|
Today’s lectionary readings make me very happy that I am an Anglican – especially the Gospel reading from Mark! In the early 17th century, England was in the midst of a civil war which had strong religious overtones. The Puritans, who found their voice under the leadership of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, advocated for the disestablishment of the Anglican Church and did their very best to destroy it through abolishing the episcopacy, destroying and defacing Anglican Churches and outlawing the Book of Common Prayer. The Puritans also advocated for the “bare reading” of the Holy Scriptures saying it was unnecessary to have clergy interpret the texts because “bare reading” of the Scriptures was all one needed to understand them. In response, one of our most noted Anglican divines, Richard Hooker said, “Bare reading is bare feeding for starving souls!”
Certainly there are passages from Scripture which can be taken at their face value. When Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself” – well, he was pretty clear (and no, he didn’t stutter!). But today’s reading from Mark is a perfect example of a text which, if taken as a “bare reading,” can be terribly misunderstood and even do positive harm. Jesus’ teaching on divorce is known as one of the “hard sayings” of Jesus and if we take it on its surface and only deal with it on a literal level then we open up all kinds of painful issues. First is the nature of divorce itself which, regardless of the circumstances, is always painful because it involves the death of a relationship. God grieves when divorce happens because real people – his very real flesh and blood children – are hurt. And then, when we speak of divorce, we are forced into looking at the flip side of the coin which is marriage – and that has certainly been a hot topic of conversation in our culture. What constitutes marriage? Is marriage “one man and one woman” as some would have us think? And if so, how do we explain King David and his 300 wives and concubines? And if we dig a bit deeper, we find marriage defined as a rapist and his victim, a man and his wife and his wife’s property (other female slaves), or a man and any woman he takes as the spoils of war. Clearly, the Biblical definition of marriage is checkered at best. And how do we understand this in light of the questions surrounding other relationships which bear some of the marks of marriage? What about same-sex couples who, by operation of law, are barred from the civil protections marriage provides me and my husband? What about elderly couples who, because of financial considerations, cannot get married without plunging into destitution? These are all very real issues which cause pain and suffering to real people. And if we only take this Gospel at a “bare reading” level, we continue to heap abuse and hurt on God’s children. I believe this is an abuse of Scripture and I strongly believe there is another layer of meaning behind this teaching. If we were to travel back to first century Palestine, we would find that marriage was a very different arrangement than what we experience in the 21st century in the United States. When children were toddlers, their parents began the process of arranging for their marriage – often to a distant cousin of the same tribe in order to consolidate family wealth and provide for the parents in their declining years (this is what 1st century Palestinian “social security” looked like). This contractual arrangement was known as betrothal and it was just that – a business arrangement. Generally, this isn’t how marriages happen in our modern culture. So in the midst of this cultural understanding of marriage, the Pharisees come to question Jesus about whether it is “lawful” to divorce ones wife (notice the legalistic language of questioning the lawfulness in light of the contractual business nature of marriage). At this time, there were two schools of rabbinic thought on this. The first said it was lawful if the woman was guilty of adultery. The second was much more lenient and gave all kinds of conditions under which a woman could be put out by divorce, including “burning the bread” (sorry ladies, if you burn the toast, you are out of here!). Instead of giving into either side, Jesus lifts the question to a whole new realm: it isn’t about a business dealing and the lawfulness of a contract – it is about people … real flesh and blood people … and especially women! Who stood to lose the most in the patriarchal culture of Jesus’ day? Women! To be put out of one’s home by divorce was a disgrace to the woman and her family. Women were often left destitute and their prospects for remarriage were very limited. Jesus goes on to say that if a man remarries, he commits adultery against his wife. This is radical because if a man remarried, the crime of adultery was considered to be a shaming of the woman’s father and male family members, not against her. If anything, Jesus is elevating the status of women who were often considered “non-persons” at this time and place. This helps us understand the tie in with the teaching about the children coming to him. Children are also relegated to “non-person” status – even in today’s society (which is why it is so easy to cut education and Head Start from our national budget … after all, children don’t vote, do they?). Jesus elevates both the status of women and the place of children through these combined teachings. So rather than see this as a teaching about divorce, I’m persuaded that divorce is merely the “presenting issue” and the real underlying teaching has to do with who the non-persons in our society are and how we treat them. Jesus came to save the last, lost, little, least and lifeless – and those who are pushed aside into non-person status fit most of those categories. The faces may change, but there are always those among us who are considered “non-persons.” In our day, it is the homeless, the physically or mentally ill, those with crippling addictions, children, the poor and hungry, the elderly, the developmentally disabled – all of these people are precious to God and yet they are those often relegated to non-person status in our culture. Our baptismal vows call us to seek and serve Christ in all persons by loving our neighbors as ourselves and to strive for justice and respect the dignity of every human being. If we move beyond the bare reading of this passage to see it is about how we treat the last, lost, little, least and lifeless, we can see a broader call and implication for our own lives. Christ did this work of reconciliation and healing in his day – and the work continues for each of us, here and now. What an amazing and glorious day! We are so blessed at Grace Church to welcome Vilhelm into Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church this morning. It is a magnificent reminder that we are part of something much, much bigger than ourselves and our little town. We are part of the Body of Christ and the Communion of Saints who span not only the globe but also span all time and space. And today we celebrate the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels which is a reminder that we are part of an even bigger fellowship which includes beings beyond our human understanding.
