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.

 “To the exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood” I Peter 1:1-2.

The New Testament writers frequently employ the narratives of “exile,” nomadic existence and marginalization in the life of Israel as metaphors for the church’s life in the time between Jesus’ resurrection and his return to reign over a renewed creation. The role call of saints in the Letter to the Hebrews comes to mind. See Hebrews 11. The author says concerning the heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures that they “suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground.” Hebrews 11:36-38. Jesus warns his disciples in John’s gospel that “[b]ecause you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” John 15:19. Paul reminds the church at Phillipi that “our citizenshipis in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Philippians 3:20.

Nevertheless, though not being “of” the world, disciples of Jesus are very much “in” the world and have been for the last two millennia. Consequently, the church is confronted in every generation with the same question: what does it mean for us to live in the world as “resident aliens”? How do we live and engage with the dominant culture? What is our duty with regard to the governments under which we live? What principles guide our commercial dealings with the rest of the world?

Pastor and theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr addressed this issue in his seminal book, Christ and Culture, Niebuhr, H. Richard (c. 1975 by Harper & Row). Niebuhr identifies three ways in which theologians and church communities have approached the relationship between the Body of Christ and the world. 1) discipleship as life in opposition to culture (Christ against culture);

2) discipleship lived in agreement with culture (Christ of culture; and 3) a combination that incorporates insights from both of these two views (Christ above culture). The first of these takes the view that loyalty to Christ and the church entails a rejection of culture and society. The second views Jesus as the fulfiller of society’s hopes and aspirations. He is the supreme teacher directing human culture to the attainment of wisdom, morality, and peace. In the third and more nuanced view, Christian discipleship is lived in dialogue with the world, sometimes working in and through societal structures seeing their improvement, sometimes challenging those structures and even calling for their abolition or replacement and sometimes seeking to convert them such that they serve the aims of God’s promised reign.

It should be noted that Niebuhr recognizes the artificialities of his categories. Monastic communities, though living in ways quite contrary to the ways of the rest of the world, have provided numerous services and contributions to society. So, too, many communities believing in the perfection of humanity through culture did so by forming utopian societies they hoped would inspire the rest of the world to emulate. There is, of course, no clear lines of demarcation between the third category and the prior two. Moreover, Niebuhr recognizes a degree of legitimacy in all these approaches and advises his readers against adopting any single view to the exclusion of all others. He warns us that no one single approach constitutes “the answer” for all times and places.

I think the same diversity exists within the New Testament. Both the epistles of Peter and Paul urge Christians to pray for “those in authority.” Though these authorities had names like Nero and Caligula, they were nonetheless instruments God employed to maintain a degree of order in the world, however imperfect and corrupt it might be. In the Book of Acts, Paul appeals to the justice of Rome to adjudicate the claims made against him by the religious leaders in Jerusalem. On the other hand, in the Book of Revelation Saint John of Patmos portrays the Roman empire as a “beast,” and instrument employed by the devil to oppress the saints and operate as the “destroyer of the earth.” So far from praying for the emperor, John prays for and rejoices in the empires’ downfall. He sees underneath its wealth, prosperity and power the ugly specters of slavery, oppression and violence. Following Jesus demands nothing short of faithful witness to God’s reign of justice, reconciliation and peace over against the tyranny of Rome.

Like H. Richard Niebuhr, I do not believe we are compelled to decide between Paul and John of Patmos. The circumstances of the church in Greece and Syria were different from those experienced by the churches of Asia Minor in John’s time. In both cases, however, the church was a marginal presence. Paul’s congregations lived uneasily under the shadow of an empire that was always potentially hostile to them, but largely indifferent. John’s churches experienced the full force of Rome’s cruelty and oppression. Saint Paul faced an empire to which he could appeal on grounds of a shared belief in justice and due process. Saint John dealt with an empire posing an existential threat not only to the church, but to humanity in general. For Paul, Rome was an instrument, however flawed, of justice and good order. For John, it was a ravenous beast. We can therefore say that both apostles preached faithfully to their churches within their unique respective contexts.

Both Paul and John of Patmos understood their churches to be “exiles,” a community of sojourners whose ultimate loyalty belonged to a kingdom that remains hidden. Still, they lived within the borders and under the jurisdiction of cities, towns and localities that were all finally subject to Rome. The communities in which they lived rightly expected the believers to participate in the common life, bear their share of the burden pursuing the common good and respect the cultural behavioral standards of law, courtesy and civility. The church was never intended to be a world unto itself. Nevertheless, at the end of the day the disciples were given to understand that they had but one Lord and their ultimate allegiance belonged solely to the reign of God he proclaimed. No decree of any nation or ruler is above Jesus’ command to love God with all the heart with all the soul, with all the mind and with all the strength and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Thus, when the demands of the empire diverged from the commands of Jesus, the disciples were required to “obey God rather than any human authority.” Acts 5:29.  

Jesus’ resurrection represents the repudiation of imperial overreach. Rome exercised its law to convict Jesus and its godlike power to execute Jesus. God reversed Rome’s verdict. That ruling liberates disciples of Jesus to live in and serve the world God made and aims to redeem while remaining free from the overreaching delusions of godhood held by the principalities and powers that would enslave it. It is, as Martin Luther once said, “to be a perfectly free lord of all” while at the same time being “a perfectly dutiful servant of all.”  

To be an exile is to live with the pain of absence while knowing the joy of an anticipated homecoming. It is to be at home away from home.

Here is a poem by Emma Lazarus about exiles being fully and freely themselves in a foreign land.

In Exile

“Since that day till now our life is one unbroken paradise. We live a true brotherly life. Every evening after supper we take a seat under the mighty oak and sing our songs.”Extract from a letter of a Russian refugee in Texas.

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

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

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

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 2:14, 22-32

Psalm 16

1 Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

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

“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’” John 20:21.

“A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” John 20:26.

Eight days after the disciples had been empowered with the Holy Spirit and commissioned to go out and declare the good of Jesus’ resurrection and God’s limitless love and forgiveness for the world, we find them still hiding behind locked doors. If Jesus didn’t actually say it to the disciples, I can’t help wondering whether he was thinking, “And what part of the word ‘send’ do you people not understand?” It does not get any better after this. Rather than following Jesus’ command, given now for the second time, to go out into the world with the good news, the disciples retreat to Galilee and return to their old lives and their previous occupation, namely, fishing. Once again, the risen Christ must confront them and lead them away from their boats and their nets out into the mission for which they were called.

