an otherwise constituted entity who anticipates resurrection. God’s anticipation of the saint’s resurrection is the heavenly reality of the saint. For God’s anticipation of creation’s life in the Kingdom, of our deification and our vision of his glory, is the whole being of heaven. The saint’s present reality is in no way attenuated by this doctrine; what God anticipates indeed belongs to the “whither” of this life but is just so accessible to him and so real in its own mode.” Jenson, Robert W., Systematic Theology, Volume 2 (c. 1999 by Robert W. Jenson, Oxford University Press), p. 368.

Perhaps that is what Jesus meant when he said of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that “they all live” to God.

Job 19:23–27a

For my take generally on the Book of Job, see my entry of Sunday, June 24, 2012. In thinking through the lesson for this coming Sunday, I found particularly helpful Claus Westermann’s book on Job. Employing form-critical analysis, Westermann identifies the dialogues throughout Job as “consoling conversation.” Westermann, Claus, The Structure of the Book of Job-A Form-Critical Analysis (c 1981, Fortress Press) p. 10.  These interchanges involve one who laments his/her misfortune and one or more persons offering comfort and consolation. He further notes that “What it comes down to is that a repeated exchange of words belongs to the process of consolation. In real situations of consolation-as experience demonstrates thousandfold-it almost never happens that the sufferer speaks only once and the consoler replies only once.” Ibid. Furthermore, it is “essential to the process of consolation that the one doing the lamenting be allowed to express himself.” This process, which ought to result in comfort to the afflicted one,  goes awry in the Book of Job. “Disputation has intruded” into the process of consolation with the result that what began as a comforting visit becomes a hostile argument. Ibid. As one reads through the cycles of dialogue in Job, it becomes clear that the target of Job’s lament gradually shifts from his friends to God. Even so, the tone of disputation continues driving all parties away from any prospect of resolution or closure. The spiral of pointless argument is broken only when God intervenes speaking from the heart of the whirl wind.

This is in fact how many encounters with suffering turn out. When people are smarting from a traumatic loss, say for example, the death of a loved one, they often appear hostile and even unreasonable. They might lash out at their loved ones for being unsupportive or the pastor for being inattentive or the church for failing to be sufficiently compassionate. They might even blame God for failing them. Defensiveness tends to be our default posture. You might point out that the family came from all corners of the country to be present at the sufferer’s time of need; that the pastor did everything possible to make the funeral service meaningful and comforting; that the congregation is being supportive in every possible way. You could point out that God has blessed the sufferer throughout his or her life and that this loss is common to everyone at some point. It is therefore entirely irrational to suggest that God is singling him or her out. While all of that might be true, it misses the point. Grief is a matter of the heart, not the head. Consolation is a journey toward healing, not an argument designed to establish propositions. Job’s three friends started out on that journey well enough. They sat with Job in silent solidarity, weeping and mourning with him for seven days. Job 2:11-13. Only when they opened their mouths did everything begin to go downhill.

By the time we reach Chapter 19 form which our lesson is taken, the conversation between Job and his friends has deteriorated into a shouting match. In the previous chapter Bildad, one of the consolers, lashes out at Job in a fit of rage: “Why are we counted as cattle? Why are we stupid in your sight? You who tear yourself in your anger—shall the earth be forsaken because of you, or the rock be removed out of its place?” Job 18:1-4. Bildad and his friends are angry at Job because Job refuses to humble himself before God and seek forgiveness for what must be some significant sin. They have carefully laid out for Job the theological underpinnings for their conclusion that his suffering is the consequence of his own wrong doing. But none of their well reasoned arguments resonate with Job. He continues to speak the language of lament even as they persist in the language of reasoned disputation. The parties are truly talking past each other.  In desperation, Job cries out “How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? And even if it is true that I have erred, my error remains with me. If indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and make my humiliation an argument against me, know then that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net around me.” Job 19:1-6.  By this time, Job has given up on finding any consolation from his friends and turns his lament upon God. As much anger and confusion as there might be in Job’s lament, there is also a desperate hope: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” Job 19:25-27.

This particular verse is well known as it is commonly read at funerals. While I believe that is an appropriate use of the text, it should be understood that it is not a reference to the resurrection of the dead, a belief specifically formed only in the latest Hebrew writings such as Daniel. Job is very much hoping for God’s vindicating judgment to be manifest in his own lifetime. Now that the counsel of his close friends has turned to judgment and accusation, Job has nowhere left to turn other than to God. In the end, God does vindicate Job, pointing out to Job’s counselors that Job’s lament, not their many disputations, constituted faithful speech to and about God. God is not glorified by elaborate conceptual arguments defending his honor. God is glorified by the faithful lament of one who takes God seriously enough to challenge him.

Clearly, consolation requires compassionate listening and suspension of judgment. Job’s counselors failed because they put their own needs to defend the honor of God and maintain their belief in an orderly moral universe before the needs of their suffering friend. Sadly, that is a mistake frequently made even today. So next time you encounter a lamenting friend, remember Job. In addition to providing us with a lesson on how not to offer consolation, this text emphasizes how freely and openly Israel entered into prayer with her God. Though mindful of her own instances of unfaithfulness to her covenant with God, Israel was not afraid to let God know when she felt God was failing to come through on his side of that covenant.

Psalm 17:1–9

This psalm is a lament and prayer for protection from enemies. Some commentators suggest that this is the prayer of a person on the eve of trial in a significant dispute that might cost him/her dearly. The psalmist points out to God that his/her conduct has been faultless and even invites God to “try” and “test” him/her to show that s/he is blameless. Because God is faithful, the psalmist confidently calls upon him for protection and vindication from his/her adversaries. Such vindication will take the shape of a judgment in the psalmist’s favor against his/her opponents.

While this interpretation is plausible, I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. Given the graphic images of violent attack in verses 10-12 of the psalm (which is not part of our reading), I believe it is just as likely that the psalmist is facing hostility from neighbors in a lawless area of Palestine. The psalm is obviously adaptable for a variety of circumstances. For this reason, it is difficult to date it. As is nearly always the case in Israel’s prayer tradition, the psalmist’s plea for protection is grounded in God’s covenant promises to Israel. No person has any autonomous right to make a claim on God. God owes no one anything. Nevertheless, because God has bound himself to Israel through specific covenant promises, Israel may freely “call God to account” and rely on God to exercise faithfulness to those promises.

2 Thessalonians 2:1–5, 13–17

The relationship between the form and substance of II Thessalonians and 1 Thessalonians has led most commentators to believe that II Thessalonians was composed by a Christian leader writing to a later generation in the name of Paul and his colleagues. However that might be, this second letter echoes Paul’s admonitions to the Thessalonians in the first letter not to concern themselves with “times” and “seasons” for the triumphal return of Christ. I Thessalonians 5:1-11. Here, too, Paul urges the church “not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word or by letter purporting to come from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.” Vs 2. He then continues to discuss the appearance of “the man of lawlessness” and the “rebellion” preceding the second coming. This particular section of scripture has given rise to much speculation and is one of the texts that appear to have inspired the Left Behind series. Paul (or the anonymous author) does not explain who the “man of lawlessness” is, nor does he say much about the force that is “restraining him now” discussed in the omitted verses 6-12. Evidently, he assumes that the readers know perfectly well what he was talking about and they probably did. We, alas, have no clue. That is what happens when you read someone else’s mail.

