Dear Ms. Gorman:

I read about how you felt “gutted” upon learning that a Florida school banned your poem, The Hill We Climb, for use in elementary school teaching and removed it from the elementary section of the school library. While I can understand your reaction, I think you should be pleased. My junior collage professor of Latin verse once told us that “poetry is by nature subversive and invites repression in countries throughout the world, but not the United States. In this country, the government does not censor poetry-because it knows Americans never read it.” You managed to do what my professor thought impossible, namely, get Americans interested in poetry, so much so that for the first time they are trying to ban it! Kudos on that score.

You should be encouraged by that Florida school’s ban. After all, poetry that is harmless is bland and boring. A poem that does not touch a nerve, unsettle the mind, challenge the status quo and make us a tad uncomfortable is like diet Coke. It’s just not the “real thing.” Your poem paints a bold and truthful portrait of what is, yet challenges us to dream of what might be. Naturally, that is upsetting to those of us who like things the way they are or who long for a return to some bygone era when America was “great” (as though that were even possible!). For those of us convinced that any sort of change amounts to our loss and that there is nothing for us at the crest of the hill, poems like yours strike a note of fear and anger. Sometimes, though, you have to open a wound in order to clean it and make healing possible. The ire evoked by your poem in that Florida school illustrates that it is doing exactly what a poem should.

Finally, nothing promotes a work of literature quite as effectively as a ban. You can be sure that, as soon as elementary school children learn that your books are forbidden, they will flock to them like flies to honey. Bans on literature do not work. They never have. Every society that has ever tried to ban literature has been on the losing side of history. Florida’s efforts to ban literature, censor teachers and stifle discussion of uncomfortable topics demonstrate that it has already lost the battle. Such futile measures make painfully clear that the champions of censorship know their ideologies, prejudices and worn out beliefs cannot withstand reasoned discussion and debate. Censorship is the last desperate, panicked attempt of a stagnant and dying society to save its collapsing order from the hurricane of revolutionary change. It will fail today as it always has in the past.

So, be comforted. Time is on your side. The future belongs to you. Your poem will be recited long after Ron DeSantis has been relegated to the dustbin of discarded demagogues like George Wallace, Lester Maddox and Strom Thurman. Truth, beauty and goodness cannot be banned.

ASCENSION OF OUR LORD

Acts 1:1-11

Psalm 47

Ephesians 1:15-23

Luke 24:44-53

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, your blessed Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things. Mercifully give us faith to trust that, as he promised, he abides with us on earth to the end of time, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“While [Jesus] was blessing [the disciples], he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” Luke 24:51.

“On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.” Second Article, Nicene Creed

The one singular event that influenced my thinking on this week’s texts and the Feast of the Ascension is the coronation of King Charles the Third. It is impossible to watch a ritual of such opulence and splendor without being impressed. It calls to mind the words of this Sunday’s psalm acclaiming God as king of all the earth.

God has gone up with a shout,
   the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.
Sing praises to God, sing praises;
   sing praises to our King, sing praises.
For God is the king of all the earth;
   sing praises with a psalm.

God is king over the nations;
   God sits on his holy throne.
The princes of the peoples gather
   as the people of the God of Abraham.
For the shields of the earth belong to God;
   he is highly exalted.

In all likelihood, this psalm was adapted from a Canaanite coronation ceremony, though echoes of its refrains can be seen in the coronation traditions of Israel as well. II Samuel 15:10; II Kings 9:13; and II Kings 11:12. See The Psalms, Arthur Weiser (c. 1962 S.C.M. Press, Ltd.) p. 375. In its final form, however, the psalm is clearly focused on the reign of God over all the earth. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Psalm 24:1. The nations, including Israel, are but a “drop in the bucket.” Isaiah 40:15. All other claims of sovereignty are, at most, contingent. Consequently, the crowning of a British monarch is but a pale reflection of the worship of the One who needs no coronation.

No doubt the makers of the lectionary intended to juxtapose this psalm of praise with Jesus’ ascension. Throughout the centuries, this critical part of the gospel narrative has been portrayed artistically in terms of a glorious apotheosis. The above icon is an example of such art. There is nothing wrong in these portrayals, though they are sometimes subject to misinterpretation. One example is the now rightly disfavored, but once prominent tradition of extinguishing the Easter pascal candle on Ascension Sunday. Whatever else this practice might have intended to convey, it strongly suggests that the Ascension is Jesus’ departure to some distant place, only to return at some time in the indefinite future. Nothing could be further from the truth. The “right hand of God,” which is biblical shorthand for the agency of God in creation, is not located somewhere “beyond the blue.” To the contrary, the right hand of God is everywhere God is active which is, well, everywhere. Thus, Jesus is not leaving his disciples or the world he came to save. Rather, he is now more intensely present than ever before. As the hymn says:

      Christ is alive!     

No longer bound

to distant years in Palestine,

but saving, healing, here and now,

and touching ev’ry place and time.

“Christ is Alive,” by Brian A. Wren, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, (c. 2006 by Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; pub. by Augsburg Fortress) Hymn #389.

One of my seminary professors, Gerhard Forde by name, used to say that Jesus is God’s “isser.” That is to say, Jesus is God’s way of being present to creation. It is critical to understand in this connection that Jesus is not God. Rather, God is Jesus. The distinction is important because if we begin with the assertion that Jesus is God, we end up trying to understand Jesus by infusing him with all the attributes we think we know to be God’s. I believe that the great Christological debates throughout history have been complicated by this confusion, resulting in endless efforts to reconcile the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God with the Jesus who got tired and crabby, hungry and thirsty, bled and died. But as John the Evangelist reminds us, “No one has ever seen God.”  John 1:18. We know nothing about God beyond what God reveals to us. When an exasperated Philip said to Jesus, “Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied,” Jesus replied “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” John 14:8-9. Jesus is all the God there is.

Because Jesus is at the right hand of God, is the right hand of God, we know how God exercises God’s reign over creation. God rules the world through limitless love, unconditional forgiveness and eternal patience. This is not the god who appeals to our appetite for measurable progress, demonstrable results or easy solutions. Love will not stop bad things from happening to good people, prevent school shootings or end wars of aggression. It will, however, outlast them. I Corinthians 13:13. God’s might is God’s patience.

Most of the world would prefer a god who “fixes things,” solves problems, answers prayers for wealth, success and personal happiness. “Give us burly gods to pummel the world and us,” says the poet. The god professed by the late Tim Lahaye, a god who will simply rapture us out of our problems, violently destroy those we deem wicked and usher in a heavenly existence appeals to people who are angry, frightened, feeling helpless and who lack the conceptual tools for figuring out why.  So, too, the appeal of Hitlers, Mussolinis and Trumps who spew hatred against our perceived enemies and promise a better world built over their corpses. Human leaders of this kind have been too common throughout history. Thankfully, there is no god in their image.

If I were to portray graphically the miracle of the Ascension, I think I would show the resurrected Christ disintegrating into a billion particles that, in turn, infuse every molecule and every subatomic particle in the universe. For better or worse, however, graphic artistic expression is not my gift. I can imagine well enough. Draw or paint, not so much. Suffice to say, faith believes, even in the face of mass shootings, the threat of nuclear war and the continuing rise of white supremacy, that the Triune love poured out into the world through the faithful life, obedient death and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ holds the universe together against all the powers of evil that would rip it apart.

