NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 5:1-7

Psalm 80:7-15

Philippians 3:4-14

Matthew 21:33-46

Prayer of the Day: Beloved God, from you come all things that are good. Lead us by the inspiration of your Spirit to know those things that are right, and by your merciful guidance, help us to do them, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

 “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits.” Matthew 21:43.

This is one of those texts in the common lectionary that must be handled with care. It lends itself to a supersessionist interpretation, suggesting that God has taken the reign of God away from the Jews and given it to the church. This reading of Jesus’ parable has lent support to the erroneous theological understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures as history of failure and unfaithfulness on the part of the Jews. Worse yet, it has led the church to view the Jews as cursed, rejected by God and therefore justly persecuted as “Kiks,” shorthand for “Christ killers.” The violent oppression of Jews in Europe throughout the middle ages culminating in the Holocaust of the twentieth century illustrates once again that bad theology is lethal. It matters what one believes about God. Accordingly, preachers addressing this parable of Jesus need to keep three things in mind.

First, the parable is not directed against the Jews. It is directed against the ruling class of chief priests and Pharisees who presided over the temple cult in Jerusalem. Jesus was not alone in his criticism of the ruling establishment in Jerusalem and the extraction of temple taxes and exchange rates from the people to enrich themselves and their Roman overlords. The temple was built by Herod the Great, the self proclaimed “king of the Jews” who was not himself a Jew. Most Jews therefore held mixed feelings about the temple in Jerusalem. As successor to the Temple of Solomon, it represented God’s presence among God’s people. But like Jesus, many Jewish prophets and teachers abhorred its corrupt and exploitive practices which they felt were wholly incompatible with God’s just and gentle reign. Accordingly, they warned that Herod’s temple might well suffer the same fate as its predecessor.

Second, at the time Matthew’s gospel was written, there was no “Christian Church” distinct from Judaism. All of the gospel actors, Jesus, his disciples and the chief priests and Pharisees were all Jews. The Jesus movement was one of many messianic groups within the larger Jewish community. It is with this understanding that we need to view the often harsh condemnations traded between Jesus and his opponents. Family arguments can be emotional, fierce and sometimes violent. Yet they are, for all that, family disputes. As a former Missouri Synod Lutheran who lived through the reign of Jacob Preus and the formation of Seminex, I can attest to the fact that strife within religious bodies is far more intense, personal and vitriolic than conflict between them. We cannot superimpose on the much later separate Jewish and Christian communities the intrenicene exchanges between Jewish movements in the first and second centuries. The tragic consequence of such misreading is illustrated below by the poet Charles Reznikoff.

Finally, and this may be the most important point to be made, the reign of God is not anyone’s property. It does not belong to the church anymore than it belonged to the chief priests and the Pharisees. The reign of God belongs to God. It is the privilege of God’s people to proclaim the good news of that reign to the world in word and deed. When God’s people mistake the privilege of sharing the news of God’s reign for a right of ownership, they are in danger of losing it. Those of us responsible for preaching that good news should hear Jesus’ parable as warning and a promise. Preachers are warned that their failure to preach the good news as good news for all people puts them at risk for losing that privilege. God’s people are promised that God will always find some faithful people to proclaim the reign of God for which Jesus lived, died and continues to live.

Ultimately, the privilege of witnessing to God’s reign was taken away from the temple elite following the temple’s destruction. For the Jesus movement, the physical symbol of God’s presence was Jesus manifested in his Body, the church. For the Jews, God’s abiding presence was found in the Torah and the great rabbinic teachers who taught and explained it, giving birth to that rich and diverse community of modern Judaism we know today. In the shadow of the temple’s destruction, God found witnesses to the promise of God’s reign among both Jews and Christians. Both are privileged to make known this good news to the world. Neither can claim ownership.

Here is the above cited poem by Charles Reznikoff characterizing a dialogue between Abrabanel[1] Queen Isabella and Torquemada[2] on expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

Spain: Anno 1492

Source: Poems 1918-1975: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff (Black Sparrow Press, 1977). Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) was an American poet. He was born in 1894 in Brownsville, a largely Jewish neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. His parents were immigrants who fled the Russian Empire and its pogroms. Reznikoff worked for a time for his family’s business as a hat salesman. He also worked for a legal publishing house where he wrote summaries of court records for legal reference books, an experience that was to influence profoundly his later writing which consisted in the main of refashioning court testimony into poetic verse. From his teens, Reznikoff had been writing poetry. He published his own work using a second-hand press for which he set the type himself.

Reznikoff’s best known poetic writing, Testimony: The United States (1885–1915), is a multi-volume work based on court records exploring the experiences of immigrants, black people and the urban and rural poor in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His final work, Holocaust (1975), is based on court testimony about Nazi death camps during World War II. You can read more about Charles Reznikoff and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

[1] Abrabanel is one of the oldest and most distinguished Jewish families. It first achieved prominence on the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages.

[2] Tomás de Torquemada (1420-1498) was the first grand inquisitor in Spain, whose name has become synonymous with the Christian Inquisition’s horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism.

EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

Psalm 25:1-9

Philippians 2:1-13

Matthew 21:23-32

Prayer of the Day: God of love, giver of life, you know our frailties and failings. Give us your grace to overcome them, keep us from those things that harm us, and guide us in the way of salvation, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’? As I live, says the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins who shall die.” Ezekiel 18:1-4.

Actually, there is more than a little truth to the proverb to which the Lord takes exception in our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures. We know that many children of abusive, neglectful and inept parents carry for the rest of their lives scars from wounds inflicted by their dysfunctional families. We who live today in the United States have never owned slaves and, unless a good deal older than me (and I’m no spring chicken), have not played any part in implementing or enforcing Jim Crow legislation. Nevertheless, we live with the consequences of these sins which perpetuate themselves systemically in our government, workplaces and educational institutions. Moreover, our children stand to inherit the world we have made for them: a world irreparably ecologically damaged, less prosperous and threatened by the resurgence of fascism. We have eaten the sour grapes of greed, racial hate and violence; their teeth are set on edge by the sorry legacy we have bequeathed to them.

Yet the prophet condemns this saying because, while undoubtedly true, it is not the whole truth. While we may have been born into circumstances created by our ancestors, unlike our ancestors, we are still living and breathing. We are moral agents capable of making moral decisions. We may not be able to erase the scars inflicted upon us in the past. But we can choose whether our past will define our future, or whether our future will bring redemptive meaning to our past. We cannot change our nation’s shameful history of racism. But that does not free us from our obligation to dismantle its continuing presence in our churches, schools, workplaces and government. We say in our confessional liturgy that “we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” That much is true. But the greater truth comes in the absolution which states: “God, who is rich in mercy, loved us even when we were dead in sin, and made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.” So, yes, you are stuck with a past, much of which you did not make and none of which you can change. But you have been liberated to live in a present governed not by your past, but by God’s future reign. So what are you going to do about it?

I think our biggest problem, and when I say “our” I am speaking principally to my fellow Lutherans, is that, like Ezekiel’s audience, we fixate too much on the confessional liturgy and too little on the implications of the absolution. My childhood religious education emphasized the pervasiveness and power of sin in our individual lives and in society leading to a kind of pious fatalism. I am old enough to remember the days before Martin Luther King, Jr. was a civil rights icon. I can remember my pastor criticizing King and the civil rights movement on grounds that disobeying the government God had established was rebellion against God. Yes, he conceded, racism is a sin and segregation is unjust. But because we live in a sinful world, the justice meted out by human authorities will always be less than perfect. Ours is not the prerogative to resist or overthrow the authority God has instituted. Because we are sinners, we cannot expect anything better from any improvement to or replacement of the authority that already exists. To the contrary, we will likely end up making matters worse.

