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Sunday, December 24, 2023

Passage Appointed: Luke: 26-38

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Every few years, the Fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve collide — as they do this year.   For people engaged in parish life and ministry, it means a lot of work — observing the last of Advent in the morning and then diving into Christmas later in the day.   I do not find myself missing that quick escalation this year.

 

For most people, however, the conjunction of Advent IV and Christmas Eve means that Advent IV is overlooked.   As a parish priest, it was my experience that very few people showed up for Advent in the morning — they waited to come to church until Christmas Eve.   And that’s understandable.   

 

There is, however, value in pausing from the rush of last minute Christmas preparations to just take a moment to consider the Fourth Sunday of Advent and its gospel passage, which is the announcement from Luke’s Gospel to Mary that she will have a son who will be Jesus.

 

It is tempting when considering this passage to focus on the controversy of the passage.   Was Mary really impregnated by the Holy Spirit?   Was she truly a virgin?  Or, is this passage even meant to tell us about a historical event?   It is well known in circles of biblical scholarship that the stories of Jesus conception and birth were told well after Jesus was crucified, and that such stories were common to the heroic literature genre of the ancient world, a genre which certainly influenced to some degree the gospel narratives.   And, sadly, the insistence on Mary’s virginity (based on a mis-translation into Greek of the Hebrew of the Book of Isaiah, which inspired this notion) has been used by too many Christians to promote ideas of femininity that are hardly positive, and have not at all contributed to the flourishing of women.

 

As important as these questions are to consider, however, it is also worth asking ourselves what the spiritual value of this story from Luke might be.

 

What I find most powerful about this interaction between the angel Gabriel and Mary is that, at its heart, it is a story about an invitation into a life-changing reality and a courageous acceptance without fully knowing the consequences.

 

If we accept the story at face value for the moment, what we see is a divine invitation into a very dangerous situation.  Any unmarried woman found to be pregnant in Mary’s time would have found herself at grave risk.   And yet, this is exactly what Mary is invited into:  to become a mother outside of wedlock.    An interesting way to bring the Christ into the world, wouldn’t you say?  By violating some pretty basic social mores.   

 

What is perhaps more incredible than that invitation, however, is Mary’s response:  “let it be with me according to your word.”   No one who is about to become a parent for the first time really knows what they are getting into, even under the best of family planning circumstances.  Mary could not have known what her “Yes” would mean for her.   And yet, she chose to trust the invitation — or, at least, the One from whom the invitation came.

 

And it is reflecting on the meaning of this for ourselves that we find a fruitful Advent IV pause before rushing headlong into Christmas.

 

The Holy One is always inviting us into new territory, often outside our comfort zone.  That invitation is always about enlarging us as people, always about us living more fully into the reality of the Christ within us, always about us becoming more aligned with the universal sacred.   To step into growth — often painful growth — always comes with risk.  We often step away from embracing the invitation, rather than finding the courage of Mary to step into it.  Ultimately, the courage to embrace these invitations comes from trust — trust that the divine flow of the Universe, which we call God, is on our side and has our flourishing at heart.   It is the courage to pass through what may at least appear to be a valley and shadow of death with confidence that whatever dies there must die in order for us to emerge from the valley into newness of life.

 

I spent years avoiding that valley, attempting to find ways around it, pretending that I was not really being invited to go through it.   In the end, it could not be avoided.  And it was pretty terrible.   But the new life I now know to be mine would not have been possible without it.

 

I would not say that I had the courage of Mary.   But I did find that courage when I began to see that there was no other way but through, and that the One who accompanied me was not leading me into darkness but toward the light.

 

This Sunday morning, before throwing yourself into Christmas, pause and think about what invitation the Holy One might be sending your way, and contemplate finding within yourself the courage and trust of Mary, to be able to say to the Universe, “Ok — I trust you.  Let’s do this.” 

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Sunday, December 17, 2023

Passage Appointed: John 1:6-8,19-28

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The gospel passage for this Third Sunday of Advent focuses on the figure of John the baptizer or John the forerunner.   Coming from John’s Gospel, the passage focuses on the baptizer as “a man sent from God” who “came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.”

 

The sacred history of John the baptizer is interesting.  To this day, there exists a small religious group called the Mandaeans who believe that John was the final and most important prophet.  Centered in what is now Iraq, Iran, Syria and Jordan, the Mandaeans are all but extinct, having found themselves in predominantly Muslim countries where they have been unwelcome, frequently subject to persecution and forced conversion to Islam.   Beyond their tragic history, however, is the fact that they hold John to be their prophet and the one whom they follow.  They probably practiced baptism before Christians did so.

 

It is interesting, then, that against this backdrop of the Mandaeans is the insistence of Christian sacred texts that John was not the messiah.   This passage from John is a perfect example.  It does not simply note that John was not the messiah, but seems to exert some extra effort in insisting upon it.     This suggests that the authors of the Christian texts were aware of the existence of followers of the baptizer and sought to reinterpret his place in the tradition so that he was still held in esteem but as the one who pointed people toward Jesus, rather than as a Jesus-like figure himself.   Perhaps the earliest Christians were uncomfortable with the claims being made by John’s followers about him.

 

But let’s step back from this more historical perspective and consider the meaning of John’s role as the Christian texts came to interpret it, within the context of this Advent season.  For each of the figures in the Christian texts, aside from their histories which are largely veiled, holds a symbolic spiritual meaning for us today.

 

In the case of John, I think we see this in the idea from the gospel that John comes as a witness to the light, who is the Christ.  

 

Each of us has something of a dual mission:  to bring forward the Christ that is within us so that the divine light illuminates and transforms us, and also to bear witness to the truth that this light is not only within us, but within all people.   We are each meant both to be the light and to bear witness to the light.  