Rather than get caught up in trying to unscramble this egg, I prefer to focus on the concluding verses 13-17. There Paul assures the Thessalonians that they have been elected by God for a better purpose than wrath and punishment. They have been called through the gospel “so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Vs. 14. The focus, then, is comfort for those who have been called. These are the persons to whom the letter is addressed. It is not appropriate to turn this letter of comfort for the elect into a threat against people to whom it was not even addressed.

Luke 20:27–38

Our gospel lesson relates an encounter between Jesus and the Sadducees. It is important to remember that, while the New Testament sometimes lumps the Pharisees and Sadducees together, they represent very different strains of Judaism. The Pharisees and Sadducees each had their own reasons for opposing Jesus. In the case of the Pharisees, the disputes were largely theological. They saw Jesus’ inclusion of “sinners” among his followers as undermining the Torah and the oral traditions designed to ensure strict obedience to its provisions. By contrast, the Sadducees were members and supporters of the priestly caste in charge of maintaining the sacrificial worship practices of the Jerusalem Temple. They were conservative insofar as they insisted on strict adherence to the ritual practices laid out in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures). They also rejected the oral legal traditions championed by the Pharisees as unwarranted innovations.  Because there is no mention of the resurrection of the dead in the Pentateuch, they maintained that there would be no such resurrection. Nevertheless, the Sadducees were more liberal in their willingness to adopt Hellenistic lifestyles. They enjoyed support from the Roman occupation forces which, in turn, benefited from a substantial cut of Temple revenue. Thus, Jesus’ act of cleansing the Temple and disrupting the commercial transactions that made it a cash cow for Rome constituted a direct threat to their wellbeing. The Sadducees’ opposition to Jesus was thus politically and economically motivated. It was likely the Sadducees who engineered Jesus’ arrest and advocated for his execution. For a useful and concise discussion of the differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, see The Jewish Virtual Library.

If the representatives of the Sadducees thought that they could humiliate Jesus before his disciples and in the presence of the people with their clever hypothetical, they seriously underestimated him. Jesus dispenses with the hypothetical summarily by pointing out that those attaining resurrection from death are “equal to angels and are children of God.” We should not read too much into this response. It is not intended to do much of anything but let the Sadducees know that their hypothetical is silly (though for thoughtful believers in the resurrection, it might raise serious concerns as noted in my introductory remarks). The real meat of Jesus’ response to the Sadducees is in his citation to God’s self identification as the God of the patriarchs. If the books the Sadducees acknowledge as holy are from the distant past and the people with whom their God identifies are all dead, it follows that their faith is also a dead relic of the past. In fact, however, God is alive and so are all who put their trust in him. No doubt the scribes (associated with the Pharisees) got a chuckle out of seeing their rival Sadducees trounced by the backwoods preacher from Nazareth. The laughter will be short lived. Their turn comes in verses 41-47.

ALL SAINTS SUNDAY

Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, you have knit your people together in one communion in the mystical body of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant us grace to follow your blessed saints in lives of faith and commitment, and to know the inexpressible joys you have prepared for those who love you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Luke 6:27-31

Like me, you have probably been watching the tragic images of ethnic cleansing taking place in northern Syria as Turkish forces kill and displace thousands of Kurds. As a professed pacifist, I feel particularly conflicted at times like these. I am appalled by our nation’s betrayal of a people who have put their lives on the line to help us in our fight. However critical anyone might be about our military involvement in the middle east, there can be no denying that President Trump’s cowardly, inept and possibly corrupt handling of the situation has precipitated a humanitarian crisis. I sympathize with my friends who argue that we need to reverse course and intervene militarily. How can we stand by and allow innocent people to be slaughtered? Would Jesus have us turn our backs on the victims of genocide? Responding to these arguments with anything short of affirmation feels-just wrong.

It is also fair to point out that my personal profession of pacifism is practically meaningless. There is no longer a military draft and even if there were, it is highly unlikely that the number of a man my age would ever come up-unless the war is going very badly for us. It is easy for me to espouse turning the other cheek when no one is laying a hand on mine. No one is shooting at me and my loved ones and no hostile army is driving me out of my homeland. “Easy enough for you, pastor, to turn somebody else’s cheek,” you might say.

That’s all fair. Pacifism is a luxury for straight, white men like me, though perhaps it shouldn’t be. Maybe those of us who identify as pacifists should, as Paul would say, “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1), taking up residence in places like northern Syria offering what assistance we can to the injured, displaced and homeless. If our witness is to be credible, we who live for peace should be at least as willing to die for it as those who fight for it. I am clearly not there yet and so you might rightly argue that my commitment to peace is only skin deep. I don’t have any concrete, positive solutions for the Kurds. So who am I to criticize those who do have solutions, however incomplete and morally imperfect they might be? Perhaps I should just keep my mouth shut.

Still, here we are on All Saint’s Sunday with Jesus commanding us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, turn the other cheek to an adversary that strikes us and refrain from defending our possessions. Near as I can tell, Jesus is taking violence and coercion off the table for his disciples. Therefore, if I would be Jesus’ disciple, I must renounce violence-even when it appears to be the only means of preventing what I anticipate will be even greater violence and injustice. It’s really quite simple, if extremely difficult in practice.

Here is where the “what about…” questions arise. “What about women beaten by abusive husbands?” “What if a deranged serial killer were about to put a knife in the heart of my three-year-old daughter?” “What would I do if I were president and knew that a dictator was about to conduct a campaign of ethnic cleansing against a defenseless group of people within his border?” “What would I have done about Hitler?” Such emotionally charged missives are usually the first responses I get from people who learn of my persuasion. As a former trial attorney, I recognize them for what they are: hypothetical questions that are not calculated to illicit information, but to extract a precise answer. To that end, they frame the issue in binary terms: fight or allow evil to prevail.

When you begin to identify the host of assumptions built into these hypotheticals, however, their superficiality becomes obvious. Fighting back presupposes that the woman in the first hypothetical has the physical strength and capacity to overcome her abuser. Lacking that, violent resistance is more likely to make matters worse for her than better. The second hypothetical assumes that I am packing a lethal weapon at the time of my daughter’s hypothetical attack-something I never do since I am a pacifist and, even if I were not, I understand that loaded weapons and children don’t mix well. It is also assumed that the attacker cannot not be persuaded against doing harm. It is assumed that I am a good enough shot to hit the attacker and not my daughter as well. (But if that is the case, why not just shoot the knife out of the attacker’s hand?) Under the third scenario you have to wonder how a pacifist managed to get elected commander and chief of the armed forces and entrusted with the nuclear codes. And under the Hitler scenario, just when would I be president? At the time of the Treaty of Versailles when I might have used my diplomatic influence to mitigate the punitive and humiliating victor’s justice imposed on Germany in defeat, thereby avoiding the circumstances giving rise to National Socialism? The problem with all of these questions is that the questioner is allowed to manipulate the facts in such a way that violence appears to be the only reasonable option. Give me the same freedom to control the assumptions and I can compel a different outcome.

The unstated assumptions in all these “what if” questions that seem to compel violent resistance as a moral imperative do not comport with reality. In fact, violence is seldom, if ever, required to resolve conflict. Every day nations resolve disputes over all manner of issues through diplomatic channels without resort to military force. Every day police officers respond to domestic disputes, bar fights and neighborhood disturbances without exercising force of any kind. In fact, most police officers complete their entire careers without ever having to discharge their weapons. Sadly, many of the instances in which the police do resort to violence have proven unnecessary. You wouldn’t know it from watching the evening news, but peaceful resolution of conflict is the norm. It’s just not as entertaining as a shoot-out and so does not make the media’s news cycle. That’s too bad, because if it did, we would discover that the world is really far more peaceful than we ever imagined.