The church has always resisted the notion that it is “sent,” that it is a nomadic people rather than a settled community, a movement into the future rather than an institution devoted to preserving the past, a living organism rather than a static organization. It is telling, I think, that we frequently refer to our places of worship as “sanctuaries,” safe places in which we can seek refuge from the world. It is as though, like the disciples, we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, his victory over death and the defeat of the forces of evil in the cross from behind doors bolted fast against the world that so desperately needs to hear this good news. I have to wonder whether the risen Christ might also be saying to us on this first Sunday after Easter, “So, friends, what are you all still doing here?”

There are some hopeful signs on the horizon suggesting that the church might finally be getting the message. Recently the board of directors for Luther Seminary, the school from which I received my M.Div., voted unanimously to divest from its current physical campus in Saint Paul in order to shift to a more nimble model of theological education and pastoral formation. To that end, the seminary is seeking a new facility in the Twin Cities area that meets the needs of its educational mission while enabling it to continue on for the foreseeable future in both a faithful and sustainable manner. It should be pointed out that this was not a move of desperation born of financial crisis. The seminary is currently well endowed. The decision to move out of its current facility was based on the recognition that the world to which we are called to minister presents challenges the seminary is unable to meet effectively through its current campus setting.  

I must admit that I was initially saddened by this news. The Luther Seminary campus in St. Paul has served my church for over one hundred and twenty years. I remember the first time I set eyes on Bochman Hall’s majestic Corinthian pillars from the end of its walkway marked with a stone Celtic cross. (Pictured above). Every time I passed through the doors of the massive library in Gullixon Hall, I was overcome with a sense of awe. Here in this one place were housed the products of great minds, souls and examples of sainthood. The musty scent of ancient volumes from the stacks stretching over six stories was a constant reminder that my little life, a mere nanosecond in the communion of saints, gains a holy significance through my incorporation into that great community embracing the whole planet and extending throughout all time and space. It saddens me to think that Luther Seminary’s ancient lecture halls where so much profound teaching, so many lively discussions and such deep learning took place will soon be silent and empty.

That said, I think the board of directors made the right call. As those who follow me know, I have expressed many times my concerns about the future of seminary education such as its prohibitive cost, the shape of its curriculum and the threat to genuine community posed by resort to virtual teaching. I do not have ready answers to these concerns, but I am convinced that locking ourselves into the comfortable places and patterns of the past is not the solution to any of these challenges. We need to raise up a generation of pastoral leaders that is diverse, theologically educated and spiritually well formed. Moreover, we need to do that without burdening our graduates with crushing educational debt. In order to meet that challenge, Luther Seminary must step outside the safety, security and comfort of its historic campus, its educational traditions and its established spiritual practices.

We should not be too hard on the disciples. The dangers they feared were very real. The same imperial powers that crucified Jesus were still at work in the world. The leaders who arrested Jesus and turned him over to Pilate for execution surely would not hesitate to do the same to any one of his disciples. Keeping out of sight and behind locked doors was not unreasonable. On the contrary, it was probably the safest course of action. But Jesus does not call upon his disciples to play it safe. They are sent, as was Jesus, to announce the gentle, just and peaceful reign of God to a hostile world. Where Jesus is, on the margins, identifying with the victims of empire and, not merely speaking but “being” truth to power, there his disciples must be also. John 12:26.

So let us not be seduced by the siren song of “againism,” whether it be the call to make America great “again” or to make the church great “again.” Let us not be deceived into believing that there was once a “golden age” somewhere in the past and that getting back to that “old time religion,” returning to “traditional values” or going back to our “Lutheran confessional roots” is going to redeem us. Today is the day the Lord has made. Psalm 118:24. It is not for us to turn up our nose at it and pine for some other bygone day. Unbelief fears the future and lives today fixated on the rearview mirror. Faith rejoices in today and looks hopefully and imaginatively toward the future.   

John’s gospel ends with the disciples finally venturing out from behind locked doors, leaving their fish nets and boats behind and following Jesus into the new life he promised. It begs for a sequel, and I believe one is written in the witness of each generation of believers. See John 21:24-25. In every generation, there is the choice to write a new chapter or vainly attempt to relive the prior one. I believe Jesus is calling us to step out of our sanctuaries, stop clinging for dear life to our institutions and leave behind the ivy covered palaces of learning belonging to a world that no longer exists. Where will that bring us and what will we find there? “Never mind,” says Jesus. “Follow me.” John 21:20-23.  

Here is the poem by Walt Whitman constituting a clarion call to step outside and onto the open road. I believe we hear an echo of Jesus’ beckoning call in the final stanza,

“[I] give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money,

I give you myself before preaching or law;

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?”

Song of the Open Road
1
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

2
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.

Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,

The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.

3
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!

You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.

4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not—if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me?

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me,
I think whoever I see must be happy.

5
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here a great personal deed has room,
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?

7
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d gates, ever provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as I pass;)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and pause?
What gives me to be free to a woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives them to be free to mine?

8
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman,
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself.)

Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old,
From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.

9
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.

The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

10
Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.

Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.

The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no longer.

Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,
No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.)

11
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you.

12
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road—they are the swift and majestic men—they are the greatest women,
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habituès of many distant countries, habituès of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain’d manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

13
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it,
To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go,
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.

All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you.

Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.

Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash’d and trimm’d faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.

No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere,
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.

14
Allons! through struggles and wars!
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.

Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well arm’d,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions.

15
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Source: Complete Poetry and Selected Prose by Walt Whitman, (c. 1959 by Miller, James E., Jr., pub. by Houghton Mifflin Company). No poet captures the essence of what is genuinely American quite as comprehensively as Walt Whitman. Born 1819 in Huntington, Long Island, Whitman worked alternately as a journalist, government clerk and as a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. He traveled widely throughout the United States giving expression to his zeal for democracy, nature, love and friendship. Though admired by such contemporaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne, it was not until after his death in 1892 that he received wide acclaim in the United States. You can read more about Walt Whitman and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

PALM/PASSION SUNDAY

Matthew 21:1-11

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm 31:9-16

Philippians 2:5-11

Matthew 26:14—27:66

“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.

^“Pilate said to them, ‘Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ All of them said, ‘Let him be crucified!’Then he asked, ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Let him be crucified!’” Matthew 27:22-23.

