Share God's Nature

Sunday, December 25, 2016

How questions

· Canticle 15

I’ve never been in prison. The closest I’ve come was a couple hours on a school bus full of protesters with a zip-tie around my wrists, waiting to be processed by the National Park Police. But that’s a story for another day. My point is that I don’t really know what it is like to be confined against my will, forced to do nothing but wait and see when and if I will ever go free.

John the Baptist, in our gospel story, is in prison, and he doesn’t know how long he must wait, or what he’s waiting for, and it’s not likely to be pleasant when it comes. But John is not concerned about this. Because God has given it to him to see that the kingdom of heaven has come near, that one is coming after him who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. This is the waiting that matters to John—the long waiting of his people for the redeemer promised to them through the prophets. And this is the wait that John believes will soon come to an end—but the question is: how soon?

The conditions of John’s imprisonment mustn’t be completely harsh, because he can have visits from his disciples. That is how he catches wind of the activities of Jesus of Nazareth, who once came to him to be baptized in the Jordan. At that time, according to Matthew’s telling, John recognized Jesus’ spiritual stature, and protested that Jesus should baptize him, and not the other way around. Jesus insisted, though, that John do it, and maybe that made John doubt whether Jesus was the one foretold. In any case, when we next meet John he is in his prison cell and sending his disciples to ask Jesus a question.

Now, the author of Matthew sets the stage for this story by using the word “Christ,” “Messiah.” It’s the first time this word appears in the Gospel since wise men came from the East, and Herod asked his priests and scribes where the scriptures said the Christ would be born. “When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing,” Matthew writes, “he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’” So for us as readers of the Gospel, the answer to John’s question is known before he asks it. There is no doubt or suspense about it at all.

For us the question that really counts is the one that Jesus chooses to answer. It is not the question of “when?” because we know that the answer is “now.” It is not the question of “who?”—the answer is, “Jesus.” But the question that Jesus answers is “how?”: “how do we know that he is the Messiah?” or “how does the Christ act when he comes?” And this morning I want to submit to you that the “how” questions are the ones that really matter to us, too.

Christians through the centuries have enjoyed speculating about what theologians call “eschatology,” that is to say, the “when” question. I guess maybe we’ve found it reassuring to think that there’s a definite date upon which history will end, and that we might even be able to foretell that date, even if in only a general, ballpark-guess kind of way. And we’ve had even more fun speculating about what theologians call “Christology”—the “who” questions. Maybe it give us a sense of confidence to be able to define in precise and technical terms who Jesus is and what exactly is his unique relationship to God and his role in the plan for the creation and redemption of the universe. But if we’re going to be completely honest with ourselves, I think we have to admit that our answers to these questions are always going to be no more than speculation, because they are questions to which, by definition, only God can give the answer.

And it’s the “how” questions that really meet us, as they say, where we live. Jesus’ answer to John’s question suggests that we can answer the “how” questions, right here on the human level. We don’t need to wait for someone else to come, in the future end of time. We don’t need to confess that Jesus is Lord and Savior, or the only-begotten Son of God, or load him up with all kinds of other lofty Christological titles. What really matters to Jesus, is that we put our faith in what he did when he was here on earth, in his human life. John the Baptist’s disciples come to ask “who?” and “when?” and Jesus answers, “tell your master what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

This answer of Jesus is a kind of pastiche of quotes from the prophets, from their inspired visions of what it will be like when Israel’s waiting is over, and the anointed one finally comes. But it’s a very selective set of quotes. He doesn’t say anything about slaying the wicked, or destroying the enemies of God; he doesn’t talk about restoring the dynasty of David, or rebuilding the might of the nation, or reforming the worship of the temple, though he could have found passages in prophecy to support making these the planks of his messianic platform. But again, he’s not answering John the Baptist’s question with promises of what he will do, if everyone accepts his claim to be the Christ, and joins his insurrection, and supports him in a bid to take power. He’s talking about what anyone can see and hear—the work that he is already doing, with the power he already has from God.

The work that Jesus is doing is healing human beings who have been deprived of the full flourishing of their lives by illness or disability, by poverty or premature death. He’s not solving all their problems, or giving them keys to a house on Easy Street, but he is restoring their dignity and their hope. He is showing them what they can do and be, when they believe that they, too, are sons and daughters of God. He is renewing their faith that there is meaning and purpose to human existence, and that they have been called to play their part in God’s mission in the world.

