Acts 2:1-11
If you have been looking for a good Pentecost movie lately, you might consider “The Soloist.” Both stories – “The Soloist” and Pentecost – speak to desperate times and point to a way through. This Way does call for courage; yet those who step out on it will find a surprising spring in their steps, as if they already touched the goal. Read the rest of this entry »
Some of you may be saying to yourselves: what was that about? I confess that I found this Gospel reading a bit theoretical at first. It becomes clearer if we put it in its overall context. It becomes clearer still by means of an image. With the help of context and image, I hope this prayer – for this reading spells out Jesus’ prayer for us – I hope this prayer will inspire us to new and greater life. Read the rest of this entry »
During World War II, under threat of a German invasion, people in the English countryside proposed to sow confusion among the invaders by mixing up their road signs. They were wrong about the invasion, thank God, but they were right about a need for clear directions. Their tactic springs to mind when I ask myself, “What mission did Jesus pass on to us? Signs point in seemingly opposite directions. We might easily be confused. According to today’s readings, the mission is all about love. Yet at other times Jesus proclaimed that it was about repenting. “Repent and believe in the good news,” he says in the first chapter of Mark. In Luke’s Gospel, just before Jesus ascended into heaven he charged his disciples with similar words, “Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all nations.” So which is it? “Love one another as I have loved you,” or “Repent and believe in the good news”? Read the rest of this entry »
Orthodox churches value icons to an extent that may be hard for us to understand. Icons take dull theology and convert it to living color. By means of icons, Orthodox churches turn stories from the Bible into symbols of shimmering beauty. Icons bring to the surface in us emotions we may not be able to touch otherwise, emotions that might transform our faith. For example, most of us can call to mind an icon of the Madonna and child. Typically, the Madonna’s head appears in the shape of a dome, often nearly filling the whole space. In her arms she holds the tiny infant. Some icons show the infant the size of her heart. What do we make of such art?
Let’s turn to John’s Gospel. John’s Gospel pays homage to Jesus’ mother in a way that none of the other Gospels do. You remember the scene on Calvary. John describes it this way, “… standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” Then Jesus said, “It is finished.” In other words, the last loose end has now been woven in.
Many scholars of the Bible read this symbolically. Jesus, according to this reading, finishes his earthly ministry by making provision for the future, for continuity. The mother symbolizes the church. The beloved disciple symbolizes all of us down through the ages who have elected to follow Jesus. The church will be to each of us as Mary was to Jesus – nurturing, protecting, training, loving, forgiving, sustaining…. The Orthodox iconographers capture this truth by making the shape of the Madonna’s head resemble the dome of a church. At the same time they shrank the size of the infant to represent our dependence and vulnerability.
If we gaze at these icons as the Orthodox traditions intend us to do, we gaze, not at them as objects, but through them, as if they were windows into heaven, into spiritual truth. Their beauty, simply in itself, gives rise to a power that draws us in and holds us. Then, too, the figures in the composition arouse our feelings. For instance, the sheltering Madonna quickens a sense of infinite tenderness; so that gazing through it, so to speak, we actually feel that quality of tenderness in God’s love, as mediated through the church. Her knowing eyes nearly always open into depths of sorrow and love, as if to say, “I know you suffer and have caused great suffering; I suffer with you, for my love is with you always.”
Whether Jesus actually intended to speak in this symbolic way or not, it does carry truth. The church, like an actual building, carries on generation after generation. Through liturgy, prayers, fellowship, sacraments, hymns, art and architecture, healing, preaching, doctrines and disciplines, the communion of saints – in countless ways the church, like a mother, guides and strengthens, protects and challenges our faith. Literally, our faith could not live without her. So this picture of mother church comforts us, as it should; yet motherhood can have another side.
Mothers can also smother. They can keep their children dependent by holding back their natural growth to independence. Through fear, threats, or other strategies of control, mothers may prevent a child from striking out on its own. Mothers, who can be so averse to risk, may resist when a child is ready to begin her or his life journey. We have seen this in the church, too. Rather than aiding us in opening up to life, some churches would keep us forever in the bud stage, ever obedient, ever rule bound – little clones, ever in dread of erring. What is to prevent this?
