a captive to the fictions

EASTER 2013 | Who? What? How? Why? These are the questions at the heart of any news story. And of course, the story of the day involves the impossible: the resurrection of a dead man.

 

The WHO, of course, is a rabbi from the backwater called Galilee, by the name of Jesus Bar Joseph. A Pharisee, probably. A radical, in the eyes of some. A reformer, certainly. But the Christian tradition makes bolder claims for him than this.

 

They say he was the Lady Wisdom, God’s self-expression, the artist through whom the world was fashioned. They say that she was the Living Torah, the life-giving words handed down to Moses—that she was both the giver and the Law itself—who taught Israel, and guided Jacob, who went with them into captivity, and led them back to safety in their own land. They said that this Wisdom could not abide to be separated from the world, and so she was born in a stable to a humble couple, who raised their boy to honor the Law and the Prophets.

 

They say that this boy grew into a teacher. They say that he was both fully human and fully God, an alien to neither heaven nor earth, but at home in both places. They say that in his body, he wedded heaven and earth, body and spirit, creation and Creator. In his self, in his being, in his life he united everything that was separated.

 

He taught this unity, and this teaching was so terrifying that he was killed. The creator became the crucified. The author of life had been led away to death. But the Christian tradition has one more unlikely assertion to make about this man up its sleeve: it contends that he did not stay dead. But the reason for the resurrection is often not made clear.

 

Which brings us to the WHAT. What happened in that event? There is a startling symmetry between the end of Jesus’ life and the beginning. Recall that when King Herod learned that a king was born in Bethlehem, he panicked, and he systematically rooted out any who might lay claim to his throne. Tradition says that he murdered every male child under the age of two—the slaughter of the innocents. For he could not suffer any challenge to his authority to stand.

 

And that’s what kings have always done, haven’t they? Eliminated all challengers to their authority?

 

For the whole of his ministry, Jesus taught about the Kingdom. It was a teaching that was usually misunderstood. Yet his message was simple. When the Psalmist wrote, “The earth is God’s, and all that is in it,” he captured the essence of it. The whole of the earth belongs to God, regardless of what human beings foolishly assert. God rules over every inch of it, heedless of human hubris. The creatures of the earth know this—only human beings fool themselves into thinking otherwise. When a sparrow flies across the border between Israel and Jordan, does the sparrow know it has just crossed the border? No, because the sparrow lives in the Kingdom.

 

Borders exists only in the human imagination. They are fictions that we construct to bolster the lie of our superiority to nature, the illusion of our authority over the earth, to contain or exclude and terrorize one another. Rome had sold the known world the lie of their rulership. They called their emperor a god, and set up his statue in their temples. They made the people of the world bend the knee by the force of the sword—and one by one the nations capitulated to the fiction of their rule.

 

The Jewish people believed this lie, too, and they were eager to throw it off in favor of another lie—the fiction of their own superiority, their own rule. All human rule is hubris. All human rule requires violence to enforce the fiction. The Roman empire pulled out the big guns in the face of Jesus’ defiance—the biggest guns they had. Their ultimate weapon was the fear of death—for it is this power that held the world terrorized in its thrall.

 

And when Jesus got up and walked away from the worst that Rome could do, he exposed the lie. The earth does not belong to Rome. It does not belong to Herod. It does not belong to the British Empire or the Soviet Union or the United States or any other pretender to that throne the world has ever known. The earth is God’s, and all that is in it. When Jesus rose again, it was because Empire did its worst, and empire did not win—because empire does not rule this world. God does.

 

Which brings us to the HOW. One of the most fascinating of all the martial arts is a relatively recent one called Aikido. It is less than a hundred years old, and it was founded utilizing the wisdom of many other, much older arts. Philosophically, however, it has a major difference from other schools. In Aikido, one’s opponents are never harmed. Instead, the opponents own force and violence are repeatedly and patiently rendered ineffective. Punches might be thrown, but the force of them is directed away without doing harm. Kicks threaten, but they are turned aside, neutralizing the energy of them. An Aikido practitioner wins a fight not by wounding or killing an opponent, but when the opponent is simply too tired or frustrated to continue.

 

It is the most elegant of the martial arts, because no matter how powerful the attacker, no damage is done. No matter how fatal the blows, they hurt no one. No matter how relentless the attack, the effort is futile.

 

In a way, the crucifixion and resurrection are God’s Aikido. Empire was a powerful attacker, the blow was fatal, the attack was relentless. And even though Jesus was sorely and powerfully wounded, he got up and walked away from the attack. And even though the Empire continued to attack Jesus’ followers for hundreds of years, it eventually gave up when it realized that THIS body simply couldn’t be killed. And no amount of effort, no threat of death, no illusion of power or grandeur could stop it or frighten it or overcome it.

 

Which leaves us with only one question: WHY? Why would God assert sovereignty in this way? Why would Jesus willingly walk to the cross? Why would God allow it?

 

Because just as Herod had to put to death all of those innocents, God had to eliminate any who might lay claim to the throne of this world. The resurrection reveals once and for all the lie of tyrannical power—especially the tyranny of the threat of death. For in the wake of Resurrection, Empire’s dire power is broken, and even death itself is defeated. Death itself is shown to be an illusion. Death itself is shown to be a lie.

 

But illusions die hard. We still live under the terror of empire. We still believe the lie. We still think that might makes right. We still cringe before the superior power of others. We still shrink at the thought of our own deaths—but this, too is an illusion.

 

Jesus has trampled them all under foot. They did their worst, and they did not defeat him. They pulled out all the stops, and he dusted himself off and kept coming. And he still keeps coming.

 

When we are invited to baptism, it’s not just a quaint little ritual. It’s an invitation to throw off the lies that keep us in bondage. It’s an invitation to a freedom that bows to no human power. It’s an invitation to life with no fear of death. It’s an invitation to live in the Kingdom, where God alone rules, to live in reality instead of illusion, to live an abundant life, because just surviving is not enough.

 

But is this a credible news story? It’s too impossible to be believed, it’s too much to ask of modern people. Very well, I’ll grant you that. I won’t ask you to believe it. I don’t believe it myself. It’s too incredible. But if reason is the rod by which all things are measured, then the human soul is expendable and pointless. There is more to the world than logic can contain. There is mystery, there is beauty, there is imagination—and none of these are even remotely reasonable.

 

So here’s a slightly different question: can you TRUST this story? Can you CHOOSE to rest in this version of events? Can you, by effort of will, TRUST that it is true?

 

To trust this story is to trust that humanity and divinity have truly come together. To trust this story is to trust that the human spirit will not be forever cowed before tyrants. To trust this story is to trust that illusions can be broken. To trust this story is to trust that we can be set free from bondage. To trust this story is to trust that death is not the end. To trust this story is to trust that there is more to life than what can be quantified and measured and explained.

