Thursday 29 March 2018

The Sacred Spell of Memory (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)


(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on March 29, 2018, Maundy Thursday)




Things That Are More Than Just Things

Our world is enchanted.  We knew this once as children.  Deep down, we still know it.

There are things in this enchanted world that are more than just things.[1]  For me, cinnamon toast will never be just cinnamon toast.  It will be my dad cheerfully making us all an evening snack that he knows we will enjoy.  Flannel will never be just flannel.  It will be my mom’s beloved ceremony: changing the bed-sheets in preparation for winter.  A wiffle ball will never be just a wiffle ball.  It will be an afternoon of homerun derby with my brother in the backyard.

Surely you know such enchanted things yourself.  Maybe they are places.  Or things you can hold in your hand.  Tastes.  Smells.

Memory puts a sacred spell on our world, filling the present with what is absent, filling our hearts with longing.

Water, Bread, and Cup

On that last night, Jesus wove a sacred spell on water, bread, and cup, making a memory that would ever haunt us and fill us with desire. 

The water would never be just water again.  It would be Christ getting on his knees and washing our feet.  The bread and the wine would never be just food and drink.  They would be Christ loving us with all that he had, body and blood.

Water, bread, cup.  They are now only memories, absences that linger over the elements.

And yet the aching absence that we feel is sometimes more real to us than the visible world.  The absence in water, bread, and cup, pulls us like an invisible force, like the longing that draws two lovers together. 

The power of this absence in water, bread, and cup is stronger than the powers of this world.  It is the one power that cannot be extinguished.  Love.  Stronger even than death, they say (cf. Song 8:6). 

A Body Long Ago That Fills Us with Longing

Water, bread, cup.  The church calls them sacraments.  Which is simply another way of saying, they are enchanted.  They remind us of a night long ago, a body long ago, a body whose loving touch still haunts us with longing today.



[1] Much of this homily finds inspiration in the theopoetic dynamite of Rubem Alves, particularly in I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body (Eugene, OR: Wipf, 2003; orig., Fortress, 1986).

Sunday 25 March 2018

God for Us (Mark 11:1-11)


(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on March 25, 2018, Palm Sunday)



Someone to Do It for Us

When life becomes difficult and we cannot do it on our own, it is only natural that we want someone else to do it for us.

I remember the first few times that I drove a car.  Both my parents were with me.  Before taking on the road, I drove around the empty parking lot up at Godwin.  No problems there.  I cruised around the perimeter.  I practiced parking.  I felt rather accomplished for a beginner.  I could do this.  Then my dad and I swapped seats, and he drove us down Pump and Patterson to the entrance of West Creek Parkway.  It was a weekend morning, and there was hardly any traffic on the road.  The speed limit there, I think, was 35 at the time.  My dad pulled over and we switched seats. 

And suddenly my feeling of accomplishment faded.  There on the open road, everything changed.  Thirty-five felt like 80.  Each car that passed me felt like a wreck waiting to happen.  My knuckles white on the steering wheel, I looked for the nearest place to pull over.  I tried to give the wheel back to my dad.  He said he’d be happy to take it, if that’s what I really wanted.  But he also said, “Jonathan, I can’t do this for you.  If I take the wheel from you now, you’ll never learn.  Driving is difficult at first, but you have to go through the difficulty.  I can’t go through that for you.  But I will be beside you the whole way through.”

Fast-forward about five years from that time, and I found myself again in a similar place.  This time, though, it wasn’t driving.  It was relationships.  I had just gone through my first breakup, and I was at a loss.  Not only had I lost a close relationship, I had also lost things to do and places to go and dreams to chase.  I felt like I could not do life anymore. 

And like before, I wanted to pull over to the side and get someone else to do this for me.  I remember countless hours spent talking to supportive friends.  On the phone.  In coffee shops.  At the park.  I would ask pointless questions.  I would speculate on the unknowable gaps of the past.  I was looking for answers—but there are no answers for a broken heart.  And my friends, I think, knew this.  They could not give me what I wanted.  They could not make satisfactory sense of things, nor could they magically restore what was lost.  They could only share the long night or the lonely day.  They could only sit with me in my brokenness.   And that’s what they did.

The “Triumphal” Entry

The word “hosanna” means, “Save us, we pray!” (cf. Ps 118:25).  It is not difficult to guess, then, what the crowd in Jerusalem expected from Jesus. 