 

In the Lindisfarne Community, our shared communal prayer is this:  “May we be as Christ to those we meet, and find Christ within them.”   This prayer sums up the goal of our spiritual life, both to be the light for others and to bear witness to the light within them.   It is a prayer that expresses our desire to live, relate, and act in the world from the authentic Christ-self within us and to relate to the Christ-self that is in others.   When we relate to others in this way, we are seeking to bring an awareness of the divine light into all our encounters — and to honor others as bearers of that light, and thus worthy of respect, love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and justice.    To bear witness to the light is to bear witness to the universal worth of all human beings.   And, perhaps, other beings, as well:  the universal worth of all life.

 

To live in the spirit of John as such a witness is, ultimately, to be a bearer of hope in a world that is too often enveloped in darkness.   The world makes people forget who they are, forget that divine light that is within them.   And this forgetfulness causes people to devalue both themselves and others.  It is what ultimately creates an opening for abuse and exploitation, for it diminishes our shared humanity.  

 

As we light the third candle of the Advent Wreath this Sunday, let us take a moment to pause before that light and recognize it as a representation of the divine light that penetrates us all.  Let us allow it to remind us of who we are, and to encourage us to bear witness to the light in all people.

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Sunday, December 10, 2023

Passage Appointed: Mark 1:1-8

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The Gospel for this Second Sunday of Advent brings us back to the beginning of Mark’s Gospel and an introduction to John the Baptist or, as he is called in the Eastern Christian tradition, John the Forerunner.    The text says that he “appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  

 

The idea of baptism — or a ritual washing — was not unique to John.   In the Jewish tradition of his time, ritual washings for purification were quite common.   And there is at least one ancient Jewish group — the Essenes — who put a great deal of focus on this practice.   But the stories that are told about John do suggest that there was something compelling about him, and he became for a time quite a popular figure.    Popular enough to place him cross-ways of the authorities.

 

I find myself thinking that perhaps what was so compelling about the ritual washing that John offered to people had something to do with its simplicity and its openness to all.   Many Jewish ritual washing practices of the time had to be done in specially set aside containers, and involved a certain amount of complexity.   As such, it was easier for people who were economically better off to perform these rituals.    John simply used rivers or lakes for his washing, and anyone — no matter how wealthy or poor they might be — could experience it easily.

 

John’s message was also compelling:  his washing essentially provided people a chance to begin again.   And in a time and place where people could relatively easily find themselves classified as ritually impure, and where religious authority figures could be rather stingy with forgiveness and mercy, John’s radical offering of a clean slate, an opportunity to start anew, was probably quite powerful.   The fact that Jesus sought baptism from John, and that his movement took up the practice after John was arrested and ultimately executed, is a sign that Jesus endorsed not only John’s ritual but the meaning that lay behind it.

 

Sin is a complicated thing, made more complicated by religious people.   We very often carry along with us lists of sins, and the sacramental practice of confession that is part of both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions tends to encourage the notion that when we think about sin, we should have in mind discreet offenses:  lists of things we have done wrong.

 

But sin need not be so fraught and complicated.  In its essence, to sin means to miss the mark.  And to expand on that notion, I would suggest that to sin means to be out of alignment with the divine, with the Christ within us.   When we are out of alignment, we move and act against the grain of the universe and the grain of life itself.  We move and act in ways that do not enhance our own flourishing or the flourishing of others.  We are living from a twisted place, rooted in the engineered self rather than in the authentic self.   We are alienated from who we really are.

 

And so John, and Jesus, and, at its best, the Christian tradition invites us in our unaligned state into the grace of repentance, a word which means simply to turn around, with the implication that having turned around, we then head in a different direction.  We head toward alignment with the sacred, toward alignment with our authentic self in whom the Christ dwells.   We begin again, in the hope of moving with the grain of the universe and of life, so that we might flourish and contribute to the flourishing of others and to the repair of the world.

 

Rather than thinking of sin as a laundry list of bad behavior, then, we would do better to think of it as a kind of illness.  And when we are ill, we need healing.    

 

The most prominent image for the church in the Eastern Christian tradition is of a hospital where spiritually ill people come to be healed.   And the word salvation actually means healing.  

 

Pretty much every evil that is done in the world, every transgression, every abuse, every wrong committed is rooted in illness.   People carrying with them unhealed wounds, and acting in the world out of that painful woundedness.    This does not excuse the evil, the abuse, the transgression, or the wrong, but it does recognize the human tragedy that is contained within each.   As a society, we tend to punish the wrong without ever addressing the illness and the woundedness in which it is rooted.   The United States devotes more resources to imprisoning people to punish them for their wrongs than any other so-called developed nation.  Among those “first world” countries, we have the largest incarcerated population.     Yet we devote almost no resources, by comparison, to addressing the illness that lies behind the crime.

 

As we light the second candle on the Advent Wreath this Sunday — the candle of peace — perhaps we can take a moment to consider John’s powerful message, endorsed by Jesus, of allowing the sinners among us (including ourselves) to begin again, and we can recover the idea that our spiritual communities and traditions are meant to be about healing and bringing people back into alignment with God, themselves, and others.   We are meant to be about the healing of the whole human family, and the repair of the brokenness in the world.   We are meant to bring peace to ourselves and others, so that together we might bring peace to the world.

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Sunday, December 3, 2023

Passage Appointed: Mark 13:24-37

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The song “Black and Blue Bird” by Dave Matthews includes this line: “God is troubling when you consider believers that would welcome the end of the world.”   It is a line I often think of when we begin the season of Advent, as we do today.

 

While Advent leads us into Christmas, the celebration of Jesus’ birth, the readings for the season tend to revolve around the theme of a somewhat strange notion in the Christian tradition:  the second arrival of Jesus which, according to some people, will mark the end of the world, a moment of final judgment in which evil is finally defeated once and for all and a new and permanent age of the reign of God begins.

 

Some Christians get rather worked up about this.

 

And some indulge in some rather gleeful — and disturbing — fantasizing about this, going so far as to imagine all the various tortures and sufferings that the wicked will endure at the second appearance of Jesus as part of the whole final judgment thing.   

 

Hence that wonderful Dave Matthews’ line about how troubling the idea of God is in the hands of those believers who so gleefully welcome the end of the world as they look forward to the way they imagine God will stick it to the evil.

