The Great Uncovering (Proper 28B)

“The Great Uncovering”

18 November 2012

Proper 28B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Daniel 12:1-3; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25; Mark 13:1-8

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

When I was in second grade, my teacher suggested to my mother that I see an optometrist.  I was always sitting way too close to the blackboard and burying my face in any book I was reading.  She suspected I was near-sighted and needed eyeglasses.  I was pretty suspicious.  I had once put on my mother’s glasses; they just made things look blurry and unrecognizable.   My teacher, however, was right.  When I first left the optometrist’s office with my new thick-lensed horned-rimmed glasses on, I was stunned.  There, on all the trees across the street, were branches wreathed in hundred of individual leaves, rather than general masses of green!  There, in the reddish wall of the building across from my parents’ office machines store, were hundreds of individual bricks framed by white mortar! 

Years later it was similar, when I first wore polarized sunglasses.  I had been working as a life guard and could never see what was going on under the water because of the surface glare.  I bought clip-on Foster Grant polarized lenses.  It was magic.  Suddenly, the glare was gone and I could see everything clearly.  Inside, however, they made everything dark and difficult to see.     

When I first looked into the night sky with a telescope I was also pleasantly surprised: what once had been a mere star, turned out to be a planet with rings or striped bands or a distant galactic nebula.  But I could not make the telescope help me see anything up close that I wanted to examine.     

Lenses, filters, magnifiers:  they change our vision and make what was difficult to descry clear.   They give can give differentiation where once was sameness, clarity and detail where once was vagueness, or sometimes simply alter our view entirely and make us aware of reality that we never would have guessed.  In a real way, they uncover what was always there, but lay it bare before our eyes.    But they all need to be used in the right context, for the right need. 

Today’s Hebrew Scripture and Gospel lesson are examples of what scholars call apocalyptic writings.    The Greek word apokalypsis means an uncovering or a revelation of what is hidden.   The question is: what do they uncover?

Early Jewish writings like the Book of Daniel and the non-canonical Book of Enoch, as well as Christian writings like the Apocalypse or Revelation of John, are included in the genre.  Sections of other books sometimes take on characteristics of this type of writing as well.  The prime example of this is the “Little Apocalypse” of Chapter 13 of Mark, together with its parallels in Matthew 24 and Luke 21.

This literature is rich is images—often symbolic figures, numbers, angels, and animals—and has, over the centuries, inspired a lot of varied interpretation.   Much of the imagery in these books seems disturbed or obsessive—a third of the sea or the moon turning to blood here, the stars falling from heaven and killing most living things there, the “whore of all the earth” fornicating with the kings of all nations here, a multi-headed beast covered with eyes and horns devouring the righteous there.  This has led, over the centuries, to many interpreters taking this literature as if it were television-like predictions of coming events in world history and especially what will happen when this world system comes to an end. 

In the year 1,000, we had penitentes running all over Europe whipping themselves and declaring the end of the world with such images.  In the 1970s, we had “the Late Great Planet Earth”; today we have the Left Behind novels.

But this reading completely misunderstands apocalyptic, and goes against Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel.   

Just before Jesus’ arrest, Jesus and his disciples are at the Temple in Jerusalem.  It is pretty impressive: 10 stories high, with masonry stones embellished with smaller carved jewels glittering in the sun, gold leaf covering large parts of it, truly a marvel.  A disciple says, “Wow! Look at that, Jesus! Isn’t that impressive?”   Jesus replies by dismissing it all and saying, “Don’t get too exited.  Soon not one stone there will be left standing on another.  It’s all going down.”   Later, when they are on the Mount of Olives across the Kidron valley opposite the Temple Mount, with a panoramic view of the complex, the other disciples ask him about this.  Such large buildings, such destruction, just like those horrible scenes in Daniel or the later parts of Ezekiel.  It is destruction on an apocalyptic level, so they ask him how his prediction fits into the weeks, days, and schemes, the numerology and timetables of apocalyptic books: when will this destruction happen, when is the end of the world? What will be the signs preceding it?

Jesus explains that such a scorecard approach to end-time signs is pointless—too many people abuse such imagery for their own advantage (“many will come and say…”).  He says they shouldn’t be too alarmed or overly excited by the appearance of apocalyptic standard stage props of “wars and rumors of wars” or natural catastrophes.  Such things, he says, are “but the beginning of the birthpangs,” that is, Braxton-Hicks’ contractions or false labor. Jesus is saying, “Don’t worry too much about any of these things.  They’re just a false alarm.  Keep calm and carry on!”  

The fact is, Apocalyptic is primarily about events and people in the world of its authors, not our day.  The Revelation of John, the classic Christian Apocalypse, itself says that it is about things that will "come to pass soon"  (Rev 1:1).   That doesn't mean soon to us, but soon to the writer. 

What is uncovered in apocalyptic is this: God's purposes and the final outcome of things when all is said and done, not "coming events."

Apocalyptic is literature written during persecution.  It seeks to understand the sufferings of the righteous and encourage them to not lose faith, and to keep resisting the oppressors.  In John’s Revelation, these are Romans under the Emperors Nero and Domitian, who put Christians in the arena to be torn apart by wild animals because they declined to offer incense to a statue of the Emperor.  In the Book of Daniel, they are Greek Syrians under Antiochus who flayed alive or boiled in oil whole families simply because they kept the Law of Moses.

Apocalyptic puts its message in rich images and code so that the readers can read it without the censors and secret police catching on and then torturing and executing them.  It is very much about “current events” as seen by the author.  It looks to the future to argue that no matter how bad things get, in the end God and the righteous will triumph and all the suffering will have been worth it.

