TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Daniel 12:1-3

Psalm 16

Hebrews 10:11-25

Mark 13:1-8

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, your sovereign purpose brings salvation to birth. Give us faith to be steadfast amid the tumults of this world, trusting that your kingdom comes and your will is done through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” Mark 13:7-8.

It was back in the Fall of 1982, my first year of parish ministry, that a parishioner asked me whether I thought the events foretold by Jesus in today’s gospel were taking place today. Then, as now, there were potential and actual military conflicts on the horizon, natural disasters occurring and talk of the “end times” among popular media preachers. I responded in the affirmative then. Forty years later, my response is the same. People in Gaza, Haiti and South Sudan are caught in the clash of military conflicts and civil strife. Famine threatens the Horn of Africa. The effects of global warming are having injurious effects on the health and safety of millions. In all of those places the church is present and disciples of Jesus are witnessing in word and deed to God’s love for the world and God’s determination to redeem it. What many “end times” preachers refer to as the “great tribulation” is not a prediction of distant future events. The tribulation has always been among us. Black youths who experience police violence, indigenous peoples robbed of their land, their culture and sometimes their children, LGBTQ+ folk and their families facing judicial obliteration of their hard won rights and undocumented families fearing deportation and separation know well the nearness of the great tribulation. Only those of us privileged to have been born white, American/Northern European and reasonably well off perceive it as remote.

I am guessing that most of you reading this article share my dismay at the outcome of last Tuesday’s election. I spent a good deal of Wednesday in a blue funk wondering how a majority of my fellow Americans could imagine that a six time bankrupt could be the best manager for the national economy, how a convicted felon could be trusted to instill law and order, how a sexual predator could be trusted to “protect women.” I felt the urge to draw back the curtains, crawl back into bed and curl up into a fetal position. I’m past that now. If you are still there, I have just four words for you: Snap out of it.

Jesus never promised his disciples a rose garden. He challenged them to take up the cross for the sake of God’s just and gentle reign. He calls us to stand with him among the poor, naked, strangers, imprisoned and sick. That entails facing tribulation head on. Saint Peter would say to us, as he did to the first century believers in Asia Minor, “[b]eloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” I Peter 4:12. Dealing with set backs, defeats and hostility are occupational hazards of discipleship. So, let’s put on our grown-up pants and, as one of my mentors was fond of saying, “get to gitten.” We are not yet dodging bullets, facing arrest or struggling to care for injured children in a war zone with inadequate supplies-as are many faithful in many parts of the world, who are seeing the great tribulation up close and personal.

That said, it seems that the tribulation has drawn a good bit closer. It remains to be seen how much of Donald Trump’s bellicose rhetoric is hot air and how much will translate into violent and repressive policies. In the meantime, we can hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. How can I possibly hope for the best? Because I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to melt the hardest of hearts. I believe that there is hidden in every historical transaction a “God factor” that can turn events in surprising and unanticipated directions. Prayer enables us to enter into that divine struggle and open our hearts and minds to the Holy Spirit’s transformative power. I believe that human agency is real and that what we do, fail to do or refrain from doing makes a difference. So, in the words of our second lesson from the Letter to the Hebrews, “[l]et us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.” Hebrews 10:23.  

Equally as well, I believe that disciples of Jesus in these United States need to be prepared for the use of government power to impose the worst acts of oppression, bigotry, racial hate, homophobia, misogyny and xenophobia we have seen in over a century against the most vulnerable among us. To that end, our ELCA bishops need to put teeth into our sanctuary guidelines by urging congregations to move forward with and supporting their pastors in implementing outreach to migrants, networking with sibling congregations, faith communities, advocacy groups and other agencies providing housing, sustenance and legal support for immigrants. There is also an urgent need for training in non-violent resistance, a must for confronting directly a massive deportation effort threatened by the incoming Trump administration. Bishops should be consulting with and referring their congregations to the many organizations and persons skilled and experienced in these techniques-like yesterday. In short, dear bishops, what you wish the Lutheran Church in Germany had done in the 1930s, do now.  

Those of us who pastor congregations need to speak the truth about the Republican Party clearly, unequivocally and without apology. No doubt there will be objections that we are being “political” and “partisan.” But this is not about politics. We can disagree in good faith over what needs to be done to fix our broken immigration system and manage our border. But when it comes to splitting up families, spewing lies about racial minorities and referring to immigrants as “vermin” who “poison the blood” of our nation, there is nothing to discuss. From a Christian perspective, politics are the means by which we love our neighbors-whether white, black or brown, whether gay, straight or nonbinary, whether documented or not. Politicized hate is not legitimate politics. It is simply terrorism and state sponsored violence the likes of which organizations like the KKK, Proud Boys and Aryan Nations routinely advocate and employ. By any metric you can devise, the Republican Party is a hate group every bit as much as the aforementioned. We need to say so to our members. And to those support Donald Trump, we need to say “Look, you are no doubt good people. You are loved by God and a treasured part of our community. But whether through ignorance, indifference or malice, you are participating in a terrible, hurtful and destructive movement with a hateful political organization. For that you should be ashamed. You need to repent of your sin before it devours you.” That our churches and their leaders have too seldom spoken this truth is, I believe, a failure of prophetic nerve.  

More important, however, than anything bishops and pastors can do is for each one of us to speak up, stand up and testify in our own daily lives against hatred and in defense of the most vulnerable among us. That is how change happens. We need to be speaking up at family barbeques, beauty parlors, bowling alleys, mall walking clubs, Bible studies, book clubs and wherever we find ourselves situated. You never know where the opportunity will pop up to push, however incrementally, a seemingly closed mind in a new direction. You never know whether your words will embolden someone else, who thought they were all alone, to speak up as well. You never can tell when children or impressionable young people might be watching, wondering whether the MAGA loudmouth in the room speaks for the whole adult world. You might be the one whose speech opens the ears of a young gay, lesbian or non-binary person, who has heard from the church only words of judgment and condemnation, to hear a good word of love, acceptance and hope from Jesus. So speak, even if your voice is shaking, even when you are struggling to find the right words, even when it seems unlikely that speaking up will make a difference. Trust me-or rather, trust Jesus. It will.    