Here is a poem by Father Daniel Berrigan with an expression of such faith and the difficulty of hanging onto it.

Astonishment

Wonder

          why illness

an odious plague dispersed

settles again after deep knives made

of the loved face a tragic mask.

Wonder

          why after one

tentative promise

raised like a green denial of death,

life resumes

its old mortician method after all.

Wonder

        why men break

in the kiln, on the wheel; men made of the sun,

men sprung from the world’s cry; the only men,

literal bread and wine, the crucial ones

poured out, wasted among dogs. Wonder,

And the lees of men, the stale men, there

in the fair vessels, a mock feast;

take it or leave-nothing else in the house.

Wonder

          at omnipresence of grey minds,

the shade of that made

O years ago, ash of the rowdy world.

Wonder

          at incapacity of love;

a stern pagan ethic, set against Christ at the door

(the discomfiting beggar, the undemanding poor).

Wonder

          woman and man, son and father

priest and sacrifice-to all right reason

one web of the world, one delicate

membrane of life. Ruptured.

Wonder

Transcendent God does nothing.

The Child plays

among the stocs and stones

A country almanac

moon phase, sun phase

hours

records and elements, grey dawn and red;

He sleeps and stands again,

moony, at loss, a beginner in the world.

History makes much of little, bet He

of clay and Caesars, nothing.

There is no god in Him. Give us burly gods

to pummel the world and us, to shake its tree

quail and manna at morning!

Wonder, wonder,

                           across his eyes

the cancerous pass unhealed, evil

takes heat monstrously. What use

the tarrying savior, the gentle breath of time

that in beggars is continuous and unruly,

that in dumb minds comes and chimes and goes

that in veins and caves of earth

sleeps like a tranced corpse, the abandoned body

of violated hope?

Wonder

given such a God, how resolve the poem?

Source: Selected & New Poems, (c. 1973 by Daniel Berrigan, pub. by Doubleday & Company, Inc.) pp. 133-134. Daniel Berrigan was born May 9, 1921, in Virginia, Minnesota. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at St. Andrew-on-the-Hudson, New York in August 1939 and graduated in 1946. Thereafter, he entered the Jesuit’s Woodstock College in Baltimore graduating in 1952. He was ordained the same year and appointed professor of New Testament studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse in 1957. Berrigan is remembered by most people for his anti-war activities during the Vietnam era. He spent two years in prison for destroying draft records, damaging nuclear warheads and leading other acts of civil disobedience. He also joined with other prominent religious figures like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to found Clergy and Laity Against the War in Vietnam. In February of 1968 he traveled to North Vietnam and returned with three American prisoners of war he convinced the North Vietnamese to release. Berrigan died on April 30, 2016 of natural causes at a Jesuit health care facility in the Bronx. He was 94 years old.

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 7:55-60

Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16

1 Peter 2:2-10

John 14:1-14

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

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6.

          That verse has followed me throughout my whole life. It has shaped the trajectory of my thinking in numerous ways at different stages of my development. I have known the verse from early childhood and probably had to memorize it in Sunday school. It was a staple in Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod teaching, the church in which I was raised. The emphasis back then was on the second sentence: “No one comes to the Father except by me.” The way, the truth and the life consisted in understanding and believing the correct doctrine concerning Jesus Christ. Thus, purity of doctrine was essential. Though our pastors and teachers grudgingly admitted that other protestant traditions and perhaps even a few confused Roman Catholics might hold elements of the gospel sufficient to constitute saving faith, the only way to be absolutely sure of your salvation was to hold fast to the doctrine professed in our Lutheran Confessions, the essential bones of which were spelled out in Luther’s Small Catechism. In my mother’s day, memorization of the entire Catechism was a prerequisite for confirmation. Thankfully, by the time I was confirmed, memorization of the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed and several key Bible verses sufficed.

          In my freshman year of high school, I had my first encounter with “evangelicalism.”[1] I met a group of kids loosely associated with a 1970s movement then called “The Jesus People.” They had a very different take on the captioned Bible verse. Their emphasis was on the first sentence: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Jesus, they believed, did not simply teach or embody abstractly the good news of the gospel. Jesus was the good news. Salvation was not about believing the right doctrine, but rather trusting the right person. Faith was relational. Thus, the issue was not “what do you believe?” but “who do you trust?” The critical question was, “have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

          This new community had much to commend it. It seemed to offer everything I did not know I was looking for in my own church-a living faith and a group of people seriously trying to follow Jesus in the carnivorous world of high school. This group was made up of believers from several different churches. We met each morning before school began in one of the class rooms for a prayer meeting led by Father Joe. Father Joe was a priest from our local Roman Catholic parish who had received “the baptism of the Holy Spirit,” an experience of renewal accompanied by speaking in tongues. In these meetings we bared our souls, offering up prayers for help in our own trials, for one another and for our unbelieving fellow students. Witnessing to our faith was a large part of what we did. Our lockers had bumper stickers reflecting bible verses or just the name “Jesus.” When these were defaced, we simply replaced them, prayed for the vandals and “rejoiced that we were found worthy to suffer for the name.” If our witnessing was intended to win converts, it was not particularly effective. But it led to many lively conversations in locker rooms, tables in the cafeteria and the hallways about faith and the things that matter.

          Ironically, the same Jesus that drew me into the evangelical movement led me out of it. That journey began at my encounter with Rev. James Cone, who preached at an assembly held by my junior college. He spoke eloquently about Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed and discipleship that calls his church to do the same. It would be decades later that I finally read his classic book, A Black Theology of Liberation, but his powerful witness was enough to turn my thinking in a new direction. No longer could I view Jesus as “my personal Lord and Savior.” He is, as John’s gospel makes clear to us, “the savior of the world.” I now understood that discipleship was not about rescuing as many souls as possible from a sinking ship. Discipleship is joining with Jesus in saving the ship.

          I should also add that, just as I was changing my perspectives, evangelicalism was evolving in a new direction. The evangelicals I found myself associating with in college seemed to lack the freshness of newfound faith that drew me to my high school group. They seemed less interested in Jesus than in ending abortion and bringing prayer back into the public schools. They were critical and fearful of the outside world. Indeed, they viewed the school (a Christian one!) and its student body and professors as mostly hostile. Theirs was very much an “us against them” mentality. Bible study, rather than a means for deepening faith in Jesus, focused instead on the approach of the “end times,” the coming “rapture,” “demon possession” and signs of the antichrist in every headline. Perhaps this dark side of evangelicalism was always there and I just did not notice it earlier on. But in any case, it did not square with following the “way, the truth and the life” of the Jesus I had come to know as savior of the world and the God who hates nothing God has made. By the end of my junior year in college, I was done with Intervarsity, Campus Crusade and the small group of prayer partners in in my dormitory.