These books read sometimes as if a highly disturbed person wrote them.  That is because the authors were people traumatized by persecution and horrible faith-devouring events.  And therein lies the importance of these writings to us.   Whatever the specifics of what hardships we may have to go through, whatever the final consummation of history that still waits us, we must remember that these books are about hope and perseverance, and the ultimate triumph of the Good.

Jesus’ “false alarm!” approach here suggests that this is the real worth of Apocalyptic speculation.  I think he would see its basic message as the same as Winston Churchill’s famous line from World War II, “If you are going through hell, then keep on going!” 

Jesus denies that apocalyptic should be read as a coded playbook of good guys versus bad guys.

Whenever anything horrible happens, no matter what, count on it that someone somewhere will mark it up as an act of God, as some punishment for some bad thing, the fault of some bad group of other people.  You know what I’m talking about.   

Pat Robertson said the 2010 Haitian earthquake was God’s punishment on Haitians’ ‘historic pact with the Devil’, dredging up a bit of Haitian revolutionary war propaganda from two centuries ago.   In 2001, Jerry Falwell blamed the 9-11 attacks also on the victims, saying that God was punishing America for lax sexual morality and casual acceptance of abortion.  The severity of Hurricane Sandy this last month was also in some quarters attributed to a Deity angry with America’s supposed moral laxness, rather than on climate change.  Louis Crew, founder of the GBLT-supporting Episcopal ministry group Integrity, says that he personally over the years has been blamed for earthquakes, tornadoes, and fires, all supposedly God’s punishments for Louie’s depravities.  “Oh, if only I had such power!” he wistfully muses. 

Jesus wants nothing to do with such nonsense.  He tells us in today’s Gospel, “Don’t worry about apocalyptic—just keep calm and carry on!  God’s kingdom is coming, and is in our midst now.  Don’t demonize others and don’t blame God for bad stuff.” 

Once, a man born blind was pointed out to him:  “Was it his parents sin or his that caused this?”  “Neither,” he said  (John 9:3).

Another time people came to him and said,  “Did you hear that the Romans massacred those countrymen of yours who were worshipping in the Temple?  Their own blood was mixed with that of the animals they were sacrificing!  What did they do that was so bad that God punished them this way?”  “They did nothing any worse than anyone else,” he replies, and continues,  “What about those people who died in the Tower of Siloam when it collapsed?  They were no worse than anyone else.”  “The lesson we should take here,” says Jesus, “is not that they were particularly bad, but that we all need to be better” (Luke 13:1-5).  

Apocalyptic is a lens to help people through bad, horrible times.  Its vision amid persecution of a bright future city of God where God will wipe away every tear is like my clear vision of those leaves and bricks after years of fuzziness.  Trying to turn Apocalyptic into something it is not, into predictive television of coming events, is like me putting on my mother’s glasses—it will only distort the world and bring more blindness, not clarity.

Jesus is saying here that we should take the traumatic events we experience, whether war or natural disasters, as occasions for drawing closer to others, for helping them, for being helped by them.  This is the heart of the coming of the Kingdom.  Anything else is stageprops that can and will be used by people wanting somehow to profit from it all. 

In the coming week, I would like you to ask yourself how you react to bad things in life.  Do you blame God for them, or say God is punishing someone, either you or some other group?  In prayer, seek ways to help use the traumas you experience or witness as ways to draw closer to others.  Seek ways to thus bring closer the great day when God’s kingdom comes and God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Comfort, Comfort My People (Advent 2B)

Comfort, Comfort My People

Second Sunday of Advent (Year B)

 Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8
Homily delivered at the Congregation of the Good Shepherd

Beijing China
4th December 2011: 10:00 Holy Eucharist

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

The year 2011 has been hard on many of us here in the Congregation of the Good Shepherd.  While our multi-national, multi-denominational composition is a point of joy for us—we have Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians, British, Bahamians, Fijians, Guyanians, Japanese, Chinese, and many more—it does make us a bit vulnerable as a group when bad things happen over the globe.  In March there was the horrible Christchurch New Zealand earthquake and its aftershocks.  Right after that, there was the horrendous earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor crisis in Sendai Japan.   In August, we had major rioting, looting, and burning in London, Bristol, Birmingham, and Liverpool. 

In addition to these catastrophic disasters, we as a group faced other problems.  Several members of the congregation were diagnosed with major illnesses.  The political process of China seems to be hunkering down in reaction to the popular uprisings in the Middle East and in preparation for changes in the top Chinese leadership next year.  As a result, in the cooperation projects and business for which many of us are here for, it has become hard to move things forward. The entire world continues to suffer from a depressed global economy, and some of our congregants have had to split up their families on a temporary basis in order to pursue their livings in separate locations where the work is. In November, people from the United States sorrowfully commemorated the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and in so doing were brought face to face with the cost of how the American public and it political leaders reacted to that attack:  two seemingly unending wars on foreign soils have produced such deficits that the nation seems unable to respond to the economic crisis.  The American political process has become paralyzed, the constitutional government of the land seemingly moribund due to entrenched ideologies and an unwillingness to cooperate or compromise with anyone of differing opinions.   The Tea Party demonstrated on the Right and was met with hoots of derision from the Center; Occupy Wall Street demonstrated on the Left and was met with beatings, arrests, and pepper spray. 

Despite the occasional moments of grace and blessing we also have experienced, all told, I think that we can agree that 2011 has indeed been an annus horribilis, a year to make one's skin crawl, if only for the catastrophes we saw.  