They who were powerless expected a man of great power.  They who were subjects to a foreign empire expected freedom.  They who were going through a difficult time expected someone who could do what they could not.  This passage is called the “triumphal entry” for a reason.  The crowd gives Jesus a reception fit for a triumphant king, expectant that he will prevail over all their difficulties.

But in only a handful of days, the crowd around Jesus is not celebrating him but instead crying out for his crucifixion.  Why?  I think it’s because they realize that they’ve been had.  This is not the man of might and muscle that they’d expected.  This is not a man who will triumph over their enemies.  This man is useless.  So they exchange their trust, putting it not in Jesus but in the people who boasted the most power: the religious authorities.

A Piece of “Street Theater”

To me, the most curious thing about today’s story is that Jesus seems to know all about the hero’s reception that he will receive in Jerusalem.  Most of today’s scripture is about Jesus planning for the event (vv. 1-7).  Only a few verses actually describe the entry itself (vv. 8-11).  This suggests to me the significance of the arrangements that Jesus makes.  He knows exactly how he wants to make his entry.  As one commentator artfully puts it, “He is carefully orchestrating a piece of ‘street theater.”[1]

And it is quite the performance.  For when the crowd gives Jesus a reception resembling a triumphant military procession, he turns it upside down (not unlike the overturning he will do shortly after in the temple).  Riding on a beast of burden, his feet perhaps dragging on the dirt path, Jesus comes not as one who lords it over others, but as one who humbly refuses the way of domination.  He comes not with prestige and power, but as one who identifies with the poor and lowly.  He comes not as a triumphant conqueror, but as one who is vulnerable and without force.[2] 

By Our Side The Whole Way Through

When life becomes difficult and we cannot do it on our own, it is only natural that we want someone else to do it for us.  It is only natural for us to cry out, like that crowd in Jerusalem, “Hosanna!  Save us!”

I have a feeling, though, that God has no more power over the problems of this world than my parents had over my driving or my friends had over my relationship.  Which is not to say that God has no power, but rather that it is an altogether different kind of power than we desire.  It is not a power that changes things from without but a power that changes us from within.  It is as simple as staying by our side while we journey through difficulties.  Which is also what we call love.  (Which is, rumor has it, the strongest power of all, stronger even than death.)

How do we know that someone is for us?  Is on our side?  Cares about us deeply?  It is not the immediate attempt to fix things.  Such an attempt betrays domination, however benevolent.  We know someone is for us if they are by our side the whole way through.  If they share our journey, our joy when we rejoice, our suffering when we suffer. 

And that is what we see in Christ today.  He is not for us in the false way of quick fixes and overriding force.  He does not come with the power to immediately change our lives and the world.  Such power would not be love but domination.  Christ comes to be with us.  To share our journey.  Even to cry out with us in the darkness when we feel God-forsaken.

In Christ, God is for us—even more than we are for ourselves. 

Prayer

Confounding Christ,
When we wish
For a hero
Of power,
You disappoint.
Because you are for us
Even more than we know,
Beside us
In all things.
Overturn our hearts,
That we might be for the world
As you are for us:
Not as one who has solutions and control,
But as a steadfast companion in hard times.  Amen.



[1] Charles Campbell, “Mark 11:1-11: Homiletical Perspective,” pp. 153, 155, 157, in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 2 (eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008).  “Street theater” is an image taken from Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), 294.
[2] Campbell, 157.


Sunday 18 March 2018

The Writing on Our Hearts (Jeremiah 31:31-34)


(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on March 18, 2018, Lent V)



The Chalkboard

I grew up on the cusp of a revolution.  By the time I was graduating from Godwin High School, every student had a laptop.  We had the internet at the tips of our fingers.  Old excuses, like “the dog ate my homework,” were no longer in circulation.  Instead I was accustomed to hearing more electronic explanations: “The program crashed just before I finished,” or much more commonly, “I forgot to save my work.”

But it was only a few years before then that my classes were taught primarily on the chalkboard.  Most of you lived in the dark ages too, so you remember the chalkboard.  Even though I haven’t touched a chalkboard in over a decade, I remember it well.  I remember how in math the teacher would call us forward individually to solve equations on the board.  And I remember how sometimes as a prank, a mischievous student would squeeze a few pieces of chalk into the eraser.  And I remember how in elementary school, cleaning the chalkboard was one of our many responsibilities: line-leader, door-holder, and chalkboard-cleaner. 

Cleaning the chalkboard was crucial.  It was the only way we could move from one lesson to the next.