 

And we ourselves have born witness to the truth of this, have we not? Have we not witnessed the power of God, of resurrection in our own lives? Has not Jesus shattered illusions that have held us in bondage? Have we not seen with our own eyes those who trust in Christ’s resurrection following him to their own deaths without fear?

 

If we don’t trust this, then hasn’t Empire actually won? Hasn’t the Empire of Rationality defeated everything in its wake, at all costs? And what a great cost it is, especially to the weak, especially to the imagination, especially to our souls.

 

But it need not be so. The angels asked the women, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” And they may well ask us the same. Why do we look for life in the weird and pointless places that we do? Why do we ourselves chase after power, and seek to hold its illusion over the heads of others? Why do we ourselves seek to rule over others, to usurp the throne of God? Why do we ourselves allow ourselves to be held captive to tyrants, to fictions, to rationality at all costs, to the terror of death? Why do we continue to swallow the lies?

 

The truth is the news event of the day: Every enemy of humankind has been defeated today. You need NEVER be afraid again. Not of anybody. Not of anything. And every power that might ever threaten or oppose us has been struck down.

 

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

 

baptism and resurrection

BAPTISM OF THE LORD | Is 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Lk 3:15-17, 21-22

 

At the heart of the Ancient and Accepted Order of Freemasons is the curious myth of Hiram Abiff. Hiram was the master builder of Solomon’s temple, and the keeper of the deeper secrets of masonry. When the temple was reaching completion, fifteen of the builders worried among themselves about the fact that their job was coming to an end, and without knowledge of the deeper secrets of the craft, they had no job security, basically. There was a heated discussion about whether they ought to take the secrets by force, and all but three rejected this plan.

 

Three of them, however, decided to act on it. They waited until the cover of night, when they knew that the master builder Hiram would be going into the temple alone to pray. They covered all three exits, and when Hiram tried to leave by the South gate, he was met by one of them. The mason demanded to be told the deeper secrets of their craft. When Hiram refused, he slashed at his throat with a ruler.

 

Hiram picked himself up and fled to the West gate, where he was confronted by another of the ruffians. He was told that if he did not surrender the secrets, they would kill him. When he refused, he was struck forcefully in the chest.

 

He was able to flee again, however, but was met at the East gate by the third of the ruffians, who once again demanded to be told the deeper secrets of the craft. When he refused a third time, the ruffian smote him on the head with a hammer, killing him instantly. The three criminals scurried his body away and buried it, after which they fled.

 

The next day, the Master Builder was missing, of course, and dreading foul play, King Solomon called for a search. They couldn’t find Hiram anywhere, so Solomon called the workmen together and asked if any knew where he was or what might have happened. The twelve that had discussed confronting Hiram about the secrets of master masonry confessed their deliberations, disavowing the three ruffians by name.

 

Solomon sent out rangers to comb the countryside and man the ports—and all three were found. They confessed what they had done and where they had lain the body. With an armed entourage, Solomon himself went to the gravesite, and gave instructions to open the coffin.

 

The body was in a sorry state. Solomon asked the King of Tyre, his close friend and confident, to grasp Hiram’s hand in the grip of a first degree mason, and raise him up. But the flesh came off of the bone when he tried. Then Solomon suggested using the grip of the second degree, with similar sad results. But when he tried the grip of the third degree, Hiram was successfully raised.

 

This myth is reenacted in the initiation ceremony for the third degree master mason. In a very dramatic fashion, the initiate experiences symbolized violence, a burial, and a bodily resurrection. It is very clear what is being enacted, there is no ambiguity here. A person dies, and his life up until that point comes to an end. He is then raised to a new life, centered on a new fellowship, and ordered by different rules—the deeper secrets to which he is now privy.

 

Ironically, most of us have undergone a similar ritual, but over time it has become so modified as to obscure its symbolism, making its once clear meaning opaque. The ritual, of course, is baptism—a ritual in which a person is declared dead, is buried beneath the water, and then raised again to a new life, ordered by different rules and a new orientation, a new center of gravity.

 

The seeds of this are clearly evident in our Gospel reading today. The Baptism of Jesus comes near the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, only three chapters in. But in other gospels, such as Mark and John, it is the very first scene. The reasons for this are many. For Mark, it was the first notable thing in Jesus’ life—he and his community don’t know the stories of the virgin birth and so forth. John begins there because it is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

 

But there’s another reason that this event comes so early in these Gospels, and it serves to remind me that I often take for granted the literary genius behind the Gospels. They are exquisitely constructed works of literature, far beyond what you would expect of an ancient document. And the baptism is a case in point: the Baptism of Jesus—so near the beginning of these Gospels—grimly foreshadows the events at the end, namely, his death and resurrection.

 

This very curious episode says to readers, “pay attention, all of this is leading up to something, this is part of something bigger.” And when WE are baptized, it is the same for us—it is an indication that we are entering into something bigger, something far greater than ourselves.

 

Unfortunately, because of the way the ritual has morphed over time, we have lost this important symbolism. For the early Christians, baptism by full immersion was essential. But under persecution in the second century, when full immersion was sometimes impossible, smaller amounts of water were permitted, until this simply became the norm.

 

The symbolism of the “washing away of sins” replaced the symbolism of dying and rising again, which is a sad example of a very powerful image being supplanted by a much weaker one—not to mention one that was theologically suspect.

 

Evangelical churches get this right when they insist on full immersion baptism, restoring to our religious imagination the former beauty and power of this ritual. Where I take issue with Evangelical teaching on baptism is an anemic understanding of symbol—as a disconnected sign of something else—rather than something that not only points to but also participates in the reality which it symbolizes.

 

Baptism isn’t just a play which shows us something that has already happened, it is a ritual in which a transformation ACTUALLY HAPPENS. When a person goes down into that water, that person dies. Literally. That person is dead. The life which has gone before—one that is oriented on the self, one that is looking out for number one, one that is isolated and separate from others—dies.

 

When the person comes up out of the water, that person comes up united body and soul with Christ. That person is raised into the very same resurrected life that Jesus began in his own resurrection. All that belongs to the baptized person—her gifts, her passions, and her sins—is absorbed into Christ. Her gifts and passions are glorified and put to good use, and her sins are nullified in the goodness of God.

 

Likewise, all that belongs to Jesus—his life, his divinity, his work, his mission, and his immortality—are absorbed by her in that very moment. Her life and Jesus’ life are married, are mingled, are made one life, now and forever.

 

The old life of isolation and self-interest is over, dead, and buried. She has been raised into a new life of communion, community, and service to others. That is what it means to be baptized. That is what it means to be a Christian.