I do worry that the American church has become so accustomed to being the nation’s chaplain that we cannot imagine our existence apart from that role. I worry that our faith has become so symbiotically bound up with patriotism and American values that we cannot imagine ourselves as a countercultural community. I worry that we sometimes wade so deep into the political fray as to get lost in the weeds and forget that our job is not to reform America, save democracy or elect the candidate we believe capable of performing these tasks. Our loyalty is-or should be-to the reign of God before all else and to the exclusion of every loyalty demanding of us attitudes, actions and commitments contrary to that reign. Nations like ours, as the prophet Isaiah reminds us, are a “drop in the bucket.” Isaiah 40:15. As the grand old hymn reminds us, “crowns and thrones shall parish; kingdoms wax and wane.” Democrats might be fretting over how they need to reformulate, reshape and repackage their message to do better in the next election. For the church of Jesus Christ, the message remains the same and let polls, focus groups and election results be damned.    

There is some good news in Sunday’s otherwise dark gospel lesson. Jesus tells us that the tribulation we are experiencing is not the death throes of all God has made. Rather, it is the birth pangs of new creation. To be clear, I do not believe for one moment that God wills wars, famines or earthquakes. But I do believe that God takes whatever we and the world throw at God and turns it toward God’s own redemptive intent. It has been said that the arc of the universe bends toward justice. If that is true, then that arc is imperceptibly gradual. It appears to me that the way of the universe is a disjointed path along which we crawl forward and get thrown back repeatedly. Progress is ephemeral and likely to evaporate at any point. That God is leading the universe to its end in God is not evident in the ebb and flow of history. It is only glimpsed in Jesus’ resurrection. Faith in the Resurrection is the only way to make sense of a people who persist in putting their trust in God and loving their neighbors, enemies included, in a world so thoroughly hostile to God and infected with hate. Disciples are the people who forgive whether forgiveness is requested or not. They are the people who care for the planet, speak up for its most vulnerable residents and bring healing to its deepest wounds-even when their efforts appear too feeble, too late, ineffective and hopeless. Yes, it’s dark out there with no sign of dawn anytime soon. But God does some of God’s best work in the dark. After all, nothing is darker than a tomb.

Here is a poem by Arthur Hugh Clough calling for faithful and persistent struggle for the good, not unlike Jesus’ call for endurance in the midst of tribulation.

Say not the Struggle nought Availeth

Source: This poem is in the public domain. Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) was an English poet, an educationalist and an assistant to Florence Nightingale. He was the brother of suffragist Anne Clough and father of Blanche Athena Clough, who both became principals of Newnham College, Cambridge.  Clough was born in Liverpool, England, but his family moved to the United States in 1822. Clough’s early childhood was spent mainly in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1837 he won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. Thereafter, he won a fellowship with a tutorship at Oriel College, but resigned in 1848 because he was unwilling to teach the doctrines of the Church of England as required. He traveled to Europe where he witnessed the revolutionary movements of the time which, in turn, inspired several of his poems. In 1852 he traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he lectured for several months. He returned to London in 1853 where he worked as an unpaid secretarial assistant to Florence Nightengale, his wife’s cousin. In 1860, his health began to fail, but despite this turn of events, he took an extended tour of travel throughout Europe during which he wrote several of his longest poems. He died in Florence in 1861, having contracted malaria in Switzerland. You can read more about Arthur Hugh Clough and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

ALL SAINTS SUNDAY

Isaiah 25:6-9

Psalm 24

Revelation 21:1-6

John 11:32-44

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.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…” Revelation 21:1.

“Spoiler alert” is term used by book reviewers and film critics warning their readers that they are about to disclose events, episodes or other accounts in a work of fiction that might betray its ending and thus ruin the suspense, surprise and enjoyment of that work for the prospective audience. I can understand the concern here. One of the fiercest arguments I ever had with my younger sister (of which there were many) was on the day she disclosed the ending of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy while I was just half way through the second book. I cannot say that the book was completely spoiled for me. But the sharp edges on the elements of suspense and the element of surprise had been substantially blunted. Knowing that Frodo’s mission would succeed, that he and his companion Sam Gamgee would survive and how the power of Sauron would be broken took much of the wind out of the books’ sails.

Of course, it is one thing to read the story and quite another to be a character within it. When you stand within rather than above the drama, you desperately want a spoiler. You want to know how things that affect you are going to turn out.  Frodo, Sam and all the other protagonists of Middle Earth would no doubt have been greatly relieved to know that their efforts, sacrifices and struggles would finally pay off. But when you are in the midst of a story, you cannot know when, how or under what circumstances it will end. You have no way of knowing whether you are living a comedy or tragedy. This is all reminiscent of the ancient tale of Croesus and Solon.

Croesus was the last king of Lydia, proverbial for his enormous fortune. Solon, on the other hand, was one of the Seven Sages of Greece, the philosopher-statesman who first laid down the laws which shaped the Athenian democracy. Solon visited Croesus at his palace in Sardis. Croesus entertained the philosopher for two nights and ordered his attendants to show him around his treasures. The king asked Solon whether he knew of any man happier then him. Solon gave several examples of persons who had lived nobly and died. None of them was rich or powerful. The exasperated Croesus fairly shouted, “but can you deny that I am surely the happiest man living?” Solon replied that, surely, the king had known wealth, power and success beyond his peers. Nevertheless, a person never knows what tomorrow will bring. Thus, said Solon, “you should count no man happy until he dies.” Not long afterward, Croesus’ son went hunting and accidentally wounded himself fatally. Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, attacked Lydia and conquered it. Croesus narrowly escaped being burnt to death and spent the remainder of his life as a prisoner of the Persian king. That his beginning was so very glorious only made his end the more bitter.