Our popular culture has an obsession with angels. Everything from Hallmark cards and ornaments, to bumper stickers telling us to “Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly,” to movies like “Angels in the Outfield” and “Angels in America” to TV shows like “Highway to Heaven” and “Touched by an Angel.” Of course, we talk about angels in the Church too but we often only think of them within the context Christmas. That’s why I love the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels – it gives us a chance to explore the wider world of angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. The Bible (including the Apocrypha texts) refers to angels and archangels 393 times. Five angels are named within these texts: Michael (whom we heard about today and whose name means “Who is like God?”), Gabriel (the quintessential Christmas angel who appeared to Mary and whose name means “God is my Champion”), Raphael (whose name means “Healer of God” from the apocryphal book of Tobit), Uriel (“Light of God”) and Jeremiel (“Mercy of God”) both appear in the apocryphal text of Esdras. Islam also speaks of angels and it is said the Quran was revealed to Mohammed by the angel Jibriel (Arabic for Gabriel). Our word “angel” derives from the Greek word angelos which means “messenger” or “emissary” and can refer to either a heavenly being or a human being. This leads me to pause this homily for a brief “theological service announcement.” There are misconceptions about angels in our culture and I would be remiss as a priest if I didn’t address two of the most common ones. The first one comes from a movie which will start showing on television continuously in … oh … about 8 weeks. That’s right – the annual “It’s a Wonderful Life” marathon. [How many of you have seen “It’s a Wonderful Life?”] Most of us know this story of redemption where an earthbound angel named Clarence Oddbody who tries to earn his wings by helping the distraught George Bailey see all the good in his life – and we know that “every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.” That’s good Hollywood, but poor theology. Angels do not earn their wings – this isn’t the Air Force or United Airlines. Meritocracy is not how things work in the Kingdom of God. The Bible says some angels have wings like the six-winged seraphim in Isaiah’s vision or the winged cherubim with four faces Daniel saw. But just as often, scripture says angels look … well … a lot like humans: the three visitors to Abraham and Sarah at the Oaks of Mamre and the two men in the tomb tell the women Jesus is alive are certainly angels … but they don’t seem to have any flying gear. We can surmise that angels either have wings or don’t and perhaps this is why the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us to always show hospitality because some have entertained angels without knowing it. (Heb. 13.2). The second common misconception is that humans become angels when they die. This one is a hard one to address when it arises because it is often said at funerals – especially funerals of children or those who die tragically. It’s usually said by a well-meaning friend or family member who’s trying to bring comfort and meaning to a senseless loss: “God must have needed another angel and that’s why …” Funerals are obviously not the time to address this. Instead we clergy bite our tongues (and I think I have a row of permanent teeth marks to prove it) and we wait … for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels so we can talk about it. For the record, we do not become angels when we die. I can no more turn into an angel upon my death than I could turn into a giraffe right now. People and giraffes are different species – so are angels and humans. When I die, scripture promises I will be taken into God’s presence to serve God as a transformed, resurrected human … not an angel. In fact, we humans enter God’s presence with something angels do not have: a tested faith in God. Angels never know what it is like to live apart from the full presence of God, but we do and in this life must walk by faith and not by sight. So when we enter God’s glory it is with a faith which has been tried and tested in ways that angels don’t quite understand. So now you know and we can return to our regularly scheduled homily. All this talk of “angels and archangels and all the company of heaven” might be a bit hard to swallow in our post-modern, evidence based scientific culture. We might be tempted to rationalize away their existence by categorizing them as colorful metaphors of ancient people. Most of you know me well enough to know that I tend to be a pretty rational, logical person and I confess that I cannot see angels directly … but I do know people who can and I believe them. Let me tell you about two people who’ve told me about their encounters with angels. I was pregnant with our youngest daughter when Claire was only three years old. Now we all know how long pregnancies are for adults, let alone three year olds, so Stu and I decided to wait until the pregnancy was obvious to tell Claire about the new baby coming. So we were extremely careful not to talk about the “b-a-b-y” in front of Claire (we didn’t even spell it in front of her). One morning when I was about 10 weeks into the pregnancy, I was pulling on my stretch leggings (because my pants were starting to get uncomfortable) and Claire came into my bedroom and patted me on the stomach. I said, “Yeah, looks like I’m getting a little fat, huh?” She just smiled and said, “No, it’s not fat, it’s just the baby in your tummy.” I was dumbfounded … “What?” Claire looked a little exasperated with me … “It’s just the baby in your tummy.” I asked, “How do you know about that?” She said, “I just know these things. And I know where babies come from too.” (This ought to be good, I thought). “Really? Where do they come from?” “They come from God Mommy.” (Good answer!) “And God is sending us a girl baby – I’m getting a sister!” Hmm … “Well honey, we don’t really know if God is sending you a sister. We might have a boy baby.” Claire was adamant, “NO! God is NOT sending us a boy baby! I’m getting a sister!” … OK … When Stu got home that evening, Claire ran up and threw her arms around him. As Stu hugged her, I said, “Guess who knows about the b-a-b-y?” He looked at me and said, “Did you tell her?” “I didn’t tell her, I thought you told her!” At that point Stu looked at Claire and asked, “So who told you about the baby in Mommy’s tummy?” Claire was very matter-of-fact, “The Angel.” I about fainted … but she was very clear. The angel told her God was sending us a girl baby – and she told people about this very plainly … for about two years. One day when she was about 6 years old, I asked her if she remembered the angel who told her about God sending us a “girl baby” and she said, “No Mommy.” The memory may have faded for Claire, but I am blessed to hold it for both of us. In my time as a hospice chaplain, I observed that when people come to the end of life, they often are living in between this world and the next. When death is near, they often see long deceased relatives and friends. But just as often, they see people they don’t know – one patient asked me about the “shiny people.” I believe these people they do not know are quite likely members of the heavenly hosts and one of my patients had such an encounter. Jean was from England. When she was enrolled in hospice I visited her and she told me much about her life and her family that was factual – she had six strokes and could not walk, she was married to her second husband Charlie who has Alzheimers, she had two sons, she was a stalwart member of the Church of England who loved the Book of Common Prayer and the old hymns, and she didn’t understand her youngest son and his wife who attend one of those “happy clappy churches” – “they don’t use a prayer book, imagine that!” But about ¾ of the way through our first visit, she turned