In 587 BCE, a great catastrophe befell the people of the tiny kingdom of Judah.  One of the world’s first trans-national Empires, Babylon, after a decade of dealing patiently, in their lights, with the fanatic and ultra-nationalistic people of Judah, came down hard. After killing all insurgent combatants and activists, they deported the entire ruling class of the nation, letting them off with their lives but placing them far away in secure and safe provinces in Mesopotamia far from where they could do any damage by stirring up opposition to the Imperial rule. They blinded the king they had put on the throne of Judah only ten years before, only to be rewarded by his treachery and disloyalty. They placed another puppet, this time non-royal and hopefully compliant, in the role of governor of the now newly-named province of Judah.  They burned the capital city, Jerusalem, and leveled to its foundation the symbol of the obstinate, uncompromising national religion that had in some ways been the driving force in the rebellion of the district, the Temple of the Jews’ God, Yahweh.  No stone was left standing on another stone. 

This was a disaster of overwhelming and unfathomable proportions.  They had believed that Yahweh had promised to protect his people them and keep them from harm.  He had promised, they thought, to protect and preserve the line of the kings descended from David and protect their rule.  Now all that was gone. 

They had tried to keep God’s commandments, and in the very doing of this had provoked the wrath of the Babylonians.  Judah had ceased to exist.  All that was left was a small group of exiles in Babylon and a large mass of “the people of the land” living under foreign domination and rapidly accommodating and assimilating to ways of the occupiers in order to get by.   The Jewish way of worship had ceased; the Temple was a mere memory.  Almost all families had lost members, if not been wiped out entirely. 

It is hard for us to understand how hopeless and desperate this situation was.  It was as if all of New Zealand had been leveled, or all of Honshu wiped off the face of the earth by a tsunami, or if the terrorists had exploded nuclear bombs instead of crashed airplanes over New York City and Washington DC.  Arguably, the disaster facing the Jews in 587 was greater than even that of 70 C.E. when the Romans leveled Jerusalem or in the 1940s when the Nazis systematically sought to exterminate all European Jewry, 

Such was the level of desperation and hopelessness.   The nation simply didn’t exist any more.  God had broken the covenant with his people.  Indeed, they were no more his people, no more even a people.  And he was no more their God.  How could one understand these events any other way? 

Among the exiles in Babylon was a prophet who wrote in the tradition of Isaiah, and whose oracles have been preserved in the latter part of that book.  In the midst of that national disaster, he wrote: 

Nahumu, nahamu 'ommi, “comfort, comfort my people.”

The Hebrew is a soft, lilting, lullaby.  It is a plural command—“you all go out and comfort them, comfort them, for they are still my people. I am still their God.”  Thus begins the Book of Consolation in the larger book of Isaiah.

The words are achingly beautiful and full of love.  “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and call out to her.   She has served her time in prison; her penalty is paid.  Her suffering is so great that it cannot be the mere punishment for past sins—it is at least twice as worse as that.”  

This Second Isaiah then introduces several separate oracular pronouncements as the different voices giving this message of comfort. 

The first proclaims that as low as things have gotten, Yahweh is about to perform the ultimate turning of the tables by wondrously and unexpectedly bringing about the return of the exiles from Babylon to Judah.  God will do the seemingly impossible—he will turn the impassible barriers between Mesopotamia and Judah into the route of return. Metaphorically, the hill and canyon filled desert where Jordan, Syria, and western Iraq currently lie will be leveled into a smooth highway that will speed the exiles’ return.  And this will be a sign of God’s glory not just for Jews, but for all of humanity:

A voice cries out:

‘In the wilderness prepare Yahweh’s road,

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

and the rough places a plain.

Then Yahweh’s glory shall be revealed,

and all people shall see it together,

for the mouth of Yahweh has said it.’

  The God who is to do this is no tribal deity, no special possession of the Jewish people.  A second voice of comfort takes up this theme of God’s universal nature, of the fact that all humanity stands in awe of God’s mystery, by surprisingly adding: 

‘All people are grass,

their constancy is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

when the breath of the LORD blows upon it;

surely people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades;

but the word of our God will stand forever.’

Note that Second Isaiah’s message is NOT: “ The national disaster was God’s just punishment on us and now he will restore us to our former state.  We will be his people and he will be our God, and all our enemies will now get their just deserts and it will be a great thing to be a Jew.”   

Rather, Second Isaiah’s message is: “Our suffering was beyond anything just.  It is a mystery, just as God is a mystery.  But our suffering is part of what it means to be human.  All of humanity suffers.  We are grass.  We are impermanent.  But God’s word remains, and that for all people.” 

It has always struck me as odd that Second Isaiah here thinks that a voice of joyful news would cry out, “All people are grass.  They wither in a day, and fade.”  What good news is there in such a saying? 

Accepting our common humanity and our facing square-on our limitations is actually a very liberating thing.  It is, in fact, good news.  It is the start of all authentic spiritual growth and health.  It is the thing that makes Socrates a wise man and the sophists around him foolish—he at least knows and accepts that he is ignorant while they go about in self-delusion.  It is the process that Buddhists call giving up desire, abandoning the expectations that enslave us, and the start of the process of enlightenment.  It is the start of what Muhammad called Islam, “submission” to God.  It is what the wisdom tradition in the Hebrew scripture calls the “beginning of all wisdom,” “awe or fear of the Lord.”   For those following Twelve-Step spirituality, it is the First Step, “we admitted we were powerless and that our lives had become unmanageable.”  It is what Jesus is describing when he says we must first lose our lives in order to find them. 