None of us knows how our story will end. What we wouldn’t give for a spoiler-some indication of how things will play out for us! The Book of Revelation, from which our second lesson is taken, is something of a spoiler. It discloses how everything ends. The old will give way to the new. God’s dwelling will be among God’s human creatures. Death will be no more. Every tear will be wiped from every eye. Mourning will give way to rejoicing. Pain will be forgotten. That is how it all ends. Evil, suffering and death will have their say, but they do not get the last word. That belongs to the One who says, “See, I am making all things new.” Revelation 21:5.

Of course, this is a very long story of which we are all a very short part. Moreover, we have no idea where we are in the story of God’s creative and redemptive dance with the world. Are we closer to Revelation, as many “end times” preachers would have us believe? Or are we closer to Genesis with millennia left to go before God is all in all? If Jesus himself could not answer that question, it is highly doubtful that any of the rest of us can. We are consigned, it seems, to living in what pastor, teacher and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has termed, “the anxious middle.”

Our gospel lesson addresses our anxiety with the promise that Jesus is “the resurrection and the life.” Throughout John’s gospel, disciples are encouraged to “abide” in Jesus. Jesus promises that through the promised Holy Spirit, he will “abide” in them just as he “abides” with his heavenly Father. We are therefore assured, not only that the great story will end in a new heaven and earth in which death, suffering and mourning are at an end, but also that our little stories, however broken and sorrowful they might be, will be redeemed and woven into the fabric of this new creation.  

On this All Saints Sunday, we are reminded that we are part of a story bigger than ourselves, a story that begins with the creative love of God and ends with God’s eternal embrace. Here is a poem by Stephen Dobyns speaking to the fraught and conflicted stories that have made and continue to make the long story of human existence.

Long Story

There must have been a moment after the expulsion
from the Garden where the animals were considering
what to do next and just who was in charge.
The bear flexed his muscles, the tiger flashed
his claws, and even the porcupine thought himself
fit to rule and showed off the knife points
of his quills. No one noticed the hairless creatures,
with neither sharp teeth, nor talons, they were too puny.
It was then Cain turned and slew his own brother
and Abel’s white body lay sprawled in the black dirt
as if it had already lain cast down forever.
What followed was an instant of prophetic thought
as the trees resettled themselves, the grass
dug itself deeper into the ground and all
grew impressed by the hugeness of Cain’s desire.
He must really want to be boss, said the cat.
This was the moment when the animals surrendered
the power of speech as they crept home to the bosoms
of their families, the prickly ones, the smelly ones,
the ones they hoped would never do them harm.
Who could envy Cain his hunger? Better to be circumspect
and silent. Better not to want the world too much.
Left alone with the body of his brother, Cain began
to assemble the words about what Abel had done
and what he had been forced to do in return.
It was a long story. It took his entire life
to tell it. And even then it wasn’t finished.
How great language had to become to encompass
its deft evasions and sly contradictions,
its preenings and self-satisfied gloatings.
Each generation makes a contribution, hoping
to have got it right at last. The sun rises
and sets. The leaves flutter like a million
frightened hands. Confidently, we step forward
and tack a few meager phrases onto the end.

Source: Poetry (October/November 1987). Stephen J. Dobyns (b. 1941) is an American poet and novelist born in Orange, New Jersey. He began his education at Shimer College but transferred to and graduated from Wayne State University in 1964. He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1967. He has worked briefly as a reporter for the Detroit News. Dobyns taught at numerous academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University and Boston University. Dobyns has written twenty-four novels in a variety of genres, fourteen poetry collections and two non-fiction works about the craft of poetry. You can read more about Stephen Dobyns and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 31:7-9

Psalm 126

Hebrews 7:23-28

Mark 10:46-52

Prayer of the Day: Eternal light, shine in our hearts. Eternal wisdom, scatter the darkness of our ignorance. Eternal compassion, have mercy on us. Turn us to seek your face, and enable us to reflect your goodness, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Immediately [Bartimaeus] regained his sight and followed [Jesus] on the way.” Mark 10:52.

I have always read this story as one of healing, a journey from blindness to sight, incapacity to wholeness. Now I am not so sure. We are told that Bartimaeus was “blind.” I take that to mean, literally, that his eyes were inoperable such that he could not see with them. But does it follow that he was “blind?” I have had the privilege of knowing well two persons lacking the sense of sight. One of them was born without sight and the other lost her sight gradually in her teens. But I would not characterize either of these individuals as blind. I learned from them that, when one loses one’s sight, the remaining senses become more acute. My friend Dave (not his real name) was born without sight, yet he had a keen appreciation for sound, texture, smell and taste. He picked up on emotions, moods, conviction (or lack thereof) in the speech of others most of us frequently missed. He noticed the song of the chickadee, the call of a cricket and the sound of an acorn hitting the pavement, all of which is often just “white noise” to the rest of us. Though unable to see at all from the age of nineteen on, Melony (not her real name) managed to maintain a virtual library of remembered visual experiences that translated into stunning works of poetry evoking images that broadened the view of her readers well beyond the scope of normal sight.[1] For both of these individuals, it was their limitations that spurred their perception, insight and creativity to extraordinary levels.