We need to remember that little-noted ending to the scene on Calvary. The Gospel adds: “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” So the Madonna would be caring for the disciple as Mary had cared for Jesus; and the disciple would be caring for Mary as Jesus had cared for his mother… but note this: under the disciple’s roof ! The disciple is not to be dependent, not to be infantilized. There is to be a relationship of mutual caring, yes; but on the disciple’s terms. This is meant to prevent mother church from forsaking her true self.
Most of us can call to mind instances of abuse, where mother church ceases to be authoritative and instead becomes authoritarian. It can happen in any generation. She all but looses sight of our needful claims on her; but presses her claims on us to the full – financial demands, for instance, or political ones. It’s as if the Gospel foresaw this possibility and cautioned us against becoming the victim of our own mother church. And so it added these all-important and empowering words, “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”
On what basis would the Gospel do this – put the trump card, so to speak, in the disciple’s hands – in our hands? Where is the wisdom in that? Think of today’s image of the vine and the branches. Jesus speaks of us as branches, that is, as individuals, not as a collective. We do unite with one another, but not like a gelatinous mass of frogs’ eggs, but through a stem, distinctive to each of us, that links us to the flow of Christ’s life. Call it the flow of the Holy Spirit. This is not all, though; this is only passive. Then comes the active process, the pruning. It’s as if God’s hands run over the vine, day in day out, shaping it for health and vitality. The whole vine becomes healthy and vital, but only through the shaping of the individual branches.
In actual practice this means that collectives, including mother church, depend on their members in order to learn, to develop a conscience, to evolve a mission. Mother church will thrive and create new growth only to the extent that we do; and we can only thrive and create new growth to the extent that we stay connected to the Spirit of Christ. That is why it was so important for the Gospel to specify that the disciple took the mother to his house, and not the reverse. You can feel the mutual dependence here: the disciple caring for the mother and the mother caring for the disciple. Only one thing keeps the system from becoming static or stagnant. The Holy Spirit. New energy enters the system through the disciples, creative energy seeking ever new forms of life.
To bring all this down to earth, let us ask a practical question. How are God’s hands running over me this morning? What shaping is taking place in me? What pruning? How are God’s hands running over you? What pruning, what shaping are you experiencing? We are connected to the same vine, yet each of us shapes up differently, uniquely. Ultimately, taken all together, our forms will add to the form and character of mother church.
Specifically, today, the Holy Spirit asks us to make a decision about the Carpenter’s Kids – children left orphaned by the AIDS epidemic in the Diocese of Central Tanganyika. Each of us, as today’s Gospel puts it, is connected to the vine. As individuals, how shall we respond? Renew our commitments? Add a bit for socks and soap? Adopt an orphan if we have not done so before? Add one more child? Those decisions, made one by one, in the aggregate will add to the form and character of mother church here at St. Gregory’s.
In my experience we enjoy a healthy, happy mother church we can look to with pride, and trust with our confidence. She stands here in Woodstock, not only outwardly beautiful, but possessed of even greater inward beauty. She cares for us in those many ways that Jesus intended, and why? Because we care for her. And by caring for her we enable her to be gracious and compassionate, even to children she has never seen. If icons were a part of our spirituality, serving as windows into heaven, a picture of St. Gregory’s would make a beautiful alternative to the traditional Madonna.