           I cannot possibly catalogue all the friends I have made, teachers I have had and books I have read that have and continue to influence my faith journey. But more than anyone else, Paul Sponheim, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary, shaped my thinking about Jesus as the cosmic Christ, as the incarnation of God’s creative and redemptive love. Jesus is God putting God’s skin in the game we know as human existence. As such, the life he lived and the death he died and his resurrection to which the scriptures testify matter-and not just for those of us who believe in him. If Jesus is who the scriptures say he is, the eternal Word which both is with and is God (John 1:1); the one through whom God created the world (Hebrews 1:2); the one in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:17); then the salvation he brings is universally applicable, politically oriented toward justice for the oppressed, socially oriented toward reconciliation and ecologically restorative.

In view of all this, it should not surprise us, indeed, we ought to expect that we will find the work and wisdom of this Word through which the Spirit of God is released into the world among people of different faiths and those of no faith at all. Again, if Jesus is who we say he is, how could it be otherwise? Thus, to say that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life through which all come to the Father is not, as so many assume, an exclusion of those whose doctrine is not quite right or who have not explicitly “accepted Jesus as personal Lord and Savior.”  As Jesus himself testified, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.” John 10:16. It is for Jesus and his lifegiving Spirit to form all of humanity into a single flock. We, for our part, have no idea how that will happen or what it will look like in the end. Ours is simply to bear witness in word and deed to Jesus and live as best we can into the just and gentle reign he proclaims.

          Though I classified myself as a former evangelical in the title of this post, that is not entirely accurate. I am still evangelical in all the ways that I believe are important. I still believe that faith is relational and that, as important as doctrine may be (and I do believe that it is important), it exists to serve, guide and nurture our faith in Jesus Christ. I still believe that theology, whatever brand it might be, is not worth the trees sacrificed to print it if it does not have as its end forming the mind of Christ in communities of faith. I still believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and that all who trust him can be assured of abundant and eternal life. But because Jesus is at the right hand of God, the life he promises is bigger than my own personal needs, bigger than the church and bigger than anything our Creeds and confessions can contain. One thing I have learned is that, whenever you think you have Jesus all figured out, you discover you don’t.

Here is a rendering of the well known Prayer of St. Patrick that I believe captures what it means to be a disciple of the Cosmic Christ.

The Prayer of St. Patrick

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the Threeness,

Through confession of the Oneness

of the Creator of creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ’s birth with His baptism,

Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial,

Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension,

Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

I arise today

Through the strength of the love of cherubim,

In the obedience of angels,

In the service of archangels,

In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,

In the prayers of patriarchs,

In the predictions of prophets,

In the preaching of apostles,

In the faith of confessors,

In the innocence of holy virgins,

In the deeds of righteous men.

I arise today, through

The strength of heaven,

The light of the sun,

The radiance of the moon,

The splendor of fire,

The speed of lightning,

The swiftness of wind,

The depth of the sea,

The stability of the earth,

The firmness of rock.

I arise today, through

God’s strength to pilot me,

God’s might to uphold me,

God’s wisdom to guide me,

God’s eye to look before me,

God’s ear to hear me,

God’s word to speak for me,

God’s hand to guard me,

God’s shield to protect me,

God’s host to save me

From snares of devils,

From the temptation of vices,

From everyone who shall wish me ill,

afar and near.

I summon today

All these powers between me and those evils,

Against every cruel and merciless power

that may oppose my body and soul,

Against incantations of false prophets,

Against black laws of pagandom,

Against false laws of heretics,

Against craft of idolatry,

Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,

Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul;

Christ to shield me today

Against poison, against burning,

Against drowning, against wounding,

So that there may come to me an abundance of reward.

Christ with me,

Christ before me,

Christ behind me,

Christ in me,

Christ beneath me,

Christ above me,

Christ on my right,

Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down,

Christ when I sit down,

Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the Threeness,

Through confession of the Oneness

of the Creator of creation.

Source: Though attributed to the legendary Irish Saint Patrick, no one knows the precise origin of this beautiful expression of faith which appears in many abbreviated forms and has inspired numerous hymns, including “I Bind unto Myself Today,” by Cecil Frances Alexander in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, (c. 2006 by Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; pub. by Augsburg Fortress Press) Hymn # 450.  

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[1] I will not attempt a comprehensive definition of the term “evangelical” as it applies to a distinct Christian tradition. As with all movements of any sort, there is a great deal of diversity among evangelicals as well as some dispute over who belongs there and who does not. Moreover, many of us “mainliners” also lay claim to that term with our own take on what it signifies. From my own experience, it seems that one common denominator is the belief that a genuine Christian is one who has made a conscious decision to accept Jesus Christ as savior.  

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 2:42-47

Psalm 23

1 Peter 2:19-25

John 10:1-10

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

“You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies…” Psalm 23:5.

The Twenty-Third Psalm is one of the few biblical passages retaining some currency in contemporary American culture. Though most people have some vague concept of what a “Good Samaritan” is, what it means to “burn midnight oil” or why you might call someone or something a “pearl of great price,” few know the parabolic context of these terms anymore. But the psalm remains in the public consciousness as a whole. It is one of the few scriptures to which nearly everyone resonates. For that reason, it was one of my staples for the many funerals I did over the years for people I never knew, who had no connection to my church and whose families had little or no faith background. It forms a point of connection, an opportunity for bringing the comfort of the gospel to people unfamiliar with the language of faith. If they know nothing else about the Bible, the Psalter or the Gospels, they know that the Twenty-Third Psalm is a poem of comfort and consolation.

Nevertheless, its popular appeal should not be taken to mean that it is in any way glib, shallow or simplistic. The comfort afforded by the psalmist is not to be equated with mere safety, security or escape from earthy misery somewhere in the sweet by-and-by. The green pastures and still waters lie along paths leading through dark valleys inhabited by enemies and the threat of death. The way by which the shepherd leads the sheep is not free from evil, but the shepherd’s presence dispels all fear such evils might otherwise inspire. That is the core confession of the psalm: God is the Good Shepherd who is with the sheep no matter were God may lead them.

Those of us urban/suburban folk frequently stumble over the shepherd/sheep imagery. For the majority of us, the closest we have ever gotten to sheep is the petting zoo. In the biblical world, sheep were not cute, cuddly little pets. They were commercial commodities. The good shepherd defends the sheep from wolves because his livelihood depends on their survival. He needs to get them to market. From there they will go to someone’s table. Just as the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, so the sheep will be called upon to lay down their lives for the Shepherd. John’s gospel is clear on that point: “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.” John 15:20-21. Being Jesus’ sheep and following him as your shepherd is not all sunshine and happiness. To the contrary, it is daily taking up the cross he carries.

It is in this context that I consider the captioned verse about the Shepherd preparing “a table in the sight of my enemies.” However the psalmist may have viewed this verse, disciples of Jesus cannot interpret it apart from Jesus’ command to love our enemies. “If you love those who love you,” says Jesus, “what credit is that to you?” Luke 6:32. Love is easy between neighbors with nothing between them but white picket fences. It is a good deal more difficult across culture war battlelines and harder still across hostile borders behind which there are people who would kill me if they got the chance. But Jesus would have us love even these enemies and do good to them. Luke 6:35

I don’t know about you, but if I have to love my enemies, I would prefer to do it from a distance. I would rather not be in the presence of people who think my transgender friends and family are “mutants,” “freaks” and sexual predators as some public figures have recently done. I don’t want to be in the company of people who throw about racial slurs, make a point of visibly packing their guns and ramble incoherently about elite cabals of Satan worshiping pedophiles. I can feel a degree of compassion for these folks, try to understand them and pray for them, but I do not want them anywhere near my table. I must confess that part of what drew me here to the Outer Cape is the near absence of such people. To be sure, you would probably find a few if you turned over enough rocks, but not in the numbers that allow them to organize marches, disrupt our town meetings or attempt to censor our school libraries. That sort of thing takes place in other communities far away from mine and I like it that way. If absence does not make the heart grow fonder, at least familiarity does not breed contempt.

