With Wild Beasts and Angels (Lent 1B)

With the Wild Beasts and Angels

First Sunday of Lent (Year B)
26 February 2012; 8 am Spoken Mass; 10 am Sung Mass
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon  

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen.

Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-13

 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’   And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.  (Mark 9:9-13)

The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist is one of the few events told in the Gospels that almost all biblical scholars and historians agree actually happened.  The story shows up in too many varied forms in too many differing early traditions to ignore.  And the various retellings and versions of the story show an acute embarrassment among some early Christians at the story of their sinless Lord and God seeking “baptism of repentance” from another religious teacher.  Such embarrassment makes it unlikely that early Christians made the story up. 

Mark’s story of Jesus’ baptism and temptation is short and sweet: Jesus comes to John and is baptized.  Coming up from the water, Jesus sees the heavens split apart and the spirit of God descends on him “like a dove.”  Then Jesus hears God’s voice, quoting the Psalms and prophets, “You are my son, this day I have fathered you. I love you, you make me happy.” Immediately, the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness where he remains for forty days, tempted by Satan, living with the wild beasts, though “angels ministered to him.” 

What would receiving baptism from John have meant for Jesus and why would he have immediately thereafter gone to the desert to be alone with God?

John preaches in the wilderness of Judea, near the north of the Dead Sea. He is within a few kilometers of the community that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, and there are clear links between him and that community.

The Judaisms of the period all agreed that impurity both ritual and moral could be driven away by following the prescriptions of the Torah—usually to wash in pure water and wait until sundown. As a result, mikvehs, or ritual baths are common objects in the Jewish archaeological sites from that period.

A ritual bath (mikveh) from Khirbet Qumran. 

The Dead Sea Scrolls sect, with its dispute with the Temple leadership, believed that simply being born Jewish wasn’t enough to be part of God’s people.  You had to accept the right beliefs and practice the right rituals. They required a ritual washing in order to enter their exclusive community. Their rulebook says that this washing had to reflect a change of heart to be truly valid.

Khirbet (ruins of) Qumran, center; Wadi Qumran (site of the scrolls caves), foreground; Dead Sea  in distance.

Both John the Baptist and the Qumran covenanters fled to the desert to escape what they saw as the corruption and false religion of the Jerusalem elites.   The desert is where God met with his people. God meets Moses and purifies his people there as they wander for 40 years after they leave Egypt (Exodus 2:11—4:31).  God meets Elijah there (I Kings 19:1-18).  

John appears preaching what Mark and Luke call a “baptism of repentance unto the forgiveness of sins,” that is, “a washing showing your change of heart that results in your sins being set aside.” 

Why would a thirty-year old house builder from Nazareth be interested in this?  The Judean wilderness was a long way from Galilee for someone on foot.   Why would Jesus want to go to the Baptist, especially if he were not unduly burdened by a sense of guilt or sinfulness?  As a Jew, he would have been unable to avoid incurring ritual uncleanliness in the course of day-to-day life. But the regular washings prescribed by the Law would satisfy that. Why undergo John’s washing to signify a change of heart?

He was attracted to the Baptist’s message:  the Temple and political leadership are hopelessly corrupt and detached from God.  His baptism is something like what the Qumran covenanters practiced, but popularized and meant for all, not a hermetic ritual into an exclusive sect.  Masses of common people flock to Jordan for John’s baptism. 

Matthew and Luke give a fuller telling of the Baptist’s preaching: “Go and produce tangible evidence in your acts that you have indeed had a change of hearts.  If you are a soldier, don’t commit unnecessary violence and take advantage of people; if you are a tax revenue agent, only collect what is required and don’t skim the proceeds to line your own pocket.” 

The Baptist is preaching basic justice.  He is calling people to take God’s love of fairness personally, to make God’s will their own.  This personal involvement with God, this demand for social justice as evidence of our change of hearts--these are all elements that would remain part and parcel of Jesus’ own proclamation that the Kingship of God had arrived in our midst.

What would John the Baptist say today if we asked him to give examples in our society of tangible evidence of a change in our hearts. Would he ask us to stop walking past beggars without assisting? Would he insist that we stop paying less than living wages to those we employ?  Stop abusing spouses and children?  Looking down on those who differ from us?  Stop frequenting enterprises or buying goods and services based on the exploitation of, or the trafficking in, persons?

Jesus seeks baptism at John’s hand because he takes to heart John’s message of justice, personal responsibility, and relationship with God.   He is himself having a change of heart.  He is moving from one part of his life to another: from his private life with his family and friends, his assisting in the carpentry/house building business, to his public ministry.   