To be sure there are those who are disappointed in Jesus because they hope for bold slogans and grandiose pronouncements and instantaneous change. There are those who are resentful because, being accustomed to power and privilege, they assumed the messiah would reserve a first-class place on his bandwagon for them. But then there are those who see that in Jesus God has come to us to heal our bodies and souls, not because we have any special rights, but because of our special needs. We are broken, seemingly beyond repair, and still God cares for us, and chooses us to be ambassadors of heaven. When we welcome this Messiah who shows who he is by restoring wounded human beings, we are already blessed, no matter who we are, or who we have been.

You and I may not have the supernatural gift of healing that Jesus had. But that doesn’t mean that the power of God can’t work through us to change our lives, or even change the world. It can, if we accept that it is in the lives of ordinary men and women like us, that God has chosen to manifest redeeming power. If we accept that this transformation is not something that will begin any day now, when we’re good and ready, when we’ve kicked that bad habit and started doing yoga, and the holiday shopping is done, or the kids are in college, it has in fact already begun.

For Christians the supreme model of this kind of acceptance has always been the mother Mary, who magnified the greatness and power of God in her own lowly soul. Though she cannot possibly be ready, she consents to conceive the promised child. And then it’s up to her—to her ordinary human powers of gestation and giving birth, of maternal care and love, of patient instruction in the way of life commanded in the Torah. She has accepted her role in the coming of the Messiah, and that in itself has scattered the proud and thrown down the mighty. That in itself has lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things, as surely as if the job were already done.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Steadfastness and encouragment

Some of you know that once a month or so I meet over lunch at B’nai Israel Jewish Center over on Western Avenue with Rabbi Ted, and Mia, his associate, and two or three other clergy from different faith communities on the West side of Petaluma. We had our December gathering on Thursday, and it was Rabbi Ted’s idea that we might open our meeting up this time, and invite folks to join us from the wider community, to share our concerns and our hopes about making Petaluma a place where all kinds of people can live together in harmony. It wasn’t so long ago that many of us assumed that this was a goal that most people share, but it appears recent events in town and in the nation have shaken that confidence. Because people came out in response to our invitation: from the synagogue and the Episcopal, and Unitarian, Methodist, Lutheran, and Catholic churches; from the Islamic Center of Petaluma; from six or seven different social service agencies and community organizations; from the police department and the city council.

Rabbi Ted emailed our little clergy group early in the week and offered to facilitate the meeting, and we gave him the green light, and on Thursday it became clear pretty quickly that we’d made the right decision. Not just because the meeting was his idea, or because he was our host. And not just because he is the most experienced spiritual leader among us. But also because of the moral authority he had when he spoke of what it means to him and his congregation when people start talking about of mass deportations, and registries of religious minorities, and internment camps. And the moral authority with which he can tell stories from the experience of his own community about attempted arson, and breaking of windows, and swastikas painted on their building over the years. And this helped us all put our meeting in the right perspective—to feel the urgency of this moment, to be sure, and the need for vigilance and initiative; but also to remember that the struggle to learn to live together is nothing new. It has been going on for a long time, in Petaluma and everywhere.

As St. Paul is winding up his long instruction to the church at Rome, about how to be a single faith community of Jews and Gentiles, with all the tensions that entails, he tells them that even though it is not easy, they shouldn’t give up hope. Because, he says, their being able to live together in harmony, and give glory to God with one voice, is what the mission of Messiah Jesus is all about. It is what God sent Jesus to make possible. It required him to put the interests of others before his own. So it wasn’t easy for him either, to say the least, but he gave himself to the task with perfect faithfulness because he loved us, and had hope that God would find a way.

And here I think that if you read between the lines you can see that Paul might also be talking about himself. This isn’t one of those passages like you find elsewhere in Paul’s letters where he holds himself up explicitly as an exemplar of imitating Christ, and talks about all the hardships and suffering he has endured for the sake of the Gospel. But in all his letters Paul writes from the heart of his own experience, and his own struggles and victories of faith are never far from his mind. I think this is one of those places where Paul is speaking of, and to, himself, as much as he is speaking to his intended audience. So when he says that the God who will help the Romans to live together in harmony is the God of steadfastness and encouragement, he’s talking about the spiritual consolation that has come to him and helped him at times when his own hope was wearing thin.

Paul’s encounter with the crucified and resurrected Jesus, a man he’d never met and used to despise, somehow made him a leader in this unlikely mission; a mission to create a new humanity, in which there is no longer male nor female, no longer Jew nor Greek, no longer slave nor free. This mission has cost him everything, and in particular it has cost him his religion. Not that he has ceased to be a Jew, or has converted to a different faith. But his experience of Christ tore down to the foundations his understanding of what it meant to belong to the covenant people of God, and to be an heir of the promises made to the patriarchs.