Love, however, does not reside in a gated community. It is always found in the public square conversing with self righteous religious leaders, harlots, tax collectors and old, cowardly white guys like me who just want to be left in peace. Jesus makes quite clear that his disciples are to be fully in and participating with the world God sent him to save. Following Jesus means going to places where you will not be welcome, speaking truths your audience might not want to hear and engaging with people who do not like you and might even wish you harm. That is dangerous work. It can get you nailed to a cross.

Dangerous as it may be, there has hardly been a time when peaceful engagement with persons we regard as hostile is more urgent. The divisive power of hateful ideologies currently being enacted into law throughout the country, the carnage in Ukraine threatening to spill over into the rest of Europe and the frightening military brinksmanship between the United States and China cry out for the better way of being human Jesus taught us. The world needs a community capable of living peacefully in the presence of enemies-without fences, walls or barbed wire to protect it. To be one of Jesus’ sheep is to be as vulnerable as the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

I can think of no better example of such a life than that of Charles Eugène de Foucauld de Pontbriand (1858-1916), the French priest recently canonized by Pope Francis. After a brief military career and some time spent exploring Morocco, Foucauld joined the Trappist monastic order. He was ordained in 1901, after which he traveled to the Algerian Sahara where he settled with the intent of starting a congregation among the Berber people, an ethnic group indigenous to the Maghreb region of North Africa. He was unsuccessful in this regard. In reflecting on his lack of success with traditional missionary methods, Foucauld adopted a new apostolic approach. His witness consisted not in preaching sermons, but through living a Christlike example. Taking the name, “Brother Charles of Jesus,” Foucauld lived with the Berbers as a humble guest with the chief objective of learning rather than teaching. In order to become more familiar with the Berbers, he studied their language and culture for over twelve years. He collected hundreds of native poems which he translated into French. He censored nothing in the poems, and never changed anything that might not conform to Catholic morality. Foucauld managed to win the love and trust of these people brutally victimized by colonialization and understandably suspicious of him and the church he represented. He also educated his own people on the beauty and sophistication of Berber culture. His life was dedicated to being an ambassador for Jesus Christ, seeking reconciliation and peace.    

Foucauld paid the ultimate price for living in the presence of those who were, in terms of blood, soil and nation, his enemies. His life of peacemaking ended on December 1, 1916, when he was assassinated at his hermitage in the Sahara. One might conclude that Foucauld’s mission was foolhardy and ended in failure. One could say the same about Jesus of Nazareth-except that God raised him from death and raises up the fragile bonds of friendship his disciples manage to build across human divisions in fractured and violent world.   

Here is a poem by Rebecca Seiferle that speaks to the fear we harbor toward our enemies causing us to dehumanize them and driving us to seek their destruction. Yet if one reads between the lines, perhaps the poem also beckons us to consider that there might be an alternative.

Love my Enemies, enemy my love

Oh, we fear our enemy’s mind, the shape

in his thought that resembles the cripple

in our own, for it’s not just his fear

we fear, but his love and his paradise.

We fear he will deprive us of our peace

of mind, and, fearing this, are thus deprived,

so we must go to war, to be free of this

terror, this unremitting fear, that he might

he might, he might. Oh it’s hard to say

what he might do or feel or think.

Except all that we cannot bear of

feeling or thinking—so his might

must be met with might of armor

and of intent—informed by all the hunker

down within the bunker of ourselves.

How does he love? and eat? and drink?

He must be all strategy or some sick lie.

How can reason unlock such a door,

for we bar it too with friends and lovers,

in waking hours, on ordinary days?

Finding the other so senseless and unknown,

we go to war to feel free of the fear

of our own minds, and so come

to ruin in our hearts of ordinary days.

Source: Wild Tongue (c. 2007 by Rebecca Seiferle; pub. by Copper Canyon Press).  Rebecca Seiferle is an American poet, translator, and editor. She taught English and creative writing for a number of years at San Juan College. She has also taught at the Provincetown Fine Arts Center, Key West Literary Seminar, Port Townsend Writer’s Conference, Gemini Ink, and the Stonecoast MFA program. She has been poet-in-residence at Brandeis University. She lives with her family in Tucson, Arizona where she teaches at Southwest University of Visual Arts. You can read more about Rebecca Seiferle and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 2:14a, 36-41

Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19

1 Peter 1:17-23

Luke 24:13-35

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

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

 “We had hoped.” Perhaps the saddest words imaginable. “We had hoped that this time the pregnancy might finally take.” “We had hoped that perhaps this treatment would be the one to push mom’s cancer into remission.” “We had hoped the counseling might save our marriage.” I suspect that everybody reading this post has lived long enough to see a hope or two dashed. After all, what is life if not a series of events that routinely shatter expectations? Would we want it to be otherwise? What would it be like to live in a world where everything went according to plan? What would be the point of athletic competitions if everyone knew the outcome in advance? Who would bother to watch a movie or read a book without plot twists, suspense and surprises? A world without an element of randomness, unpredictability and surprise would be boring. It would be a world without hope. God loves us too much to place us in such a dry, colorless existence.

The world in which God places us is one where hope can thrive. It is a place where imagination can lead us to new discoveries, life altering innovations in mechanics, medicine and the sciences. Hope enables a people to survive and maintain its dignity under centuries of slavery. Hope allows one to look with unclouded eyes at a world of cruelty, injustice and tyranny and still look forward with joyous expectation to a better world of mercy, justice and freedom. You may have heard it said that, “Where there is life, there is hope.” But the converse is just as true. “Where there is hope, there is life.”

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were close to death. To be sure, they were breathing and their hearts were still pumping blood. But there seemed to be no point to it all. The hope that had been driving them for the last three years had been dashed. Jesus, who these two disciples expected to liberate their oppressed nation from centuries of Roman brutality and oppression, was dead. Worse, he had been betrayed by the leaders of his own people into the hands of their oppressors and tortured to death in the most inhumane and humiliating way possible. The kingdom Jesus promised and on which the disciples had staked their lives never materialized.

I have seen hopelessness like this before. I saw it in the eyes of a teenage girl trapped in the body of a boy who could not make her friends, her parents or her church understand. I saw it the eyes of a mother whose son was sentenced to decades in prison. I have seen it on television, in newspapers and on the internet in the eyes of millions stranded at our southern border, cramped into overcrowded refugee camps and sitting alone in detention centers. I have seen it over the years in the eyes of institutionalized elderly folk nobody but the pastor ever visits. These are people whose hopes have been so thoroughly dashed so many times that they have lost the capacity to hope. They have become convinced that the way things are for them is the way they always will be. This is as good as it gets.