 

None of this has a place in my theology or belief system.  I want nothing to do with a God who would bring things to an end and take the opportunity to administer the kind of vindictive judgment that some in the Christian tradition seem to so look forward to.

 

Yet we do have this mysterious theme around which the Advent readings revolve that connects the Christ to ….. what, exactly?

 

In today’s gospel reading for the First Sunday of Advent, as I look at it, Jesus seems to be speaking in poetic language about an unexpected appearance of the Christ when things seem to be bleak, and emphasizes the importance of keeping awake — being on alert, being watchful, “for you do not know when the master of the house will come.”   One could choose to read this as a sort of description of the end of the world.   Yet, that reading is a choice — and not the only one that could be made.

 

I like to think of Jesus’ life as the in-breaking of the Christ Event into the world.  Whatever one does or does not believe about Jesus and the stories told about him, there is no question that his appearance in the world ended up causing massive, historical changes as the Christian movement began, took hold, grew, and ultimately became The Church.   That is not to say that the impact of the Christian movement has been entirely good — the record is quite mixed.  But whether you are a believer or an atheist or somewhere in between, that impact cannot be denied.   

 

Perhaps the key difference between someone who looks at the impact of the Christ Event on world history from a perspective of faith versus someone who does not is this idea that the Christ Event did not happen once in a particular historical moment but that it is on-going — that the Christ Event which in Jesus impacted the world is also meant to unfold in me, in each of us, in a way that profoundly impacts my life.   In other words, I am meant to undergo the Christ Event in my life.

 

And just as the Christ Event in Jesus had a profound impact on the world, quite literally altering the course of history, so the Christ Event in me should have a profound impact on my life and my personal history.   In other words, the Christ Event reorders our lives in such a way that it can feel like the world as we once knew it has passed away, and something new has emerged or is emerging to take its place.   This is not about the wicked being tormented and sent ultimately to hell, nor is it about a violent ending of everything.   It is about patterns in me that no longer serve me dying, and being replaced by a new way of thinking and being that is aligned with the divine.   

 

Of course, the Christ event in me is not a project with a guaranteed outcome, just as it was not in Jesus.    Whenever the divine shows up in life, it is really our response to it — what we do with it — that truly matters.   Just as the followers of Jesus down through the centuries made some terrible, horrific choices in response to the Christ Event in Jesus — choices that had little to do with the teaching of Jesus and much to do with their desire for power and control — so it is that our response to the Christ Event in us may move us toward alignment with the divine or may move us very much away from that alignment.   

 

The dynamic that lies at the heart of the Christ Event — death and resurrection — suggests that a faithful response to the unfolding of that event in our lives requires us to allow certain things in our personal worlds to end so that new life may emerge.   To allow that process to happen is very difficult, even painful, and very often we back off from it.   The Christ Event may begin in us, but its unfolding in us can get stuck or halted as we retreat from it.

 

And so from this perspective, Advent serves as a reminder and an opportunity.   It reminds us to awaken once again to the unfolding of the Christ Event within our lives, and to recognize that its unfolding in us can resume, and that no matter where we have gotten stuck on the path of transformation, we can continue walking that path.   It is near, it is at the very gates of our life.   We may have lost sight of it, but we can wake up to its reality, to its invitation, to the possibilities it holds for us.   It will require us to let go of some things — and that may feel like the ending of our personal worlds in some respects.   Yet, such endings are necessary to make room for new life.

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Sunday, November 26, 2023

Passage Appointed: Matthew 25:31-56

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This Sunday is a difficult one on the calendar of the western church.  It is typically known as the Sunday of Christ the King — and marks the last Sunday in the western church year, just before we begin a new year with the arrival of Advent.  And, by the way, this last Sunday of the church year only received this designation in 1925.

 

One of the difficulties, of course, is that this imagery of kingship is not one that really resonates with people in our time and place.   Gone are the days when kings and queens ruled.  In the places where these figures still exist — such as Great Britain — monarchs are symbolic figures who no longer exercise any real power.    So perhaps continuing to hold on to royal images in reference to Christ no longer makes much sense.

 

Another difficulty is the triumphal tone that the title of this Sunday sets.   Its position as the last Sunday in the church year is meant to reenforce the idea that, in the end, Christ rules over all.  Which is really suggesting that the church — Christianity — wins in the end, and is meant to triumph over every other religious and spiritual tradition on the planet.

 

The gospel passage connected to this Sunday also seems at first glance to lend itself to this triumphal tone.   This year, that passage is from Matthew’s Gospel, and is typically referred to as Christ judging the nations.   It depicts all the nations of the earth gathered before the great throne of Jesus, who separates them into distinct groups, sending one into life eternal and the other into punishment eternal.    At first reading, it appears to be a story about individual salvation and personal judgment, based on whether one was helpful to the poor and needy or not.

 

A number of commentators, however, have suggested that to read the story in this way is not what the author of Matthew’s Gospel intended.  They point to the fact that from beginning to end, Matthew is presenting Jesus the Christ as the heart of an anti-imperial program.    It is there right at the beginning, where the birth of Jesus to a needy peasant family on the edges of society is contrasted with the violent efforts of King Herod to exert power and control from the center in order to maintain empire.  If we take that overarching perspective of the gospel into consideration, then we can read this story in a different way.

 

Rather than seeing it as focused on individual salvation and personal judgment, we can see it as a commentary on the power structures of the world and its nations.   And the question the story asks is simply this:  which power structures are focused on caring for those on the margins and which are not?  Those that are so focused have a better chance of survival and those that are not are at risk of failure.

 

There is a lot of talk these days about the growing disparity between the wealthy and everyone else.    One percent of the world’s population own almost half of the world’s wealth, and just 81 people (all billionaires) have more wealth than 50% of the world’s population.  If we look, we can see the corrosive effect of this inequality on so many of the world’s populations and the power structures that maintain this inequality.  In the long term, such inequality is not sustainable.   And it certainly is not consistent with the ethical framework of any of the world’s spiritual and religious traditions — except where those traditions have been corrupted.