Thankfully, you are not likely to hear preaching like that in any American Lutheran church today, though I suppose if you were to turn over enough rocks among some of the more reactionary break off Lutheran bodies you might find a specimen or two. Nevertheless, I think the same pious fatalism still infects much of our ministry today. It is just more difficult to recognize because very often it is hidden under activist rhetoric. In a recent article in the Christian Century,[1] Gerardo Marti, professor of sociology at Davidson College observes that “the word inclusive is everywhere….” Yet while usually sincere and rooted in scripture, “over time it has become a moral framework centered on affective warmth rather than structural change.” As a result, the “theology of inclusivity leads to an impasse for the White progressive church: It wants to be prophetic without being disruptive, just without being divisive, welcoming without ever being uncomfortable.”

The paucity of substance in my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s commitment to dismantling white supremacy became clear in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. At that time many of us, including yours truly, urged the bishops of the ELCA to call upon the church to make a substantial commitment to reparations to African American victims of racism. See Open Letter to the ELCA Presiding Bishop and Synodical Bishops: A Modest Proposal for Reparational Tithe. I cannot speak for everyone who issued this call, but I received a half page response from the then presiding bishop thanking for me for my interest and informing me that the issue of reparations was being referred to a committee for study. Ah, the committee, that cul-de-sac down which ideas are sent to die! The rationale, I was told, was to develop a program to educate the whole church so that the move for reparations and other more direct actions to address white supremacy would have “buy in” from all members. But again, as Marti observes, the emphasis on analysis, discussion, education, all designed to “get everyone on board,” leads finally to institutional paralysis. The study and consideration of racism gets confused with actually confronting and combating it. The process becomes an end in itself. More than that, it practically ensures that no meaningful action involving risk or sacrifice will ever be taken.

There is little risk in issuing public statements condemning white supremacy and urging justice for its victims. There is no risk involved in synodical conventions breaking its delegates up into little groups to share experiences and feelings about racial issues. It costs nothing to post a “Black Lives Matter” sign on your front lawn. But pledging substantial financial support and making church property and resources available to Black churches and/or Black organizations fighting for equal housing, education and opportunities will surely prove disruptive and very possibly divisive. Some bishops with whom I have communicated tell me that they are pastors to the whole church and that it is their job to build consensus, not dictate. We need to take whatever time that requires.  

To any bishop who might give a tinker’s dam for what a retired small steeple pastor thinks, I respectfully disagree. Bishops are not group facilitators. The ELCA presiding bishop is to “be a teacher of the faith of this church and shall provide leadership for the life and witness of this church.” So says the ELCA constitution at chapter 13, subsection 21. According to the model synodical constitution, bishops are to “[i]nterpret and advocate the mission and theology of the whole church.” Model Synodical Constitution, chapter 8, section 12, subsection g1. No, you cannot dictate what the rest of the church must do. But you can and, if the above cited constitutional provisions mean anything, you must call the church to do concretely what is right and what is just. The church may not listen to you. It might well turn on you and reject you. You may seem to have failed. You might not be reelected. That’s called taking up the cross. Deal with it. Stop acting like the CEO of a failing corporation trembling before the wrath of angry shareholders. You are bishops. You stand in the shoes of the apostles. Speaking hard but redemptive truth is your job. So put on your grown up pants and do it.

Ezekiel’s message is clear. There is no room for resignation. Repentance is a refusal to let the past shape the future. You play the hand you are dealt, however unpromising it might be. You do not throw your cards into the air and walk away from the table. You do not complain that the challenges are too big, that you are too small and the consequences of obedience are too risky. Even in the ashes of defeat and the hostile environment of exile, God is present working a new thing. You can choose to be part of “that number when the saints come marching in,” or you can just sit on the curb and let the parade pass you by.

Here is a poem by Langston Hughes arguing for the recognition of the present time as the day of liberation for people of color. Hughes’ holy impatience reflects that of Ezekiel’s zeal for the future of his people.

Freedom

Source: Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (c. 1926 by Alfred A. Knopf, pub. by Random House, LLC, 1990). Langston Hughes was an important African American voice in the “Harlem Renaissance” of the 1920s. Though well-educated and widely traveled, Hughes’ poetry never strayed far from his roots in the African American community. Early in his career, Hughes’ work was criticized by some African American intellectuals for portraying what they viewed as an unflattering representation of back life. In a response to these critics, Hughes replied, “I didn’t know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too.”  Today Langston Hughes is recognized globally as a towering literary figure of the 20^th Century. You can read more about Hughes and discover more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website (from which the above quote is taken).

[1] “The Inclusivity Trap,” by Gerardo Marti, The Christian Century, (October 2026), pp. 62-66.

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 15:15-21

Psalm 26:1-8

Romans 12:9-21

Matthew 16:21-28

Prayer of the Day: O God, with all your faithful followers of every age, we praise you, the rock of our life. Be our strong foundation and form us into the body of your Son, that we may gladly minister to all the world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

 “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Matthew 16:24.

Jeremiah is a prophet in deep trouble. His relationship with his congregation, the people of Judah, has become toxic. The early delight he took in his calling has evaporated. His ministry seems to be going nowhere. He is alienated from his prophetic colleagues. Unfortunately for Jeremiah, his time knew nothing of today’s cottage industry of pastoral coaches, pastoral burnout counselors and congregational conflict mediators. His only source of consolation is the God who called him. And God does not appear particularly empathetic toward his downtrodden prophet:

“Therefore thus says the Lord:
If you turn back, I will take you back,
    and you shall stand before me.
If you utter what is precious and not what is worthless,
    you shall serve as my mouth.” Jeremiah 15:19.

To paraphrase, “Quit your whining, Jeremiah. I never promised you a rose garden. You can’t expect people to thank you for telling them truths they don’t want to hear. God does not care about polls, favorability ratings or popularity and neither should you. I am bringing this people to a bright new day. That’s good news they are longing to hear. But the way to the new dawn comes only after passing through the dark night of judgment. That is news they are not going to like. Furthermore, they are not going to like you for bringing it to them. You won’t be spared their hostility. The only promise you get is that God will give you what you need to face whatever you have to face. You will become tough as a wall of bronze.” Not exactly the model of pastoral ministry I learned in seminary or the expectations I had for my own pastoral career. I was, of course, determined to work hard at preaching, teaching and pastoral care for my members. But I also anticipated that I would be loved, cared for and supported in return. For the most part, I was. But there were exceptions.

The first time I experience substantial hostility from members of my congregation occurred following the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Though I did not hide my dismay over the outcome of that election, I did not express my views on that subject from the pulpit or in any Bible study class or church meeting. My preaching and teaching did not change. My focus was, as I have always striven to keep it, on Jesus and God’s just and gentle reign for which he lived, died and continues to live. I continued, as I have always done to emphasize Jesus’ call to serve him in those regarded “least” among us. These include the poor, the homeless, the alien and even, perhaps especially, those we regard as enemies. For a significant group of folks within the church, however, such preaching evoked a visceral response. Suddenly, advocacy and support for immigrants, which has been a focus of our Lutheran churches for more than eight decades, was “too political.” Welcome and inclusion of LGBQT+ folk, our policy for the last decade, became a red line of contention. Combative emails, provocative posts on my FB page and angry letters started coming my way. What once were areas of discussion over differing viewpoints became lines of demarcation in an atmosphere of increasing hostility.

I responded by meeting with disaffected members over lunch, individually and in groups. I held discussion groups at which I hoped we might learn to listen to one another, understand one another’s thinking and perhaps diffuse some of the anger. While members who participated were generally receptive, the dissenters only deepened their opposition as it became clear that the congregation at large did not share their outlook on my ministry. My efforts at reconciliation failed. One member angrily and publicly announced his departure from the congregation at our annual meeting, dramatically tossing his church keys on the table in front of me. Another circulated an email to the congregation stating that he would no longer attend or support the church. A few simply disappeared but informed me though remaining members “that there was no need for me to call on them.”