Jesus sees in John’s baptism a call to refocus, to reorient, to redirect his life. For him, the “fruit worthy of a change of heart” would be the living out of the task to which God was calling him. 

Despite the pressures on him in Nazareth to do the conventional, to follow the norm, to settle down, possibly start a family of his own and make something of himself, Jesus makes the long journey to see this Wildman of God in the Judean desert.   His neighbors in Nazareth think he has abandoned his Mother and siblings.  Yet Jesus in baptism hears the voice of God.  The result is clear in Jesus’ public preaching when, alone of the religious voices of the day, he calls God, “Father” and says He is above all a loving Father.    

This is why he must leave for the desert, where must be tested, “live with the wild beasts” and sort out things to find out what his identity revealed in baptism means. 

When Jesus later returns to Nazareth later, his Mother and siblings try to get him to come home and start acting normally again, because they think he has gone insane (Mark 3).  He is no longer the Jesus whom they had known and loved.  He now is clearly a man willing to give up everything for God’s reign to be made more clearly visible, willing to die if necessary. The time in the desert has left its mark.

Contemporary Ugandan theologian Emmanuel Katongole has written of the “‘rebel consciousness’ that is essential to Jesus’ gospel.”  He says, 

Wherever the gospel is preached, we must remember that its good news will make you crazy.  Jesus will put you at odds with the economic and political systems of our world.  This gospel will force you to act, interrupting the world as it is in ways that make even pious people indignant. 

Friends, we are not what God intended when he created us.  We need all the more to have a change of heart and manifest it in our actions.  We too need to seek in quietness our true baptismal identity, and God willing, have angels minister to us also as we struggle with the wild beasts.  May we, like Jesus, remain undeterred from the mission God sets us to, no matter how crazy this appears to those we love.

In the name of Christ, Amen.

 

Break Every Yoke (Epiphany 5A)

Break Every Yoke

6 February 2011

Fifth Sunday After Epiphany Year A

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

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?  Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. Isaiah 58:6-12

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

A few weeks back, a major U.S. media political commentator challenged his listeners to stand up and be counted for what he called the right way.  He said that the term “social justice” had become a code word on the left for what this commentator called “socialism,” something he considered to be very bad indeed.  He said that if his listeners heard “social justice” being preached in Church, they were to stand up, walk out, and find another Church.  

Those of us who read the Bible seriously were appalled, regardless of any merits the commentator’s analysis of how to best alleviate poverty may or may not have had.  The reason is that “social justice” is a major theme of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Testament.  In fact, it is one of the defining themes in both sets of books.  If Christian ministers are not preaching social justice, they are not preaching the Bible. 


The fact is, if you are talking just in terms of number of verses where issues are discussed and mentioned, the Bible is much more concerned with how we establish fairness and decency in our laws and in our economy, and how we treat the oppressed, the excluded, and the poor, than it is about most other things, including our family arrangements or our sexual morality. 

In the Hebrew Scripture, God’s people is in many ways defined by their experience of social and economic exclusion or oppression.  Deuteronomy preserves an early fragment of Hebrew liturgy that sums up the national experience in these terms

My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to harsh labor. Then we cried out to Yahweh, the God of our ancestors, and Yahweh heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So Yahweh brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders.  He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey (Deut. 26:5-9).

Again and again, the prophets call the people to turn back from their own oppression of others, reminding them, “You too were slaves in Egypt.”  

Again and again, they say we must take particular care of the wretched of the earth, the poor, orphans, widows.   Providing a fair playing field and then ignoring those who do not succeed is not enough.  We must see the poor, note their needs, and take care of them.   

An underlying idea is that fair is fair, and we must treat others as we would want to be treated.   Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, is God of rich and poor alike, and is particularly concerned with the poor because the poor need him most.  There are right and wrong ways of behaving, standards of common decency.  We must not exploit or take advantage of the weak, ignore them or turn a hard heart to their pleas, nor degrade or violate their human dignity by forcing them to do things against their consciences.  The holiness of Yahweh requires his demands on his people in this regard:  

Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.  Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless ...  If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate. (Exodus 22:21-27)


Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.  (Exodus 23:9)

For three sins of Israel,
   even for four, I will not relent.
They sell the innocent for silver,
   and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample on the heads of the poor
   as on the dust of the ground
   and deny justice to the oppressed.
Father and son use the same girl
   and so profane my holy name.
 (Amos 2:6-7)

Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and Yahweh your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this.  When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this. (Deut. 24:17-22)

One of the great differences between Yahweh and the gods of the nations surrounding Israel is summed up in his care for the poor.  The Philistine god Baal is a god who cares for the rich and the powerful.  Yahweh cares for the disposessed and poor.  The Philistine goddess Astarte cares for the sexually voluptuous and the fertile. Yahweh makes the infertile woman a mother of children.  The Assyrian emperor-god Ashur is a god who cares for the militarily powerful and cruel.  Yahweh defends the defenseless.  Every local divinity takes care of his own. Yahweh defends the alien who sojourns in a strange land.  

In contrast to the gods that personify wealth, power, and fertility, Yahweh is the God over all the earth, of rich and poor alike, who takes the part of the weak and defenseless, and can turns things upside down:

I know that Yahweh will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and justice for the poor. (Ps. 140:12).

[God] defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. (Deut. 10:18; see also Isa. 25:4; Psalm 10:14; Isa. 41:17).

Because God is compassionate he demands that we be compassionate too:

If there is a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any of the towns of the land which Yahweh your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks. (Deut. 15:7)

When you have finished paying the complete tithe of your increase in the third year, the year of tithing, then you shall give it to the Levite, to the stranger, to the orphan and the widow, that they may eat in your towns, and be satisfied. (Deut. 26:12)

Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am Yahweh your God. (Lev. 19:19-20)

Do justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor. Also do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or the widow; and do not shed innocent blood in this place. (Jer. 22:3)

The fact is, Jesus and John the Baptist in the Gospels teach this, as do St. Paul and St. James.  The doctrine is found on nearly every page of the Bible, in all the areas of the Church’s reading of Scripture:  Torah, Prophets, Psalms, Epistles, and Gospel. 

The message is simple, but insistent: help those in need.   Give them material support and take their cause.  It's not at all hard to understand; it's just hard to do.  We must do it as individuals.  And the government does have a role as well:

 [You kings,] open your mouth for those unable to speak, for the rights of all the unfortunate. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and defend the rights of the afflicted and needy”.  (Prov. 31:8-10)

I know of no church that stresses serving the poor as much as the Bible itself does.  So the demand for people to walk out of churches when the matter is occasionally preached rings a little hollow on my ears. 

All these texts are unequivocal.  There are no excuses or exceptions.  None of them tell us to help the poor only if they are hard working, moral, or have legal residence status.  They don’t say help the poor “when you feel you can,” “when you feel guilty about it,” or “once of twice a year.” 

In the unfortunate politics of identity so common in our age, people often are urged to vote their conscience, make the moral choice in voting.  “How would Jesus vote?” is the question posed by those who think Jesus would vote for them.  But based on the evidence in the Bible, if you wanted to be a Biblical one-issue voter, you'd do well to make that one issue serving the poor.

I am not saying here that one party has a monopoly on justice and programs that respond to this Biblical call.  None of these passages is clear in terms of saying what way of helping the poor is the most effective, the most appropriate, with the broadest good.  Those are questions for social scientists and politicians to work on.  But in order to be in keeping with even the most basic requirements of Biblical justice, it is clear that we all, regardless of our political preferences, must work to help the poor and alleviate poverty and oppression.

It is not enough just to give help to soothe our consciences.  We are also called to “plead the cause” of the poor, i.e., defend their interests and advocate their cause.  When others are silent, do you speak up for the poor in your work place, your school, your church, your community, and your political party?

The poor are real people.  The oppressed are real people.  It is sometimes too easy to filter them out of our vision.  If they are a different color from us, speak a different language, have different morals, we can perhaps say they are not deserving of our attention or our help.  But would you like to go before the Almighty and explain how you did not help someone in need because they were different from you?  Isn’t that the very point of God’s love of the poor?  He wants us to help them because they are different from us.  He wants us to help them because they are undeserving.  God gives the blessings of rain and sunshine on both the righteous and the unrighteous, says Jesus, and we should be as perfect in that as he is (Matt. 5:43-48). 

Are you unwilling to help someone, or have the rulers help someone, because that person is an “illegal alien?”  Can you imagine having to explain such thinking and feeling to God?  The very phrase suggests that an entire class of human beings is “illegal” and thus not worhy of compassion.   

To such thinking, the Bible tells us, “Care for the foreigner in your midst, because you too were once foreigners.”
 

Helping others in need merely because they are in need is a central demand of our faith.  It is just that simple. 