The best response I have ever heard to those “what if” questions designed to corner the pacifist into conceding the necessity of violence in some circumstances comes from singer, songwriter and fellow pacifist Joan Baez. The following is an excerpt from an interview she gave to the Christian Science Monitor in 2013:

“To a question on the limits of her pacifism — or as she says ‘the what-if-someone-is-going-to-shoot-your-grandma’ scenario — she replies: “Anybody who says they would never do this in any situation would probably have to check themselves, but for the way I lived my life and the way I plan to live my life does not include violence,” she said. “The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation.” (Read the full interview at the Monitor’s website).

In short, it simply is not the case that we have but two alternatives when confronted with violence, namely, counter-violence or surrender to evil. There are many ways to resist evil, resolve conflict, overcome hostility and defeat injustice. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and numerous saints of the Mennonite and Quaker traditions illustrate how it is possible to confront evil forcefully without resort to violence. That is why I refuse to defend Jesus’ call to peacemaking and non-violence on terms dictated by anyone’s hypothetical questions. If Jesus tells me there is a way out of the vortex of violence and retribution that does not require me to become violent and vengeful, I believe him. If in any circumstance I cannot see that way, the fault lies in my lack of imagination and inspiration, not in the call of Jesus. For that reason, Baez’ call to “practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities” required to discern that way become all the more urgent. We need openness to the Holy Spirit that the mind of Christ be formed in us.

In the end, my commitment to pacifism is not grounded merely in the above cited verses from Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain or any other particular verse of Scripture. My commitment is Christological. God is the ultimate pacifist who, when his only beloved Son was violently murdered, did not resort to violent retaliation. Instead, God raised up that precious gift we so cruelly rejected, and gave him back to us again. Jesus would not allow his disciples to use the sword in his defense. If violence cannot be employed to defend God’s only begotten son, when in God’s name can it ever be justified?

I close with the conclusion to a book that has been formative in my thinking, namely, What About Hitler? Brimlow, Robert W. (c. 2006, Brazos Press).

“At this juncture it is time for me to respond to the Hitler question: how should Christians respond to the kind of evil Hitler represents if just war and [theories of] supreme emergencies are precluded, and if we live with a different meaning of success?

“We must live faithfully; we must be humble in our faith and truthful in what we say and do; we must repay evil with good; and we must be peacemakers. This may also mean as a result that the evildoers will kill us. Then, we shall also die.

“That’s it. There is nothing else-or rather, anything else is only a footnote to this. We are called to live the kingdom as [Jesus] proclaimed it and be his disciples, come what may. We are, in his words, flowers flourishing and growing today, and tomorrow destined for the furnace. We are God’s people living by faith.”

Ibid. p. 151.

On a slightly different note, this is All Saints Sunday. Though the texts focus more on the saints struggling within the church militant, it is appropriate to give some thought also to the saints in light. Thus, the following poem:

The Communion of Saints

In the darkness of the nave,
Riding out the temporal wave,
God at rest but never sleeping
On its course this ship is keeping.
Windows screening out the day
Illustrate the hidden way
From which streams through dark of night
Rivers of eternal light.
Holy silence, solemn chime
Joins eternity with time.
Saints in joyous heavenly mirth
Greet those still awaiting birth.
With them mortal voices raise
Their poor, but faithful songs of praise.

Source: Anonymous

REFORMATION SUNDAY

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

Prayer of the Day: Gracious Father, we pray for your holy catholic church. Fill it with all truth and peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it; where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in need, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Initially, I had thought to entitle this Reformation Day reflection: “Why I am still a Lutheran.” On further consideration,  however, I decided to change it into a question and entitle it “Why am I not a Roman Catholic?” That title reflects what has become an ever more urgent and personal inquiry for me. Several people I know and admire have “crossed the Tiber,” so to speak, and become Roman Catholics these last few years. They all have their own reasons. Some of my friends tell me that they are drawn to the “depth” and “texture” of the Mass next to which our protestant worship seems shallow and austere. One of my friends made the switch because she feels that the urgency of living our discipleship as a global communion which transcends all racial, ethnic and national loyalties is greater than any other moral or theological issue dividing the church. She feels the Roman Catholic Church is the strongest and best expression of that commitment. My friend is appalled at the way American protestant churches, in her view, have become little more than civic organizations dedicated to upholding middle class values and promoting some version of the American dream. I know a few people who have become Roman Catholics for no better reason than to escape the controversies sparked within the protestant churches over sexuality issues. (Good luck to them with that. I have a feeling their relief will be short lived.)

Whatever reasons these folks may have for turning to the Church of Rome, it is obvious that they do not find the theological controversies of the Reformation worth fighting about anymore. Or perhaps they feel that these controversies have been largely resolved or never really existed in the first place. Maybe we have been talking (or shouting) past each other all the time. I take seriously the decisions of my friends. After all, it was never the intent of the Reformation (for Lutherans anyway) to form a new Church. It was always our desire merely to reform the old one. At our best, we Lutherans have understood ourselves as a reform movement within the Church Catholic rather than another church. So, if the issues dividing us have been resolved or no longer matter, what excuse do I have for continuing to perpetuate a rift within the Church? If the Church is both One and Catholic, it should live that way and its unity should not be disturbed absent a clear departure from the gospel.

Of course, I can point to a lot of things I don’t like about the Roman Catholic Church. It’s stance on the place of women, contraception, treatment of gay and lesbian persons as well as several of its practices are deeply troubling to me. Yet for much of my life, the Lutheran Church held many similar positions and had its own practices that troubled me. Still, I remained Lutheran and worked for change within my church. These matters were not deal breakers then. Why should they be now? Why not join the Roman Catholic church recognizing that, just as in any church community, there will be need for change and reform as well as opportunities for witness and ministry?

Then there is the whole branding issue. Back in the days when there were enough dyed in the wool Lutherans around looking for a church, it made sense for a church to hang out the Lutheran shingle prominently. That way, all those Lutherans would come to our door before some other Lutheran church snatched them up. But those days are long gone. Few people are looking for churches of any kind these days and those that are don’t seem overly concerned about the brand. Over the last couple of decades, the Lutheran brand has become a liability. I find it increasingly difficult and awkward to explain to people I meet just what it means to be “Lutheran.” If I respond that we are a church that proclaims Jesus as Lord, I seem to be implying that Roman Catholics (and other churches) do not proclaim Jesus or at least do not do it as well as us. If I try to answer that question from a historical perspective and explain how the Lutheran Church was a product of the Reformation in the 16^th century, their eyes glaze over. I am tired of explaining what a Lutheran is. I would rather talk about Jesus from within a united, or better, “catholic” church. About the only thing the Lutheran label is doing for us anymore is making clear to people who see it on our signs that they are not one of us.

