SacraConversazione

Second Sunday in Lent Year B

2012-01-30T10:08:00.000-08:00

Second Sunday in Lent B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22: 22-30; Romans 4: 13-25; Mark 8: 31-38

This is the third of five times in the Torah God repeats the promise to Abraham and Sarah, that despite Abraham's age and Sarah's barrenness they will have a son and "make you exceedingly numerous." God initiates the relationship/covenant: "you shall be father [and mother] to a multitude of nations...." I shall "turn you into nations and kings shall come forth from you." This will be "an everlasting covenant". On this occasion, also, God changes their names from Abram and Sara, underscoring that this covenant into which they have entered with God requires a complete break with all past identities. Their new reality is staying in relationship with God through more tests to come. The homecoming of this long, lonely journey will a miraculous son who will carry the covenant to all generations. (The outlandishness of God's initiative and promise is captured wonderfully in the next verse, not included in the lectionary assignment, when we are told that Abraham "flung himself on his face and he laughed, saying to himself, 'To a hundred-year-old man will a child be born/will ninety-year-old Sarah give birth?")

The God (first known through Abraham and Sarah) is the same God of all human nations, the psalmist declares, as well as every mortal, anyone "who goes down to the dust."

Paul provides an interpretation of God's promises to Abraham and Sarah citing excerpts from the same passage we just read from the Torah. Although Paul starts by responding to a contemporary controversy-- the relationship of new followers of Jesus to the Law-- he rapidly moves to a much broader insight. He notes that Abraham and Sarah began and achieved their life-giving, life-expanding relationship with God before God had given the Law! Their story of faith precedes the most venerable aspects of "religion." It goes back to the root, the primeval experience of God out of which grows "religion." They "grew strong in their faith as they gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised."

Jesus makes the first of three predictions, to which Mark gives significant weight in his narrative. The enmity against him by the religious establishment, Jesus says, will only become stronger and more determined. Eventually he will be killed but then rise from the dead after three days. Peter is shocked/embarrassed/confused and takes Jesus aside, refusing to accept what Jesus has just said. Jesus' reaction is harsh. Loud enough for the other disciples to hear him, Jesus "rebukes" Peter, even calling him "Satan." He then turns his attention to the other disciples and the rest of the crowd to warn them that if they continue to follow him, they will be also be required "to take up their own cross." He explains: "[T]hose who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will find it."

In the Second Section of Being and Time, Martin Heidegger dissects how we live in "averageness." We participate in "idle" talk that easily conforms to our family and peers. We "tranquilize" our anxieties, especially our anxiety about dying. We can even become numb. "In the publicness with which we are with one another in our everyday manner, death is 'known' as a mishap which is constantly occurring.... Some one or other 'dies', be he neighbor or stranger. People who are no acquaintances of ours are 'dying' daily and hourly." (pp 296-297)

Heidegger seeks to alert us to an alternate perspective. He writes that if one allows one's self to confront the fact that at some point-- you can never know when-- you will no longer exist as you have known this life since you were born. Then, and only then, he argues, a person begins to grasp life more firmly and fully. Then, and only then, he says we are led to an impassioned "freedon towrds death," (which his translators put in bold!) (p. 311) This "freedom" allows us to imagine and do deeds we would have never dreamed of before. We discover choices, opportunities, relationships and, most importantly, we do things that would have never been possible in our safe "Averageness."

"When we confront our extreme condition of anxiety (depression/death/conscience, however," so concludes William Blattner in his gloss on Heidegger's magnum opus, "we are jolted out of this complacency and forced to face the full range of our freedom. We can hide from these opportunities, once disclosed, disown ourselves, and fall back into a lostness in the Anyone, or we can seize upon our freedom, see for the first time that we are called upon to answer to [our specific] situation, and not just the Anyone. Such a steady and steadfast self, true not to who we 'really' are, but to how we are, is a self we construct resolutely facing the challenges to our leveled-off complacency." (Heidegger's Being and Time, p. 167)

By the time the third of five promises God makes to Abraham and Sarah, he is ninety-nine years old and they have abandoned family, friends, status, security and every aspect of living for which we work so hard to give ourselves a feeling of comfort and security. Instead, the elderly couple have wandered seemingly aimlessly to Haran, Canaan, Egypt and back to Canaan. Every connection to their past has been lost. All they have is themselves and these promises from God that this lonesome journey will finally come to a new home of joy, plenty, progeny and blessings which they do not now even have the capacity to imagine! And, that despite the ridiculousness of their old age, they will be the progenitors of new nations and monarchs!

In today's gospel, Jesus reiterates this intriguing and also disturbing promise: "For what profit is there for you if you get everything you assumed was desirable but, in the process, forfeit your own life."

Paul describes this God who promises more and more and more if we are willing to travel lightly with God: the God "who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not [now] exist." Of Abraham and Sarah's exemplary faith he says: "Hoping against hope, they believed...."

First Sunday in Lent (Year B)

2012-01-29T15:21:00.000-08:00

First Sunday in Lent B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Genesis 9: 8-17; Psalm 25: 1-9; I Peter 3: 18-22' Mark 1: 9-15

NOTE: The readings from the Hebrew scriptures this Lent review some of the foundational promises made by God (Lent 1,2,3) and the ongoing and future consequences of those promises (Lent 4 and 5). Walter Brueggemann writes of these promises: "Israel's testimony to Yahweh as promise maker presents Yahweh as both powerful enough and reliable enough to turn life in the world, fro Israel and all peoples, beyond present circumstances to new, life-giving possibility. Yahweh's promises keep the world open toward well-being, even in the face of deathly circumstances." (Theology of the Old Testament, p. 164)

The Noah narrative depicts God as "forgetful" but then "remembering." The story begins with God regretting creating humankind so thoroughly that God wants to wipe all creation away in a world-wide flood. Then God "remembers" Noah and provides a plan to spare Noah, his family and representatives of every creature. God provides a second chance. After the entire episode, God promises never to destroy the whole earth by flood again. As a reminder of that promise, God puts a rainbow in the sky so that every time God sees it God will remember the promise not only to all humankind, but to "every creature."

Intense introspection leads the psalmist to remind God that he relies on God and God's ways despite the unrelenting mischief of his enemies against him. He then pleads, "Recall Your mercies, O Lord, and Your loving-kindness... they are forever" And "remember me."

The writer of this letter attributed to Peter presents a picture of the church's rapidly developing interpretation of the meanings of the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. The writer asserts, "Christ suffered for sins once for all," sweeping into Christ's death the entire history of every human sin. Then he elaborates on two nights about which the gospels are silent. During the time Christ was among the dead, he preached to all, including Noah and his family. Their trial by flood "prefigures" baptism, God's redemptive work through Christ extends to every human who ever existed or who ever will exist!

In last Sunday's gospel, Mark emphasized the direct connection between God's redemptive work in the past and Jesus in the event best described as "transfiguration." On the occasion of Jesus' baptism, he emphasizes that connection when "the heavens were torn apart and a voice declared 'You are my Son, the Beloved....' " After this momentous event, a time of struggle and temptation follows. The number forty sags with the weight of loaded significance-- the chosen wandered in the wilderness for forty years, Noah and his family watched the earth swallowed up during forty days and forty night of rain, etc. etc.

Biblical relationships are anything but static. There is always change. Relationships are in jeopardy, then wonderfully restored; promises are made but then forgotten; absence sometimes and full presence other times; betrayal followed by heart-wrenching forgiveness; anger followed by a change of heart. Each party in the relationship holds the other accountable. All these things are just as true of our relationship with God.

The readings from the Hebrew scriptures this Lent restate some of the foundational promises made by God to us: creation is abundant, generous and good; hope is always a possibility; no matter what happens, life will be sustained. But, these promises can feel in doubt. Sometimes God gets so frustrated with our foolishness and worse that, for awhile, it seems maybe God has forgotten those promises to us. For our part, we are full of promises and best intentions, but then we forget. One party or the other, it seems, is always reminding the other of past promises made and mutual obligations because of those promises. The relationship is always in need of maintenance or repair.

Every time God's promises are read aloud, as they will be again this Lent, all those within ear-shot must make a decision about those promises-- Yes! No! or No opinion.

Some of the most fruitful work of Paul Ricoeur is his meditating on what he calls "attestation." A useful summary that work is provided in Don Stiver's Theology after Ricoeur, especially p. 204 ff. Stiver writes: "Attestation is not totally clear, always faces the restriction of suspicion, and allows for the expansion of surplus meaning. It never escapes the conflict of interpretation but is a risk, backed by one's life, looking forward to vindication in hope." "Ricoeur sees that we cannot avoid some outlook on life, but it is not knowledge that can be guaranteed by some method of foundation, a la the modernist ethos; rather, it is a risk we must take that we back with our lives." (p. 205) He then quotes Ricouer, "I hope in order to understand." (p. 224)

God's promises present us with decisions which we must make not just with our heads or even our hears, but we "back with our lives." They also invite a relationship with God that will have its ups and downs--Jesus, too, knew temptation-- but each party can hold the other accountable. We remind God of past promises to sustain all creation and we survive and flourish because we trust and rely on those promises with our lives!

For those inspired to follow Jesus, this relationship with God reaches a climax in the days of the Triduum, toward which we walk in these forty days of and six Sundays in Lent.

Ash Wednesday (A,B,C)

2012-01-24T17:27:00.000-08:00

Ash Wednesday (A,B,C)
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Isaiah 58:1-12, Psalm 103; II Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew6:1-6, 16-21

The writer of the Book of Joel sets off an "alarm" for "all the inhabitants of the land...." "The Lord is coming, it is near...." A time of deep "darkness" will accompany the arrival of a "great and powerful army...." In this moment of crisis, "return to me," says the Lord, your God, "with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." "Return to the Lord your God," who is "gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing." Announce a fast with the blast of a "trumpet." Gather all the people, young and old, including infants, even summon the bride and groom from their honeymoon. The priests should station themselves "between the vestibule and the altar" in the Temple and "weep," saying: "Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery..."

OR

The text of ('third") Isaiah attacks the hypocrisy of those who participate in acts of penance "("fast"), but "serve your own interests... and oppress all your workers." It also introduces an innovative definition of penance: the kind of penance the Lord wants is "to loose the burden of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free..." More specifically, "to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your home...." The consequence: "Then your light shall break forth like the dawn and your healing shall spring up quickly...." Now, when you call on the Lord, the Lord will answer. The text repeats for emphasis the specific acts of justice that will produce "light." This will be the source of strength (strong "bones") and renewal ("a watered garden"). New structures will be built on old foundations. Then you will earn a new reputation: "repairer of the breach," the restorer of "safe streets."

According to the psalmist, the Lord knows intimately our failings and limits, but the Lord's compassion for us is limitless.

Paul offers his life as an example of the way the paradox ("foolishness") of the gospel actually works in real life. "...As poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything."

Only Matthew's Jesus provides some unique warnings about hypocrisy while maintaining specific instructions for "piety,", as the prophets did before him-- generosity to others in need, fasting and prayer. Do not do these things in any ways that they might redound to your self-image or reputation. Rather, do them in "secret," because they are what the Lord asks us to do.

Several postmodern thinkers have grappled with the themes in these biblical texts appointed for the first day of Lent, especially Marion, Levinas and Derrida. Their work establishes that seeking to act justly to others is a unilateral gift and sacrifice with no expected return. John Milbank engages in dialogue with them and offers a response in overtly Christian language. (See for example "The Midwinter Sacrifice," in Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology, Graham Ward, ed., pp 107-130) Seeing justice for others is one's only hope of salvation, or even specifically, one's resurrection! Practicing justice is its own reward not in some petty calculation of reciprocity, but in an open, generous "economy" of grace from God to us and then from one person to another.

These biblical texts fault all schemes of morality that promise some form of tit-for-tat. They insist that the only adequate response to our failings is a particular kind of repentance-- feed, clothe, advocate-- as personal response to the grace we have received. Participating in specific actions of justice for others is literally our salvation!

"Authenticity"----

One of the most productive concepts in Heidegger's work is die Eigenlichkeit. Given the many misinterpretations, the very useful summary and clarification given by William Blattner might be timely for this beginning of Lent (Heidegger's Being and Time, New York: Continuum Publishing, 2006). Although it has traditionally been translated as 'authenticity', Blattner suggests "ownedness' and writes:

Thus to be resolute, to own one's self, is not a matter of finding one's true self and insisting upon it, at least not in any conventional sense of those terms. After all, whoever one might take one's 'true self' to be can be overtaken by the world. What is more, and perhaps worse, one can die to that self by slipping into a depression that wrenches it away from one. To have found oneself and and won oneself is in some cases to stick with one who has been heretofore and so do so in the face of daunting social pressure, while in some cases it is to adapt flexibility to a new world or new dispositions. To win oneself is, in and of itself, neither to stick with who one has been or to 'wear the world's clothes lightly.' Rather, to find oneself and win oneself is to see what is factically possible and important to carry through with it, whatever its relation to who has been heretofore might be. We can put this point by saying that the self one must find and win is one who is at this moment, but we cannot let the language of 'moments' (Augenblicke) mislead us. Just as who I have-been is not who I have been, in the sense of the phases of my life that have gone by, so the moment of vision of which Heidegger writes ... is not the now clock-time, a tipping point between what has gone by and what is to come. This moment of vision, which might better be called a 'moment of resolution,' encompasses who I find myself and am able to go forward as. (pp 166-167)

God's unrelenting forgiveness

It is what God does after Moses' encounter with God on Mt. Sinai and he returns carrying the tablets on which God had written the law/covenant that is so surprising. Moses returned to find God's people "running wild" (Exodus 32:25) in frenzied worship of an image they had cast in gold. He was so angry, he threw the tablets to the ground where they shattered. The Lord declared that a consequence of their waywardness will be that they will not enter the promised land but only their descendants. And here is where the surprise happens. The Lord instructs Moses to cut two new tablets and return to the mountaintop. The Lord "passed before" Moses and made the most amazing statement of self-disclosure (34:6-7), not only renewing the covenant but making it more sweeping. Walter Brueggemann calls these two verses the "credo" of Israel. (Theology of the Old Testament, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997, p. 216) Now God declares God to be "merciful and gracious, slow to anger/and abounding in steadfast love/and faithfulness / keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation/forgiving iniquity/and transgression/and sin...." This "credo" recurs at pivotal points in the narratives of the Book of Numbers, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Jonah and the psalm appointed for Ash Wednesday, Psalm 103:8. Even after our slacking or outright hostility, God takes the initiative to renew the covenant, to write on the stone tablets again. This is the good news for Ash Wednesday. The Anglican priest and poet, George Herbert, concludes his poem "The Sinner" with these lines, which might serve as our request, too:

Yet Lord restore thine image, hear my call:
And though my hard heart scarce to thee can groan.
Remember that thou once didst write in stone.

"And to dust you shall return..."

When Martin Heidegger writes --"This certainty that 'I myself am in that I will die,' is the basic certainty of Dasein [Life] itself....." (History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, Theodore Kisiel, trans., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009, p.316)-- he is not wallowing in a sad or morbid obsession with death. A full and realistic acceptance of the reality that one day I will no longer exist in this life is an important part of his logic that such a realization enhances, intensifies my engagement with life. It is the reliable way for us to finally grasp the importance and urgency of the wonders of this life, especially in "caring" for others. Likewise, when the church includes in her liturgy for the First Day of Lent-- "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."-- she is not calling for a forty day, self-inflicted scare tactic. She is saying that coming-to-terms with our own mortality is the first step on a journey that leads to a personal awakening, a re-birth, a 'resurrection'! For those who use the liturgical year as a spiritual discipline, the awakening, re-birth, 'resurrection' reaches a climax at a moment of loud bells and bright lights on Easter Eve at the Great Vigil and continues into the next morning when the women disciples bring the first reports that the tomb is empty! Life, new life has come out of dying!

Last Sunday after the Epiphany Year B

2012-01-20T16:37:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday after the Epiphany B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

II Kings 2: 1-12; Psalm 50: 1-6; II Corinthians 4: 3-6; Mark 9: 2-9

The time has come for God's spirit to pass from Elijah to Elisha. This story includes human emotions we can easily understand as well as an experience so spectacular it stretches description beyond words. On their trip from Gilgal, Elisha announces on three different occasions that he will never leave Elijah. Finally they come to the bank of the Jordan. Elijah takes his mantle, with its spectacular powers, strikes the river and it parts so the two men walk across on dry earth, recalling God's similar miraculous works through Moses and Joshua. On the other side, Elijah asks Elisha if he has a final request. "Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit," he responds (boldly?). As the two continue walking, "a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two men of them and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven."

Perhaps we have stanzas from a grand liturgical occasion in this psalm. The awesome ways in which God's glory has been revealed in the past, marked by fire and violent storms, are recalled and now requested by the choir to descend on "Zion, the zenith of beauty." Here let heaven and earth connect.

The appearance of Christ is, for Paul, comparable to a second creation, another display of God's extravagant love. "Let the light shine out of darkness."

This passage form Mark is rife with powerful allusions to God's past actions. "After six days," seems to be a direct evocation of Exodus 24:16 when God speaks after the sixth day. The mountain where Mark's narrative has taken Jesus with Peter, James and John is shrouded by a cloud and God speaks, as God did to Moses. Moses and Elijah, the only two people taken into heaven directly by God, appear with Jesus, who is "transfigured" before them and his clothes become dazzling white." Only Peter speaks with a remarkable non sequitor, "because he did not know what to say...."

Scriptural narratives oscillate between those in which natural human emotions and thoughts engage the divine and other narratives that overwhelm all prior human experience and description.

In an essay from the January 2010 edition of the journal Modern Theology, (see link, below), John Panteleimon Manoussakis reviews the "typos" of mountaintop theophany in the Hebrew scriptures and its continuation in the gospels. He writes"Between Mount Sinai [Moses] and Mount Horeb [Elijah], the evangelists of the New Covenant seem to claim, stands Mount Tabor. Christ's Transfiguration on Mount Tabor is 'biblical' theolphany, a revelation within the revelation, so to speak, where Christ the revelaer, reveals Himself by revealing His Father and His Holy Spirit." "...[T]his is the same God who appeared to the prophets and the Fathers [sic] of the Old Covenant." (pp84-85) Earlier in this essay, he has traced a line of thinking about biblical theophanies from de Saussure, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty to von Balthasar and then concludes "God's self revelation neither scorns the physical world nor shatters the human senses; indeed, His [sic] revelation must involve the human body and its senses. On the other hand, what the senses experience is by no means exhausted by them but it remains inexhaustible, excessive, saturated with intuition; thus man [sic] knows that he [sic] is in the presence of Him[ sic] who is beyond experience and comprehension and whose sole experience is precisely the one is not comprehending, but rather comprehended by what seeks to comprehend (cf. Philippians 3:12)." (p.81)

At one of John Caputo's productive conferences to explore the connections between postmodern thought and religion at Villanova University, Richard Kearney moderated a memorable conversation between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion. At one point Marion said, we sometimes have "an utmost experience without words, the significations, the concepts to utter it, to explain it and to articulate it. One of the best examples, for instance, and I do not refer to theology, may be found in the transfiguration of Christ. The disciples witness the transfiguration and they say nothing but 'Let us build three tabernacles. For he [Peter] knew not what to say.' (Mark 9: 5-6)" "If there could be any revelation, no mind, no word would be wide enough to host that revelation." (God, The Gift and Postmodernism, p. 69) Further on Marion says, "To have an experience of the impossible means to have an experience of the impossibility prima facie, which I call 'counter-experience' of bedazzlement, of astonishment, of Bewunderung. This counter-experience has to do with the fact that we can see, but cannot designate as an object or a being an event that we cannot comprehend but nevertheless we have to see. This counter-experience is, in fact, the correct, consistent kind of experience appropriate to every decisive evidence in our life-- death, birth, love, poverty, illness, joy, pleasure and so on." "The incomprehensible, the excess, the impossible, are part and parcel of our experiences." (p. 75)

From the mountaintop to which Mark has brought us we look one way and see where we have been. In that direction we look back on Jesus' direct encounter with women and men and, through his empathy and caring in actions and words, the love of God can be seen in life-changing, miraculous ways. Mark also wants us to recognize that these events are directly connected to similar revelations of God's love in Israel's past, which became lore and then sacred texts. From this same mountaintop, Mark also wants us to look at the road just ahead, to another even more mesmerizing "transfiguration." It will lead to Jerusalem. There events will unfold and words will be said that will sear the human imagination. There the love of God will be revealed in the most spectacular revelation yet. As Paul says, in Jesus humanity can discover "the image of God." We will be deeply moved and, if we will it, changed. There will be times when the only possible response is silence. What is to be seen makes an impact beyond words, beyond explanation but not beyond profound significance and visceral meaning. It reaches us at the same place where we experience the most profound experiences of living-- "death, birth, love, poverty, illness, joy, pleasure...." We experience it, but we lack any capacity to describe or contain it; rather, it defines us, if we let it.

Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany Year B

2012-01-16T14:53:00.000-08:00

Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

II Kings 5: 1-14; Psalm 30; I Corinthians 9: 24-27; Mark 1: 40-45

Powerful men, large egos, a humiliating stigma, a self-effacing representative of God and, finally, a deeply moving conclusion in this story of Namaan. As a successful and respected military leader and favorite of his king, Naaman knows how and through whom to get big things done. He knows how to be successful in anything he wants, except finding a cure for his humiliating skin disease. Through a very unlikely channel, he hears how he can be healed; a captured slave girl who serves as a handmaid to his wife says there is a prophet in Samaria who can heal his leprosy. Relying on the gossip of a nameless slave girl, he makes arrangements as befits his status. He plans to go right to the top and gets a letter of introduction from his king to the king of Israel. He puts together a staggering fortune to present to anyone who can help him. But the king of Israel is confused and angry by Naaman's inquiry. Elisha hears of the situation and sends a message to the King to send Naaman to him. With his entire entourage, chariots, horses and vast fortune he arrives at the door of the humble prophet, who does not show even the usual courtesy of coming out to greet a guest but sends a message: Go wash in the Jordan seven times. Naaman is insulted and infuriated at this treatment and the instruction to go wash in a muddy little creek that cannot really even be called a river by the standards back home. But those who serve him plead: If you had been asked to do something difficult you would have taken the challenge with relish and not been insulted. Follow the instructions from the prophet, they argue. What a sight-- the proud military hero with every human honor known gets down off his high horse and washes in the muddy, joke-of-a-river, Jordan and "his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy."

The psalmist has experienced a kind of death, which, although not identified, made him feel like he was at the end of his rope. "I cried to you and you healed me" he witnesses in song. "You have tuned my dirge into a dance/undo my sackcloth and [instead] bind me with joy."

Using sports metaphors-- competitive running and boxing-- Paul compares his "training" to preach the gospel to an athlete obsessed with training to win at his competition, except his trophy is "imperishable."

Following the preceding episode (see last Sunday's reading), where Mark's emphasis was on Jesus' frenetically rushing about, healing more people than could even be counted, this episode focuses on one person with what was assumed to be an incurable disease. A leper approaches Jesus. In a provocative detail, Mark says Jesus has a strong, emotional reaction to the man and his situation. The man seems to challenge Jesus: " If you choose, you can heal me." Just as succinctly Jesus responds: "I do choose. Be made clean." Immediately he is cured. Jesus asks him not to tell anyone. But the man bolts out to tell anyone and everyone he meets. As a result, Jesus can no longer move around the cities and towns because the crowds are too large. So he goes out into the countryside where the crowds can come to him.