Israel’s Cheatin’ Heart

The story of Israel is a little bit like a chalkboard. 

As Jeremiah reminds us today, when God heard the cries and heartache of the Israelites in the land of Egypt, God took them by the hand and brought them out of Egypt.  In the process, God fell in love with Israel.  Today’s scripture refers to their relationship as a marriage.

The problem is, Israel forgot its marriage vows.  Well, sort of.  On the outside, things looked alright.  Priests were performing the sacrifices.  Prophets who knew the scriptures said many things in the name of God.  People were following the letter of the law.  Technically they were honoring their vows.  But they had what Hank Williams would have called a “cheatin’ heart.”  For they had forgotten the love of God.  God had come to them when they were oppressed, weak, and needful.  But now, they were neglecting the oppressed, weak, and needful, and instead hoarding power and possessions at their expense. 

Here’s how Jeremiah puts it: “From the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.  They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (6:13-14).  And Isaiah, who came before Jeremiah and was perhaps a prophetic role model, puts it like this: “Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination.  New moons and sabbath and calling of convocation—I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity….Learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isa 1:13, 17).

In other words, while the Israelites were busy carrying out the vows of their relationship with God, a completely different law was being written on their hearts: entitlement, prestige, profit, and all at the expense of the needful.

Cleaning the Chalkboard

Which brings us to today’s scripture, where God is heart-broken.  God desires more than the Israelites’ holy habits; God desires their hearts.  So God declares, “I will put my law within them, and I will write in on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (31:33). 

In other words, God has the chalk in hand and wants to write something new on the chalkboard of the Israelites’ hearts.

What does that mean for the law of greed currently written on their heart?  Jeremiah never spells this out, but I think it means that, first, the chalkboard will need to be erased.  As I learned in elementary school, cleaning the chalkboard is crucial.  It’s the only way to get from one lesson to the next.  Or as David says in our psalm today: “Purge me with hyssop, and I will be clean” (51:7).  The desert fathers and mothers, who pioneered our faith in the first few centuries after Christ, stressed that this was the first step of faith: purging.  We must unlearn what we have learned.  We must shed our old thoughts and feelings, before we can put on Christ.

Our Chalkboard Hearts

Our story, I think, is little different than Jeremiah and the Israelites.  Because you or I or anyone who lives in this world, has a chalkboard heart full of writing.  Our family, our friends, and our society write upon our hearts a host of expectations and assumptions, fears and desires.  The funny thing is, I normally think of myself as having thoughts and feelings.  But when I step back and look at myself, I can see that in fact thoughts and feelings have me![1]  I am very often following a script written upon my chalkboard heart by the rest of the world.

I remember the first time that I flew to England.  At the gate to my plane, there were several men with long beards who were prostrating themselves repeatedly in prayer.  At that time, the news media were showing similar images whenever they talked about terrorism.  And so written on my heart was the suggestion that these men were dangerous.  I was fearful.  I’m ashamed to share this, but I also understand now that I was being shaped by forces beyond my comprehension.  As Paul says, we wrestle not with flesh and blood but with unseen powers and principalities (Eph 6:12).  Later I would share a flat with Reza, a business doctoral student and practicing Muslim from Iran, and I would meet many more Muslims who were scraping out a new life in England, despite daily being misunderstood and mistreated.  And over time something—perhaps the grace of God—slowly erased that fear on the chalkboard of my heart, and in its place wrote love.  For what else is the image of men and women prostrating themselves, than an image of faith?  It happens round the world billions and billions of times everyday, not as a prelude to terrorism but as submission to the will of God.

Recently I’ve been reading the work of Miguel De La Torre, a Cuban Baptist minister, whose ministry has taken him into the lives of undocumented migrants.  He shares their experiences firsthand from a ground-level perspective.  Before reading these stories, written on my heart was doubt and suspicion toward these folks.  What I had learned in history class and in general conversation was the idea that people come to our country because of opportunity—such is the story of my family, who emigrated from Germany—and our country has laws that very sensibly regulate this incoming immigration.  I was not prepared for stories like the ones that De La Torre told, like the ones about Mexican farmers who lost their farms years ago as a result of a trade policy pushed by our country.  These farmers then find work for substandard wages at the maquiladoras, factories in Mexico that are owned by American companies that export products very cheaply back into our country.  Unable to make ends meet with their meager wages, these farmers-turned-factory-workers finally make a perilous journey through the desert in order to look for a living wage in the country that has been profiting at their expense all the while.  They risk their lives not for opportunity but for the same reason anyone risks their lives: survival.  I understand that these stories are not every immigrant’s story. But they certainly have me questioning the writing on my heart.  So I wonder what Jeremiah would say?  Would he say what he said in chapter 22: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages” (22:13)?  And I wonder, too, what law would Jeremiah want written on my heart.  The law of a powerful and self-interested nation?  Or an older, untraceable law that repeatedly invites care for the weak and needful?  Indeed, I am haunted by the fact that the Hebrew Bible says only once to love your neighbor (Lev 19:18), but thirty-seven times says to love the stranger.[2]