and said, “Oh, excuse me, did you get that list I gave you last week?” I turned and looked … but there was nobody there. At least I couldn’t see anyone there. Her son chalked it up to medication – I wasn’t so sure. One day as I entered her room, Jean was lying in bed and staring at the wall with a very troubled look on her face. I said, “Jean, you look like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. What’s troubling you?” She said, “It’s that staircase.” I said, “Which staircase?” She said, “That one … the one right behind you.” I looked behind me and saw a wall … but I said, “Oh … THAT staircase. What’s wrong with it?” (I didn’t really see the staircase … but she did and that was most important). She said, “The man at the top of the staircase says I have to go up the stairs. I’ve had six strokes and I can’t walk. I can’t go up those stairs. And he says Charlie has to go up the stairs too and he’s in a wheelchair. We can’t get up the stairs!” I asked, “Did the man at the top of the stairs say you have to go right now?” She looked up … “No … not right now.” I took her hand, “Well, then you don’t have to worry at all because when it is time for you and Charlie to go up the stairs, God will strengthen your legs and you will run up those stairs and be light as a feather.” She said, “Really? How do you know?” I said, “Jean, I know because God will never ask you to do anything that he won’t give you the strength to accomplish.” She looked upward towards the top of the staircase and said, “Well … that’s a relief.” I asked her later if she knew the man at the top of the stairs, she said, “No. I’ve never seen him before in my life.” St. Michael the Archangel is the patron saint of holy death and the dying. Was he the man at the top of the staircase? I don’t know – perhaps he was. What I do know is this man came to give Jean a message. Four months later, Jean ran up the stairs – light as a feather, unburdened and free. This is our hope and the hope we baptize Vilhelm into today: that one day we too will run up those stairs and join the saints in light and live in the company of angels. When I was in seminary we had a panel discussion in our class on rural ministries and it was comprised of retired Lutheran pastors who had served small churches. All of the pastors were male – not unusual given their average age. During the course of the discussion, the topic of clergy wives came up. Now given they were all men, the term “clergy wife” was exclusively used and wasn’t much of a surprise; however, for the female seminarians (who were the majority of the students in the class), it was a bit challenging. We heard all about how congregations have expectations of clergy wives: they will bake cookies for the bake sale, teach in the Sunday school, join the Lutheran Church Women, sing in the choir and, if she plays the organ, they even get an organist out of the deal! These pastors referred to this sort of thinking as the “two-fer” call – as in you get “two for one” when calling your pastor. Now in all fairness, these pastors did say that the expectations for clergy wives were often steeped in ridged gender roles and sometimes quite inflexible; however, they all went on to extol the virtues of their respective wives and all of the things they did in the parish to support their husbands – and they made it clear they could not have been effective in their ministry without the support of their wives. Upon leaving the classroom after that presentation, one of our fellow female seminarians asked me, “So what do you think about all those clergy wives?” I replied, “Are you kidding me?! I’m getting me one as soon as I can!! I don’t need a husband … I NEED A WIFE!”
That evening at home, Stuart and I talked about our days and I told him about this panel discussion. I said to him, “It was the consensus of the female seminarians that we don’t need husbands, we need WIVES!” Stu replied, “What do you think I am? I AM the rector’s wife … or at least I will be!” Now I laughed at that initially, but he called me out. “Who bakes the cookies in this house?” Oh … he had me on that one – I only do that at Christmas. “And who cooks most of the dinners around here?” OK … he had me on that one too – I’m a utilitarian cook … he cooks for the joy of it. “And if you open up every cookbook your mother ever gave us, to whom did she give them??” OK … that was three for three because all of them have “To my cooking buddy Stuart from Mom” written in the front cover. I conceded … I already HAD a rector’s wife (and someday when a church calls me to be a rector, then it will be official … right now he’s the Priest-in-Charge’s Wife). And I have to admit, he’s good at it. So much so that some of my male colleagues have said they will be sending their wives up so my “wife” can teach them how to care for a priest! “A capable wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.” This passage from Proverbs is probably one of the more well-known sections of this book. Proverbs is part of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Wisdom texts – which also includes Job, Psalms, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and the apocryphal books of Wisdom, and Sirach. These texts are devoted on how to live a wise and faithful life and often are full of practical advice. The author of Proverbs is giving an extended lesson to his son. So we must begin by realizing this “capable wife” emanates from a position of male privilege and patriarchy. Ancient Jewish culture had strong gender role expectations for both men and women (not unlike what our pastor friends found in their congregations). And I don’t know about you, but reading this exhaustive list of what a capable wife does … well it made me TIRED! I was ready for a nap after just reading this list! She “seeks wool and flax” and weaves cloth; she rises while it is still night and provides food for her household; she considers a field, buys it and plants a vineyard (and probably makes the wine too!); she is a business woman who makes linen garments and sells them; her children and husband call her happy (I’d call her exhausted … but who am I?). This woman is doing all things, at all times, for all people! We call this … over-functioning, don’t we? And it is tempting to fall into this idealized standard which no woman, or man, could possibly live up to. It is possible that our poet author of Proverbs is ascribing to this capable wife the very virtues of Lady Wisdom which he extols. It is no small thing that wisdom is personified in both Hebrew and Greek as a feminine quality. We also need remember that the Holy Spirit is also personified in both Greek and Hebrew text with feminine names. So our Scriptures speak of God’s Spirit which imparts Wisdom as part of the femininity of God – even in the midst of a patriarchal culture. We still live in a patriarchal culture which affords particular privilege to men but at the same time also binds men into rigid gender expectations which limit their expression of what it means to be male. Patriarchy is a part of our sinful nature which hurts both women and men. God’s Spirit placed into our holy writings the seeds of respect and honor for both feminine and masculine and when we dig just a bit deeper into this passage, we find some things which address the patriarchy of our own day – especially in what Proverbs 31 does not say about the capable wife. First, nowhere does it say that the wife’s value and worth are derived from her husband. She is a woman of her own worth and value and although later Christian tradition would try to make a woman’s identity a consequence of her husband and her status dependent upon him, this just isn’t in the passage. This capable wife is her own person and, if anything, her husband’s reputation is dependent upon her qualities, not the other way around! This woman’s worth is a result of her own thoughts and actions – there is no indication of her being submissive and