Right at the beginning of Mark's narrative, we are presented with these amazing pictures of Jesus rushing from house to house and town to town and finally gong into the countryside so he can perform exorcisms and heal as many people as feasible. Running himself ragged, trying to steal a few minutes for himself before everyone else gets up at daybreak, he responds to every person who comes to him with a need, excluding no one, and even going after those who might not have thought themselves eligible for healing. He even responds to strangers in the street. As his followers come to realize, Jesus is the complete image of the God their ancestors had known days long past-- persisting, inveigling, pursuing, individuals, likely and unlikely groups and finally, from the cross, the whole world.

In this encounter, Jesus is challenged by a man with leprosy, which was a situation a lot more complicated than just a medical condition! Throughout the scriptures, leprosy is a sign for Levitical "uncleanness," (see Leviticus, especially chapters 13 and 14). It causes fear and repulsion, it marks a person as morally repugnant. The only hope for a cure is from a holy person. But a leper presents a unique challenge. His mere existence tests the reach of God's mercy and the willingness and effectiveness of the holy person to whom the leper comes for help. "You can cure me, if you choose," the leper says to Jesus.

For those who see Jesus as God in the flesh, the choices Jesus made are still shocking. God-- in the flesh-- exhausting himself trying to touch as many people as possible, deserving and undeserving, grateful and ungrateful, friend and complete stranger. And when he is confronted by someone who bears the unmistakable stigma of religious, social and moral revulsion, without missing a beat, Jesus heals in one crisp sentence that it seems he cannot wait to get out of his mouth.

This incident fits into a bigger picture, too. At this point in the liturgical year, not that long after Christmas and just before beginning the pilgrimage of Lent that ends at the cross and the empty tomb, a reminder from Graham Ward, inspired by Hans Urs von Balthasar is pivotal. He writes: "All incarnation is kenotic [God's self-emptying to the whole world received as gift that began and sustains existence as we know it]; all Word becoming flesh, all acts of representation are kenotic." "The cross is not then an event that can be isolated and made the fulcrum for all theological understanding. Not only is the event of crucifixion, the death of God, part of a trajectory moving from incarnation to resurrection (and Pentecost.) It is the outworking of a sorterological economy inaugurated with creation...." (from Balthasar at the End of Modernity, Gardner, Moss, Quash and Ward, eds., pp 45-46)

But God's work in the world is fulfilled in the testimony of witnesses to that work for what it is and what it actually accomplishes in the lives of specific people. Mark makes it quite clear, despite the fact that Jesus asked the healed man not to tell anyone, he told anyone and everyone.

In Acts of Religion, Jacques Derrida writes: "The act of faith demanded in bearing witness exceeds, through its structure, all intuition and all proof, all knowledge. ('I swear I am telling the truth, not necessarily the "objective truth," but the truth of what I believe to be the truth, I am telling you this truth, believe me, believe that I believe, there, where you will never be able to see nor know the irreplaceable yet universalizable , exemplary place from which I speak to you; perhaps my testimony is false, but I am sincere and in good faith, it is not false testimony.' " "That one is called upon to believe in testimony as in a miracle or an 'extraordinary story'-- that is what inscribes itself without hesitation in the very concept of bearing witness. And one should not be amazed to see examples of 'miracles' invading all the problematics of testimony...."
( pp 98-99) Testimony supersedes every other form of expression and rises or falls on its veracity in the lives of actual people who attest and those who believe. Despite Jesus' request that the healed man tell no one, he darts around the countryside telling anyone he sees!

The witness completes the miracle!

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany Year B

2012-01-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany Year B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Isaiah 40: 21-31; Psalm 147: 1-12,21; I Corinthians 9: 16-23; Mark 1: 29-39

This stirring passage from Isaiah makes a sweeping claim: the Holy One created all that exists, remains deeply engaged and will guarantee not only creation's survival, but its flourishing. This knowledge reinvigorates all who admit it-- "those who wait on the Lord." Even those who are world weary will rediscover enthusiasm for life. Singing this hymn reminds those who sing it that God's investment in creation is inexhaustible and renews the dis-spirited.

"It is good to sing hymns to our God," the psalmist begins. The stanzas of the hymn he composes recall God as builder, healer, the One who maintains the universe, and, just as importantly, the One who brings justice. Those who sing this hymn "long for God's kindness."

Paul forgoes any privileges that might accrue to him because of his work and status in the early church. He also explains how he has used different his unique status as a scholar trained in Torah and a Roman citizen to appeal to diverse constituencies. He has made these choices so that he can freely share the good news with anyone, at any place, at any time.

Mark offers a narrative that shows exactly how Jesus' influence/impact spread. He heals one person, the mother-in-law of Simon Peter. Word spreads and the neighbors show up at the front door with their needs. Jesus heals and performs exorcisms freely to "many." The next day, before everyone else is up, Jesus went alone to pray. The first four followers go looking for him to tell him even more have shown up. But Jesus says they must move on to the more towns and villages so he can benefit even more people.

Generosity, inexhaustible generosity. Eagerness to share. Rushing from person to person, house to house, town to town, responding to needs expressed and needs even before they are expressed. Giving with no preconditions, indiscriminately. Giving not as a gesture, but more like uncontrollable compulsion! If Jesus is the mirror of God, as his followers find, then Jesus has the same traits of God and the same impact on people.

Given the thrust of Jean-Luc Marion's work, his regard for "miracle" should not come as a surprise.

Marion sees that each of us is a "gifted" person who engages daily with other "gifted" persons. The gift is life itself! We understand ourselves, each other and all existence best if we admit/acknowledge that there is more in each of us than we can understand, manage or certainly classify. Indeed, some of our experiences of the sheer abundance of life are so singular we use the only word that seems appropriate-- "miracle."

Responding to Marion's work, Emmanuel Falque, professor of philosophy at Instiut Catholique in Paris quotes Marion and then continues: "' [T]he miracle will no longer bear on a physical event, but on my consciousness itself.' (Marion, "A Diue, rien d'impossible," p. 49) The true miracle, according to Marion, is in this way a miracle of my consciousness, a lived experience in the conversion of my way of looking at things rather than in the things themselves." (Kevin Hart, ed, Counter-Experience: Reading Jean-Luc Marion, p.192)

Each gospel has its own organizing theme and Mark's gospel distinctly sounds its theme right at the beginning of the narrative: the singular trait of God, which Jesus also showed spectacularly, is generosity, indiscriminate generosity to the point of changing people's lives. We know Jesus is of God because we are told wherever he has been there are always people left who look at life in a completely new way. The best word they can find to describe their life-changing experience is "miracle." Just as the text of Isaiah testifies that God, who is "unsearchable," can be known as "Creator," "healer," and the One who "sustains," so Mark's Jesus is introduced as a "healer" and one who has power over all other powers.

This experience is not prone to prose but to poetry and to song. Isaiah says (sings) that singing this song revives even the most world weary person you know (yourself ?). The psalmist (147: 1-12,21) offers some stanzas for those who "long for God's kindness." His song is about God as the always reliable builder, healer, maintainer and bringer of justice.

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany Year B

2012-01-11T14:13:00.000-08:00

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Deuteronomy 18: 15-20; Psalm 111; I Corinthians 8: 1-13; Mark 1:21-28

This crucial passage from the Book of Deuteronomy links the unique, defining role of Moses as leader, law-giver, and intermediary between God and the people to the prophets, who provide that life-line to God after Moses. And it contains a recurring concern in Deuteronomy: how to distinguish between true and false prophets. If a prophet's words lead people to another god or are inconsistent with something God has not wanted before, that prophet is false. Likewise, those who do not listen to a true prophet will be held "accountable."

The psalmist creates an alphabetical (acrostic) list of God's consistent attributes: bountiful, staunch, redemptive, truth and justice.

Paul responds to a controversy in the church. Should Christians eat the perfectly good meat left over from sacrifices to pagan gods and idols? Paul offers a pragmatic solution but then provides a profound reminder. He sees no problem with eating the leftovers because those gods are meaningless to Christians. However, because there are some over scrupulous Christians and some new converts who might not understand the distinction, he will personally not eat that meat. He does not get distracted by such controversies about God's ways that "puff-up" the piety and expertise of those invested in the controversy. Rather, he returns to that experience of God's love through Christ that re-made and continues to re-make him. He writes that the more crucial dynamic is "anyone who loves God is known by God." That person does not seek to emphasize his "knowledge" of God and God's ways; he is humbled, deeply moved and inclined to loving others because he has discovered how much God loves him!

Mark inaugurates Jesus' public life with a revealing event. With his first few followers, Jesus goes to synagogue and, as was the custom, joins in the commentary on the scriptures read that day. All present notice that he does not meander among possible understandings, but he speaks boldly, clearly, decisively, "with authority," revealing a distinctive authenticity. And then, to emphasize his capacities, Mark says he acts just as boldly, performing an exorcism. The unclean spirit recognizes Jesus as "the Holy One of God." Right away, we are off on Mark's fast-paced journey with Jesus to Jerusalem.

The expected tendencies are to complicate religion. Perhaps it is a human way to exalt its importance. Such human complications also have a way of enhancing the status and prejudices and piety of those who create them. Paul deals patiently with those who obsess on such minutiae, but does not miss a chance to return to the one singular experience that changed his life. In the synagogue in Capernaum, the community is engaged in it's routine sabbath discussion when they hear a new voice who speaks clearly, plainly, directly, understandably, "with authority."

Luce Irigaray , credentialed in both psychoanalysis and linguistics, is usually described as a leading European Feminist. More currently, she is visiting professor at various British universities. Influenced by Freud, Lacan, Levinas and Derrida, she explains to the West some consequences of our preference for abstraction to understand and describe ourselves and relationships with one another and to influence our actions. In her 2002 work, The Way of Love, she writes: "The philosophers of the West are without doubt the first technocrats of whom we suffer multiple avatars. Including suffering through the destructive confusion between essences that they have cleverly fabricated and the flesh, the breath and the energy that we need to live." (p.4) When it comes to others, she insists, they "must remain flesh, living, moving. Not transformed into some idea, no matter how ideal." (p. 156) And in this excerpt, she offers a definition promised in the title The Way of Love: "This place of hospitality for the other becomes built as much as, if not more than, we build it deliberately. Made of our flesh, of our heart, and not only of words, it demands that we accept that it takes place without our unilaterally over-seeing its construction." (p. 154)

Words can lead to avoidance as effectively as understanding. They can dazzle with "knowledge" that "puffs-up." They can seem quite impressive and even necessary-- for awhile. But then comes an authentic voice, gesture, person who speaks as one "with authority," leveling all prior constructs. Even (especially?) the religious are prone to words and abstractions which seem urgent, important-- at first. But as Paul wrote in the middle of yet another church controversy, the over-arching reality is that "anyone who loves God is known by God." As he did so often, especially with the wrangling Corinthians, Paul returns to what makes the gospel not just another religious argument, but a transforming experience, to what changed his life, to what can change any one's life. The only "knowledge" that really matters is the knowledge that only comes from love, of others, of God because I know God loved me first and always. This is the consistent theme of the scriptures and provides the only necessary criteria for distinguishing between "true" and "false" religious leaders. And, there is always some iteration of "healing." We become witnesses to this change. And witnesses talk about very different priorities and with very different affect than those engaged in religious controversies, no matter how important they might seem at the time. It is the same loving God to whom the ancients gave witness to whom I now give witness from first-hand, personal "knowledge."

Third Sunday after the Epiphany Year B

2012-01-11T13:39:00.000-08:00

Third Sunday after the Epiphany B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Jonah 3: 1-5, 10; Psalm 62: 6-14; I Corinthians 7: 29-31; Mark 1: 14-20

With broad strokes, the author of Jonah makes a precise point. He presents Jonah as fighting God at every step, but finally accepting the role he is called to play, if begrudgingly. Although Nienveh was one of the neighboring superpowers which was a constant threat to God's people, yet, "The word of the Lord came to Jonah for the second time..." to go to his peoples' enemy with God's message. Jonah went to the huge metropolis, (which took "three days" to walk across), got one day's walk into the city and began to deliver: "Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" The people "believed God," "proclaimed a fast" and "everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth." When God saw that the people had responded to the message delivered by Jonah, God had a 'change of mind' and "said:" God will not destroy Nineveh and it did not happen.

The psalmist has learned through the vicissitudes of life to trust God as hope, rock, salvation, stronghold, safety, honor and refuge. However, he has no delusions about people, whether important or unimportant in everyday matters. Do not be dazzled by human "lies" or the influence of human "oppression." Do not have "illusions" about cheating others; "though it bears the fruit of wealth/set not your heart upon it." Although God spoke "one thing," the psalmist heard "two things:" God is the only source of honest, reliable "strength," and the core of that "strength" is "kindness."

Paul's apocalyptic asceticism was quite common among various religious sects of his day. He advises dispensing with basic human activity, personal and social, "for the present form of this world is passing away."

Matthew, Luke and Mark follow the narrative that Jesus did not begin his public ministry until after John the Baptizer had been arrested and that Simon Peter and Andrew, then two other brothers, James and John, were the first followers who accepted Jesus' call to accompany him on his journey. All four men made their living as commercial fishermen, so Jesus' only comment is direct and to the point: "Follow me and I will make you fisher of people." Mark's details emphasize that Jesus' invitation was short and direct and their response was immediate, leaving their co-workers and father.

Jean-Luc Marion's writing is so supple it is a sensual experience to read. His important book, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Giveness culminates in a dazzling analysis of "the call." ((pp 282-319)

He discovers these vital points:

"...a call... decides the choice of a spirit, a soul, a life" (p. 283)
one "takes a call upon himself" (285)
and, therefore, "assumes unambiguously the role of he who knows himself subjected to a seduction" (286)
which means that "it is necessary to decide if you want it or not" (286)
and if one accepts the call, she becomes "a prism...who converts the one [call] into the other[response] (296
"only the response performs [completes, makes actual] and the gifted [responder] renders visible and audible what gives itself to it only by corresponding to it in the act of responding, 'Here I am'" [Marion uses the example of Samuel's call and response; see last Sunday's reading and commentary)
call always precedes us, literally, because it precedes our birth in the hopes, aspirations, longings, passion of our parents; "I am born from a call that I neither made, wanted, nor even understood." (290)
at the beginning, who is calling can be ambiguous even unknown; but it is given a name "through their [the responder's] response, a full name to the caller of the call" (298)
at some point, the called "will pass beyond the name given in response in order to confront his own "anonymity." "At this moment, the child becomes an adult... that he should make a name for himself." (301)
"no advice or counsel, no friend or enemy, can do anything for the gifted [called] in the situation of giving itself over or not." (307)
indifference or even denial of the call is an option, but remember that in your decision, you are making "the choice of a spirit, a soul, a life."
"the history of the gifted is due to the sum of its response, which draws it near or distant from the call." (295)

Marion's analysis of "the call" as a human experience vividly illuminates these readings. For the believer, God's call comes from anyone, anywhere, anytime. It calls us out of ourselves and into the lives of others; making us "fishers" of other individuals, communities and societies. At first it's source or shape may not be recognized. And it certainly may not come at a convenient time nor, if we are honest, is it really necessarily wanted; we see ourselves in Jonah! But our response makes the call meaningful, clear, real, actual. Jean-Louis Chretien puts the matter succinctly: "That to which we respond gives itself to us in the response that we give to it." Therefor, Whoever fails to respond simply does not hear and has not heard. But whoever responds is exceeded by that which calls forth his[sic] response." (The Call and the Response, p.25)In some way or other, it takes us outside ourselves and, in the process, we grow up a little more, just as James and John left their father. We can be deaf or blind to God's call or we can even deny it. But in our responses, we are building our life, our soul. Our presumed vocation ("call") is enlarged, just as the commercial fishermen were made into "fishers of people." And the results, no matter how much we resisted, can be quite wonderful. What prospects!

Second Sunday after the Epiphany Year B

2012-01-02T15:10:00.000-08:00

Second Sunday after the Epiphany B (Revised Common Lectionary)
I Samuel 3: 1-10 (11-20); Psalm 139: 1-5, 12-17; I Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51

Samuel plays a pivotal and unique role in a time of epochal change from old systems of authority-- prophets and judges-- to new-- monarchy. It is also a time when God seems silent. As a young boy, he is called not through the traditional channels of authority, nor even by his mentor, Eli, but directly by God. In that calling, he is given a message for Eli: the lineage of your family as ministers of God will cease. These earliest events set the pattern for his life. He will make and break many traditional centers of authority, even kings, Saul and David.

The psalmist discovers that God's knowledge of him goes deeper than he ever imagined. God has known him from the womb. "From behind and in front, you shaped me."

In one of his occasional outbursts, Paul displays discomfort with the human body and its functions, including sex, except between a husband and wife.

The gospel writer John varies significantly from his predecessors, Mark, Matthew and Luke, in his narrative of Jesus' call of his first disciples. He alone introduces "Nathaniel," who appears only one other privileged time, as a witness to the resurrection of Christ (21:2). John depicts Nathaniel as a sincere Jew who recognizes immediately Jesus as the Messiah. In an intricate play with well-known symbols-- the fig tree and Jacob's ladder-- John establishes a crucial distinction that pervades his gospel: the good Jews who accept Jesus as Messiah and the condemned Jews who do not. (Of course, Nicodemus is another personage unique to John's narrative who plays a similar role.)
Texts settle nothing. Just the opposite, they are provocateurs. Because they are human constructs, they are never free of human motives, power plays and emotions known and unknown even to the writer/speaker. Furthermore, the writer/speaker cannot control all the future interpretations her text inaugurates. "Since the work of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud [and we could easily add Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida among others] "we have become aware that 'texts' are seldom what they seem to be," Anthony Thistelton reminds us in Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise, (p. 68). He also declares that "It is one task of theology, among others, to attempt to disentangle manipulative power-bids from non-manipulative truth claims, and to distinguish evidence, argument, or valid testimony from modes of rhetoric, which rely on seduction, disguised force, or illegitimate appeals to privilege." (p. 27) Even texts that are regarded by believers as speaking on behalf of God, because they are of human origin, expressed in human modes of communication and available only through human interpretation can never have a settled, permanent, immutable authority. God's truth is pure. But once it is embedded in human language, which is the only way it can be expressed, it is embedded in personality. To use Michel Foucault's observation about all human language, "a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth." ("Discourse and Truth: the Problemization of Parishesia," Joseph Pearson, ed. Foucault archive, unpublished, p.8)

From his call as a child and throughout his entire life, Samuel plays a distinctive role in Israel's history. At times he declares God's role in making a king but then undermines that same king, again in God's name. Even at the anointing of God's chosen, Saul, as the first king of Israel, Samuel tells the people "You have rejected God today." (I Samuel 10:19) Human authority may have contingent necessity and utility, but it is never permanent and is never to be confused with God, whose ways are not our ways.

Paul's discomforts and prejudices are quite understandable for the time and influences that shaped him. John's need to distance the early church form the Jewish synagogue may even have had a contingent, tactical rationalization. But how can anyone ever calculate the pain, suffering, slavery and other forms of denial of basic humanity and even death that those texts and their interpreters have justified over the past two millennia!

Human traits are to be expected and critiqued in any human text, including biblical texts and theology, as Thistelton reminds us, as well as our own personal unexamined interpretations we carry around perhaps even from childhood. They can be damaging and even lethal. But more is required.

What in the biblical narratives is clearly beyond human origin and judges human interpretation even within biblical narratives themselves? God's faithfulness, God's persistence, God's reliability, God's love which will not give up on us despite the fact that God knows us better than we know ourselves. As the psalmist says in verse 6, (which is not appointed to be read today from psalm 139): Knowledge of You, my God, is too wondrous. This is the rubric under which every interpretation is judged.

God did not come as a baby dependent upon the whims of basic human kindness and then become subjected to every from of human deceit and even betrayal that cost Christ's life to reinforce any human interpretation from any source or time, no matter how venerable. God did it for love. God did it to love. God did it to free us to love. That judges everything else except its own inherent wonder!

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew near to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.

'A guest," I answer'd 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes, but I ?'
'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve,'
'You must sit down,' says Love 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat

George Herbert (1593-1633)
Anglican parish priest

First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of the Lord Year B

2011-12-27T15:21:00.000-08:00

First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of the Lord B (Revised Common Lectionary)

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29, Acts of the Apostles 19: 1-7; Mark 1: 4-11

Unabashedly taking a Babylonian creation myth for his own purpose, the author of this account of creation emphasizes God's initiative and beneficence. The Hebrew " bara" ("create") is used exclusively as an act of which only God is capable. Creation is carried out by "the wind of God" sweeping over the primeval scene. Robert Alter writes that God's "breath" "hovers" over the waters is the same verb used to describe "an eagle fluttering over its young..." with a "connotation of nurture." (The Five Books of Moses, p.7) The first gift from God is light, which is declared "good." (Five more times, God will declare the splendor, diversity, and fecundity of creation "good," and finally "very good.")

Borrowing heavily from Canaanite poetry is more obvious in this psalm than in others. The wonders of nature which inspire awe in us-- thunder, the legendary majestic cedars of Lebanon, the alien wilderness, the miracle of birth, floods-- can be signs of the Lord's "voice," glory and majesty.

Given the historical prominence of John the Baptizer before Jesus became a public figure, it should not come as a surprise that Luke in his Acts of the Apostles had to address his followers. He compares and contrast. John the Baptizer called for repentance as preparation for the One who was to follow him. That One, Luke preaches, is Jesus who brings another type of baptism, of the Holy Spirit, which is distinct from the baptism offered by John.

Mark depicts John the Baptizer as a direct link to the messianic prophets of the past. But this narrative contains the same distinction made in the other synoptics and John, specifically a distinction between the baptism with "water" offered by John for "repentance" vis a vis the baptism offered by Jesus of the "Holy Spirit." The works and message of Jesus are something new, to which those who came before him could only point. The sign of something new and even unique from God is the Holy Spirit, which descends on Jesus just as he emerges from the water of the Baptizer's conventional baptism. And as significantly the text emphasizes that, "he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit" ! To finish fittingly this dramatic scene, "A voice came from heaven, 'You are my son, my Beloved; with you I am well pleased'."

What are we to make of this jumble-- four gospel accounts plus Paul's gloss (each treating John the Baptizer differently); two creation stories, including today's taken from another religion; multiple iterations of the major stories in the Hebrew scriptures; the authorized liturgical hymnal (the psalms) which happily and heavily borrows from earlier texts and even other religions?

Ludwig Wittgenstein thought about this question and wrote in Culture and Value:

"God has four people recount the life of His incarnate Son, in each case differently and with inconsistencies-- but might we say: It is important that this narrative should not be more than quite average historically plausible just so that this should not be taken as the essential, decisive thing? So that the letter should not be believed more strongly than is proper and the spirit may receive its due...." (p.31e)
"Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather it offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! But not believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a historical narrative, rather: believe, through thick and thin, which you can do only as a result of a [specific] life." (p.32e)
"But if I am to be REALLY saved--what I need is certainty-- not wisdom, dreams or speculation-- and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what is needed in my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind." (p.33e)

The preacher preaches for effect, to move the soul, the spirit not for something trivial or sentimental, but for one's salvation. The preacher adds her own gloss on the biblical narratives, which are also glosses. Or, the preacher tells new stories that, to the best of his ability and for a specific congregation he knows, aims for the same effect inspired by the biblical narratives.