In all the gospels, the “crowd” or “the people” constitute a unique character. The crowds flock from all over Palestine and beyond to hear Jesus’ teachings and to be healed of their ailments, though their understanding of his preaching and mission is limited. The religious leaders in Jerusalem fear the crowd. They know the crowd holds Jesus in high esteem and that the reign of God Jesus proclaims challenges the imperial power of Rome. They are also painfully aware that the position of privilege and power they hold depends on their placating Rome. Thus, the religious elite find themselves in an untenable situation. Arrest Jesus and risk a riot that would certainly bring down a military response from Rome; or ignore Jesus’ messianic mission which is clearly on a collision course with Rome. Either way, a conflict with Rome appears inevitable. The only solution: undermine the crowd’s attraction to Jesus. 

Crowds are notoriously capricious. Their memories are short and their loyalties fleeting. Today’s hero is tomorrow’s villain. Crowds can be carried away by lofty rhetoric. They are easily seduced by charlatans who promise easy solutions to complex problems. Crowds are vulnerable to extremists who put the face of minorities, foreigners and other disfavored groups on all their fears and convince them they are being persecuted, victimized and dispossessed. A crowd has a mind and a spirit distinct from and bigger than any of its members. Its malignant will overwhelms one’s instincts of decency, compassion and civility. People will commit and applaud unspeakable acts of violence and brutality when part of a mob that they would never think of doing or condoning individually. Skilled rhetorical manipulators know how to awaken our deepest fears, prejudices and hatreds. They know how to exploit these dark angels of our nature to inspire paranoia, knowing that when we are afraid, uncertain and confused we can easily be driven to destructive and violent action. We can be made to forget who we are, the relationships that bind us together as a community and the values we hold dear. A mob has no memory, no vision and no thought process. It does not move deliberately. It is driven by the energy of its blind malice. Other than the crucifixion of Jesus, there is no better example of that phenomenon than the Republican insurrection of January 6, 2021.

The gospels do not tell us exactly how the religious leaders in Jerusalem “persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed.” But we have contemporary examples of “influencers,” with large followings. The late Charlie Kirk comes to mind. Joe Rogan’s “manosphere” is another example as is Charlamagne the god. Taylor Swift exercises a powerful influence over her millions of fans as have other superstars over the decades. Influencers can affect the way we dress, the slang we use, the cars we drive (or wish we could drive), the music to which we listen, our politics, morality and spending habits. Of course, there is nothing wrong with having influence, nor is there anything sinister about being influenced. I do not know where I would be today without the teachers, pastors, authors, poets and artists who have influenced me over the years.

Still, I believe it is critical to recognize and acknowledge that we are, in fact, being influenced. It is also important that we ask ourselves frequently, “by what or by whom am I being influenced?” This inquiry is increasingly important in this age of social media which, in addition to making vast amounts of important news and information easily available, also constitutes a swamp of misinformation, unfounded conspiracy theories and hateful ideologies. The rise of AI makes it possible to distort and even fabricate pictures, videos and works of art such that it is becoming ever more difficult to determine what is real. We are open to mass manipulation and misdirection like never before. History has taught us that such manipulative power can drive a crowd of otherwise law abiding people to heinous acts of violence such as lynchings, rioting and genocide. The gospels teach us that mass manipulation led to the crucifixion of God’s Son.

During these last days of our Lenten pilgrimage I believe we would do well to consider the forces influencing us and to ask ourselves who or what is shaping our hearts and minds. What or who is demanding our attention? How are we being entertained? From where are we getting our news and information and what effect is all of this having on the way we think about our world, about our neighbors and about our God?

Here is a poem by Carl Sanburg speaking to the fickleness and capriciousness of the mob as well as its vulnerability to manipulation. The poem also expresses the hope that the mob might finally gain a soul and become a people governed by the lessons history has to teach.

I Am the People, the Mob

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

Source: Creative Commons. 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.

THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT

Exodus 17:1-7

Psalm 95

Romans 5:1-11

John 4:5-42

Prayer of the Day: Merciful God, the fountain of living water, you quench our thirst and wash away our sin. Give us this water always. Bring us to drink from the well that flows with the beauty of your truth through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

In this Sunday’s gospel reading we find Jesus slumped against the façade of Jacob’s well, famished, exhausted and thirsty. The journey through hostile Samaritan territory from Galilee to Judea did not afford much in the way of comforts. The Samaritan villages along the way could hardly be expected to offer hospitality or even staples such as food and water to a band of Jewish travelers. It seems the disciples had to go some distance out of their way to get food-perhaps a detour into a more friendly Jewish enclave? In any event, Jesus was evidently too worn out to accompany them.

We are not accustomed to thinking of Jesus as weak, vulnerable and at the mercy of strangers. But that is the way the woman from Samaria found him. I can imagine the smirk on her face as she answered Jesus call for a drink, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” I can hear her thinking to herself or perhaps even saying, “guess you must be pretty thirsty mister high and mighty rabbi to beg a filthy Samaritan woman for a drink.” She must have been amused to hear Jesus offer her living water. “Well isn’t that just like one of you holier than thou Jews. Think you’re the one in control? Think you hold all the cards? Well guess what? I’m the one with the bucket. If anyone here is going to get water, it’s going to come from my bucket.”

Jesus then tells her to call her husband only to be told that she has none. Then, Jesus reveals that he knows her better than she thinks anyone could. It is here that I think the preaching of this story goes off the rails. Too often, the fact that the woman has been married five times and is now living with a man who is not her husband draws moral disapproval from us moderns. We assume that she is a floozie, a loose woman, an adulteress with a torrid sexual history. But that is hardly likely. In the first century, divorce was the sole prerogative of men and, as evidenced by Jesus’ dealings with religious authorities elsewhere in the gospels, there were some who believed that it was “lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause.” Matthew 19:3. The Samaritan woman might have been divorced due to a health condition that made her sexually undesirable. She might have been unable to conceive and bear children and thus incapable of continuing the family line. Or perhaps she was, like the luckless woman described by Jesus’ opponents in the dispute over the resurrection, passed through a succession of brothers, all of whom predeceased her. Mark 12:18-23. Whatever the case may have been it is obvious that this woman has known repeated rejection and her failure to remarry marks her as “damaged goods.” In spite of all this, which is somehow known to Jesus, Jesus is genuinely interested in her. The woman, for her part, is beginning to take an interest in this strange Jewish rabbi.