What two words have we heard most often in the media this week? Swine flu. Could the media be creating hysteria, or have we something really to fear? Though we cannot tell yet how serious this flu may turn out to be, we can prepare. Medical advice tells us that early attention to flu-like symptoms can make a difference. What about spiritual preparation? What would that look like? How might it help? Read the rest of this entry »
If we think of ourselves as pilgrims and of our life as a spiritual journey, then every now and then we need to climb a tree. Where we have been? Where we are going? We have to rise above the day-to-day details to find out. On a real pilgrimage our path is linear. On a spiritual pilgrimage it is both linear and cyclical. From a linear perspective we just keep growing. We grow in understanding. We grow in commitment. We grow in love. We grow more alive. On the other hand, from a cyclical perspective, we keep passing the same wayside shrines again and again. The incarnation – or Christmas – is one such shrine. Following that comes Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Advent, and then the Incarnation again. I am calling them shrines, in keeping with the image of a pilgrimage, and yet like real shrines, they both measure our progress and inspire us for further progress. Read the rest of this entry »
Nature has her secrets, but we humans have prying minds. Last spring I visited friends who live on the mountain above the village. Standing on their deck, I looked up to where the wall of the house met the eve, about ten feet above our heads. Eastern Phoebes had built a nest right in that angle. In fact, the lip of the nest so nearly touched the eve that I wondered how those wind-borne architects squeezed into their nest. What goes on inside? Those used to be nature’s secrets, but no more. Our friend had installed a pea-sized surveillance camera in the nest. From the vantage point of their kitchen, we watched life in the nest unfold on the screen of their laptop: gaping baby beaks, quivering quills, and a beady-eyed parent, offering a fly. Read the rest of this entry »
For today’s reading go to http://Bible. Oremus.org
What shall we make of the story of the command to sacrifice Isaac? Perhaps no other story in the Bible arouses such horror in us, or such pathos. We try not to ask what kind of God would set up such a test, because we do not want to hear the answer. We try not to put ourselves in Isaac’s place, because we so need to trust our father, and yet, seen through Isaac’s eyes, doesn’t he turn out to lie to us and to betray us monstrously? We try not to put ourselves in Abraham’s place, because he is setting out to put an end to everything in life that he holds dear – his son and his progeny. What is this story of horrors doing in the Bible? Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine, if you can, a world without religion; and not only that, but a world where no one speaks of spiritual realities. The word God is not heard, nor the word sin. Of course, both would be present. After all, gravity operated in the days before anyone knew its name or understood the concept. So here we are, oblivious to any higher or greater purpose for our lives, other than getting and spending; and at the same time prisoners of our own sins and the sins of others. I say prisoners, because sin works on us the way cowboys work to brand a calf: in effect, it throws us to the ground and ties us hand and foot. Can you imagine a more mired existence? We would have to invent tremendous distractions, just to keep ourselves from reflecting. Read the rest of this entry »
For today’s reading go to: http://bible.oremus.org
Supposing you have a greasy glass jar and you want to clean it out. Two possibilities spring to mind. You could try wiping it clean with a cloth, or you could float the grease out by pouring in warm, soapy water. We might think about sin this way. We can try to clean ourselves up by struggling to be good; or we can simply let God into our lives. Most people, especially religious people, subscribe to the first method, the self-cleaning method. The results, though, leave something to be desired. For one thing, a greasy film remains. For another, it leads to unpleasant consequences, particularly a tendency to compare ourselves to others; as in, who is the greater wash-day miracle? This morning I want to explore the second method of dealing with sin; that is, simply letting God into our lives.
Let’s start with the reading from the Hebrew Bible. It helps to remind ourselves that, while the story is set in the time of the Exodus, the story was actually written many centuries later. Not only that, but those who composed the narrative possessed spiritual insight as least as sophisticated as ours, and in many cases greater. I say this, because too often in our day we take these stories literally; whereas they were written as metaphors for truths which the authors knew could not be expressed directly. Here is a simple example. Let me ask you to define love. You might start out seeking a direct definition; and then in frustration give up, and tell me the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. “That,” you would say, “is love!” What about today’s story, then? What kind of metaphor is that? “That,” we will say, “is sin!”
As with all biblical texts, we have to ask: what situation in life does this story of the snakes address? Whatever it is, it will be universal. Is it perhaps what we experience when we know we have done wrong; when we live in the grip of guilt, and we do not know how to break free? That sequence will feel familiar to all of us. We may not realize when we sin; or we may think it does not matter. The poisonous snakes, standing for sin, make it abundantly clear that sin is sin, and it does matter, because it brings death – spiritual death. Like snakes, sin moves with subtle malice; so that we may not realize we have been bitten. My busy outward life can hide from me how near my spiritual life lies to death. The sickness is there, all the same, and sooner or later I will know it. We might say, then, that this story addresses that situation in life where sin leads to spiritual death.
Now comes a curious detail. God tells Moses to make a bronze replica of a poisonous snake and to put it on a pole, so that people have only to raise their eyes to see it. Note that it does not say they will not be bitten, only that they will live – not just exist, but come fully alive. This is an amazing claim. It acknowledges that we will sin and continue to sin; but the consequences will not be death. How can this be?