Therefore, even though the version of creation assigned for this Sunday is borrowed, it is told for the effect of conveying God's beneficence, which, through the eyes of faith, regards all creation as gift from God who called it "good." (For an admirable understanding of the power of seeing life as God's good gift, even, or perhaps especially, in the messiness of our own times as witnessed in the works of the British playwright Alan Ayckbourn and the American novelist John Updike, see John Mctavish's "Soul Mates" in the journal, Theology Today, vol. 65 no. 4, pp 475-488. Also, Catherine Keller's wondrous Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming and John Caputo's The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event owe their brilliant inspiration to the Elohist's creation story.) )

Mark's intended effect is to introduce the reader to his story of Jesus that follows as something "new" from God. And something that will always be new. Any human enterprise can launch a n appeal for "repentance," as John the baptizer admirably did, but only God's spirit can launch (this time in Jesus) a new beginning as full of benevolence as the initial act of creation, which God sees as "good."

Luke's emphasis in the Acts on the Holy Spirit and Mark's words attributed to the Baptizer make a startling claim that is as powerful today as when it was first thought: God is not finished, the narrative does not end in the biblical text, but continues in those who come to see themselves as baptized by the very same Holy Spirit as Jesus himself! The iterations/interpretations flow endlessly and so does the impact on specific "lives," as Wittgenstein insisted.

The Epiphany

2011-12-27T14:57:00.000-08:00

The Epiphany

Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7,10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12 Revise Common Lectionary, Years A,B,C

The book of Isaiah is composed as a crescendo of recurring themes. Each time a theme is revisited, the language is a little more extravagant. In this passage, despite the current "thick darkness" which has engulfed the nation, not only will Jerusalem be restored after its destruction and years of ruin, the people and bounty of neighboring nations, some of whom were enemies in the past, will provide the resources for her renewal. Miraculously, "the Lord will arise upon you and the Lord's glory will appear over you." There will be a homecoming that will cast a "light" so bright it will draw other nations "and kings to the brightness of your dawn." The wealth of other nations-- including "gold and frankincense"-- will pour into the re-building and re-establishment of God's people.

Dedicated to Solomon, the son of the first great king of Israel, this psalm celebrates the restoration of an ideal monarch who will bring justice to those to whom justice is least available; the reign will be honored above neighboring nations, even the farthest away and most alien. This justice will "rain" down as broadly and as evenly as "showers."

The author of Ephesians is generally believed to be an admirer of Paul. If mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, then this unknown writer is a huge fan, even taking on Paul's own history, but expanding it. Here the emphasis is on the mission of Paul to non-Jews. His role is to explain God's hidden plan, now revealed in Christ.

Raymond Brown ( The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary of the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke, New York: Image Books, 1979) suggests that many of the elements of the visit of the magi in Matthew's gospel can be identified in nearby religions and especially in contemporary secular history. In particular, he details the visit in A.D. 66 of exotic rulers "from the East" accompanied by their "magi" to Rome, (p. 174). He also reviews the use of a guiding star to herald the births or deaths of great leaders (p. 170) in Greek and Roman mythology. The Magi, a "priestly caste that specialized in interpreting dreams and astrology," (Brown p. 167), come seeking the "King of the Jews," (a title only used one other time in Matthew's narrative; as the charge put over the head of Jesus on the cross), and a tyrant king, Herod, is threatened. The appearance of "stars" was common in classical myths and legends to signify the birth of a new leader or some other ominous event.

Preachers can easily get distracted by futile arguments over the historicity of scriptures or, instead, go directly to the prima facie meaning. ("Historicity" meaning a belief of Modernity in facts about the past that through disciplined human activity can escape human subjectivity.) These passages selected for The Feast of the Epiphany go directly to fundamental questions of our expectations. And, as usual, the scriptures disrupt those expectations. They suggest to our imaginations that apparent sources of human authority are always penultimate. The scriptures insist that there is always an ideal experience of justice, peace, and security for which we long beyond any human accomplishment. This longing causes constant dissatisfaction with the status quo. But it also makes clear a goal worthy of our greatest passion and personal investment. For Christians, this universal human longing for the ideal becomes centered in Christ-- the content of all that has been remembered that he said as well as the details all he did and was done to him. In Christ the ideal becomes flesh and enters into the travails of everyday life, including the most mundane failures and victories. Christ is an "epiphany," a sudden breakthrough, a revelation beyond the usual human assumptions. Therefore, it is only appropriate that the trappings of epiphanies, in this case guiding stars, magi, and exotic gifts, should welcome this revelation. In Matthew's creative bricolage of scraps from other traditions, the message and its method of delivery are melded together: our comfortable norms are disrupted by ideas of something better and at first strange, even exotic, for Christians that is the Christ event, which is always both clearly different than everything else that we know and life-giving.

In his contribution to Radical Orthodoxy, (Milbank, Picksotck, Ward, eds.) Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt sees that "With the closure of modernity and the jettisoning of the modern account of 'necessary truths of reason' understood as Cartesian 'clear and distinct ideas,' however, it once again becomes possible to put forward the notion of the sublime presented through the contingent and historical." He continues by quoting from the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Love Alone: The Way of Revelation, pp 12-13), to show how early Christian witnesses used freely prevalent ideas, motifs, legends, symbols in the ancient world as "baptizable anticipations of the God-Logos in person who entered into Israelite history, filled the whole world, in whom were the Ideas which were the patterns by which the world was made, and in relation to whom the world could be understood." The biblical and other earliest witnesses used extant material to announce to the whole world God did something that had never been done before and would alter human history. It would never stop surprising us! Its power for revelation would never diminish.

The Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ:January 1

2011-12-24T12:49:00.000-08:00

The Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ: January 1
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 8; Galatians 4:4-7; OR Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-21

The Lord instructs Moses to relay to Aaron and his descendants the authority and the language for blessing God's people: to bless and keep, show the Lord's face and countenance and "give you peace." With this blessing, the (priestly) descendants of Aaron "shall put my name on" God's people and God "will bless them."

The psalmist celebrates creation, which she finds infused with the Lord's "name." When she considers humanity's place in creation, she finds it "a little lower than gods/crowned with glory and grandeur." But, the Lord's "name" is "over all."

Paul works out the change in status of God's people due to the "Son, born of a woman, born under the LA, in order to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as children." And now as "children," "the Spirit" permits/inspires us to call God "Abba! Father!" And as God's child, that makes you an "heir."

OR

In one of the most fecund constructs in all of Paul's writings, this excerpt from his letter to believing Phillipians is most likely as extant hymn Paul quoted. Paul exhorts his readers to emulate Christ, who "though he was in the form of God" did not rest in that status, but instead "emptied himself...." The hymn invokes a well-defined and familiar construct in the classical world; he took "the form of a slave," because he was "born in human likeness." This subservient status voluntarily put him in the position of humility and obedience "to the point of death-- even death on a cross." Now the hymn sweeps up away in the extreme opposite direction; "God highly exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name...." This name is honored "in heaven and on earth...." Hence, "every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Luke's birth narrative continues by describing what happens after the shepherds had been told by "an angel of the Lord" the "good news" of the birth in Bethlehem of "a Savior who is Messiah and Lord." They went into town, found Mary and Joseph and, in a manger, the newborn infant. They told Mary and Joseph the announcement the angel had made to them and their utter "amazement." The text is unclear exactly who is included, but just says that, "And all who heard it were amazed...." Mary's reaction in particular is noted: she "treasured them" and kept them "in her heart." The shepherds left, singing and rejoicing for what they had "seen." As was the Jewish custom for a male newborn, eight days later, when it was time to have the child circumcised and named, "he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel [to Mary, 131b] before he was conceived in the womb."

A name names, it works well enough but it never captures fully what has been named. When given to a child, his or her naming launches a life, but it never fully contains the fullness of that life. John Caupto writes: "A name is a promissory note what is cannot itself keep." And, "Names are asked to carry what they cannot bear toward a destination they do not know. Names are trying to help makes things happen, while events are what is happening." (The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event, p.3ff) These are among the the reasons Caputo gives to make his main point: names are "events." A name sets in motion an array of deeds, memories, words, relationships that surpass the capacity of any particular name to contain. It is the "event" of the life of the named person that never ceases having an impact whenever the name is invoked.

The name "Jesus," given to Mary by an angel even before she conceived, would have been a name of deep significance. It is the Greek form of the Hebrew name "Yahoshua" or "Joshua," whose leadership brought Israel into the promised land. But it will be, of course, what Jesus actually does and says that will turn this name into another interpretation of "event," which still reverberates/continues/connects/impacts. His total "obedience" even "to death on a cross" will release a display of love that is aligned with another name, "Messiah, Lord," the Christ. And, even the privileged name of "Son." All these names fuse into an "event," a God-event. Caputo continues: "The name of God occurs, not on the plane of being, but of the event; it is the name of a signification or an interpretation, not a substance." (p.181) It is the "event" of all that Jesus said and did that persists and is invoked when his name is named and the story attached to that name is told. It is the capacity of that name to, as we look up at the figure on the cross, raise our sights to the majesty of God's love that retains its power, which fills heaven and earth; a "name above every other name," that wondrously makes us God's "child," and "heir."

Christmas: Year A,B,C

2011-12-08T08:55:00.000-08:00

The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas I

Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Our comments during Advent described Isaiah's paradoxical perspective: unvarnished realism about humanity contrasted with absolute hope. In the history of patriarchal Israel, hope in God's rescuing God's people in what seemed impossibly oppressed situations was focused on the birth of a son. That new life, full of promise, seemed a meaningful symbol for a fresh start out of the ruins of past failures of the people and of the leaders. In this passage, Isaiah links this universal hope to an idealized memory of the reign of David. But this new monarch will inaugurate peace upheld by justice.

This psalm illustrates how the Bible is frequently a compilation of texts in a new text. This psalm is a "mosaic" of excerpts from many psalms. The nationalistic aspirations for reliable peace and justice are now expanded beyond the Jews to the whole earth.

Titus (as well as First and Second Timothy) seem to also be compilations, this time of fragments from letters assumed to be by Paul. The emphasis here, however, is on deeds of love and mercy not so much as a response to our personal experience of receiving God's love and mercy as practical ways to be separated from larger society.

Raymond Brown's essential The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary of the Birth Narratives of Matthew and Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1977) speculates that Matthew began his gospel with a birth narrative and then continued, but that Luke wrote his gospel and later attached a birth narrative under the influence of similar birth/youth narratives for seminal leaders in the ancient world. Basic Lucan themes are clear: the essential role of some very unlikely people in God's work in the world-- a devout young girl and some simple, earthy shepherds; yet placed in the history of the world, specifically the Roman Empire, and the ancient longings of the Jews always centered on some restored form of the Davidic monarchy. Fr. Brown also assumed that the details of the birth narratives were not historical "facts," even though Luke's narrative, especially, provides specific names and events. It was, Fr. Brown demonstrated, instead a brilliant amalgamation of texts, extant interpretations, customs and popular beliefs mostly initiated by the Hebrew Scriptures, in particular the Books of Isaiah and Micah. Its purpose was a point-by-point counter story to the dominant narrative of the day-- human invincibility as represented in the Roman Empire, specifically in the person of the Emperor Augustus, whose birthday had been made into the first day of a new calendar and surviving inscriptions hail him as "savior of the whole world." (p.393 ff)

Christmas II
Isaiah 62:6-12, Psalm 97, Titus:3:4-7, Luke 2:(1-7), 8-20

Written after the trauma of the destruction of Jerusalem and exile in Babylon, this passage offers a vision of Jerusalem fully restored to its earlier grandeur and secure position as a sign of God's redemption of "the holy people."

This psalm is another example of the way biblical writers borrow and give new propose to habits of speech from neighbors. The image of the Lord surrounded clouds, thunder and lightning is borrowed from Canaanite mythology. But the power of the divinity is not an end in itself, it is to establish justice.

Unlike the earlier excerpt from Titus, this one seems to be closer to Paul's original writings. Followers are to be known for their "works of righteousness" in response to the work of the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ.

See comments above for similar excepts from Luke's birth narrative.

Christmas III
Isaiah 52:7-10, Psalm 98, Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12), John 1:1-14

Continuing Isaiah's powerful use of paradox, the writer depicts Jerusalem in ruins, but still calls for hope in God's action. Among the ruins and debris of destruction, he envisions the sentinels announcing God's salvation and calls for singing and celebration. Walter Brueggemann interprets this passage as an announcement which has the force of creating what it announces: God reigns and God's people flourish! "Where Yahweh rules, there is another world of human possibility." "a new world pushes with determination against the old one. It begins in singing...." (Israel's Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988, p.49)

The psalmist recalls how God acted with decisive power as yet another form of god's "bounty," "kindness" and "faithfulness." The "whole earth" is enjoined to "shout out," to "burst out in song" accompanied by strings and brass that also accompany the rivers and mountains, because "when the Lord comes to judge the earth" it will be with pure justice and righteousness.

Gabriel Josipovici in The Book of God: A Response to the Bible, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), singles out the Book of Hebrews for its role in interpreting the ancient sacred texts to describe the life and significance of Christ. He details how this reinterpretation altered Hebrew assumptions and left a lasting impact on the Western imagination. Christian preachers today, who join the "sacra conversazione" of constant reinterpretation of scriptures can remain sensitive to the integrity of the First Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, and still retain the honored role of Jesus for Christians in the Second Testament. In this except, the writer recalls that God spoke in the past through prophets, but now speaks through "a Son," who is "the reflection of God's glory and exact imprint of God's very being." He then cites various excerpts from existing scripture to highlight what Christians see so compellingly in Jesus.

Jean-Luc Marion notes, "for every mortal, the first word was already heard before he could utter it," she can only "undergo by receiving it...." Therefore, "some gift happens to me because it precedes me in such a way that I must recognize that I proceed from it." (Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, p.270) Applying Marion's primacy of "the word" to Genesis, we appreciate better the import of the announcement that God "speaks" and then order, beauty, meaning, relationships follow. The opening of John's gospel, which invokes the opening of Genesis, announces that "the Word became flesh," inaugurating a "second" beginning/ birth/ genesis. And God's motive is the same in both beginnings-- love for creation.

Luce Irigaray, psychoanalyst and philosopher, reacted to a sermon she heard at Notre Dame, Paris, on Christmas Day. "There wasn't so much as a trace of the birth of God made man, and no incarnation save the choice of text, the voice of the preacher, and the congregation gathered there." "why invite the people to a celebration of the Eucharist on Christmas day if not to glorify the felt, the corporeal and fleshly advent of the divine, this coming, the consequences of which theology seems far from understanding." (The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader, ed.
ed. Graham Ward, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997, p. 205)

The appearance of the divine in the Bible does not separate the human from the divine, it embodies the divine in the human-- literally. Luke's simple story, unselfconsciously mixing angels and smelly shepherds, an act of God in the confines of a shelter for animals, requires the Christian preacher to also point out the divine in the human. That divine love can and does penetrate and illuminate our lives in all its messiness is cause for celebration if there ever was one! God is not aloof from creation. Now the child depends on the basic human care of a young mother and father. The most mundane, human actions are now imbued with the full stature of the divine. The most mundane, human actions can become means of salvation. There is hope. There is cause for joy.

Was somebody asking to see the soul?
See, your own shape and countenance...
Behold, the body includes and is the meaning , the main
Concern, and includes and is the soul

Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass

Further thoughts---
Throughout the Tanakh, when the future seems to be trailing off to a dead end, when humankind's prospects seems doomed to cycles of repeated failures, when faith in God seems nearly foolish, God enables a miraculous birth that in an instant wipes away what seemed crushingly inevitable. Indeed, the entire story of this journey with this God begins with a miraculous birth of a son to an elderly Abraham and barren Sarah.

More than Matthew, Luke uses this tradition with its powerful emotional undertow in his narratives about Zechariah and Elizabeth, a new Abraham and Sarah, and Mary and Joseph, through whom God does something even more spectacular to participate directly in human life. The birth of Jesus originates not with a barren woman and an old man, but a virgin who is "overcome" by the Holy Spirit with the exemplary support of her betrothed.

Hannah Arendt, a non-practicing Jew who knew the horrors of the Twentieth Century first-hand and who struggled with the resulting moral crises along with some of the most probing thinkers of her time saw clearly and could write:

The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from it's normal, "natural" ruin is ultimately the fact of natality.... It is, in other words, the birth of new men (sic) and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope, those two essential characteristics of human existence which Greek antiquity ignored altogether, discounting the keeping of faith as a very uncommon and not too important virtue and counting hope among the evils of illusion in Pandora's box. It is this faith in and hope for the world that found perhaps its most glorious and most succinct expression in the few words with which the Gospels announce their "glad tidings": "A child has been born to us." (The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1958, p. 247)

Further thoughts----

What began as modest tropes on biblical/liturgical texts became in the Middle Ages day-long plays with hundred of characters in as many as forty-eight different scenes. Among the most elaborate and popular were those plays presented on the Feast of Corpus Christi in the Medieval English city of York, from which we have the most complete, extant script. Each guild of workers in York became responsible for the production of one of the scenes, which were written and performed in the vernacular with a few, well-known phrases from the Latin liturgy. Each scene was imbued with the whole range of human emotions, from deepest sadness to light comedy. The Corpus Christi play was performed in York from 1375 until 1569, having been banned in England in 1534. The scene of the nativity of Jesus was the responsibility, appropriately, of the roofers or thatchers in the city. In the script, after Joseph expresses his joy and anxieties about the impending birth, Mary assures him "God will advise, full well, you'll see" and then she sings this song:

Now in my soul great joy have I;
I am all clad in comfort clear.
Now will be born of my body
Both God and man together here.
Blessed must be he.
Jesus my son that is so dear,
Now born is he.

[after the birth, Mary continues]

Hail, my lord God, hail prince of peace;
Hail, my father, and hail, my son;
Hail, sovereign Lord, all sins to cease;
Hail, God and man on earth to run;
Hail, through whose might
All this world was first begun:
Darkness and light.

Son, as I am a simple subject of thine
Permit, sweet son, I pray to you
That I might take thee in these arms of mine,
In this poor weed to cover you.
Grant me your bliss,
As I am your mother chosen to be
In faithfulness.

from a "Modernization" of the text by Chester N. Scoville and Kimberly M. Yates, copyright Toronto 2003

For a full text of the York play, see www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/yorkplays/York14.html

Fourth Sunday of Advent Year B

2011-11-29T14:56:00.000-08:00

Fourth Sunday of Advent B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

II Samuel 7: 1-11,16; Psalm 89: 1-4, 19-26; Romans 16: 25-27; Luke 1: 26-38

Now that King David is settled in a permanent home, he wants to build a permanent home for the "ark of God," which had always been housed in a tent or portable vehicle for easy movement. David tells Nathan of his plan and at first the prophet agrees. But overnight, Nathan heard from the Lord a different message. He is told to remind David that the Lord has been with him from the very beginning when he was tending sheep to now, as prince/shepherd over Israel. While Nathan's message to David does not endorse the King's plan for a permanent home for the ark, it includes two new, major promises: "I will make of you a great nation," and "your house shall be established forever."

The psalmist celebrates God's faithfulness/reliability as shown specifically in the fortunes of David and his throne, which will last "for all generations."

This closing doxology at the end of the letter to the Romans, whether by Paul or a later editor, reaches wide-- to the past, present and future. God's "mystery" was made known through the ancient prophets, it is known now in Christ, to whom be glory forever.

Relying closely on announcement/birth narratives for Ishmael, Isaac, Samson and Samuel from the First Testament, Luke closely follows precedent, but introduces something totally new. He carefully details how the announcement to Mary and her response will be the fulfillment of the ancient promise to David that his throne will last "forever." The announcement also tells how a barren woman, Elizabeth, will miraculously conceive a son, John the Baptist, with her husband. But Mary's situation is something totally new. Although she is still a virgin and without sleeping with her betrothed, Joseph, she will bear a son. This totally new thing will be accomplished because "the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you."

Discussing this intriguing incident in David's life as told in II Samuel, Walter Brueggemann calls it "the interpretive pivot of messianism in Israel." It is a "genuine novum in Israel's faith. In one sweeping assurance, the conditional 'if' of the Mosaic Torah (Exod 19:5-6) is overridden and David is made vehicle and carrier of Yahweh's unqualified grace in Israel, This statement may be regarded as the beginning point for graciousness without qualification...." (emphasis added) (Theology of the Old Testament, pp 604-605)

In his classic study of the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, The Birth of the Messiah, (New York: Doubleday, 1979), Raymond Brown concludes that Luke carefully crafts his narrative to make it clear not only that Jesus' birth is in fact the fulfillment of God's promise to David, but it is more. Luke's innovation is "constant with a theology of a new creation wherein God's Spirit, active in the first creation of life (Gen 1:2), was active again." (p. 299)

If for the readings of Advent III we invoked Derrida, (above), for this Sundays readings and gospel we call upon Jean-Luc Marion. John Caputo neatly draws the distinction: "For Marion the sign for 'God' is flooded by givenenss, for Derrida it is a dry and dessert aspiration for I know not what. (Caputo and Scanlon, eds. God, the Gift and Postmodernism p. 199) "For Marion the Messiah has already come, hypergiveness has already overtaken us, and it is a question of having the eyes to see and the ears to hear and the songs to sing about what already has happened." )p. 218)

So in Marion's own words (from God Without Being): "Love is not spoken, in the end, it is made. Only then can discourse be reborn, but as enjoyment, a jubilation, a praise." (p. 107) "We believe in the God who gives (back) life." (p. 86) "A gift, and this one [Christ] above all, does not require first that one explain it, but indeed that we receive it." (p.162)

Overwhelming every human (pre) conception, outstripping every (prior) experience of love, out performing every (previous) encounter with generosity, so far beyond any capacity for human measurement that it cannot be extrapolated from human invention, the distinctive claim of the biblical narratives (now renewed in a message to and the response of a Virgin) is the love of God, which not only made all things, but now can make all things new! With this God, all things are possible. The paradoxes are outlandish. A young girl becomes God's willing accomplice for a break-in in the middle of the night; in John Donne's wonderful phrase in his poem, "Annunciation," Mary becomes "Thy Maker's maker and thy Father's mother." Which is sets up the ultimate paradox: God appoints a "Son," a descendant of David, to be born to this Virgin, who will be shown to be God's supreme sign/act of love.

Third Sunday of Advent Year B

2011-11-25T11:38:00.000-08:00

Third Sunday of Advent Year B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; I Thessalonians 5: 16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28

After decades of intimidation, war and finally total destruction of Jerusalem and then exile, every aspect of personal and social life is in a shambles. The people of God are demoralized and resigned to their hopeless circumstances. But the preacher feels called by the Lord God to make a startling promise: in short, God will reverse every hopeless aspect of their lives. Re-energized, he continues, the people of God will re-build out of the ruins in which they now live the city of Jerusalem and lesser cities. They will come to be known as "the planting of the Lord." Why will God act this way? "For I the Lord love justice...." As reliably as the the garden returns after a barren season, "the Lord will cause righteousness to spring up...." (The Book of Isaiah is cited in Christian scriptures more than any other book from the First Testament than the Psalms.)