It was only through the grace of God, and his faith in Jesus, and the signs he saw of the Holy Spirit at work in the communities to which he was sent, that Paul could gradually build his religion up again, according to a radically different design. This was a long, painful process, and it didn’t help that it made him an outcast and a blasphemer in the eyes of the people he used to think of proudly as his own. So if Paul speaks in the name of a God of steadfastness and encouragement, it’s because he knows that he himself would not have made it this far without that God.

And Paul also gives the church in Rome a recommendation for where to turn to find the encouragement and hope that they need. It the same place he goes, which is to say the scriptures. He even gives a little demonstration, citing some of his favorite Bible verses—the ones he knows by heart, and that he turns to when he needs encouragement to remind him that he is not on some kind of fool’s errand, but is doing the will of God.

Because the call that Christ has given him to God’s universal mission of reconciliation is not entirely new. The prophets of the covenant, even as far back as Abraham and Moses had pointed toward the true grandeur of Israel’s vocation. But it was in Isaiah that this vision came into full view. In Isaiah we read that as punishment for Israel’s sins, God would permit foreign enemies to come and slash the tree of the Israelite nation and the lineage of David, until nothing but a root remained. But Isaiah also promised that from that root a new shoot would come, to rule in the Spirit of justice and wisdom. And those same Gentile nations that once came to conquer and plunder, will come to learn the way of Israel’s God, by which the whole creation will live together in peace.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but we find similar imagery of trees and roots in the preaching of John the Baptist. Like Isaiah’s, John’s message is one of electrifying hope: “the kingdom of heaven is near.” But it also contains a warning. John warns the people not to presume that belonging to some religious organization guarantees them a place in that kingdom. Neither does being born into any particular nation or tribe. He says “one more powerful than I is coming after me.” But the one who is coming brings a purifying fire. It’s a fire that will spread widely and indiscriminately, giving life and power to men and women of every language, and tribe, and family, and nation. It will inspire them with the wisdom and will of God; but it will also burn up everything in them that is not of God, everything inessential, or has outlived its usefulness—everything that does not bear good fruit.

Each week in church we follow Paul’s advice and turn to the scriptures for encouragement. And every year at this time, we go all the way back to that moment where the prophets of the Old Testament open the door to the New, the time just before the story of Jesus began. It’s time again to hear the voice crying in the desert, telling us to turn our lives around because the kingdom of heaven has come near. It is time to come out of our churches and sects and to go down to the river to confess our sins, to pray that God will cut down and sift out and burn away everything in us that is fruitless. Now it is time to prepare a way for the one comes to baptize us with Holy Spirit and fire. We go back to this time as if to clear away all our assumptions and the things we take for granted, all the privileges and prerogatives of being “Christian,” and strip our religion down to its foundation: the radical hope that God will come and teach us, and all the nations, how to live together in peace.

Coming into the light

On Friday at noon a few of us from St. John’s gathered with a few hundred other people for a rally in Walnut Park. Our purpose was to demonstrate our commitment to making this a community where the rights and dignity of every person, and every kind of person, are respected, and where it is safe to be who you really are. There were several speakers, and some half-hearted attempts to get a call-and-response chant going, but my wife and I agreed that the high point of the event was a speech by a student, a recent graduate of Casa Grande High School.

I say “speech”, but what his words really amounted to was a brief telling of his life story. Brought here by his parents from Peru when he was three, he lost his father to deportation a few years later. As a teenager, he began to understand what it would really mean for his to be undocumented when he went to one of the factory outlet stores north of town to apply for his first job, and the application asked for his social security number. He was an indifferent scholar in high school, but managed to graduate, and somehow was prevailed upon to enter Santa Rosa Junior College. It was there, taking courses in Political Science, that he discovered his sense of purpose and potential. It was there he helped organize a union of undocumented students to advocate for their future, and there he made the Dean’s academic honor roll and was elected student-body President. And the loudest cheers of the afternoon, the moment that made my own spine tingle, came when he announced that he had just received word of his acceptance at UC Davis.

It was a variation on the classic American dream, with one small twist. As he came to the end of his story and drew his conclusions from it, this student didn’t talk about himself. He didn’t talk about his hard work, or stick-to-it-iveness, or the importance of having confidence in himself no matter what. He talked about others, the teachers and administrators, the mentors and friends, the people like us in the crowd at the rally, who saw past the judgments and stereotypes attaching to his immigration status, and saw him. They saw his humanity, and the gifts and talents he could contribute to his community, and to his country, if given the chance. And they encouraged him to lay aside his fears and resentments, the hostility of others he had turned against himself, and to come out of the darkness and into the light.