But then the disciples encounter a stranger on the road. We know this stranger was the resurrected Jesus. But the disciples fail to recognize him. They are not alone in this failure of recognition. Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus for a gardener. John 20: 11-16.   According to Matthew’s gospel, many of the disciples who encountered the resurrected Christ in Galilee still “doubted,” meaning, I suppose, that they were not sure the man they saw before them really was Jesus. Matthew 28:16-17.  I do not know because I cannot get inside the heads of these disciples, but I suspect their lack of recognition stemmed from a lack of hope. Hope is the engine of expectation. Hope recognizes that there is in every transaction a “God factor” that sometimes brings about surprising and unexpected twists and turns. We might define the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as God’s element of surprise imbedded in the last place you would expect to find it.

A cemetery is not the place you look for a new beginning. But that is where the story of the people called church gets its start. Because our story begins with baptism into Christ’s death where we are “born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God,” we are quite at home in seemingly hopeless circumstances. I Peter 1:23. That is why you find churches like mine reaching out to befriend and affirm transgender teens in states where their very right to exist is denied by statute. It is why you find people of faith at work in refugee camps and on our southern border working to secure rights and sustenance for people who have no home, no country and no rights. It is also why we find ourselves visiting and befriending people institutionalized in long term care facilities, detention centers and prisons. God does God’s best work in the dark. It is there God plants the seed of hope which, once planted, bursts through the frozen earth, stone walls, iron bars, barbed wire and the grave.

It was in the breaking of the bread that the two disciples recognized Jesus. Yet it is obvious that the groundwork was already being laid as he was talking to them on the road and setting their hearts on fire by opening to them the scriptures. I would love to know more about what was discussed on that journey to Emmaus. I expect that Jesus was recounting for those two disciples God’s delight in opening barren wombs with the birth of great leaders, making pathways of escape for slaves trapped between the armies of the Egyptian empire and the sea, bringing streams of water from stone to quench the thirst of a people lost in the wilderness, making kings from shepherds and forming nations of landless, wandering aliens. What greater delight could this God have, what greater surprise could God spring on us than to break open the very grave? To be sure, the world is full of tragedy, but Easter reminds us that God is full of surprises.

This is all good news for a world careening toward global military conflict, threatened by catastrophic ecological disaster, overshadowed by the rise of hateful racist ideologies and plagued by gross economic inequality. The way out of these dilemmas appears to be narrowing and may soon be closed. But hope insists that God still has surprises in store for us. This is not the first time the people of God are finding themselves faced with what appears to be a dead end. The world needs to know that its Creator has not abandoned it. The world needs to know that the Spirit of God is working in, with and under teachers faithfully witnessing to tolerance, acceptance and diversity, NGO workers serving and advocating for refugees, attorneys fighting to protect reproductive rights for women, scientists striving to educate the public and call world leaders to take action on climate change and all persons striving to name and eradicate the idolatries of racism and nationalism. All these people of good will need to hear that their efforts are not futile because, whether they know it or not, their efforts are not theirs alone. Whether they recognize him or not, Jesus is working among and through them. As Saint Paul would remind us, what God begins, God will find a way to finish. Philippians 1:6.    

Here is a poem by Sonia Sanchez that speaks of something like the hope born of an encounter with the resurrected Christ. As an African American poet, she knows something of hope struggling to vanquish despair.

This is Not a Small Voice

This is not a small voice

you hear  this is a large

voice coming out of these cities.

This is the voice of LaTanya.

Kadesha. Shaniqua. This

is the voice of Antoine.

Darryl. Shaquille.

Running over waters

navigating the hallways

of our schools spilling out

on the corners of our cities and

no epitaphs spill out of their river

mouths.

This is not a small love

you hear       this is a large

love, a passion for kissing learning

on its face.

This is a love that crowns the feet

with hands

that nourishes, conceives, feels the

water sails

mends the children,

folds   them    inside   our    history

where they

toast more than the flesh

where they suck the bones of the

alphabet

and spit out closed vowels.

This is a love colored with iron

and lace.

This is a love initialed Black

Genius.

This is not a small voice

you hear.

 

Source: Wounded in the House of a Friend (c. 1995 by Sonia Sanchez.; pub. by Beacon Press). Sonia Sanchez (born Wilsonia Benita Driver in 1934) is an American poet, writer and professor. She is a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement. Sanchez has written several books of poetry. She has also authored short stories, critical essays, plays and children’s books. She received Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 1993. In 2001 she was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to American poetry. You can read more about Sonia Sanchez and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 2:14a, 22-32

Psalm 16

1 Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

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

“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” John 20:21.

With these words Jesus sends his disciples out from behind locked doors and the fear imprisoning them there into the world in order to reflect and practice the same Trinitarian love expressed in God’s sending God’s only beloved Son into the world, not to judge, condemn or destroy it, but to redeem it. But one week later, Jesus finds the disciples exactly where they were before-hiding behind locked doors. Thomas was not the only one with doubts. Though the rest of the disciples might have been convinced that Jesus was alive, they were not ready to trust him. Nevertheless, Jesus greets them with the same words: “Peace be with you.” I have to wonder whether he might also have said, “and what part of ‘send’ do you people not understand?”

Sometime later we find the disciples back in Galilee. They are not going forth into the world with the message of forgiveness Jesus had given them. They are fishing-and not for people. The disciples are going back to the life they once knew, the predictable rhythms of their profession and the comfort of the familiar. Once again, Jesus must intervene to get them back on course. John’s gospel ends where the other three gospels begin-with the disciples leaving their boats and their nets and following Jesus. The last words spoken by Jesus to his disciples are “follow me.” See John 21:1-23.  

There has been much scholarly discussion concerning the nature and history of the faith community producing the Gospel of John. Among the most insightful and comprehensive are History & Theology in the Fourth Gospel, Martyn, J. Louis (c. 1979 by the author; pub. by Abington Press); The Community of the Beloved Disciple, Brown, Raymond E. (c. 1979 by the author; pub. by Paulist Press). Numerous commentaries have since contributed additional information and the results of subsequent research. As interesting and informative as all of this discourse surely is, it leaves me with more questions than answers. The one conclusion I come away with is that there is no reliable way of getting behind the scriptural text to reconstruct the New Testament churches. Just as the search for the “historical Jesus” invariably leads to the discovery of exactly the messiah we wanted for Christmas, so efforts to uncover the pristine form of the Jesus movement always reveal more about the seeker than the sought. The question is not whether the New Testament witness is historically accurate (an anachronistic inquiry its writers would not have understood), but whether the New Testament witnesses “got Jesus right.” Are they faithful in their testimony to what Jesus accomplished among us? That is a question that neither historical critical methodology nor any other hermeneutical approach can answer for us. At the end of the day, the Bible engages us on its own terms and in all the glorious messiness of myth, parable, poetry, narrative, preaching and correspondence. There is no “man behind the curtain” to whom we can appeal. So we take Saint John’s unique witness to Jesus as Saint John gives it to us.