The psalmist invokes that time when Jerusalem will be restored. He uses everyday experiences of people who laugh uncontrollably when their fondest dream has come true and rivers flowing again after draught. As reliably as the cycles of nature, "those who sow in tears/ in glad song will reap."

Rejoice, pray, give thanks, Paul exhorts. Do not restrict the Spirit of God when God disrupts what we have come to accept. Test them.

John's time and context is quite different than the synoptic gospels, therefore his treatment of the important historical figure of John the Baptist is distinctive. Here John the Baptist is presented in such a way to decipher competing claims about his role vis a vis Jesus. John is not the Messiah nor even the prophet expected before the Messiah, Elijah or any of the other prophets. He is "the voice" posited by Isaiah, "crying on the wilderness." His cry is singular: to alert any who will listen that "among you is the Messiah." (The significance of John the Baptizer in all four gospels is reflected by his appearance, directly or indirectly, in the first three Sundays of Advent this year.)

This Sunday of Advent directs our attention not to anticipation to the birth of Jesus but to what John Caputo calls, "Messianic time."

In his self-described "Michelin's guide to Jacques Derrida," The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, John Caputo cites "Messiah" or its derivatives on 89 of his 339 pages of text, from page 1 to page 338. "Messianic time," he writes, "is prophetic time, the time to come, that disturbs the present with the call for justice, which calls the present beyond ... itself. For the most unjust thing of all would be to close off the future by saying that justice is present, that the present time is just...." (p. 81) But just before this passage, he makes the same move as Isaiah when he writes, "Justice means doing justice, doing the truth... in order that he might come, in order to bring about messianic time, the epoche of the Messiah." (loc cite) "The Messiah is already among you," John's John the Baptist insists.

Isaiah says that God acts because God "loves justice." And, by daring to announce God's justice precisely in those times when the people have become resigned to the impossibility of justice, the preacher helps make it possible. Her words announce/remind/initiate/allow/permit/incite, all at once.

Caputo concludes, "...justice is precisely unseeable and unforeseeable...." " Justice does not reside high above but settles into the flesh of the least among us, pitching its tent among us. Justice is not above but urgently required here and now, even as it is something you press forward to with passion, with prophetic and messianic fire... with a fiercely burning ruah, something to come, something impossible, unimaginable, unrepresentable, something with which you must keep faith, the passion of faith.... (p. 338)

Paul warns not to restrict the Spirit. Let it flow where it will. The people of God, moved by "the passion of faith," should expect ferment, change as the norm. Although we never know exactly where or when God's justice will re-assert itself, just as we never know precisely when it will rain, we announce and work for justice as part of our everyday routine, taking for granted that God's justice will return, the parched river bed will once again bubble and gush with water. "Those who sow in tears/ in glad song will reap."

Second Sunday of Advent Year B

2011-11-15T15:01:00.000-08:00

Second Sunday of Advent Year B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Isaiah 40: 1-11; Psalm 85: 1-2, 8-13; II Peter 3: 8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

Following decades of threats and finally destruction by the Assyrians and then the captors of Israel, the Babylonians, "Isaiah" hears an unidentified voice that announces: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.... Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed." The dialogue between the unidentified voice and the prophet continues: "Cry out," demands the voice. "What shall I cry?" the prophet asks. State the obvious: human existence is transient and fragile. Then declare the not so obvious: "the Word of God will stand forever." Like the warrior and the shepherd, "the word of God" protects, restores and nurtures. With no justification, the prophet places hope in the act of announcing the power of "the word of God," to rescue and renew.

The psalmist invokes a past-future vision. As in the past so we can look forward in the future: God rescues by speaking. When God speaks (and is heeded) the result is distinctive: "Kindness and truth have met/ justice and peace have kissed."

Anticipation of the return of Christ was an essential claim of the gospel in the early church. The writer of second Peter provides a standard summary of that belief, but heightens the drama by asserting the total destruction of the earth by fire. However, this destruction is for a specific purpose: "a new heaven and a new earth "where righteousness is at home" will come. Anticipate that new reality by living it now, he instructs.

Jumbling phrases from various sources in the Hebrew scriptures but attributing them to Isaiah, Mark portrays the well-known work of John the Baptist, (even Jospeheus mentions him in his contemporary history of the Jews). Mark casts him as that "voice crying in the wilderness." People leave the capital city and travel into the hostile wilderness. They find a man, who, in appearance and message, is depicted with details that evoke stirring memories of the ancient prophets. His ministry is marked by a cleansing with water, but One is coming, he declares, who will cleanse/renew with spirit/fire.

One of Jacques Derrida's most influential essays is his meditation on Plato's Timaeus, entitled "Khora," in On the Name (1995). Derrida contemplates "an apparently empty place-- even though it is no doubt not emptiness." (p.103) He is considering that place/time that we intuit that is outside/beyond any human success to conceptualize, master, assert, force, penetrate. Later, although discussing the specific role of philosophy in the Western imagination, his insights are useful when applied to all human language/conceptualizing: "The bold stroke consists here in going back behind and below the origin, or also the birth, toward a necessity...." (P.126)

Isaiah's "voice" in the barren wilderness is outside, beyond human origin. It begins as an inarticulate cry, a wail even. In dialogue with the prophet it endows a message, an announcement: with no human origin source or participation, "the Lord's glory will be revealed." From somewhere outside/beyond human invention, which flourishes then always fades and dies, "the word of God will stand forever."

What is distinctive and authentic about this "word of God?" It protects and saves from threats to our well being, as a shepherd cares for his sheep. Or, as the psalmist rhapsodizes, kindness and truth become one and justice and peace embrace and kiss.

Mark does not begin his story with a birth narrative. It starts in the barren wilderness, near but alienated from the capital of human religious and political enterprise, Jerusalem. It is an announcement out of the blue. It reduces its own importance by announcing that the One who is coming and all that Mark will write about his words and deeds is the bold, game-changing action of God.

The landscape of the "wilderness" around Jerusalem is extreme. Where there is no water it is as barren as as a lunarscape. But where there is water it is lush with growth and spectacular flowers. These passages grow out of that biblical experience of extremes. They describe an existential extreme contrast: without the hope and content of the "word of God," (which by its nature exceeds and surpasses any human origin; Genesis testifies that God "spoke" and then there was life!) human existence is barren, harsh and often feels futile; but when God "speaks" and those words are heeded and treasured, life flourishes, it is rescued, renewed, "righteousness is at home."

First Sunday of Advent Year B

2011-11-15T14:45:00.000-08:00

First Sunday of Advent Year B
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Isaiah 64: 1-9; Psalm 80: 1-7, 16-18; I Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13: 24-37

The Book of Isaiah concludes by recalling two distinct and contradictory traits of God's behavior: when God reveals God's-Self, it is the equivalent of creation erupting-- "mountains quake" "fire kindles;"-- yet, this same God "works for those who remember [this God] and who wait...." "You meet those who gladly do right..." is the biblical testimony. When this God "hid," however, we all became "like one who is unclean, and all righteous deeds are like filthy cloth." Our lives "fade like a leaf" and our "iniquities" blow us away with the wind. In such terrible times, "no one" calls "on your name, or attempts to take hold of you...." Despite such dire developments, there is a "YET;" "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand." Do not stay "angry" and always remember "we are your people."

Alluding to a formative event in Israel's past-- when Joseph and his brothers re-established Israel-- the psalmist pleads to the Lord as Israel's "Shepherd" who also is "enthroned on the cherubim" for a new, similar event; a new son descended from these ancient tribes to "bring us back."

Paul begins his difficult letter to this church in Corinth by recalling the core meaning of their identity: "the grace of God that has been given to you in Christ Jesus." Your self-understanding and all that you are counting on to get you through "to the end" is based on the life-giving words and works of Christ. "God is faithful...." God "called us into the fellowship..." created by the "Son, Christ our Lord."

Given the repeated conquests, rebellions, pogroms, and the mass death of thousands with the destruction and desecration of the Temple by the Greeks and then the Romans over the previous two hundred years, we should be surprised if we did not find a rich tradition of "apocalyptic" writings, including the gospels and Paul's letters! Drawing literally and figuratively from the books of Isaiah, Daniel, Zechariah and Deuteronomy, Mark's narrative depicts the appearance"In those days" of "the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory." We must live as if this life-altering event could occur at any second because no one knows or can know when it can happen. The narrative posits two contradictory statements; on the one hand, "this generation will not pass away," on the other hand, "no one knows when this will happen." Consider this scenario: a boss entrusts to you everything valuable to her while she is away; you will need to keep one eye focused on what you are responsible for and another on her return, which could be awhile or immediately, you have no way of knowing. "Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come."

Among writers regarded as postmodern, attempts to characterize how we understand ourselves pay attention to the emotional, psychological, spiritual or affective aspects of our make-up, not just our thinking capacity, (Descarte's cogito). Michel Foucault insists that any self-understanding "of ourselves must be considered not, certainty, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating: it must be conceived as an attitude, an ethos..." (quoted in Blackwell's Companion to Postmodern Theology, Graham Ward, ed. p. 87)

Mark is not concerned in this critical passage with "theology" or any other kind of conceptualizing. He rejects speculative thinking about God's ways. He is instead focused on our attitude to life. He tells us to live in a permanent state of alertness to the possibility that everything that we regard as important and stationary could be lost at any second. We should regard whatever time we think we have as temporary, borrowed. We are to be alert, engaged, vigilant, not sleep-waking through life. Live with one eye on our immediate responsibilities and the other prepared to see when it could all end. Life is not a rehearsal!

Like some mighty double fugue, the scriptures weave together two dominant melodies and improvise on them endlessly: human-made time --hour, day, week, month year, era, a single life-time-- juxtaposed with God's "time," which is always an EVENT-- an irruption/disruption/course correction/revelation/fresh start. John Caputo considers both of these senses of "time," when he writes: "The time of the world is the sort of time that you can count, the time you can count on, the sort that economics depends upon; it is regular and reliable enough for us to calculate.... Ticktock, ticktock." (The Weakness of God: A Theology of Event, p. 162) By contrast, Caputo continues: "The coming of the kingdom is not a matter of prediction or prophesying some coming event off in a dark and unknown future." Rather: "The kingdom is already in us and something we are already in. The time of the kingdom is today, now, already." "God rules now, in Jesus, who says that the kingdom is upon us." (p.167)

Thanksgiving Day Year A

2011-10-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving Day A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Deuteronomy 8:7-18; Psalm 65; II Corinthians 9:6-15; Luke 17:11-19

Deuteronomy was compiled and edited as Moses' farewell sermon/address to God's people in which he reviews all that God has done with a recurring admonition-- Keep all the Lord's teachings and God's people will be sustained. After forty years of brutal wandering in wilderness, God's people now stand on the border of entering the land of God's covenant. This land is staggeringly bountiful and fertile; "you will lack nothing...." However, be warned, do not allow this abundance to make "your heart haughty and... forget that the Lord your God..." is the One who provided. Do not "say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand made me this wealth.'" Rather, always "remember the Lord your God..." for God is the source of the "power to make wealth...."

Although there are no words to adequately praise the Lord, the psalmist cannot resist. She must first confess her "mischief" and "crimes," before continuing with a crucial petition: "May we be sated with the Lord's bounty." She acknowledges the Lord's "awesome acts" and "rescuing" deeds as the traits of the same One whose "power" and "might" are manifest throughout creation. It is the Lord, she avers, who "soaks" the earth to "enrich" it so it produces "grain." "Your bountiful year" is capped with luxuriant meadows and hills that sustain "flocks" and "grain." She discovers that creation is not mute: "they shout for joy and even sing."

Paul is certain that the person who "sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." Therefore, give, give "cheerfully, not reluctantly or under compulsion...." If we assume/accept that "God is able to provide... every blessing in abundance" then we can/should just as easily assume/accept that "by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly...." "You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity...." "thanks be to God for this indescribable gift."

In a revelatory encounter unique to Luke's narrative, Jesus was on the road "to Jerusalem," skirting the border between
"Samaria and Galilee" when "ten lepers approached him." Although they kept a cautionary distance, they were still within shouting distance: "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" Jesus gave them one simple instruction, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." As soon as they started to follow his insurrection, they were "made clean." Of the ten, only one returned to give thanks; and that one was a "Samaritan." Jesus asked, Where are the other nine? "Was none .. to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" He told the man, who bowed before him, to get up and go: "Your faith has made you well." Once, again, Luke privileges the least expected, the alien, who did the right thing, which was to give "thanks" to God and identifies giving thanks as the beginning of faith.

Biblical texts never get over their awe of the sheer abundance of creation. The psalmist 'sees' that the earth is "soaked" with the elements that "enrich" the earth "so that it produces all we will ever need." She 'hears' creation "sing." Standing on the cusp of fulfillment, looking out over the spectacular fertility of the land the Lord has given, Moses 'sees' so much abundance, he can announce, "you will lack for nothing."

'Seeing' and even 'hearing' the abundance of creation is an act of will, a decision to be made.

Jean-Luc Marion inserts his notion of "saturated phenomenon" into our traditional understanding of how we perceive the world. By this notion, he means that the world overwhelms our senses and, therefore, we must rely on hermeneutics/interpretation to make sense of it. In an important collection of essays in response to Marion's work entitled Counter-Experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion, Emmanuel Falque quotes Marion and then comments. "In an essay by Marion we read: 'By saturating phenomenon I understand here one where the manifest given goes beyond not only what a human look can bear without being blinded and dying, but what the world in its essential finitude can receive and contain." ("The Saturated Phenomenon," trans Thomas A. Carlson, Philosophy Today 40, nos 1-4 [1996]: 103-24) Falque also quotes Marion in the same essay: "the miracle will no longer bear on a physical event, but on my consciousness itself." (Ibid, p.49) Falque now adds: "the true miracle, according to Marion, is in this way a 'miralce of my consciousness,' a lived experience in the conversion of my way of looking at things rather than in the things themselves." In an essay which concludes the collection, Marion himself writes" "Not seeing or, worse, not accepting what he sees-- [is] in short blindness undergone or willed." (p.383ff)

If one "wills" to 'see' and 'hear' the extravagance of creation as meaning "you will lack for nothing," two reactions follow spontaneously: 1) gratitude, 2) generosity. The clear and really only point of that story unique to Luke's gospel is that the act of thanking God was essential for making the man whole. Paul writes that if one makes the willful decision to 'see' that God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance," (emphasis added), then "by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly" -- "cheerfully!"

In her own response to Marion's work in the same collection of essays, Kathryn Tanner argues that, "One receives gifts only in giving them back to the giver in the same way that one has been given them." (p.222)

decision to 'see' and 'hear'. And what follows is gratitude and generosity. "May we be sated with the Lord's bounty."

Proper 29 Year A

2011-10-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Proper 29 A "Christ the King"
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 100 OR Psalm 95: 1-7a; Ephesians 1:15-23, Matthew 25: 31-36

Using daily, familiar experiences, the Hebrew prophets describe God as a potter (Jeremiah, Isaiah), a gardener (Jeremiah), mother (Isaiah), healer (Jeremiah) and, most frequently, a shepherd (Jeremiah, psalms and this passage from Ezekiel). Given the complete spiritual, social, political, physical and religious crises caused by the conquest and captivity by the Babylonian empire, new hopes were placed on God by the chosen as articulated by Ezekiel. Homeless in Babylon, they were "scattered far and wide" and totally vulnerable. But God will gather, rescue, seek, bring back, bind-up and strengthen. God will judge between the "fat and the lean sheep" and "feed the lean with justice." "I, myself, will be the shepherd of my sheep...." The failed leaders who "butted" the "weak animals" will be replaced with "my servant David, and he shall feed them and be their shepherd."

As he crosses the threshold into the court of praise, the psalmist sings "God has made us and we are God's/ God's people and flock"

OR

The psalmist summons praise to God who is our maker and "the Rock of our rescue." "We are the people of God's hand." We are God's people, "the flock."

Paul understands the emergence of the church as an extension and continuing demonstration of God's power at work through Christ, whom God "raised from the dead and seated him at God's right hand in the heavenly place."

In the biblical narratives, restoration and rescue always entail the re-establishment of justice by God. This ancient hope is now applied in Matthew's narrative to Christ when he "comes in his glory and all the angels with him...." While all three synoptic gospels conclude parallel sections with warnings about a time of reckoning linked to the coming of "the Son of man," only Matthew's narrative concludes this section just before the Passion Story with a vivid depiction of the wonderful and terrible event. Like a "shepherd" who routinely performs the necessary task of separating "the sheep from the goats," so "the Son of man" will separate those who fed the hungry and thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick and imprisoned from those who did not do these things. Because: as you did or did not do to the least.. you did or did not do to me!

Matthew's narrative places a scene, unique to this gospel, at the climax of his several chapters devoted to a telling of the unforgettable words and actions of Jesus and just before the final chapter set in Jerusalem.

He paints a stunning picture. A supreme Judge of last resort sits on a throne. This Judge's decisions are final. Some react with joy, others are horrified with the decisions. The sole criterion on which the Judge is basing these final decisions is who was and who was not engaged in basic, daily habits of justice. Nothing else matters.

(This image in Matthew's gospel is the inspiration for Michelangelo's vivid depiction of "The Last Judgement" that covers the entire wall behind the altar in the Sistine Chapel. www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Last-Judgement.html )

A passion for justice, not as theory but as concrete, everyday actions, emerges also among some postmodern writers. Derrida and Marion articulate powerful arguments for "radical hospitality" as central to their entire work. Gadamer understands the act of interpretation of texts as a communal quest to judge what is "right, here and now." Levinas argues that because the other person can never be reduced to any form of total understanding, he or she always stands in my line of sight as unavoidable responsibility. This responsibility is beyond ethics. It is a "spiritual" claim; he or she is a "trace" of infinity, of God. "The most finite creature is filled with the infinite in its own way," he insists. (Alterity and Transcendence, p. 67)

John Caputo, reliably, captures the gist of this postmodern reverence for biblical justice: "In the kingdom, the mark of God is on the face of the stranger, the 'other,' not the 'same.' In the biblical tradition. God is not the object of speculative mysticism that sweeps us up into an eternal now where we are one with the One, but the one who comes knocking at our door dressed in rages in search of bread and a cup of cold water." "The one who receives the stranger receives God, 'the God who loves the stranger'." (The Weakness of God: A Theology of Event, pp 262-263)

Matthew is clear. Some are going to be shocked when the final judgment is announced. Some thought the only criterion that mattered was being "religious" (some vague impression about serving God only for the sake of serving God or developing a 'personal' relationship with God for my personal benefit) when in fact it was the basic habits of daily compassion that count! "When did we not serve God?" The answer "When you did not respond to the needs of others as a part your daily routine." It should be so natural to one's everyday habits, that it does not seem special or not even necessarily "religious." But for those who thought they had figured out and were doing "religious" things but were oblivious to the needs of other people of all sorts and conditions, there is a rude awakening coming, so biblical texts want to make clearly and as vividly because this is the core of their witness!

Proper 28 Year A

2011-10-08T08:04:00.000-07:00

Proper 28 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Judges 4: 1-7; Psalm 123

OR

Zephaniah 1: 7,12-18; Psalm 90: 1-8

I Thessalonians 5: 1-11; Matthew 25: 14-30

An earlier victim of Joshua's victories over him, Jaban the King of Hazar, now wants revenge. After harassing Israel for twenty years, he mobilizes a large, well-equipped army for conquest of Israel. The alarmed Israelites turn to a leading authority, the prophetess and judge, Deborah, to take charge. She summons Barak, who gathers an army of 10,000. She instructs Barak where to encamp while she draws Jacob's army into Barak's waiting army. (After this excerpt, Barak follows Deborah's commands and routs the enemy. But on reaching their headquarters he discovers that their general, Sisera, had already been killed. The victory is credited to the wise and brave leadership of Deborah who in 5: 7 is called "a mother of Israel.")

The psalmist paints a moving vignette-- the expression and posture of an adoring slave girl as she awaits the attention/instructions of her mistress-- to evoke Israel's waiting on the Lord.

OR

Refuting directly those who dismiss the Lord's accounting, Zephaniah foretells "the Day of the Lord." It is always speeding toward us, it will cause chaos and pain for those who have the most to lose in the status quo and no one will escape. ("The Day of the Lord," when God will intervene suddenly and directly in human affairs, is a recurring idea in the Hebrew scriptures. Sometimes it is applied to specific events in history, e.g. the Babylonian captivity, as well as a cosmic event for all creation. It will be greeted with horror by those who have not followed God's ways, but with hope by those who have. The Christian scriptures pour all these venerable meanings into the judgment/hope of Christ's second coming.)

The only psalm attributed to Moses, who himslef lived a hundred and twenty years and played the pivotal role in the history of the chosen, acknowledges that God was before creation and spawned creation. To God a thousand years of human history are like a fragment of a memory from a dream. And our seventy, or even eighty years, just slip by. But the failures of a life-time, even those hidden from others, come before God's face and we fear God's anger. May this anxiety about reckoning spur us to "count our days rightly/ that we may get a heart of wisdom."

"The Day of the Lord," i.e. Christ's return, will come Paul writes "like a thief in the night"-- unexpected, by surprise, undetected until it is standing right over our bed, startled. "But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are children of light...." So while some are indifferent while others are frightened of a time of accounting, you have nothing to fear. "For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord, who died for us, so that whether awake or asleep we may live with him."

Following another parable about watchfulness (see proper 27 A, last Sunday), Matthew adapts a story which transposes his point into one of our most carefully calculated and emotionally gripping commodities-- money. We are to act as shrewd managers of money do; invest prudently and wisely. And what does money represent in this parable? Perhaps it is what we all possess by various measurements-- our time on this earth, the impact we have on others individually and at large, the decisions we make, our actions and their consequences, in short all that comprises our lives. There will be an audit. Get busy.

We all cease to be-- stripped of relationships, capacity for daily living, meaning. We will cease to be when we die, of course, but we can also cease to be some ways even before death. Furthermore, even though we can acknowledge we will die "some day," we can say nothing certain about when that moment of death will come.

In his sweeping examination of the human condition in Being and Time, Martin Heidegger's discussion of this reality of not existing plays an important role. ( Div. II, p 274ff) Coming to grips with this reality he insists is crucial. We will cease to be when we come to the end of our time, but, we can also cease to be even before then by failing to live beyond basic instincts and missing what it means to be more authentically ourselves and more deeply engaged with and for others. He analyzes the many ways we can "tranquilize" ourselves to avoid confronting our limitations and our potential by just giving into the supposed urgencies of unexamined living.

Today's appointed readings and gospel jolt us out of our complacency. In just a few words that have echoed for millennia, the psalmist compares our fleeting, finite time to God outside human time. For God a thousand years of human history must seem like a left-over fragment of some dream barely recalled. Our seventy or even eighty years fly by in a blur. Both Zephaniah and Paul use the venerable phrase "The Day of the Lord" to apply in new contexts the reality that life as we know it, as measured in all human history as well as our individual lives, will not last forever. And in the end we will face the consequences of our failures, even those we have kept from others.