 

To be baptized is to live right now in the resurrected life of Jesus. To be baptized is to recognize that we are living our eternal life NOW. It doesn’t start after death—is has ALREADY started, in the moment when we died and were united to Jesus’ own resurrected life. For those of us who trust the promises of God, death holds no terrors for us. We are already living in the resurrection. As God says in our reading from Isaiah, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name; and you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned,” and when you are laid in the grave, I will not abandon you there.

 

Like Solomon opening the grave of Hiram Abiff, each of us will be raised. Martin Luther says that Jesus himself will command our graves to open and will raise us up with his own hand, not collectively, but each of us individually.

 

We make a lot of noise about Eucharist, but really, it is baptism that is the most important of the sacraments. Because it is THIS ritual that changes our lives, that kills off an old way of being, and unites us to Christ forever. And I can imagine that the words that people heard at Jesus’ baptism might very well be said of us at ours, “This is my beloved child, in you I am well pleased.”

 

When Martin Luther was asked which was the most important day of his life, he said, “My baptism, of course.” The irony is that Luther was baptized as an infant, so he could not even remember the most important day of his life. I was eight years old at my baptism, and I barely remember it. Even if the memory is vivid for you, I wonder if the meaning of being buried with Christ and raised to a new life IN HIM was clear to you? If not, I invite you to own that reality for yourself today.

 

Instead of a closing prayer, I’d like to suggest that we reaffirm our baptismal vows. If you have not been baptized, or are not a Christian, or don’t resonate with the meaning of baptism, I ask you to meditate on the rituals and covenants that have transformed you in the past, and to recommit yourself to the spiritual path that you have chosen, or has chosen you, as we pray.

 

My friends, do you renounce the powers of evil and desire the freedom of new life in Christ?

I do.

 

Do you profess Jesus Christ as your guide and savior?

I do.

 

Do you promise, by the grace of God, to be Christ’s disciple, to follow in the way of our Savior, to resist oppression and evil, to show love and justice, and to witness to the work and word of Jesus Christ as best you are able?

I promise, with the help of God.

 

Do you promise, according to the grace given you, to grow in the Christian faith and to be a faithful member of the church of Jesus Christ, celebrating Christ’s presence and furthering Christ’s mission in all the world?

I promise, with the help of God.

 

Dear friends, this water will be used to remind us of our baptism. Let us ask God to bless it and to keep us faithful to the Spirit he has given us.

 

O God, hear the prayers of your people: we celebrate our creation and redemption. Hear our prayers and bless this water which gives fruitfulness to the fields, and refreshment and cleansing to human beings. You chose water to show your goodness when you led your people to freedom through the Red Sea and satisfied their thirst in the desert with water from the rock. Water was the symbol used by
the prophets to foretell your new covenant with us. You made the water of baptism holy by Christ’s baptism in the Jordan: by it you give us a new birth and renew us in holiness. May this water remind us of our baptism, and of the new birth that you have given us through it. We ask this through Christ our Savior.
Amen.

appeal to authority

EPIPHANY 2013 | Is 60:1-6; Eph 3:1-12; Matt 2:1-12

As a young man, I felt fairly devastated by my experience of church. We had been part of a congregation in the Chicago suburbs that was so extreme in its fundamentalism that it was very much on the fringe of the Southern Baptist Convention at the time. Just so you know, if you’re so over-the-top conservative that even the Southern Baptists view you with suspicion, you’ve gone too far.

 

We had clearly gone too far, and we left a lot of wreckage in our wake—my own soul included. For several years I just gave up on God. It was all sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll—but far geekier and a lot less cool than that actually sounds because, you know, this is ME we’re talking about.

 

But all the while I was sowing my wild oats, I had one finger in the Christianity water bowl. Just one. But it was an important one. There was this singer-songwriter named Bruce Cockburn—and at the time (well, in fact, for some time to come )I was fairly obsessed with his music. His lyrics were profound, shot through with a visceral mysticism that touched me deeply.

 

His songs were disarmingly honest—both confessional and revelatory of a greater purpose at work in the world that was always just out of sight but often impinging on daily life. He always asked the hard questions, and he never gave the easy answer. He wrote about being confounded and moved by beauty, wonder, and at times even evil, and of the incessant interior struggle to be a person of mindfulness, compassion and integrity.

 

Consistently, in listening to Cockburn, I was confronted with deep questions about what it meant to be a truly human being, and was challenged to be a better and more honest person. But the thing that most confounded me was that much of his ruminations came from his Christian faith.

 

Bruce was, in fact, an Anglican mystic. And I was so impressed and moved by him, that at that time I felt I could not dispense with Christianity altogether because THIS MAN was a Christian. There was something in his songwriting, his poetry, his ideas that called to me, that spoke to me of something that I deeply wanted for myself, that pointed to a well-examined and well-lived life.

 

He might have just been a folk and rock-n-roll artist, true—and rock stars are not generally noted for their altruism or their piety. But the truth is, I TRUSTED him, and he kept saying that there was something important about Jesus. I was too wounded to claim that for myself at the time, but I trusted Bruce, so I hung in there and kept the door open, just a crack at first, but still open. It was enough.

 

As I look back on that period of my life today, I see that what influenced me was Bruce’s authority. I trusted him, and he pointed to Jesus. So I had to look at Jesus. Our reading from the Gospel According to St. Matthew today contains precisely this same kind of appeal to authority. There’s no record that the three wise men were songwriters, but they certainly were people of authority in the eyes of Matthew’s readers.

 

Now, typically, this text is viewed as a foreshadowing of the appeal of Jesus’ message amongst the Gentiles, and I think that interpretation is definitely fair. But one would expect that sort of message to pop up in Luke’s Gospel, not in Matthew’s Gospel. This point, quite frankly, gave me fits this week as I pondered our lessons. It just didn’t seem to FIT. The message of God’s Good News crossing the line from the Jewish world to the Gentile communities is precisely what the Gospel of Luke is ABOUT. But Matthew’s Gospel has its roots in the Jewish Christian community. It is very much an inwardly focused Gospel—written by Jews, to Jews. What meaning could the story of the wise men have in this context?

 

I believe it is precisely this question of authority that I’ve been speaking about. Yes, Jesus is the Messiah because trusted authorities—the Hebrew prophets—spoke of him, and predicted his coming. But there was a less likely but no less real source of authority that the author of Matthew’s Gospel wanted to appeal to as well. The Jewish people at this time thought well of Zoroastrians. It was, after all, Zoroastrians who conquered Babylon, and who set them free and permitted them to return to Israel. It was the Zoroastrian king Cyrus whom the Hebrew prophets called, “the son of God”—it’s right there in the Bible. It was Zoroastrian theology that so impressed them that they appropriated huge portions of it for themselves—like monotheism! And all of our beliefs about angels, demons, heaven, hell, the final judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and a coming messiah are borrowed from Zoroastrianism.