The prophet Ezekiel says that the sin that brought God’s condemnation on the Cities of the Plain  (Sodom and Gomorrah) was ignoring the needs of the poor, to the point of abusing them, in the midst of abundance: 

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it. (Ezek. 16:49-51)

Social Justice is a biblical doctrine, and anyone who wishes to truly preach the Bible must be willing to preach social justice.  Anyone who truly wants their faith and actions to be grounded in the Bible will make it a major part of their efforts.   

Loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke. Share your bread with the hungry, share your house with the homeless.  When you see someone with inadequate clothing, cover them.  Help the poor and oppressed, and take up their cause.

In the name of Christ, Amen.   

God at Work Where We Least Expect (Epiphany 4A)

  

God at Work Where We Least Expect

30 January 2011

Fourth Sunday After Epiphany Year A

Micah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12; Psalm 15

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so people persecuted the prophets who were before you.” 

Matthew 5.3-12

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

I have been looking a lot at the mass media recently, including advertisements and public affairs talk programs.  What do they tell us about what we want?   Or about what others expect us to want?  What images are chosen as attractive?  What is seen as desirable and what is looked down on or outright scoffed at?   If we were to make a list of “blessed are” statements like those in today’s Gospel reading, but base them on the values and perceptions of the these media, what would the list look like?  For good or for ill, some might say:

Blessed are the wealthy; whoever dies with the most toys wins.  Blessed are the young; dying then beats rusting and growing old.  Blessed are the fashionable, for they can look down on the less hip.  Blessed are those with the best electronic gear, for their lives are enjoyable and easy. Blessed are big bosomed blondes, for they will attract men. Blessed are guys with six-pack abs; they will find whatever lovers they want.Blessed are celebrities; they are the beautiful people. Blessed are the hip; their Facebook posts go viral. Blessed are the thin; they are never the butt of fat jokes.  Blessed are the powerful, for they have their own their way.   Blessed are the well armed, for they can defend themselves. Blessed are the violent, because no one will mess with them.  

The beatitudes, or macarisms, at the start of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew are so well known that often we unfortunately miss what they actually are saying. When we hear them, we tend to quickly lapse into a happy, warm feeling of devotion and stop listening. Familiarity with these sayings breeds not so much contempt as it does inattention. We usually find the beatitudes vaguely comforting or reassuring without much thought of the content being conveyed.  We are like the people at the back of the crowd in the Monty Python film, Life of Brian.   They struggle to hear the Sermon, but at the end leave, saying, “oh, that’s nice … blessed are the cheesemakers. Good chaps, they.”

But these sayings were spoken in the context of a culture that praised things, and called certain people happy or blessed, just like our culture praises things, and calls certain people blessed. And Jesus’ sayings turn many of these platitudes on their head.  “It’s a good thing to be hungry, it’s a good thing to be poor, it’s a good thing to mourn, to be excluded,” he says.  Really?

A little less familiar to most people is the version of statements found in Luke’s telling of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, as a result, some of these jump out at us in their forceful clarity: 

"Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.

Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!  Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their ancestors did to the prophets.   

But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger.

Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

Luke 6:20-26

It is clear that whatever it was that the historical Jesus said here, it troubled his followers, as it should trouble us.  Each author, Matthew and Luke, has adapted the series of “blessed are” statements in their shared sayings source for his own purpose. 

Matthew has “spiritualized” the sayings, turning “hungry” into “hungry for righteousness,”  and “poor” to “poor in spirit.”  Jesus just can’t be talking about the literal poor or the literally hungry can he?  So Matthew turns the sayings into a series of moral nostrums, of ways of being that we should strive for. 

In contrast, Luke adds a “now” to the misfortune being marked as “blessed,” and a “then” to the good thing God will do in the future to fix the problem, turning the sayings not into moral nostrums, but affirmations of the coming completion of the Reign of God whose inauguration Jesus has come to announce.  Luke also adds the woes that counterbalance the “blessed are” statements, placing them all in the second person, “blessed are (or woe to) you,”  thus working the eschatological contrasts of his version of the sayings into his overall Gospel story of everyday faith of everyday Christians.   These woes may or may not have been listed together before Luke wrote.   Since several separate “woes” are found on the lips of Jesus in multiple early Christian sources, I think that Luke is probably reflecting something close to what the historical Jesus actually said.  

The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas preserves some of these sayings—both macarisms and woes—separately as well, and also adapts them for its own purposes, sometimes esoteric in a pronounced degree.   