So what do we do with these facts? We are not to be frozen with fear. The psalmist urges us to to use this stark awareness of our reality as a prod to "count out days rightly/ that we may get a heart of wisdom." Paul argues that if we are already engaged in doing God's work we have nothing to fear and, just as importantly, we are not to just sleep-walk though our life, sort of dead already. We are not destined for fear, Paul insists. The parable Matthew relays it even more explicitly. Get up. Get busy. Use your instinctual shrewdness for good. Invest what is most precious-- your time on this earth, your impact on others, your money, in short the various aspects that make up your life as calculatingly as the most successful investors. Use your assets for maximum return. Do not just sit on them, or hide them under the mattress. You do not have forever. You do not know how much time you actually have. So behave as if you were running out of time, because you are !

Awareness of such human realities as final death, as well as ways of "dying" even before death, and an accounting for how we have used whatever abilities and time we are given leads to what Heidegger calls "an impassioned freedom towards death [his emphasis]-- a freedom which has never been released from the Illusion of the "they [conventional, everyday ways of just getting along, just getting by], and what is factical, certain of itself and anxious." (p. 311) Today's readings from Zephaniah, Psalm 90, Paul and Matthew convert this "anxiety" into a healthy, constructive motivator for productive action. It prods us to use whatever capacities, circumstances and time we have beneficially for others and, thereby, for ourselves as well. Live life more abundantly by "investing" whatever we have been given.

All Saints Year A

2011-10-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

Feast of All Saints Year A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Revelation to John 7: 9-17; Psalm 34: 1-10,22; I John 3: 1-3; Matthew 5: 1-12

Under duress as a persecuted minority in the Roman Empire, the writer recalls (from memory ?) fragments from the prophets especially Amos, Jeremiah and Isaiah and Psalm 23 and envisions how all this will end. He sees all those "no one can count" who have believed and died, many as martyrs. Robed in white (their baptismal garment ?) and holding palm branches, they join with the angels, the elders and the "four living creatures" around God's throne in worship. Their torment is over "for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd."

The psalmist recalls perilous times from his past when he called on the Lord who answered and saved him. From his personal experience, he extrapolates to all in dire circumstances who look to the Lord and "beam." God sends a "messenger" for protection. Happy is the person who takes shelter in the Lord's protection.

According to this first letter attributed to John, clearly there are some things we know and some things we do not yet know. We know we are God's children, but "what we will be has not been revealed." We do know we will in some fashion be like God, but not exactly how. Until all is clearer, purify yourself as God is pure. We can be certain of one thing: because "the world" does not understand God it will not understand those who follow God's ways.

In Matthew's chronology, Jesus begins his ministry with a summary of all that will unfold in his actions and teachings as the story continues. Jesus takes his first few disciples aside but crowds follow. What they hear from him is a series of contrasts that are completely counter intuitive to conventional wisdom: those who "hunger for righteousness" and are currently dismayed by the odds against them will prevail in the end; those who show mercy and make peace even when they are persecuted for their beliefs and actions, following Jesus' example, will be known as "children of God." However, the same old human story relentlessly continues-- you can expect to be persecuted "in the same way the prophets who were before you."

Fergus Kerr concludes a chapter in Theology after Wittgenstein with his own translation of two famous aphorisms of Wittgenstein: "Language-- I want to say-- is a refinement, 'in the beginning was the deed'." (p.120).

An organic distinction of the biblical narratives is that their teachings, commandments, admonitions and invitations get tested in what some real people actually did in response. Their experiences were remembered and eventually became texts gathered together and designated canonical. Reading those texts, we see ourselves in their stories and begin to forge our own unique response.

The biblical texts are based on individual women and men who had an experience of God and reacted in ways that are remembered as positive or negative incidents but unforgettable. The biblical texts would just float above actual human experience as we recognize it were it not for the stories of people who responded as we might. And so in someone like Peter, who runs hot and cold, we can see ourselves. Indeed, we can also see something of ourselves in accomplishments and failures of David or the crankiness and passions of Paul or the earnest but misplaced priorities of Judas or the unnamed woman who endured twelve years of menstrual pain but finally found peace by acting on the simple faith that if she could just touch Jesus her prayers would be answered. So many, many more stories in the biblical texts that influence each of us in unique ways. And then there are the stories of those over intervening centuries who comprise the tradition of the church. And not to be forgotten are the stories of individuals in your personal history from whom you learned this faith. Faith is communicable. (Now what about those who are learning their faith from you, in particular those children for whom you have responsibility?)

Individual lives-- the decisions and choices made, the actions taken, the anxieties and hopes expressed-- become memories, memories are distilled into stories, stories become texts, and texts become the parameters within which we imagine and live out our lives.

The Feast of All Saints is not just about a few heroic moments in the lives of a handful of people. It is about all of us --"no one can count" --who share a common memory. We have been told that we should wager on God's wisdom, summarized as fully as anywhere by Jesus right at the beginning of his public life as a series of contrasts, which, although the total opposite of conventional wisdom, will prevail and will lead to the best life has to offer. The stories of those who have tried this way to live a life resonate with us only because we can see ourselves in them. By recalling them, we celebrate on this feast day our shared status as a "child of God forever." For a fleeting moment, we can stand outside history and have a vision similar to John's of all those who have gone before us, whose stories point us in the direction we can write our own stories. What twists and turns will our story take? How will it end?

Proper 27 Year A

2011-10-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

Proper 27 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Joshua 24: 1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78: 1-7

OR

Amos 5: 18-24; Wisdom 6: 17-20 OR Psalm 70

I Thessalonians 4: 13-18; Matthew 25: 1-13

Joshua gathers the tribes of Israel to discover the limits of their loyalty to the God of their origins through Abraham and Sarah. The first test is between their loyalty to God and the gods of their neighboring nations. They all promise their allegiance to God. Joshua turns the screw. But this God to whom you have just pledged your loyalty can be quite unpredictable. God's holiness can include jealousy and even harm after having done good. They repeat their allegiance. Joshua tells them they will be witnesses against themselves if they fail to keep their promise. Then he proceeds with the details of their covenant.

In these introductory verses to a lengthy psalm that reviews the long relationship between God and the chosen, the poet relies on the recitation of that history to continue and renew the covenant with this and future generations.

OR

In a rare time of peace and prosperity, religious practices had become elaborate re-enforcements of the status quo. Without credentials and coming our of nowhere, Amos speaks in a brash, new way. He warns against "calling" on the Lord when the results may not be what you expected or wanted. He derides routine liturgical offerings, rituals and singing. Rather "let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Justice and righteousness are the specific demands of the Lord.

Drawing on ideas and even verbatim excerpts from Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus, the writer of this book dedicated to Wisdom composes a paean: "the one who loves her/ will keep her laws." And, find immortality and nearness to God.

A compact psalm that calls upon the Lord to confront one's enemies and even spin them around on their heels. (This psalm is repeated in Psalm 40: 14-18)

Paul addresses two big questions among early believers: death and the return of Christ. Paul teaches that when Christ returns, those who have died trusting will be raised up from the dead to join current believers and go to the Lord forever. This is not an argument, but a "hope" which believers can have because of the resurrection of Jesus. "Encourage one another with these words."

Although the narratives of Mark and Luke include similar sayings, only Matthew's places it at the conclusion of a story about ten people, five who were prepared and five who were not and the consequences. Ten bridesmaids took with them their lamps as they went out to greet the arrival of the "bridegroom." While five only took their lamps,the other five took their lamps and an extra supply of oil. "Five were foolish and five were wise." By the time the "bridegroom" arrived at "midnight," the five "wise" were prepared for his arrival, but the five "foolish" had to ask the others for some oil. But the "wise" said they might not have enough and the five others should go and buy some more. While they were gone, the "bridegroom" arrived! The five who were prepared eagerly greeted him, went into the "marriage feast," and the door was shut. When the five "foolish" arrived late, they asked to be admitted. but were told by the "bridegroom" that he "did not know" them. "Watch, therefore, for you know not neither the day nor the hour."

How does one prepare for the unexpected? Just exactly how are we to live without final answers? These passages are about the mood, tactics, stance, and attitude for the meantime, the time between today and God's fulfillment, (which, by the way, may not be what we expected after all!).

The parable of the wise and foolish, unique to Matthew, serves a specific function in his narrative. It is not about the content of faith, but learning the steps in the dance of believing; not belief as an exercise of right-thinking but about behavior and priorities while we wait; not about concepts but actions. Even if we lack details about when, where and how Jesus will return, we are to learn the right habits engendered by eager expectation.

Even didactic Paul, who seems compelled to explain everything in detail, recognizes that this faith to which we respond is closer to "hope" than proof.

Joshua emphasizes that when one pledges loyalty to this God, one makes that promise not really knowing what specific demands that promise might require in the future; it is an open-ended promise.

Amos recognizes that the most carefully observed religious life in all its liturgical and pietistic details has at its center a volcanic eruption of justice which is always unpredictable because it is God's justice.

Marin Heidegger turned his laser-like attention to an aspect of our lives that we already know but just have not thought about as clearly as he did. In Being and Time he examined this experience using the German word " Befindlichkeit." It was traditionally translated as "state-of-mind." But subsequently others have proposed other possibilities, such as mood or stance or attitude or predisposition. Our primary mood "simmers" in us until a specific event reveals it to us. This stance or attitude, therefore, influences how we interpret and respond to any specific event. Heidegger assumes we "cultivate" our primary attitude or predisposition through sefl-reflectionrespond that makes the event what it actually becomes. Ultimately, the stance or attitude we cultivate affects our potentiality for being.

People expect biblical insights and sermons about appropriate belief, but these narratives with which we are dealing here point us in the direction of mood/stance/attitude/predisposition. And they insist that the stance we cultivate as the primary mode in which we live life determines if we are foolish or wise, prepared or unprepared for whatever God has in store because we have pledged our allegiance not knowing where that pledge will take us.

Explicating Heidegger (in particular his reflections of Paul's letters to the Thessalonians) and Derrida, John Caputo concludes: "The 'second coming of Christ' is not a 'when' to be calculated but a 'how' to be lived, not a matter of reckoning a definite time in the future, but of being ready, existentially transformed and radically open to an indefinite possibility that must be preserved in its indefiniteness." (The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion, pp 139-140) This "radical openness," Derrida insists, inflames "passion," a "passion to let justice flow." (p. 338)

We know the expression, "fear of the unknown." These biblical readings offer an alternative: "hope for the unknown" based on trust in the God of those who have gone before us and have found their salvation as we can, too.

Proper 26 Year A

2011-10-07T15:25:00.000-07:00

Proper 26 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14.25; Psalm 107:1-7,33-37

OR

Micah 3:5-12; Psalm 43

I Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew 23:1-12

We are now in the hands of an author/editor commonly referred to as the "Deuteronominist," whom Robert Alter assumes to actually be the prophet Jeremiah assisted by his secretary Baruch, (Who Wrote the Bible? New York: Harper and Row, 1987, p.146ff). This writer re-tells the whole history of God's people, from Abraham/Sarah up to the catastrophic sack of the Temple and enforced diaspora by the conquering Babylonians and concluding with the promise that the Temple would be re-built. The recurring pattern that continues through all eight books (Joshua, Judges, I II Samuel, I II Kings, I II Chronicles) is-- fidelity to God's ways preserves God's people, infidelity brings on ruin. In today's appointed excerpt, Joshua leads "the elders, the heads, the judges and the officers of Israel" through a stern cross-examination: choose this day whom you will serve-- the God who initiated and sustained a relationship of compassion and care or the gods your ancestors worshipped before Abraham or the gods of Egypt or the gods of neighboring nations. Three times Joshua drills them and three times the leaders pledge their fidelity to the Lord's ways.

"Acclaim the Lord who is good," the psalmist begins. She then reminds God's people that their originary identity is those who were "redeemed," saved, rescued, "from the hand of the foe." She cites the years "wandering" in the "wilderness" and the ensuing thirst and fatigue. Out of their misery they "cried to the Lord" who "saved them." It was the Lord who put them on a "straight road" that led to a "settled town." Continuing (at v.33), the psalmist invites all the people and the "elders" to "Exalt" the Lord. She then declares that the Lord is capable of extremes: the Lord can turn rivers running through the land into "wilderness" and the "fertile land into salt flats," "because of the evil of those who dwell there." The Lord can also turn "pools of water" into wilderness or parched land into springs of water. There the Lord "settles" the "hungry" and "founds a settled town." There God's people "sow fields and plant vineyards" and the Lord blesses them and they flourish.

OR

After the trauma of the fall of the Northern Kingdom and its capital Samaria to the Assyrians, a prophet named Micah, like his contemporary Isaiah, challenges the leaders of the Southern Kingdom with its capital Jerusalem. He directly and opening ridicules these leaders who "cry 'Peace'" when they have plenty to eat for themselves, but "declare war" on those who put nothing into their mouths. In such a bleak, dark time, without "vision," the "sun shall go down upon the prophets. They will be silent because they cannot grasp any "answer" from God. "But as for me," Micah announces, "I am filled with power, with the spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might" to declare to God's people and their leaders "who abhor justice and pervert all equity," who build with "blood" and "wrong." Those who are supposed to guarantee justice take "bribes" and the "priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money," but have the audacity to still presume "the Lord is with us." This is the reason Jerusalem will be leveled and returned to "plowed" land strewn with the ruins of the city.

Expressing isolation and the "deceit" of his own people, the psalmist cries to God for "Your light and Your truth." They will "guide" the psalmist and bring him back to "Your holy mountain/Your dwelling place." There, at "God's altar," he will "acclaim" God accompanied on a "lyre" his moaning and longing for God in whom he has "hope."

Having quickly left Thessaloniki, Paul now writes a letter of encouragement and exhortation to the community of believes there from both Jewish and Gentile backgrounds. Here he reminds them of his "blameless" behavior while he was with them and describes his work as nurturing them like a parent. He then depicts his teaching as "the word of God...not as human word, but as what it really is, God's word...." Now this "word" is "at work in you believers."

Only in Matthew's narrative does Jesus call out "the scribes and Pharisees who sit on Moses' seat..." in this particular confrontation. He tells the "crowds" to honor their knowledge and insight and to "practice and observe whatever they teach you and follow it...." But just as succinctly and bluntly he also tells them "do not do as they do for they do not practice what they teach." They pile on the shoulders of the devout elaborate, heavy religious rules and dense interpretations-- "burdens"-- but will not lift a finger to put their words into action. They enjoy wearing clerical garb "to be seen" and they crave "the place of honor," including the "best seats" and enjoy the honorific titles in the streets, but "you"-- this new community of believers-- are not to use titles, such as rabbi, Father or master. (Here the text repeats a saying that occurred earlier, 20:26-27): the person considered "greatest" among you will be the "servant" in your community. "...[W]hoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."

So mush religious energy, imagination and resources are devoted to defending THE (my!) faith, meaning its customs, institutions, practices, rules and venerable teachings; so much less is spent on doing the faith. It makes sense that human beings would prefer such efforts because they bring their own reward; the results are clear and easy and such efforts are always perceived as pious and noble. In the meantime, the hungry go hungry, those unfairly imprisoned stay in prison or are even executed, civic life corrodes, commerce favors the strongest, and public institutions fail to serve their communities honestly. The scriptures extol the necessity for sound teaching, efficacious exegesis and worthy worship, but these are no substitute for action, specifically and always making justice happen. Micah skewers the leaders for "perverting justice;" Jesus acknowledges that the religious leaders may get the words right, but are not following through with the actual deeds of justice; Paul sees a distinction between "human words" and God's "word," which "works" on and in believers.

Reflecting on another occasion when Jesus expressed exasperation for stalling (Mark 4:35ff), Catherine Keller, in her wonderful book, Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming, attributes "Jesus' irritation" to those who equate faith only with "belief, with knowledge, with any stash of propositions." But fail to "Bear the fruit, use the talent, heal the sick, feed the hungry, uncover the flame, make the peace." She calls this the "activating gospel." (p.214) An "activating gospel" works on and in believers, turning them into accomplished, skilled justice-workers. They know the "words" of faith as well as anyone, but they turn the words into deeds. Whoever exalts herself will be humbled, but whoever serves justice will be exalted in God's community."

Proper 25 Year A

2011-09-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

Proper 25 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Deuteronomy 34: 1-12; Psalm 90: 1-6, 13-17

OR

Leviticus 19: 1-2, 15-18; Psalm 1

I Thessalonians 2: 1-8; Matthew 22: 34-46

Moses climbs another mountain, Mt Nebo, from which he sees the land promised by God to Abraham and re-affirmed to Isaac and Jacob/Israel. And so the Torah ends with the death and burial of Moses, the only person who ever was "embraced" by God face to face. His successor, Joshua, is named. And the unparalleled story of the Lord's "mighty deeds and and all the terrifying display of power" done through Moses ends with the stated assumption that another like him had never been seen since.

The only psalm attributed to Moses dramatically contrasts our awareness of time-- like grass we sprout and grow in the morning and wither and die at night-- to God's time-- "forever and forever, You are God." This is the God from we ask "sweetness/graciousness."

OR

The writer of this excerpt from Leviticus incorporates into a summary of the Law given by God to Moses two crucial additions: "You shall by holy for I the Lord your God am holy." and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

This wisdom psalm, placed at the very beginning of the psalter, introduces a thread that runs throughout the collection: the wise person "murmurs" God's teachings day and night and will prosper, flourish and bear fruit; the "scoffer" will wither and fade into nothing.

Paul acknowledges the scepticism of his hearers in Thessaloniki because of other would-be leaders who have disillusioned them. But he reminds them that he did not use their well-known tactics-- flattery, angling for money and telling them what they wanted to hear. "But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply did we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us."

As others before him had done, Jesus links love of God and neighbor as the essence of the Law, (Deuteronomy 6:5). But then he poses a question to the Pharisees. If the Messiah is to come from the lineage of David, then why does David (in Psalm 110) address the Messiah as "my Lord?" They have no answer. Jesus leaves the clear impression that he knows directly about such matters.

Past, present and future conflate into a "moment" that surpasses words. Powerful memories from the past when God rescued the chosen from slavery in Egypt and all that had happened in the wilderness over the past forty years, now overwhelmed with grief by the death of Moses but literally standing within seeing distance of the land promised to Abraham so many generations earlier -- past, present and future fused into a "moment," a moment out of time.

It fits that the only psalm attributed to Moses reveals a keen awareness of the contrast between our awareness of time and God, who is "forever and ever."

In Being and Time, (p,370 ff) Martin Heidegger ponders the various awarenesses of time we know. He describes how each person has an awareness of her or his own past experiences, thoughts and feelings which are powerfully embedded in our memory. He also describes the Present, which is always a toss-up between just getting by, making the conventional or "average" choices and digging deeper into ourselves, owning who we are "authentically" and then making the most "caring" choice for ourselves and those who will be affected by our choices, (the kind of 'caring' Paul describes in today's epistle). Then he describes our awareness of the future as a mixture of who we have been in the past and the person we might become with "resoluteness," recognizing our "potentiality for being."

Then Heidegger arrives at one of his most crucial descriptions: "We therefore call the phenomenon of the future, the character of having been [the past] and the Present, the ecstasies of temporality." (p.377) In a footnote, the translators Macquairre and Robinson highlight the root of the Greek word to "ecstasy" and its closeness to another English word, "existence."

In such ecstatic "moments," (who knows the minutes, hours or even longer by human measurement), the confluence of past, present and open-ended future meet in a life-changing experience.

This is the "moment" on which the Torah concludes. It leaves the reader suspended in this "moment." It is the "moment" which we experience a few times in our lives and change the course of our lives.

Jesus creates such a "moment" in his question to the Pharisees. His question allows each person to infer on his or her own that Jesus was a descendant of a venerable mortal, David, and that he is also the One outside human history, the "Lord," the One who makes possible the future. And here he stands before them at this time and place and his presence demands a decision from each person.

A"moment" of ecstasy," of intense awareness of life at its most real, of "primordial existence," to use Heidegger's words. A "moment" in which I own my past as well as my future by the choices I make here and now.

Over and over, the biblical narratives attempt to induce such "moments" in those who dare to read these narratives and take them seriously. Walter Benjamin made a distinction between "information [that] does not survive the moment in which it was new" compared to "storytelling" that "preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time." (Illuminations, p.90) The scriptures, we can add, honor past displays of God's "power" and the women and men who gave testimony to it in their time. But they are not any sort of "information," they are stories that assume that God's "spirit" is timeless and still can still be released, even "after a long time."

Proper 24 Year A

2011-09-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

Proper 24 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Exodus 33: 12-23; Psalm 99

OR

Isaiah 45: 1-7; Psalm, 96: 1-9 (10-13)

Thessalonians 1: 1-10; Matthew 22: 15-22

Moses continues to press the Lord, who has given him the responsibility for leading the Lord's people, to reveal the Lord's-Self--"let me know Your ways, that I may know You...," Moses implores. The Lord promises that "My presence" will go with Moses and the Lord's people. Moses wants something more specific: "how, then, will it be known [to Your people and other peoples] that I have found favor in Your eyes...?" Even after the Lord responds, yet again, with assurance of the Lord's "favor," Moses persists: "Show me, pray, Your glory." Instead of direct revelation, which no one could survive anyway, the Lord promises to reveal the Lord's "goodness-grace-compassion." The Lord offers an alternative experience. Moses should hide in a "crag," so that when the Lord "passes over" the Lord will "shield" Moses with "My palm until I have passed over." Then, the Lord will take away the shielding "palm" and Moses will see the Lord's "back, but My face you will not see."

In vv 1-6, the psalmist calls upon the whole earth to give due regard to God's Name, which is great, fearful, holy. God's justice is like an ideal monarch's. Having painted a picture of the monarch/God enthroned, he now summons all to bow down to God's footstool (as close as one dare come). In vv 7-9, the psalmist asserts that this God of all people is the same who entered into the history of the chosen in specific, saving ways.

OR

God has just ordained Cyrus, King of Persia, as "shepherd," (44:28). Now Cyrus is called "my anointed" (a "messiah") as was David. Cyrus is given this sacred role to play by God although " you do not know me." God is the God of all creation, of "weal and woe," as well as of the chosen. There is no God comparable.

Patching together well-known fragments from other psalms, the psalmist offers what he calls a "new song" that praises the God distinct from all other gods. This God "rescues" all people daily (whether they know it or not), and gives fair justice. This God reigns throughout all nations and throughout all creation.

In the salutation of his letter to the congregation in Thessaloniki, Paul quickly reviews crucial points: faith, love and hope are verbs; God has chosen you; we have already proven to you the kind of people we are; your example of turning from idols "to serve a living and true God" inspires others wherever it is told; with us, you wait for the return of God's son.

Matthew ratchets up the tension between Jesus and the Jewish leaders by saying they are out to entrap him in public. The political/religious lightning rod is a tax imposed by the occupying Romans on the Jews. The Pharisees promote not paying the tax as a act of resistance, while the Herodians support paying the tax. (Herod's tact is to cooperate with the occupiers. It's how he rebuilt the Temple, after all, not to mention several palaces for himself as well!) On the surface, Jesus' answer seems obvious: pay to Caesar what you owe to Caesar and pay to God what you owe to God. But has he responded to their issues? His would-be entrappers are "amazed" and move away from the crowd around Jesus.