 

In short, they might be filthy Gentiles on the outside, but on the inside the Jews recognized the Zoroastrians as people of God. They respected them, admired them, and invested their scriptures, their priesthood, and their theology with authority. So when Matthew wanted to convince his readers that Jesus was the messiah, he appealed to two major sources of authority—insiders, the biblical prophets, but also outsiders, the trusted Zoroastrian religious leaders.

 

This is why Matthew shows us three Zoroastrian priests travelling all the way from the East to recognize and worship the Christ child. It was an appeal to authority—both Jewish authority and a respected gentile authority as well.

 

Of course, an appeal to authority isn’t proof. It’s more like a character witness. But that’s not nothing. It was, presumably, convincing for many of Matthew’s readers—otherwise he would not have included it, nor would it have survived the Gospel’s many redactors. It was the same for me: Bruce didn’t prove that Jesus was worthy of my time and attention, but his testimony carried a lot of weight.

 

And that’s important. The truth is, I’m not sure if I would call myself a Christian today were it not for Bruce Cockburn’s witness. At a crucial time in my life, he figuratively grabbed my arm and said, “Don’t throw this out. There’s still something for you, here.” And because I listened to him, I am standing here today.

 

It’s humbling, because it makes me wonder in what way I do that for others. Crazy as it sounds, there are people for whom I am an authority. Just as there are people for whom YOU are an authority. Our words, our witness, the things to which we give our attention and energy carry weight with other people.

 

There are people watching us all the time—family members, friends, and even total strangers—who look to us for clues about what is worthwhile in life. Our actions, our decisions, and our commitments speak far more loudly than our words—although our words are important, too.

 

My assumption is that you are here tonight because Jesus is important to you. There’s something about him—his teaching, his life, his authority, maybe his integrity or his divinity—that speaks to you. But would other people know that from watching you day-to-day?

 

Even watching Bruce Cockburn from afar, following his musical career, he pointed me to Jesus. Do I point other people to Jesus? Do you?

 

Do we live our lives in such a way that people are impressed by our integrity? Does our faith strike people as so compelling and real that they cannot dismiss it out of hand? Are we faithful stewards of the happenstance authority that we have accumulated, just by being who we are, where we are, when we are? If not, why not?

 

After all, God has made good use of unlikely authorities. Rock-n-roll singers and heathen clergy and me and YOU. Sounds exactly like the kind of company Jesus would keep, doesn’t it? Let us pray…

 

 

God, we never know who is watching, but someone always is.

Help us to live our lives in ways that are worthy of the authority people afford to us.

Help us to live lives of integrity.

Help us to honor you in such a way that no one can dismiss us

or the place that YOU hold in our lives.

Make of us living witnesses to the grace, gifts, and love

that you have given to us,

so that others will find it hard to dismiss you out of hand

and may find the meaning and community and covenants

that have made our lives sweet.

For we ask this in the name of him to whom we point

In our prayer, in our work, in our art and in our lives,

Even Jesus Christ. Amen.

you brood of vipers!

ADVENT 3 | Zeph 3:14-20; 1 Jn 1:6-10; Lk 3:7-18

This reading from Luke today is a head-scratcher, isn’t it? Does John the Baptist EVER have a good day? Is he always grumpy, or is in only when the camera is on him that he’s so unpleasant? Is it the Holy Spirit driving him to such heights of grumpiness, or is it hemorrhoids? Scripture is obscure on this point.

 

One thing it IS clear on, though, and that is that this guy is a heck of a preacher. As every good preacher knows, when you start a sermon, you want something that’s going to really grab people’s attention. Experts say that you’ve only got about 15 seconds to get a congregation interested or you’ve lost them. So what does John say? “You brood of vipers!” Mission accomplished.

 

It would be as if I stood up and started my sermon by saying, “Ahoy, sinners!” It’s not a very politically correct beginning for a sermon these days, but it would certainly get your attention.

 

So John’s got them in the palm of his hand, and what does he say to them? “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” This is a rhetorical question. John himself did, but he’s implying that the prophets have, through their writings, and that God has, through the gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit. Through scripture, through the preacher, through the subtle stirring in their own hearts, God is calling to them—God is reaching out to them, informing them that God is coming, and they must prepare themselves for God’s arrival.

 

What is fascinating about this reading is that we can clearly see four discreet groups to which John is talking. First, there are the good and pious Jewish people who don’t feel like they need to repent. Second, there are the good and pious Jewish people who recognize that they DO need to repent. Third, there are the Jewish backsliders—active evildoers—who are receptive to John’s message of repentance, and finally, there are the Gentiles who are open to his message as well.

 

Let’s look at each of these groups a little more closely, shall we? First there are the Jewish folks who follow the Law, and don’t see any need for John’s message. I mean, honestly, “repent” is never a popular message. It makes people feel bad, it is confrontational, and nobody likes to be made to feel guilty about anything.

 

This was certainly true in John’s day, but it is no less so in ours. We in the Christian church have done such a terrible job in our teaching about sin and salvation, that when people catch a whiff of this kind of language, they either just shut down, or they head for the door. I remember teaching a class on Catholic Christianity at the Chaplaincy Institute a couple of years ago. The students had just learned the say the rosary, and they were up in arms. “I just can’t say, ‘pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our deaths,’” one of them complained. The others nodded in unison. “I’m not a sinner!” she objected—a little too loudly.

 

I explained that the kind of worm theology that they were wounded by in their childhood Sunday school classes was not what the prayer was referring to. To say, “I’m a sinner,” is NOT the same as saying, “I’m a piece of crap,” or “I’m a bad person,” or “I’m worthless”—not at all. It is not a condemnation. It is a statement of fact, like, “I have grey eyes,” or “I am right-handed.” It is a simple acknowledgement of the fact that there is a gap between how I would like to be and how I actually am. There is a gap between God’s hopes for me, and what I am able to actually able to achieve under my own power.

 

The people in John’s day were objecting, too. “Why should we repent?” they asked, “We are descended from Abraham.” Both then, as now, some folks have a hard time admitting that they have anything to apologize for.

 

Other folks, though, like the backsliders, they KNOW they’ve done wrong, and if they want to get right with God, they’ve got some work to do. These folks are represented in Luke’s story by the tax collectors. They were considered to be snake-belly low in most people’s estimation—after all, they worked for the Roman occupiers, they extorted money from their own people to support the Roman war machine, and they usually cheated their townsfolk and neighbors while they were at it.

