The great migration

Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
Psalm 121

The story of our faith community begins when God speaks to a man named Abram.  He tells him to leave behind everything he knows, and to set out on a journey.  God does not tell Abram where he going, only to go to a place that God will show him. And he tells Abram that he is sending him for a purpose.  “It is my purpose,” says God, “but you will experience it as a blessing.  And not only will you be blessed, but you yourself will become a blessing, a blessing to all the families of the earth.”

The story says that Abram answered the call, and set out on the journey, and his son-in-law, Lot, went with him.  So right from the beginning this was not a solitary, heroic quest; it was a family migration.  And that is the way it has been ever since.  The Jewish family traces its ancestry back, through all the centuries of dispersion and exile, and returning home, of captivity in Egypt and Exodus, of pastoral nomadism desert wandering, to Abram (later called Abraham).  They trace their lineage through Isaac, the son of Abraham’s wife Sarah, but the Muslim family also claims Abraham as their ancestor, in a bloodline that began with Ishmael, the son of Sarah’s handmaid, Hagar.  In the same way the genealogies of Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Luke trace the family tree of Christ back to Abraham.

But in his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul says that this biological descent is not what makes Abram our ancestor.  We may be Jews, or we may be Gentiles, says Paul, but we are members of the family of Abram either way, because we share his faith in God.  When we hear the word that calls us to leave behind our old gods, our old ways, we set out on a great journey, toward the promised destination of all human wandering.  And our right of inheritance in that homeland is not grounded in our genetics, but in the grace of God who creates all things new.  When we set out in faith to make the migration, we are reborn into a new family--a family of blessedness, that blesses all the families of the world. 

Some of you heard the story I’m about to tell on Ash Wednesday, but I come back to it today because some of you weren’t there, and because it is about the point of departure on a journey of faith.  When I was a boy, about nine years old, my school friend Mark invited me to church with his family.  The church I usually attended with my parents was a large, beautiful, architecturally-significant structure in a park-like setting, in the finest neighborhood in town, but on this Sunday I rode with my friend’s family to a non-descript cinderblock structure on the wrong side of the tracks.  The preacher was a younger man in shirt-sleeves with slicked-back hair who paced around on the stage speaking extemporaneously into a microphone he held in his hand. 

And I don’t remember anything he said, but I do remember that while he was speaking I suddenly understood that my life was intended for me by an all-knowing, loving, and compassionate wisdom.  In a brief but unforgettable encounter, this wisdom communicated itself to me, so that I knew that nothing about my life was random or meaningless or wrong, and that I had no reason to be anxious or ashamed or fearful about the future, because the same presence I was feeling in that moment was behind everything in the world, and would never abandon me, because it was eternal.

As quickly as this moment had come, it was over, and as my ordinary consciousness reasserted itself my first thought was about Jesus.  I was, after all, in a church, and there was a guy up there talking about Jesus, so immediately I wondered, “what does Jesus have to do with what I just experienced?”   And what came to me was that Jesus was the journey ahead.  He was given to me as the key, if you will, to making that moment the enduring truth of my life, to integrating it into my ongoing every day experience.  And I would have the rest of my life to learn who he is and how he works.

As I say, this entire experience happened very rapidly, maybe in just a couple of minutes, and while it was happening my friend Mark saw tears streaming down my cheeks and that I was powerfully moved, and he decided that in that moment I had been “born again.”   From that point forward he took it upon himself to educate me in the rights and responsibilities pertaining to my new status.  And I think poor Mark found it confusing that I showed so little enthusiasm for his doctrine, and no inclination to return with him to his church.   But the thing is, what he had to say to me about God and Jesus and salvation never seemed remotely connected to the loving wisdom I had encountered on that day.

I guess you could say my friend Mark was a little like Nicodemus, the Pharisee we meet in today’s reading from the Gospel of John.  He can see the outward signs of the presence of God, the tears streaming down the cheeks, the deeds of power and transformation.  But something is missing from his understanding.  Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, in the darkness of his ignorance of who Jesus really is, but he tells Jesus what he already knows: “We know you are a teacher who has come from God.”  But if there is implied in that statement, a desire for something not yet known—a deep and searching question—we never hear it.  You get the impression that Nicodemus may be interested in what Jesus has to say, but he is basically struggling to fit it all into his existing conceptual and doctrinal framework.   And it’s not fitting very well.