The Only Way for Life to Grow

In our gospel text today, Jesus compares our life to a single grain of wheat.  If we hold onto our life, he says, we will lose it.  We will be but a single grain of wheat, clinging to the stalk, shriveled and fruitless.  But if we let go, we bear much fruit.

Which is perhaps another way of saying what Jeremiah is saying.  If we hold onto the script that the world has written onto our hearts, allowing ourselves to be possessed and directed by the thoughts and feelings that we have—which is to say, the thoughts and feelings that have us—then we will be little more than machines, following the same the program, the same code, day after day.

But as I learned years ago, cleaning the chalkboard is crucial.  It is the only way to move from one lesson to the next.  Perhaps part of Jeremiah’s message is that cleaning the chalkboard of my heart is the only way for life to go on, the only way for life to grow.   For only when my chalkboard heart is clear, can God write anew God’s law in my heart.

Jeremiah doesn’t explain what God’s law looks like, when it is written on the heart.  I don’t know what he had in mind, so I can speak only from my own experience.  For me, God’s law written on my heart is not some unchanging word.  It is a living word.  It is continually written and erased and rewritten.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the law that God writes on my heart when I allow it, is a person: Jesus Christ. 

I’m quite a poor student at times, and often I refuse to clear the chalkboard of my heart.  But when I have done so, Christ has been written on my heart anew, looking different each time, shattering my expectations and my assumptions, driving out old fears and filling me with new, life-giving desires.  So I have been led to embrace my Muslim brothers and sisters and to look with compassion upon the powerless who seek refuge in this powerful land. 

I’m grateful to you today for allowing me to share some very personal thoughts and feelings.  They are only my experience and perspective, and yours may be very different.  What I do trust for both you and me is this: Lord only knows what will be written on our hearts next, if we have the courage to keep cleaning the chalkboard.  For cleaning the chalkboard is the only way to move from one lesson to the next.

Prayer

Christ of the new covenant,
Our hearts are covered
With self-interested scripts
Written by our world:
Empower us to erase
Our old expectations and assumptions
And to anticipate and welcome
The strange new script
Of your love. 
Amen.




[1] Cf. Richard Rohr, Just This (Albuquerque: CAC, 2017), 34.
[2] Jonathan Sacks, Faith in the Future: The Ecology of Hope and the Restoration of Family, Community, and Faith (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997), 78.

Sunday 11 March 2018

Sunday 4 March 2018

Turning the World Right-side Up (Exodus 20:1-17)


(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on March 4, 2018, Lent III)



A New World

Today we pick up from where we left off last week.  If you’ll remember, God responded to humanity’s history of violence with blessing.  God blessed Abraham that he might become not only the father of a particular people but also the father of a new humanity.  A humanity that lived not by grasping or clawing but by leaving its own heart and home to seek the blessing of others.

The story in today’s scripture is no different than the story of Abraham’s blessing last week.  This remains the tale of a new humanity.  A new world.  That is what the Ten Commandments are about.

The Way of Life and Goodness

Simply because of the word “commandment,” though, it’s hard for me not to think of the Ten Commandments as a set of rules along the lines of, “Do this—or else!”  When I read them, I sometimes imagine a disciplinarian God with a ruler ready to whack against misbehaving Israel.

While some ancient Israelites certainly shared this perception—for we do occasionally get pictures in the Bible of a petty and vengeful God—that is not the picture that we get in the story of the Ten Commandments.

In fact, let’s just drop the title “The Ten Commandments” altogether.  Because that’s not what the original text calls them.  A more literal translation from the Hebrew would give us more simply “the ten words,” or “the ten sayings.” 

Here’s how Moses will describe the ten sayings and all the law later, when he addresses the Israelites for the last time before his death: “See, I have set before you today life and what is good, and death and what is bad….Choose life” (30:15, 19).  In other words, these ten sayings are not the peculiar rules and regulations of a controlling and vengeful deity.  They are, rather, the way of life and goodness.  Live like this, and life will be good.  Don’t, and what life you have won’t be worthy of that name.  It will be bad.