So, why am I not a Roman Catholic? The best answer I can give is that the faith community in which I was baptized, in which I have been nurtured and under which I have sought to follow Jesus happens to have been Lutheran. The Lutheran churches were institutionally severed from the Roman Catholic Church centuries before I was born. Over those centuries, we each confronted the same issues presented by the modern world from our separate perspectives and arrived at some very different resolutions. Our separate paths have created new chasms that make “crossing over” profoundly difficult for those of us on both sides at a deeply personal level. I have to ask myself, could I join a church in which my daughter’s call to the ministry of Word and Sacrament is not recognized? Could I join a church in which the marriages of my gay and trans friends are deemed sinful? Could I join a church in which my family members would not be welcome to join me at the Lord’s Table? Make no mistake about it, the fractures in the Church Catholic occasioned by the Reformation are grievous wounds to the Body of Christ which must be healed. But I don’t believe that tearing myself away from the faith community that has shaped my relationship to Jesus and continues to inform my practice of discipleship will assist in such healing. In fact, it would most likely aggravate the wound.

Thus, even if I were entirely comfortable with the idea of joining the Roman Catholic Church (I am not yet), I probably would not do it. I would be just one soldier switching sides in a war that should not have been declared in the first place. I want reconciliation to the Church of Rome with all my heart, but not without the rest of my faith family. I want healing for the whole Body of Christ, not just for myself. That means living with the pain of separation while continuing the hard work of dialogue, listening, repenting, forgiving and, above all, praying for the Holy Spirit to make us one.

Here is a poem by Barbara Howes about homecoming, which I think we can read as a prayer for return to the home where we have never truly been, but which we earnestly seek and to which Jesus would call us: the oneness he shares with his Father in the binding love of the Holy Spirit.

The Homecoming

All the great voyagers return
Homeward as on an arc of thought;
Home like a ruby beacon burns
As they crest wind, scale wave, soar air;
All the great voyagers return,

Though we who wait never have done
Fearing the piteous accidents,
The coral reef sharp as the bones
It has betrayed, fate’s cormorant
Unleashed, whose diving’s never done.

Even the voyager of mind
May fail beneath behemoth’s weight;
Oh, the world’s bawdy carcass blinds
All but the boldest, rots the sails
And swamps the voyaging of the mind.

But all the great voyagers return
Home like the hunter, like the hare
To its burrow; below, earth’s axle turns
To speed their coming, the following fair
Winds bless their voyage, blow their safe return.

Source: Collected Poems 1945-1990, (c. 1954 by Barbara Howes,  pub. by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.) Barbara Howes (1914-1996) was an American poet. She was adopted by a well-to-do Massachusetts family and reared in Chestnut Hill.  She graduated from Bennington College in 1937 and worked briefly for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Mississippi. From 1943-1947 Howes edited the literary magazine, Chimera, living in Greenwich Village. In 1947 she married the poet William Jay Smith, and they lived for a time in England and Italy. They had two sons, David and Gregory, and divorced in the mid-1960s. The book from which the above poem is taken received a nomination for the 1995 National Book Award. You can read more about Barbara Howes and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Kierkegaard’s Ghost

(News that’s fake, but credible)

The White House announced today that the eagle logo, employed on medals, flags and emblems throughout all branches of the military, is to be replaced by the chicken. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham explained that “chickens come home to roost and we feel that the chicken image best reflects the president’s policy of pulling our troops out of dangerous war zones and bringing them back home again.” While many veterans and active duty service people have expressed outrage at the change, the president defended his decision. “The chicken’s a noble bird,” he told reporters in an interview this morning. “It has a strong sense of self preservation. I respect that. I’ve always said that I don’t think much of soldiers like John McCain who get themselves captured or killed. I like those who don’t get captured-like me. I had the good sense not to go to Vietnam. That’s why I’m such a stable genius.”

The president also lashed out at reporters questioning his abandonment of the Kurds, American allies in the struggle against ISIS, to slaughter by the Turks. “The Kurds are fighting for their land. But where were they when we were fighting for our land in the Revolutionary War? We owe them nothing.” Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was quick to defend the president. “Look,” he said, “When Donald Trump said we would support the Kurds, he just was joking. That’s obvious. He’s a fun loving guy. Problem is, those Kurds have no sense of humor-and neither does the liberal fake news press.”

There is no word yet on when the new uniforms, medals and flags bearing the new chicken logo will begin to appear in regular use. But an anonymous source reports that a contract for their manufacture has been negotiated through the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, with a company in China.

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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

NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Genesis 32:22-31
Psalm 121
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Luke 18:1-8

Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, tireless guardian of your people, you are always ready to hear our cries. Teach us to rely day and night on your care. Inspire us to seek your enduring justice for all this suffering world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Luke 18:8.

Is it possible that the church might finally die out? Is it possible the voice of the good news will cease? Could it be that Jesus will return to find nothing he can recognize as his Body anywhere on earth? I don’t like entertaining that question, but if Jesus himself raises it, I think it behooves us to take it seriously.

According to projections from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) Office of Research and Evaluation, the whole denomination will have fewer than 67,000 members in 2050, with fewer than 16,000 in worship on an average Sunday by 2041. [1] That is a sobering projection. Granted, projections like these are subject to numerous variables, some of which are impossible to predict. Nonetheless, the consistent historical decline in membership and attendance since its inception in 1987 more than suggests that the ELCA will be a much smaller church three or four decades from now.

There is no shortage of opinions about why this is happening to us. Numerous synodical initiatives have been launched with hopes of reversing the downward trend, each with its own snappy moniker, powerpoint presentation and glossy notebook full of discussion questions and group exercises for participants. When I was still active in full time parish ministry, I could count on receiving at least half a dozen adds in the mail and over the internet each week from consultants promising to transform my church from a small struggling congregation into a megachurch. There is but one common denominator among all these programs. They don’t work. After more than thirty years, the one thing we have learned is that we are on a trajectory of extinction and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.

But that is not the same issue raised by Jesus’ troubling question. Jesus is not pondering the future of the church and its institutions-at least not directly. He is pondering the future of faith. Thus, before concerning ourselves with the ELCA’s survival (or the survival of any other denomination for that matter), we should be asking ourselves whether the ELCA is worth preserving. Are we the kind of community in which the mind of Christ is formed? Are we the kind of community that produces disciples of Jesus? Are we, as St. Paul urges, employing the scriptures in such a way “that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” II Timothy 3:17.

In one sense, I can answer these questions in the affirmative. All of the congregations to which I have belonged and which I have served helped to inform, shape and strengthen my faith. I know of more circumstances than I can number in which church communities have come to the aid and support of persons in desperate need. The church in which I grew up recognized and employed the gifts of a young man with learning impairments, enabling him to become a valued member of the community rather than a “social problem.” My fieldwork church successfully incorporated the poor, the homeless and persons with disabilities into its mission and ministry to the community. The congregations I have served over the years all have engaged faithfully in witness, service and advocacy. I know that our churches have been instrumental in forming the faith and character of many individuals who have taken their discipleship into the heart of their work and their communities. There is much that I can point to within the ELCA and its congregations with pride.

But that isn’t the whole story. It sometimes seems that these examples of faith active in love are the exception rather than the rule. On the whole, I fear we have done a piss poor job of forming disciples proficient in their understanding of our faith and equipped for the work of ministry. That is largely because we have created an ecclesiastical culture based on the model of a voluntary association providing services to its members. I attend church more or less regularly and contribute more or less generously (most likely less). In return, I am entitled to have my children baptized, confirmed and married. I am assured of pastoral care and visitation when needed and burial services when my time comes. Heaven, of course, is also an added benefit. Furthermore, because the church is all about me, my needs and my wants, I am free to switch my membership whenever my nose gets put out of joint or another congregation offers me a better deal. Teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness (II Timothy 3:16) is not a part of the transaction. Indeed, in our American culture of rugged individualism, where “nobody has got the right to tell me how to live my life,” these things are likely to be resented.