demur. She is pursuing her own ends rather than obeying orders and doing so for the good of herself and her household. The writer praises her for being purposeful – we might even say she’s being praised for her headstrong ways. Second, this wife is not extoled for childbirth and child rearing. In the ancient world, bearing children and rearing them was a key status credential for women. The writer only makes a passing reference to her children rising up and calling her happy – he does not say anything else about motherhood as her primary or sole identity. The passage has a lot to say about this woman’s generativity (she “seeks,” “rises,” “buys,” and “provides”), but her generativity is a result of her intellect and wisdom not her biological functions. Finally, this passage says absolutely nothing about her appearance. Not one word! It says nothing about her age, her body shape, her clothing, her make up – it says nothing about all those things with which our current culture is so obsessed. Our culture tells women and girls that their core value is based upon physical beauty – and a standard of physical beauty largely promulgated by magazines with Photoshopped images of models creating a standard of “beauty” no woman could ever achieve. We obsess about this. We have and epidemic of eating disorders because of it. We spend way too much money on plastic surgery and make up because of it. The world tells us that our worth is based on impossible images and that which will not last but the poet says rightfully, “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain…” Our common life is woven with painful realities of the cultural expectations put upon us based upon gender as well as other aspects of our transitory and fleeting earthly nature. The good news is we are called to a different, and dare I say peculiar, way of life – one grounded in our real worth as God’s beloved children and not one based on our biology, what we look like or our social status. Our identity in God, who we really are, is something which cannot be taken from us – it is the one thing which endures forever. Mark’s gospel narrative holds two interesting things in tension. On the one hand, Mark’s vocabulary is quite limited compared with other gospel writers and with other New Testament texts. On the other hand, he does some pretty sophisticated things with his narrative constructs to link ideas and images together. One curiosity to me, is that Mark is the only gospel writer who preserves several of Jesus’ words in his native tongue which was Aramaic. Matthew, Mark and Luke all quote Jesus’ words from the cross in Aramaic: Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?). In addition, Mark preserves two other Aramaic phrases: after healing Jairus’ daughter he says, “Talitha cum” (“Little girl, I say to you get up!”) and the phrase we hear in today’s gospel “Ephphtha” (“Be opened!”). Now when writers do something out of context, like quote foreign languages, it makes me wonder … why? Why these phrases? Could there be a connection between them? As I prayed with these phrases, it seemed as if they link together as part of the pattern of our Christian life.
The first Aramaic saying in Mark is Jesus’ words to Jairus’ daughter, “Talitha cum / Get up.” These are really the first words to anyone who begins the life of faith. They are the Aramaic counterpart to God’s words spoken to Abram in Genesis: “Lech lecha” – “Get up and go.” God called Abram to get up and then to go to the land God would show him. Likewise when we are called to follow God, we have to get up, get on our feet (literally and figuratively) and be ready to go where God leads us. The second phrase is from today’s reading: “Ephphtha / Be opened.” As Jesus opened the ears and loosened the tongue of the deaf mute man, this word is also one of invitation to us as we follow Christ: Be opened! The Christian life is one where we begin the journey to discover who we really are in God. This is different from who we think we are – that’s largely a construct of our ego, for good or for ill. The journey of our faith is to peel back the layers of our life experiences and beliefs in order to discover who we really are from God’s perspective. We cannot do any of this work unless and until we allow ourselves to be opened. There are Christians who have no trouble getting up and beginning the journey but being opened is hard. To be opened means to risk. And what we risk is being open to transformation: we call it conversion in the Church. Some folks have said the scariest word for Episcopalians is “evangelism” but I disagree. The scariest word is “conversion” because conversion means the death of one way of being so another way can be born. It is the cycle of death and resurrection. German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that when Christ calls you, he bids you come and die. That is conversion. Dying to our own selfish needs: our need to be right, our need to protect our prideful egos, our many and varied addictions (and we all have them … some are just more socially acceptable than others) – dying to all of this is what conversion means. But we cannot be converted until we are opened. We must be opened to the possibility of a greater life in the risen Christ than what we know today. If we refuse this call to be opened, especially to the change conversion brings, then all we will do with our faith is hide behind our religion and mistake religiosity for falling into the hands of the living God. Religion is only a means to move towards God – we dare not use it as a cheap substitute for God. Once we take seriously the call to “get up” and “be opened” we move into conversion. There are two places I find where we tend to resist being open. The first is right after the call to get up. We feel called by God, but we really don’t want to let God do the leading. We’d rather remain in charge of our lives and let our egos rule the day. The other time is right after conversion where we may be tempted to thing we’ve somehow “arrived” at our final destination. Conversion is a lifelong process of being made anew – over and over and over. When we experience a conversion and we find ourselves changed, we can be tempted to close down and defend our new position lest we be called to yet another conversion. Ephphtha! Be opened! It is a constant reminder of the importance of openness to God’s Spirit at all times, in all places, and under all circumstances. As we engage in this process of conversion, we can often encounter the third of Jesus’ Aramaic sayings: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? / My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We find this in conversion because to change always means something about us must die. And death brings out Jesus’ cry from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Christian mystics call this point the dark night of the soul. It is that place where the death brought about by conversion is very real, the grief is real, and we may not be able to discern the presence of God, and a way forward isn’t always clear. True conversion of the spirit will always take us there at some point and even life itself will take us there whether we want it to or not. There is a story told of a professor at Virginia Seminary who, upon the death of his wife, became extremely depressed. This professor and priest would come to the Eucharist at the seminary chapel and when it was time to stand and recite the Nicene Creed … he sat silently. For months on end he sat and could not bring himself to profess his belief in God. Finally, after many months, he began to emerge from his grieving process. One day, he spoke at chapel and explained that while he was in the despair of his grief, he found he could not stand and recite the Nicene Creed because he wasn’t sure if he really did believe in God. However, he found himself carried by the seminary community at that point. “You said the creed for me when