In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul reminds the church in Rome that it is time; time to rouse themselves from a life half-lived and to become fully awake. “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness,” he says, “and put on the armor of light.” Which is kind of a strange image when you think about it—the armor of light. Because armor is what a person puts on for protection from attack by enemy. And, I don’t know about you, but when I am attacked my first instinct is to conceal myself; to hide what I am thinking and feeling, who I really am, and what I really want. But in a world still afraid of the dark, says Paul, we must find our safety by shining out as beacons of light.

And this is an image that appears throughout the scriptures. Our reading from Isaiah today ends, “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “you are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hid.” John’s Gospel says that “the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness more than the light… But the one who does what is true comes to the light.” But the question remains: why would a tiny, oppressed minority like the Jews, or like the followers of Jesus, whose safety you think would come from lying low and being as inconspicuous as possible, want to come out into the light?

I think the answer to that question comes down to faith—faith in the judgment of God. It is the faith that judgments of other human beings have no real power over us, because they are usually mistaken. They see only outward appearances, and are often based on ignorance and prejudice, and envy and fear. It is only God who knows what is in the human heart. Only God knows what we have suffered and overcome, and what we deeply love and truly hope for. So there is something no one can ever take from us, even by taking our lives, which is who we are in the eyes of God. Of course, that is small comfort if we are hiding behind our own superficialities—thinking we are what we own, or what job we have, what neighborhood we live in or who our ancestors were. In such cases the light of God, shining in the hidden depths of the heart, may come as a rude shock. It may involve the sudden destruction of what we thought was important in making us who we are.

But it’s a different story if we are already moving toward the light. If we have already opened our hearts to the light of the disinterested truth, and have fearlessly examined the things we’ve done for which we feel guilty or ashamed; if we have watched the subtle workings of our self-regard and judgmental or acquisitive thoughts toward others; if we have acknowledged to ourselves our own deep-seated loneliness, our doubts about our worthiness and need to be loved; if we have come to terms with the vanity of worldly achievements, and our ignorance before the mysteries of the universe, and we have honestly reckoned the brief span of our lives; then we have already begun to see ourselves as God sees us. The last steps into the light may still be painful to bear, but we will already have learned to take the medicine of God’s compassion and love that brings hope and even joy to the process of purification.

Of course, Christian hope is not just hope for a personal inner illumination. It is hope that God’s hidden purpose for the entire world will come out into the light. For the authors of the New Testament this hope was more than wishful thinking. It was the expectation of the inevitable. Not because they claimed to be able to see the future, but because they believed in the promises of God. Those promises said that God had already chosen a time and a place to come out of hiding, and teach everyone what all the struggle and striving of history was ultimately for. This was the message of the prophets to Israel, such as when Isaiah told of instruction going forth to the nations from Jerusalem, to beat their swords into ploughshares and learn war no more. And for the New Testament apostles, the life and teaching, and death and resurrection of Jesus made these promises came true. He was the light of God’s wisdom and will that shone in the darkness of the world.

The church remembers Jesus with praise and thanksgiving for the gift of this light, but also with prayers for the further fulfillment of God’s promise. Which sounds like two different things but it is not. One way I think we can see how grateful remembrance and hopeful expectation hang together is by reflecting on Jesus’ own favorite way of talking about himself—as the “Son of Man.” In some places Jesus uses it to refer to the hardship and suffering he has to undergo, like any human being in the world. In other places he uses “Son of Man” to speak of the authority given him by God to cast out evil spirits, and heal sickness, and forgive sins. And in still other places it is as if he is speaking of someone else, a Son of Man who is yet to come, who will bring the final, universal revelation of the mercy and justice of God. These different uses do not contradict one another, but create a full picture of the mission of Christ.

God’s compassion and solidarity with our suffering is linked to God’s working to heal and forgive and restore, and these aspects together set the standard for the coming judgment. The revelation of the Son of Man is our armor of light, protecting us with the assurance that the judge of the world has a deep understanding of our predicament, and views us with loving-kindness. It gives us the courage and the confidence to join in his struggle to reconcile the world to God. He has revealed the light in which God sees us, so there can be no retreat into the darkness of shame and fear, no going back to the sleep of a life half-lived. Because now it is only a matter of time.