A subversive streak runs throughout the biblical narratives. At one point we were told Moses talked to God "face to face" (Exodus 33:11) and then immediately told no one sees God and lives. The dominant theme throughout the Hebrew scriptures is God's relationship with the chosen, but then God relies on a pagan superpower, Persia, and its King, Cyrus, to rescue and restore the chosen, even though Cyrus does not even know God. Throughout his entire teaching and in unforgettable dramatic daily demonstrations, Jesus continues and intensifies the insistence of the Law and the prophets on justice, but when it comes to application of the Law to the most important religious/political question of the day, he will not take sides.

We cannot not pin God down. God's ways are not our ways is a truism about which we must remind ourselves again and again. Yet, we can "know" God reliably. In Robert Alter's splendid translation and commentary on The Five Books of Moses (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), the professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkley, writes about today's appointed first excerpt from the Hebrew Scriptures: "God's intrinsic nature is inaccessible, and perhaps intolerable, to the finite mind of man (sic), but that something of His (sic) attributes-- His (sic) 'goodness,' the directional pitch of His (sic) ethical intentions, the afterglow of the effulgence of His (sic) presence-- can be glimpsed by humankind." (p. 506)

Still God takes the initiative to bridge this gap with sometimes dazzling and sometimes mundane traces of infinite "goodness-grace-compassion." Despite occasional brief successes in bridging this gap, there is also disappointment, confusion and flat out rejection on our part. But God tries repeatedly.

Responding to the latest work of Jean Luc Marion, Kathryn Tanner distills in a few sentences this story of God's giving of Self to us over and over. She writes: "God wants the return of our own love and gratitude and devotion to God's own mission of giving to others; that is the soteriological point of God's giving to us. Benefiting others is the end and whether God too might be benefited in some attenuated sense of 'benefit'-- our weak chorus of praise drowned in the already fulsome radiance of God's glory-- does nothing to corrupt the motive since God gives regardless. The unconditionally of God's giving simply means that God gives before any such return on our part, and that God continues to give even when that return fails to be made. indeed even if any such return were never to be made, for the sake of enabling it." (Counter-Experience: Reading Jean-Luc Marion, pp 221-222)

God uses what ever means God chooses, orthodox and unorthodox. It is equally true that we can and cannot see God; we get a glimpse-- God's glory "passes by"-- but we never fully see or understand because God's purposes are beyond understanding and only appear to us as extravagant, wild, unstoppable, senseless love, especially given our clueless responses.

Jesus chooses not to take sides in the issues that are so urgent to us at any given time because God has bigger fish to fry; God's interests lie with the whole world, those who know God and those who do not, those who acknowledge that God "rescues" each day and those who do not, those on both sides of our prejudices, the "weal ( well-being) and the woe," given your personal interests and perspective.

But there is another interpretation of Jesus' not taking sides-- and it is very important. The biblical narratives are jagged with "contradictions" and blanks left not filled in to our satisfaction to preserve its "subversive" task. Here the heuristic method in the biblical narratives becomes clear. We are told enough to engage our own moral responsibilities but God does not settle them on our schedule and to fit our needs. The biblical narratives do not offer facile settlements to our burning issues, rather they goad us to a deeper place to struggle and arrive at our best response, open to review by the community of believers and others who have a stake in our decisions, and, therefore, open to change. God tolerates wrong choices, even expects them. But God becomes impatient with short-cuts we devise to avoid the moral struggle that is at the core of the human experience.

Proper 23 Year A

2011-09-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

Proper 23 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Exodus 32: 1-14; Psalm 106: 1-6, 19-23

OR

Isaiah 25: 1-9; Psalm 23

Philippians 4: 1-9; Matthew 22: 1-14

The narrative about God's relationship with God's people (after seven intervening chapters of cultic law), continues with Moses unseen and unheard from for forty days in the smoke and flashes of fire on the mountaintop. The one who had lead them out of slavery and into the wilderness disappears and the people turn to his older brother and deputy, Aaron, to "make gods for us" to lead us. Aaron instructs the people to bring to him all their gold jewelry, which he has melted down and cast in the form of a "calf." In direct contradiction to the Commandments God has given, Aaron tells the people, "These are your gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt...." Aaron declares that the next day will be "a festival day to the Lord." The people offer "burnt offerings" and "sacrifices" and celebrate. The narrative at this point returns to the mountaintop where the Lord tells Moses what is happening and instructs him to, "Quick, go down, for your people that I brought up from Egypt has acted ruinously." Specifically, "they have swerved quickly fro the way" that I laid out for them. The Lord is ready to wipe them out when Moses "implores" the Lord to spare the people the Lord has already rescued once before. The Egyptians will feel vindicated and say that "the Lord brought them out of slavery only to destroy them in the mountains." Moses then invokes the covenant/relationship the Lord initiated and nurtured, repeatedly, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel. And the Lord "relented."

Recalling past infidelity, the psalmist confesses "We offend like our forefathers...."

OR

This collection of writings from several centuries gathered into one narrative called "Isaiah" careens between doomed judgment and transformtional hope. This excerpt reaches a pinnacle of hopefulness. Right on top of the debris and waste from humankind's war and greed, God will put on a feast and invite all nations. God will eliminate death, wipe away tears, blot out disgrace. "This is the Lord for whom we have waited."

Drawing from everyday, first-hand experiences in a pastoral society, the psalmist makes the Lord's tender intimacy and care palpable in concrete, specific images.

Concluding what appears to be an insertion (from Paul or another?) into the body of the letter to his favored community of believers in Philipi, the writer acknowledges the assistance of several women by name and then begins a series of exhortations to help people sustain themselves. He urges gentleness, patience, prayers of supplication and thanksgiving. He then lists virtues which he has taught and, he says, tried to exhibit. All this rests on one crucial hope, "The Lord is near."

Engaged with the issues of the emerging church in conflict with Jewish leaders and the curiosity of non-Jews, Matthew tells a story he says was told by Jesus. A king issues an invitation to a wedding banquet for his son. When those invited do not show up, he sends representatives to issue the king's invitation personally and urgently. They still do not come. They just go about their business. The king resents their ingratitude and sends troops [Romans] to destroy their city [Jerusalem]. Now the king sends his "slaves" [followers of Jesus the Christ] to invite literally anybody off the street, "both good and bad." At the party, the king noticed one who did not have on the proper attire and ordered him thrown out. "For many are called but few are chosen."

Hopeful narratives in the Bible push right up against the outer limits the human imagination. Isaiah presents in salivating detail the menu for an extravagant all-you-can-eat-and-drink banquet God will host right on top of the ruins of human war and greed. The psalmist describes God's longing for intimacy using at hand experience form the fields where sheep graze.

But the biblical narratives also record that the fulfillment of such hope can be in jeopardy. Despite God's infinite generosity and repeated wooing, we offend, just like those who have gone before us, the psalmist reminds us inconveniently. God's patience can even reach its limits and God considers giving up. Although many show up believing they can succeed where others have failed, we are rudely told, many are invited but few actually make it.

Disappointment on both sides make for a tumultuous relationship between God and us, the biblical narratives insist. The temptation is to domesticate this wild, untamed relationship; to mold an image of god/God more to our needs; to nuance God's commandments; to limit open-ended expectations.

Many postmodern writers have taken up the banner "let God be God." And they also embrace this tumultuous relationship of unmet expectations on both sides.

Consider for one example Emmanuel Levinas. In Alterity and Transcendence, Levinas embraces God's command, knowing we can never fulfill it totally. He writes: "This face of the other, without recourse, without security, exposed to my look and in its weakness and its mortality is also the one that orders me: 'Thou shalt not kill'. There is in the face, the supreme authority that commands, and I always say it is the word of God. The face is the locus of the word of God. There is the word of God in the other, a non-thematized word." (p. 104) Earlier, discussing the specific problem of Jewish-Christian relationships, Levinas insists that to take God's commands seriously solves nothing, on the contrary it sets in motion a series of "insoluble problems." He writes: "The presence of persons before a problem. Attention and vigilance: not to sleep until the end of time, perhaps. The presence of persons who, for once, do not fade away into words, get lost in technical questions, freeze up into institutions or structures. The presence of persons in the full force of their irreplaceable identity, on the full force of their inevitable responsibility. To recognize and name those insoluble substances and keep them from exploding in violence, guile or politics, to keep watch where conflicts tend to break out, a new religiosity and solidarity-- is loving one's neighbor anything other than this? Not the facile, spontaneous elan, but the difficult working on oneself...." ( pp 82-83) Commenting on the earlier excerpt in his explanation of the influence of Levinas on Marion, Kevin Hart reaches the conclusion that "I find that me desire to persist in my being... has always and already been interrupted by the trace of the infinite that signifies the other person. A claim is registered in me, one that I cannot satisfy either de facto or de jure and that therefore denies me the option of retiring from the field of ethical action with a good conscience." (Counter-Experience, p. 27)

Commands we cannot meet if we take them seriously lead to impatience on both sides of the relationship between God and us. There is also mutual disappointment, occasional moments of intimate tenderness, and falling in and out of love just like two lovers who cannot live without or with each other. This is the relationship the biblical narratives describe that gives life, but fails only when we do not maintain our side.

Proper 22 Year A

2011-09-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

Proper 22
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Exodus 20: 1-4,7-9; Psalm 19

OR

Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80: 7-14

Philippians 3: 4b-14; Matthew 21: 33-46

Robert Alter endorses the speculation of other scholars that an earlier version of the Ten Commandments was much more succinct (which would have, also, been more practical for incision into stone tablets than later, extended versions written on scrolls), The Five Books of Moses, [New York: w.w.Norton, 2004, pp 428-432]). God identifies God-Self as the same God known by a prior wondrous act of deliverance: the God "who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery...." The first four Commandments protect any reference to this God, --"for the Lord will acquit anyone who misuses his name"-- the remaining Commandments shift to Commandments for their well-being as community: keep the Sabbath, honor parents, shun murder, adultery, stealing, "coveting," and bearing "false witness." The gift of these Commandments is surrounded by "thunder, lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking...." Those who "witnessed" this display kept their distance out of fear. They implored Moses to "speak to us," because they believe that if "God speaks to us... we will die," because "God has come only to test us." This intimidating display serves the purpose of instilling respect and awe for the Commandments, "so that you do not offend..."

To the psalmist, the whole creation speaks in each daily cycle in "silence" to God's glory. [How does one hear this silent speaking?] The commands of this God are perfect, steadfast, unblemished, pure, truth. But our "unwitting sins" require us to beg to be cleared.

OR

Using a venerable metaphor, Isaiah likens God's investment in Israel/Judah to the gardener of a vineyard. The gardener prepared the soil and planted the best available vines. But when it came to time to enjoy the harvest of his hard work, all he got was "wild grapes." Now angry, the gardener tore down the protecting wall and allowed the garden to be overrun. To make certain the point of this story is not lost on his listeners, Isaiah makes it clear that the gardener is God and the garden is Israel/Judah. For all God's labor, attention, investment and nurturing, God expected justice but got bloodshed; expected righteousness but got cries of injustice.

The psalmist also uses the gardener metaphor to describe God's establishment of a "vine out of Egypt." Why, the psalmist cries, did You allow it to be overrun?

Paul's entire identity had been shaped as a Hebrew-- Pharisee and passionate defender of Israel. Then he met Christ. All that is meaningless now. Paul has a new goal, a new cause "to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his suffering by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may obtain the resurrection from the dead."

Jesus has just indicted his listeners for their failure to respond to John the Baptizer and told them that "tax collectors and prostitutes" will participate in Gods realm ahead of religious leaders, (see last Sunday's gospel, 21:23-32). Now he adds insult to injury by telling another story, which thinly disguises their lack of response to him as further evidence for an indictment against them. This story is about a "landowner" who first sent his "slaves" to "collect the produce" from his land. But the "tenants" abused and killed them. He then sent more "slaves" who were also rejected. Finally, he sent his "son," assuming they will now "repent." But they immediately decide to "kill him and get his inhertiance." Jesus, in the classic manner of a rabbinic teacher, asks his listeners: what will the landowner do to these tenants? They respond that he will put them to "a miserable death" and "leave" the land to "other tenants." Jesus quotes Scripture (Psalm 118:22-23): "the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone...." In case he has been too subtle, Jesus now says bluntly (only in Matthew's version): "the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom." The religious authorities want to arrest him on the spot, but "feared the crowds, because they regraded his as a prophet."

Biblical narratives operate in three environments-- God, us and the gap between.

When speaking about God or reporting God's direct speech the words used include true, trustworthy, rock, steadfast, perfect, pure. And as Walter Brueggemann notes, "Yahweh is a God who commands (swh). The foremost mode by which Yahweh communicates to Israel is by commandment (miswah) and Israel' crucial mode of engagement is by obedience (sm). " He calls chapter 20 of Exodus God's "primal command." (Theology of the Old Testament, 1997, p. 181 ff) When God speaks in biblical narratives, it is accentuated with lightning, fire, earthquake, violent wind.

When speaking of us, the biblical narratives are blunt, honest, probing. In his seminal study of the Western imagination, Mimesis, Erich Auerbach contrasts classical treatment of human nature to the emerging Christian perspective this way, "the deep subsurface layers [of how humans understand themselves] which were static for the observers of classical antiquity, began to move" (p.45) Later he notes that St. Augustine is "outside the style of his age" because "he feels and directly presents human life, and it lives before our eyes." (p.70) Later still, he finds in the writings of the sixth century Bishop of Tours, Gregory, further realism: "This brutal life becomes a sensible object; to him who would describe it, it presents itself as devoid of order and difficult to to order, but tangible, earthy, alive. Gregory was a Bishop-- it was his duty to develop Christian ethical attitudes; his office was a practical and demanding one, in which the cure of souls might at any moment be combined with political and economic questions." "Nothing human is foreign to Gregory" (p. 91)His observations of the formative centuries of Christianity led Auerbach to conclude, "Christianization is directly concerned with and concerns the individual person and the individual event." (p. 92)

What of the gap between God and us? If God is pure and steadfast but we are unsteady and fickle, how do we respond? The biblical narratives describe responses that include indifference, rejection and desire; the gap either overwhelms or inspires. (In the appointed readings for this Sunday, Isaiah describes indifference, the gospel describes rejection and the psalmist and Paul show passion.) God repeatedly reaches out to us across the gap and each person responds for himself or herself.

John Caputo finds in the work of postmodern writers, especially Derrida, fresh descriptions of a passionate response to this gap. Calling Derrida a "Jewish Augustinian," Caputo discovers in his work " a desire beyond desire, as a desire for God... a restless heart that desires we do not know [fully] quite what, where the name of God is the name of our desire even as it is the best name we have for what we do not know." (Kevin Hart, ed., Counter-Experience, p. 74) We are left then with "a justice to come that denounces the injustice in what at present calls itself just or democratic." "We do not know [fully] what this justice is, but we do know "that nothing present can lay claim to it. Thus the effect of the call to come is not to predict anything coming but to intensify our desire." (Ibid) Unsteady and fickle as we are, we can still find some life-giving response. "Our best words are empty intentions, promises that have not and cannot be kept, words that we cherish because of the promises they make but do not quite keep." (p. 76)

The gap between God and us is unstable even tempestuous. In the biblical narratives God commands justice but then pleads, cajoles over and over and over when we do not love and do justice. We are preoccupied with "more important" concerns or we outright reject God's commands and God's repeated reaching out to us. The biblical narratives also describe in excruciating detail our flawed responses. We can feign contentment with the gap or it can become for us the source of passion for the impossible.

A few pages after considering the event described in today's reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, Kevin Hart considers the 'gap' we have been discussing this way: "For God opens the space wherein love can be ventured, and the first step is always his (sic). As absolute subject, God never presents himself (sic) as object in any sense, and so he (sic) comes to us not as experience but in (emphasis added) experience: not as that which we can appropriate, render proper to consciousness, but rather as a mystery that passes through our lives, a disturbance that opens our ways of being, doing, and thinking..." (The Experience of God: a Postmodern Response, pp 80-81)

Proper 19 Year A

2011-09-05T11:52:00.000-07:00

Proper 19 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Exodus 14:19-31; Psalm 114; OR "The Song of Moses and Miriam" (Genesis 15:1b-11,20-21)

OR

Genesis 50: 15-21; Psalm 103: (1-7), 8-13

Romans 14: 1-12; Matthew 18: 21-35

The "angel of the God" and the "pillar of cloud" that had been in front of the Israelites now moves behind, coming "between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel." It lit up the sky all night. "Moses stretched out his hand over the sea." And, "the Lord drove the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided." The Israelites walked through the riverbed on "dry land" as the water formed a "wall for them on their right and on their left." The Egyptian army pursued them. "At the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and cloud looked down upon the Egyptian army, and threw the Egyptian army into panic." The Lord "clogged their chariot wheels. When the Egyptians saw what was happening, they said: "Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt." The Lord told Moses to stretch out "his hand over the sea, and "at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth." As the Egyptians tried to flee, "the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea." The sea covered over "the entire army of Pharaoh;" not one survived. "Thus the Lord saved Israel...." Israel saw the great work the Lord did...." And "the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant, Moses."

Without any sort of introductory petition or summons to praise, the psalmist (114) plunges straight into re-telling the spectacular escape of God's people from slavery and subsequent establishment in Judah, their "sanctuary." He then references the two occasions, forty years apart, when God parted water so that they walked to safety on dry land-- when God parted the Red Sea when they fled Egypt and, when God parted the Jordan River under Joshua's leadership and they went into the promised land. The psalmist asks rhetorically: What is going on with such bizarre disruptions of nature? Dance, twirl, spin, whirl "before the God of Jacob," who turns rock into water (Exodus 17)!

OR

Moses and Miriam, his half-sister and sister of Aaron, lead God's people in singing praises for God's deliverance at the Red Sea due to the Lord's direct interventions. The Lord "blew forth a mighty tempest/and the sea swallowed them up." Miriam raised her tambourine and "all the women danced with their tambourines, repeating the victorious refrain: "Sing to the Lord, the Exalted One/who hurled horse and rider into the sea."

OR

The saga of Joseph and his brothers concludes. Their father, Jacob/Israel, has died and been taken back to Canaan for burial, as he requested. The brothers, suspecting that Joseph might now "pay us back for all the evil we caused him," sent a message to Jacob saying it was their father's last wish that he "forgive... the offences of your brothers for evil they have caused you." Then his brothers came to him in person, "flung themselves before him" and offered themselves to him as "slaves." But as he had done when they were reunited for the first time, Joseph assures them that, although they "meant evil toward me, God meant it [their selling him into servitude] for good...." This was the way God's people survived. He promises them, once again, his personal protection.

The psalmist addresses her own soul: "Bless the Lord, all my soul;" never forget the Lord's "generous acts." The Lord forgives, heals, redeems and "crowns you with kindness and compassion... and sates you with good....." The Lord performs "righteousness" and "justice." The Lord took the initiative to make the Lord's ways "known to Moses and the Lord's "feats" to all Israel. "Compassionate and gracious... slow to anger" is the Lord. The Lord does not deal with us as we deserve. As high as the heavens, as far as east is from west, God's "kindness" distances our "transgressions." As a parent for a child, so "the Lord has compassion..." on us.

Paul addresses controversy over the variety of customs in the early church regarding fasting and eating and days of observance. These differences are trivial. What matters is the common purpose to honor and serve the Lord. Rather than focus on differences with others, focus on yourself because "each of us is accountable to God" not for others but for ourselves.

Jesus has just given instructions for settling disputes within the church (Mt 18:15-20, last Sunday's gospel), when Peter (only in Matthew's narrative) asks for clarification: "Lord how often should I forgive?" In Matthew's narrative, only, Jesus throws out an extravagant figure, "not seven time [as in Luke's version, 17:4], but seventy times seven." Then follows a comparison parable, also unique to Matthew, about one who had been forgiven a very sizable debt but did not forgive others who owed him much smaller debts. When the one who had been so generous heard about it, he had the man put in jail until he paid all the original, huge debt. "So my heavenly Father will also do to everyone of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart."

Joseph's unmerited forgiveness of his brothers deserves two tellings; once when they are reunited for the first time and again after their father dies and the brothers worry that Joseph might now get his revenge, to which he would be entitled. Both times, the brothers throw themselves on Joseph's mercy and both times Joseph goes out of his way to assure them he will not treat them as they deserve, but with kindness. Both times, grown men weep uncontrollably. The psalmist (103) stings together all the experiences of God that cause her such gratitude and joy-- God's forgiveness, healing, kindness, compassion, and life's sheer abundance. Only Matthew's narrative includes a story told by Jesus that has a clear, unambiguous point: forgive others as frequently and as completely as you already know you have been forgive.

In The Weakness of God: A Theology of Event, John Caputo quotes Jacques Derrida and the other "famous deconstructionist," St. Thomas Aquinas, as he considers the power of forgiveness. "Forgiveness is the gift in which I give away the debt you owe me.... That is why, when someone owes us something, we say we 'have something on them,' which means that in forgiveness, I give up what I have on the other. I release them, dismiss their debt, and let it go." He then quotes Aquinas directly: "a gift is literally a giving that can have no return, i.e., it is not given with the intention that one can be repaid and it thus connotes a gratuitous donation. Now the basis of such free giving is love...." [Summa Theologica, P.I,Q.38.a.2,c] Or as Derrida asks and Caputo notes: "And does one have to deserve forgiveness? One may deserve an excuse, but ought not forgiveness be accorded without regard to worthiness?" [Given Time, trans. Peggy Kamuf, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p.162]

So, consider an insight from Hannah Arendt drawn from her dramatic life. A student of Heidegger, Husserl and Jaspers and classmate of Gadamer, soon after she finished her graduate education she was put in a Nazi concentration camp because of her Jewish birth. She escaped, came to the USA where she lectured and taught at some of the most prestigious universities and also wrote for The New Yorker magazine, including covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Her articles were published as a book whose subtitle is "A Report on the Banality of Evil." Her perspective rejected the classic Western notion of an abstract human nature and instead focused on the behavior of each person within the context of The Human Condition, which is the title of what is generally regarded as her most important writing. In it, this secular Jew, survivor of the Holocaust and first-person witness to the trial of "the architect of the Holocaust" writes: "the discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth." "...It is not true that only God has the power to forgive..." This power to forgive "must be mobilized by man toward each other before they can hope to be forgiven by God also. Jesus' formulation is even more radical. Man in the gospel is not supposed to forgive because God forgives and he must do 'likewise,' but 'if ye from your hearts forgive,' God shall do 'likewise'." (Here she cites the last verse of today's appointed gospel, v. 350) While epic crime and evil are rare, she continues, "trespassing is an everyday occurrence which is in the very nature of action's constant establishment of new relationships within a web of relations, and, it needs forgiving, dismissing, in order to make it possible for life to go on [emphasis added] by constantly releasing men from what they have done unknowingly.
(Here she cites Luke 17: 1-5) Only through this constant mutual release from what they do to each other can men remain free agents, only by constant willingness to change their minds and start again [emphasis added] can they be trusted with so great a power as that to begin something new." (1958: University of Chicago Press, p. 237 ff)

Is forgiveness as the means for starting over, allowing something new, renewal of life the central theme of biblical narratives? God forgives over and over to "preserve life," allow rebirth; we forgive to restore relationships and "start again." The gospels offer, each in its own way, Jesus as the embodiment of God's power of forgiveness so life can be renewed. If this is the central, transformative theme, is everything else relatively trivial? Isn't this literally the difference between life and death, survival and destruction? As long as there is daily human living, there will also be the need to re-discover again and again the power of forgiveness "from the heart."