I could not say it for myself,” he told them. In that space where he felt so abandoned by God and so alone, it was the Church through the seminary community, who carried him until he could stand on his own again. None of us can do this journey of faith in a vacuum. We are not independent, discreet entities of existence. We are a community where our actions impact the real lives of others. It’s been said there are no “Lone Ranger” Christians and I think this is very true. Our faith journey inevitably moves us from getting up to being opened to being converted – to dying and rising over and over and over in the course of our lives. Talitha cum, Ephphtha, Eli, Eli lama sabachthani? Get up; be opened; my God, my God why have you forsaken me? – all of us can connect with one of these Aramaic phrases right now. Wherever you are on your journey and whichever phrase speaks to you, know this: you do not journey in this life alone. You travel in the company of the saints here on earth, with this community here at Grace Church, and with those who have gone before who continue to intercede for you, in the company of angels, and always in the presence of the Living God. In my time as a hospice chaplain, I conducted many funerals and some were rather … colorful. I had a very interesting encounter at one of my graveside services with an evangelical lay pastor who ran a trucker ministry up and down I-81. The deceased was one of my patients and the family had asked me to do a graveside funeral; however, this lay pastor let me know that the deceased had “come to Christ and was saved” through his ministrations. Now I believe strongly in the “make a friend, be a friend, bring a friend to Christ” model of evangelism. I was glad the deceased, who had a very hard and painful life, had heard the word of the gospel and come to believe. This was all good.
But as our conversation progressed, the lay pastor began to lecture me about the scriptures and how the King James Bible was the only authoritative word of God and all other translations were of the Devil because “they took words out and changed the meaning of God’s word.” Well, at this point the lay pastor was showing his ignorance of linguistics and his own prejudice towards the King James Bible. Standing at a graveside really didn’t seem the appropriate venue for a theological debate, but that didn’t seem to stop him. He proceeded to point an accusing finger at me and said, “You ARE going to preach God’s word from the King James Bible, aren’t you?” I wasn’t going to argue, “Of course, I have no objection to that.” He continued to point at me and said, “You DO READ the King James Bible for your learning, don’t you?” … “Well … no,” I replied. He had a stunned look on his face. “I prefer to read the scriptures in Greek and Hebrew,” I told him, “I find the original languages to be rich and enlightening myself.” He didn’t know what to say to that … so he walked away. One of the things we humans tend to do is confuse the means with the ends. As I vowed at my ordination, I do believe the Holy Scriptures to be the word of God and to contain all things necessary to salvation. But note what this does not say: it does not say all things in the Holy Scriptures are necessary to salvation. There is some really weird stuff in the Bible, if we're completely honest. The Scriptures are a tool for us, inspired by God, written by humans to instruct us and form us into Godly people. But when we confuse them with God or think God only speaks in Elizabethan English, then we have a problem! It is called idolatry. In today’s encounter with the Pharisees, Jesus takes them on for confusing the means with the ends. The presenting issue is the tradition of washing hands which, interestingly, is not commanded in the Torah at all. Now for us in the 21st century, eating with unwashed hands seems to be not just unwise but unhealthy too. But remember, this all happened long before germs and bacteria had been discovered! The washing of hands and other vessels as Mark describes, was a tradition that developed over time in the Jewish community. It came out of the oral tradition which was codified in the Mishnah and then in the Talmud … but it is not in the Torah. This tradition was born out of a desire to make all aspects of Jewish life holy. We often refer to this as the hallowing of time. The intention was to draw your mind and heart to God even through the most mundane activities – like washing hands or pots and pans. We have similar practices in our tradition: the use of the liturgical forms in the Book of Common Prayer, the practice of reading the Daily Office, the various pietistic practices like crossing yourself or genuflecting that we exercise in worship. All of these come from our tradition and can draw us closer to God. If we believe that only our outward behaviors are what make us Christian, we have mistaken the means for the ends. This is what Jesus is pointing out: one can do all the right outward actions and still have a sinful heart which unleashes the unholy. We all have sin in our hearts – this is the truth. This is why we cannot merely look within ourselves to save ourselves. If we could have somehow “evolved” our way into being better, don’t you think we would have done it by now? If our traditions are merely a pietistic show which allows us to dodge the sin within us and mask it in religiosity, we are perpetuating sin in the name of God and this is most dangerous. If, on the other hand, our traditions move us to unmask and confess the sin within us that it may be healed, then our traditions are moving us towards God and not a false religiosity. Jesus said, “… there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile.” It is important to note that the sin inside makes us unclean and confusing the means for the ends is sinful. But also note that what comes from outside us conversely has the power to save us – namely God’s very self which is transcendent and wholly Other. This God comes to us through Means of Grace: Bread and Wine/Body and Blood, the Scripture and the prayers. It may appear somewhat paradoxical to say that our outward traditions and behaviors both are and are not important. They are certainly not important if the behaviors and traditions are merely a false face on a corrupted heart. They are not important if they become litmus tests for who is a “true believer” and who is not. If, however, the behaviors and traditions are moving us to more honesty and shaping our hearts to be more inclined towards the true religion James speaks of – caring for the most vulnerable among us and keeping ourselves from the corrupting influences of the world – then the behaviors and traditions have a purpose: to draw us closer to God and shape us into more Christ-like people. It’s often been noted that behavior proceeds belief – we behave our way into new beliefs. This is captured in one of our Anglican traditional sayings: Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi – the law of praying is the law of believing or “how we pray shapes how we believe.” So it isn’t whether we read a particular translation of the Bible, use the Book of Common Prayer, pray the Daily Office, cross ourselves or genuflect which makes us Christ-like. But if these practices help us be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, to be doers of the word and not just hearers, to care for the most vulnerable among us and resist the corruptions of the world, the flesh and the devil, then we will honor God with both our lips and our hearts. I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying, “You are what you eat,” right? We are what we eat … and that might be pretty disturbing for some of us. What do you put into your body by eating and drinking? For that matter, what do you put into your mind through words and images? What do you take into your body through all of your senses? I ask because what we take into us changes us – for good or for ill.