The idea expressed in the literary form used in these sayings is more than a simple “Happy are they who,” or “How blessed are they who…”   The idea is more like  “How favored by God (or honored) are the ones who.”  “Woe to those who” in Luke is more like “Shame on those who,” or “How outside God’s grace are those who…” 

Jesus is turning conventional values of what is desirable on their heads.  Some things just on the surface of them are bad:  starvation, hardship, sorrow at a loved one’s death, social exclusion.   Some things just on the surface are good: having enough food and money to provide for your family and (to quote some of the rabbis) to have the leisure to study scripture.  But Jesus is not so sure. 

Some of Jesus’ contemporaries taught an ancient version of modern day “Gospel of Wealth.”  They said, “God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked.  Since rich people are obviously blessed, they must be close to God; the poor must really be rejected by God.”  But Jesus knows that bad things can happen to good people and that sometimes evil people prosper. 

He says, “You’ve misunderstood what a blessing from God is.  It is the poor who are blessed by God, not the rich.”   If those around him say,  “Religious and respected people are close to God,” he says, “No, actually, it’s the people who have been excluded because people think that they are unclean or evil who actually are closer to God.”   

Announcing the coming of God’s reign, he sees God busy at work exactly where we usually expect least to find God: hunger, yearning, dependence, and vulnerability are all signs of God’s active presence and saving work, not marks of God’s curse or punishment.

It is an important idea, and profound theology.  He is not trying to belittle suffering, or say, “it’s not all that bad.”  He is not like the hero of The Life of Brian, who when on the cross, bursts out into the cheery song, “Always look at the bright side of life.”   He knows that hunger, grinding poverty, misery, deprivation, grief, and the deadly exclusion inflicted on marginalized people by the so-called righteous are all truly horrible and not a bit of what God wants for his creatures.  

When he says that God is at work in these horrors, that God’s favor can be found there, Jesus is not seeking to minimize or trivialize people’s sufferings.  He is seeking to magnify the grace of God.  God is the answer to, not the source, of horror.

St. Thomas Aquinas developed this idea into the doctrine of the Deus Absconditus, a term taken from the Latin version of Isaiah 45:15, “Truly you are a God who has been hiding himself, the God and Savior of Israel.”  God may be hidden, but if you have faith in God, it is God that you must wholly trust. Martin Luther developed the idea further by placing it in the broader context of his doctrine of Grace.  A modern way of expressing Deus Absconditus is “God is where you least expect him.”

The implication of both Aquinas and Luther’s doctrine of the Deus Absconditus is this: horror and evil in the world are not evidence that God does not exist.  Rather, the fact that we revolt against and find horrible the evil in the world is one of the strongest evidences of God, since the very desire for justice and the right cannot come merely from this messed up world we live in.  Rather, it comes from God himself, imprinted in the creation God made, in the creation of human beings, where it is written on our hearts.    Immanuel Kant expressed the idea differently when he said that he found evidence for God not just in the order he saw in the workings of the stars, but also in the workings of the human heart and mind.  

Where Buddhism tells us that the source of suffering is desire and the solution is getting rid of all desire, and becoming detached and truly apathetic to world around us, Christianity teaches us that while we must learn acceptance and patience, it is alright to be dissatisfied with wrong.  In fact, it is essential because God made us thus.  

Each of the macarisms includes some point of dissatisfaction: hunger, grief, need.  Jesus thinks it’s O.K. to be not O.K.  Mourning means unhappiness at the loss of a loved one.  It does not describe a state of acceptance or serenity.  "Blessed are those who mourn."  Neediness and hunger do not describe satisfaction, but desire for something different that what we now have. 

Reinhold Niebuhr's great "Serenity Prayer" is not a prayer only for serenity to accept the things we cannot change.  It also prays for courage to change the things we can.  It also asks for wisdom to know to distinguish between the two.  

The idea of God at work in the day-to-day things of life, even its horrors is a key part of Jesus’ message announcing the arrival of God’s Reign. 

Putting the idea into modern words and references, we see the point Jesus is trying to make.  And the point should shock us into recognition of God at work in all sorts of situations where we normally only see horror: 

God favors those with AIDS; he is at their bedside and in their prayers.   

God favors outcasts, because he will include them.    

God favors the abused, because he will make them whole.

God favors the powerless, because he will empower them. 

God favors the homeless, because he will give them shelter. 

God favors the addicted, because he relieves them of cravings and obsessions.