This was a painful chapter in my ministry. The folks who left were people I married, people whose children and grandchildren I baptized and whose loved ones I buried. I suppose I will never stop looking back upon that troubled time and wonder whether there was not more I could have done to bring about reconciliation and peace. Still, unlike poor Jeremiah, I had the support of my congregation. The church council stood solidly behind me. I had the support of sympathetic colleagues in ministry. Moreover, while I encountered a lot of anger, I never received any threats of violence. I am thankful for the love, support and encouragement I received from my congregation and colleagues during those difficult days. I know of many pastors who, like Jeremiah, did not fare so well with their congregations.

As I read Jesus’ words in Sunday’s gospel calling his disciples to take up the cross, I am beginning to wonder whether perhaps I was trying too hard to make peace. After all, didn’t Jesus warn us that he did not come to bring peace, but a sword? Didn’t he tell us that he came to sow division? Matthew 10:34-39. Didn’t Simion warn Mary the Mother of our Lord that Jesus would be “destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed?” Luke 2:33-35. Let us not dilute the impact of Jesus’ challenge in Sunday’s gospel by turning the cross into a generalized metaphor. The cross was an instrument of imperial violence designed to instill terror in the hearts of imperial subjects. From Rome’s standpoint, it was the most powerful reminder that Ceasar was lord and a warning to anyone who dared to dispute that lordship. Jesus’ call to live in a manner that brings one to the cross is therefore a radical political statement. It is a call to witness explicitly, by word and deed, that Jesus, not Caesar is Lord.

I do not believe that the church’s message changes under the reign of Trump or that the task of ministry was any simpler before he came on the scene. To the contrary, I believe the president has made our task clearer, if not easier. As I have said before, we have Trump to thank for exposing the demonic influences of white supremacy, economic oppression and a whole smorgasbord of bigotries that have always been part and parcel of our nation’s DNA. He has, I believe, made it nearly impossible for us to believe any longer in the United States as a benevolent giant whose power and wealth are “blessings” signifying divine approval. That is and always has been a lie in which the American church has too long been complicit. It is time for that to end.

The current regime is doing everything in its power to prop up the dying myth of American exceptionalism. By purging all references to the nation’s history of slavery from our national parks and museums, censoring exhibits at the Library of Congress and bullying universities into substituting propaganda for history, the Trump administration is working frantically to revive a picture of the United States that is deteriorating faster than the lining for the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial. Jesus would not have been the least bit surprised by any of this. He understood and would have us know that empires, the American empire included, are ephemeral. They “fret and strut their hour upon the stage and are heard from no more.” Jesus knew that Rome’s power, like the power of all empires, rested on the fear of its ability to deal out death. With all its military might, Rome was powerless in the face of a man who did not fear death. Rather than shrinking in horror before the threat of crucifixion, Jesus embraced it. He turned Rome’s most powerful symbol of oppression into a lifegiving symbol of liberation.

The word of the cross is tough medicine for an empire that has confused wealth, power and privilege with divine approval. It is perhaps even tougher for a church that has always seen itself as the nation’s chaplaincy and enjoyed the benefits that come with such status. As observed by Rev. Dr. Linda E Thomas, professor of theology and anthropology, Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago:

“People with achieved and ascribed privilege, power, wealth, individually and intersectionality, need to understand how the vectors of demonology operate to give them privilege, access to resources and freedom at the expense of “othering” others. They need to know how they perpetuate demonic systems that give them advantages and grant them social subsidy, monetary subsidization and/or endowment. In other words, historically dominant groups need to know the ways they advance and keep the cancers of racism, sexism, heterosexism, Islamophobia, and other “isms” alive and metastasizing. They can become allies of many different historically subordinated people by replacing discriminatory statutes, decrees and laws that usurp power or nullify the enactment of legislation that promotes equality and equity.”[1]

Preaching that goes to the heart of our sin and calls for repentance at the individual and communal level is likely to spark hostility and opposition within our congregations and the church at large. It might even mean the end of the church as we know it, just as the Babylonian conquest meant the end of Judah as the people knew it. But Jesus reminds us that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” John 12:24. The surest way to lose one’s life is to cling to it. Matthew 16:25. People fixated on the past will never see the Kingdom of heaven coming to us out of God’s future. People terrified of death will never see through its darkness to the resurrection. People unwilling to face God’s judgment will never find God’s grace. This word of the cross is a hard word; but it is a good word for the church, for our nation and for the world.

Here is a poetic meditation by William Dean Howells on Jesus’s inquiry, “what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”

What Shall it Profit?

If I lay waste and wither up with doubt

The blessed fields of heaven where once my faith

Possessed itself serenely safe from death;

If I deny the things past finding out;

Or if I orphan my own soul of One

That seemed a Father, and make void the place

Within me where He dwelt in power and grace,

What do I gain by that I have undone?

Source: This poem is in the public domain. William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American realist, novelist, literary critic, playwright, and diplomat. He was particularly known for his tenure as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, as well as for the novels The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Traveler from Altruria, and the Christmas story “Christmas Every Day”, which was adapted into a 1996 film of the same name. Howells was born in Martinsville, Ohio (now known as Martins Ferry, Ohio). He began at an early age to help his father, a printer and publisher, with typesetting and printing work. In 1852, his father arranged to have one of his poems published in the Ohio State Journal without telling him. He began working at the Journal in 1858 where he wrote poetry, short stories and translated pieces from French, Spanish, and German. In 1860 Howells wrote Abraham Lincoln’s campaign biography, Life of Abraham Lincoln. You can read more about William Dean Howells at the Britannica website.   

[1] “Public Theology, Populism, and Racism in the Post-Obama Era in the United States: A Womanist Summoning,” Linda E. Thomas, pub. in Resisting Exclusion: Global Theological Responses to Populism, (pub. by Evangelische Verlangsanstalt GmbH, Leipzig, Germany, under the auspices of The Lutheran World Federation).

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 51:1-6

Psalm 138

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

Prayer of the Day: O God, with all your faithful followers of every age, we praise you, the rock of our life. Be our strong foundation and form us into the body of your Son, that we may gladly minister to all the world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

From as far back as the first time I was told this story in Sunday School as a youngster, I have been made aware that we Lutherans hold that when Jesus said to Saint Peter, “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,” he meant Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah, not Peter himself. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church’s claims concerning apostolic succession and Papal authority are fundamentally misguided. I have always been suspicious, however, of arguments based on what Jesus “meant” to deflate arguments based on what Jesus actually “said.” It seems clear to me that the identification of the Greek name “Petros” with the Greek word “petra” meaning rock leaves little doubt that Jesus is conferring some measure recognition and status on Peter. I hasten to add, though that there is a long way to go from there to positing a divine mandate for apostolic succession as practiced by Roman Catholics and other church bodies, including now my own ELCA.

What, then, are we to make of Jesus’ declaration about Peter? Perhaps we should turn to our lesson from the prophet Isaiah. Speaking to a disheartened band of returning exiles who discover that life in their ancestral homeland is turning out to be difficult and fraught with danger, the prophet urges his hearers to:

“Look to the rock from which you were hewn
    and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Look to Abraham your father
    and to Sarah, who bore you,
for he was but one when I called him,
    but I blessed him and made him many.” Isaiah 51:1-2.

The prophet also refers to Abraham and Sarah as rock. But he does not lift them up as heroes or great leaders. The emphasis is not on the virtues of these two ancient ancestors, but on what God was able to do with them. They were but a single family living as aliens and sojourners among hostile peoples. Yet God raised up from them not only Israel, but several other nations. That, too, is the thrust of the gospel message. Jesus says of Peter, on this rock I will build my church. Thus, it is neither Peter’s status among the twelve nor his confession (which we know was somewhat misguided) that matters most. What matters is Jesus’ promise to build up his church.  

What importance does this have for us? First, we know a few things about Peter. He is a frequent spokesperson for the disciples, but often less than perceptive. He does not understand Jesus’ parables and his questions often betray profound misconceptions about the reign of God Jesus proclaims. We know that, after vowing to go to prison and even death with Jesus, he denies knowing him when the opportunity to fulfil that vow arrives. Just as Abraham and Sarah were unlikely prospects for nation building, so Peter does not strike us as a very reliable cornerstone of Jesus’ church. But their vulnerabilities and shortcomings do not limit God’s determination to work God’s redemptive purpose in their lives.