I don’t think that attempting to challenge this consumerist mentality will reverse our pattern of membership decline. In fact, it might even accelerate it. But that shouldn’t deter us. Membership decline is not the worst thing that can happen to a church. As Paul points out, in the absence of a solid grounding in faith and practice, people tend to “accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” II Timothy 4:3-4. They are ripe pickings for the likes of Franklin Graham, James Dobson, Robert Jeffress, Tony Perkins, Pat Robertson and the like whose weird mix of end times hysteria, sexism, homophobia, American/Christian nationalism and subliminal white supremacy strike a chord resonating with so many folk fearful of a future that looks dark and threatening and who are ready to grasp any straw that promises to make sense of it all. Some of this low hanging fruit has been plucked from the midst of my own congregations. Too many men and women we have baptized and confirmed are very much in thrall to these charlatans and they are not happy when we publicly call them to account and dispute their ideologies.

In the recent past, I called for an ecumenical Barman like declaration from our bishops and theologians condemning specifically these distortions of our faith and reaffirming with boldness and clarity the good news of Jesus Christ confessed in the ecumenical creeds. While there have been no shortage of ecclesiastical statements condemning one or another of our government’s recent policy decisions, there has been no widely subscribed confessional declaration naming what I can only characterize as the heretical perversions of our faith undergirding the present reign of evil. I sometimes fear that my church lacks the courage, spiritual maturity and theological depth for any such declaration. I worry that the image of Jesus is becoming unrecognizable in our midst.

I can sympathize with our denominational leaders. It is hard challenging the consumerist mentality of a congregation. People who have for generations believed that the church to which they belong is their church and that the length of their membership and the significance of their contributions entitle them to a degree of influence inevitably feel that something is being taken away from them. Members who have ingrained upon their psyches the assumption that faith and patriotism are two sides of the same coin and that the church exists to shore up a particular notion of American cultural values will have a hard time adjusting to an understanding of church as a counter-cultural community that sometimes must question, criticize and even oppose the dominant culture. I have experienced all of this first hand and have the scars to prove it. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for a bishop charged with unifying the church facing the prospect of schism within a denominational body already under stress. There is a real danger that a lot of individuals and congregations will be driven away by a clarion call to repentance, faith and a radical change of ecclesiastical culture.

Yet if we fail to “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching” (II Timothy 4:2) so that the gospel of Jesus Christ is made distinguishable from the ideologies pulling our members in every other direction, I am not convinced that our survival matters. It will mean nothing for the church to have survived if, upon his return, its Lord cannot recognize it as his Body.

Here is a poem reflecting on Jesus’ haunting question.

Advent
 
They say the hour’s getting late
The day of judgment will not wait.
Soon the dawn of doom will come
And darkness swallow up the sun.
So turn from earth your wandering eye
And fix your gaze upon the sky;
So when the Son of Man comes again,
He’ll find among us faith in men.

Yet if the end does not come soon,
We might yet colonize the moon,
Set our flags in the sands of Mars,
From there set sail for distant stars.
Given ten thousand years or more,
We might break down the last closed door,
And with your great machines transverse
The breadth of this whole universe.

Still, however far we roam,
No matter where we make our home,
We’ll meet again at each new shore
The Galilean troubadour
Whose troubling song will hound our race
In every coming time and place.
If God the end of time should save
For people in this distant age,
Will the Son of Man e’en then
Find among us faith in men?

Source: Anonymous

[1] See Faith + Lead, September 5, 2019 (published by Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN). Of course, the ELCA and the rest of American protestantism is but a drop in the bucket when compared with the whole church catholic, many parts of which are growing. I do not mean to equate the ELCA with the church universal. Still, the demise of the church in any part of the world is a serious matter.

EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Psalm 111
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and most merciful God, your bountiful goodness fills all creation. Keep us safe from all that may hurt us, that, whole and well in body and spirit, we may with grateful hearts accomplish all that you would have us do, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Once upon a time, a little girl spoke and her words ignited an international furor and nudged the world just a little closer to a better tomorrow. I am not speaking of Greta Thunberg pictured above, but the anonymous slave girl featured in our lesson from the Second Book of Kings. This little Israelite girl was kidnapped during one of the many skirmishes between Israel and its arch nemesis, Aram. She ultimately wound up in the house of Naaman, a powerful and distinguished general where she served Naaman’s wife. Naaman had obviously distinguished himself as a mighty warrior. Nevertheless, beneath their supreme military rank, weapons of war, body armor and medals of valor, mighty warriors have the same vulnerabilities as the rest of us mortals. Even men who defeat armies and conquer kingdoms fall like the rest of us before viruses and bacteria. So it was with Naaman who, the Bible tells us, suffered from leprosy. This great warrior, once the star of military parades, seemed fated now to suffer a pitiable death on his sick bed.

But then the little slave girl spoke up. “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy,” said the little girl to her mistress. II Kings 5:3. The mistress, in turn, relayed to her husband what the little girl told her. Naaman took this information to his king and requested letters of introduction to the ruler of Samaria in order that he might find this great prophet capable of healing even leprosy.[1] Evidently, Naaman was well regarded by the king, who gave him everything he asked for. And so Naaman set out for Samaria, the capital of Israel, with “ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments.” II Kings 5:5. Something appears to have gotten lost in transmission between the little girl, her mistress, Naaman and the king of Aram. The letter appears to seek this marvelous miracle of healing not from the prophet but from the king of Israel. The king is naturally distraught. “Has the king of Aram gone mad? Does he really think I can cure leprosy? More likely he is seeking a pretext for another war!” So the king of Israel rends his garments in distress.

Somehow, Elisha the prophet gets wind of the king’s distress (perhaps through chatter on the slave netowrk?). “No worries,” he tells him. “Send Naaman to me. I’ve got this.” And so the king does. Naaman arrives at the prophet’s door with his entourage, no doubt expecting a welcome befitting a military hero. Instead, he is met by Elisha’s servant who tells this general, who is accustomed to bathing in the pristine waters of his own country, to wash seven times in the muddy, mucky Jordan. This is more than the general can endure. He rides way in fit of rage, his hopes dashed and his pride wounded. No doubt he was entertaining fantasies of returning with his army to knock Israel’s pompous little king off his throne and deliver a sound thrashing to his snake oil peddling prophet who treated him with such contempt. But once again, the voice of reason bubbles up from the slaves. “What’s wrong with you, man? You were ready to give that prophet ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of garments for his services. But he didn’t take any of that. All he asked was that you take a bath. Isn’t even the remote chance of a cure for leprosy worth getting a little wet?” Naaman relents, washes in the Jordan and the rest is history. The story concludes with Naaman, once Israel’s mortal enemy, returning to his homeland a believer in Israel’s God.