 

This Sunday’s passage from Matthew’s Gospel can be read as a commentary on the kind of world we live in now — one that privileges already privileged people at the expense of most other human beings.   It is a commentary on the way in which we so often end up living at the expense of others.   And that this story was told 2000 years ago tells us that human systems have not made much progress.

 

In closing, I need to comment on the end of this passage, when those who were living at the expense of others and did not care for those on the margins are sent into “eternal punishment”.   While I cannot go into it here, it is an axiom of my theological perspective (and I am hardly alone in this) that God has nothing to do with violence.   Thus, any suggestion in the biblical texts of sending people to hell and eternal punishment cannot, in my view, be read in anything close to a literal way.

 

It does seem clear to me, however, that power structures that privilege the privileged and exacerbate inequality are creating a kind of hell themselves.   As we look at our political culture today, how could it not be described as hellish?  I interpret Matthew here not as describing something that God does — throwing people into hell — but rather as describing that which is the natural consequence of corrupt human systems that fail to care for those in need.   

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Sunday, November 19, 2023

Passage Appointed: Matthew 25:14-30

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This week’s gospel passage, continuing our reading in Matthew, presents another of the parables of judgment that Jesus teaches.   Each of these parables of judgment can be challenging to interpret, particularly if we attempt to associate the central characters in these parables as stand-ins or symbols for God.  Many commentators have noted that Matthew’s parables — particularly the parables of judgment — cannot be read this way, and note that Matthew presents them in a way that seeks to point that out.   He often takes pains to point out that he is talking about “a man”, meaning that we should not take the man in the story as a stand-in for God.

 

A number of commentators also note the importance of Matthew 11:12 as providing us an interpretive key in reading the gospel: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.”  This verse suggests that the kingdom or realm of God is revealed in human suffering, and it is the human created kingdoms or realms of the world that engage in violence to cause that suffering.   Thus, in any parable in Matthew’s Gospel, if we are to identify a “Christ figure” in the story, it would perhaps most likely be the one in the story who is subjected to violence.

 

With all this in mind, we can turn to this week’s parable, usually called the Parable of the Talents.   In the story, the central character is a man who is a slave-owner and clearly of a questionable character, revealed as one who is usually “reaping where [he] did not sow, and gathering where [he] did not scatter seed”.  Because of this reputation as a “harsh man” (it is clear that with this reputation, this character cannot be a stand-in for God), the third slave in the story goes and buries the talent he was given, rather than risking it by investing it in some way, as the other slaves did.    The third slave is afraid, and is so overwhelmed by his fear, that he cannot risk losing what he has been given, and so he hides it until he can return it to his master upon his master’s return.

 

As a result of his fear and inaction, he is castigated by his master and thrown into the “outer darkness”.   He suffers violence at his master’s hand because he cannot get past his fear, and therefore he cannot take any risk that might lead him to a more fruitful, more abundant, more full life.

 

For me, the real truth of the story lies in what is implied but not said:  that the realm of God is revealed in the suffering of this man due to his fear and the impoverished life into which that fear locks him.   The brutal world of human power would toss him aside for this.  But the realm of God would seek him in that outer darkness in order to heal him of his fear.

 

Parables really only become meaningful when they interact with our own lives.  And this particular parable speaks very loudly in my life.   One of the things that has become clear to me over these last almost 4 years of exploration and reflection has been the discovery of how much fear was a dominant component of my inner life.   I cannot say that it was so substantial as to prevent me from taking risk and finding success and meaning in my life, but in the end, that fear did short-circuit my life in a profound way.  It did, ultimately, lead me into an outer darkness in which I became incomprehensible to many and invisible to some.   There were very few people willing to venture into that outer darkness to find me.

 

I can say with full conviction, however, that the divine grace did find me there in ways that are stunning and nearly incomprehensible to me.   When we speak in our churchy language of being raised to new life in Christ — a beautiful phrase that always held more mystery to me than substance — this is something I actually have experienced.  I was given a new life, I was returned to myself in a way that ultimately transcended the fear that had always been my constant companion.    I am a living testimony to the truth that in that outer darkness where the human systems of this world are so willing to leave people — there I did truly find the realm of God in a way I had never experienced it before.  

 

And so the lesson of this parable, I think, and so many other parables of judgment, is that the divine does not act as the human.   “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Holy One” (Isaiah 55:8).   We so often insist on creating some sort of divine power structure that mirrors corrupt and violent human power structures — it is one of the ways those human structures seek to legitimize themselves.   The mystery of Christ is meant to disabuse us of this false equivalency.

 

It is in coming to terms with our own powerlessness as we undergo suffering that we find the power of the divine.  And when our human power structures are able to mirror that truth — and transform from inflicting suffering to embracing those who are suffering for the sake of healing — that is when our humanity is aligned with the sacredness of the universe.  That is when the realm of God becomes manifest among us.

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Sunday, November 12, 2023

Passage Appointed: Matthew 25:1-13

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Today’s gospel reading is that story generally referred to as the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.    It is one of the many parables in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus introduces with the words, “The kingdom of heaven is like….”

 

And that short introduction contains the first teaching of this parable:  that the kingdom, or realm, of God cannot be directly described.  The most we can ever say about the realm of God is that it is “like this” or “like that”.   Or, conversely, it is “not like this” or “not like that.”   So we should not miss the caution that lay behind this truth, which is that when we use the realm of human language and images to describe the realm of God, the best we can hope to do is to point toward a truth that transcends our capacity to fully grasp.  This is, ultimately, why religious language is always and forever metaphoric language, because it is attempting to point us toward something that is intimately present but also utterly beyond.   