 

It’s hard for us to really grasp how despised these people were in their own time. I mean, many of us have known people who work for the IRS or are tax preparers, and sure, they’re evil—but they’re not EVIL evil, you know? A good analog for us today might be drug dealers. They, too, betray their own people for profit, after all.

 

But what is fascinating in this reading is that, when the tax collectors go to John and say, “What should we do?” John doesn’t say, “Stop working for the stupid Romans!” which is what most ordinary, god-fearing folk would expect him to say. Instead, he says, “Don’t collect more than the schedule says.” Again, it’s hard for us to see the scandal of this answer. It’s as if the drug dealers went to John—and instead of telling them, “Stop selling drugs!” he tells them, “Don’t charge more than ten bucks for a dime bag.”

 

Likewise, the Gentiles who are listening are also moved by John’s words. They’re soldiers, working far from home in this backwater desert country that they hate. But there’s something compelling about this people and their God. And when they go to John, and say, “What should we do?” John doesn’t say, “You idiots, stop being soldiers!” Instead he says, “Don’t bully people, be honest, be content with your pay.”

 

Now, note that John isn’t making any distinctions between these folks. He’s not saying, “You lot over there—you’re a brood of vipers. And you fellas over there, you’re a gaggle of snails, and you all over by the fence, you are a pack of cute puppies.” No, as far as John is concerned, they’re ALL vipers. Which might seem harsh, but John is a dramatic guy. And note that even though John is instructing them on how to be better people, he doesn’t tell them to stop being sinners—or vipers, for that matter. Why not? Because that would be IMPOSSIBLE. He might as well tell them to grow a third eye or to flap their arms and fly to the moon.

 

It is the same for us. Any Christian teaching which says, “You have to be perfect. You have to be completely good. You must stop being sinners,” or even “You CAN stop sinning,” is erroneous teaching. It is dangerous teaching—because you simply cannot do it. And God does not ask of us things we cannot do.

 

The world is broken, and everyone in it is likewise broken. You cannot expect perfection from a shattered pot. All of us—whether we are pious and unrepentant, whether we are in need of forgiveness and know it—all of us are broken. The parents of the children killed at Newtown are broken, so badly they may never heal. The shooter was CERTAINLY broken, broken unto death, and will now never have opportunity to repent of his actions, at least not on this side of the grave. All of us suffer from this brokenness, some more than others.

 

But as this reading shows, God seems strangely, maddeningly, unphased by human sin. Maybe God is just so used to it by now that he’s stopped flying off the handle and wiping people out, as in his volatile Old Testament phase. And this is both confounding, and weirdly, good news. Because, no matter how broken we are, God doesn’t reject us because of it. God doesn’t cast us away. God doesn’t stop loving us because we’re broken. Far from it. Jesus could have spent his life in the company of those annoyingly perfect angels for all of eternity, but he didn’t. He CHOSE to pitch his tent with us—sick, smelly, sinful, and devastatingly broken though we are.

 

Of course, there are degrees of brokenness. But there doesn’t seem to be degrees of God’s love. It’s another mystery that boggles the human mind. We’re broken, we’re sinners, and yet God doesn’t expect us to be anything else. But he DOES want us to repent. But if God doesn’t want us to repent in order to STOP being sinners, WHY does God want us to repent? Because God wants to make HONEST sinners of us.

 

What God wants more than anything else from us is love, relationship, intimacy. It is for this reason that God drew near to us in Jesus, and loved us so completely in his life. But as those of us who have been part of a romantic relationship know so well, what happens when you are not honest with your partner? It comes between you. It divides you. It makes real intimacy impossible.

 

Real intimacy requires that we be vulnerable with our partners—that we show up, warts and all. Real intimacy requires that we be truthful with our partners—even if it makes us look bad. Real intimacy requires that we share how we feel with our partners—because it is this kind of naked truth-telling that grows intimacy.

 

And that is what God wants with us. And if we, too, want this kind of intimacy with God, then our starting point has to be one of honesty. We cannot found a real relationship with God on a lie. We cannot go to God and say, “yes, let’s be lovers” and then not be truthful about ourselves.

 

That is why relationship with God begins with repentance. It begins with an honest acknowledgement of our human limitations. It requires that we leave our pretenses and false personas and defenses at the door. It means that when we come before God, we come naked, as we actually are, empty handed, without excuses, honest about all of our gifts and our shortcomings.

 

It isn’t that God doesn’t love us when we are hiding behind our pretensions. Not at all. God loved us so much, that while we were still blinded, Jesus came to us, for us, to be with us, to show us that great love. The problem is that when we are hiding behind our pretensions WE cannot truly love God. For we can’t embrace God and hide from God at the same time. We must stop hiding first.

 

We might take issue with the indelicate way that John preaches, but his main point is as true for us now as it was then. Before we can truly know God, we must be honest with God. It is for this reason that, historically, most Christian worship has begun with a confession. We confess not because we are bad people, but because we want to be honest people, because we want to love God not just in word, but in truth. Let us pray…

 

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you 
in thought, word, and deed, 
by what we have done,
 and by what we have left undone. 
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
 we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. 
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. 
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
 have mercy on us and forgive us; 
that we may delight in your will,
 and walk in your ways, 
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

revenge fantasies

ADVENT 1 2012 | Jer 33:14-16; 1 Thess 3:9-13; Lk 21:25-36

 

I’ve always been a huge fan of fantasy literature—and I know that many of you are fans, too. So, try this story on for size:

 

The chief counselor to the Emperor turned out to be evil through and through. He betrayed his Lord and made his escape into the wilderness. He ran fast and far enough to be out of his Lord’s jurisdiction, and being a cruel and wily man, quickly set himself up as king in this new and wild place. He worked dark magic in the bowels of the earth that no earthly power could resist, and set out to conquer the neighboring cities. They fell without resistance, as did the neighboring countries, until, confident in his dark magic, he became emperor in his own right. He ruled with an iron fist, until every land known to the bards in his country was a vassal state, ruled by puppet kings, all swearing fealty to the Dark Lord.

 

But he did not rule wisely or well, and the people suffered greatly. The bards in their travels saw the injustice and cruelty, and they began to sing songs of a righteous usurper who would topple the Dark Lord’s cruel throne. In an insignificant backwater, a young man was born and raised. He was poor, of common heritage, no more learned than others of his class. He was a craftsman with few pretensions. Yet many began to see similarities between him and the bard’s songs. He began to wonder if the things they were whispering about him might not be true. One fateful day he saw with his own eyes the slaughter wrought by the Dark Lord’s minions, and his fate was sealed. Whether he was the one sung about by the bards or not, he set out to topple the cruel throne.