Now the woman poses a question to Jesus: “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” So, which is it? It was hardly an idle question. The subject had been a matter of fierce dispute ever since the northern Israelite tribes broke away from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to become the Northern Kingdom of Israel a millennium ago.  Perhaps she was expecting a lengthy dissertation on why the temple in Jerusalem is the only legitimate place of worship and that the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim was an idolatrous sham. What she got was a startling admission on Jesus’ part that neither the Temple in Jerusalem nor the Jewish nation hold a monopoly on genuine worship. “The hour is coming and is now here,” says Jesus, “when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.” Did this Jew just say that Samaritans, too, can be genuine worshipers of God? The thought is almost too big to get one’s head around. “I know that Messiah is coming,” says the woman. It seems she wants to be done with this conversation. “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” To this, Jesus replies, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” 

At this point, the disciples return and wonder why Jesus is speaking with a woman of Samaria and what he could possibly want with her. The woman takes her leave at this point. Significantly, I think, she leaves her bucket behind, thereby enabling Jesus to access the water from Jacob’s well, a small act of compassion toward the one she so recently deemed a de facto enemy.  Moreover, she invites the people of her village to come and see this remarkable teacher who saw her, knew her and expressed a passionate interest in her. The Samaritans come out in force to meet Jesus, inviting him and his disciples to stay with them. Jesus “remains” with them for a full two days.

The Greek word “meno” meaning “to remain” is a significant one in John’s gospel. John the Baptizer announces that Jesus was known to him by the witness of the Holy Spirit that both descended and “remained” upon Jesus. John 1:32. In his final words to his disciples, Jesus urged his disciples to “abide in me as I abide in you.” John 15:4. Here the English word “abide” is but another translation of the Greek word, “meno.” Thus, you could translate the verse as “remain in me as I remain in you.” As God loves God’s beloved Son, so the Son loves us and invites us to “abide” or “remain” in God’s love. John 15:9. In Sunday’s gospel, the love of God that stubbornly abides in Jesus penetrates the heart of a women that ought to have been an enemy. The inroads made into her heart opened up a crack in the wall of historic enmity between Jew and Samaritan, allowing the living waters of reconciliation and healing to flow freely and bring new life.  

There is an old saying, the source of which I have not been able to ascertain, that “an enemy is a person whose story you have not heard.” Saint Paul reminds us that our “struggle is not against 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. The weapons we are given to resist them are truthful speech, righteous integrity, the way of peace, prayer and the good news of God’s redemptive intent for our world. Ephesians 6:14-18. We wage peace rather than war, forgiveness rather than retribution, prayer rather than threats. We know that those who display aggressiveness, utter threats and commit violence do so from profound hurt, desperate fear and deep seated insecurity. Loving one’s neighbor (which includes the enemy) as oneself requires that one get inside the other’s skin, try to see the world through their eyes and understand the journey that led them to where they are. Such love requires one to look past whatever harm the other has done, whatever hateful views the other might express and whatever threat they may appear to present in order to touch with a healing hand the places where they are hurting. As Jesus demonstrates, such love requires one to become vulnerable, helpless and open to the other.

As again Saint Paul reminds us, this way of Jesus appears as folly to those who believe that strength consists in raw coercive power. I Corinthians 1:18-25. But we are witnessing today the tragic consequences of employing raw coercive power to achieve justice and peace throughout the middle east. Violence does not end violence. It only begets more violence spiraling out of control and drawing ever more victims into its vortex of death and destruction. Today, as has always been the case, Jesus’ way is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus and his way of the cross are the only way out of our self destructive path. It is not for nothing the Samaritan villagers recognized in Jesus “the savior of the world.”

Here is a brief poetic fragment by Edwin Markham that illustrates in one broad stroke the way of Jesus as it appears in our gospel lesson for this coming Sunday.

He drew a circle that shut me out –

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in.

Source: This poem is in the public domain. Edwin Markham (1852—1940) was born in Oregon City, Oregon and was the youngest of 10 children. At the age of four and following his parent’s divorce, he moved with his mother to Lagoon Valley in Solano County, California. Markham attended San Jose Normal School (now San Jose State University) graduating in 1872. Markham’s most famous poem, “The Man with the Hoe,” which accented laborers’ hardships, was first presented at a public poetry reading in 1898. His main inspiration was a French painting of the same name (in French, L’homme à la houe) by Jean-François Millet. Markham’s poem was published and achieved instant popularity. Throughout Markham’s life, many readers viewed him as an important voice in American poetry, a position signified by honors such as his election in 1908 to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. You can read more about Edwin Markham and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT

Genesis 12:1-4

Psalm 121

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

John 3:1-17

Prayer of the Day: O God, our leader and guide, in the waters of baptism you bring us to new birth to live as your children. Strengthen our faith in your promises, that by your Spirit we may lift up your life to all the world through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Sunday’s lessons from Genesis and Romans lift up Abraham as a person of strong faith. The psalm describes in a beautiful, lyrical way what such faith looks like. By contrast, the gospel lesson features Nicodemus-hardly someone that comes to mind when examples of faith are under discussion. We meet Nicodemus three times in John’s gospel. In our gospel lesson, we find him creeping silently through the night to question Jesus under the cover of darkness. John does not tell us specifically why Nicodemus came at night, but we can safely conjecture that he did not want to be publicly associated with Jesus. We know that there were some influential religious leaders who believed in Jesus but were fearful of expressing their faith in him. Evidently, Nicodemus was among them. John 12:42.

Nicodemus comes across as something of a dufus who cannot seem to follow Jesus’ line of thinking. But in all fairness, I have some difficulty with that myself. Jesus declares that no one can see the reign of God unless they are “born anew.” Nicodemus asks, quite reasonably, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” Birth is a traumatic experience. One minute you are in a warm, dark, quiet and safe environment where all your needs are met without any effort on your part. The next you are thrust into realm of novel and unintelligible noise, harsh lights, cold air and new experiences of touch and smell. You have no conceptual tools or prior experience to make sense of everything that is happening to you. It is probably a good thing we cannot remember the experience of birth. If we did, we would probably be spending the rest of our lives in trauma therapy.