What I see

It’s a little bit curious to me how these ten sayings have become such a mark of religious identity.  People who display them in their lawns or at their courthouses often want to say, “We’re a Judeo-Christian nation.”  But if that’s the case, I have little interest in being called Christian (or Jewish).  Because much of what I see around me does not look like the life and goodness described in these ten sayings.  I see a world that serves the gods of riches and power and neglects the poor and the hungry in its midst.  I see a world that runs on greed and envy, one where stealing is sanctioned if it’s done with contracts and business suits, one where infidelity is just another commodity that people can purchase online at the click of a button.  I see a world where life is cheap.  Much of what I see around me does not look like the life and goodness that Moses described.

Personally, I think the ten sayings have less to do with our religious identity and more to do with how we live as human beings.  I think the ten sayings are like the physics of the spiritual world.  If we don’t live in their way, then we’re bound to fall—as surely as gravity will pull you or me down from a high place, if we don’t watch our step.

Overturning Tables, Overturning the World

Which is why, I think, Jesus had no problem charging into the religious and national capitol building of his day—the Temple—and overturning tables.  Because he was not only turning over tables.  He was overturning a world that had lost its sense of up and down; a world that become disoriented by greed and selfishness and neglect for one’s neighbors; a world that had chosen death and what is bad.

In other words, he was trying to turn the world right-side up.  He only ever wanted what God had wanted: life and what is good.  His story is the same as the story of Abraham and the story of Moses.  It is the story of a new humanity.  A new world.  A world turned right-side up.  Jesus would call it the kingdom of God.  But it had an ancient foundation, one that we hear in the ten sayings.  Listen beyond the “Thou shalt not” and we might be surprised at what we hear:

Imagine

For imagine a world where people were not enslaved by possessions, power, or prestige.

A world where there was no Wall Street or Capitol Hill or Hollywood, because people found the holy image of God not in idols far away but in their neighbor and in the stranger in their midst and in the person who is different.

Imagine a world where social media was not divisive, because words were not for persuasion but only for praise and prayer.

A world where the bottom line didn’t matter as much as sometimes sitting on your bottom and enjoying a meaningful moment of rest, where you could just be—be with, be grateful, be happy.

A world where a person’s name was infinite, including the names of all their ancestors—a humbling reminder that we all come from somewhere; no one is self-made.

Imagine a world where there were no police and no corporal punishment because people did not resolve their difficulties through threat or force.

A world without pornography because people were never reduced to objects.

A world where doors never had locks because people shared all things in common.

A world where conversation never ended in polarized standoffs, because people never gave a bad name to others but instead tried to understand them. 

Imagine a world without glossy billboards, commercials, or advertising, because people were immune to envy.

Being Overturned

The ten sayings are not dusty old decrees for a day long gone.  They are God charging into the religious and political centers of our world and overturning the tables, turning us right-side up.  They are life-changing.  And like any meaningful change of life, they are difficult.  But as Moses put it so bluntly, they are also what makes life good.

If you’ve ever made a real change in your life—and by the way, change is what that fancy Christian word “repentance” means—you know that changes like the ones demanded by these ten sayings involve more than good intentions.  They involve commitment.  They start with small things, things as small as a mustard seed.  Maybe a little habit here, like blessing an enemy rather than cursing—maybe a little habit there, like seeing the image of God in strangers.  These changes are especially nurtured in community, where two or three or more are gathered.  They flourish at the Table, which is where we catch a glimpse of the world right-side up, in the love and sharing and self-giving of our Lord.

The ten sayings, which dream of a new humanity and a new world, can easily be written off as impractical.  Remember what we did the last time God overturned the tables of our world?  We wrote God off, crossed God out.  But thank God, God does not write us off.  The ten sayings echo still in our world today, and in them Christ is tipping our tables and turning things over, insisting on a new humanity, a new world.  This Lent, as we practice letting go of what we do not need, let us also practice being overturned.  Let us welcome the tipping grace of Christ and seek out the world right-side up, a world that God has dreamed of for quite some time.

Prayer

Creator God,
Whose words wove goodness
Out of the material of creation,
Whose ten sayings can weave goodness
Out of our world today;
Grant us the grace
To welcome you
When you charge into the Temple of our hearts
And turn us upside down
And our world right-side up.  
Amen.