God favors the solitary, because he brings them into family and community. 

God favors “nobodies,” because he knows them each by name. 

God favors sinners, because he forgives them. 

God favors women, because she knows what they go through. 

Shame on you who have big houses, because you will lose your estates. 

Shame on you celebrities, because you will be forgotten.

Shame on you powerful, because your fall will be great. 

Shame on you Empires, because you will go bankrupt fighting your wars.

Shame on you so-called righteous, because everyone will know your secret sins. 

Shame on you beautiful people, because you will grow ugly and die like everyone else.

Shame on you fashion plates, because you will have to be naked.

Shame on you brilliant minds, because you will go senile. 

So what applies here to us?  First, remember that God expects us to be dissatisfied with things that are just plain wrong.  We should be part of the social and moral conscience of our peer group, our colleagues, and our age.  Next, remember that God expects us to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.  His grace must work through us.  Third, in our prayer life and meditation, let us more fully empathize with those suffering, and let us redouble our efforts at the corporeal acts of mercy and organizing for social justice to alleviate hunger, poverty, persecution, and disease. 

“You think I’ve gotten things upside down?” Jesus says.  “Look around you and tell me who is getting things backward.”  If we love God and trust God, we too must actively engage with evil, in  order that grace more fully abound. 

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

A Loathsome Stranger's Mercy (Proper 10C; Good Samaritan)

Rembrandt, The Good Samaritan

  A  Loathsome Stranger’s Mercy
Homily delivered Seventh Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 10; Year C RCL)
11 July 2010; 10:00 a.m. Morning Prayer Said
Congregation of the Good Shepherd
Beijing, China
Readings: Amos 7:7-17 and Psalm 82 or Deuteronomy 30:9-14 and Psalm 25:1-9; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Finding a dead body lying out in the open is a very disturbing experience.  When my wife and I lived in West Africa several years ago, one Sunday morning we were running of the beach.  She got ahead of me, as she usually does when we’re running.  I heard her start screaming in terror and hurried to catch up with her.  There beside us, in sand at the high tide mark, was what used to be a human being, now bloated in the heat and already a meal for the crabs.   We ran to get the port authorities, who recovered the body, identified it as a fisherman who had fallen from his boat a week earlier about 25 miles up the coast, and returned it properly covered to his grieving family.  It was not the only corpse I saw in Africa.  Once, on a trip into Lagos Nigeria, I spotted a body lying along side the road.  My driver refused to stop to try to get help, since the area was notoriously known as the haunt of criminal gangs who often would rob anyone who has the misfortune of having to stop their car. 

Today’s Gospel reading is a parable that describes such a disturbing scene. 

A lawyer asks Jesus a question of Jewish Law: “Master, of all the 615 commandments in the Torah, 365 'Thou shalt not's' and 248 'Thou shalt's,” what is the essential that I need to do to please God? “ 

Luke says the lawyer is asking Jesus the question trying to test him (10:25).  Jesus is cautious, and asks the lawyer what he thinks the Law establishes as its core (10:26). 

The Lawyer replies in these words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deut. 6:4) and then “Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). 

This epitome of the Law is probably Jesus’ own.  Matthew and Mark place it on the lips of Jesus himself as he replies to a lawyer or a scribe (Matt. 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31).  The first of these commandments is part of the Shema, the basic creed of Judaism that every practicing Jewish male recites during morning prayer (Deut. 6:4); the second is a commandment found in Leviticus 19:18, part of dozens of rules enumerated in the  Leviticus Holiness Code (Lev. 17-26).

“Love God, then love your neighbor.”  Jesus agrees:  “That’s exactly right.  If you do that, you won’t have any problem pleasing God.” 

Then the story gets complicated.  The lawyer follows up with another question of law, seeking, as lawyers are wont to do, clear definitions of terms of law and the scope of their applicability.  “And who, rabbi, exactly is my neighbor?” 

Luke tells us that the lawyer asked the question in order to justify himself.  The point is clear.  The lawyer wants to know the exact scope of his obligation to love others so that he can have a clear idea of who it is that he is not obligated to love.  

Clearly other people had asked the same question about the Holiness Code’s commandment to love our neighbors.  The Holiness Code prescribes rules for God’s people living in God’s land, including special ones for God’s priests and their assistants in the Temple (Lev. 21-22).  It also gives rules regarding aliens living in the midst of God’s people, both how to treat them and what is expected of them.   It seems to distinguish between “Israelites" or “your people” from “aliens living in your midst” as well as “your neighbors.”  It is not completely obvious from the text whether “neighbors” includes only fellow Israelites, all resident aliens also, or only aliens who keep the rules.  One text, however, clearly also says “The alien who reside with you shall be to you as the citizens among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” (Lev. 19:34).  