In order to be “born anew” or “born from above,” you need to unlearn everything you have ever learned. You must be stripped of all the assumptions, all of the biases, all of the family, religious and national loyalties into which you have been encultured and left psychically and spiritually naked. What, short of a traumatic brain injury, could put you into such a state? Yet according to Jesus, that is what must happen before we can comprehend God’s reign. Rebirth is hard to imagine. A new born infant or even a small child comes into the world without knowing what is possible, what is impossible, what is good or what is evil. For them, the world is all raw, unmediated sensation. Accordingly, they are radically open to learning and learn is what they do! Most of the critical learning we do occurs between infancy and early childhood. The older we get, the less open we are to learning. What we have already learned and believed becomes more deeply ingrained as we age. The older we get, the harder it is to let go of deeply held convictions and beliefs. The longer we have committed blood, sweat, time and effort supporting our religious institutions, our political parties and our familial communities, the harder it is question these loyalties, much less abandon them. Nicodemus was right to wonder how an adult can begin to view the world with the eyes of a child, unclouded by years of learning and experience.

Something like birth from above is what was required of Abraham when God called him to leave his home, his kindred and his tribe and follow God’s leading to some land somewhere he had never seen. His new life would consist of living as a homeless nomad and an alien in an unfamiliar land filled with hidden dangers. Yet this land, God tells the childness and aged Abraham, will one day belong to his descendants. Abraham would have been more than justified in asking, as did Nicodemus, “how can these things be?” John 3:9.

Sarah, Abraham and their descendants are models of faith. Notwithstanding what we moderns might view as their moral failures and shortcomings, they staked their lives on a promise. All the conditions that confronted them weighed against the fulfilment of the promise. As the author of the Letter to the Hebrews points out, their faith was based “on things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1. Our nomadic spiritual ancestors’ conviction that the land of Cannan belonged to them was at odds with the hard geopolitical realities of the bronze age. Yet they lived in expectation of its fulfilment as though it were a sure thing.

As professor Stanley Hauerwas has observed, the life disciples of Jesus live makes no practical common sense apart from belief in Jesus’ resurrection. By raising from the dead the man whose life was lived in accord with the impractical, ineffective and hopelessly altruistic precepts of the Sermon on the Mount ending his crucifixion and the dispersion of his followers, God declares that the future belongs to the poor, the meek, the pure in heart, the merciful, the peacemakers and especially those who are most hated, despised and persecuted. The Resurrection places the proud, the wealthy, the war mongers, wall builders, the culture warriors and ethnic cleansers on the wrong side of history. So, because God raised Jesus from death, we continue to pick up the garbage on our streets even though our efforts are dwarfed by the tons of industrial waste dumped all over our planet by commercial interests whose only value is financial gain. We continue advocating for transgender children, racial justice and humane immigration policies even when our political allies plead with us to downplay such matters and focus instead on “kitchen table issues.” We make peace through seeking reconciliation, forgiveness and restorative justice in a world convinced that peace can only be made through the threat, and failing that, the use of military might. None of this makes sense unless you believe that God raised Jesus from death and that therefore the future belongs to the just, gentle and peaceful reign of God.

So how does our friend Nicodemus fit into all of this? As we have noted, he is one of the religious leaders who believed Jesus but was unwilling to associate with him publicly. John the Evangelist has harsh words for such under cover believers. He chides them for loving human praise more than the praise of God. John 12:43. Still, it is worth noting that when the religious authorities were hell bent on arresting Jesus, it was Nicodemus who spoke up and insisted that no such action should be taken without first hearing what Jesus had to say. John 7:45-52. Following Jesus’ crucifixion, his disciples all deserted him and left his body to be pecked at by crows and eaten by dogs at the foot of the cross. But Nicodemus, along with Joseph of Arimathea, another under cover disciple, sought permission to take down the body of Jesus and give him a proper burial. John 19:38-42. It seems that despite his initial skepticism, Nicodemus may have been born anew. It appears that perhaps he did catch a glimpse of God’s reign. Did it lead him finally to a life of discipleship? John the Evangelist leaves us to wonder about that.

Here is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson that speaks to “a love that in the spirit dwells that panteth after things unseen.” It is to that spirit Jesus appeals when he says to Nicodemus, ^“What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘Youmust be born from above.’The windblows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:6-8.

Gnothi Seauton (Know Thyself)

Source: Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 3, edited by William H. Gilman & Alfred R. Ferguson (c. The Bellknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1964) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1803,^[15] to Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister. at age fourteen, Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed freshman messenger for the president, requiring Emerson to fetch delinquent students and send messages to faculty. He took outside jobs to cover his school expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and as an occasional teacher. Emerson served as Class Poet and, as such, presented an original poem on Harvard’s Class Day, a month before his official graduation on August 29, 1821. In the early 1820s, Emerson was a teacher at the School for Young Ladies. He next spent two years living in a cabin in the Canterbury section of Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he wrote and studied nature.

In 1826, faced with poor health, Emerson went to seek a warmer climate. He first went to Charleston, South Carolina, but found the weather was still too cold. He then went farther south to St. Augustine, Florida. There Emerson had his first encounter with slavery. At one point, he attended a meeting of the Bible Society while a slave auction was taking place in the yard outside. He wrote, “One ear therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was regaled with ‘Going, gentlemen, going!'” Emerson was staunchly opposed to slavery. In the years leading up to the Civil War he gave a number of lectures on the subject. He  welcomed John Brown to his home during Brown’s visits to Concord and voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, whom he later met in person. Starting in 1867, Emerson’s health began to decline. He wrote much less and started experiencing memory problems. Still, he continued to travel widely and lecture in Europe and the United States. He died from complications of pneumonia in 1892. You can read more about Ralph Waldo Emerson and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website

FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19

Matthew 4:1-11

Prayer of the Day: Lord God, our strength, the struggle between good and evil rages within and around us, and the devil and all the forces that defy you tempt us with empty promises. Keep us steadfast in your word, and when we fall, raise us again and restore us through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
    whose sin is covered.

Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity
    and in whose spirit there is no deceit.”  Psalm 32:1-2.

Our prayer for this first Sunday in Lent rings true with a particular clarity these days. The “struggle between good and evil rages within and around us” and we are tempted with a slew of “empty promises” at every turn. The Lenten challenge is to turn away from the allure of such promises, reject the claims the evil one would assert over our lives and lament our complicity in society’s systemic injustice. But is that really all there is to it? Is repentance only a matter of lamenting sin, turning away from evil and receiving forgiveness for past wrongs? I don’t think so. Over many years of leading my congregations through the season of Lent, the Three Days and celebration of the Resurrection, I have become convinced that we have not gotten repentance completely right.