Acceptance of our condition as imperfect, limited, and very temporary people living in an imperfect and sometimes horrifying world is needed to break down the barriers between us and other people.  It is at the heart of the process of repentance, of regretting and turning aside from our misdoings, and performing amendment of life. 

I think that is why St. Mark in today’s Gospel says that John the Baptist’s preaching of repentance was the “Beginning of the Happy Message” of Jesus Christ.  Mark sees John as the “messenger sent before the Lord’s day,” borrowing from Malachi, and as, borrowing from today’s reading from Second Isaiah, the voice in wilderness crying “prepare the way.”   John, as dour and unsparing as we usually like to think him, is still a bringer of Good News, because he urges us to accept that we are helpless and hopeless, and this universally so, since all people for him needed his baptism, regardless of their heritage, religion, or family background. 

But acceptance is only the start.  In order to find the hope and help we lack, we need to turn our lives over to this God who breaks down barriers, smoothes down the barriers and fills up the gaps, makes the rough places plain, recreates the broken nation, and raises the dead to life. 

The third oracle in today’s Isaiah passage fairly sings in joy of what it means when we recognize God’s hand in these loving acts of restoring the exiles.  Second Isaiah personifies the City about to be rebuilt by the returning exiles, Jerusalem built on Mount Zion, itself as a herald of joyful news, the joyful news of God’s love:   

Get you up to a high mountain,

O Zion, herald of good tidings;

lift up your voice with strength,

O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,

lift it up, do not fear;

say to the cities of Judah,

"Here is your God!"

See, Yahweh God comes with might,

and his arm rules for him;

his reward is with him,

and his recompense before him.

He will feed his flock like a shepherd;

he will gather the lambs in his arms,

and carry them in his bosom,

and gently lead the mother sheep.

Second Isaiah here takes the commonplace image used by the Hebrew prophets, the image of the coming day when Yahweh will set things right, by rewarding the righteous and punishing evil-doers, and changes it drastically.  No longer is this a day that burns.  No longer is it a great day of military conquest.  It is a day of gentle love.  It is a day that God as a loving shepherd feeds his flock, and carries the little lambs tenderly in his arms.  “Here is your God,” he says, implicitly saying “and not in those images of blood and fire.”  For Second Isaiah, God is a loving shepherd, not a warrior or executioner.

The season of Advent is a season of preparation and waiting.  We await and prepare for the inbreaking of God, for the coming of Christ, whether once long ago in Bethlehem, or soon in glory to finish setting things right.   The traditional prayer for the season is this:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

As we prepare, let us remember Second Isaiah’s message in today’s Hebrew Scripture reading:  we are all grass, and quickly fade.  But God loves us.  The coming of God to set things right is a moment of comfort, a moment of joyful news, not just for some, but for all.  It is a moment when God as a mother sings lullabies to us, her children, and when God, as a gentle shepherd, carries us in love, his lambs.

Sisters and brothers here at the Congregation of the Good Shepherd.  Elena and I have been blessed for the last 2 ½ years to be part of you, to sing and worship with you, and to serve you.   We are blessed to share the celebration of the first part of this Advent season with you.  We will be moving to Ashland Oregon in just a couple of weeks, for new ministry and new blessings.  I want to thank all of you for the great faith you have shared with us, and for the opportunities you gave us here to serve. 

May we all during the rest of this Advent season reflect on our limitations and failings, and be brutally honest about this with ourselves.  And may we see this, together with God’s offer to help us, as the gladdest of tidings, the best of good news.  And may we, in our lives and service, be heralds of this joyful message to all whom we meet. 

In the name of God, Amen.

Not In the Earthquake (Lent 1A)

 “Not in the Earthquake”

13 March 2011

Homily Delivered the First Sunday in Lent Year A

10:00 a.m. Liturgy of the Word

Congregation of the Good Shepherd

Beijing, China

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11; Psalm 32

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."  Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say, `You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, `You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.  (Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7)

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

 At the Ash Wednesday Service earlier this week, Mother Jemma read in her prayers part of a poem she had written.  It expressed the sense of mortality she was acutely feeling as we began Lent in the wake of the terrible earthquake in her homeland: dust of the rubble, ashes of ruins, “remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”  Then we heard on Friday afternoon of yet another, more terrible earthquake in Japan—as Christchurch still buries its dead.  Then we began to learn of the horrors of the fires and the tsunami.  Yesterday afternoon, just after large aftershocks hit the Fukushima Daiichi Power Station, a major mechanical explosion ripped apart the building housing the number one reactor, seriously injuring four workers who had been feverishly working to get the reactor under control.  In what may be the most serious nuclear power crisis since the Chernobyl disaster, authorities are telling people in the locality to stay indoors and wear face masks.  As of 10 o’clock last night, Kyodo news service was reporting that in the Minamisanriku, a town of 17,000 in Miyagi prefecture, 9,500 people remain missing or unaccounted for.

I was reminded of a line from the Book of Common Prayer’s Great Litany, which people in my tradition often chant at the beginning of this penitential season:  “From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and  flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine, Good Lord, deliver us.”   (TEC BCP, p.  149) The videos of bridges with traffic being washed away in the raging waters, and the photos of large areas ravished and flooded, with a passenger train strewn across it like some naughty child’s toy, and the realization that the first devastations took place during the work day and rush hour, recalled another line from the litany, “…from dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord, deliver us.” 

Such horror is enough to make you wonder, if you have faith, or if you are naturally optimistic.  It certainly doesn’t weaken the native pessimism that some of us seem to have, or the belief of some that the world is totally random and meaningless.  It was after the All Saint’s Day earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 that the Enlightenment lost confidence in a world guided by any kind of friendly providence.  Voltaire and Rousseau both reacted by suggesting that in light of the disaster if God were good, he could not be almighty, and if he were almighty, he could not be good.  This is the classic problem of theodicy, how we explain the justice and goodness of God in the face of irrational and random horror.