So, too, I think that Bartimaeus had “eyes to see” notwithstanding his impaired vision. He was desperate to get Jesus’ attention, to the point of annoying his followers. Though told to pipe down, he shouted all the more to “Jesus, son of David.” When asked by Jesus what he wanted, he replied that he wished to receive his sight, but I think there was more to his request than that. We read that once he was able to see, he “followed Jesus in the way.” Can we assume that Bartimaeus desired to receive his sight to that end? Could it be that this “blind man” understood what Jesus’ disciples failed to grasp, namely, the “way” in which Jesus calls us to follow him? Is Bartimaeus among the few people, like the anonymous woman who anointed Jesus with oil and the centurion at the foot of the cross, who understood who Jesus was and what he was up to? Did he, like Dave and Melony, possess an enhanced perceptiveness honed by his impairment? People are not defined by their limitations. To the contrary, they define themselves in their struggle with those limitations. Some such limitations are physical disabilities, like blindness. Others include the challenge of being a parent in the midst of a bitter divorce; putting life together again after being fired; fighting addiction; dealing with depression. Of course, all of us face the limits imposed on us by our mortality. It is in these struggles that character is shaped, empathy developed, new skills discovered, forgiveness learned, hearts strengthened and minds expanded. As the poet reminds us, “that which ties us to the earth/enables us to fly.”

Tied to the Earth

Source: Anonymous          

---

[1] Both John Milton and the ancient bard, Homer are said to have been blind. Regardless whether that is historically accurate, it testifies to the longstanding recognition among artists and poets that human creativity transcends and is even enhanced by sensual limitations.

       

Kierkegaard’s Ghost

(News that’s fake, but credible)

The Ghost has just obtained the transcript of an interchange between Vice President Kamala Harris and Fox anchor Bret Baier just prior to her interview on Fox News.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris recently sat for an interview on Fox News with chief political anchor, Bret Baier. The interview coverned a wide range of subjects, including immigration, the economy, responding to U.S. adversaries and more.

Proir to the interview, Harris was heard to express some reluctance to Baier about appearing on Fox News. 

[Begin transcript]

Harris: I don’t want to go among mad people.

Baier: Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.

Harris: How do you know I’m mad?

Baier: You must be or you wouldn’t have come here. All mad people come here. Rudy  Giuliani, Kari Lake, Kristi Noem and, of course, Donald Trump. If you were sane, you wouldn’t set foot in our studio. We haven’t had a sane voice here since Chris Wallace left us.

[End Transcript]

**************************************************************

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

TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 53:4-12

Psalm 91:9-16

Hebrews 5:1-10

Mark 10:35-45

Prayer of the Day: Sovereign God, you turn your greatness into goodness for all the peoples on earth. Shape us into willing servants of your kingdom, and make us desire always and only your will, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” Hebrews 5:7.

This is perhaps an allusion to Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane that the imminent “cup” of suffering and death might pass him by. Jesus had no death wish. He wanted desperately to live. His prayer to God for salvation from death was sincere. It was also heard by God-but not answered affirmatively. Jesus died prematurely, horribly, alone and, according to the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, in conformance with God’s will.

Theologians have struggled for millennia at coming to grips with this affirmation that Jesus’ death on the cross was both necessary and consistent with God’s will. What sort of parents would murder their children and what noble end could possibly justify such perverse means? The explanation offered by substitutionary atonement theology, namely, that Jesus’ death was necessary to satisfy the requirement for just punishment of sin demanded by a righteous God, works well on a very high level of abstraction. The trouble is that human life and experience occurs in the messy concrete. We know from our own experience that it is possible to forgive wrongdoing without extracting repayment. It happens every day within our marriages, within our families and within our communities. If Mom could forgive me for breaking a lamp in my childish roughhousing that was given to her by Grandma and that had been in the family for years, regardless of my inability ever to replace such a treasure, is it too much to expect the same from a supposedly merciful God?

There is, I think, a better way of understanding the necessity of Jesus’ suffering and death. Did God will that Jesus die? In the absolute sense, yes. “The Word became flesh,” John the Evangelist tells us. John 1:14. Unless the body Jesus wore in “the days of his flesh” was merely a clever disguise and never actually part and parcel of God’s Son, then Jesus was, as our creeds confess, truly human. To be truly human is to be mortal. When God became flesh, when God determined to be “God with us,” God assumed all that goes with being human, including death. Jesus was therefore no more immune from death than any the rest of us.

The deeper inquiry takes us to the heart of the gospels. Given that Jesus would necessarily endure death, was it necessary that he die so cruelly. Again, the answer is an unqualified “yes.” The reason lies hidden in the mystery of the Incarnation. I think the Eastern Church does a better job of articulating this mystery, reminding us that the Word’s becoming flesh was not an afterthought or an unpleasant necessity forced upon God in order to straighten out a world that had gone off the rails. The Incarnation was God’s intent from the beginning, before the world was formed, before humanity took its first breath, before Adam and Eve succumbed to sin. From the very beginning it was God’s will to become flesh, an act that God undertook not because of the fall into sin, but in spite of it. God is determined to become human, human as humans were meant to be, living joyfully, thankfully and generously under the just and gentle reign of God, even if this was to be done in the midst of a world determined to reject that reign. The inevitable consequence of being truly human in an inhumane world is suffering and the cross. The cross is the price God was willing to pay in order to stick with God’s eternal intent to be Immanuel, “God with us.”

The reality is that love hurts. Everyone who has ever raised a child, lost a spouse, or been betrayed by a friend knows that people who dare to love, risk getting hurt. Love sometimes calls upon us to make sacrifices, give up on opportunities or close the door on lifelong ambitions to care for the people near and dear to us. The love that is God does not shy away from such sacrifices, even when they threaten to drain the life out of us. Because this love is the very essence of God, the glue that binds the Trinity as one, the Word in which, as Saint Paul tells us, “all things hold together,”( Colossians 1:17), it is eternal. Living in love is to partake in eternal life. Jesus, the embodiment of God’s love, is therefore “the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” Hebrews 5:9.