Second, “the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Bear in mind that this declaration is made before Peter’s denial of Jesus. Peter, we know, is bound to fail. The church regularly fails to live into its calling as a witness to Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims. Nonetheless, the church, with all its faults, is God’s building project. In so many ways, in our private and corporate lives, we deny the Lord we proclaim. Yet Jesus does not ever deny his church. Once again, the stones are only the building material. Jesus is the builder on which the structure depends. What Jesus begins, Jesus finishes.

Third, there is an awesome responsibility placed upon Peter. He is given the keys of the kingdom, the power to bind and the power to loose. There has been no shortage of scholarly debate over exactly what that means. I will not attempt to summarize it here. But at a bare minimum, it means that the words spoken and the acts done by Peter and through the church are powerful and have eternal consequences. The charge to exercise prophetic ministry is not a privilege. It is solemn charge to speak God’s words of judgment and grace. Properly spoken, these words bring light into the darkest places, hope where there is despair and open up new paths where life seems to have hit a dead end. Get it wrong and bloody crusades are launched, heretics and supposed witches are burned at the stake and Tomahawk missiles slaughter innocent school girls. Great responsibility and, I would add, accountability is placed upon Saint Peter and the church that will be built upon his ministry. The church will always be in need of criticism, repentance and reform if it is to remain faithful.

Finally, the gospel reminds us that Jesus sees in those he calls far more than they are able to see in themselves. Where the rest of the world saw only an unlearned fisherman, Jesus saw Saint Peter the Apostle. Where the rest of the world saw only a corrupt tax collector, Jesus saw Matthew the Apostle. As an ecclesiastical insider, I don’t need anyone to tell me how corrupt church institutions can be, how ambitious for power, how mean and petty we clergy can be and how self centered and unwelcoming congregations can be. But every so often, just often enough to keep me believing in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, something extraordinary happens. A church assembly votes and takes concrete steps to welcome individuals and groups formerly excluded by both church and society in spite of the institutional consequences, such as loss of membership and financial support. A pastor takes a principled stand for justice that puts their call, their livelihood and their standing with ecclesiastical authority in jeopardy. A congregation puts its endowment into a promising but risky ministry  to its community. In short, every so often we discover that we are more than we think we are. We have gifts for ministry we never dreamed we possessed. We find ourselves doing what we never imagined possible. When that happens, it’s beautiful.

Here is a poem about calling and commission from an anonymous source.

Father to Daughter

Let no one tell you, girl,

          that the mountain is too high,

the evil too deeply entrenched,

          the valley too steep

or that it’s too far to the sky.

          Let no one say, my child,

that your dreams are too big,

          that you are too small,

that what your heart tells you is right

          can never be and so ignore its call.

Let no man convince you to be practical

          or chide you for lacking common sense.

For it just may be that God’s been waiting

          endless ages for someone

blind to conventional wisdom,

          someone brave enough to be compassionate

instead of simply strong,

          someone who would rather die

for a good cause than live for none at all.

          So ignore all words of caution

and shut out all well meaning advice.

          Silence the timid voice of warning

and listen instead with your whole heart to the call.   

Source: Anonymous  

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 56:1, 6-8

Psalm 67

Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32

Matthew 15:[10-20] 21-28

Prayer of the Day: God of all peoples, your arms reach out to embrace all those who call upon you. Teach us as disciples of your Son to love the world with compassion and constancy, that your name may be known throughout the earth, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“for my house shall be called a house of prayer
    for all peoples.” Isaiah 56:7.

Following the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital during Donald Trump’s first term, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro remarked that,

″[Trump], like King Cyrus before him, fulfilled the biblical prophecies of the gods [sic] worshipped by Jews, Christians and, yes, Muslims, that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state and that the Jewish people finally deserve a righteous, free and sovereign Israel.”

Perhaps, in addition to coming clean about her baseless allegations of vandalism to the Washington D.C. reflecting pool, Ms. Pirro should likewise revisit her remarks about Cyrus and her messianic assertions about Donald Trump. All who are moderately biblically literate know that Cyrus did not give back Jerusalem to the Jews returning from exile in Babylon as the capital of a “free and sovereign Israel.” Not by a long shot. Palestine under Cyrus was one of many satraps governed by local Persian rulers. Reoccupying the land of Israel was for the newly liberated exiles a privilege granted by the Persian Empire, not a right. Living faithfully in the land does not require and certainly does not entitle one to control or monopolize it.

To put all of this in context, understand that the earth is the Lord’s and whatever claim we have to it is provisional, contingent and temporary. Psalm 24:1. This is so for the State of Israel no less than any other nation state. What the people of Israel (as distinct from the nation state by that name) learned and what the church has had to learn over and over again is that the minute we start thinking of anything in our hands as a permanent entitlement, we are tempting the Almighty to take it away from us. Speak to the prophet Jeremiah about that. Israel initially occupied the land as seminomadic tribes with no central authority. When they demanded a king in order to be “like the other nations,” the prophet Samuel strongly discouraged them. It turns out that Samuel was right. The monarchy resulted in the stratification of Israelite society, the loss of land and livelihood for subsistence farmers to the ruling elite the distortion of Israel’s covenant faith and, finally, to conquest and exile. The new start given to the returning exiles from Babylon did not include sovereignty. But it did open up an opportunity for the people to rebuild their covenant faith on a surer foundation by “doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God.”  

The Bible states clearly that, just as Israel is given as a covenant to the nations (Isaiah 49:6), so Jerusalem is a city belonging to all peoples. Consider, for example,

“Among those who know me I mention Rahab [Egypt] and Babylon; behold, Philista and Tyre, with Ethiopia-‘This one was born there,’ they say. And of Zion it shall be said, ‘This one and that one were born in her;” for the Most High himself will establish her, The Lord records as he registers the peoples, ‘This one was born there.’”  Psalm 87:4-6.

“It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’” Isaiah 2:2-3.

“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Isaiah 56:6-7.

“And the [New Jerusalem] has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.” Revelation 21:23-26.

These passages all testify to Jerusalem as a center of worship and prayer open to all peoples. For Jews, Jerusalem is the City of David, the site of Solomon’s temple, the place where Abraham nearly offered his son Isaac as a burnt offering and, according to some Jewish traditions, the site of creation. For many Muslims, Jerusalem is the third holiest city after Mecca and Medina. It is the place to which the prophet Mohamed was transported during his “night journey.” Of course, Christians know Jerusalem as the place where Jesus entered in triumph, was arrested, crucified and raised from death. Turning this holy city into the capital of a modern nation state controlling and limiting access flies in the face of all that Jerusalem signifies in the scriptures. Only in the weird and wacky world of right wing pre-millennialism, a faith cooked up by sectarians in the late 19^th Century, does nationalizing Jerusalem make theological sense. For more on that, see my post of Sunday, June 11, 2017. The scriptures offer not one single straw in support of nationalizing the Holy City.

Beyond the obvious humanitarian concerns plaguing the middle east, should Christians care about Jerusalem? Does the fate of Jerusalem matter anymore than the fate of any other city in the world? Wouldn’t the gospel be the gospel whether Jerusalem thrives or perishes? I think not. The three Abrahamic religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity have this in common: place and time. Our beliefs are grounded in historical events that occurred in specific places. Ours is not a religion of pure spirit divorced from the things of the world. The career of Muhamad, the saga of Israel and the life and death of Jesus and his disciples’ witness to his resurrection are not mere historical accidents illustrative of but not essential to larger moral and spiritual truths. They are intertwined with and inseparable from our teaching, faith and practice. It is no accident either that all three of these faiths intersect at Jerusalem. Though this holy city has been at the center of some very bloody and unholy conflicts throughout history, that should not and need not be so.