 

Sadly, we have for a long time now forgotten this truth, and become overconfident and arrogant regarding our capacity to describe that which we label as God or the realm of God.  We think we have it.  We think that our creeds and doctrines and scriptures fully comprehend the divine.   Which is why religion is filled with doctrinal terrorists whose chief concern is to make everyone obey these creeds and doctrines because, in their minds, they are correct.  And they convince themselves that this enforced obedience is good because it “saves” people.  It doesn’t occur to them that it is they themselves from whom people really need to be saved.

 

All creeds, doctrines, scriptures — all religious language — points beyond itself to a transcendent reality that will never be fully described but can be perceived in the experience of the soul, if we are paying attention.

 

And I think this parable of the wise and foolish virgins can be understood as a parable about paying attention in order to experience the More, the transcendent realm of sacred experience.  

 

In the end, the parable is about a group of young women who pay attention and a group of young women who get distracted.  The so-called “foolish” virgins are distracted by concern over whether they have enough oil for their lamps — so much so that they leave the scene at the critical moment to purchase more oil and thus miss the appearance of the bridegroom.   

 

In religious metaphor, it is common to refer to the soul in a feminine mode and to use the term virgin to indicate a soul who is seeking experience of the divine.   And it is common to refer to that experience of the divine as a bridegroom, one who comes to be joined to the soul.  Thus we can see what the imagery of this parable is pointing us toward:  our own desire to experience the divine, transcendent mystery and our readiness to receive that experience. 

 

The lesson of the parable, at least for me, is a well-worn principle of spirituality:  the importance of paying attention to the present moment.  When we become distracted by worry or concern about the past or the future, we remove our attention from the moment we are in.  And, the experience of the sacred is one that only happens in the present moment (indeed, all experience happens only in the present moment).   

 

I have spent much of my life obsessing about the past or in terror about the future.   And in doing so, I expect I have missed a lot.  What I have found is that intentional spiritual practice — whatever form it takes, as long as it is authentic — is designed to move us out of this cycle of obsession and worry and anchor us in the present.   It is always a temporary anchoring, because we human beings have a lot of trouble setting aside that obsessing/worrying mode of being.   Yet, when we are able to do so, we can pause in the moment and experience depth — and that is where the realm of God is to be found.

 

All creeds, doctrines, and scriptures are simply there to point us toward that and help us prepare the ground of our souls to receive and recognize the experience of the sacred when we find it.   And it is our spiritual practice — rooted in the present moment — that is the arena in which that experience arrives.

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Sunday, November 5, 2023

Passage Appointed: Matthew 5:1-12

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November 1 is All Saints Day, which can be observed on the first Sunday after.  So I am choosing to reflect on the All Saints Day gospel, which is an option for today.

 

That gospel passage is always the Beatitudes — Matthew’s version.  Those verses, each beginning with that phrase, “Blessed be….” have much to tell us, I think, about what lies at the heart of life, in a spiritual sense.   That is, that there are paths to be followed, choices to be made, dispositions to be cultivated that evoke blessing.  

 

What does that mean?  I would note that in the Beatitudes, Jesus uses a passive voice rather than an active one.  Those who follow a certain path or make a certain choice or cultivate a certain disposition find that they are blessed.   Or, better put, they find that they experience a state of blessedness.   To me, this suggests that whether we find that state or not is up to us, rather than to a deity who somewhat arbitrarily decides whether or not to hand out a blessing.

 

To experience blessedness, I think, is to experience a kind of resonance with the universe, to find oneself in the divine flow.  It is to transcend the ego and narrowness of self and experience something of the transcendent mystery that animates all life.   It is to go with the grain of the universe rather than against it.  And when we go with the grain of the universe, we flourish as human beings.   

 

Christians over the last few centuries seem to have become quite preoccupied with sin, rather than with blessing.   For me, sin is the opposite of what I just described.  It is to go against the grain of the universe, to go against the grain of the authentic self.  It is to move deeper into the ego and the engineered self and lose sight of that transcendent mystery of the More.   

 

Along with this preoccupation with sin has come a conception of God as one who somewhat arbitrarily makes lists of things that are sinful (bad) and then passes judgment on those who do those things.   It is the idea of the great being in the sky who doles out penalties for sin or blessings for doing well.     It makes God into something of a glorified referee — who also happens to be the one who makes the rules.

 

This is such an impoverished, outworn idea.   God is not a being, but rather Being Itself.  There are paths and choices in life that open us up and enliven our humanity, and there are those that close us down, cause us to cave in on ourselves, and cripple our humanity.   It is not always easy to precisely describe what these are, but we know it when we see it in others and when we experience it in ourselves.    We live in a vast matrix of Being that is touched by a transcendent consciousness that seeks our good and our well-being.  A consciousness that seeks to lead us toward the experience of blessedness.   But ultimately, we must decide to step into that experience.  It is not something arbitrarily bestowed upon rule-followers, but something inherent in the very structure of life that is always available if we seek it, see it, and choose it.

 

The saints have, in many ways, become rather comic-book figures in our time.  But really, when we speak of saints, we are really speaking of people — mostly unknown to us — who had the courage, insight, and willingness to step into blessedness in a way that made their lives brighter and, in some cases, more memorable.   The annual celebration of All Saints affords us an opportunity not only to celebrate those to whom the church chose to give the title, but to remember and celebrate those whose stepping into blessedness touched our lives in some way.  And it reminds us that the paths of blessedness are always open to us.  

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Sunday, October 29, 2023

Passage Appointed: Matthew 22:34-46

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In today’s gospel, Jesus is asked what are the two greatest commandments in the Jewish law, and his response is quite well-known: love God and love your neighbor as yourself.   And all of a sudden here we find ourselves in the choppy waters of the question that is not asked:  what is meant by the word “love”?

 

In today’s culture, we think and speak about love as primarily a matter of the heart.  For most people, love is a feeling — and people will go to great lengths to experience that feeling of “being in love”.    There is, of course, a difference between “being in love” and simply loving.  The former really only applies to romantic love, and then really only to the first phases of romantic love.   The second applies to love in all of its many forms — not simply romance, but also friendship and familial relationships.   But whether we are speaking of the giddiness of newly found romance or the deeper love that comes as relationships mature, we still tend to focus on love as something we feel.