Today’s Reading from Genesis is a story that seeks to answer the question “Why do we have to die,” a question we tend to ask when disaster strikes.  The story puts this into larger questions as well, “Why, if God made the world, is there evil and misdoing here? Does the bad we see in the world mean that God made it bad, and that God is part bad?”   The story is often misread. It is about ha’adam, Hebrew for “the Human Being,” or Every Man and Every Woman, and the details are rich with meaning for each and every one of us. 

The story introduces evil into the world through a talking snake, the most clever of all animals.  That detail alone should tell us that we are dealing with a folk story here.  The snake convinces Every Man and Every Woman to eat the one fruit—of all the wonderful fruit available to them—the one fruit forbidden them by God,  It thus gives us the answer to these hard questions:  “We don’t know why, and perhaps cannot know why, there is evil and death in the world.  It’s a mystery!  But one thing is sure—the evil we do and the evil we see do not come from God.”

The Book of Job makes the same point.  It tells the story of a man who is “perfect in all his ways,” yet who suffers horror.  His friends, ever willing to defend the justice of God, urge Job to confess and repent of whatever hidden sin he has committed that God is so obviously punishing him for.  Most of the book’s 40 some chapters outline the argument.  But Job just can’t agree that what has happened has any semblance of fairness.  He won’t lie to get God off the hook.  Yet he does not “curse God and die,” as suggested by his wife.  He continues the argument, drags out the discussion.  Finally, when God at long last engages him directly, and speaks to him from “out of the whirlwind,” the revelation of the difference of their perspectives is so overwhelming that all Job can do is put on dust and ashes, repent himself, and bless the name of the Lord.  In so doing, he is not granting his friends’ arguments.  He is simply mourning the hard, hard, facts of our human condition, and expressing his hope and trust for its ultimate resolution by a reliable but mysterious God.   

Many stories in the Gospels make the same point.  Stories of Jesus healing the sick tell us that the ultimate purpose of God does not include disease, suffering, and death. Jesus’ ministry of announcing the in-breaking of the reign of God focused in large part in healing physical and mental suffering. This tells us that God doesn’t intend horror and disappointment for his creatures.   One of the key difficulties in theodicy is finding the appropriate connection between God’s ultimate good purposes and intention and what we experience in our actual lives. 

Jesus was asked about people who suffer horrible things.  Once, a man born blind was pointed out to him:  “Was it his parents sin or his that caused this?”  “Neither,” he said.  

Another time people came to him and said,  “Did you hear that the Romans massacred those countrymen of yours who were worshipping in the Temple?  Their own blood was mixed with that of the animals they were sacrificing!  What did they do that was so bad that God punished them this way?”  “They did nothing any worse than anyone else,” he replies, and continues,  “What about those people who died in the Tower of Siloam when it collapsed?  They were no worse than anyone else.”  “The lesson we should take here,” says Jesus, “is not that they were particularly bad, but that we all need to be better” (Luke 13:1-5).  

Jesus knew well that sometimes bad things happen to good people and that in this world the evil often prosper.  His death of the cross is the ultimate example of the righteous suffering unjustly.   But he trusted in God and the goodness of God nonetheless.   That’s why in Gethsemane, he asks if it is possible to have the cup pass from him.  But immediately he adds, “Your will, not mine, be done.”  It is this very openness to God that gets us out of the way, and helps bring the kingdom closer.  

That is the point of today’s Gospel reading.  Where we, Every Man and Every Woman, defect from God's purpose and sin, Jesus Christ in the desert, though completely one of us, overthrows the tempter’s power.  And this through complete openness to his Father. 

We often lose sight of this basic point in the story of the Fall of Humankind because of the historicized way many of us have come to read these stories, a process helped along by the rhetorical flourishes you can see in today’s reading in Paul.  But even there, note that Paul says Adam passed sin to his descendants “because all have sinned” not “so that they all sin.”  In his classic phrasing of the doctrine of original sin, St. Augustine pushed it further by suggesting that this sin in our origins was a moral contamination transmitted through the very act that generates children, sex, which he associated with the symbol of eating the forbidden fruit in the Genesis story. 

In the Book of Genesis, however, there is no hint of such a demonization of human sexuality.  Genesis sees sexuality as part of God’s good creation, and seeks to counter its divinization in the fertility cults so abundant in the ancient near East. 

This story in Genesis does not teach that sexual sin corrupted our first parents and transmitted this to us all.  Instead, it tells a story where figures representing each one of us go astray.  And go astray we do.  Elsewhere Genesis teaches that the human heart, for whatever reasons, has a mysterious tendency to go astray and desire evil.  In the story of the Flood, we hear, “Yahweh saw that the wickedness of humankind was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Gen 6:5)   Later Judaism develops the idea in this verse into the doctrine of the Yetser hara‘ “the inclination to evil,” the rabbis’ doctrine similar to Augustine’s Original Sin, but without blaming some human ancestor for one’s failings or disparaging sex and the body.

The greatest proof of the truth of the teaching of a “Fall of Humankind,” therefore, is not to be found in the archaeological or fossil record.  It is to be found by looking in the mirror. 

So much for how Genesis explains moral evil that comes from human choice.   What about natural horror, “nature red in tooth and claw,” or the great economies of waste and suffering seen in natural selection in the evolution of species?