The New Jerusalem described in the above citation from the Book of Revelation is everything the current Jerusalem is not-but might be. Might be if enough Jews, Muslims and Christians own up to all that Jerusalem means to them; if enough ecumenically minded representatives of all three faiths can help us all see beyond the ancient blood feuds, global politics, conflicting claims of sovereignty to a different way of honoring the holy city; if our longing to see a Jerusalem that reflects God’s future prevails over the cycles of retribution that entrap us in our violent past, then we might just catch a glimpse of that holy city God is so eager to give us.

Here is a hymn/poem by Johann M. Meyfart celebrating the new Jerusalem envisioned by John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation. Would that God’s Spirit strengthen the determination of all who seek the peace of Jerusalem that we might in our lifetimes see something of that newness in the here and now!

Jerusalem, Thou City Fair and High

Jerusalem, thou ci­ty fair and high,
Would God I were in thee!
My long­ing heart fain, fain to thee would fly,
It will not stay with me;
Far ov­er vale and mount­ain,
Far ov­er field and plain,
It hastes to seek its fount­ain
And quit this world of pain.

Oh hap­py day, and yet far hap­pi­er hour,
When wilt thou come at last?
When fear­less to my Fa­ther’s love and pow­er,
Whose pro­mise stand­eth fast,
My soul I glad­ly ren­der,
For sure­ly will His hand
Lead her with guid­ance ten­der
To Heav’n, her fa­ther­land.

A mo­ment’s space, and gent­ly, won­drous­ly,
Released from earth­ly ties,
The fie­ry cha­ri­ot bears her up to thee
Through all these low­er skies,
To yon­der shin­ing re­gions,
While down to meet her come
The bless­èd an­gel legions,
And bid her wel­come home.

Oh hail thou glo­ri­ous city! Now un­fold
The gates of grace to me!
How many a time I longed for thee of old,
Ere yet I was set free
From yon dark life of sad­ness,
Yon world of sha­dowy nought,
And God had giv’n the glad­ness,
The her­it­age I sought.

Oh what the na­tion, what the glo­ri­ous host,
Comes sweep­ing swift­ly down?
The chos­en ones on earth who wrought the most,
The Church’s bright­est crown,
Our Lord hath sent to meet me,
As in the far-off years
Their words oft came to greet me
In yon­der land of tears.

The pa­tri­archs’ and pro­phets’ no­ble train,
With all Christ’s fol­low­ers true,
Who bore the cross, and could the worst dis­dain
That ty­rants dared to do,
I see them shine for ev­er,
All glo­ri­ous as the sun,
’Mid light that fad­eth nev­er,
Their per­fect free­dom won.

And when within that love­ly para­dise
At last I safe­ly dwell,
From out my bliss­ful soul what songs shall rise,
What joy my lips shall tell,
While ho­ly saints are sing­ing
Hosannas o’er and o’er,
Pure hal­le­lu­jahs ring­ing
Around me ev­er­more.

Innumerous choirs be­fore the shin­ing throne
Their joy­ful an­thems raise,
Till Heav’n’s glad halls are ec­ho­ing with the tone
Of that great hymn of praise,
And all its host re­joic­es,
And all its bless­èd throng
Unite their my­ri­ad voic­es
In one eter­nal song!

Source: The Lutheran Hymnal, (c. 1941 by Concordia Publishing House). Johann Matthäus Meyfart (1590-1642) was a German Lutheran theologian, educator, academic teacher, hymn writer and minister. Meyfart was born in Jena, the son of a minister, and studied at the University of Jena beginning in 1608 graduating in 1603. He went on to study theology at the University of Wittenberg in 1614. He taught from 1617 at the Gymnasium in Coburg and served as its Rektor from 1623 until his death. Meyfart authored numerous hymns and composed several theological essays, including one fiercely criticizing witch trials.

SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Zechariah 9:9-12

Psalm 145:8-14

Romans 7:15-25a

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Prayer of the Day: You are great, O God, and greatly to be praised. You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Grant that we may believe in you, call upon you, know you, and serve you, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
    and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
    and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea
    and from the River to the ends of the earth.” Zechariah 9:10.

This week we head into that orgy of patriotic celebrations commemorating the declaration of independence of the original thirteen colonies from Great Britain sparking the Revolutionary War. The United States is far from the only nation born out of lethal violence, nor is it the only one that celebrates such seminal conflicts. National mythologies grounded in wars portrayed as heroic struggles and which lionize military figures at the head of such wars abound. Most nations have their George Washingtons along with a pantheon of lesser veterans honored regularly at civil ceremonies. Violence is a key ingredient to nationalism.

Not so with God’s people Israel. Abraham, Sarah and their descendants existed for generations in the Promised Land as sojourners. They lived as resident aliens in the no man’s land between various Canaanite city states and always in the shadow of the Egyptian empire. They were enslaved for generations in Egypt and their liberation came about, not through any violent uprising or military struggle, but through the intervention of the God of their ancestors. In the final confrontation between the armies of Pharoah and the people of Israel at the Red Sea, there was no military resistance on Israel’s part. No heroic leader rose up to rally the people and lead them to victory. There was only Moses who told the terrified crowd corralled between an imperial army and the sea, “the Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.” Exodus 14:14. Even the conquest of the land of Canaan was never attributed to Israel’s armies. As the psalmist attests:

“We have heard with our ears, O God;
    our ancestors have told us
what deeds you performed in their days,
    in the days of old:
you with your own hand drove out the nations,
    but them you planted;
you afflicted the peoples,
    but them you set free;

for not by their own sword did they win the land,
    nor did their own arm give them victory,
but your right hand, and your arm,
    and the light of your countenance,
    for you delighted in them.” Psalm 44:1-3.

A holiday such as Veteran’s Day would have been unthinkable for Israel. Their “thank you for your service” was directed to God alone.

The God of the Bible abhors violence. Violence, we are told, was what drove God to bring a catastrophic flood upon the earth in the days of Noah. Genesis 6:11. It was the failure of such divine violence to remedy human violence that led God to renounce violence forever as a means of dealing with the earth. Genesis 8:20-22. God is worshiped throughout the scriptures as the one who

“makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
    he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the shields with fire.” Psalm 46:9.  

Isaiah prophesies the rise of a ruler who will inaugurate an era of peace, but not through military might. This ruler will judge “with righteousness,” champion the cause of the “poor” and decide “with equity for the meek of the earth.” Isaiah 11:3-4. This ruler will indeed smite the powers of systemic injustice infecting the earth and slay the wicked, but not with military force. This ruler will defeat the powers and agencies of evil “by the rod of his mouth” and by “the breath of his lips.” Isaiah 11:4. God’s power is God’s Word exercised through the messiah as persuasive, not coercive. Under the gentle reign of this messianic ruler,

“The wolf shall live with the lamb;
    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed^[a] together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.” Isaiah 11:6-9.

God consistently chooses mercy over retribution. Though Adam and Eve were warned that they would die on the day they ate fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God did not bring death upon them. Instead, he clothed them before sending them forth from the garden of Eden. God did not impose the death sentence-or even life without parole-upon Cain for the murder of his brother. God spared the wicked city of Nineveh, much to the annoyance of the prophet Jonah. Even when God employs what we experience as violence, it is always measured and designed to bring about repentance, healing and reconciliation. Moreover, lethal violence is not a measure to be taken by human beings. While the psalmists cry out for vengeance against their enemies and sometimes tell God in bloodcurdling terms how their enemies should be punished, they leave the business of executing retributive justice in the hands of God where it rightly belongs. So it should come as no surprise that Jesus refused to permit his disciples to draw the sword in his defense.

Our reading from Zechariah makes the bold proclamation that God saves God’s people by disarming them, by taking from their hand instruments of violence and by eliminating from their portfolio the basic tools of warfare. Israel’s messiah comes not on a war horse, but “humble and riding on a donkey.” God’s just and gentle reign will not, indeed, cannot be implemented by means of violence. God has no desire to be Stalin on steroids. God will reign through love or not at all.