 

When Jesus speaks of love, as he does in today’s passage, he cannot be talking about a feeling.  Why?  Because everything he says is set in the context of commandment.   And feelings cannot be commanded.   They happen or they don’t happen, but it is simply not possible for someone to walk up to you and order you to love them and suddenly you feel all warm and lovely toward that person.    Feelings are not commanded.   

 

When we recognize that, it becomes apparent that Jesus must be talking about behavior and action, for these are things that can be commanded.  In other words, we cannot choose how we feel, but we can choose our actions.

 

When Jesus says that the greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves, he is speaking about how we choose to act in the world toward others.  To love God, I think, means that we seek to act in ways that align with the transcendent power in the universe that nudges us toward what is best for us.   It means to be sensitive to the subtle movement of the spirit, to the quiet motions of grace, and to seek to align ourselves with the divine flow.  

 

To love our neighbors as ourselves is to simply to treat others with the care and kindness that we ourselves long to receive.   And that begins with treating ourselves with care and kindness.  We don’t always recognize that this “love your neighbor as yourself” thing is pointing toward a kind of feedback loop.  Kind and caring actions toward ourselves empower us for kind and caring actions toward others which, in turn, reenforces kind and caring actions toward ourselves.   It is difficult to care for others when you are not caring for yourself.   And it is more often than not the case that when we see those who act cruelly toward others we are seeing people who are living tormented lives and are unable to be kind to themselves.  And often because they were not shown kindness and caring at critical times in their lives.

 

So when we see Jesus speaking of love, when we read about love in the Bible, let us not make the mistake of thinking that we are talking about feeling.   Rather, let us understand that we are talking about how we live and act in the world.  Are we open to the motions of grace and the leading of the spirit?  Are we taking care of ourselves?  Are we moving toward others in ways that are kind and caring?  It really is that simple — and that challenging.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday, October 22, 2023

Passage Appointed: Matthew 22:15-22

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Today's gospel reading presents us with an attempt by religious authorities to entrap Jesus, so that they might be able to make an accusation against him that would get him into hot water.  They present him with a question that was, in their time and place, quite the hot-button issue:  Should a faithful Jew pay taxes to the Roman emperor?  If Jesus answered "Yes", then he would have lost credibility among a large segment of his people, who believed that paying taxes to the occupying power was offensive.   Roman tax collection was ruthless and deeply unpopular, as one might imagine.  On the other hand, if Jesus said "No" then he would have gotten into trouble with that same occupying power, opening himself up to a charge of fomenting dissent against Rome.

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Jesus, of course, was aware of the trap that they were laying for him, and avoided it with admirable skill that left his questioners both amazed and defeated.   He simply asked them to produce the coin with which the tax was paid, noted that it was Roman money bearing the emperor's inscription, and uttered those well known words, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."    

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The story makes me think about the hot-button issues of our day when it comes to religion and politics.  And as I wonder about those, I am deeply mindful of the violent conflict between Palestinian terrorists and Israel that is now unfolding in the very region where more ancient authorities asked Jesus their loaded question.

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Americans are accustomed to the notion that church and state are separate in our political system.  However, religion and politics have never been separated, both influencing the other in subtle and not so subtle ways.   The US has evolved a unique and, as far as I am concerned, distasteful blend of Christianity and nationalism that wants to believe that the United States is some sort of new Israel, some kingdom of God on earth, some chosen nation among all other nations.   In this twisted vision, Jesus is a kind of American Rambo who will use any means necessary to establish or ensure that America is a Christian nation.   Much of today's ascendant right wing politics is a direct outgrowth of this nationalistic theology.  And, in an age when people have become accustomed to saying outrageous things, we have had at least one member of Congress openly say that the church should be telling the state what it should be doing.   

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In Jesus' time, there were many among the Jewish people who viewed the religious authorities with suspicion, and even saw the Temple and its rituals as compromised, because of the compromises that those authorities had made with the Roman occupiers.  It was, in the end, the Romans who decided who the High Priest would be.  Centuries later, as Christianity moved from being an illegal religion to the official religion of the Roman Empire, the monastic movement arose as a protest against what was seen as a compromised church.    Indeed, much of what came to be considered orthodox Christian theology was developed under pressure from the Roman Emperor to get all Christians on the same page.  Questions that were formerly left unanswered or open suddenly acquired fixed answers from which dissent became impossible.   A radically pacifistic early Christianity wound up blessing the Roman imperial war machine -- because the Emperor needed it to do so.   The stage was set for the cozy relationship that would exist between crown and mitre, state and church all across Europe.   

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One of the insights of the American revolution was that this should not be -- that religion should not be a tool of the state, and that the state should have a benign attitude toward religion.  It was that perspective that ultimately allowed different interpretations of Christianity, and different religious traditions, to take root in this country.   Not easily, of course, because human beings still have their prejudices and preferences.  But it was a step in a remarkably new direction given the history of religion in Europe.

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All of this is something that the right wing Christian nationalists would like us to forget -- they would like us to believe that the founders of this country were zealous Christian evangelists, which could not be further from the truth.

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As people use religion as an excuse to cover their violent agendas, and as religion uses its power to try to push a political agenda, we would do well to consider the cautionary nature of Jesus' teaching in today's gospel.  Render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God's what is God's.   When church and state get in bed together, nothing good ever comes from it.   The state should never be interested in a narrow religious agenda, nor should its power be allowed to support such an agenda.  The state's interest is in the maintenance, support, and defense of civil society which should look upon citizens as having equal standing regardless of religion.  And the church -- and other religious communities -- should be interested in developing the spiritual capacities of their adherents, to promote human healing, flourishing and transformation.   These different goals of the state and of religions can both end up supporting a more peaceful, equitable, and just society.  But they should do their work on different sides of the street.   