Genesis hints that there is a lack of perfect conformity to God’s intention even in the natural world as God created it (without benefit, as it were, of a historical “Fall of Man”). In the Priestly account of creation in Genesis 1, for instance, not all the commands of God in creation are perfectly reflected in what immediately happens as a result, especially if you read this in the original Hebrew. Charles Foster writes:   

“‘Let light be,’ commands God; ‘Light be,” comes back the report.  This is not ham-fisted editing: whoever put this story together knew exactly what they were doing.  ‘Grass grass,’ God tells the earth.  But the earth does not.  It ‘puts forth’ grass.  The created order is slightly disobedient from the start.” Of the eight “let there be” orders in creation, only “Let there be light” is implemented exactly  (The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin [Hodder & Stoughton, 2009] pp. 132-33). 

The Priestly author only hints at this lack of conformity of the created world with God’s intentions.  He knows that God’s declaration that creation is good, when in the face of recalcitrant nature, presents us with mystery.  But the idea ties in with Augustine’s doctrine of what evil is.  For Augustine, evil is not a positive thing, but rather the absence of good.  And if God is all good, then the very act of creating something that is not-God implies that there will be gaps in the goodness of the created world.  That is how he accounts for the natural evil in the world.

Yesterday while we were walking in Chaoyang Park and talking about Japan, Elena told me another  folk story, this one from Japan,  that she had learned as a children’s librarian:   

Ojiisan was a simple man living long, long ago on a mountaintop near the sea.  His name means "grandfather." One day when his family was preparing to go to a festival celebrating the rice harvest, he refused to go. He sensed something was very wrong so he and his grandson stayed behind. As he watched from a distance all the villagers celebrating the festival below near the ocean, he felt the earth rumble beneath the soles of his feet.  Ojiisan, who had felt hundreds of earthquakes in his time, knew this one was different than most.   He had learned from his grandfather that after some earthquakes, terrible surges of the ocean could draw up the water near the beach and then crash back again, destroying everything and everyone not one high ground.  As he watched, he saw the ocean begin to recede quickly and leave the bottom exposed.  To his horror, he saw the villagers at the celebration rushing toward the beach to watch instead of running away from it to save themselves.   He called, but no one could hear.  So he ran to his own precious fields, full of ripe rice, and set them on fire.   The villagers, seeing the fire and smoke, left the amazingly bare ocean bottom and began to rush up the mountain to try to put out the fire.   The grandson tried to get them to put out the fire before it destroyed the entire wealth of the family, but the grandfather stopped him because there were still villagers below who had not seen the smoke and come.  They too soon noticed and ran up the mountain, just as the tsunami hit the lower ground and carried away everything there.  By sacrificing his own farm and livelihood, Ojiisan had saved all the villagers.   To this day, a temple built by the villagers stands on that mountainside overlooking the dangerous sea, honoring Ojiisan and his sacrifice.  [adapted from Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajikawa]

In this story, Ojiisan does not get distracted by the horror he is seeing.  He is not dissuaded by the cost of what he must do.  He sees what he needs to do, and does it, even when his grandson thinks he is crazy and pleads with him to stop.  By not getting distracted, and simply doing the next thing put in front of him that he needs to do, the next right thing, Ojiisan saves his village and becomes worthy of a shrine in his honor.    In his sacrifice of his rice fields, he is like Christ, who sacrificed himself to become for us beacon to lead us from our misdoings, our struggling against God's ultimate purposes, from again and again doing what we know is wrong. 

William Pike, writing on the Haiti earthquake two years ago, said that he had been reminded of the story of Elijah’s flight to Mount Horeb in 1 Kings 19, where God spoke to Elijah not out of an earthquake, whirlwind, or fire, but out of the whispering of the still breeze.  Pike remembers the words used in the passage—“The Lord was not in the earthquake.” 

God indeed is not in the earthquake, is not in the horror, not in the fire, nor the flood.  God is not in our misdoings and our failure to do the right thing.  All these show us how far the world is from God's ultimate intention, not God in action.   Rather, God is in the efforts of people trying to do the right thing.  God is in those who help the victims of such things. 

May we all this week continue in our prayers and searching to find repentant hearts.  But let us also pray for,  and help by contributing fiscal resources, the recovery and rescue efforts in Japan and New Zealand. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.  

Intercessions for Victims of the Sendai Earthquake and Tsunami

and Christchurch Earthquake

O merciful Father, you taught us in your holy Word that you  do not willingly afflict or grieve the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve:  Look with pity upon the sorrows of their children in Japan and New Zealand afflicted by natural disasters, for whom our prayers are offered.  Remember them, O Lord, in mercy, nourish their souls with patience,  comfort them with a sense of your goodness, lift up your countenance  upon them, and give them peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Receive in mercy the souls of those who have died.  Bring them forth, we pray, in your good time fully alive and themselves, but like the stars shining in the heavens. 
O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us.

Give comfort and peace to the dying, Lord.  Save and preserve, Lord, those whose lives and health are still in danger.
O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us.

Ease the pain of the injured. Heal and strengthen the hurt and the ill. 
O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us.

Give courage and skill to those seeking to manage the damaged nuclear reactors that their efforts may be successful and worse harm avoided.

O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us.
 

Give strong resolve to and strengthen government and military officials, community leaders, aid workers, care givers, neighbors, and donors that assistance will come quickly, efficiently, and in adequate amounts, and that recovery efforts proceed successfully. 
O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us.

Bless and comfort those who have lost loved ones and colleagues.  Help them to not lose hope or a sense of purpose. 
O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us.

Bless especially children who have been orphaned, the elderly who have lost their grown children, and families that have lost their breadwinners.  Give them adequate replacement caregivers and support. 
O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us.