As those who follow me know, I identify as a Christological pacifist. As such, I do not condone the use of lethal force under any circumstances. I am well aware that my convictions constitute a minority position within the church catholic and that most of my siblings in the faith subscribe to some form of the “just war” doctrine. That teaching affirms Jesus’ words on the Sermon on the Mount to the effect that the default posture of a disciple is pacifism. When violently attacked, a disciple “turns the other cheek” and responds with love and prayer for the enemy. A narrow exception to that rule exists for persons engaged as soldiers and law enforcement officers, the rationale being that such persons exercise force, not to extract vengeance, but to protect the innocent from violence. Though you might disagree with my objections to the “just war” doctrine, I hope we can agree that war, and every other exercise of violence whether just or not, represents a tragic human failure. I hope we can agree that the idolatry of nationalism, the most extreme manifestation of which is war, constitutes a rupture in the human family, an exaltation of nation, tribe, race and class over the global unity God desires for the world. I hope that in our worship we can avoid the cultural tendency to glorify our nation’s wars and idolize those who fight them. In these days in which missiles and drones reign death from eastern Europe to the middle east and millions caught in the cross-fire are killed, wounded and uprooted from their homes, the church must not sugar coat these realities with patriotic jingoism. We need to say in no uncertain terms that war is not glorious, not to honorable, not righteous and certainly not an occasion for celebration and pride. It is sin, for which the only faithful response is repentance.

Here is a poem by Thomas McGrath that strips away the patriotic façade of glory, honor and heroism covering the unspeakable horror and obscenity of war.

Ode for the American Dead in Asia

1.

2.

3.

Source: Selected Poems 1938-1988 (c. 1988 by Thomas McGrath; pub. by Copper Canyon Press, 1988). Thomas McGrath (1916-1990) was a celebrated American poet and screenwriter of documentary films. He grew up on a farm in Ransom County, ND. He earned a B.A. from the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks and served in the Aleutian Islands with the U.S. Air Force during the Second World War. McGrath was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University and pursued postgraduate studies at Louisiana State University. He taught at Colby College in Maine and at Los Angeles State College. He was dismissed from the latter in connection with his refusal to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953.  In refusing to participate in the committee’s “blacklisting” efforts, he testified that “[a] teacher who will tack and turn with every shift of the political wind cannot be a good teacher. I have never done this myself, nor will I ever.” McGrath later taught at North Dakota State University and Minnesota State University. He was married three times and had one son to whom much of his later work was dedicated. You can read more about Thomas McGrath and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 20:7-13

Psalm 69:7-18

Romans 6:1b-11

Matthew 10:24-39

Prayer of the Day: Teach us, good Lord God, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, except that of knowing that we do your will, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28.

“Pastor, do you believe in hell?” That is a question I frequently get on Sundays when texts like this come up. My stock response is, “Why don’t you tell me what you think hell is and I will tell you whether I believe in it or not.” That usually gets the conversation going in a way that allows me to deconstruct a lot of harmful misconceptions and invite the entertainment of new perspectives. But sooner or later, I am pressed to respond to the question: What is hell and do I believe in it?

The short answer to the first part of the question is that I don’t know what hell is. The Bible speaks of it only in parabolic, apocalyptic and poetic terms from which I don’t think we can draw any concrete metaphysical conclusions. The Greek word used in the New Testament is “Geheneh,” which is the name of the place where garbage was burned outside the city, suggesting to me that it is figurative rather than literal. I therefore do not believe the scriptural references to hell, even the lurid images of the “lake of fire” in the Book of Revelation, support belief in a subterranean realm where damned souls are imprisoned for torment throughout all eternity. One of the most ancient creedal assertions found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures is that God is “merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Even when God punishes, God does so with the ultimate aim of healing and reconciliation. Eternal punishment is simply not consistent with God’s character as so revealed.

Most of what can be gleaned about hell comes from the book of Revelation which employes apocalyptic imagery. I think so many people get Revelation entirely wrong because they give only a cursory glance to chapters 1-3, the letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor. These are small, vulnerable and demoralized communities living under the shadow of a hostile empire facing social ostracism, political infighting and struggles with heretical influences. One gathers from the tone and content of these letters that these churches are on the verge of giving up. No doubt they were beginning to wonder, what’s the point? The apostle is using the fantastic imagery throughout the rest of the book to make the point that his churches are precious in God’s sight, that their struggling communities represent God’s presence in the world and that the struggles they face are of cosmic significance. It is the lamb, the lamb who was slain no less, that is destined to triumph over the fearful and beastly powers of empire. The intent was clearly not to establish a timetable for the world’s demise, but a poetic vision of its redemption. The “lake of fire” was prepared for the demonic forces animating the Roman empire, not for human beings.

The biggest problem with hell is the obsession people seem to have with who is going there and who isn’t. I am not sure anyone is going to hell. The prophet Ezekiel tells us that God takes no pleasure in the death of anyone. Ezekiel 18:32. Saint Peter tells us that it is not God’s will that any perish. II Peter 3:9. John’s gospel tells us that God so loved the world (not Christians, not the church, not good people) that God sent the only beloved Son. John 3:16. That suggests to me that salvation is much bigger than the church. It is not God’s intent to save as many souls as possible from a sinking ship. God means to save the ship and everyone on it. Whatever and whoever God is able to work into the mosaic of the new heaven and the new earth, God will save to that end.

That being said, the passage must mean something. Jesus’ words are clearly intended, at least in part, as a dire warning. There is much that is irreconcilable with God’s reign and cannot be woven into the fabric of a new creation. Hatred, bigotry, cruelty, arrogance, lust for power and wealth come to mind. These things are therefore consigned to the garbage dump for burning. If we are all honest with ourselves, these moral faults infect us all to some degree. Thus, on that day when all that is “covered” is “uncovered” and all secrets are made known (Matthew 10:26), there will be some hell to pay for all of us. I quote again a passage from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s monumental work, The Brothers Karamazov. The scene is the death bed of the sainted Father Zossima, elder of the local monastery from which he addresses the monks under his leadership for the last time.

“Fathers and teachers, I ponder, ‘What is hell?’ I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence, immeasurable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given on his coming to earth, the power of saying, ‘I am and I love.’ Once, only once, there was given him a moment of active living love and for that was earthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. And that happy creature rejected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it not, scorned it and remained callous. Such a one, having left the earth, sees Abraham’s bosom and talks with Abraham as we are told in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and beholds heaven and can go up to the Lord. But that is just his torment, to rise up to the Lord without ever having loved, to be brought close to those who have loved when he has despised their love. For he sees clearly and says to himself, ‘Now I have understanding and though I now thirst to love, there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my love, for my earthly life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a drop of living water (that is the gift of earthly, active life) to cool the fiery thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it on earth; there is no more life for me and will be no more time! Even though I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for that life is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is a gulf fixed between that life and this existence.’”[1]

I cannot imagine that on the day of judgment when our lives are measured against the rich and numerous opportunities we have had to love deeply this good green earth, the many people whose lives have intersected with our own and the One from whom these opportunities come, we will not lament the time we have wasted on envy, bitterness and chasing after trivialities we thought would bring us happiness. Saint Paul alludes to something like this in his First Letter to the church in Corinth:

“According to the grace of God given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Let each builder choose with care how to build on it.For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—the work of each builder will become visible, for the daywill disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done.If the work that someone has built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a wage. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.” I Corinthians 3:10-15.  

Is it possible for a person to become so thoroughly distorted, so completely depraved that the image of God is entirely erased and the Creator must say, “I never knew you. Depart from me”? Since Jesus floats this possibility, it would be foolish to ignore it. Nonetheless, that is not a call I believe any of us can make. From the disciple’s perspective, it is assumed that all persons, however cruel and depraved they might appear to us, nevertheless bear the image of God and must be treated with love and compassion. When Jesus was asked whether many or few would be saved, he refused to answer. Instead, he told the inquirers to focus on their own walk on the narrow path rather than speculate on the destiny of others. Luke 13:23-24.   