It is in light of these observations that I believe we need to consider our gospel lesson for this Sunday in which James and John seek to be at the right and left hand of Jesus in his glory. What were their motives? Were they seeking positions of power, influence and privilege? That might have been part of it. But I also believe that they might have been seeking a deeper relationship with Jesus and a more intense involvement with God’s coming reign of justice and peace. Perhaps, like so many of us who end up in the “helping professions,” they wanted “to make a difference,” to change the world for the better. I shared those motivations early on in my ministry. But I don’t necessarily believe that changing the world is our responsibility. In spite of his ministry of teaching, healing and preaching, Jesus did not change the world. God changed the world by raising Jesus from death. If there had been no Resurrection, Jesus would be remembered, if at all, as just one more starry-eyed idealist who got himself impaled on the sharp, cruel edges of reality while pursuing an impossible utopian dream.

Jesus’ resurrection, however, re-defines reality. The teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, so far from being impractical for surviving in a violent, cruel and unjust world, are intensely practical if one believes, as do disciples of Jesus, that in the end, what will matter is how we have treated the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the refugee, the naked and the sick among us. Some are called to do this on a macro level in the realm of politics, community organizing and public ministry. Many more of us are called to do it with our children, chronically ill family members, neighbors in need, homebound members of our churches and neighborhoods. But the measure of one’s discipleship, if such a thing is even measurable, is the same suffering love God exercises in the flesh of Jesus.

Once again, I cannot get inside the minds of James and John. I cannot discern their motivations. But one thing I do know. That when Jesus was “glorified,” when the depth of his love was most explicitly demonstrated, those at his right and left hand were hanging on crosses, mocking him along with the rest of the crowd. No wonder Jesus said to James and John, “You do not know what you are asking.” Mark 10:38. Being at Jesus’ right or left hand is not a privilege awarded to those of extraordinary virtue, faith and courage. It is always a gift given to those most in need of Jesus’ healing touch, whether they deserve it or not. In the end, we are as close to Jesus as we are to the person nearest to us in deepest need of God’s redemptive love. We are as great as we are compassionate.

Here is a poem by Robert Duncan exploring some images that give us a glimpse of what incarnational love might look like.

Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal

Source: The Opening of the Field, (c. 1960 by Robert Duncan; pub. by New Directions Publishing Corporation) Robert Duncan (1919–1988) was an American poet. He was born in Oakland, California and spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Duncan was heavily influenced by Hilda “H.D.” Doolittle. He is associated with many literary traditions and schools, including the Black Mountain College. Duncan, who came out as a gay man in 1941, figures prominently in the history of pre-Stonewall gay culture. In 1944, he wrote the landmark essay “The Homosexual in Society.” In that essay, Duncan argued that society’s treatment of gay persons was a civil rights issue comparable to the plight of African Americans and Jews. It was published in Dwight Macdonald’s journal, politics. You can read more about Robert Duncan and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Amos 5:6-7, 10-15

Psalm 90:12-17

Hebrews 4:12-16

Mark 10:17-31

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and ever-living God, increase in us your gift of faith, that, forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to what lies ahead, we may follow the way of your commandments and receive the crown of everlasting joy, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“For I know how many are your transgressions,
   and how great are your sins—
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,
   and push aside the needy in the gate.
Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time;
   for it is an evil time.” Amos 5:12-13.

There are times when it is prudent to keep your mouth shut. That is what Dad told my Mom the day one of my relatives over for Thanksgiving dinner made a racist joke employing the “N” word. “We don’t talk about other people that way and we don’t use that word in this house,” she said. “Hey, just making a joke,” our visitor replied. “Well it isn’t funny,” Mom replied. An awkward and uncomfortable silence prevailed over the rest of the evening with a few feeble attempts at small talk. “Why did you have to make a scene,” Dad asked in an exasperated tone once our guest had gone. “You know he’s always spouting garbage like that. It’s best just to ignore him. You are never going to change his mind.”

My Dad was half right. This particular individual was hardened in his racism and not the sort of man likely to change his mind. But his was not the only mind at the table. My siblings and I were there, too. We learned a valuable lessen that evening from our mother. When someone speaks racism, you don’t just let it pass. You speak up, you rock the boat, you make a scene-even if it means spoiling a visit, offending your guest and opening a rift in the family. In the midst of evil times, when the righteous are afflicted, those entrusted with ensuring justice take bribes and the needy are pushed aside at the border, the prudent keep silent, but prophets speak up.

The prophet Amos was no more prudent than Mom. He spoke truth to systemic injustice. It was an act of uncommon courage for this prophet who was a foreigner and an immigrant in the Kingdom of Israel. I have always assumed that Amos spoke with a powerful and commanding voice like James Earl Jones. But these days, I sometimes wonder whether his voice shook and his hands trembled like Mom’s did on that Thanksgiving day decades ago. There are consequences for disturbing domestic, societal and ecclesiastical peace with truthful speech. Mom’s truthful words created a family rift that was not soon healed. Amos’ preaching earned him swift deportation back to his homeland of Judah. For many faithful witnesses, truthful speech has brought violence, imprisonment and death. Thus, while prudence is surely an important virtue, it is not the highest. In evil times, the faithful speak the truth and let the political, familial, ecclesiastical chips fall wherever they will.

This Sunday my congregation celebrated world communion Sunday by acknowledging our Lutheran ministry of welcome through the agency of Global Refuge, formerly known as Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. With more than 1,000 partners and 50,000 volunteers, World Refuge is the largest faith-based national nonprofit exclusively dedicated to helping restore a sense of home to immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. Our hymn of the day was entitled “Build a Longer Table,” the text of which follows:

“Build a Longer Table, not a higher wall,

feeding those who hunger, making room for all.