Because Jesus wants Nicodemus to go on a journey.  In the verses that follow, the Gospel of John takes us on a whirlwind tour from the superficial signs of God’s presence to the inner workings of God’s purpose in Christ.  It is a kind of crash course in the great gospel themes of the journey of salvation, from baptismal rebirth in water and spirit, to seeing and entering the kingdom of God; from the new freedom of the Spirit, to believing the testimony about heavenly things; from the incarnation and ascension of the Son of Man to the strange medicine of the cross that gives final liberation from the captivity of death and evil.  This rushing current of religious imagination brings us at last into the very heart of God, to the loving wisdom that sent his only Son into the world, that the world might be saved through him.

  

People sometimes speak of the season of Lent as a journey.  It is a time to remember that our life in faith is a long searching, and that we still have a long way to go.  It is a time to jettison the extra cargo, to pack light, so we can cover some ground.  And the destination of this journey is not an end, but a point of departure.  The season has its origins in the ancient church, in the final weeks of preparation for baptism at Easter.  In those days baptism was not an individual thing.  At the center of the church’s Easter celebration, it was a remembrance and participation in the moment when the family of Abraham, and every person in it, and the whole created world, was reborn. 

And even if you had been baptized already, maybe long before, every year there was a part of you that went down with the neophyte into the dark waters of Christ’s descent into death and hell.  Every year there was a part of you that came up out of the water, newborn, and was anointed with the oil of the spirit and clothed with the white garment of Christ’s resurrection.  And I think that the veterans began to join in the neophytes fast of Lent because they also wanted to be ready.  They wanted to be open so that when the family gathered to enact again the drama of God’s love for the world, they were open to receive the gift of the only Son.  They wanted to set out on the great migration again from the beginning, a little closer to the goal.     

Love like God's

Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48
Psalm 119:33-40

When Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven, he was saying that, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, God is alive.  He was saying that God’s revealed vision of a community shaped by the laws of God to be like God, a community of justice, generosity, compassion, integrity, and love, was his vision, and that he was acting to realize it decisively.  He called anyone who would listen to embark on the journey to a new life of God-likeness.  And he gave them a way to follow that would lead them to that life, when he summed up the whole of the Jewish law and the prophets in a simple statement: “Love the Lord your God will all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.”  But the way of Jesus went further.  In his teaching, and in all he did up to and, especially, his death, he urged us to the greatest love of all, the love that is ardent as the sun and indiscriminate as the rain, the love that is perfect like the love of God.  Jesus said, “love your enemies.”

In this teaching, Jesus confirms the message of the great Hebrew prophets who said that God is patient, merciful, and kind not just to Israel but to every nation, that every human being is a child of God, with the promise of a place at the table in God’s Kingdom.  And Jesus insists that this commandment is not for some future day.  It is not a utopian ideal, waiting for the world to change so it can go into effect.  The world begins to change now, says Jesus, because we, in our present circumstances, begin to love as God loves.

And what were the present circumstances of Jesus’ audience when he said to them, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”?  They were the daily realities of foreign occupation and colonization, of economic globalization, of mounting inequality and social control enforced by military rule.  It was a world where your superiors would strike you across the cheek with the back of the hand to humiliate and put you in their place; where crushing taxation and exorbitant rates of interest were pushing you into destitution, and a creditor could bring a poor man to court and demand his coat as security for repayment of a loan.  It was a world where a Roman soldier had the right to impress anyone on the road into service, to carry his 85 pounds of gear the distance of one mile.

And what did Jesus advise them to do under these circumstances?  Well, he told them not to have any illusions, but to recognize evil when they saw it.  But he also told them not to oppose this evil with violence.  When Jesus says “do not resist an evildoer” the word translated “resist” is a military term, meaning to form ranks for battle opposite the enemies’ line.  Jesus wanted his listeners to remember that the persons who carried out the daily rituals of their oppression were also beloved children of God, and not to repay one evil with another. 