We like to imagine that history is driven by the actions of kings, generals, great prophets, presidents and members of congress. But more often, I think, major events are set in motion by anonymous slaves and children. That shouldn’t surprise us, given that we worship the Word made flesh in the infant born to a homeless couple in a barn. And that brings me back to Greta Thunberg who made headlines with her passionate address to the United Nations, chiding world leaders over their gross irresponsibility in failing to address climate change. Our president in his usual presidential manner retweeted the following by someone named “Kellie” “She’s getting the best education socialism can steal. I won’t be held hostage by someone who just got a learner’s permit. Sorry kiddo! Tell Al to try again.” In a slightly more dignified, if equally condescending manner, Russian president Vladimir Putin referred to Greta as a “kind but poorly informed teenager.”  The Illinois Family Institute, a right wing evangelical blog promoting the likes of Rev. Franklin Graham, askes, “can’t Greta Thunberg’s parents keep her from traveling across the ocean to thunder at adults at the U.N.?” If I may summarize these comments, they amount to the old moronic dictum, “children should be seen not heard.” All of this goes to show that weak minds float along in the same gutter. Wise people know that when little girls speak, it behooves us to listen.

Here is a poem by David Wagoner about the fragile, intuitive wisdom of children too often lost on adults and lost to children themselves if ignored, neglected or stolen through socialization in an adult culture.

That Child

That child was dangerous. That just-born
Newly washed and silent baby
Wrapped in deerskin and held warm
Against the side of its mother could understand
The language of birds and animals
Even when asleep. It knew why Bluejay
Was scolding the bushes, what Hawk was explaining
To the wind on the cliffside, what Bittern had found out
While standing alone in marsh grass. It knew
What the screams of Fox and the whistling of Otter
Were telling the forest. That child knew
The language of Fire
As it gnawed at sticks like Beaver
And what Water said all day and all night
At the creek’s mouth. As its small fingers
Closed around Stone, it held what Stone was saying.
It knew what Bear Mother whispered to herself
Under the snow. It could not tell
Anyone what it knew. It would laugh
Or cry out or startle or suddenly stare
At nothing, but had no way
To repeat what it was hearing, what it wanted most
Not to remember. It had no way to know
Why it would fall under a spell
And lie still as if not breathing,
Having grown afraid
Of what it could understand. That child would learn
To sit and crawl and stand and begin
Putting one foot forward and following it
With the other, would learn to put one word
It could barely remember slightly ahead
Of the other and then walk and speak
And finally run and chatter,
And all the Tillamook would know that child
Had forgotten everything and at last could listen
Only to people and was safe now.

Source: Poetry, May 2000. David Wagoner (b. 1926) is an American poet who has written many collections of poetry and ten novels. He attended Pennsylvania State University and received a master’s degree in English from Indiana University in 1949. Wagoner has taught at the University of Washington since 1954 and served as editor of Poetry Northwest and was elected chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1978. He currently teaches in the low-residency MFA program of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island, Washington. You can learn more about David Wagoner and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

[1] For reasons known only to God and the inscrutable minds of the makers of the common lectionary, verses 4-6 are omitted from this reading relating what transpired between Naaman and his king. Thus, the congregation finds itself wondering on Sunday morning, “What letter? And how did the King of Israel get involved with this business?”

Kierkegaard’s Ghost

(News that’s fake, but credible)

Late night comedy figures are reportedly in a panic over the potential impeachment of President Donald Trump. “This is serious,” Stephen Colbert, host of the Late Night Show, was heard to tell a gathering of his colleagues. “If Trump goes, we are left with Pence-and how unfunny is he.” Colbert went on to point out that Mr. Trump’s departure from office would likely be followed by the elevation of Mike Pence and his election in 2020 or the election of a Democratic challenger-neither of whom are likely to be the least bit funny. “Joking on Mike is like beating up on a kindergartener,” said Colbert. “And the dems? How can you make a joke about a chief executive who goes to work and does the job?” Colbert further explained that, “without Trump, our ratings go through the floor, the networks drop us and we all wind up on the Las Vegas/Atlantic City casino circuit.”

Jimmy Kimmel expressed similar concerns. “Trump has been our meal ticket,” he said. “Oh we got a few good laughs on George W. and Bill Clinton, but that took some work. Donald Trump-that man is a self executing joke. All we have to do is wait for the tweets and soundbites to come in and put them up on the screen.” Seth Meyers concurred adding, “this could be the biggest hit we have taken since Sarah Palin dropped off the grid.” Jimmy Fallen agreed saying, “we might be looking at the driest comedic stretch we have seen since the Obama presidency.”

Daily Show host Trever Noah expressed a more sanguine view. “Look,” he said. “We have to view this philosophically. We have had a great run for over two years. We all knew this would end someday. Trump’s impeachment just means we have to go back to writing our own material for a while.” So, too, comedian John Stewart expressed a degree of optimism. “I have great faith in the American people,” he said. “They gave us Donald Trump and I think they can be trusted to serve up another electoral joke sooner rather than later.”

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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

SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
Psalm 37:1-9
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

Prayer of the Day: Benevolent, merciful God: When we are empty, fill us. When we are weak in faith, strengthen us. When we are cold in love, warm us, that with fervor we may love our neighbors and serve them for the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

This week’s lessons are a hot mess of contradiction. On one hand, the psalmist’s confident assertion that those who “trust in the Lord and do good…will live in the land, and enjoy security.” Psalm 37:3. On the other, the cries of Habakkuk protesting the reign of  senseless violence, cruelty and injustice. In the psalmist’s world, righteousness is rewarded with safety, health, wealth and long life. The wicked “will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb.” Psalm 37:2. But the experience of Habakkuk does not comport with this rosy picture. Habakkuk lived and preached during the period of  Babylonian domination over the Southern Kingdom of Judah. He witnessed the selfishness and corruption of Judah’s leaders that finally led to the small kingdom’s loss of its land and its temple. He saw first hand the brutality of the conquering Babylonian army as it systematically destroyed his nation. In response to this ocean of blood letting and cruelty, often visited upon the innocent and that, in any event, seems out of all proportion to any sin anyone might have committed, the prophet has this to say:

Why do you make me see wrongdoing
and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
therefore judgement comes forth perverted. Habakkuk 1:3-4.

So, who are we to believe? Whose words ring true? Those of the prophet or those of the psalmist? Perhaps both of these biblical witnesses speak truthfully. Practicing honesty, integrity and compassion do lead to a better life-at least often enough that we encourage our children to work hard, tell the truth, play fair and be kind. In a society where justice is prized, righteousness is rewarded. But what happens when the institutions of government become instruments of oppression? What happens when commerce is driven by human greed rather than harnessed to meet human need? What happens when partisan lies become the coin of public discourse? What happens when white supremacy, patriarchy and nationalism are systemically imbedded in the foundations of government, education and the workplace? In the words of another psalmist, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Psalm 11:3.

It is hard to teach your children kindness and compassion when you are compelled to send them each day into a school plagued by bullying and violence. It is hard for employers to treat their employees justly when they must choose between terminating an otherwise productive employee or ceasing to provide health insurance for all employees. It is hard for judges to administer justice where law enforcement systematically singles out persons of color for prosecution. Righteousness is not a solo act. In a sense, no individual can be anymore righteous than the community of which s/he is a member. Habakkuk is speaking to a context in which “the foundations are destroyed.” So, the question is, how can the righteous live justly in such an unjust world?

The answer given to the prophet’s question is this: “the righteous live by their faith.” Habakkuk 2:4. That brings us to the gospel lesson where the disciples implore Jesus, “Increase our faith!” Luke 17:5. The lectionary has failed us here by omitting verses 1-4 of Chapter 17 in which Jesus describes the kind of community required for persons to live righteously:

Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent”, you must forgive.’”