 

No one took much notice of him, even when he began to enlist others in his cause. Partly because his efforts were counterintuitive—he made speeches about compliance, not rebellion, but the message was deeply subversive. The vassal kings and the shamans conspired against him, plotting to kill him.

 

This was, it seemed, what he had planned all along, because as they led him to his death, he slipped from their grasp and gained access to the emperor’s keep. All rushed to the Dark Lord’s defense, but the cruel throne was not the craftsman’s destination. Instead he made for the dungeons, to the forges that made and kept the dark magic. These he broke, and with them, the power that held the empire in the Dark Lord’s thrall. As the castle began to crumble around him, he wielded an ax and broke the locks from the dungeon’s cells, setting free all those who had ever opposed the Dark Lord’s reign.

 

They barely emerged alive, before the castle tumbled into ruin, but the destruction was only beginning. The undoing of dark magic rippled off into the distance, shaking the earth, razing cities and villages in its wake, travelling slowly but surely toward the far reaches of the Empire. The Dark Lord’s power was broken, his towers collapsed, but it would take years for the undoing to reach the farthest shore of his domain. All who felt the earth shake knew that the end was near—but whether these signs portended despair or hope they could not say. The craftsman sent his comrades out to tell the people what it meant—the power of the Dark Lord was broken forever, and all that was built by evil magic would soon be crumbling around them.

 

It’s an epic worthy of Tolkien, wouldn’t you say? And of course, you all own a copy of this epic fantasy—it’s called the New Testament. The Dark Lord is, of course, Satan, and the craftsman is, of course, Jesus. And the destruction of the Dark Lord’s power and the gradual descent of his empire into chaos is precisely the situation that the New Testament writers imagined themselves. They believed Satan’s power had been broken, and they saw the political upheavals and natural disasters of their time as evidence that the demonic influence he wielded over the world was disintegrating, and would eventually grind to a halt at which time the Son of Man would be revealed, and God’s rule over the earth would finally begin.

 

Advent begins with an apocalypse because the coming of the Son of Man heralds the end of evil’s reign of terror over the world. But there’s a problem with apocalyptic thinking. As with just about every event in life, it comes with a temptation and an invitation. The temptation surrounding apocalyptic visions is to see them as physical events that have yet to happen—they are the revenge fantasies of persecuted peoples.

 

Many have succumbed to this temptation, of course. Apocalyptic literature was invented by the prophet Zarathurstra, whose fellow Vedic priests had rejected his theological reforms and cast him and his meager band of followers into the desert to die. God gave him a vision of a great battle in which he and his followers fought on the side of good, while the Vedic orthodox fought on the side of the Evil One. He took great pleasure in imagining the coming defeat of his enemies and the vindication of his cause by God’s own hand. It was a revenge fantasy, one that held great comfort for his followers in their distress.

 

When the Jews were in slavery in Babylon, they heard the Zoroastrian revenge fantasies and they made them their own. In their version, the God of Israel would trample the Babylonians in the dust and liberate his children, restoring them to their country, and putting every other nation beneath his footstool. Again, it was a powerful revenge fantasy, one that strongly influenced the early Christian movement.

 

The Book of Revelation is the revenge fantasy of the early Christian community in the midst of great persecution and suffering—pointing to a time when they imagine that God would ultimately crush completely the power of Satan and his vassal kings. And nearly every persecuted Christian community has followed suit, casting the political tyrant de jour as the antichrist, and imagining how God would exact his vengeance and vindicate his faithful.

 

Martin Luther engaged in such fantasies, hailing the pope as the antichrist and the reformation movement as the faithful remnant whom God would vindicate. Evangelical Christians do the same today—they imagine themselves to be persecuted, disenfranchised, and marginalized by a corrupt and demonic culture under the direct influence of the Evil One. The Left Behind series of novels has packaged the Evangelical revenge fantasy so successfully it has sold 65 million copies, and a rebooted movie series is underway starring Nicholas Cage.

 

It’s a seductive temptation, but it’s also a dangerous one—because it locates evil elsewhere, and projects it onto others, allowing the fantasizers to imagine themselves both righteous and wronged, a formula for justified violence if there ever was one.

 

But there’s also an invitation in such stories—to see them not as external and coming events, but internal and present ones. It is tempting to see the apocalypse as literal, but I believe the invitation to us is to see it as symbolic. These images are not about Satan’s hold over the kingdoms of the world grinding to a halt, but about the power that evil has over my own heart. It isn’t THE world that is ending, it is MY world that is ending.

 

Because that’s what happens when Jesus arrives. We can’t compartmentalize him. He shines light on absolutely every part of life, and every part of life must be reevaluated in reference to his presence and his teaching. His arrival portends an end to the old order: to a world ruled by coercive power, by social station and privilege, by corruption and cruelty and the allure of wealth. All of these are revealed to be empty and even evil, and the repurcussions of such realizations are profound.

 

It’s one of the reasons that we so often hold Jesus at arm’s length—because we know that if we truly prepared him room, if we truly welcomed him into our little worlds, he would tear them apart. And you’re right. He would. He will.

 

Let’s not kid ourselves. The apocalypses aren’t the antiquated fantasies of “those” people that can be dismissed by the modern and sophisticated mind—that’s just another temptation. The apocalypses are warnings in the here and now for anyone considering getting serious about this God thing: You proceed at your peril. You go any further with this and your world will end. And worlds do not end without tears.

 

Because if you prepare Jesus room—if you swear fealty to him, not just in word but in truth—then nothing in your life is safe. Sweet Jesus, meek and mild. Baloney. He comes with a sword that threatens to separate you from everything you hold dear. If you follow him, you risk leaving behind everything you love. You say “Yes” to him, you open that door, and you let loose the four horsemen of the apocalypse as surely as if you were the great beast himself.

 

So how is this good news? Because the only world that Jesus seeks to end is the one based on lies—on privilege and coercion and arrogance. And if that’s the world you love, then by all means, you’d be far better making excuses and keeping that door shut fast. The world that Jesus comes to end is one with a Dark Lord on the throne—we call it the ego, but it is a tyrant just the same. So if you want to keep him in power, then prepare Jesus nothing but some platitudes and he will shake the dust from his feet and leave your tyrant unmolested.

 

But if you open that door, the New Heaven and the New Earth that comes in the wake of that world’s destruction has all of the same things and the same people in it, with one major exception—it has the Holy One as its light, its center of gravity, its ordering principle. All things are made new, including our lives.