So the legal question “who is my neighbor” was a point of discussion, and different people gave different answers to it. In the inter-testamental Book of Sirach, we read, “give to the devout, but do not help the sinner” (Sir. 12:1-7).   Here the distinction between your fellow countryman and a neighbor is whether one keeps the Law or has the reputation of being religious.  In the Manual of Discipline in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we read, “… seek God with all your heart and all your soul, . . . love all the sons of light, and hate all the sons of darkness” (1QS 1.1-3, 9-10).  Here, even fellow Jews, if they do not accept the legal interpretations of the Dead Sea Scroll sect, are considered beyond the pale of being “neighbors.”   On the other hand, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria two centuries before the common era wrote, “God asks ... [us] to love him . . . and serve him with . . .[our] whole soul” (Spec. Leg. 1.299-300) and says that this is a “duty to God as shown by piety and holiness, and a duty to men as shown by humanity and justice” (Spec. Leg. 2.63).   Neighbors here appear to be all fellow human beings. 

Jesus’ reply to the question is a story that turns many expectations of that time and place totally on their head.

 Dundee Parish Church (St. Mary's, Church of Scotland) 

Parable of the Good Samaritan

A man goes down the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Remember Jerusalem is 2700 feet above sea level while Jericho is 800 feet below it.  With only 17 miles between, it means there is a 200 foot drop every mile.  There are lots of switchbacks in the steep road where many nooks and crannies can easily hide crooks and baddies. 

He meets up with robbers, is beaten unconscious, stripped of all his clothing, and left for dead. 

But then by chance someone comes by.  It is a Priest, commuting between his home in Jericho and his intermittent work in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Surely a priest—a religious person and an example of doing the right thing—will help a fellow countryman who is almost dead, right?   But when he sees the man, he hurries to the other side of the road, and walks on. 

Then another religious leader, a temple assistant called a Levite, also comes along.   He too avoids what appears to be the naked corpse on the side of the road.  

Now we mustn’t think too ill of the Priest or the Levite.  The Law of Moses stipulated that Priests and Levites had to be ritually pure for their service in the Temple, and also clearly stated that any contact with a corpse contaminated and brought with it ritual impurity.  

It is probably just about at this point in the story that Jesus’ listeners realized that the fact that the man looked dead might in reality cause his actual death through lack of care, and all because of religious people scrupulously trying to follow the commandments of God. 

To be sure, the Law did provide over-ride clauses where saving someone’s life or even helping them save their ox from the mire took precedence over purity requirements.  But even here, such acts of mercy and human sympathy did not get rid of the pollution thus incurred. 

Like good storytellers in any culture, Jesus here follows the rule of three.  We often hear jokes about an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scot, or other ones about a Rabbi, a Catholic Priest, and a Baptist Preacher.  Here is it a Priest, a Levite, and a…

Jesus’ audience knows it will be a normal resident of that part of the country, a Judean.  He won’t be constrained by the heavier purity concerns and he’ll save our poor victim, right? 

No.  The third traveler on his way is not a Judean.  It is a Samaritan.

Now to Jesus’ Jewish audience, having a Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan being the three is like someone today telling story and having the three be the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and Usama bin Laden, or maybe Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, and the head of the Mafia.   

Samaritans were seen as contemptible half-breeds, heretics and blasphemers, allies with the foreign occupiers, and immoral.  They themselves were considered by Jews to be ritually unclean and contaminating.   The poor Jewish man who is about to die himself will be ritually polluted by accepting anything from the Samaritan.  But at this point, he isn’t particular about who he can accept help from.  Better unclean and alive and than unclean because you’re dead. 

When this Samaritan sees the wounded man, he stops, is moved to mercy, takes good care of him, and even provides for him as if he were a family member.  

Note that the Samaritans also had their own version of the Torah, and the same basic rules about corpses were found there.  But this Samaritan risks contamination by his own lights and helps the half-dead person on the side of the road. 

Jesus closes his story answering the Lawyer’s question “who is my neighbor?” by saying, “Who do you think acted like a neighbor to that unfortunate man?”

The lawyer can’t even bring himself to say, “The Samaritan.”  He replies abashedly, “the one who showed him compassion.” 