Proper 21 Year A

2011-08-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

Proper 21 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Exodus 17: 1-7; Psalm 78: 1-4, 12-16

OR

Ezekiel 18: 1-4, 25-32; Psalm 25: 1-8

Philippians 2: 1-15; Matthew 21: 23-32

Just three days after their miraculous deliverance from slavery, God's people "murmur" against their leaders about the lack of water (Ex.15:22ff); just two months later, they "murmured" about the scarcity of food and water (Ex.16:1ff); and now they "dispute" with Moses, again, about the lack of water. This time, Moses fears for his life. But the Lord instructs Moses to "pass" in front of the people with some elders and carrying the (shepherd's?) "staff with which you struck the Nile..." with the foreknowledge that the Lord is about to enable Moses to strike "the rock in Horeb" and "water will come out of it and the people will drink." When this spectacular display of God's goodness happened, Moses named the place "Testing and Dispute", "Massah and Meribah" "for the disputation of the Israelites, and for the testing the Lord, saying, 'Is the Lord in our midst or not?"

The psalmist declares that he will rhapsodize the history of God's "wonders," for the next and future generations, including when Moses "split" rock in the wilderness and the Lord brought forth water "like rivers...."

OR

When life is not fair, is it a result of our action, our parents (or some others) or God? Through Ezekiel, God informs that each person knows the consequences of her or his decisions-- not others, not God, no one else. "Turn and live."

Painfully aware of his "youthful offenses" and "past crimes," the psalmist calls for God's mercy as he "lifts his [nefesh] heart." According to Robert Alter, the Hebrew noun nefesh means my "essential self."

Paul identifies ideal traits of the community of believers: "encouragement in Christ," "love," "sharing in the Spirit," "compassion and sympathy," "humility." In vv 6-11 he seems to quote an existing hymn which comments on the paradox that Jesus did not exploit his status but "emptied himself." Within this community of believers, each person should emulate Jesus in her or his own unique way: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling: for it is God at work in you."

While all three synoptic gospel narratives include this story of this particular conflict over his "authority" between Jesus and the "chief priests and elders" ("Scribes") soon after he enters Jerusalem and the Temple, only Matthew continues with a scathing story. When challenged about his authority, Jesus responded that after they answer a question he has for them, he will respond to their question: Who gave John the Baptizer his authority; was it from "heaven" or "human?" The religious leaders argued among themselves: if they said "heaven," Jesus will ask them why they did not "believe" John; if they said "human," they risk the anger of the people, who regarded John as a "prophet." "We do not know," they finally replied. "Neither will I tell you by what authority" I do what I do. Now Jesus asked these religious authorities their opinion about "a man who had two sons." The father told the first son to go tend the vineyard "today." At first he refused, but then went and did as his father had told him to do. He went to the second son with the same command. At first he said he would go, but actually did not. "Which of the two did the will of the Father?" They answered, "the first." Then Jesus confronted them harshly: "tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you," because they responded to John the Baptizer and you did not. Even after you saw God's work through John, "you did not change your minds and believe him."

Two important themes in these important readings enter into a powerful conversation.

1) Our expectations, which give us comfort and security, can and will be disrupted. The children of Israel had come to expect God's miracles as routine and complained when they felt God was not reliably present. When John the Baptist and Jesus came out of nowhere, declaring and acting out God's work in the world, and gained popular followings for their message and deeds, the established religious leaders and the venerable traditions in which they had invested their lives, their status and from which they received their livelihood were threatened. They did not respond to God's word/Word.

2) Each person endures the consequences of a lifetime of decisions; we cannot hold others responsible, (including our parents). Or, as Paul so memorably puts it, "work out your own salvation in fear and trembling...."

Here is how these two themes could comment on each other. Our expectations can be disrupted so thoroughly that we are forced to face ourselves without the web of image, status, and reputation that we have invested our whole lives in constructing for ourselves. Our human habit is to shape expectations to suit our needs. We find and then help reinforce systems, messages, institutions, leaders and even beliefs that support our needs, our status. But when they are threatened or even taken away from us, we are left with our own "essential self," as the psalmist says.

Martin Heidegger made many keen observations about the "essential self" in Being and Time. A key distinction made right at the beginning of his major work is between "averageness" and "authenticity." Averageness includes the superficialearned knowledge of ourselves as we really are, our actual aspirations, motives and goals, our unfinished, raw self. He uses synonyms for authenticity which can be translated as "mineness" and "ownedness." The ultimate crisis, he says, that causes us to face our self is our own death. But other loses throughout life can jolt us out of "averageness." At such times, when we "own" our true self-- or at least as fully as we can-- can, in its very being , 'choose' itself and win itself; it can also lose itself and never win itself; or only 'seem' to do so." (p. 68) Or as Ezekiel demands, "Turn and live!"

Jesus insists that the person who has some insight about her or his true self and has also experienced some life-changing encounter with God's justice, mercy, and compassion will enter the realm of God's domain before those who are so successfully invested in illusions about themselves, no matter how well it all comes together for them in everyday life. "Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling: for it is God at work in you."

Proper 20 Year A

2011-08-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

Proper 20 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Exodus 16: 2-15; Psalm 105: 1-6, 37-45

OR

Jonah 3: 10 - 4:11; Psalm 145: 1-8

Philippians 1: 21-30; Matthew 20: 1-16

Just two months after God's spectacular deliverance of God's people from slavery, they complain to their leaders, Moses and Aaron: "If only we had died in Egypt, where we... ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill the whole assembly with hunger." But the Lord tells Moses, "I am about to rain down bread from the heavens, and the people shall go out and gather each day's share on that day, so that I may test them whether they will go by My teaching or not." And, on the sixth day, the Lord will provide enough for two days. Moses and Aaron deliver the news to the people, telling them also that their "murmuring" against them is actually complaining against the Lord who has heard them. Moses instructs Aaron to tell the Israelites the news again, when "they turned toward the wilderness and... the Lord's glory appeared in the cloud." And again the Lord instructs Moses to tell the people they have been heard and they "shall have your fill of bread, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God." "That evening, quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp." When the dew lifted, there is a "stuff fine, flaky...." The people say to each other, "'Man hu, What is it?' For they did not know what it was." Moses tells them, "It is the bread that the Lord has given you as food."

This psalm reviews in poetry Israel's memory of God's powerful, generous "deeds" and "wonders" in the past, including the wondrous gift of "quail"and "bread from heaven" and water from a rock in the wilderness. These appointed verses mention the crisis in the wilderness when God not only saved Israel, but promised more than just what was needed. God "opened the rock and water flowed/ it went forth in parched land as a stream." All this was the continuing fulfillment of the Lord's "holy word" to Abraham.

OR

Although Israel's narratives traditionally privilege Israel as God's favored, this story says God's favor can be shown even to Israel's enemies ! Jonah is angry, very angry, angry enough to prefer to die rather than play any role in God's favor to an enemy. God challenges Jonah: "Is it right for you to be angry?" Jonah walks away to sit under a bush and seethe. God causes the bush to wither and die. Now Jonah is also angry about the bush that has abandoned him. But God reminds Jonah that he had nothing to do with the appearance or disappearance of the protective bush, alluding to the fact that only God decides when, where, how and on whom God favors gifts.

The psalmist vows to exalt/bless the Name of the Lord "everyday." God's "grandeur," "wondrous acts," "great goodness," "grace" and "loving-kindness" inspire her and "one generation to the next."

Paul claims that sometimes he would welcome death as release from his complicated and sometimes dangerous life and the opportunity to "be with Christ." But he labors on for the communities of believers like this one, the Philippians. He offers himself as an example of the way they should welcome adversity when it accompanies their "salvation."

As Jesus and his followers get closer to Jerusalem, Matthew increases the tension and, alone among the gospel writers, has Jesus tell this unforgettable -- and somewhat disturbing--story. An employer unfairly pays all his workers the same. Those who have worked all day in the scorching heat are paid the same as those who worked only a short time after 5:00 PM ! When those who have worked the longest and hardest protest, the one who pays their salary says: I choose to give to the last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?"

What is familiar in the story of Jonah and Jesus' story in Matthew is human jealousy based on a legitimate sense of unfairness; what is shocking is the real nature of God's love, which shatters our sense of fairness. God's love is unfair, excessive, extravagant, seemingly arbitrary even moody. It is outrageous ! It comes out of nowhere (like water out of a stone) and sometimes seems to flow more to those in need rather than the deserving.

Jean-Luc Marion's 2002 study, Being Given, has become a significant and fecund contribution. He states early that his sole purpose is to show that everything we experience as human beings is best understood "under the jurisdiction of giveness." (p. 40) In step by step detail that produces a sheen of brilliance, he says we will understand ourselves and our world better if we see our selves first not as givers but as "gifted." This status is not something we earned or even deserved, it is the essence of life, the force that sustains life. Among the many implications of this insight, Marion demonstrates, we discover that we are not so much "producers" of meaning as "witnesses" to what existed before we were born, sustains us everyday and will continue after we die. We do not "grasp" so mush as we "receive." We do not "define" life so mush as we are "witnesses" to its wonders. We are sustained not as much by knowledge as we are by "surprise" and "wonder." Finally, and perhaps surprising to those not familiar with Marion's work, he says we are guided not so much by "ethics" as we are by "love." We understand ourselves best not so much by "self-positing" as by "surrender."

This notion that we know ourselves best when we see ourselves as "gifted" is not new with Marion. Husserl and Heidegger introduced the suggestion at the beginning of the last century and the works of Karl Barth and Hans urs von Balthasaar, among others, are seen as theological expansion of the notion. But Marion has renewed the earlier work of others and given it greater clarity and excitement. And once again it is opening fresh ways to understand the extravagant claims made throughout the biblical texts about the radical nature of God's love. "God's greatness cannot be fathomed." "I choose to give to the last the same as I give to you." God's goodness is like "water out of a stone"-- its unidentifiable source, sheer abundance and where it flows startle us and leave us gasping. We come to not so much fret about its seeming arbitrariness as the wonder of it all and our delighted discovery that we are "gifted."

Lent in the year 387 was a time of crisis for the church in Antioch. While away, the bishop asked an assistant, John, to lead the people in his absence. Throughout that Lent, John preached fervently. By the time they got to Easter, John preached a sermon that contributed to his earning the nick name, "golden mouth," or Chrysostom. With this story of Jesus that is unique to Matthew in his heart and mind, John preached: "Whoever is weary of fasting, let him now receive his earnings. Whoever has labored from the first hour, let him today accept his just reward. Whoever has arrived only at the eleventh hour, let him not fear the delay, for the Master is gracious: He receives the last even as the first; he gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, as well as to him that has labored from the first, and to him that delayed. Therefore let everyone enter into the joy of the Lord! The first and the last, receive your wages. Rich and poor, dance with each other. The temperate and the slothful, honor this day. You who have fasted and you who have not, rejoice this day! Let no one bewail his transgressions, for forgiveness has risen from the grave. Let not one fear death, for the Savior's death has set us free."

When something goes wrong, we ask "O God why me?" When life is rich and full why then do we not ask then "O God why me?"

God's love is outrageous! Live with it!

Proper 18 Year A

2011-08-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

Proper 18 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149

OR

Ezekiel 33: 7-11; Psalm 119: 33-40

Romans 13: 8-14; Matthew 18: 15-20

After 430 years in Egypt (v.40) and violent negotiations between God's representative, Moses, and Pharaoh for the release of God's people, they are now on the eve of escape when Moses and Aaron are given detailed instructions for the establishment of a new, annual observance. On what is the "tenth" day for God's people in the "first month of the year," every household shall take a lamb, (shared with neighbors if appropriate), so that everyone has a portion. This 'unblemished lamb, a yearling make," shall be kept for four days and then every household shall slaughter its lamb "at twilight." "And they shall take the blood and put it on the two door posts and lintel on the house in which they will eat it." With the "fire-roasted" lamb, they shall eat "flat bread on bitter herbs." Leftovers shall be burnt the next morning. While eating this special meal, you shall be dressed, ready to move in "haste," because with this meal of "passover offering," God's people begin their exodus. Every first-born in Egypt "from man and beast" will die, but God's people will be spared. "I will see the blood [on the doorposts and lintels] and I will pass over you...." "And this day shall be a remembrance for you, and you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord through your generations, an everlasting statue you shall celebrate it."

The psalmist summons singers, dancers and instrumentalists to perform a new, large composition in praise of the Lord-- Maker, Redeemer, Avenger.

OR

The book of Ezekiel records the Lord's orders to the Lord's sentinel. Warn the people. If they do not respond, at least one witness--the sentinel --will be saved. If they do, all will be saved from the coming destruction and death.

The psalmist invokes following the Torah and all its synonyms-- ordinances, law, ways, teachings-- as the path to a bountiful life.

Echoing the teaching of Jesus, Paul writes that the whole Law is fulfilled by "the one who loves another." Paul stresses urgency, "for salvation is nearer to us than when we first became believers." In the meantime, do not give in to lower instincts.

In a passage unique to Matthew (who provides instructions to the church frequently), Jesus describes how the church ought to deal with differences. The first step is to go directly to the other person and try to settle the dispute. If you work it out, you have gained a friend. If that does not work, take two or three others with you. If that fails, take it to the whole church. If he still refuses to listen, let him become an outsider, "as a Gentile and a tax collector." Whatever the church agrees to will also "be bound in heaven...." Furthermore, if "two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."

A religious community declares the promises of God in praise and prayer which follow closely biblical examples, including exact phrases and inspired paraphrases to assert to all God's love and God's power. These liturgical observances of memory and praise inspire hope from generation to generation. They are done "perpetually" for the survival of the community.

The other major function of the religious community is interpretation in word and deed. And that gets more complicated.

In Being and Time, Heidegger insists that while assertions can be made and passed on from person to person and generation to generation, fixed interpretation cannot. He writes: "That which is put forward as assertion is something that can be passed along for 'further re-telling' which "...may become veiled again in the further re-telling.. and does not 'give assent' to some 'valid meaning' which has been passed along." (pp 197-198, 155)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty's work (which influenced Levinas and Derrida especially) returns repeatedly to the theme that thinking is always embodied in a specific person with a unique personal and social history in community with others. Each person arrives at contingent truth that is truthful for her or him in her or his finite status. Each person is unique but not alone. The other person, the community and human expression of speech bring unique persons into proximity to each other. Speech "incarnates," "uses" words to convey meaning as he or she understands it. When the other reciprocates, there is new meaning. Speech and action declare who we are at a certain time and circumstance but the speech and actions of others change the individual, too.

A religious community asserts the glory of God and the hope to which the glory of God gives to all. But the interpretation of these profound assertions in word and action vary by each unique person who is always being changed by the community of believers and who contributes to the community in her or his unique way.

American theologian Kathryn Tanner contributes timely insights when she writes: "Uniformity of belief in general is overrated as a requirement for social stability, according to postmodern culture." "Far from threatening the stability of the Christian way of life, the fact that Christians do not agree on interpretation of matters of common concern is the very thing that enables social solidarity among them." The church should encourage itself to have "a genuine community of argument, one marked by mutualcommitment to mutual correction and uplift, in keeping with the shared hope of good discipleship, proper faithfulness, and purity of witness. This is the sort of mutual admonition and concern that one finds in the letters of Paul." (Theories of Culture, pp 120-128)

Personal witness contributes to and is changed by community/communication. The community is changed by the witness of the individual. All suffer when it does not flourish. Not "toleration," not "diversity," but honest expression of personal conviction treated as necessary for the actual life of the whole community is what is called for. This is a high expectation. It does not give in to our "lower instincts." It values and holds accountable the individual and community equally. It is peculiarly biblical.

Proper 17 Year A

2011-08-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

Proper 17 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Genesis 3: 1-15; Psalm 105: 1-6, 23-26, 45c

OR

Jeremiah 15: 15-21; Psalm 26: 1-8

Romans 12: 9-21; Matthew 16: 21-28

Moses was shepherding his father-in-law's flock near Mt Horeb when a messenger/angel of the Lord "appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush" which burned, but was not "consumed." Moses "turned aside" to look at this stunning sight more closely when "God called to him from the midst of the bush" , telling him "Here I am." God instructs Moses to come no closer and to remove his sandals, "for the place you are standing on is holy ground." God identifies God-Self as the same God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Moses hid his face in fear as the Lord continued, "I indeed have seen the abuse of my people" under their Egyptian "taskmasters" and "know its pain." Moved by their plight, the Lord announced: "I have come down to rescue it from the land of Egypt and to bring it to a goodly and spacious land" that flourishes with abundance, although already occupied by other peoples. The Lord repeated awareness of their plight and told Moses he will be the one sent to Pharaoh. Moses was incredulous! The "sign" that all this was the Lord's doing will be fulfilled "when you bring the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain." Pressed for more explicit authorization from the Lord, Moses asked for a name beyond "the God of our Fathers." And God said to Moses, "I-am-Who-I-am." That is the name you should tell the people, adding that this is the same name as "the Lord of your fathers..."[and mothers]. "That is my name forever, and this my title for all generations."

Revel in that "Holy Name," the psalmist invites, and then "recall the wonders God did." Rehearse the stories of Jacob and Moses. Sing! Hymn!

OR

Jeremiah begs the Lord, "remember me and visit me." He "ate" the "words" of the Lord, in which he "delighted," but for which he endured "insult." The prophet says the Lord is like a "deceitful" stream that promises water but the drys up. The Lord speaks: "If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth." The people will fight you, "but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you...."

The psalmist professes his innocence before he washes his hands in preparation for praise.

Paul combines tactical advice for living in a world that is suspicious of these new followers of this Jesus. Care for members of the community of believers. He also advises to care for you enemies for a rather nasty reason, "for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." In summary, "overcome evil with good."

In Matthew's narrative, Jesus has just identified Peter's confession of faith as a "rock" upon which the church will be built and then explicitly tells his disciple for the first time that "he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering... and be killed, and on the third day be raised." Peter chastises Jesus, "this must never happen to you." Jesus shuts Peter down absolutely: "get behind me Satan!" Your priorities are a "stumbling block to me," because you are focused not on "divine things but on human things." Jesus makes it clear to any would-be followers, "take up your cross and follow me...." The stakes are high: "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." And then in an atmosphere of impending apocalypse, Jesus declares that "the Son of Man is to come... in the glory of the Father" and bring judgment with him. When? "[S]ome standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Mn coming in his kingdom."

In the biblical narratives, encountering God is befuddling, frightening, and irresistible. Each encounter leaves the poor individual with some impossible task that is scary and, at the same time, full of promise. It is always conveyed in the imperative; a demand. The only possible reaction is to accept or decline the demand. Acceptance always means personal risks. Declining entails the even greater risk of missing out on living an enlarged life with some more powerful purpose; to only see "human things" and miss "divine things."

The recent work of Jean-Luc Marion generates notable excitement among theologians. In a worthy collection of essays in response to the French "neo-phenomenologist," Emmanuel Falque quotes Marion's definition of "saturated phenomenon" as "where the manifest given goes beyond not only what a human look can bear without being blinded and dying but what the world in its essential finitude can receive and contain." And what is a consequence of this overwhelming experience? "[T]he miracle will no longer bear on a physical event, but on my consciousness itself." And then Falque observes, "The true miracle, according to Marion, is in this way, a miracle of my consciousness, a lived experience in the conversion of my way of looking at things, rather than in the things themselves." (Kevin Hart, ed., Counter- Experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion, p. 192)

Moses is dazzled and confused, but will play that pivotal role in God's next act of salvation; Jeremiah "ate God's words" and personally suffered for it but is told by God that he will have the extraordinary human privilege of being God's mouth; Jesus describes a humbling and dangerous passage for him and those who follow him that is the only way that will lead to a final day of redemption.

God reveals. We are stunned and confused. We are changed and see new possibilities for ourselves and others we would not have even guessed at before. We are exposed to the "possibility of the impossible," in Marion's phrase.

Proper 16 Year A

2011-07-26T08:11:00.000-07:00

Proper 16 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Exodus: 1:8-2:10; Psalm 124

OR

Isaiah 51:1-6; Psalm 138

Romans 12: 1-8; Matthew 16: 13-20

The narrative of the patriarchs and matriarchs shifts to the story of the Israelites in Egypt. In last Sunday's excerpt, Joseph promised that his father, brothers and their families would flourish under his protection in Egypt; and flourish they did, dramatically fulfilling God's promise to Abraham and Sarah of many descendants. The new Pharaoh, "who knew not Joseph" feels threatened because they could make an alliance with enemies outside Egypt. His first tactic is to "abuse them" by imposing on them hard labor on vast building projects. When their population continues to grow, they are subjected to "crushing labor." The "King of Egypt" orders a sinister policy that all Egyptian midwives destroy all Israelite newborn males at birth, but let girls live. But the midwives "feared God" and did not follow his orders.   When interrogated, the midwives respond that the Israelite women are too "hardy" and deliver their babies before the midwives could get to them. "And God made it go well for the midwives," who flourished with their own husbands and children. Now Pharaoh issues a directive for the whole nation to throw every male Israelite newborn into the Nile. But, the Israelites grow even stronger. The story now shifts to the fate of one infant male. An Israelite family, "from the house of Levi," had a son, whom the mother hid for months. When she could no longer keep him hidden, she made an "ark," (the same Hebrew word as is used in the story of Noah), put the infant boy in it and released it on the banks of the Nile. His older sister kept watch from the shore. Pharaoh's daughter came to bathe in the Nile. One of her attendants saw the small ark with the infant in it and, noticing it was an Israelite child, offered to find an Israelite woman to feed and care for it. "And the girl went and summoned the child's mother." Pharaoh's daughter took the child into her household with his mother to care for him. After the child was weaned, he "became a son" to Pharaoh's daughter. She named him "Moses, for from the water I drew him out."

The psalmist invokes the Lord's praise because of the Lord's activist protection: "Were it not for the Lord who was for us...." Other nations would have swept over Israel like a flood "over our necks." Israel is like a bird that has slipped free of a trap: "the snare was broken/and we escaped." Who is this activist protector? "Our help is in the name of the Lord/maker of heaven and earth."

OR

This Isaiac commentator demands to be heard by those "who seek the Lord"-- "Listen to me...." He directs their attention to "the rock from which you were hewn"-- Abraham and Sarah. Out of that one couple, God made "many." Even in the bleakest of times, the Lord is able you provide "comfort," to cause "waste places" to flourish, to turn sadness into singing. Listen for a "teaching" and for a new declaration of "justice" that will be like a "light" in a dark time. The Lord's "deliverance" will be swift when it comes. It will be like a muscled "arm" of "hope." All of life is finite and mortal, but the Lord's "salvation will be forever, and...never end."

The psalmist, speaking from her personal experience, declares "with all my heart," her gratitude for the Lord's "kindness and steadfast truth." "You have made Your word great across all Your heavens." She testifies, personally, to the Lord's response to her needs and extrapolates from her experiences that "All kings of the earth" will praise the Lord for "the words" from the Lord's "mouth." Although the Lord is "high" above human affairs, the Lord "sees" here,"below." She returns to her experience: "Your right hand rescues me." The psalmist ends with an rejoinder to the Lord: do not abandon Your investment: "Do not let go of Your handiwork."