So if he strikes you with the backhand, offer the other cheek; if he wants to strike you again, he’ll have to use his forehand, like he would with an equal.  Or if he stands in court demanding your coat, give him your undergarment as well; he’ll see you naked, a source of shame for him and a vivid demonstration of where your debt is leading you.  Or if he makes you carry his pack one mile, carry it for two, an act of voluntary friendliness that might just make him wonder if you really are a beast of burden.*   Jesus does not teach the crowd to passively accept abuse, but to disrupt the smooth operation of the machinery of evil with creative non-violent action.  Acting to reclaim the image of God in oneself, even while suffering evil, offers the doer of evil the chance to rediscover that image in himself.

When Jesus said to love your enemies, he wasn’t being sentimental.  He was speaking to people on the verge of erupting into revolutionary violence, of slipping over the edge into suicidal despair.  And he said there is a way back from the brink.  It won’t be easy.  It will involve risk, and require great courage, and patience, and willingness to suffer.  It will demand unshakeable faith in God’s love,  and its power to break down the most stoutly defended walls between people.   It calls for invincible hope in the coming of God’s Kingdom, hope even when it seems that the rule of violence will never end, even when it is clear that the struggle to break it will cost you your life.

 

On the night that Barack Obama was re-elected I listened to his victory speech.  And as he addressed a large and enthusiastic crowd of supporters in Chicago, he returned to the theme of “hope” that got him elected the first time.  He began to lay out his vision of hope for America’s future, and even though I hadn’t voted for him this time, I felt just a little moved.  There even came a point when he appeared to suggest that he might do something about the real problems facing the nation: “We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt,” he said, “that isn't weakened by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”  And then he went on, in the very next sentence, to say: “We want to pass on a nation that is defended by the strongest military on Earth—but also a country that moves with confidence beyond this time of war to shape a peace that is built on the promise of freedom and dignity for every human being.”

And I remember thinking, “there it was.  That was the moment where the hope died.”   Because global military domination, even by America, will never move us to the time of peace, let alone the promise of freedom and dignity.  It’s a practical impossibility, for a whole host of reasons, economic, historical, social and political.   But the reason it concerns me, as a preacher of the Gospel, is that it’s hopeless.  Jesus knew this.  He knew the Roman imperial propaganda, with its claim to be the divine instrument of world peace, and he saw what the new world order looked like where the boots met the ground.  And he perceived that the entire project masked a deep despair.  Because the premise at the heart of all such endeavors is that there is no hope—no hope that we will ever learn to love our enemies, or that loving them will do any good; it’s hopeless, so it isn’t worth the risk or the effort.

It’s uncomfortable for me to say this.  It may be uncomfortable for you to hear it.  I may even seem to be your enemy, or worse, to be rallying you for battle.  But I’m willing to take that risk, because this year you are supposed to whether to call me as your rector, so it’s important that you know what I really think.  What’s more, if you do call me, it will be for the purpose of renewing the church.   And that is going to require love, and I don’t mean the love that is the tacit agreement not to talk about certain subjects.  I don’t mean love for our friends, or our families, or our neighbors.  I don’t mean love for our country, or even love for undocumented immigrants or the homeless people in our streets.  People can find those without this [gesture around at the church building]. 

What will renew the church is that people find a kind of love here they can’t find anywhere else, love that is perfect, like God’s--the love of our enemies.  They are going to come here because here they find the way that leads the whole world back from the brink, towards health and salvation.  If I’m elected Rector I’m going to do what I can to find that way.  Just in case you’re worried, that doesn’t mean that every Sunday sermon will be like this one.  This is only one plank of my platform.  But we will work on loving each other enough to say what we think and feel about the things that really matter, and where we have real disagreements, like foreign policy and what hymns we like to sing on Sunday morning.  We will work on loving each other enough to listen.  Not all the time—that would be exhausting.  But steadily, patiently, with faith, and hope, and love—most of all, with love.