 

So this Advent season, as we sing the words of the carol, “let every heart prepare him room,” let us think seriously about what we’re saying. Advent isn’t a time of sentimental Victorian nostalgia. It’s a time of discernment, one in which dread and grief are not out of place. For when Jesus arrives, don’t let the baby suit fool you. He comes arrayed for battle—the battle for your soul. If you want, you can keep him in the manger, cute and cuddly and non-threatening. Lots of people do. In fact, it’s probably safest that way. Let us pray…

 

Jesus, you scare us.

You demand more of us that we are prepared to give.

You threaten everything we hold dear.

And yet we cannot seem to walk away from you.

We’re here, after all.

But we’re also teetering on the edge,

wondering if the cost is too high,

if the price is too dear,

if you will ask of us what we fear most.

Comfort us, Jesus, and show us a vision

of a new life, where coercion and violence and greed and despair

no longer rule the human heart

but where liberty has truly broken in and freed us from our thrall

to tyranny and selfishness and fear.

You invite us to destruction. How should we dress for that?

the people we don’t know

ALL SAINTS 2012 | Is 25:6-9; Rev 21:1-6; Jn 11:32-44

 

Back in my 20s, halfway through my community college career, I took a break for a couple of years. When I finally decided to make something of myself, everything that I had learned about school and studying went out the window, and I attacked school with a vengeance—a vengeance I still possess, apparently if the distress of my current teachers at the GTU is any indication. I blew through my Associate’s degree and turned my sights to my Bachelor’s. My grandparents lobbied hard for me to go to a Baptist college, and they were not above obfuscation and misleading tactics to get their way.

 

Eventually, they persuaded me, and I prepared myself for my next big adventure—heading off to Cal Baptist. There was only one problem. I didn’t know anyone there, and I was terrified of what I might find. I was just figuring out who I was, differentiating myself from my fundamentalist heritage, and here I was about to plunge into a religiously conservative institution. Was I nuts?

 

I laid awake at night, terrifying myself with worst-case scenarios about the kind of people I was about to meet, and I was sure that who I was and what I had to offer would not be welcome among them. I was certain I would be unloved, picked on, and ostracized. Remember, I only had high school and community college to judge by. I was sure I was going to hate it.

 

But when I got there, I discovered something amazing—the actual people. I met Lawson, and Margaret. I met Jon Lothanore, brooding like Heathcliff, but eager to give you the shirt off his back. I met Brent, who was to become my best friend at school, a PK who loved the same music I did, and who struggled with many of the same things. I met Al-x, a punk chick with a spiked Mohawk who was brave enough to stay at school as she gave birth to her first child, out of wedlock.

 

I wish I had known who I was going to meet. I wish I had known that I was going to meet people I would love and care for, for the rest of my life. I wish I had known that, far from a bunch of uptight fundamentalists, Cal Baptist was filled with people who lived out their faith in wildly idiosyncratic ways—ways that inspired me, and continue to inspire me.

 

I hope, that as I approach my own death, I can remember this lesson, because I think I’m going to need it. Let me explain what I mean. Usually, on All Saints or All Souls, we focus on those that we admire or folks we have loved who have passed on. But the truth is, the Communion of Saints, the community of those who have died in faith and gone before us—the vast majority of these are unknown to us. History has forgotten most of their names. They aren’t people that we are looking forward to seeing. We know nothing about them. Yet, it is among them that we will—upon our arrival on the other shore—make our home, it is they who will become our friends, our loved ones, it is they, the vast multitude of people unknown to us in this life, who will make eternity grand. They are the family we have yet to meet. They are waiting, pulling for us now, and eager to meet us when our race is run.

 

But just as I was terrified to go off to CBC, the unknown is scary to all of us. I admit that I did a very foolish thing back then. I was so afraid of facing these unknown people at this unknown college that I asked my girlfriend to marry me, just so I wouldn’t have to go alone. Now, I loved her, as well as any self-centered kid barely out of his teens can love anyone. My love for her today, I think, is even greater. But as even Cherrisa will freely tell you today, it was a terrible match.

 

I cringe when I think of my cowardice back then, of the pain that my foolish choice caused to Cherrisa, myself, and the people around us. But at the same time, I understand it. The unknown isn’t nearly as scary if we have someone we love and trust at our side to meet it with us.

 

And this is precisely why it is important for we, who are Christians, to foster an intimate relationship with Jesus, right here, right now. Because if we meet that passage and we have not done the hard work of establishing that relationship, growing that relationship, learning to lean on and trust that relationship, then the cynical remark that we often hear, that “everyone dies alone,” is true.

 

But for those of us who know Jesus, who really know him, I don’t think it is. If we strive to cling to him in every stressful situation, if we long to rest in him in our peaceful moments, if we are committed to follow him into hell if he should ask us, if we know the sound of his voice, if we are indeed his sheep—then there is no place in this life or the next that we go to alone.

 

You want good news? That’s it. And this kind of relationship isn’t just for religious fanatics. It’s the kind of trusting, committed relationship that Jesus is calling all of us to—no matter what we’ve done or who we are or what we believe.

 

There’s a wonderful passage in Luther’s writings, where he says, “We shall suddenly rise on the last day without knowing how we have come into death and through death. We shall sleep, until [Christ himself] comes and knocks on the little grave and says, ‘Doctor Martin, get up!’ Then I shall rise in a moment and be happy with Him forever.”[i] If I’m reading him right, Luther is saying that Jesus himself will knock on every gravestone, and he will raise each and every one of us with his own hands from death, just as he did Lazarus.[ii] I find this to be an amazing image, and an amazingly comforting teaching. Jesus will meet each and every one of us, he will raise us up to life, and together we will journey to that unknown community where we will make our first truly permanent home.

 

When my dog Clare died, I gave her a solemn charge. I told her, “When it’s my time, I want you to meet me.” She died moments later, but I sensed she understood and agreed. Today I have no doubt that when my time comes, I’m going to have no reason to fear—because Jesus and the best dog I ever knew are going to be there, making the bridge, passing over with me, regaling me with stories about the amazing people I’m about to meet.

 

It’s All Saints Day—so let’s celebrate all the people we don’t know that we’re going to spend eternity with. Because I am fairly certain that we are going to LOVE THEM.

Let us pray….

 

Let not your heart be troubled;

you believe in God, believe also in Me.

In My Father’s house are many mansions;

if it were not so, I would have told you.

I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you,

I will come again and receive you to Myself;

that where I am, there you may be also.

And where I go you know, and the way you know.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

 

---

NOTES

 

[i] T. A. Kantonen, The Christian Hope, 1594, p. 37.