Saint John gives us a band of disciples, a church, that is anything but enthusiastic about being sent. This is a church that would much prefer to remain within the confines of its sanctuary. This is a church that fears the world its Lord loves so desperately. This is a church that seeks peace in the comfortable, the familiar and the routine. This is a church that must be dragged kicking and screaming into its mission to the world. That sounds a lot like the churches to which I have belonged for all my life. Perhaps it describes the church in every age. It is a church that, left to itself, would never go outside, never dare to engage a broken world, never attempt anything new, risky or controversial.

But here is the thing. The church is not left to itself. Jesus just won’t leave us alone. He continues to break into the locked rooms where we try to hide. He continues to breathe into us his discomforting Holy Spirit. Jesus is forever interrupting our established routines and pushing us out into the world God loves so fiercely. In the end, the disciples are not so much “sent” as they are “led.” As noted above, John’s story ends with Jesus and his disciples walking away to…well, we do not know where they are headed next. Maybe that is how it is supposed to be. The Good Shepherd leads the sheep, sometimes by going before them, sometimes prodding them from behind and often going after them when they have lost their way and bringing them back.

God knows that there are plenty of reasons to be afraid. There are plenty of reasons for wanting to hunker in the bunker. There plenty of excuses for not sticking your neck out. Moreover, who of us does not wish we could just go back to fishing? Who of us does not wish we could go back to a time before anybody ever heard of Covid-19, before the eighty year peace in Europe was shattered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, before the murder of George Floyd reminded us how deeply our nation is infected with systemic racism; before the price of eggs and gas went through the roof? Yet in the midst of all this, Jesus comes to us and says, “Peace! As the Father has sent me, so now I send you.” Being sent into the world is a frightening prospect, particularly as we have no idea where in the world we are going. But we will not be going alone. Jesus goes ahead, drives us from behind and walks beside us. So we will get there-wherever “there” turns out to be. And the best part is, once we finally get going, we discover how joyful the journey can be.

Here is a poem by Charles Hamilton Sorely about running for the sheer joy of it. I think such joy might approximate that of the disciples as they leave their nets and boats to follow Jesus to-who knows where?

The Song of the Ungirt Runners

We swing ungirded hips,

And lightened are our eyes,

The rain is on our lips,

We do not run for prize.

We know not whom we trust

Nor whitherward we fare,

But we run because we must

    Through the great wide air.

The waters of the seas

Are troubled as by storm.

The tempest strips the trees

And does not leave them warm.

Does the tearing tempest pause?

Do the tree-tops ask it why?

So we run without a cause

    ‘Neath the big bare sky.

The rain is on our lips,

We do not run for prize.

But the storm the water whips

And the wave howls to the skies.

The winds arise and strike it

And scatter it like sand,

And we run because we like it

    Through the broad bright land.

Source: Poetry Foundation. Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895 –1915) was a British Army officer and Scottish war poet who fought in the First World War. He was killed in action during the Battle of Loos in October 1915. Sorley was born in Powis House Aberdeen, Scotland. He attended King’s College School, Cambridge and Marlborough College. Sorley spent a little more than six months in Germany. However, when Germany declared war on Russia, he was detained briefly, released and expelled from the country. Upon returning to England, Sorley immediately volunteered for military service. He arrived on the Western Front in Boulogne, France in May of 1915. Sorley was killed in action during the final offensive of the Battle of Loos. In addition to his poetry, Sorley loved cross-country running. Running was an evident theme in many of his poems, including the above. You can read more about Charles Hamilton Sorely and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD

Acts 10:34-43

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

Colossians 3:1-4

Matthew 28:1-10

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

“After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.” Matthew 28:1.

Why were the women going to see the tomb on the first day of the week? Matthew says nothing about their motivation. It is tempting to interpolate from Mark and Luke who tell us that they were going to anoint the body of Jesus with spices according to custom. But given the fact that, according to Matthew, the tomb of Jesus had been sealed and was under Roman guard, it seems unlikely that the woman would set out on such a hopeless errand. So what were they expecting to “see” at this tomb they could have had no hope of entering?

I cannot get inside the heads of these women, but I wonder whether they had an inkling, a hunch, an irrepressible hope that the Jesus story was not over. I wonder whether there they were driven to the tomb by an inexplicable expectation that God still had more to do with Jesus. Professor Stanley Hauerwas goes so far as to conclude that “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary believe what Jesus has promised, that after three days he will be raised.” Hauerwas, Stanley, Matthew, from the series, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, (c. 2008 by Stanley Hauerwas; pub. by Brazos Press) p. 244. Accordingly, they go to the tomb in order to witness the fulfilment of that promise. They have been chosen to be the first witnesses of the resurrection and charged with directing the disciples to return to Galilee where they, too, will see the risen Jesus. Ibid.

I find Hauerwas persuasive on this point. There is much in Matthew’s gospel to suggest the prominence of the women as witnesses. The genealogy at the opening of the gospel running from Adam to Joseph the husband of Mary includes, contrary to custom and practice, four women. Moreover, the four women mentioned, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba, all played pivotal roles in the ancestral line. Finally, after laying out his elaborate genealogical tree, Matthew abruptly chops it down with the words, “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way” and proceeds to inform us that Jesus was conceived quite apart from Joseph’s involvement. Matthew 1:18. Once again, the woman is the primary actor. As it was in the gospel’s beginning, so it is at the end.

For the two women, then, faith preceded the appearance of the angel, the empty tomb and their encounter with the resurrected Christ. They believed in the resurrection before there was any basis other than Jesus’ promise. It all goes to show that “seeing” is not necessarily “believing.” We read later on in the same chapter that some of the disciples who returned to Galilee and met the resurrected Christ still “doubted.” Matthew 28:17. The miracle of Easter apparently did not convince everyone who witnessed it in real time. How much less those of us who rely on the testimony of others. Like the women who set out to see the tomb, we proceed on the strength of a promise.  

In our modernist arrogance, we are prone to assume that if only we could get behind the scriptural witness, pry away the theological biases of the biblical witnesses and view the events taking place on Easter Sunday with a cold, objective and empirical eye, then we would know with certainty what “really” happened. If only we had a time machine that could take us back to that first Easter Sunday, then we could believe-or not-on the basis of what we know. But I am not convinced a time machine would resolve our doubts. If an encounter with the resurrected Christ could not do that for the disciples, there is no reason to believe it would help us. Only faith can see mysteries.

By faith I do not mean blind acceptance of assertions that defy undisputed fact. To be sure, it is a fact that human beings are mortal. Everything we know about human physiology runs contrary to the notion that death is reversible. But faith insists that there is more to be known than we are capable of knowing. Faith also understands that the empirical method enabling us to split the atom, walk on the moon and unravel the human g-gnome is not the sole or even primary means of discerning truth. Poets, musicians, dancers and playwrights also testify to truths that are real and worthy of our contemplation. Moreover, let us not forget that the greatest advances in both theory and technology begin not in the lab, but in the imagination. Faith does not insist on certainty about what is. It challenges us to remain open to what might be. The women in our gospel went to the tomb on the first day of the week because they could imagine a love so strong and fierce that neither the Roman Empire, nor its armies nor death itself could contain it. Faith claims that what they imagined, what they sought and what they claim to have found is real.