---

*This exegesis of Matthew 5:38-41 is dependent on the groundbreaking work of Walter Wink.  Cf. The Powers that Be (New York: Doubleday/Galilee, 1998), pp. 101-111.

Pluck and throw

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37
Psalm 119:1-8

 

Every weekday morning I drive my daughter to school before coming to my office.  We’re supposed to leave the house at 8 o’clock, but it’s usually closer to 8:10 before we finally get breakfast eaten and shoes on, and the backpack and the lunches, the laptop (mine, not hers), the clarinet and the music stand, and whatever else we need for the day ahead into the car, and pull out of the driveway.  Then we have to make our way through the streets of Petaluma, crowded with other people in their cars, buses, motorcycles, trucks, and even trains, all of them in just as much of a hurry as we are to get where they are going.  Finally, we have to find a place in the crowded drop-off zone in front of Risa’s school, to pull over and safely let her out onto the sidewalk.

The thing that makes it possible for us and everyone else to make that journey every morning is that there are rules.  There are the ones that are codified into state and local ordinance, the traffic laws and the rules of the road.  And then there are the unwritten rules that each person makes for him or herself about how far above or below the posted speed limit it is okay to travel, or how long one should wait at a four-way stop when the driver you thought had the right-of-way isn’t going ahead.

 I wish I could stand here and tell you that I make that drive every day in a state of perfect composure, and that I have nothing but patience and respect for those people who don’t interpret the rules exactly the same way I do.  I’d like to say I have a generous tolerance for drivers who are more cautious and conservative, or more bold and aggressive, than I would be.  But the truth is that Risa gets to see a side of me on our morning drive to school that she might never see otherwise.  She gets to hear words come out of my mouth that she might otherwise not have known were in my vocabulary.

I’m not proud of this, and Risa likes to point out, when I lose my temper with another driver, that it is for doing something I might have done myself, and probably have.  As a person who is supposed to stand for peace, love, and understanding, I’m well aware that my own morning commute is a daily betrayal those ideals.  I can’t really claim that if everyone drove to work the way I do, we would all find ourselves in the Kingdom of God.

And this is true even though, on the face of it, I’m not breaking the law.  Which brings us to the point I’ve been getting to, which is that the rules by themselves are not enough.  Not if we want more out of life than the bare minimum standard of getting to school in one piece, and close enough to on-time.  Not breaking the law is not going to be enough if we want a world where we live together in real harmony and contentment.  That will require something more, something that goes beyond what we do on the outside to how we are on the inside.

In the reading from Deuteronomy this morning, we can see the emergence of this kind of understanding of the law.  It is not something arbitrary set up by God to test his people’s obedience.  The law’s real purpose is to change them.  It is to convert them into a people who live together in a way that really is worth living.  The law is the constitution of a different kind of nation, where human existence is more than a miserable brutish struggle that leads directly to the grave.  Keeping the commandments of God, Israel will achieve a kind of greatness not measured by the extent of her territory, or the wealth of her rulers.  Their own little slice of land will be enough for them, because of the greatness of the life they will live there, in unity, prosperity, justice, longevity and peace.

Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of heaven is radically new, but is built squarely on Israel’s vision of the best way to live.  It is a call to conversion, to receive the abundant life envisioned in Deuteronomy, only present and active now in the person and teaching of Jesus.  Today’s passage from Matthew is really a commentary on last week’s gospel where Jesus says that he has not come to abolish the commandments, but to fulfill them. 

Now it might seem from what he says next that this fulfillment means adding new and even more demanding and restrictive rules to the ones already in force.  But I think this reading misses the point.  I think what Jesus is really saying is that the kinds of behavior that cause so much needless suffering in the world, and tear apart the fabric of community, do not come about because people decide to break the rules.  They are really more pervasive and insidious than that, and the difference between truly egregious sins and the seemingly harmless little foibles that we secretly indulge in the privacy of our hearts, our homes, or our automobiles, is a difference of degree, but not of kind.