Help those who have lost their homes or their means of livelihood.   

O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us.

Help communities rebuild, especially schools, hospitals, and enterprises that provide livelihoods. 
O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us.

Bless all who look on at horror to simply trust in you and not ask why such disasters happen but rather ask what human need they can fulfill when facing one.   
O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us.

Father, your Son Jesus died for us in shame and pain, but was not deflected from his mission.  Help us to follow him bravely in the Way of the Cross.  Help us to be your hands of mercy and
love to those who suffer.   Give us faith, merciful Lord, that glorious resurrection can follow deadly suffering,  and that in your good intention for creation, all shall be well,
and all manner of thing can be turned to good. 
O God, make speed to save us.
R.     O Lord, make haste to help us

Knowing our weakness, and reminded by these frightening signs that we are but grass and the flower thereof, that we are mere dust and unto dust shall return, all this we ask for your tender mercies’ sake. 
Amen  

Two Kinds of Why (Lent 3C)

“Two Kinds of ‘Why’”
Third Sunday of Lent (Year C)
7th March 2010
Beijing, China
Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

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

We just heard this week of yet more earthquakes—another in Taiwan and a horrendous one in Chile.  The dead in Haiti are not yet all buried, and yet now we have more death from natural disasters.  It is enough to make you wonder, if you have faith, or if you are naturally optimistic.  It certainly doesn’t weaken the native pessimism that some of us seem to have, or the belief of some that the world is totally random and meaningless. 

A disaster 250 years ago had similar results.  Some historians have said that the beginning of the nihilism of the modern world can be traced to the November 1, 1755 earthquake that leveled the capital of Portugal, Lisbon.  It was the point where the Enlightenment lost confidence in a world guided by any kind of friendly providence.  Historian Will Durant put it succinctly, “Both faith and hope suffered most when, in November, 1755, came the news of the awful earthquake at Lisbon, in which 30,000 people had been killed.  The quake had come on All Saints’ Day; the churches had been crowded with worshippers; and death, finding its enemies in close formation, had reaped a rich harvest.”  Voltaire and Rousseau both reacted by suggesting that in light of the disaster if God were good, he could not be almighty, and if he were almighty, he could not be good.  This is the classic problem of theodicy, how we explain the justice and goodness of God in the face of irrational and random horror. 

When the Haiti earthquake struck a month ago, television Evangelist Pat Robertson quickly chimed in by affirming that God was not only both good and almighty, but directly  and personally responsible for the earthquake.  God, Robertson said, was punishing the Haitians for what he called their ‘historic pact with the Devil’, dredging up a bit of Haitian revolutionary war propaganda from two centuries ago.  Most of us when we heard this were aghast.  The Rev. Franklin Graham, to his credit, replied simply that Robertson must have misspoken, for, as he knew, “God loves the people of Haiti and has not abandoned them.” 

But statements such as Robertson’s, clearly wrong-headed and wrong-hearted, seem to appear with an unfortunate regularity in certain theological quarters when really bad things happen.  Remember Jerry Falwell’s blaming the 9-11 attacks in 2001 also on the victims, saying that God had visited punishment on an America for what Falwell said was an-all-too lax sexual morality and an-all-too-casual acceptance of abortion.  

The religious people who make such comments are consciously trying to cast themselves in the role of prophets—diviners of God’s will and intentions.  They can quote the Book of Deuteronomy and its kindred works in the Old Testament to the effect that God rewards and blesses the righteous and punishes and brings disaster on the wicked.  They can point to many passages in the Old Testament that account for disasters by saying they were God’s punishment.   The logic of this position is that since God is involved in day-to-day life, and since God is just, bad things must happen to bad people and good things must happen to good people.  

But not all scripture agrees with this view, regardless of what the Book of Deuteronomy has to say on this particular issue.  Some parts of the Bible, indeed, strongly deny it.

 The Book of Job tells the story of a man who is “perfect in all his ways,” yet who suffers horror.  His friends, ever willing to defend the justice of God, urge Job to confess and repent of whatever hidden sin he has committed that God is so obviously punishing him for.  Most of the book’s 40 some chapters outline the argument.  But Job just can’t agree that what has happened has any semblance of fairness.  He won’t lie to get God off the hook.  Yet he does not “curse God and die,” as suggested by his wife.  He continues the argument, drags out the discussion.  Finally, when God at long last engages him directly, and speaks to him from “out of the whirlwind,” the revelation of the difference of their perspectives is so overwhelming that all Job can do is put on dust and ashes, repent himself, and bless the name of the Lord.  In so doing, he is not granting his friends’ arguments.  He is simply mourning the hard, hard, facts of our human condition, and expressing his hope and trust for its ultimate resolution by a reliable but mysterious God.   

I was raised in a religious community that, like Robertson and Falwell, taught simply that God blessed the righteous, punished the wicked, and heard and answered the prayers of the righteous. My wife and I had a major trial in our faith just after we were married while we were still in college and just starting our own family. We had become friends with a young couple that went to Church with us. They were good people. After several years of unsuccessful efforts, they were able to get pregnant and had a beautiful little baby boy. After a month or so, though, it became apparent that sometime was wrong. He had been born with a genetic defect: the upper layers of his skin were not fully connected with the deeper layers. If you touched him slightly on the arm, it quickly would turn into a large blister, would easily burst and become infected. There was little that the doctors could do. Despite two months in intensive care, the baby’s body was covered with what essentially were second-degree burns. He was held suspended in a light net to prevent further damage from the bed. His parents were not allowed to touch him, so they could not even comfort him as he screamed his little life out in agony. During the ordeal, we prayed. Our friends prayed. The Church elders prayed and anointed the baby with healing oil, carefully, on the inch or so of sound skin on the side of his head. The whole community prayed. And the baby suffered and slowly died.