This sounds very much like a twelve-step community in which each member takes on the responsibility of ensuring the sobriety of the other. Under no circumstances must any “stumbling block” be placed in the path of another that might lead to relapse. Moreover, because the possibility of relapse exists for each member, the health of the community requires that forgiveness and acceptance be the rule.

It should be obvious that life in such a community of recovering sinners requires faith. It requires faith in the redemptive presence of God’s Spirit that never gives up on anyone. It requires faith that each member of the community, however recalcitrant, annoying and seemingly disruptive, has been claimed by Christ and is present because s/he is precisely the one God needs to help build the mind of Christ within that community. It requires faith because the community might not recognize, appreciate or even desire the gifts you bring to it, much less reward you for your efforts. You might never see any positive results for the work you do or get the recognition you feel you deserve. But that shouldn’t matter. What matters is that God is at work and you are privileged to share in that work. That’s as much reward as is needed and can be expected.

The church exists to bear witness to a better way of being human, showing the world the kind of community required for people to live righteously. To be sure, the church is not a perfect community made up of better people. It is rather a gathering of people who know they have become intoxicated by the false values of a society whose foundations are cracked. They are gathered to help each other gain and maintain sobriety in a world drunk on selfishness, greed, violence and hateful ideologies. They are gathered to live under the gentle reign of God which, in a violent world, necessarily takes the shape of the cross. The cross is what righteousness looks like in an unrighteous world. The righteous live by faith because, where the foundations are destroyed, there is no other way to live.

It being Rosh-Hashanah, I thought it appropriate to cite this poem by Emma Lazarus who plumbs the depths of this ancient Jewish observance and the strong, stubborn, resilient faith it represents. It speaks, I believe, about the kind of faith for which Jesus calls in our gospel lesson.

The New Year

Rosh-Hashanah, 5643

Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled,

And naked branches point to frozen skies.—
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold,
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn
A sea of beauty and abundance lies,
Then the new year is born.

Look where the mother of the months uplifts
In the green clearness of the unsunned West,
Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts,
Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light;
Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest
Profusely to requite.

Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all.
The red, dark year is dead, the year just born
Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob,
To what undreamed-of morn?

For never yet, since on the holy height,
The Temple’s marble walls of white and green
Carved like the sea-waves, fell, and the world’s light
Went out in darkness,—never was the year
Greater with portent and with promise seen,
Than this eve now and here.

Even as the Prophet promised, so your tent
Hath been enlarged unto earth’s farthest rim.
To snow-capped Sierras from vast steppes ye went,
Through fire and blood and tempest-tossing wave,
For freedom to proclaim and worship Him,
Mighty to slay and save.

High above flood and fire ye held the scroll,
Out of the depths ye published still the Word.
No bodily pang had power to swerve your soul:
Ye, in a cynic age of crumbling faiths,
Lived to bear witness to the living Lord,
Or died a thousand deaths.

In two divided streams the exiles part,
One rolling homeward to its ancient source,
One rushing sunward with fresh will, new heart.
By each the truth is spread, the law unfurled,
Each separate soul contains the nation’s force,
And both embrace the world.

Kindle the silver candle’s seven rays,
Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers,
The garnered spoil of bees. With prayer and praise
Rejoice that once more tried, once more we prove
How strength of supreme suffering still is ours
For Truth and Law and Love.

Source: Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings, (c. 2002 by Broadview Press) Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) is most famous for the words of her poem, The New Colossus inscribed on the base of the Statute of Liberty.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

She was one of the first successful and publicly recognized Jewish American authors. Lazarus was born in New York City to a wealthy family. She began writing and translating poetry as a teenager and was publishing translations of German poems by the 1860s. Lazarus was moved by the fierce persecution of her people in Russia, a frequent topic of her writings, as well as their struggles to assimilate into American culture. You can sample more of Emma Lazarus’ poetry and read more about her at the Poetry Foundation website.

SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Amos 6:1a, 4-7
Psalm 146
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31

Prayer of the Day: O God, rich in mercy, you look with compassion on this troubled world. Feed us with your grace, and grant us the treasure that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“If we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.” I Timothy 6:8.

The plant in the above picture is dune grass. This photo was taken yesterday afternoon at LeCount Hollow beach on Cape Cod. Dune grass is sometimes improperly referred to as “poverty grass.” The misnomer is understandable. Like poverty grass, dune grass grows and thrives in nutrient poor soil where no other land plant can survive. It is commonly found, as here, on bare sand just inches above the tideline. I think it provides a helpful metaphor and lens through which to view this Sunday’s lessons, all of which focus on poverty and its antithesis, wealth. I will come back to that shortly. But first, a few observations about the gospel lesson.

This parable of Jesus is commonly referred to as “Lazarus and Dives.” The title contains yet another misnomer. “Dives” is not a proper name but only the Latin word used in the Vulgate translation of the New Testament for “rich.” In any event, I think a more apt title might be “The Great Chasm,” referring, of course, to the chasm separating Lazarus resting in the bosom of Father Abraham from the rich man burning in the garbage dump of Hades. It is important to recognize that this “great chasm” did not originate in the afterlife nor was it of God’s making. The rich man constructed this great chasm on his own when he first settled into his gated community, a community where he could live a sheltered life, untroubled by the sight of beggars. The chasm grew each time he was driven through the central city to his office in a black limo behind tinted windows with the silk drapes drawn against the wreckage of ruined neighborhoods. It grew each time he met the plaintive gaze of Lazarus lying at his gate, quickened his pace and walked through his door without making eye contact. Now, in the afterlife, that chasm is still there-only the rich man and Lazarus are on opposite sides. The great reversal foretold in Mary’s Magnificat has come to pass:

“[God] has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.” Luke 1:51-53.

You might think the rich man would have gotten the point, but he remains clueless. Even as he sits burning in the in the city garbage dump, he still thinks he is important. He still imagines that he is in a position to fraternize with Father Abraham. He still thinks Lazarus is his “boy” who can be ordered to “fetch” him a drink. Even after Abraham explains the situation to him, the rich man continues pressing for special favors, imploring the patriarch to send Lazarus to his errant brothers with a warning of the fate awaiting them also. This last request, illustrating once again the man’s arrogance and obtuseness, is unnecessary. “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them,” says Abraham. “No, father Abraham,” the fool protests, “but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”

Of course, we can’t miss the final irony in the rich man’s last plea. We know that someone has risen from the dead. Tragically, though, Abraham’s words have proven themselves. Two millennia later the chasm we have constructed between rich and poor remains and, if anything, it has gotten wider and more difficult to traverse. Nearly one half of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day. One billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, twenty-two thousand children die each day due to poverty. See Global Issues website. These are, of course, only numbers. We don’t see the names and the faces, nor do we hear the stories behind such soulless statistics. They are safely buried under neatly drawn graphs and pie charts, far away on the other side of the chasm.