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Sunday, October 15, 2023

Passage Appointed: Matthew 22:1-14

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Matthew's Gospel presents us with another parable today that is an interpretive challenge.   It is a story in which the kingdom of heaven is compared to a king who throws a wedding banquet for his son, and the invited guests refuse to come.  And so the king sends out troops to kill them all, and orders his slaves to open the banquet to everyone.  Once the banquet hall is full of people, the king comes in to see the guests, and finds one who is not dressed appropriately.   He demands an explanation, but the guest remains silent -- he has nothing to say.  And so the king has him bound hand and foot and thrown out.

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Traditionally, this parable is interpreted in such a way that God is put in the role of the king.   But the consequences of that interpretive move are monstrous.   It makes God equivalent to a petty dictator who lashes out violently when people resist his will.   And that is something that I simply refuse to accept.   It is amazing to me how many people, however, willingly do so.   I think that an affinity for violence is so deeply rooted in us that we are often more willing to project that violence onto the divine rather than to allow the divine to challenge our own violent tendencies.

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More recent interpretive work on this parable suggests that we should view it not through the traditional lens of a monarchical God enthroned on high who metes out punishment to sinners, but through the lens of Jesus' own living out of the mystery of the divine, in which God in Christ undergoes the violence of humanity in order to unmask that which lays behind our temptation to violence and subvert it by reordering our humanity not on the basis of power and violence but of love and non-violence (for more, see the Girardian Lectionary).

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Such a reading turns this parable upside down.  Rather than seeing the petty tyrannical king as the divine figure, we instead see the silent wedding guest who is thrown out of the banquet for not being properly dressed as the divine figure in the story.   This silent, unwelcome guest is the Christ who undergoes the violence of the tyrant.  The kingdom of God is not like the king, but like the guest who is found unworthy.   

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Matthew's Gospel makes a bigger deal of Jesus' remaining silent before his accusers than any other gospel, which further reenforces the idea that the silent guest is the Christ figure in the story.  And the subtlety of the Greek here makes it clear that the king is a man, as if to discourage the idea that we should identify him as the divine figure in the story.

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This parable offers us the opportunity to recognize that how we interpret these stories has very much to do with the lens that we use to look at them.   When the parable is viewed from the perspective of a kingly god who rules over the universe -- which essentially wants God to be a king up there in the sky whose chief attribute is possession of power that inspires fear -- then we end up with a story which depicts God along those Iines.  But if we view the story through the revolution of the Christ event, we begin to see that these old, imperialistic conceptions of God must give way to something more profound, in which the divine is seen as possessing an entirely different power rooted in love, non-violence, humility, selflessness, and surrender.   The former conception of God leads us to sanction the use of power and violence, and to venerate those who seek to have control over others.   The latter conception leads us to see how twisted and wrong that is.

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Sunday, October 8, 2023

Passage Appointed: Matthew 21:33-46

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The gospel passage appointed for today is a difficult one.  It is tempting to read it as a dire warning about how God will bring vengeance and destruction upon those who are unfaithful.   And that reading plays into the temptation of many people to attribute violence to God.   The issue of sacred violence -- imagining that God would indulge in the same kinds of violent acts that come all too easily to humans -- is a huge theological problem.  Those who have no trouble assigning violence to God will cite text upon biblical text in support of that perspective.  But let's be honest:  you can find a biblical text to support just about anything you want to argue.  

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I take it as a maxim that God and violence have nothing to do with each other.  My experience of the sacred, and my reading of the whole of Jesus' teaching and the insights of the mystics, lead me to this conclusion.  I also take it as a maxim that human beings will choose violence to resolve their grievances rather easily.   And will also not hesitate to use sacred texts to justify that violence if they are of a religious mindset.

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So when I encounter a text like today's gospel passage with my conviction that violence and the sacred have nothing to do with each other, I exclude any reading of the text that involves God in violence.   And so, what might really be going on here?

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I think this is primarily a text about faithfulness.  Not necessarily about faithfulness to God, but faithfulness to one's responsibilities as someone who seeks to live in harmony with the sacred dimension of life.

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The metaphor of the vineyard is one which is often applied in the Bible to the people of Israel.  And in case we might miss it, the author of the text points out that the Jewish authorities who heard Jesus realized he was talking about them.

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We often forget that Jesus was about reforming his Jewish tradition, not about starting a new religion.  That forgetfulness has led Christians over the centuries to tragically and horribly interpret words attributed to Jesus in an anti-semitic tone.   If we remember that this is what Jesus was about, however, then we can appreciate this text not as a warning of divine wrath, but as a thinly veiled criticism of religious authority.

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Jesus was deeply aware, it seems, of the way in which the religious authorities of his time interpreted their tradition in ways which imposed heavy burdens on people.  The poor and less advantaged of that time found it difficult to bear those burdens.   Jesus was offended by the insensitivity and lack of compassion that the authorities had for those who struggled the most.   He was also offended by the way in which those same authorities would claim ownership of divine grace and mercy, and assume the right to determine who was "in" and who was "out".  

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Jesus points out in this passage that no human being, and certainly no religious authority, has the right or power to make such a determination.   No one controls the realm of God.   The kingdom, or realm, of God is like a cosmic field of divine energy that is accessible to any and to all.    Religious practice may help us find our way into it, but no religion or religious hierarchy can claim ownership to the gate to determine who has that access.

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That is the warning and the criticism behind the strong words of today's gospel: that it is dangerous for anyone to assume the authority to control the realm of the sacred.  It is open to all -- and that has always been a scandalous idea.   Historically people with greater privilege have always had a hard time assigning worth, value, and access to the divine to those whom they consider "less".    And so we pretend to surround the gate to the realm of the sacred with a whole lot of rules, imagining that we can decide who is worthy to enter.   Yet our rules don't count for anything.   The realm of God is open to all.    The only thing anyone need do is knock, and the door will be opened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday, October 1, 2023

Passage Appointed: Matthew 21:23-32

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One of the consistent themes in the gospels is the tension -- and even open conflict -- between Jesus and the religious authorities of his time.   While we have become accustomed to thinking of the Christian movement as being a separate religion rooted in Judaism (as indeed it became), we can forget that Jesus did not set out to start a new religion.   Rather, he was interested in reforming his own Jewish tradition, whose leadership was seen by many as corrupted and compromised.