[ii] Small Catechism, The Creed, Third Article, “…at the last day will raise up me and all the dead, and will give to me and to all believers in Christ everlasting life. This is most certainly true.”

the preferential option for the wicked

Prov 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Ps 125; Jam 2:1-10, 11-17; Mk 7:24-37

One of my favorite TV shows from the BBC is a medical drama called “Bramwell,” that concerns the first woman doctor in London in the late 1800s. Eleanor Bramwell is the Lady doctor in question, and she routinely endures the ridicule of her male colleagues. Unable to find work in a hospital, her father—also a doctor—offers to take her under his wing, allowing her to treat his rich female clientele. Eleanor is a headstrong and proud woman, and she refuses, but she also despairs. Finally, a friend of the family, Lady Peters, agrees to be her benefactor so that she can open a clinic in the heart of the London slums, which they nickname, “The Thrift.”

 

Trouble ensues, as you might expect, as the young Dr. Bramwell has trouble getting anyone to cooperate with her—or the poor public to trust her. She even comes into conflict with her benefactor, Lady Peters, who insists on acting as a doorkeeper to make sure that the clinic only accepts the “right sort” of patients. This, of course, enrages Dr. Bramwell, since the “wrong sort” of people include anyone that Lady Peters disapproves of. She turns away criminals, prostitutes, the dark of skin, and the vaguely suspicious. In each case, of course, Dr. Bramwell overrides her decision and treats the patient anyway—sometimes with disastrous results when Lady Peters turns out to have been right about someone.

 

But she is just as often wrong—and one of the show’s main themes is “exactly who are the right sort of people?” Are they the people who look like us? The people who act like us? The people who pray like us?

 

These are precisely the kinds of questions our readings are asking of us today as well. For the people James is writing to, they obviously think that the “right sort” of people are the rich, and they despise and ignore the poor. For the Psalmist and, often, Lady Peters, the “right sort” of people are the moral—the wicked need not apply. In our Gospel reading, we encounter one of the most disturbing episodes in the ministry of Jesus, where he seems to think that the “right sort” of people are either the people of “my race” or the people of “my religion,” depending on how you are looking at Judaism.

 

But it is precisely this sort of privilege that is being addressed in our readings. James confronts his readers with their classism. He tells them that they can’t be people of faith and show partiality. He tells them that they can’t push the poor person to the back and give the place of honor to a rich person—at least, not if they want to call themselves Christians.

 

And the Syreo-Phoenitian woman would have made Dr. Bramwell proud with her pluck, because she stands up for herself. Not only that, but she stands up to Jesus, and she calls him on his racial—or religious—prejudice. Not only that, but she’s right, and he realizes it, he acknowledges it. He doesn’t exactly apologize—remember that Jesus, being human, has his bad days, too—but he does, at least, do the right thing in the end.

 

A primary principle of Catholic social teaching is the “preferential option for the poor.” The phrase is useful, but unhelpfully obfuscatory. It got its start in a letter from the Jesuit Superior General to the Jesuits in Latin America in 1968. That wasn’t so long ago, and it’s kind of amazing how quickly the phrase rose to prominence in Catholic teaching. What it means is that given a choice between the poor and the rich, which is God going to favor? God is going to favor the poor, every time.

 

This is a deeply scriptural teaching. Just look at our reading from Proverbs. Solomon says, “Do not rob the poor because they are poor…for God will plead their cause, and will plunder the soul of those who plunder them.” That’s harsh. It’s also really, really clear.

 

But as our Gospel reading makes clear, it isn’t only the poor whom God favors above others—it’s those who are marginalized in other ways, as well. Just look at the ways the Syro-Phoenician woman was disadvantaged. First, she’s a woman in the Middle East—with no rights or power of her own. Second, she’s of a despised race. Third, she’s a heathen. Fourth, and possibly worst, her daughter is possessed by demons. And on the scale of social disadvantages, that may be rare, but it’s right up there.

 

The Psalmist presents us with a very simplistic theology. He asks God to bless those who are good, and to banish those who are wicked. But we know the world doesn’t work like that. The wicked often flourish, and the righteous often suffer. The book of Job was written precisely to counter this sort of theology. And, in fact, the other readings don’t seem much concerned with the moral state of the outcast. The Syro-Phoenician woman isn’t female, brown, heretical, or den-mother to a demon because she’s wicked—but the text doesn’t say that she’s a good person, either. She’s a clever debater and she’s got pluck—we’ll give her points for that, but we know nothing about her moral state.

 

There is no “preferential option” for the good, as much as we would like it to be so. In fact, God seems maddingly unconcerned with people’s “moral state.” As James points out, look if you’ve broken one commandment, you’ve broken them all, so get off your high horse before you get a nosebleed or fall and break something.

 

But if our readings are correct, we might make a case that God has a preferential option for the foreigner, the despised, or the outcast. Or try these on for size: how about the preferential option for the sick? Or the preferential option for the drunk or the addicted? Or the preferential option for the gay or lesbian? Or here’s one to blow your mind: how about the preferential option for the wicked, since the Psalmist seems to look down on them so much?

 

The testimony of scripture is clear: if there is anyone that you consider “less than” yourself, WATCH OUT. Because before the throne of judgment, God is going to decide in THEIR favor, not in yours.

 

It’s a grave warning. And I don’t think that I am immune. And I doubt that you are either. I think the question for us to discern is—who is it that we look down on? Speaking for myself, I have a very hard time with the arrogant. And quite frankly, I’m not so hot on the stupid, either. And do I secretly judge the homeless? I do, God help me. In fact, nearly every day I find myself judging my relative worth to almost everyone I meet. And paying attention to that has revealed that the truly arrogant and stupid one is, well, ME.

 

So who do you look down on? To whom are you superior? And the knee-jerk intellectual response “no one, dammit, we’re Americans” isn’t going to cut it, because it isn’t honest.

 

Look, I want to be a good person, but as James points out to us, being “good” isn’t enough. It may not even be that important to God. What IS important to God, though, and what God most requires of me is to be a KIND person. It’s it’s a LOT harder to be a kind person than it is to be a good person. And I’m not going to explain that. I think you know, in your heart of hearts, what I mean by that, even if you don’t agree.

 

As a young dog, Judy insisted on dominating any other dog who crossed her path. As nice a dog as she was, she always had to assert her dominance. When she encountered any other dog, she got along well with them, but she also positioned her head over the other dog’s shoulder—a classic canine dominant pose. Yet the other day, when our puppy Sally approached her, Judy relaxed enough to show Sally her belly, seemingly completely unconcerned.

 

 

 

 

 

Let us pray…

 

The rich and the poor

and the good and the wicked

and the gay and the straight

and the citizen and the foreigner

and the sick and the well

and the addicted and the sober

all have this in common.

The Holy One is the maker of them all.

Blessed be the Holy One.

And blessed be all those whom we presume to be beneath us.

For the Holy One will please their cause,

And vindicate them

And will plunder the soul of those who plunder them.

God, help us. Amen.