The bronze serpent did not work like magic. A person had to gaze hard at it; a quick glance would not do. They had to stare at it, which meant to turn their gaze inward and examine their sin. They had to recognize and acknowledge the harm it had done – to themselves, to others, and to the whole of society. We call it confession. Notice that nothing else was required – no amendment of life, no penance. If they simply gazed at the bronze serpent as if their life depended on it – which it did – then repentance would follow inevitably from their awareness of sin’s poisonous consequences.
This episode with the bronze serpent amounts to an exercise in awareness; and in time awareness supplants sin the way warm, soapy water floats away grease. No self-improvement strategies were called for, no battle of wills within ourselves to become a better person. Simply honesty before the face of God is all that God asks of us – the soap in the soapy water, so to speak.
The soapy water strategy differs radically from the usual religious approach. We who are identified as religious get a lot of bad press, precisely because we eschew the warm soapy water and reach instead for the greasy rag of self-improvement. It never works, but it does repel non-believers. Let me give you an example from a person I knew in California who belongs to one of the fundamentalist churches. Sam had been a drug addict and alcoholic for years, and he became clean thanks to this church. As the years went by, he rose in the ranks of leadership. Finally, he and another man were selected to go out and start another church. Sam, meanwhile, had begun to drink again and perhaps do drugs as well. He took a lot of trouble not to get caught by any of the people from church, sometimes driving over 100 miles just to go out for dinner. One day, in spite of all the mentholated cough drops he sucked and garlic he ate, one of the junior pastors in his new church smelled alcohol on Sam’s breath, and outed him. Rather than gaze at the bronze serpent, Sam fired the junior pastor.
You can feel Sam’s spiritual death here. I suspect it cannot be avoided with the self-improvement approach. Note how Sam had become divided within himself. One part of him was condemning the other part. The other part was cringing under the lash of guilt. It is what we mean when we say Sam lost his integrity, meaning his wholeness. Note, too, how he lived in constant fear of discovery. Finally, note how Sam, feeling judged, judged others – the junior pastor in particular. His spiritual journey stood on hold. This was not Sam’s unique problem. A culture of mutual judgment, or the threat of it, underpinned the whole church. Perhaps they told themselves they were just helping each other to live purer lives. In reality, they were wasting their energy on self-improvement, when that same energy could have gone into feeding the hungry and worshiping God in the beauty of honesty. When we try to self-clean hypocrisy follows.
I hope this helps us understand what Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Jesus, the serpent on the cross, shows us the power of sin to harm. We gaze at him, at his torment, at his suffering and if we are honest we say to ourselves, “My sin put him there.” Yes, Jesus died for the sin of the whole world; yet if I alone sinned and no one else, he would have died just that way, just for me. Jesus’ death on the cross goes far beyond the bronze serpent, however. Like the bronze serpent, Jesus crucified allows us to gaze, until we realize and acknowledge our sins. He enables confession.
But more than that, Jesus returned. In a manner beyond our telling, he rose from the dead; and in some incontrovertible way he let his friends know that they were forgiven; their betrayal was forgiven. They testified to Jesus’ resurrection, not only because of what they had seen, but even more because of how they felt. They should have felt shame and guilt; they should have felt diminished in their own eyes and the eyes of others. No such thing! Instead, they experienced transformation. New life and power poured into them. Intimidated hicks from the hinterlands suddenly became bold and effective evangelists at the center of power. They in turn spread the good news. What good news? Not just that Jesus had been raised from the dead, but what it meant: we, too, can experience that living encounter which frees us from all the self-diminishment of sin, all sin’s poison.
St. Augustine wrote, “Love God and do as you please.” I would interpret that this way. First, establish a love of God; root yourself in an intimate relationship with Christ. Then for God’s sake do not go out and live a pinched, hesitant, fear-ridden life, perpetually on guard against sin. Live boldly. Live joyfully. Live with abandon. Feast, sing and dance! Pour yourself out in self-giving. The shadow of judgment is behind you. You have come into the light of wholeness. You live in the freedom of honesty; for you make daily use of the serpent on the cross – the figure that signifies: sin is not the end; no matter how grievous, sin need never be the end. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