A member of the worshiping community of which I am a part during the vacation season here on the Outer Cape recently summarized a sermon he heard in which the preacher declared, concerning the oppressive measures of our government against so many vulnerable groups, “I am not part of the so-called resistance. I am not resisting anything. I am struggling to follow Jesus and live into the reign of God he proclaims. They are the resistance.” I heard similar sentiments expressed by a member of one of our churches in Minneapolis involved with providing food assistance to persons afraid to leave home for fear of ICE violence. Disciples of Jesus practice the life of God’s coming reign in the face of resistance from a world unprepared to accept it. To be sure, such an existence takes the form of the cross, but its end is resurrection and a new creation. Thus, repentance is not merely or even chiefly a matter of sorrow for sin and turning away from evil. It is turning toward the imminent reign of God. Rejection of the devil and all his empty promises is not a precondition, but the consequence of this joyful turning.

What happens when we view the temptations Jesus faced in this light? The good news here is that God can be trusted to provide for our most basic human needs-and has so provided. Contrary to what the false apostles of scarcity keep telling us, this earth is capable of feeding, sheltering and caring for all people, notwithstanding the violence we have inflicted upon it. I recall a lecture I once attended led by a leader of my church’s global hunger ministry during which a woman posed the following question: “If God loves us so much, how come there are so many of these hungry people you keep talking about?” Without missing a beat, the speaker replied, “Many theologians and philosophers have struggled with that question and written thousands of books on the subject. But I think part of the solution to the problem is resting right there in your purse.” As the disciples learned when faced with a hungry crowd of five thousand, a little bit goes a long way when placed into the hands of Jesus, who calls us to trust God’s generosity as we practice our own.

The good news is that suffering, loss and even pain need not be feared. The devil would have Jesus believe that the reign of God will come without sacrifice. If you trust God, God will “rapture you away from the great tribulation.” “Your faith plants the seeds and God sends the harvest of prosperity,” “all things work out for good for those who trust God.” Quoting Psalm 91, the devil assures Jesus that he can safely throw himself down from the roof of the temple because,

 “God will command his angels concerning you,’
    and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”  

But there is more to this Psalm than the devil is letting on. The author of the psalm is quite possibly a soldier who has known the dangers of combat. Or perhaps he or she is the survivor of a plague. Whoever they may be, they have seen death up close and personal. They know that God “will be with them in trouble.” Psalm 91:15. That is quite different from promising that there will be no trouble for those who trust in God. To the contrary, Jesus knows that his trust in his Heavenly Father will subject him to opposition, suffering and death. But suffering and death, real though they surely are, do not have the last word. For that reason, they have, as Saint Paul says, “lost their sting.” I Corinthians 15:54-55.

The good news is that God’s reign comes without violence, force or coercion of any kind. Jesus has no need for “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” Matthew 4:8. He knows that such glory and power are illusionary. As the prophet Isaiah points out, the nations “are like a drop from a bucket.” Isaiah 40:15. As went Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Greece, so goes Rome, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union and, perhaps soon, the United States of America. Contrary to what much of American Christianity believes, God does not need the United States, democracy or the constitution to implement or prop up God’s reign. Jesus knows that empires have only time to “strut and fret” their “hour upon the stage” and then be “heard no more.” MacBeth, Act 5, Scene 5. God has all eternity with which to work. God’s reign will come with or without our efforts. The only question is, will we accept Jesus’ invitation to participate in that joyous occurrence or throw our lives away in futile resistance?

In sum, I believe repentance to be a joyful opportunity. It is grounded not in angry reaction to the evil around us, but in a thankful response to Jesus’ invitation to live under God’s just and gentle reign. Joyful repentance is on full display in the words of Wendell Berry:

“So, my friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love somebody who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

The flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.”

Repentance is not mere resistance, but an affirmative response to the better live Jesus invites us to share with him. We don’t have to repent. We get to repent.

To be clear, repentance does involve sorrow for the time we have wasted in bitterness, envy, selfishness and greed. There is genuine and proper regret for the harm we have done to others and the wounds we have inflicted on our planet. But the good news of the gospel is that our past need not determine our future. What we have done cannot be undone, but it can be worked into a narrative of redemption. Again, as Wendell Berry urges,

“As soon as the generals and politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go…”

Let this Lenten season be one in which our sober acknowledgement of brokenness nevertheless glows with a measure of Easter joy.

Here is the full poem of Wendell Berry cited above.

    Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
    vacation with pay. Want more
    of everything ready-made. Be afraid
    to know your neighbors and to die.
    And you will have a window in your head.
    Not even your future will be a mystery
    any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
    and shut away in a little drawer.
    When they want you to buy something
    they will call you. When they want you
    to die for profit they will let you know.

    So, friends, every day do something
    that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
    Love the world. Work for nothing.
    Take all that you have and be poor.
    Love someone who does not deserve it.
    Denounce the government and embrace
    the flag. Hope to live in that free
    republic for which it stands.
    Give your approval to all you cannot
    understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
    has not encountered he has not destroyed.

    Ask the questions that have no answers.
    Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
    Say that your main crop is the forest
    that you did not plant,
    that you will not live to harvest.
    Say that the leaves are harvested
    when they have rotted into the mold.
    Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

    Put your faith in the two inches of humus
    that will build under the trees
    every thousand years.
    Listen to carrion – put your ear
    close, and hear the faint chattering
    of the songs that are to come.
    Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
    Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
    though you have considered all the facts.
    So long as women do not go cheap
    for power, please women more than men.
    Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
    a woman satisfied to bear a child?
    Will this disturb the sleep
    of a woman near to giving birth?

    Go with your love to the fields.
    Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
    in her lap. Swear allegiance
    to what is nighest your thoughts.
    As soon as the generals and the politicos
    can predict the motions of your mind,
    lose it. Leave it as a sign
    to mark the false trail, the way
    you didn’t go. Be like the fox
    who makes more tracks than necessary,
    some in the wrong direction.
    Practice resurrection.  

Source: The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry, (c. Wendell Berry, 2016; pub. by Penguin Random House, UK). Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is a poet, novelist, farmer and environmental activist. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. You can read more about Wendell Berry and sample more of his works at the Poetry Foundation website.