Faith, says the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, is the assurance of things hoped for. Hebrews 11:1. That sounds a little contradictory. We are not accustomed to linking “hope” with “assurance.” But I don’t know how else to make sense of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary setting out that morning to visit the tomb of Jesus. I don’t know how else to make sense of doctors, nurses, pastors and counselors working year after year in refuge camps where life for the people they serve shows no sign of getting better anytime soon. I don’t know how else to make sense of teachers I know working for their students in schools that are chronically underfunded in neighborhoods that are dying for salaries that can barely support them. I don’t know how else to explain the work of hospice caregivers. All of this only makes sense if you can imagine a “new heaves and a new earth” where war gives way to peace; where the divisions between human beings are erased; where the mighty are cast down from their thrones and the poor exalted; where even the reign of death is ended. All of this can be imagined, hoped for and, yes believed. Christ is risen. There are no limits to what might be! Alleluia and Amen.

Here is a poem by Joyce Hernandez that speaking to Jesus’ resurrection which, though it leaves “no scratches on the world” to which we can point, is nonetheless real and visible to the eye of faith.

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

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

PALM SUNDAY/SUNDAY OF THE PASSION

Matthew 21:1-11

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm 31:9-16

Philippians 2:5-11

Matthew 26:14-27:66

Prayer of the Day: Sovereign God, you have established your rule in the human heart through the servanthood of Jesus Christ. By your Spirit, keep us in the joyful procession of those who with their tongues confess Jesus as Lord and with their lives praise him as Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

‘Hosanna to the Son of David!
   Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ Matthew 21:9.

Palm Sunday appears as a singular and welcome note of jubilation in the otherwise somber season of Lent. Yes, I know that the Sundays “in” Lent are not “of” Lent because they are, as all Sundays, little Easter celebrations. Nevertheless, the shadow of Lent is evident in the purple vestments, the absence of alleluias and the theme of the cross running through our Scripture lessons. So one cannot help but feel a measure of relief in this celebratory service re-enacting Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. It is as though we cannot help ourselves. As the great hymn proclaims:

“No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that Rock I’m clinging.

Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,

How can I keep from singing?”

“My Life Flows On in Endless Song,” by Robert Lowry, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, (c. 2006 by Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; pub. by Augsburg Fortress) Hymn #763.

My need for song became painfully clear to me during the height of the Covid 19 pandemic. Like most churches, mine was not meeting for worship in person from March of 2020 until summer of the following year. When we did begin meeting again, there was no singing in our worship for several weeks. Such worship as my wife and I were able to attend was of the virtual variety. Though I am thankful that this means of connecting was available to us, I missed joining my voice with the whole community and the sense that it was being caught up with the voice of the whole communion of saints and with angels, archangels and all the company of heaven.

The absence of singing in my life affected more than my mood and spirit. One rainy afternoon in the midst of a terrible funk, I put on a CD given to me by a member of the last congregation I served. It was a fine collection of traditional hymns sung by a large professional choir backed by a robust pipe organ. Almost reflexively, I began singing along-or at least I tried. It was then that I made the troubling discovery that I could no longer sing. I struggled to reach notes previously well within my range and failed. My voice cracked and left me coughing. I hasten to add at this point that I have never had a singing voice close to American Idol quality. But I can carry a tune well enough and have always enjoyed singing. I belonged to the worship choir in college and the choirs of every church I have served or to which I belonged. I was able to sing the liturgy competently and lead singing for church school, youth groups and nursing home services, sans accompaniment when necessary. Now I was finding that I could not manage a single verse from a familiar hymn. I guess that singing is one of the many things that you have to use or lose when you get to be my age.

I was determined not to lose my ability to sing. So it was that I began chanting the psalms in my private morning and evening devotions, singing the liturgy and reading the lessons aloud. It was not pretty to begin with. I took some comfort, though, in the psalmist’s invitation to “make a joyful noise to God.” Psalm 66:1. If I could not be melodious, I could at lest be joyful and that, according to the psalmist, would suffice. Gradually, I built up my stamina. Over time, my range grew to embrace its previous tenor parameters. I was relieved to discover that my singing voice was not irretrievably lost.

I recovered something else as well. Though physically isolated from my faith community, I began to feel a kinship with it and with the whole communion of saints in my singing. It was profoundly comforting to know that the psalms I was chanting had been chanted by the people of Israel throughout their journeys in the wilderness following the Exodus, in times of triumph and defeat, in circumstances of exile and liberation. These same psalms inspired the New Testament witnesses. They have been chanted by monks for centuries. They have been and continue to be the inspiration for hymns of faith. Most significantly, I knew that they were being sung by believers around the world even as I sat singing them in my living room. Reading the words of scripture aloud gave me the realization that I was speaking with my voice words that have given life and birthed faith throughout the church’s history and continue to do so. My voice, I discovered, was not merely an instrument for my own self expression. It was also a conduit through which the Spirit was working to unite my heart with those of believers throughout the world and over time and space.

The creation is, as W. David O. Taylor has observed, “hardwired to sing.” According to the book of Job, the creation began with an outburst of cosmic song. Job 38:4-7. John of Patmos envisions the redeemed creation as a grand choir made up of every nation, tribe, people and tongue united in a song of praise before the throne of God. Revelation 7:9-11. The psalms weave into song worship, teaching, prayer and every aspect of human life from joy to sorrow, from triumph to tragedy, from cradle to grave. Mary sings of the liberating good news her unborn child will proclaim. Luke 1:46-55. Jesus and his disciples sing hymns at their last meal together, the meal giving birth to our Eucharist. Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26; Paul and Silas sing hymns while imprisoned at Philippi. Acts 16:25. Paul urges the churches in Ephesus and Colossae to greet one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16. In singing together, the church experiences in some measure the oneness for which Jesus prays and its unity as a single Body upon which Saint Paul insists. John 17:22-23; I Corinthians 12:12-13. Singing unites us in Triune love to God the Singer, God the Voice and God the Song as well as to one another. It joins us with the divine music that birthed the world, redeems the world and draws the world to its proper end where God is “all in all.” I Corinthians 15:28.    

“And while the reality of ‘one body’ may be experienced only partially and defectively this side of the eschaton, and while the work of church leaders to foster unity in fractured congregations is daunting, the practice of Spirit songs enables us by grace to sing ourselves into a future that Christ has prepared for us and that we can taste here an now…” Taylor, David W., “Singing Ourselves into the Future,” published in The Art of New Creation, edited by Jeremy Begbie, Daniel Train and W. David Taylor (c. 2022; pub. by InterVarsity Press), p. 132.

So we sing our hosanas under the shadow of the cross where we struggle with a resurgence of fascism, systemic racism, and a war spiraling out of control. We sing our hosanas even as we enter into the dark narrative of Jesus’ passion. We sing our hosanas because, after all, “since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can [we] keep from singing?”

Here is a poem about the spiritual power of song by Lily Augusta Long.       

The Singing Place

Cold may lie the day,

And bare of grace;

At night I slip away

To the Singing Place.

A border of mist and doubt

Before the gate,

And the Dancing Stars grow still

As hushed I wait.

Then faint and far away

I catch the beat

In broken rhythm and rhyme

Of joyous feet,—

Lifting waves of sound

That will rise and swell

(If the prying eyes of thought

Break not the spell),

Rise and swell and retreat

And fall and flee,

As over the edge of sleep

They beckon me.