In today’s episode of the extended dance version of the Feeding of the 5,000 as told by John, Jesus now moves into some very provocative language. We tend to spiritualize what he says and those of us who have been Christians for a long time can easily gloss over the shock and awe of what his words mean: “ … unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.” Let’s drop our tendency to over-spiritualize this – this sounds like cannibalism! This is shocking language. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, references to eating someone’s flesh are seen as hostile actions. (Psalm 27:2, Zech 11:9) Ezekiel pronounces the judgment against Gog by stating they will be sacrificed on the mountain of Israel and the birds and wild animals will eat flesh and drink blood. There are also prohibitions on the drinking of blood in the Torah. The only positive references to eating flesh and drinking blood are in the Eucharistic language of the New Testament. Jewish people hearing these words would be scandalized by them! And yet, the consuming of the meat from sacrificed animals was commonplace in both Jewish and Greco-Roman religious praxis. The meat from sacrificed calves, goats, and lambs was part of the diet of the priestly class in the Jerusalem temple. So when Jesus uses this language, he is both scandalizing his hearers and foreshadowing his own life becoming a sacrifice which will reconcile the world to God. Up until this point in John’s narrative, Jesus has placed his emphasis on believing in his discourse: “whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” “whoever believes has eternal life” “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” We are often tempted to reduce belief to an intellectual assent to a series of propositions or ideas. This really isn’t what belief is. The Latin word for “I believe” is credo which more accurately translated is “That to which I give my heart.” It is more closely related to trust rather than the ability to understand or comprehend. Belief is not a head trip even though we are tempted to reduce it to this. Jesus’ words today move from giving our hearts to action: “Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.” Through this language, Jesus says giving our hearts is the first step, but it is not enough. We must put our convictions into actions: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” Jesus is telling us, “You are what you eat!” My father tells the story of when he and my mother joined the Episcopal Church. They had participated in an ecumenical progressive dinner in 1974. Several churches participated and a different course of the meal was served at each church. During the various courses, the clergy of that particular congregation would tell the diners a bit about their church and traditions. There was one participant who asked every clergyperson this question: “What is the center of your worship experience?” The ministers of the more Protestant churches answered, “The preaching of the Word of God.” When this question was posed to Father Mac Stanley rector of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, he replied, “The Eucharist is the center of our worship. We are centered on the Sacrament.” This got my dad’s attention … and within two weeks, we were worshiping at St. Michael and All Angels. There is a temptation to take the Eucharist for granted – after all, we have it every Sunday and sometimes even in the mid-week as we did this past week. Yet Jesus was clear this mystical meal is about his abiding in you – his becoming a part of you – as you eat his flesh and drink his blood. It is a physical act with very real physical consequences. You are what you eat. Jesus commanded us to make disciples through baptism and to receive the Eucharist. These are the only two sacraments explicitly commanded by Christ because they are necessary to our salvation. They are the means by which we die to ourselves and then live for Christ, continuously being nourished by his Body and Blood. This is why we worship in the way we do because what we take into ourselves matters. Through the hearing of the word, through our participation in prayer, through hearing music and singing praise to God, through the smells of incense, and through the taking, blessing, breaking and giving of Christ’s Body and Blood, we are formed into the mind and likeness of Christ so that in the words of our Rite 1 Eucharistic prayer, we may be a “reasonable, holy and living sacrifice unto thee.” You are what you eat. You are what you choose to take into you and what take into you forms you into who you are. The Eucharist is a mystical feast of communion and community – it builds us into the Body of Christ as a living sacrifice for the sake of repairing the world. You are what you eat. What you take into you matters. Of what will you choose to partake? In 1996, I was privileged to visit Japan as part of a five woman delegation from the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland to the Anglican Church in Tokyo. The purpose of our visit was to discuss the issue of ordaining women to the priesthood. This was long before I had acknowledged my call to ordained ministry – I was an active lay member of All Saints in Frederick. In the Japanese Anglican Church at that time, women could be ordained as deacons, but no farther. The subject of ordaining women as priests had been brought up at the Japanese Church’s General Convention just a few months before our trip and it was defeated in a deeply divided vote. The Bishop of Tokyo invited us to come and share the experience of how women’s ordination unfolded in the United States. He was one of the few bishops to vote in favor of it at Convention – largely because of his time spent in Maryland.