Because both involve a denial of our real interrelatedness, for all of us are equally, utterly dependent on God.   And God has made each one of us equally worthy of honor, equally deserving of love.  This denial is not something we choose to do—but it is planted very close to the center of our very sense of self, and the whole structure of our personality has grown up around it.  And as Jesus tells us in the gospel today, the more power it has over our lives, the closer we get to hell.

But we can choose to admit this, to stop pretending that we’re better than we are.  We can start to pay more attention to how it works in our own lives.  We can stop blaming other people for our habitual self-inflicted wounds.  And we can stop blaming our bodies.  All my life I’ve struggled with this passage about how if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away.  Clearly it’s rhetorical, but for a long time I misunderstood what kind of rhetoric it is.  I used to think it was hyperbole—that Jesus was exaggerating to impress on us the severity of sin, and our responsibility for it.  But now I think it’s also irony.  It’s a joke, pointing out the absurdity of self-mortification.  Because who in the world ever really stumbled because of his eye, or her hand? 

No, what we really need to pluck out and throw away are our thoughts, all that endless cascade of mean little thoughts we have about ourselves and other people.  The ones that tell us what a raw deal we’re getting, and how much better off the neighbors are.  The ones that are always ready to fasten on what is less than perfect, and so slow to give thanks for the miracle of sharing this existence.  What we need to tear off and throw away are our self-pity, and envy, our prejudices and power trips, and fantasies of domination and revenge.  These are the members that get us thrown into hell.

So we throw them away, knowing they’ll be back.  But we throw them away again, because repentance is not a one-and-done catharsis, but a life-long conversion.  And the more we pluck them out and throw them away, the less power they have to define us.  At the same time, we start to find ourselves strangely attracted to thoughts of an entirely different kind, thoughts like “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” 

And we start to wonder what it would be like to go through the world with that kind of trust, that combination of confidence and tenderness.  And maybe in time we start to see that at the very beginning another seed was planted in our hearts, one that’s not off center at all.  The shoot that sprouted from that seed has been growing in secret all the time, and is completely intertwined with that anxious, grasping, craven self we thought we really were.  Its roots go down deep into the goodness of life together on the earth.  Its leaves spread high and wide above, to receive the grace that streams from heaven.  And the Christ-life sways and dances in all of us together, not because we follow the same rules, but because we move to the breath of the same Spirit of love.

You can't eat salt

Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12)
1 Corinthians 2:1-12, (13-16)
Matthew 5:13-20
Psalm 112:1-9, (10)

My science teacher in middle school used to take Wednesday off.  He would sit at his desk with his feet up and let us students use the class period to read, any book we wished, and one of us would bring in popcorn for the rest to snack on.  When my turn came to provide the snack, I spent some time on Tuesday night popping corn on the top of the stove, and as each batch was finished, I’d empty it into a large paper grocery bag.  Then I would add a little melted butter and some salt.  And I would close the bag and shake it a few times, to mix everything thoroughly, and add a little more butter, and a little more salt.

I’d never made such a large quantity of popcorn before, and I guess I misjudged how much salt it would take to properly season it.  Because the next day, after I’d passed my big bag around the science room and everyone had scooped out a pile onto a paper towel, I served some out for myself.  And when I put that first handful into my mouth, it was so salty I could hardly keep myself from spitting it out again.  I thought maybe it was just because mine came from the bottom of the bag, but a quick glance around the room showed that no one was eating it, and there were still a lot of popcorn on the paper towels.    My pride wouldn’t let me admit that I’d brought inedible popcorn to science class, so I kept munching away until I couldn’t force myself to take another kernel, and I still carry in my body the memory of the strange, headache-y, queasy feeling of eating far too much salt.