TRANSFIGURATION OF OUR LORD

Exodus 24:12-18

Psalm 2 or

Psalm 99

2 Peter 1:16-21

Matthew 17:1-9

Prayer of the Day: O God, in the transfiguration of your Son you confirmed the mysteries of the faith by the witness of Moses and Elijah, and in the voice from the bright cloud declaring Jesus your beloved Son, you foreshadowed our adoption as your children. Make us heirs with Christ of your glory, and bring us to enjoy its fullness, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

 “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” Matthew 17:5.

Just when the disciples think they finally have Jesus figured out, they find out they don’t. Just when they think they understand what the reign of God is all about, they discover they have a lot more to learn. They struggle to comprehend Jesus’ parables, they question his judgment when he tells them they are bound for Jerusalem and they do not know what to make of the Transfiguration but are clearly intent on making it last. The succeeding generations of disciples have fared no better. We are still trying to figure out who Jesus is, what he demands of us and how to follow him. Over the centuries, the church has made some disastrous wrong turns, not the least of which was turning Jesus into the mascot of empire, the tool of colonialism and, most recently, the patron saint of American racism, genocide, misogyny and homophobia. The way of discipleship is, as Jesus characterizes it, “narrow” and “hard.” By contrast, the way leading us away from it is “wide and the road is easy.” Matthew 7:13-14. Thus, the divine imperative: “This is my Son, the Beloved…listen to him.”

How do people like us who are two millennia removed from Jesus’ earthly ministry listen to him? Of course, the most direct witnesses we have to Jesus are the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. The Bible, consisting of both documents, is understood in my Lutheran tradition to be the Word of God-but only in a derivative sense. Primarily, the Word of God is the Word made flesh, the incarnate Word, Jesus the Christ. In the not too distant past, we would have said that the Bible is “inerrant and infallible.” The abandonment of these terms in our more recent statements of faith caused quite a stir among folks who felt we were watering down the Bible’s authority. But I think jettisoning these terms was a wise decision. They say both too much and too little. They claim too much because they ascribe everything to the text, suggesting that we disciples of Jesus are a “people of the book.” [1] On the other hand, these two terms say too little because they fail to specify the focus of the Bible’s testimony to the Incarnate Word. In arguing with his opponents, Jesus remarked, “you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf.” John 5:39. I prefer to say that the Bible is a faithful and reliable witness to God’s saving acts toward Israel and God’s redemptive acts for all creation through the obedient life, faithful death and glorious resurrection of Jesus. Disciples of Jesus read and interpret the scriptures through this lens. That is how the Bible enables us to listen to Jesus.  

Still, the fact remains that the Bible has not always functioned as a redemptive text or a faithful witness to Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims. Throughout history the Bible has been cited in support of unspeakable hatred, violence and cruelty. In both the United States and South Africa, the accounts of Israel’s conquest of Canaan were cited as a rationale for invading, conquering and dispossessing indigenous peoples. Saint Paul’s admonition to respect governing authorities as instruments of God’s justice has been cited to justify tyranny and condemn resistance to it. The Bible was regularly invoked to support the institution of slavery in the antebellum United States and afterward to support the systemic racism of Jim Crow. Biblical passages have been employed to demonize, ostracize and incite violence against gay, lesbian and transgender persons. The Bible is a complex, layered and diverse collection of literature filled with rabbit holes leading to dark and frightening places. It is a dangerous book in the hands of the wrong people.

That brings us to our reading from II Peter where the apostle says, “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.” II Peter 1:20. That is not to say the Bible needs no interpretation. As noted above, it clearly does. The operative words in Peter’s remark are “one’s own.” Interpretation of scripture is far too important a task to be left to everyone’s individual conscience. It is too important to be placed solely in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities or left to the outcome of any democratic process. Interpretation of scripture is the task of the whole church. We need the wisdom and experience of bishops, pastors and teachers to school us in the lessons learned by the church over the centuries and the hard won teachings that have guided us. We need prophetic voices of preachers speaking from the margines to warn us when our orthopraxy does not match our orthodoxy and call us back to faithfulness. We need writers, poets, artists and musicians to stretch our imaginations and help us to see and understand in new ways our Lord Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims. I daresay we need even the heretics. While we may reject their claims and teachings, we can thank them for helping us clarify, revise and strengthen our own. (And I hope we are learning to treat them more grace and gentleness than we have in the past!) Through all these witnesses, we discover anew the Jesus we thought we knew as he is constantly transfigured and we are by him transformed.

Here is a poem about perception that transfigures and its transformative potential by Jennifer Jean.

Doors of Perception

My father leapt on stage at the Hollywood Bowl

to grab drum and cymbal sticks

from a star—he wanted to be

a star, a door, a Door. White. Security

thugs dragged him off

John Densmore. He saw doors everywhere, he saw Doors

everywhere—at the Whisky,

the Beanery, the Magic Mountain fest—and

in primary colors

in Windward, Oakwood, or North of  Rose. He wanted

to forget war in Venice, to be a door in Venice

and face the faux canals.

Later, he flew to Paris to pay homage to the Door who died

with a head of Alexandrian hair.

He carried huge pale poppies

to the “Poets’ Corner” in the Père Lachaise,

to this stranger under a cream coffin

door nailed shut. He said, Break on through.

He put a poppy in his pocket

like a receipt,

and chased daylight till he landed

in LA, saw a wave of  white

stars rippling

on the Pacific on new moon nights,

when the ever-present rust cloud was blown out to sea.

He found a motel room door, particle door, and shut it

on all that he owned

for fifty years. He lived there, adding up primary colors,

hour to hour in Bliss Consciousness—

crossing his legs on the bed, letting electric snow

hush the TV. Hush

gunfire and

blood. He forgot his father’s father’s Cabo Verde

and let himself   be Italian there—

a different kind of   Venetian—because who he really was was

too close to Black.

Source: Poetry (October 2020). Jennifer Jean is a poet, translator, editor and educator. She was born in Venice, California and lived in foster-care until she was seven. Her ancestors are from the Cape Verde Islands. She grew up in California’s San Fernando Valley. She earned her BA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and her MFA in poetry from Saint Mary’s College. Jean has been awarded fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Disquiet/Dzanc Books, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Kolkata International Poetry Festival. She received the Jean Pedrick Award from the NEPC, and an Ambassador for Peace Award from the Women’s Federation for World Peace. Jean is the founder of Free2Write: Poetry Workshops for Trauma Survivors, and has been the poetry editor for Talking Writing Magazine and MER. You can read more about Jennifer Jean and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] My friends who insist on an inerrant Bible find themselves drawn down a thousand rabbit holes, having to defend a literal six day creation, a literal worldwide flood and a literal halt to the earth’s rotation against all scientific evidence. This is necessary because if the Bible is found to be unreliable in any single detail, its credibility is destroyed and faith is undermined. But this is to do exactly what Jesus’ opponents were doing, namely, placing faith in the scriptures rather than the God to whom the scriptures testify.  

FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Isaiah 58:1-12

Psalm 112:1-10

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Matthew 5:13-20

Prayer of the Day: Lord God, with endless mercy you receive the prayers of all who call upon you. By your Spirit show us the things we ought to do, and give us the grace and power to do them, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
    and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” Isaiah 58:6-7.

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” Matthew 5:13.

Salt had numerous uses in the first century. It was used for enhancing the flavor of food as it is today. Salt was also employed as a preservative, critical for warm climates. It was used to brighten the light of oil lamps, increase the efficiency of baking ovens and as a cleansing agent. Salt was a component in ritual sacrifices, sometimes spoken of as a symbol of Israel’s covenant with God. For more on this, see Nolland, John, The Gospel of Matthew, (New International Greek Testament Commentary, c. 2005 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). We need not settle on which particular use Jesus had in mind to appreciate the metaphor. Whether acting as seasoning, preservative, cleanser, brightener, cooking aid or ritual symbol, salt is always used to benefit something else. The one thing salt cannot do is salt itself. Salt that has become degraded, diluted or altered in some way such that its effectiveness is impaired cannot be restored by adding more salt to it.

As we move further into this section of Matthew known as the Sermon on the Mount, we hear Jesus becoming increasingly critical of the religion practiced by many of the scribes and Pharisees. He makes clear, however, that his criticism is not of Judaism and its practices. To the contrary, he makes clear that he did not come to abolish, but to fulfill the Torah. Jesus is fully supportive of his opponents’ practices of fasting, prayer and almsgiving. His criticism goes rather to the failure of their fasting, prayers and giving to inspire them toward observance of the “weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” Matthew 23:23. In this Jesus was consistent with the prophet Isaiah who chides his own contemporaries for their scrupulous observance of ritual fasting on the one hand while ignoring the needs of their needy neighbors on the other. Faith that does not embody empathy toward the world of neighbors is not Christian, however much it might be plastered with crosses and smothered with mouthed praises of Jesus.

If the Sermon is to be preached faithfully, the preacher must recognize that it is an indictment of our own worship as much or more than that of Jesus’ contemporaries. Ours, too, is often worship that is more form than substance. It is one thing to issue preachy-screechy social statements condemning poverty. It is quite another to “bring the homeless poor into your house.” It is easy enough to condemn colonialism from comfort of our homes and offices built on land our recent ancestors stole from indigenous tribes. It is quite another to consider what it might mean to reverse the colonial systems from which we obviously continue to benefit. It is easy to lament and issue declarations of apology for our church’s participation with and complicity in our nation’s shameful history of slavery. As those of us who have been urging the church to take concrete steps toward restorative justice and reparations for Black Americans, acting on such bold declarations is not something our leaders are keen on pursuing.

The Sermon on the Mount is good news. To the poor it throws open the door to God’s reign of plenty; to those who groan under the yoke of oppression, it promises liberation; to those who are persecuted, it promises vindication and blessing; to the rich, it promises liberation from addiction to wealth; to the privileged, it promises demolition of the walls that separate us from the neighbors who have for too long paid the price for our consumptive way of life. In the Sermon, Jesus invites us to join him in a new way of being human in an increasingly inhumane world. No matter how beaten down one might be under the crushing oppression of empire, no matter how deeply one might be implicated in driving that oppression, the inbreaking of God’s reign opens up opportunities for repentance, justice and reconciliation (in that order). Jesus invites us to become “like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail.” Isaiah 58:11. He calls us to become a sign of what our world can be.

That brings us back to salt, the substance that seasons, cleanses, preserves, enlightens and sanctifies-among other things. Disciples understand that they cannot establish the reign of God through their own efforts. They can, however, and must witness to it in deed as well as word. That is what food pantries in the church basement are all about. They do not make much of a dent in world hunger, but they season a nation, half of which is starving from lack of nutrition while the other is starving from lack of compassion. Protests against Donald Trump’s private army of ICE thugs killing their neighbors may not break the resolve of our government to inflict terror upon our neighborhoods. But it will shine a light on oppression and highlight the humanity of its victims. Sanctuary churches are not the solution to anti-immigrant violence and oppressive policies. But they do, along with numerous other communities of faith and humanitarian organizations, hold together vulnerable communities and provide essential support for families in the greatest danger of arrest and deportation. The preachers who find courage to speak truthfully to their congregations about what discipleship means in an age of bigotry dressed up as patriotism will not move the needle of public opinion. But they can perhaps light a flame that God’s Spirit will one day fan into a fierce and cleansing fire. Like salt, Jesus’ disciples are called to be agents of seasoning, preservation, cleansing, illumination and sanctification.

It may seem counterintuitive to think of salt as a healing agent. Nobody likes the idea of “rubbing salt into a wound.” But pain is an inevitable part of healing and recovery. A pinch of salt in the right places can be the catalyst for needed change. Here is a poem by Larry Neal celebrating the many people whose lives and struggles have seasoned the long (and as yet incomplete) sojourn of Black Americans toward liberation from the oppression of white supremacy. 

O God make us strong and ready

Source: Hoodoo Hollerin’ Bebop Ghosts, (c. 1968, 1974 by Larry Neal; pub. by Published by Howard Univ Press). Larry Neal (1937–1981) was an American writer, poet, critic and academic. He was a well known scholar of African-American theater who contributed to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Neal was a major force pushing for black culture to focus less on integration with white culture. He sought rather to lift up its unique features within an equally important and meaningful artistic and political field celebrating Black heritage.

Neal was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Woodie and Maggie Neal, who had five sons. He graduated from a Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia in 1956. He later graduated from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in 1961 with a degree in history and English. He then went on to receive a master’s degree in Folklore which became a major subject of many of his later works. Neal was a professor at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia and a copywriter in Wiley and Sons. He held professorships at City College of New York, Wesleyan University and Yale University. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship for African-American critical studies. You can read more about Larry Neal and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.