Feasting together, stranger turns to friend,

Christ breaks walls to pieces; false divisions end.[1]”

Advocating and resettling refugees is nothing new for Lutherans in the United States. We have been doing this work for over seventy years and, until the recent decade, it has been no more controversial than church potlucks. Under the present cultural climate of racism, xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment, however, such work is regarded as unamerican and subversive by a large segment of our country’s population. Advocating for refugees in the face of howling MAGA mobs shouting “build the wall” is not for the faint of heart. Moreover, to be perfectly fair and balanced, neither of our major political parties has shown much interest in “building a longer table” when it comes to migrants and refugees. If Republicans have openly “pushed the needy aside in the gate,” Democrats have been doing a pretty good job of “keeping silent” about the tragic effects of our failed border policy.

While keeping silent might be politically prudent, it is not an option for disciples of Jesus for whom the commandment to love one’s neighbor knows no borders. While I applaud the recent statement of ELCA Bishop Elizabeth Eaton supporting the Haitian residents of Springfield Ohio, recently vilified and slandered by the Republican presidential and vice-presidential nominees, I could wish that it had said unequivocally what needs to be said, namely, that the Republican Party, which, through its elected leaders, espouses racial hate is an instrument of oppression no less than the KKK, the Aryan Nation and the Proud Boys. The Republican Party and the deviant expressions of Christianity that give it spiritual legitimacy are as much a threat as was the National Socialist Party and the German Christian movement in Germany of the 1930s.

I know that many will tell me I am being hysterical. “Come on, Peter! You cannot seriously argue that a little trash talk by politicians during an election season is comparable to the systematic murder of six million Jews. We are not even close to that!” In response to those of you who raise this objection, I have just one question: How close do you want to get? Must our Haitian residents actually be killed before you acknowledge the danger? If so, how many? Do we have to reach the full number of six million? Or will a million do? How about five-hundred thousand? And what about other groups oppressed by Republican culture war tactics? Can we tolerate legislation removing protections for transgender kids just as long as it only opens the door for hazing, bullying and humiliation? Do we have to wait until they suffer actual violence? And, again, how high does the body count have to get before you are willing to call it a systemic crime against humanity and name the perpetrators? How long and how far must things go before you throw prudence to the wind and speak the hard truths that must be heard?

I recently issued a call for our church to declare the Republican Party a hate group under the criteria of the Southern Poverty Law Center. I have not received a response and do not expect one. For one thing, national denominations such as the ELCA are not likely to bother reading, much less responding to, the ravings of an old retired pastor. To be fair, there are a lot of us out here in cyberspace and the bishops’ time is probably better spent on matters other than keeping track of a bunch of bloggers. Furthermore, the consequences of such a declaration would be highly disruptive. No doubt, many high value donners would be offended. To the extent that preachers find the courage to bring this hard word to their congregations, we could well see churches split and members lost. Bringing this message into our homes would likely lead to further family rifts and estrangement. Jesus was well aware of these consequences:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Matthew 10:34-36.

In some places, speaking truth to power can get you deported-or hung on a cross. No, we are not there yet. But, again, I have to ask, how close you want to get?

I cannot deny that remaining silent, inoffensive and soft spoken is the most prudent course during this “evil time.” For all who choose prudence, I commend you to God and your conscience. For my part, I prefer a church divided over the cross of Jesus Christ than one united under anything less. I prefer the enduring peace of God’s just reign to the false, fragile and superficial peace maintained by silence. Disciples of Jesus, I believe, must be prepared to disturb the former peace for the sake of the latter.

Here is a poem by Denise Levertov that shatters the false and fragile peace of silence and complicity.

Goodbye to Tolerance

Genial poets, pink-faced

earnest wits—

you have given the world

some choice morsels,

gobbets of language presented

as one presents T-bone steak

and Cherries Jubilee.

Goodbye, goodbye,

                            I don’t care

if I never taste your fine food again,

neutral fellows, seers of every side.

Tolerance, what crimes

are committed in your name.

And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,

blood donors. Your crumbs

choke me, I would not want

a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped

by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never

falter: irresponsive

to nightmare reality.

It is my brothers, my sisters,

whose blood spurts out and stops

forever

because you choose to believe it is not your business.

Goodbye, goodbye,

your poems

shut their little mouths,

your loaves grow moldy,

a gulf has split

                     the ground between us,

and you won’t wave, you’re looking

another way.

We shan’t meet again—

unless you leap it, leaving

behind you the cherished

worms of your dispassion,

your pallid ironies,

your jovial, murderous,

wry-humored balanced judgment,

leap over, un-

balanced? … then

how our fanatic tears

would flow and mingle

for joy …

Source:Breathing the Water (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1987). Denise Levertov (1923–1997) never received a formal education. Nevertheless, she created a highly regarded body of poetry that earned her recognition as one of America’s most respected poets. Her father, Paul Philip Levertov, was a Russian Jew who converted to Christianity and subsequently moved to England where he became an Anglican minister.  Levertov grew up in a household surrounded by books and people talking about them in many languages. During World War II, Levertov pursued nurse’s training and spent three years as a civilian nurse at several hospitals in London. Levertov came to the United States in 1948, after marrying American writer Mitchell Goodman. During the 1960s Levertov became a staunch critic of the Vietnam war, a topic addressed in many of her poems of that era. Levertov died of lymphoma at the age of seventy-four. You can read more about Denise Levertov and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

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[1] Text by David Bjorlin, b. 1984, Music Noel Nouvelet (French Caorl) GIA Publications, Inc. To hear the full hymn, click on this link.

TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Genesis 2:18-24

Psalm 8

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

Mark 10:2-16

Prayer of the Day: Sovereign God, you have created us to live in loving community with one another. Form us for life that is faithful and steadfast, and teach us to trust like little children, that we may reflect the image of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” Mark 10:11.