Paul admonishes the readers of his letter to the church in Rome to set themselves apart by seeking "the will of God," with humility. Just as a body has "many parts," each with its unique "functions" yet vital to the well-being of the whole body, so each member of "Christ's body," the church, is "individually members of one... another." Each person has "gifts," which, although different and distinctive, are all needed and essential.

This vagabond group of Jesus and a few followers now come to Caearea Philippi, site of a shrine to Pan. By this point in their wanderings across the countryside, the group have seen Jesus interact with a wide variety of people whose reactions have run the gamut from admiration and gratitude to confusion and even hatred. They have stood next to him in some happy times and on some tense occasions. They have heard his stories and teachings, which still seem a little enigmatic. Jesus starts a conversation about all this with a question, Who are people saying I am? They repeat the rumors they have heard. Some say John the Baptist, others have even said Elijah; only Matthew adds Jeremiah, the ancient prophet most vexed about the future of God's people. Then Jesus asks directly, But what about you? Who do you say I am? Peter takes the lead and declares Jesus is the Messiah, to which only Matthew adds, "the Son of the living God." Only Matthew continues with Jesus saying further: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!" You did not make this testimony by "flesh and blood," but it has been "revealed... by my Father in heaven." Jesus now calls him by "Peter," and declares "on this rock I will build my church. "Hades" will not overwhelm it. To Peter Jesus gives the "keys of the kingdom," so that whatever is done on earth is affirmed in "heaven." Then Jesus "sternly ordered" his disciples to not reveal to "anyone that he is the Messiah."

The scriptures speak of experiencing the presence and absence of God, clarity and confusion caused by God's words and actions, hope/faith in God's participation as well as cries out of desperation for God to act again, affirmation and secrets.

The Jews saw their whole history as a series of events when God seemed near or absent, but the recurring declaration is always-- hope. The gospels describe every imaginable reaction to Jesus from adoration to rejection. In this dramatic excerpt from Matthew's account, Peter boldly announces the decision he has reached about the true identity of Jesus, but then Jesus asks to keep it a secret. As early as Paul's letters, the church is already a miss-mash of diverse, even contradictory reactions to the gospel about Jesus.

Emmanuel Levinas draws on the work of his teacher, Heidegger, and the bible where he explores "traces" of God. Developed further by Derrida and Marion, this notion of traces contributes significantly to a total re-ordering of how we regard what we think we know. It makes us less certain about our interpretations that suit our needs a little too neatly, and, therefore, shifts our focus on the life-giving, surprising biblical claims of God's love, steadiness, and abundance, which for Christians is seen winsomely in Jesus. And there is an ethical implication, too. It makes us more receptive to Others who like us respond authentically, if differently, to the same biblical traces about God. Then pperhaps unexpectedly, they ignite a "passion for the impossible [which] takes place within the trace." (Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, p. 24) And they remind us once again that faith is not shrugging acquiesce to overwhelming evidence, it is a decision, even a bold decision. "...In virtue of the trace... faith is always faith, a decision made in the midst of undecidability...." (Caputo, p. 59)

These readings issue an invitation to make a fundamental decision, an act of faith, a wager "in the midst of undecidability" that justice will prevail. This act/choice/wager/decision is more than speculation. If we expect one outcome-- justice will, when all is said and done, be overwhelmed-- we behave one way; if we bet on a different outcome-- that despite "impossible" odds and with no irrefutable evidence, justice will prevail-- we behave in a totally different way.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. paraphrased another preacher when he frequently declared" "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." That paraphrase was taken from a sermon given by The Rev. Theodore Parker and published in 1853. It reads:
   I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a
     long one, and my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate
     the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight' I
     can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it
     bends toward justice.

Mr. Parker's words have the full impact of personal testimony, because as a leading advocate for the abolition of slavery on the U.S., he personally hid runaway slaves from the South in his home.

The question in today's gospel is not about what others say, but to whom and for what do you pledge your loyalty; it is about loyalty to God's cause in the world. The testimony in both readings from the Hebrew scriptures and the repsonsory psalms is witness to God's activist intervention, always on the side of justice, even when it is nearly impossible to still believe in it. "Faith is always faith, a decision made in the midst of undecidability."

Proper 15 Year A

2011-07-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

Proper 15 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133

OR

Isaiah 56: 1, 6-8; Psalm 67

Romans 11:1-20, 29-32; Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

Joseph rises to great power in Egypt-- the foreigner becomes the ultimate insider. Desperately seeking food during a famine, Joseph's brothers go to Egypt and are taken to Pharaoh's deputy. They do not recognize their brother, but he knows them. They mistake the identity of the one who will rescue them and through whom God's covenant will extend to another generation. Finally Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers when he asks if their father is still alive. Before they even have a chance to ask, he assures them of his forgiveness for selling him into slavery when he was a teenager. Through their evil, he tells them, "God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors;" "to preserve life." He tells them to bring their father and families to Egypt where he can assure their survival. He clasps his brother Benjamin and kisses him on the neck, weeping. They all weep. The brothers regain some composure and begin to speak. (What could they have possibly said?)

The psalmist rehearses three disparate signs of abundance-- reunion after exile, a full, flowing beard and dew in a season of draught-- and then speaks of the Lord's permanent blessing and "life for evermore."

OR

It is generally recognized that a third iteration of the Book of Isaiah that is a commentary on the two prior sections begins here. "Thus says the Lord..." it begins. Because the Lord's "salvation will come and my salvation will be revealed," there is only one appropriate response to this news: "Maintain justice and do what is right...." Who will be eligible for the Lord's "salvation?" Anyone-- "foreigners" or any others-- "who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servant, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant...." All these the Lord will bring to "the holy mountain" on which sits "my house of prayer...." Their offerings will be accepted there, "for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples." The Lord will "gather" the "outcasts of Israel" and "others" together.

The psalmist asks for God's favor/blessing on the whole earth, among all nations. The 'global' (to use our contemporary word) theme is sounded twice, verbatim (for emphasis?) in v.4 and again in v.6" Nations acclaim You, O God/all peoples acclaim. The "yield" of the earth inspires us to ask for God's blessing for the whole earth, all peoples.

Writing to Christians in Rome, the seat of international power, Paul considers the position of "God's people" in the rapidly and increasingly diverse communities for whom Jesus is the Christ. He first reminds his readers of his heritage, which descends directly from Benjamin, (who plays such a prominent role in the story of the reunion between Joseph and his brothers; see the first alternative reading from the Hebrew scriptures). "God has not rejected his people," whom God knew and loved for generations. "For the gift of the calling of God are irrevocable." Their "disobedience" prompted God's mercy, of which non-Jews are the beneficiaries, too. "...God is merciful to all."

A contrast between outward piety, as caricatured by "the Pharisees an scribes," and actual words (and deeds) is made within the context of the burning, urgent controversy within the early church: the status of Jews and non-Jews. Matthew implies "the Pharisees and scribes" made a journey from Jerusalem specifically to interrogate him: "Why do your disciples transgress the traditions of the elders?" They do not wash their hands before eating (10:1-2). After Jesus challenges their own more serious failures to fulfill the Law (vv3-9), he turns to the crowd who, presumably, have heard this heated exchange. He tells them an aphorism: "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." When Jesus is told "the Pharisees and scribes" are offended by what he had said earlier, Jesus offers another aphorism: they are the blind leading the blind. Peter, only in Matthew's narrative, asks Jesus to explain. What goes in the mouth "goes into the sewer," Jesus elaborates, but words can "defile," because"out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander."   The scene that immediately follows is in a different place, "the district of Tyre and Sidon," and with a new character, a "Canaanite woman," Matthew writes, (Mark identifies her as "Greek"), who shouts at Jesus: "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." Jesus ignores her. The disciples urge Jesus to "send her away." Turning a cold shoulder to the woman, Jesus declares: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." She kneels in front of Jesus and begs, "Lord, help me." Coldly he answers: "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." The woman calls out Jesus, "even dogs eat the crumbs" that fall under the table. Jesus relents: "Woman, great is your faith!" He tells her what she so desperately wanted to hear: "Let it be done for you as you wish." Matthew highlights the immediacy of the result be writing simply: And her daughter was healed instantly."

That Joseph's brothers did not recognize him is not surprising. The last time they saw him was when he was seventeen and they had sold him into servitude to a band of merchants on their way to Egypt. As far as they knew, they were standing before a very wealthy man, Pharaoh's deputy! Yet, it was only because of their brother's unmerited forgiveness and compassion that they would survive the famine. Joseph chose to see everything that had happened between them as God's way to extend past promises into the future. By the time of the third iteration of the canonical Book of Isaiah, God's promises are now available to more than the historically chosen; they are available to any and to all who "join themselves to the Lord" and "hold fast my covenant." The place of worship on "the holy mountain" from now on will be known as "a house of prayer for all peoples." The psalmist (67) intercedes on behalf of "the whole earth/for all peoples." After reminding his readers of his own lineage, Paul asserts that God did not "reject" the chosen people of the historic covenant, which is "irrevocable." Through Christ, God is now "merciful to all." Matthew's narrative describes a confrontation between Jesus and "the Pharisees and scribes" which culminates in an important teaching-- "it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles... but what comes out."   But after this confrontation, Matthew depicts that even Jesus is caught off balance. A "Canaanite" woman pesters him until he caves and assures her that God's "healing" extends to her, too. Reflecting on this encounter, (and Mark's parallel version), John Caputo notes something still unsettling: "there is nothing about one's external situation that makes one unclean-- or a 'dog'-- but only what proceeds from the heart-- and the heart of this non-Jewish woman melts him [Jesus] down." (The Weakness of God: A Theology of Event, p. 261)

This can get very confusing for those who want to be gate keepers, especially when it comes to religious matters. Are there some with the advantages of 'insiders' or the inherent disadvantages of being 'outsiders' when it comes to God's grace? What would such assumptions mean in a story like Joseph's reunion with his brothers, who thought they were dealing with a foreigner, who is actually the ultimate insider, and whose forgiveness literally saves their lives and allows God's covenant to pass to the next generation? Do such radial assumptions about God's grace continue to catch us off-guard, as Matthew (and Mark) depict even Jesus was unprepared to practice what he had been preaching?    Caputo again, "The condition of admission to the kingdom are quite unaccountable: the ones who get in are the ones who are out; on the other hand, the ones who end up left out are the insiders who did not take the invitation [of Jesus] to heart." (pp262-262)

Proper 14 Year A

2011-07-16T12:50:00.000-07:00

Proper 14 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105: 1-6, 16-22, 45b

OR

I Kings 19: 9-18; Psalm 85: 8-13

Romans 10: 5-15; Matthew 14: 22-33

Patriarchal and matriarchal intrigue continues into the next generation, but God finds a way to extend the covenant. Jacob/Israel and Rachel's seventeen-year old son, Joseph, was assisting his brothers in shepherding the flocks of the extended family. He returned home to tell his father, "who loved Joseph more than all his sons," with some sort of tale that put his brothers in a bad light. The fact that their father had shown his favor for Joseph by giving him "an ornamental tunic" only exacerbated their jealousy; "they hated him...." On a later occasion, Jacob/Israel sent Joseph to join his brothers who were now tending the flocks somewhere near Shechem. On the way to find them, "a man" discovered Joseph wandering and asked, "what is it you are seeking?"   He said he was looking for his brothers. "The man" directed him to where they had gone. When they saw Joseph approaching, they hatched a plot "how to put him to death." They decided to kill the "dream master" and throw him in "a pit" where a wild beast would surely come along and devour him. But one brother, Reuben, said they could not be responsible for murder. Instead, they stripped him of the elaborate cloak and threw him into a pit empty of water. As they ate, they saw an approaching caravan on its ways to Egypt. Another brother, Judah, proposed they sell Joseph, rather than murder him because "he is our brother, and our flesh." The travelling merchants bought Joseph for twenty pieces of silver and took him to Egypt with them.

The psalmist rehearses the Lord's great "deeds among the peoples," beginning with Abraham and Sarah, continuing with Jacob and Rachel and Leah, and their son, Joseph, who was sold as a slave and taken into Egypt. (This is the only mention of Joseph in the psaltery.) He was shackled and tortured until "the king" had him freed. He became master of his own house and flourished and prospered in Egypt.

OR

The prophet Elijah had a long history of conflict with the reigning King and Queen of Israel, Ahab and Jezebel, who promoted alien religions, especially the cult of Baal, in Israel. Fleeing from the vengeance of Jezebel, Elijah "came to a cave and spent the night there." During the night, "the Lord came to him," asking what he was doing hiding in a cave. Elijah forcefully replied: "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of Hosts; for Israelites have forgotten your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword." Elijah continued his accounting of himself: "I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away." The Lord told Elijah to leave the cave and "stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." At first, there is a wind strong enough to "split mountains and shatter rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind." Then followed an earthquake, but the Lord was not there; then fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire, "a sound of sheer silence." Elijah "heard it" and "wrapped his face in his mantel...." "A voice" asked Elijah for an accounting, and he repeated his prior report or service and loyalty. The Lord told Elijah to go and anoint a leader in Syria, Hazael, and Jehu, a rival of Ahab, as King of Israel and Elisha as his own successor. The two new kings will take up the sword against Ahab, leaving "seven thousand in Israel... that have not bowed to Baal....."

The psalmist gives thanks that the Lord forgave "Your people's crime" (v.3) and continues by asking for the Lord's enduring "kindness." "Let me hear the Lord God speak," because when the Lord speaks, "kindness and truth have met/justice and peace have kissed." Truth "springs up" from the earth as justice "looks down from heaven."

Paul expounds on a frequent theme in his writings: the difference between the gift of God's to Moses of the Law, as literally written in stone and all the written and oral commentary it has generated, and God's gift of Christ. The "words" of faith are no longer distant in any way, they are "on your lips and in your heart," beginning with personal statement "that Jesus is Lord" and "that God raised him from the dead." The dynamic of faith now becomes a direct connection between what is in one's heart and what one speaks. Paul quotes the prophet, Joel (2:32) to underline that essential act of speaking: "For, 'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'" But a dialogue/conversation/call-response does not happen unless someone initiate its: "how are they to hear without someone to proclaim..."

The received narrative of Elijah's encounter with "the Lord, the God of Hosts" includes nonchalantly two opposite experiences of God: "sheer silence" and then direct, specific conversation. The psalmist (85) hopes and prays that she will "hear the Lord God speak," because when the Lord speaks inevitably kindness, truth and justice come to life in human affairs. Paul, the highly-trained rabbi, insists that the same God who gave the gift of the Law in stone also gave the gift of Christ in the flesh, meaning that the "words" of faith are no longer distant in any way, but "on your lips and in your heart." He then establishes an iron-clad rule--" anyone who "calls on the name of the Lord will be saved," but no one knows on whom to call or what to say unless someone else tells them. Unnerved by being buffeted by threatening winds all night long, the disciples of Jesus are at first "terrified" when they see him until he speaks, "do not be afraid." After an initial burst of enthusiasm and faith, Peter begins to sink and cries out spontaneously, "Lord, save me."

This uniquely human activity of speaking reveals, enables, initiates action, connects, imparts; we learn all these things language can do from other human beings. For Jean-Louis Chretien, human speech is where "spirit erupts." In The Call and the Response, Chretien writes: "This voice, our own, the human voice where we listen forever to what beckons us, is the very place where spirit erupts into the world. In the timbre of the voice, spirit manifests itself the only way that it is possible for it, which is body and soul. It gives itself by uttering itself."   However, speaking is only possible if we have listened, he continues: "To speak is to have listened and to be listening still...." What we say is "intimately our own insofar as it reveals something to us about our own utterance and its meaning...." (Was Peter surprised at what popped out of his mouth when he panicked-- "Lord, save me." Where had he learned that? What did the other disciples learn when they heard what Peter said and then what Jesus said in response?) From whom we learn what to say and then when we say the same things establishes a kind of call-response relationship with the source of that conversation: "Our voice does not constitute itself by itself, does not give itself since it always responds, but it does give voice to whatever calls it, which becomes voice only in it...." (pp44-45)

Knowing what to say because we have listened and learned applies to all human speaking. But the peculiar language we have learned from scriptures always has the same, distinctive effect on ourselves and on others-- justice, truth and kindness "spring up" in human affairs. It is language we mimic from God who, although shrouded in "sheer silence," also, has chosen to speak clearly, directly and always to the same effect. And if we chose to engage in that peculiar, biblical conversation, we will be fundamentally changed ("saved"). Chretien again, "In calling me, the call does not leave me intact: it surges only by opening a space in me to be heard, and therefore by shattering something of what I was before I felt myself to be called." (p.48)

Proper 13 Year A

2011-07-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

Proper 13 A
(Revised Common Lectionary)

Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 17:1-7

OR

Isaiah 55:1-5; Psalm 145: 8-9, 15-22

Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

Jacob is en route to try to reconcile with his brother, Esau, from whom he cheated his brother's birthright as firstborn. Jacob sends his two wives, Rachel and Leah, and the whole household to the other side of the stream called Jabbok, (which means crooked or twisting). while he spends the night alone. In the middle of the night, "a man wrestled with him until daybreak." When "the man" realized Jacob would not surrender, "he struck him on the hip socket and Jacob's hip was put out of joint...." Still, Jacob would not relent. "I will not let you go unless you bless me," Jacob insists. "The man" asks Jacob his name. After Jacob tells him, "the man" declares: "You shall no longer be called Jacob [which, like the nearby stream, Jabbok, means 'crooked'] but Israel [which means 'God is reliable'] for you have striven with God and with humans, and you have prevailed." Jacob/Israel asks "the man" his name, but instead "the man" blesses him. To mark this momentous name change from Jacob to Israel and his night of wrestling, Jacob names the place Pleniel, (which means 'appearance' or 'face of God'): "For I have striven with God face to face, and yet my life is preserved." Jacob/Israel left this place, "limping because of his hip."

The psalmist describes her prayer/song for justice as "guileless." she acknowledges sleepless nights when the Lord "probed" her heart and "found no wrong in me." She attests to her loyalty and asks for the Lord's "mercies." By the last verse of the psalm, she is wide awake and beholds the Lord's "face" and "image."

OR

This Isaiac prophecy exults in God's abundance. It was a promise fulfilled in the past through David, but it is about to be experienced again! It is abundance beyond any human capacity to be bought with or secured by money. The poet/prophet invited his readers/hearers to imagine and to seek and to "eat" that which "is good." It is an abundance whose source you do not even know yet that will come to you. It is an extension of the Lord's "everlasting covenant" which was initiated and is continued for one reason and one reason only-- God's "steadfast and sure love...." Given Israel's contemporary status as a captured people in the Babylonian capital and Jerusalem still in ruins, the poet/prophet makes a promise that highlights the certainty and power of God's promise; "nations that [currently] do not know you will run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel...."

Verse 8 is a direct quote from Exodus 34:5 of the ways God is knowable-- "gracious/merciful/slow to anger/great in kindness." these attributes extend to "all creatures." Therefore, all creatures look to the Lord for "hope" and generosity each season. this is a reasonable hope, because the Lord is always "just" and "faithful."

Paul celebrates God's blessings on his own people, the Jews-- the patriarchs and prophets, the Law, the liturgy and the promises. But he anguishes that they do not recognize the Messiah.

In Matthew's narrative, Jesus has just completed a long series of teachings on seeking the kingdom as a life-long quest when he gets the disturbing news of the macabre beheading of John the Baptist.
Matthew's version of the event that immediately follows, when Jesus shifted the expectation that his followers had the capacity/abundance to "feed" any number they might imagine as overwhelming, is sparer than Mark and Luke's but powerful in its own ways. Although Jesus needed to get away from the crowds, when he saw the rapidly growing crowds "he had compassion for them...." Seeking what perhaps they thought was best for Jesus, the disciples advised Jesus to send them back to their villages so they can "buy food for themselves." But Jesus tells the disciples: "you give them something to eat." But they report they only have "five loaves and two fish" among them. Jesus took what they had, "looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke it" and gave it to the disciples for distribution, "and they all ate and were filled," with enough leftovers to fill "twelve" baskets. The total count of this massive crowd was "five thousand men;" and only Matthew adds, "besides women and children."

Roland Barthes 1971 "textual analysis" of the Genesis narrative of Jacob's night-time wrestling match initiated a series of similar post-structuralist examinations and a new insistence that biblical texts must be read on their own terms. He concludes: "...What most interests me in this famous passage is not the 'folkloric' model but the frictions, the breaks, the discontinuities of readability, the juxtaposition of narrative entities which manage to escape logical articulation...." "...The problem, at least as I raise it for myself, is in effect not to reduce the Text to a signified, what ever it may be (historical, economic, folkloric, or kergymatic), but to keep its signifying power open." ( The Postmodern God, Graham Ward, ed. p. 94)

Taking this stance, we read the text not with preconceived assumptions about any neatly settled meaning, no matter how venerable. Rather, we engage it deeply each time we live with it for some time expecting/awaiting new, current, personal meaningful insights we want and need. There is an abundance whose limits will never be discovered. And we leave ourselves open to a certain kind of "seduction."

Abundance is the great undercurrent that runs throughout biblical textsenough left over for any stragglers Even Paul's disappointment in his own people is that despite God's past generosity they cannot recognize this even more extravagant gift in Jesus.

Jean-Luc Marion is exploring this stance in depth. He is saying that we look at the world and our experience of living in it and make a decision: either it can all be trivialized, conceptualized, manipulated for the basic instincts of each individual or it can be accepted as extravagant gift received through and shared among communities for the common-weal. He says that once we make a decision, we are primed for "revelation," a sudden, complete change of perspective and exposed to a certain kind of "seduction." In his famous essay, "Sketches of a Phenomenological Concept of Gift," (found in The Visible and the Invisible), Marion observes that many gifts, including "the receiving of life, death, forgiveness, confidence, love or friendship of another" occur totally outside any monetary or "terms of property." Furthermore, the gift is only realized or made actual when the one who accepts it, makes an "act of acceptance," Marion writes. These are the realities of life that surround, support, sustain any individuals life. They are as abundant as we chose them to be. We already posses them in sufficient abundance. We rely on receiving them from others for our own survival. After Jesus offers the prayer of thanksgiving, all participate/see/taste/share the "abundance" that was already there. The disciples blunder that the crowds could go home and "buy" what they really wanted and needed is fully exposed.

When one permits herself this "act of acceptance" she becomes susceptible to a certain kind of "seduction." I allow myself to be "seduced" by the realization that "I, I alone, and more than another, affirm the capacity to let myself be seduced and freely consent to this seduction...." (pp92-93) Is this that certain kind of "seduction" that affected Jacob/Israel so powerfully? Or transformed a persecutor into a missionary, as with Paul? (Both had a new name given to them. Marion writes about names that we are not "simply called by this name, but indeed to this name." Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Giveness, p292)

In sometimes strange and usually clever ways, the biblical narratives nudge the reader into a place to accept (or reject) the revelation of abundance and the One who set such extravagant giving into motion and sustains all creation. And to further identify that One as the same One who pursed God's covenant people so relentlessly and anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the same message to all.

The biblical texts (if we keep their "signifying powers open") are never finished speaking to us of abundance beyond any human understanding or even expectation of abundance. To take the "act of acceptance" leaves one open to a certain kind of "seduction."