It is all too tempting to use this text as a platform from which to launch an attack on the proverbial 1%, that is, the very few who control the majority of the world’s wealth. These, after all, are the “rich.” That term surely does not include those of us who slog to work five days a week or more for the better part of our lives just to pay for the roof over our heads, educate our children and scrape together enough savings to see us through the last years of our lives. But in our second lesson, the Apostle Paul expresses a different view of what constitutes excessive wealth. “If we have food and clothing,” he says, “we will be content with these.” I Timothy 6:8. Needless to say that I, along with most of the people to whom I preach, live far above Paul’s baseline. And though the only physical commodity for which Jesus commands us to pray is enough bread for the day, most of us have been raised to pursue the nirvana of “financial security.” How do we defend living well above Paul’s baseline when so many are compelled to live far below it? The sobering truth confronting us in Jesus’ parable, in the words of the prophet Amos and the teaching of the Apostle is that wealth has a powerful death grip on our souls. It is hardening our hearts, making us blind to our poor neighbors and deaf to their cries.

Before we can hope to call the world to repentance and to compassion for what it considers “the least” among us, we need to face up to the truth about our own sordid relationship to wealth. We need to acknowledge that, at the deepest level, we are hoarders. Clinically speaking, hoarders are individuals who experience persistent difficulty getting rid of or parting with possessions, leading to clutter that disrupts their ability to use their living or work spaces. On a spiritual plane, our obsession with accumulating wealth disrupts our relationship to our planet and to our neighbors. It is also the biggest obstacle to discipleship that we Christians in America encounter. Hoarding is a peculiarly human behavior. Animals typically do not overeat, accumulate more than they need or hunt other species to extinction. If they have any concept at all of tomorrow, it doesn’t figure into their behavior today.  Animals seem to have a primal instinct leading them to be content when there is food at hand, water nearby and no predators on the horizon. That ought to be enough, and it is enough for the ravens and for the grass of the fields. Luke 12:24-28. Along with godliness, says Paul, such “contentment” is “great gain.” I Timothy 6:6.

That brings me back to the dune grass. This hardy plant thrives where no plant should be able to live. It seems almost to delight in the poverty of its harsh environment, finding just enough of what it needs. Dune grass faces with a gleeful defiance the brutal wind from off the ocean and the briny moisture inflicted upon it. There are people like that too, though few in number. These unique individuals find similar contentment in “baseline” living. Saint Paul was one of them. “I have learned to be content with whatever I have,” says Paul. “I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.” Philippians 4:11-12. Saint Francis of Assisi was another such person. He also rejoiced in living day-to-day, receiving charity shamelessly and thankfully when in want, but giving cheerfully and generously when blessed with abundance. So, too, there continue to be Anabaptist communities like the Amish, monastic fellowships and other intentional Christian groups that find contentment in living simply and gently on the land, rejecting the American creed of contentment through accumulation and consumption. These witnesses testify to the better life God is able to give us-if only we can empty our hands to receive it.

If there is anyone with whom we ought to identify in Jesus’ parable, it is the brothers of the rich man. Like them, we are still alive. It is not too late for us to escape the heart hardening, soul crushing pursuit of success measured in terms of acquisition and financial security bought at the cost of impoverishing our neighbor. It is not too late for us to look past the veneer of our sheltered existence and see the people our consumptive lifestyle is destroying. It is not too late for us to begin dismantling the chasm our greed has built. Like the brothers, we have the words of Moses and the prophets calling us away from a life of greed and indifference into a life of compassion and generosity. More than that, we have the witness of the one who threw himself into the depths of that dreadful chasm and whom God raised from death. The chasm of callus indifference need not continue to define our relationships to one another, deadening souls on one side and crushing bodies on the other. It doesn’t have to be this way!

Here is a poem by John Reibetanz piercing the chasm of wealth and privilege to give us a glimpse of the human cost of our consumptive way of life.

Daily Bread

We have cried often when we have given them the little victualling we
had to give them; we had to shake them, and they have fallen to sleep
with the victuals in their mouths many a time.
(parent of children working at a textile mill, to an
1832 Parliamentary inquiry into child employment)

1.

They cry for children too tired to cry for themselves,
daughters twelve, eleven, eight—eyes
shutting down as a grate’s banked coals shut down
at midnight, in the rising damp called ‘home.’
Too tired to eat after eighteen hours feeding
looms whose steel teeth grind insatiably,
the girls will be offered up again at dawn.

Yet they are the lucky ones, to work where skylights
hold swatches of the unaffordable blue.
Imagine these girls’ mine-trapped cousins, hauling
black rocks on sledges up tunnels of black air:
half-undressed, belted, harnessed, saturated
with the oil-blackened water they crawl through
pumping ‘the lifeblood of British industry.’

Flogged for talking, Margaret Comeley, aged
nine, can sometimes close her mouth around
a piece of muffin—if she manages
to keep it from the rats, ‘so ravenous
they eat the corks out of our oil-flasks.’
Sarah Gooder fills her mouth with song
‘when I’ve light, but not in the dark; I dare not then.’

2.

Here is a working girl so filled with light
she is pure song: her sun-bright bodice shines
in counterpoint with her blue overskirt,
and, from her forehead’s crescent of white linen,
tapering light blazes a white path
down arms and wrists to folds of spread blue cloth,
like moonlight piloting the tide’s refrains.

A Dutch milkmaid, Tanneke Everpoel,
lucky enough to live in the Delft house
where Vermeer’s* eye and brush could catch the spill
of morning light as her brief peacefulness
brimmed over, serves here as a celebrant—
bread heaped up on the altar-like table,
wine transubstantiated into milk

whose brilliance seems the source of the room’s light
she pours forever from the earthenware’s
black core. His pose; yet—all hers—underneath it
(and signalled in her fixed eyes’ unconcern
for the beholder) such complete immersion
in what she does, that she is all she does
and it is she, this offering-up of day.

And he? When he was forty, the Sun King
invaded Holland. No one wanted art.
In debt to his baker for three years’ worth of bread,
Vermeer, according to his widow, falling
‘into a frenzy,’ passed ‘from being healthy’
in ‘a day or a day and a half … to being dead,’
‘the very great burden of his children … so taken to heart.’

3.

Knowing the earth is closer to the sun
in winter won’t revive the street person
sleeping towards cold death in a bus shelter.
Bread in a painting won’t cure stomach ache.
So Margaret dragged her great burden of coal
while Sarah sat terrified in the dark,
and neither knew Vermeer’s poised working girl,

broke bread with her, shared her breaking light.
The painting stood by, helpless to save them
or him, and looking at it now cannot
help anyone. Yet, it can cry for them,
as parents take their children’s grief to heart:
the beads of salt, shimmering on the bread
like diamonds, can be tears the two girls shed

down where no light sang their preciousness.
The cradled pitcher’s brim can be their hearth,
since it (and not the sky’s cold mine of stars)
pours out what cannot shelter us, but feeds
a hunger no daily bread can fill: for light—
light that, like coal, comes from our earth; hunger
that, unlike grief, is inexhaustible.

* Johannes Vermeer  (1632 – 1675) was a painter of the Dutch Baroque period. He specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class life.  The reference here is to one of his paintings entitled “The Milkmaid.”

Source: Mining for Sun (c. 2000 by John Reibetanz , pub. by Brick Books). John Reibetanz (b. 1944) was born in New York City and grew up in the eastern United States and Canada. He studied at Brooklyn College and Princeton University. He has published essays on Elizabethan drama and modern and contemporary poetry. He also authored a book on King Lear and translations of modern German poetry. Reibetanz has also written several of his own poems that have been published in the above cited work and in numerous other magazines and periodicals. Reibetanz currently lives in Toronto and is a Fellow at Victoria College. You can find out more about John Reibetanz and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.