“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24.

If you are going to preach on the text from Hebrews or the Psalms, then you would be well advised to use alternative texts for the gospel lesson and the reading from Genesis. That is because these two texts carry with them a tremendous load of interpretive baggage that will determine how they are heard and processed. Of particular concern are those persons in the congregation who are divorced; persons struggling with issues of gender identity; and, of course, gay and lesbian folk who may not see themselves in either the creation story or Jesus’ remarks on marriage and divorce. Thus, in my opinion, if these texts are to be read in worship, they must be addressed in the sermon.

A few points need to be made with respect to the gospel. First and foremost, it must be emphasized that the question put to Jesus about divorce is a man’s question asked by men in what was (and to what a large degree still is) a man’s world. In first century Judean culture, divorce was the prerogative of men. Women could not divorce their husbands.[1] In a world without equitable distribution, alimony or child support, divorce imposed a disproportionate burden on wives. Divorced women had the option of returning to their father’s household, though there was no guarantee they would be well received. A divorced woman brought shame on her family. If the divorced woman had no family to which she could return, her future was even more bleak. In the world where Jesus lived and moved, divorce was an instrument of oppression against women and perhaps their children as well.

Jesus responds to his opponents’ question about divorce by expanding the scope of the discussion. Jesus would have them know that Moses had quite a bit more to say about marriage than how to end it. Jesus reaches back to the creation narratives from Genesis, also attributed to Moses. God created men and women to be “partners.” They were to support and care for one another in a covenant relationship of mutual faithfulness. Of course, then and now, marriages fail for numerous reasons. But the point to be made is that the failure of a marriage does not mean that the partners’ responsibility for one another is at an end. Here it is important to make the point that persons who have ended their marriage and yet continue to honor their obligations to support their spouses and care for the children born during the course of the marriage are not the equivalent of the men Jesus addresses who would simply dispose of their wives for a newer model. Divorced couples who continue to cooperate in raising their children, honoring obligations incurred during the marriage and maintaining a caring (if not romantic) working relationship are to be applauded, encouraged and supported-not judged and condemned.   

Lurking in the background here is the issue of domestic abuse. These words of Jesus concerning divorce, taken out of their context, have lent support to the false belief that God would have a person remain in an abusive marriage rather than seek divorce or separation. As with the sabbath, marriage was made for the wellbeing of people, not people for the institution of marriage. When a marriage ceases to be a sanctuary of love, human maturation and security for all family members, it must be set aside just as surely as the sabbath must be set aside in the interest of human health and wellbeing. God does not will for anyone to be abused physically or emotionally. This point must be made emphatically. It would also be helpful to list in the bulletin for Sunday contact information of persons and agencies providing assistance to victims of domestic abuse.  

And now we come to the Genesis reading. This story has been widely cited as a “proof text” for the proposition that the Bible views marriage exclusively as a life long partnership between one man and one woman. Of course, that is not the case. The Bible recognizes polygamy and concubinage (sexual slavery) as legitimate forms of marriage. It all depends upon which texts you chose to fixate. This is the problem that always arises when we approach the Bible with our own concerns and agendas. We desperately want the Bible to give us a hard and fast definition of marriage. But God is not particularly concerned about that. The quotation of what appears to be an ancient saying about a man leaving his mother and cleaving to his wife comes at the end of the story. It serves more as an illustration than a prescription. What God is concerned about is loneliness. “It is not good,” says God, “that the man [earth creature] should be alone.” If we read this text from the standpoint of God’s priorities rather than our own moral, political and societal interests, I think we come to some very different conclusions. God wills for human beings to experience friendship, love and intimacy. It is not good for any human being to be deprived of these good gifts.

Finally, a word about Jesus’ allusion to the first chapter of Genesis in which the poet declares of the human race, “male and female [God] created them.” Genesis 1:27. This verse is often cited as a proof text for the proposition that one is either male or female with no room for any other sexual or gender identification. Yet the poet’s language throughout the first creation narrative puts the lie to this notion. God separated the light from the darkness, calling the light “day” and the darkness “night.” Nonetheless, the moon and the stars light up the night sky and shed their light upon the face of the earth. There are caves and ocean depths where the sun’s day light never reaches. God separated the land from the water, yet millions of square miles of the earth’s surface are occupied by intertidal zones, marshes, swamps and wetlands that are neither entirely land nor sea-all of which are critically important to the world’s ecological health. Why, then, should it surprise us that human sexual attraction and gender identity fall on the same diverse spectrum? It is important that our gospel and the traditional creation texts with which it is paired be proclaimed in a way that all people can see themselves in the sacred narrative as persons God made “good” and persons God wills to know friendship, love and intimacy.   

This is a lot to cram into a single twenty minute sermon. That is why I question the wisdom of the creators of the common lectionary in juxtaposing our readings in this way. I think these issues are better addressed in a discussion setting where the whole biblical witness can be brought to bear. Nevertheless, for those of you preachers who feel bound to the dictates of the common lectionary, I wish you a double share of God’s Spirit this Sunday.  You are going to need it.

Here is a poem by Rickey Laurentiis about a kind of loneliness that might well reflect that of Adam. It is the sort of loneliness that God means to eliminate.

Trans Loneliness

Martha P. Johnson

Source: Poetry (July/August 2024). Rickey Laurentiis is an American poet who was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. They are the author of Boy with Thorn, a work that earned them the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the Levis Reading Prize and the PEN/Osterweil Award. Laurentiis’ poems have appeared in Boston Review, Feminist Studies, The Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, New Republic, The New York Times and Poetry. They have been translated into Arabic, Spanish and Ukrainian. Laurentiis is the inaugural fellow in Creative Writing at the Center for African-American Poetry and Poetics. They are also a Lannan Fellow. You can read more about Rickey Laurentiis and sample more of their poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] This was not necessarily the case for Judaism in the diaspora where Jews were subject to the laws of foreign jurisdictions in which they lived. This may be why Jesus expands the prohibition on divorce to include women.

NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29

Psalm 19:7-14

James 5:13-20

Mark 9:38-50

Prayer of the Day: Generous God, your Son gave his life that we might come to peace with you. Give us a share of your Spirit, and in all we do empower us to bear the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14.

A lot of preachers I have heard over the years begin their sermons with a recitation of this verse. It serves as a prayer that the preacher’s message might faithfully convey the good news of Jesus Christ and its implications for the hearers. Though I have never used this verse of scripture in that way, I find no fault with such usage. Nonetheless, the scope of the psalmist’s prayer far exceeds whatever concerns we might have about the quality of our preaching. These words concluding the psalm must be understood in light of all that comes before. This psalm is a meditation on the “Torah,” translated in our English Bibles as “law.” That is an unfortunate rendering. We tend to think of “law” in terms of rules, statutes and legal requirements. American Christians, deeply individualistic as we are, view law as antithetical to faith or “spirituality.” The Pharisees get a bad wrap in a lot of our preaching because they have been painted as “legalists” who put rules ahead of human needs, compassion and justice. No doubt some of them fit that description-as do a lot of Christians today. But, on the whole, modern Judaism, which derives largely from the Pharisaic tradition, views the Torah much differently.

While the rituals, customs and requirements spelled out in the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures might strike us as restrictive, they were designed to guard Israel’s liberty won for it by its God in the Exodus. A reminder of God’s faithfulness was found in each task of daily life. Preparing and eating meals, washing clothes, butchering animals and planting crops all contained seeds of meditation, symbolic acts and reminders of the new existence to which the people of Israel had been called. It is also important to understand that the Torah is not a changeless prescription written in stone. Judaism has always recognized that the Torah speaks to the here and now. It requires interpretation, reinterpretation and fresh application to ever changing circumstances.

It is for this reason that the psalmist meditates on the Torah. Its commandments are not a collection of dry regulations. They are windows into a deeper understanding of God and the world God made. They are not a legalistic prison enclosing the heart and mind, but a platform from which the psalmist is enabled to look into mysteries, a launching pad for the imagination.

I think there is much to be learned from this understanding of Torah. A lot of Christians I have encountered over the years, some within my own Lutheran tradition, tend to view the Bible as the sealed container of divine truth. There is, in the minds of these folks, a single “biblical worldview” built out of a fixed set of doctrinal assertions and moral absolutes found within the four corners of the biblical text. For such a constricted perspective, information, learning and imagination are dangerous. They can lead one to question the truth and doubt the integrity of the Bible. Banning books, restricting the academic freedom of teachers and subjecting text books to legislative mandates are all simply desperate efforts to protect a feeble and unsustainable faith from the rigors of intellectual critique. Such an outlook kills the kind of interaction with the Bible to which the psalmist testifies. It is hard to meditate on the Bible when you are expending all your energy and attention to protecting it.

While my own biblical training in seminary was nothing like the literalist approach I just described, it did little to encourage meditation. The historical critical method in which I was instructed acknowledged and even celebrated the complexity of the scriptures and the diversity of voices in and through which it speaks. But the method brought with it the same rationalistic and colonialistic biases of the nineteenth century in which it was birthed. We were warned against letting our imaginations run away with us when interpreting texts. Our job was, through a dispassionate application of textual criticism, source criticism, form criticism, redaction analysis and properly framing of the text in its “Sitz im Leben” (roughly translated, “historical setting”), unearth the grain of historically valid biblical truth to be proclaimed. Though much of what I learned about the Bible’s composition, history and transmission was helpful in a general way, it was not particularly useful in preaching or in meditating on the Word.

Of equal concern regarding the historical critical method is the nineteenth century baggage that comes with it. There is in the method a bias toward rationalism and empiricism that tend to boil all of reality down to what can be demonstrated in the lab. No doubt, empiricism has proven enormously useful in advancing the physical sciences. Applied to history, anthropology and religion, not so much. Nineteenth century protestant Christianity tended to view itself as the pinnacle of world religious evolution just as western society viewed itself as the peak of human civilization. Having shaken off the primitive beliefs in spirits, magic and divine agency, the church had evolved into a rational religion compatible with western culture as a whole. As a result, “lesser” religions tied to inferior cultures were generally dismissed as “superstitions.” This is precisely the same sort of arrogance that fuels the engines of right wing Christian nationalism.

Thankfully, there are many pastors, teachers and theologians who have moved beyond such narrow thinking. Liberation theologians, such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff and Jon Sobrino encourage us to read the gospels imaginatively through the eyes of the poor, oppressed and exploited. Black liberation theologian James Cone invites us to recognize the cross and resurrection as lived out by Black Americans struggling against systemic racism. Womanist theologians like Natalia Imperatori-Lee, Mercy Amba Oduyoye and Ivone Gebara call upon us to read the scriptures through the eyes and experiences of Black women. Employing the imagination to scriptural interpretation unleashes its redemptive power and makes space for the Holy Spirit to work. This, I believe, is what the psalmist means by “meditating” on God’s words.

Here is a poem by Billy Collings about the transformative power of books. In many respects, I believe it mirrors the dynamics found in the psalmists’ meditation on the Torah and the way in which we are invited to meditate on scripture as disciples of Jesus.

 Books

From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus

Source: Poetry (April 1988). Billy Collins (b. 1941) is an American poet. Though born in Ireland, he grew up in Queens and White Plains, New York. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and was a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York. Collins has been recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and was selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. Collins has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He currently teaches in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. You can read more about Billy Collins and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.