And I wait as the seaweed waits

For the lifting tide;

To ask would be to awake,—

To be denied.

I cloud my eyes in the mist

That veils the hem,—

And then with a rush I am past,-—

I am Theirs, and of Them!

And the pulsing chant swells up

To touch the sky,

And the song is joy, is life,

And the song am I!

The thunderous music peals

Around, o’erhead-

The dead would awake to hear

If there were dead;

But the life of the throbbing Sun

Is in the song,

And we weave the world anew,

And the Singing Throng

Fill every corner of space—-

Over the edge of sleep

I bring but a trace

Of the chants that pulse and sweep

In the Singing Place.

Source: Poetry, (November 1912). Lily Augusta Long (1862–1927) was an American poet and novelist. She was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and decided to become a writer when she was only eleven years old. Long graduated high school in St. Paul and later took an elective course at the University of Wisconsin. As a student, she submitted verses and sketches to local papers. A few of her poems were published in Unity. In 1887, two of her stories appeared in the magazines Overland and Current. Long also edited and contributed to Women’s Record. She wrote short stories and poems for Harper’s Weekly. Under the pseudonym Roman Doubleday, she wrote pulp mysteries for The Popular Magazine. You can sample more of Long’s poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Psalm 130

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, your Son came into the world to free us all from sin and death. Breathe upon us the power of your Spirit, that we may be raised to new life in Christ and serve you in righteousness all our days, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.” John 11:45.

So many, in fact, that the religious establishment in Jerusalem was becoming alarmed. Jesus was no longer simply a false teacher, a breaker of religious taboos and a bad moral influence. He was becoming a threat to national security. Jesus’ popularity was drawing the attention of Judea’s Roman overlords. According to John the Evangelist, this unwanted attention was a direct result of his raising Lazarus from death. Caiaphas, the high priest, is well schooled in realpolitik. Caiaphas understands the threat Jesus poses to his fragile arrangement with the world’s only superpower under which his people are permitted to exist. As distasteful as it might be, killing Jesus and Lazarus is a small price to pay for sparing the whole nation the wrath of Rome’s legions. John 11:45-53. So let us not be too hard on Caiaphas and his associates. After all, decisions like these are made by law enforcement bodies, intelligence agencies and chiefs of military staff every day.

These verses following Sunday’s gospel lesson are important because they frame the context for this final miracle of Jesus. It is, according to John the Evangelist, the straw that broke the camel’s back, the sign that made equivocally clear to the rulers in Jerusalem that Jesus must die. As such, it is an intensely political act, a frontal assault on the empire, a bold assertion that Rome’s threats of war, torture and death are finally empty. The last word belongs to life. That is a word no empire can bear to hear. How can a nation hope to rule through violence and terror when its most fearsome threat of raw, violent power-the cross-is transformed into a symbol of victory? When a people no longer fears death, how can a tyrant hope to retain control of them? The raising of Lazarus, and more so the Resurrection of Jesus, is deeply political. The reign of kingdoms, empires and nation states with their bogus claims of sovereignty, their machinery of oppression and police power is over. Be afraid Caesar; be afraid mother Russia; be afraid Uncle Sam; be very afraid.

Understand that there is nothing inherently wrong with government per se. To the contrary, government is one of God’s good gifts. It is the means by which neighbors exercise love for one another by making provision for the health of our common life together. But every gift of God is a potential idol. It becomes so when it usurps divine prerogatives. In this regard, all modern states, regardless their form of governance, have one thing in common: they all claim the sole legitimate authority to take human life. The state, unlike the rest of us, has the legal right to employ lethal force to enforce its laws, protect its commercial interests and make war on its enemies. The assumption here is that the state-like Caiaphas-employs violence in the service of some higher moral good that justifies it. Thus, when all other means of persuasion fail, there is always the national guard, the armed forces, the gallows or lethal injection. The state, every state, relies on the power to kill. Without it, the state cannot survive.

By raising Lazarus, Jesus puts the lie to the assumption underlying the state’s blasphemous claim to power over life and death. In so doing, it pulls the rug out from under all assertions of national security, sovereignty, territorial integrity, border security and all the other poor excuses nation states make for killing people. A human being created in God’s image is sacrosanct. However distorted that image might become, the human form is God’s temple. As such, oppression, poverty, violence and death must not be allowed to deface it. God alone rightfully determines its end.  

The same cannot be said of nation states. “The nations,” says the prophet Isaiah, “are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dost on the scales.” Isaiah 40:15. The great empires of the world are, as Shakespeare would say, a “walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5. Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome are now ruins and dust. Someday the United States of America will join them-as will all who give to nations and kingdoms the allegiance belonging to God alone.

Let us then put aside the heroic and patriotic rhetoric surrounding the cult of the warrior and acknowledge the carnage taking place around the world for what it truly is: a massive sacrificial holocaust of human flesh to the false gods of nation, blood and soil. Let us boldly assert that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism into the one holy, catholic and apostolic church made up of “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues.” Revelation 7:9-10. Thus, to take up arms against any person on behalf of any nation is to defile God’s holy temple, betray God’s holy church and deny the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the one who offers only life and redemption, even to his enemies. Jesus is the man who chose endurance of suffering and death over inflicting it upon others. Jesus is the only begotten Son of the God who shows no favoritism and knows none of the distinctions we make among ourselves. Jesus raised Lazarus to show Mary, Martha, his own people and all nations that this God’s fierce love for all people cannot be killed.

Here is a poem by Henry Colman reflecting on the gospel lesson for this Sunday.

On Lazarus Raised from Death

Where am I, or how came I here, hath death

                     Bereaved me of my breath,

                               Or do I dream?

          Nor can that be, for sure I am

These are no ensigns of a living man,

                               Beside, the stream

                               Of life did fly

From hence, and my blessed soul did sour on high,

                     And well remember I,

                     My friends or either hand

                               I weeping stand

                               To see me die;

Most certain then it is my soul was fled

Forth of my clay, and I am buried.

These linens plainly show this cave did keep

                     My flesh in its dead sleep,

                               And yet a noise

          Me-thought I heard, of such strange force

As would have raised to life the dullest corse,

                               So sweet a voice

                               As spite of death

Distilled through every vein a living breath,

                     And sure I heard it charge

                     Me by my name, even thus

                               O Lazarus

                               Come forth at large,

And so nought hinders, I will straightaway then

Appear, (though thus dressed) ere it call again.

Was’t my Redeemer called, no marvel then

          Though dead, I live again,

                               His word alone

          Can raise a soul, though dead in sin,

Ready the grace of hell to tumble in

                               High as the Throne;

                               In all things he

Is the true powerful Eternity:

                    Since thou has pleased to raise

My body then, let my spirit

          Heaven inherit

          And the praise.

And let thy miracle upon my clay

Prepare, and fit me ‘gainst the reckoning day.

This poem is in the public domain and reprinted in Chapter into Verse, an anthology of English poetry inspired by scripture edited by Robert Atwan and Laurance Wieder, (c. 2000 by the editors; pub. by Oxford University Press). I have been unable to secure any information concerning Henry Colman, though he may have been the prominent New England clergyman of that name born 1785 in Boston. If you have any further information, I would appreciate your sharing it with me.