“Go and do likewise.  Be like that Samaritan,” is Jesus’ reply. 

This answer by Jesus places him squarely on one side of a major division within the Biblical tradition. 

Walther Bruggemann, in his magisterial Theology of the Old Testament, points out that throughout the Hebrew scriptures, one finds two great thematic threads. On the one side, there is the striving for purity and ritual holiness, for being special and set aside for God’s service.  “You shall be holy for I am holy,” we read in Leviticus, and there follows hundreds of detailed rules setting boundaries and defining categories to help achieve holiness.  On the other side there is striving for justice, for treating people, especially the marginalized, decently and fairly. 

The two themes often seem in opposition.  The priests and the Law tend to talk a lot about purity and holiness.  The prophets tend to talk about dealing with others justly, especially those most in need.  For Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Micah and others God says things like:  “I expect obedience, not sacrifice.” “I hate your sacrifices because you mistreat the widow and the orphan.”    “All I really ask of you is to treat the poor fairly, and to walk humbly with me.”  For the priests and teachers of halachic law, however, God say things like, “You will be Holy for I am Holy, says the Lord.”  “You shall not pollute the land with impurity, or I will destroy you.”  “You shall drive out pollution from among your midst and separate yourself from uncleanness.” 

Bruggemann says that the two traditions are both important and mutually corrective. The boundaries established by the Law are what define and preserve the People of God, and allow ethical monotheism to flourish.  But if holiness is not tempered with the call for social justice, it becomes empty ritual, a mode of oppression, and dies.  On the other hand, calls for social justice in the absence of an authentic call to holiness rapidly degenerate into the most obvious self-serving form of interest-group politics.  That’s why it’s love God first, and then love one’s neighbor.  

It is very important to note that in the Gospels, whenever social justice is placed in conflict with ritual purity and Jesus is asked to decide between them, in every single case he opts for social justice.  For him, justice trumps purity and holiness in this sense every time.  

It has to do with his understanding of God as the God of everyone, not just of the Jewish nation, or righteous people.  “God makes the sun shine and the rain fall on both the righteous and the wicked,” he says (Matt. 5:45).  “You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbors and hate your enemies, but I say, love your enemies’,” he says (Matt. 5:43). Thus his answer about “who is my neighbor?”  

Jesus sees that the Lawyer’s question has framed the world wrong.  The commandments to love God and to love neighbor are, above all else, commandments to love. When the lawyer tries to interpret them by asking in essence “and who exactly is it that I don’t have to love,” Jesus throws a parable at him.  The intent is to shake his world view.  Like a Zen koan, the parable is meant to shock the lawyer into a new way of feeling and perceiving. 

Professor Klyne Snodgrass in his recently published master work on the parables Stories with Intent says this:  “This parable is evidence of what is obvious elsewhere:  Jesus will not allow boundaries to be set so that people may feel they have completed their obligation to God.  Love does not have a boundary where we can say we have loved enough, nor does it permit us to choose those we will love, those who are ‘our kind.’ With this parable, Jesus in effect says, ‘You should know already from Lev. 19:34 that the love commandment extends to the stranger (or traveler) in your midst.’’” 

Love knows no boundaries, and, in the words of St. Paul, “love never ends.” 

All of us have our ways, like the lawyer, of seeking to justify ourselves and say to the God who calls us to love, “Enough, already!”  We all too often use boundaries as a means to do this, whether national, ethnic, political, gender, or even what we consider to be moral boundaries. 

We do this because it is easy.  It is, in fact, too easy, since we know that we as creatures live and die by boundaries.  We need definitions and limits, or our lives are chaotic and unordered.  Boundaries are generally good, and something we all need.   And this is the case whether we are talking moral boundaries, legal boundaries, or personal space and autonomy boundaries.  We need them because without them we are messes. 

But we must never let boundaries become a strait-jacket that makes us unable to reach out our arms in love to those in need.  

Good fences may indeed help make good neighbors, but not if we do not chat across the fences, and as needed reach over them. 

I challenge each of us this week to look at ourselves.  Take 10 or 15 minutes during your prayer time or meditation time, or even exercise time, and ask these questions:  1) Where am I transgressing boundaries with resulting harm to myself or others? 2) Where am I using boundaries as an excuse to not do the right thing?

Once you have some answers, then look again at this story. 

Remember that lawyer and his self-justifying question.  And then really think about the story of that loathsome stranger doing kindness to a fellow human being, no matter how different, no matter how alien.

And go and do likewise. 

In the name of God,  Amen.