Finally, I am not sure what eternal punishment looks like-assuming anyone arrives there. I don’t think God gets any jollies from torturing people who call upon God by a different name, do not believe in God or do not have their doctrine quite right. If any are lost, it will be because they have become so thoroughly depraved that nothing of God’s image is recognizable or reconcilable with the kingdom of heaven. So what happens to those who become so thoroughly depraved that they cannot live peacefully under the gentle reign of God? Perhaps Father Zossima is right. The lost will finally be allowed into the kingdom in spite of themselves. That might be worse than any eternal flame. Can you imagine Donald Trump living in a world that no longer pays him any attention? Can you imagine Hitler living in a community that no longer remembers or cares about the Third Reich? What could be worse than realizing that you have thrown your life away on all the things that don’t matter and that everything you thought was important, all the accomplishments in which you took such pride and all the causes you gave your life to are worthless trinkets rusting in the dustbin of a world now past and that it is too late to change it?

The observations made by Father Zossima, speculative as  they might be, are nonetheless in keeping with the gospel message, namely, that the Good News of Jesus is not merely life after death, but life now into which God’s reign is breaking. Eternal life is not eternal merely by virtue of its duration, but chiefly because of its quality. “Faith, hope and love, these three remain, but the greatest of these is love,” says St. Paul. I Corinthians 13:13. All who live in love are living a life that transcends death. To live for less is to waste one’s life on that which is only fit for burning in the dump.

To conclude where I began, I don’t know what hell is. I am convinced, however, that whatever it is, hell is of our own making and not the work of a merciful and compassionate Creator. Here is a poem by Carl Sanburg illustrating the point.

Our Hells

Source: Poetry (October, 1932). Carl Sandburg (1878 – July 22, 1967) was a Swedish-American poet, biographer, journalist and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and one for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Sandburg is widely regarded as a major figure in contemporary literature. At the age of thirteen Sandburg left school and began driving a milk wagon. Throughout his early years, he worked as a porter at the Union Hotel barbershop in Galesburg, Illinois, a bricklayer, a farm laborer in Kansas, a hotel servant in Denver, Colorado and a coal-heaver in Omaha. Sandburg began his writing career as a journalist for the Chicago Daily News. Later he wrote poetry, history, biographies, novels, children’s literature and film reviews. He also collected and edited books of ballads and folklore. He spent most of his life in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan before moving to North Carolina. You can find out more about Carl Sandburg and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

[1]  Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov (Trans. by Constance Garnett, c. 1950 by Random House, Inc., New York, NY) p. 387.

It has become increasingly clear to me that I will not be able to post an article for this week. I therefore am reposting an article I wrote on the same texts six years ago that I hope will still resonate currently. I also recommend the fine articles written by Danny Zacharias, Diana Abernethy, Joel LeMon and Stephen Chester at Working Preacher.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Exodus 19:2-8
Psalm 100
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35; 10:1-23

Prayer of the Day: God of compassion, you have opened the way for us and brought us to yourself. Pour your love into our hearts, that, overflowing with joy, we may freely share the blessings of your realm and faithfully proclaim the good news of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8.

Brian was a young exchange student from England majoring in engineering. But in the middle of his sophomore year, he began experiencing chronic pain and fatigue. After undergoing numerous tests, Brian was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease that had ravaged his kidneys. Though the disease was brought under control with medication, Brian’s kidneys were beyond healing. The young man was placed on dialysis. At this point, one of his teachers, a young professor in her third year of teaching, underwent testing to find out whether she might be a potential organ donor for her student. When the results confirmed that she was indeed a match, she volunteered to donate one of her kidneys to Brian. The resulting transplant was a success and Brian returned to leading a full and active life. This story is true, though the names have been changed in the interest of protecting the privacy of those involved.

One can’t help but be inspired by the young professor’s generosity. But how inspiring would it be if, instead of a promising young engineering student, Brian had been a high school drop out with a long history of addiction. What if his kidneys had been done in by years of drug and alcohol abuse rather than an autoimmune disease? Would such a generous and costly sacrifice move us to the same admiration? Our would we wonder about the sanity of the donor? Certainly, there must be other matches far more deserving.

Yet, as Clint Eastwood’s character, Bill Munny says, “Deserves got nothing to do with it.”[1] Those of you who have seen the movie, Unforgiven know that Munny, being a cold blooded killer, means simply that what happens to us is not tied to whatever we think we are entitled. The universe deals out famine, epidemics, hurricanes and personal tragedy without a thought to what anyone deserves. Experience bears that out every day. Children are killed by drunk drivers, innocent civilians are killed in military conflicts of which they want no part and the cat throws up all over the carpet just as the guests arrive. Saint Paul, however, applies this concept inversely to God’s love for creation and the people God calls to make known that redemptive love. The world might appear to be hopelessly caught in a spiral of spiritual, economic, environmental and political destruction. The church might seem a far cry from the Body of Christ Paul insists that it is. Neither the world nor the church seems worth God’s investing so much of God’s self. But this world is the one for which God sent God’s Son and the church is the people called and chosen to make that wonderful gift known. “Deserves got nothing to do with it.”

The same principle seems to be at work in Jesus’ selection of disciples. This is a motley group consisting of a terrorist dedicated to ending by whatever means Roman occupation of the Promised Land, a tax collector enriched by collaborating with Rome and some fishermen who were just trying to make a living and stay out of the way. As we discover throughout the gospel, these are people of “little faith,” people slow to comprehend Jesus’ parables, people obsessed with being “great” in the kingdom of heaven and quick to abandon their Lord when their support is needed most. There were probably many others as or more deserving of inclusion among “the twelve.” But “deserves got nothing to do with it.”

I know something of undeserved grace. I was about as unpromising a student in high school as the twelve were unpromising prospects for discipleship. My grades hovered at and sometimes dipped below “C” level. My only interest in college was avoiding the draft in the event the Vietnam war dragged on past my eighteenth birthday. So I sluffed my way through Ms. Boyers’ “bonehead English” class during my freshman year, fully expecting to be placed in the sophomore equivalent the following year. Much to my surprise, however, I discovered upon my return to school in the fall that I had been placed in honors humanities. This had to be a mistake, I reasoned. Ms. Boyer informed me that it was no mistake. “Peter,” she said, “you are lazy, your spelling is awful and your penmanship stinks. But you have a brain. You can be much better than you are. So I saw to it that you got placed in honors. Now, don’t embarrass me.”

I don’t know exactly what Ms. Boyer saw in me. But her decision to place me in honors humanities was literally life changing. In that class I discovered a passion for learning that put me on a trajectory leading into two rewarding careers. There were, no doubt, plenty of students (probably most of my class) that showed more potential and were more deserving of that spot in honors humanities than me. But as it turned out, “deserves got nothing to do with it.”

We don’t get what we deserve in life. That is common complaint, but it shouldn’t be. As the anonymous poet says, “There ain’t no one should have the nerve/ To say they ought to get what they deserve.”

Justice

He shuffled in out of the rain and sleet
leaving in his wake puddles of dirty
water on the floor from the melting slush
on his booted feet.
Behind the counter the haggard waitress
turned her back against the freezing wind
That came uninvited through the door he’d left ajar.

She muttered “Jesus!
Why can’t you shut the door?
Don’t you know it’s cold as hell?
It costs enough to heat this joint,
Without having to heat
the whole damn city as well.”

The harsh rebuke was lost on him.
He took his seat at the counter,
fumbled with the menu
half speaking, half singing
the words to a vaguely familiar hymn.

“Mary’s favorite,” he said,
turning toward the waitress on his stool.
She, for her part, kept her gaze on the grill.
She had no time to pass with this garrulous old fool.
“Loved that old song,” he declared in a husky voice
so loud and so intrusive was his talk,
That patrons in the booths along the wall
Stopped their hushed chatter and looked up.