Salt is not food.  It enhances the flavors of food.  It keeps it from spoiling.  It is absolutely necessary for life, but by itself it is useless.  You can’t eat salt.   We ought to bear this in mind when we hear Jesus say to his disciples, “you are the salt of the earth.”  It is the same message in that other saying, “No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.”  It is the message that William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury during the Second World War, summarized when he said, “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

Sometimes the church has acted as if the world existed for its benefit, and has bent worldly wealth and power to service of church leaders and institutions.  At other times we have tried to sever the connection entirely, and create a self-enclosed society, only concerned with its own other-worldly purposes, disinterested and unperturbed by the tensions and upheavals outside her sanctuaries.   But these sayings of Jesus make it plain that if we are going to be the renewed people of God that he sought to give birth to, then the rest of the world has to be at the very heart of who we are.  We are to dissolve into it, to transform it into something truly nourishing and delicious.  We are to light it up, so that its own true beauty and color and full dimensions can be seen. 

The paradox that we have to live with is that the world doesn’t necessarily want the salt or the light of the Gospel.  Remember that these sayings in Matthew come right after the part where Jesus says “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and utter all manner of evil against you on my account.”  And living for the sake of people who don’t see any benefit in what you have to offer is an uncomfortable position to be in.  So sometimes we make a case for ourselves in human terms.  We’ll justify our existence by claiming that we “transform lives,” and point to our members who have kicked the bottle, or worked out their marital problems, or gotten good jobs since they started coming to church.   Or we’ll talk about how we inspire social action that improves our communities, and point out our involvement in distributing food to the poor, or housing the homeless. 

But as important as these things are, trying to justify ourselves in these terms can obscure the heart of what we are about.  It conceals the truth that we have been given a vision of personal transformation that goes far beyond helping people get back to “normal” as social convention defines it.  It is to be silent about the deeper kind of social action, a new solidarity that heals the root structures of rivalry, indifference, and suspicion in human relations.       

We’re running up against this problem now as we organize for an event that we’re calling the Big Night Out.  This effort involves reaching out in a way that we haven’t before to people around Petaluma--friends, and friends of friends, and even complete strangers.  And we are inviting them to a charity event to raise funds for a good cause called St. John’s Episcopal Church.  As we do this, we are appealing to them by describing the benefits we provide, in terms we think they can understand.  We are talking to them about the restoration of this beautiful building, with its architectural distinction that lends so much character and value to the historic downtown area.  We are talking about our long relationship with COTS, which provides services to those who have lost their homes, or are in danger of losing them, and how we are sharing a quarter of the funds that we raise to support that work. 

And I think that this is a sensible approach to take.  But it is also important for us to be conscious of what it is we’re not saying.  It’s not that we’re inviting people to this event under false pretenses.  Its just that we don’t really expect them to understand.  We don’t know how to talk to them about what really makes St. John’s tick, or what value it really has to the community, because there is no way to do it without using the language of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And that very thing that we are reticent about is the taste of the salt, without which it is not good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.  But we’re afraid that if we try to explain ourselves to people on those terms they will immediately stop listening, because they’ll think that we are “religious,” that outmoded and incomprehensible thing, and some hidden agenda to brainwash them and entice them into joining our cult.

It’s a quandary, and I have no better response to it than one I found last week in a little pamphlet put out by the Taizé community in France, which is the inspiration for our monthly service of chant and silence here at St. John’s: 

“But if the salt were to lose its saltiness…

It must be recognized that we Christians often obscure [the] message of Christ…

We are at a point in history when we need to revitalize this message of love and peace.  Will we do all we can so that, freed of misunderstandings, it can shine out in its original simplicity?  Can we, without imposing anything, journey alongside those who do not share our faith but who are searching for the truth with all their heart?

In our attempt to create new forms of solidarity and open up new ways of trust, there are, and there always will be trials.  At times they may seem to be overwhelming.  So what then should we do?  Is not our response to personal trials, and to those which other people endure, to love still more?”

We are reaching the point in the renewal of this congregation where we are starting to understand that we have been called together to do something for our neighbors.  But to find what that is, we have no choice but to meet them where they are.  And we are looking not so much for people we can help, as for conversation partners.  We are seeking not so much an effective rhetoric of persuasion, as a common language in which to begin to understand each other, and share our wonder and anguish about the things that matter most.  And we are waiting on the power of the Spirit to do what we can never accomplish by ourselves, to open minds, to soften hearts, to take down walls, to heal, and salt, and light our world.