It is not the only time in my life when I wished that the world were as simple as I had been taught in Sunday School: my wife’s mother’s cancer, my father’s Alzheimer’s disease.

Yet I have also seen prayers answered in wonderful and miraculous ways, sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually: a deadly disease stopped in its tracks and healed, broken relationships mended and strengthened, mental illness managed.

The gospel stories of Jesus healing the sick tell us that the ultimate purpose of God does not include disease, suffering, and death. Jesus’ ministry of announcing the in-breaking of the reign of God focused in large part in healing physical and mental suffering. This tells us that God doesn’t intend horror and disappointment for his creatures. 

As we can see in the embarrassments that the Deuteronomy retribution theology causes people like the Reverends Robertson and Falwell, one of the key difficulties in theodicy is finding the appropriate connection between God’s ultimate good purposes and intention and what we experience in our actual lives.  

Jesus was asked questions like this several times in his life.  “Why was this man born blind—did his parents sin or was it him?”  “Neither,” he replies, “it wasn’t as punishment, but so that I would have the chance to heal him” (John 9:2-3).  They ask him why, and he answers why.  But note—the “why” question that Jesus answers is a very different “why” than the question posed.  The question asked is “why was he born blind," i.e., "what was the cause or origin of his being born blind?"  The answer Jesus gives is a “why was he born blind," i.e., "for what purpose was he born blind, or for what effect?”   

The former is a 'why' that seeks origins or cause, the latter is a 'why' that seeks final purpose or effect.  I once preached this text in Chinese, and there the distinction is far clearer than it is in English--  the people ask Jesus "Wei shenme (why)?"  Instead of answering "yinwei... (because, on account of....)" he says it is "wei le .... (in order that)" he heal the man.   

Jesus' shift between the two different kinds of 'why' is essential. 

Jesus assumes, along with Job after the voice in the whirlwind, that God is good and all powerful.   In The Doors of the Sea, a book written in response to the tsunami of 2004, theologian David Hart writes:  “As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy.”  Jesus would have agreed.  That’s what all the healings and exorcisms in his ministry are about.  Such an attitude may not intellectually answer the problem of theodicy, but it addresses the emotional questions involved. 

This faith is the basis of Jesus’ answer to the question “why does a seemingly innocent person suffer?” Jesus, together with Job, does not falsify his life experience in order to defend this basic truth:  he won’t lie and say the man born blind or his parents were any worse than others.  He admits that the innocent suffer, and this implies that in our current situation, with our current perspective, there may not be an answer that we can give to the “why, on what account?” question when we see horror.  It is not on account of unusual wickedness worthy of punishment, nor is it on the account of injustice, incompetence, or evil in the heart of God. 

So the only possible answer to a “why” here is to shift it to a “why, to what purpose?” question and look for opportunities to serve and help bring the ultimate intentions of God closer to the reality we see before us. 

“The coming of the rule of God” was the great image used in Jesus’ day to describe the hoped-for day when God’s ultimate purposes were realized.  Jesus’ proclamation of the in-breaking of God’s reign was marked by his healings and exorcisms and his call for greater social justice—this embodies his shift from “why, on what account?” to “why, for what purpose?”  He saw the arrival of the final purposes of God as not only possible but inevitable, but knew we needed to get out of God’s way.    

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is asked about people who suffer horrible things.  “Did you hear that the Romans massacred those countrymen of yours who were worshipping in the Temple?  Their own blood was mixed with that of the animals they were sacrificing!  What did they do that was so bad that God punished them this way?”  “They did nothing any worse than anyone else,” he replies.

“What about those people who died in the Tower of Siloam when it collapsed?  They were no worse than anyone else.  The lesson we should take here,” says Jesus, “is not that they were particularly bad, but that we all need to be better” (Luke 13:1-5).  

He then tells the parable of the slow-bearing fig tree—the gardener being patient and working with the non-fruit-bearing plant.   Again, the point is to describe the connection between the arrival of God’s ultimate intention and where we are today.  God is cutting us slack so that we can bring forth fruit.  The delay in the arrival of God’s intentions is actually a mercy to us, since we are part of the problem in keeping God’s will from being achieved. 

Jesus knew well that sometimes bad things happen to good people and that in this world the evil often prosper.  His death of the cross is the ultimate example of the righteous suffering unjustly.   But he trusted in God and the goodness of God nonetheless.   That’s why in Gethsemane, he asks if it is possible to have the cup pass from him.  But immediately he adds, “Your will, not mine, be done.”  It is this very openness to God that gets us out of the way, and helps bring the kingdom closer. 

William Pike, writing on the Haiti earthquake, said that he had been reminded of the story of Elijah’s flight to Mount Horeb in 1 Kings 19, where God spoke to Elijah not out of an earthquake, whirlwind, or fire, but out of the whispering of the still breeze.  In thinking about Pat Robertson’s graceless remarks, Pike remembers the words used in the passage—“The Lord was not in the earthquake.” 

God indeed is not in the earthquake, is not in the horror.  He is not in towers falling, whether it be the tower of Siloam or the Twin Towers in New York.  All these things show us how far the world is from God's ultimate intention, not God in action.   Rather, God is in the efforts of people trying to help the victims of such things.  He is in reconciliation and service.  He is in justice and peace. 

May we learn to shift our perspectives and better submit to our loving God.   May his kingdom come, and his will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. 

In the name of Christ,  Amen.