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In this context, then, the demand by the authorities in today's passage from Matthew's Gospel that Jesus explain by what authority he teaches what he teaches and does what he does is not surprising.   All the more so because the traditional style of rabbinic teaching at the time was to site the lineage of previous rabbis upon whose teaching one was building.   Jesus did not follow that style.  He did not appeal to previous teachers to provide a foundation for his own teaching.   He simply taught what he taught.   And he apparently did so with a kind of confidence that left the authorities of his time rather unsettled.

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That confidence of Jesus comes, I think, not from authority but from authenticity.   Jesus was radically authentic: he knew who he was and what he was about, and that authenticity brought a sense of authority to his teaching that did not require him to justify what he was saying by appealing to those who came before him.   And the people who were attracted to him were, I think, attracted to that authenticity.   It was unusual --- most human beings don't realize their full authenticity.   And to see it in someone like Jesus was compelling.

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But while Jesus -- and probably all the great religious figures and founders from Buddha to Muhammed -- embodied this amazing authenticity, that was not something that most of his followers were able to reach.  And so as Jesus' movement evolved into a religious tradition and acquired an institutional character, the compelling power of authenticity was replaced by authority.  And Christians have been arguing about who has authority to say what to whom ever since.   The sacred power of authenticity gave way to the secular and mundane power of authority -- and, of course, control.

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At the close of this week's gospel passage, Jesus poses a question that points to the way in which words and actions don't always correspond.    One of the marks of deep authenticity is a correspondence between word and action:  one does what one says, and one says what one does.  While Jesus commends the one who does what was asked after saying he would not over the one who promises but doesn't act, I think in both cases we have examples of less than full authenticity.   In both examples, the mind, heart, soul and body are not fully integrated with each other.   This is perhaps one of the best definitions of "sin" that one can find: this lack of correspondence and integration that leads the whole of one's being to be in harmony.   Authenticity brings wholeness, and wholeness brings authenticity.

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Authenticity is costly -- the story of Jesus' life makes that clear.   But lack of authenticity is deadly.  As we move into greater authenticity and deeper integration, it will cost us -- sometimes painfully.  It requires us to abandon our self-delusions, and can create space and separation between ourselves and those who would encourage us to continue to live with those delusions.   At the same time, authenticity and integration brings freedom -- because when we know who we are and what we are about, we are empowered to enact that authenticity freely.

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The movement into greater authenticity and deeper integration is a kind of dying.  Beyond it, however, lies the sacred realm of new life.  It is to that realm that Jesus was pointing, and it is that realm to which we are called.  It is the narrow path that leads to life.    It is what being human is really about.  Anything less is a distortion and impairment of our own human-ness.   And it is from living in a distorted, impaired humanity that Jesus and all the great teachers sought to save us -- by pointing us again and again to the path.  It is not something that you can reach by mere assent to a set of beliefs, nor is it something reserved to any particular group.  It is the designed goal of all humanity, and one must do the hard work of walking it, in whatever tradition helps one to do so.

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Sunday, September 24

Passage Appointed: Matthew 20:1-16

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This week's Gospel is a parable of Jesus, about generosity and jealousy.  Its central character is a landlord who goes several times to a local marketplace to hire laborers who are waiting there hoping to get a job for the day.  Just like the day laborers you might find waiting in any Home Depot parking lot in today's society.  These are people who live on the edge, just getting by, living one day to the next.  To be hired for the day is life.  To go a day without work is one step closer to death.

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At the end of the story, the landowner hands out the daily wage to each worker, beginning with those he hired at the end of the day, people who worked only an hour.   To them, as to every other worker, he pays the full day's wage, regardless of how long they worked.   This act of generosity -- choosing to give the same wage to each worker no matter the length of the labor -- enrages those hired earlier in the day.  They feel they should get more, since they worked longer.  The truth, I think, is not so much that they think they should get more but that they think those who put in less time and labor than they should get less.  

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The landlord points out that none of the workers was cheated.  The ones hired early in the day received the pay they agreed to.  If he chooses to pay the same to everyone, that is his business -- he is allowed to be as generous as he wants to be.

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I think the landlord of the story is deeply aware of the fact that those who work for him live perilous and fragile lives, and that his generosity is quite literally life-giving and, potentially, life-changing.  The fact that he goes to the marketplace a number of times over the course of the day indicates not so much a need for additional labor but a concern for the people who gather there and their need.  He knows that they depend on people like himself in order to live, and he is determined to do all he can.   His generosity is determined not so much by his need for labor as it is by the neediness of those who gather day by day at that marketplace.  His generosity is the gift of life.

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Generosity based on the need of another, rather than on the needs of the one being generous, is deeply counter-cultural, both then and now.  It is why the workers who labored all day are enraged.  This is not supposed to be how the labor market works.  But by telling this story, Jesus is saying something about the divine economy, which recognizes the deep interconnections within the human family, and assigns equal value to all.  The divine generosity flows where it is needed.    When we become channels of that generosity, when we recognize ourselves as part of the divine economy of being, then our generosity flows where it is needed.  The question of whether it is deserved is no longer a question.

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For me, this is not a theoretical exercise.  I have, over the past couple of years, been the recipient of an incredible generosity, offered freely to me by someone who simply recognized my need and looked upon me with compassion.  And that generosity in so many ways has saved my life.  I found myself unexpectedly caught up in the divine economy where all of the things that society -- and, indeed, the church -- would say cancelled out my value no longer mattered.   There was just me, a human being in pain and trouble, standing there with my need and not knowing where to go with it.  And there was he, this other person, who simply saw that and responded.  It was pure grace, and it has made all the difference.

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May we find ourselves slow to judge, and quick to be generous.  So many of us have what is needed to accomplish some healing in the lives of others.  To simply recognize their need, and to respond, is all we need to provide others with hope and new life.

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