“Keep it down, will you?” she snapped.
“You don’t have to broadcast to the whole damn world you know.”
“Sorry,” he replied, in no quieter tone.
“I’m so confounded deaf these days I can’t hear myself.”
“Well I can hear you fine.
And so can everyone in the room.”

“Now my Mary,” he began…
But to begin is as far as he got.
“Look, Chuck, I’m busy.
I got customers, tables and food.
I don’t have time to chew the fat.
Don’t mean to be rude.”

He stammered something about having to go,
Got up from his stool,
Put on his hat
And trudged back out into the snow.
The waitress stared straight ahead
The deep purple neon sign
Reflected off her glossy black hair,
Illuminated the crusty makeup on her pale face
And gave a surreal glow to her chalky, white skin.

“Kind of rough on the old coot, weren’t ya?”
An old fat man with an unlit cigar in his mouth
Sauntered out of the back room.
He sat himself down a shabby chair
Behind the counter.
A resentful silence was all the answer he got.
“Seems to me,” he went on, “the guy is just lonely.
Let him talk a minute or two
and he’ll move on, like as not.”

“He ain’t the only one that’s lonely,”
The waitress replied.
“And he treated ‘his Mary’ like a dog
Right up to the day she died.
Now, of course, he misses her.
Says he wants her back.
I bet the hell he does.
But it’s too damn late now, Mack.
He’s a lonely ‘cause he’s a bastard
And he’s been one all his life.
He didn’t deserve Mary
And there’s no woman so bad
As deserved to be his wife.”

“That may well be,” the fat man said.
But let the good Lord sort that out once we’re all dead.
Fact is, there ain’t no one should have the nerve
To say they ought to get what they deserve.”

Source: Anonymous.

[1] Unforgiven, 1992, Fill written by David Webb Peoples and produced by Clint Eastwood.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Hosea 5:15—6:6

Psalm 50:7-15

Romans 4:13-25

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Prayer of the Day: O God, you are the source of life and the ground of our being. By the power of your Spirit bring healing to this wounded world, and raise us to the new life of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
    I have killed them by the words of my mouth,
    and my judgment goes forth as the light.
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
    the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Hosea 6:5-6.

This text is yet another reminder that the power behind God’s judgement, God’s wrath and God’s punishment is God’s Word. The violence implied in the words “killed” and “hewn” pertains not to weapons of war designed to destroy human flesh, but to preaching, parables and poetic utterances crafted to break hearts, change minds and restore relationships. As the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12.

The point is further illustrated in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians in which Paul urges his readers to “take up the whole armor of God.” Ephesians 6:13. For a people living under Roman occupation, the sight of soldiers armed with swords, shields and helmets was a common one and a reminder of Rome’s military supremacy. Seeing Rome’s well suited troops on their streets sent a clear message to everyone that they lived at the base of a hierarchical pyramid of power on which the emperor stood at the apex. Paul stands that pyramid on its head, reminding the church at Ephesus that their enemies are not “blood and flesh,” “but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12. Against such powers, weapons of steel are useless. Thus, Paul tells his readers to arm themselves with the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit “which is the Word of God.” Ephesians 6:14-17.

Speech is integral to our humanity. We claim that we have been created in God’s image and there has been no little debate over exactly what that means. In the Bible’s opening words, in the first chapter of Genesis, the first thing we learn about God is that God speaks. Perhaps that is what makes us human creatures uniquely Godlike. We have the power of endowing sounds and syllables with meanings, making our thoughts, feelings, ideas and opinions known to one another. With these building blocks called words, we erect poems, songs, stories, novels, speeches and sermons. Words are complex vectors of meaning capable of evoking imaginative worlds and bringing into focus the depth and complexity of the “real” one. Karl Marx is credited with saying, “give me twenty-six soldiers and I will conquer the world,” by which he meant the letters of the alphabet.

That brings me to the flip side of speech. Words are capable of incredible evil and destructiveness. Words can be used to insult, demean and intimidate. They are used to lie, construct hateful ideologies, reinforce racial prejudices, propagate dangerous misinformation and incite violence. Cruel and oppressive regimes have employed propaganda to whip up support for their reigns of terror. Words can be employed to label and scapegoat the most vulnerable among us. In our own United States, the words of the Bible are routinely stripped of their context and misappropriated by preachers of hate and corrupt politicians to justify their oppressive, unjust and frequently racist policies. Just as words can bring life and hope, they can ruin life and extinguish hope.

It is fashionable these days to rag on social media and AI for degrading our vocabularies, cheapening our dialogue and poisoning our civil discourse. Clearly, they have contributed to all these worrisome trends. The same, however, can be said for the invention of the printing press, the growth of radio and its subsequent displacement by television. Whenever you give a bigger voice to more people, you run the risk that the gift of language and speech might be abused. Our problem with hate speech, misinformation and abusive online conduct is not a technical one. It is a malady of the human heart. We are a people with a decreasing vocabulary, shrinking imagination and growing lack of linguistic competence.

The collapse of language is nowhere better illustrated than by our own government which tells us repeatedly that there is a ceasefire between the United States and Iran even though we are shooting missiles and drones at each other. Our secretary of defense insists that the massive bombing campaign against Iran was not a war. The president tells us the mob that stormed our capital on January 6, 2021 are patriots. It is as though language has been thoroughly drained of meaning. This is all reminiscent of Alice’s encounter with Humpty Dumpty:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less.”

          “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

          “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master-that’s all.

Alice Through the Looking Glass, (Lewis Carroll).

Accordingly, terms like “war,” “ceasefire” and “patriot” mean whatever the loudest and most powerful voice says they mean. Words are no longer vessels of meaning. To the contrary, they are bereft of meaning, so much so that antonyms become synonyms. We are living into George Orwell’s dystopia where the government’s slogan is:

“War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength.” 1984,(George Orwell).  

It is hardly surprising, then, that our government is unable to function. How is it possible to formulate policy, draft legislation, enforce or interpret law where words have no meaning and language is little more than noise? How can nations resolve conflicts, make and honor treaties or collaborate in addressing global problems if their agreements consist of words without meaning? Is it surprising that our online discourse so often amounts to little more than an exchange of insults and competing memes? Moreover, it should not surprise us that our violent rhetoric often evolves into violent acts. When language no longer works, what is left other than to silence your opponents by lethal means?  

As disciples of Jesus, the Word made flesh, we have a keen interest in redeeming words and restoring language. The healing of language needs to begin with us. We need a renewed respect for words.[1] We need a deeper appreciation and understanding of the meanings they carry, how they are heard differently by different audiences who have learned them in very different contexts. We who preach need to work harder at developing our vocabulary so that we avoid religious jargon, partisan clichés and worn out rhetoric. We need to develop our linguistic skills so that we can speak clearly, directly and imaginatively. We need to practice constructing sentences where words are well placed so that their intended meaning is clear and well expressed. We need to work harder at crafting paragraphs that serve as building blocks for the construction of the “big idea” that our congregations need to hear. Beyond that, we need to be mindful of our use of words on social media, at public gatherings where we have the opportunity to speak to important issues and even in casual conversation. Preserving and improving our language is not simply a matter of good manners and social etiquette. It is a matter of preserving our very humanity.

Here is an anonymous poem that addresses the importance of words and speech.

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

Source: Anonymous

[1] In this regard, I have noted a recent trend among some preachers to employ the “F” word in their preaching. I am not sure what the rationale for that is. The word has become so ubiquitous in our culture that it has lost its shock value even in church. If the preacher’s objective is to show the congregation that they are “real” or “earthy” and so enhance their credibility, well, good luck with that. My objection to the use of the “F” word generally has nothing to do with its meaning, but with its total lack thereof. When you say to me, “F” you, all I can surmise is that you are angry but that you lack the vocabulary, conceptual tools and emotional maturity to understand or explain why you are angry or what your anger has to do with me. Either that or you are just too lazy to bother with all that. Thus, the “F” word is nothing more than the inarticulate grunt of a person unable or unwilling to employ intelligible speech.