I spent my first Sunday at our companion parish of Holy Trinity in Tokyo with Deacon Mary Yamano. Mary is a very gifted and spiritual woman who was also a professor at the Anglican seminary in Tokyo. She felt a strong call to be a priest, but the current situation did not allow her to live fully into her call. As we stood in the chancel prior to the congregation’s arrival that Sunday morning, Mary explained the flow of the service to me. For a moment, we stood together in that space in silence and Mary turned to me, her eyes brimming with tears, and said, “This is so hard!” With that, she broke down. I put my arms around her and I think she cried a year’s worth of tears into my shoulder. She had spent over 20 years as a deacon and been faithfully serving a church that just could not get past their tradition and biblical interpretation to see her gifts as a priest. Tradition and scripture are gifts from God; however, both must be interpreted and sometimes our interpretations put limitations on the Spirit rather than allow the Spirit to liberate us. Tradition and scripture are to be means through which we encounter the living God, but too often we mistake the means for the ends and find ourselves in the practice of worshiping the tradition or the scripture instead of the God who inspires both. This is a form of idolatry and it seems to be what is happening in this portion of our reading from John’s gospel today. We’re about half way through this extended version of the Feeding of the 5,000 story. And the focus today has shifted away from the crowds who are engaging Jesus in a back and forth dialog to this group John calls “the Jews” to which Jesus gives an extended teaching. Now there are various understandings of what John means when he says “the Jews.” Sometimes he is referring to the Jewish authorities. At other times, it appears he is speaking of “Judeans” in effort to contrast their temple-centered spirituality with that of the Galileans whose worship is less centered on the temple in Jerusalem. At other times he is speaking of the Jewish people as a whole. I’m inclined to think this is a group of Jewish people as Jesus tells us they are complaining among themselves. Perhaps they are divided about who Jesus is and what his teachings about bread mean. This group of Jews appears conflicted about the idea of Jesus’ origins and who he really is. The origin and identity of Jesus is a major theme in the Gospel of John – beginning with the prologue where John says “the Word was with God and the Word was God” and the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Yet John also said, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” We are hearing this again today. His own people just couldn’t accept him – after all, they knew where he came from, right? He came from Galilee, and was the son of Joseph … what’s all this “came down from heaven” stuff? Last week, I spoke of the fourfold shape of a Eucharistic life and how this extended story centered on the acts of taking, blessing, breaking and giving – the acts Jesus uses on the bread and fish, the act we do each Sunday when we celebrate the Eucharist, and how it is to be the pattern of our Christian life. Today we hear in this reading of how these grumbling Jews were stuck in a paradigm shaped by their own traditions and scriptural interpretations. They knew they were chosen (taken) and blessed as God’s Chosen People. But that’s where they stopped. No being broken so that a new understanding could enter their hearts. And this is why they could not understand what Jesus meant as they rigidly stuck to what they knew. They knew that the bread which came down from heaven was the Manna in the wilderness – it was part of their history in the Exodus story (and it is no coincidence that this story in John is set near the Passover – John 6:4). The Jews perceived all of what they were experiencing as past actions in their history while Jesus is speaking of the living bread of the here and now and into eternal life – one which shows up among them in a form they don’t expect: a seemingly ordinary man from Galilee. It’s tempting to sit back and pass judgment on these poor clueless Jews who can’t get past their paradigms to see Christ; however, we are not unlike them at all. It was scriptural interpretation and holy tradition which for many years claimed the sacrament of ordination was only valid for men – a paradigm that barred Mary, and many others, from living into a priestly call. We too have our lenses, shaped by both the Bible, tradition and our culture which often blinds us to seeing God breaking into our world in new ways and in forms we don’t expect. What happens when we encounter Christ in a homeless person, or a recent immigrant from Mexico (who may not be “legal”), or in someone addicted to drugs or alcohol, or maybe in the eyes of a Muslim child? Do we refuse to see Christ in these people because our scriptural and traditional interpretations won’t make room for this possibility? Will we refuse to be fed by their presence with us and will we refuse to be Christ for them? If so, we are no different than the Jews who are not seeing Jesus for who he really is. I’ve heard it said that if we believe Christ is only able to come to us in the ways we expect, we will walk right past as he’s heading the other way. Christ often comes to us through people who challenge us and through those who are on the margins. Where does the Living Bread show up for you? Where have we failed to recognize Christ precisely because we have remained taken and blessed but refused to be broken? As we continue our journey through John, may we live as taken, blessed, and broken people that we may be fed by the Living Bread that, in turn, we may feed others. “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”
In light of what’s been happening in the news this week, we might paraphrase this: “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the chicken sandwiches and waffle fries.” You might have seen a few stories in the news about Chick-Fil-A. CEO Dan Cathy, who is a Southern Baptist, made clear his opposition to same-sex marriage based upon his understanding of scripture. Certainly, he is entitled to have his opinions and I respect his right to adhere to a literal/factual interpretation of scripture. If it was only about one man’s personal beliefs, this whole story would have blown over by now, but it hasn’t. The deeper and more troubling issue is about how Mr. Cathy’s corporation gives large multi-million dollar donations to organizations like the Family Research Council who disparages gay and lesbian persons and which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as a hate group. There really are two levels to this controversy – one involving the physical consumption of food in support of a person’s beliefs and the other is a deeper spiritual issue of how we live together as the Body of Christ. This week’s gospel reading speaks to the two levels of feeding – the physical and the spiritual – and is a continuation of last week’s reading. All four gospels tell the story of the feeding of the 5,000 … but John’s version is what I’d call the “extended dance remix version” of this story. We will hear this story spread out over five Sundays! Last week, we heard the story of the actual feeding where Jesus took the five barley loaves and two fish, blessed the bread and fish, broke the bread and fish, and gave it out to the multitude gathered. He took, blessed, broke and gave. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because we hear those same words every week in the Eucharistic prayer: “On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, ‘Take, eat, this is my Body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” Taking, blessing, breaking and giving … It’s about the Eucharist! If, however, we connect this story to only the Last Supper, we reduce it to one event in the life of Jesus. I think it’s important to remember that the narrative of the Last Supper is conspicuously absent from John’s gospel: he has Jesus washing the disciple’s feet instead. So by putting this fourfold action of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving into the story of the feeding of the 5,000, John is telling us that Eucharist isn’t just about the Last Supper. Eucharist is really about the entirety of Jesus’ life and ministry. Jesus was taken – claimed by God. He was blessed by God. He was broken on the cross for our redemption and he was given for the life of the world. Not only is this true for Jesus, but it is also true for us. Christians are also to be taken, blessed, broken and given for the sake of the world. But, the problem is, many Christians want to be taken and blessed … and stop right there, thank you very much! That’s the “feel good” part of Christianity. Being claimed by God and blessed by God feels good. But if we stop there, Christianity can become dangerous – even toxic - because if we only accept being taken and blessed, we will continue to encounter Christ on our terms and not on his terms. We will still retain control. This is a sort of spiritual narcissism where I get to be claimed and blessed, but I still hold onto the right to interpret the Bible my way, use the Bible to uphold my own prejudices, and choose who I want to be in relationship with and who I want to exclude. This is the kind of spirituality the crowd exhibits. They want Jesus on their terms. They want to take him by force and make him a king. They want to know what they need to do to perform the works of God. They want this bread always. They like being taken and blessed … but they stop short of broken and given. And let’s be honest – none of us really wants to be broken do we? We don’t want to face our faults, our defects, our deficiencies, our weaknesses, our hurts, our suffering, our pain, the abuse we’ve suffered and the abuse we have in turn hurled at others. That doesn’t feel good, does it? It’s not fun. We’d rather be smug, self-sufficient, and self-righteous if given our druthers. We’d rather justify, minimize and flee from our brokenness. But that’s not the way of the cross – it is not the way of the Christian. We cannot be given for the sake of a broken and hurting world unless we allow our own brokenness to be what it is – and to face it honestly. Our brokenness is the place where the crucified One meets us and reminds us that even as we are broken, we are still taken and blessed. We don’t stop being taken and blessed … even when we are broken. It is in our broken state where we can be emptied of our spiritual narcissism and our false ego. It is there where we can find not just serenity but also the ability to connect with the sufferings of others so that we can be given for the sake of God’s people. We cannot be a gift to others until we accept we are broken. The shape of the Eucharistic life involves all four actions: being taken, blessed, broken and given. It was the pattern of Jesus’ life and ministry and for us to live authentically as Christians it needs to be ours too. We cannot claim to be Christian by having Christ on our terms and avoid being broken and given for others. If we do, our faith remains centered in ourselves and we will succumb to the temptation to harm others and cloak our actions with religiosity and self-righteousness. When we are taken, blessed, broken and given, we find ourselves able to connect with the Other and see the face of Christ in them and in doing so we will promote the Body’s growth in building itself up in Love. One of the occupational hazards of being clergy is ... bookstores. We keep them in business - really. Most clergy I know have amassed rather formidable personal theological libraries. I was blessed to inherit the libraries of two priests and it takes up three large bookcases. If you take any five clergy and put their libraries together, they'd likely the size of some of them rivaling the ancient library in Alexandria. I confess I’m no exception. Even with the advent of Kindles and Nooks, there’s something about picking up a good old fashioned book (you know, it’s made from paper and has pages you can turn!). Sometimes, I’ll run across a quote from a book, perhaps in a magazine article or online in a blog, and I think, “Hey, that’s pretty amazing … I have to read that book!” And then I go out and get the book just so I can read the rest of it. Such was the case when I read a quote from Dr. Greg Kennedy’s doctoral thesis: The Ontology of Trash: The Disposable and Its Problematic Nature. Now hang with me on this … I know this sounds a bit ponderous, but it really was a rather remarkable book. In a philosophical inquiry based on the works of Martin Heidegger, Kennedy explored the nature of disposability and waste. What makes something disposable? Why is a thing considered something of worth one minute and trash the next? Kennedy discusses how our understanding of disposability in the physical realm also transcends our emotional and spiritual realities. When so much in our world is easily disposed of as waste or trash, it isn’t too far a leap for us to believe other things can be disposable too: groups of people, personal relationships, and for some even God. And Kennedy isn’t the only one thinking about this. In his New Year’s address in 2008, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams posted a video on YouTube pondering the same questions. He said, “Building to last is something we all understand. And if we live in a context where we construct everything from computers to buildings to relationships on the assumption that they’ll need to be replaced before long, what have we lost?”
As I prayed with today’s scripture texts, I was struck by the contrast between the reading from 2 Samuel and the Gospel text from John in light of this issue of disposability. We hear the story in 2 Samuel about King David and his indiscretion with Bathsheba resulting in her pregnancy. David cleverly devises several ways to cover this pregnancy up; however, when all else fails, Uriah the Hittite becomes the one who is expendable in order that David’s sin might be covered up. In the world of humanity, there seems to be an inherent disposability on the part of some so that privilege can be maintained by others. In contrast, we hear in the Gospel that nothing is disposable. When the crowds had eaten their fill of bread and fish, Jesus told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” I personally like the Greek root which is translated “lost” – it also means “perish” or “destroy.” It could be rendered, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may perish.” The only other time this word for “perish” or “lost” shows up in John, it is in the 17th Chapter where, on the night before Jesus is executed, he prays for his disciples saying: “While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.” It is clear from Jesus’ prayer that it is not God’s intention that any of us should lost because God does not do waste in the kingdom. While humans often find ways to make things and people disposable, God is finding ways to redeem and make whole those very same things. In fact, God seems to find use for the very things we really want to dispose of! Each of us has fragments in our lives that, if we are totally honest, we’d really prefer to dispose of – the broken, weak, dis-eased parts of us we all have. A few weeks ago, Paul talked about this very thing when he referenced the “thorn” in his flesh that he prayed God would remove. God’s response was, “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.” Today, Jesus says, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” God longs to gather up our fragments: our wounds; our dis-eases of body, mind and spirit; the past we regret and wish we could erase; the present messes in our lives; the anxieties over the future. Christ wants to make sure all of that is gathered so that nothing may perish but instead be redeemed, resurrected, and restored. It is into this promise and this hope that we baptize our brother Daegan Alexander this very day. Daegan, we are making a very audacious claim as we baptize you a few minutes from now. That claim is that all the fragments of your old life have been gathered up in the death of Christ and they are drowned in the waters of baptism. Christ has gathered up the fragments of who you are, all those things you like and don’t like, and they have been redeemed by his death on the cross. Your old understanding of yourself and the world will be drowned in these waters and you will be raised up into a new life of grace where the fragments of your life (all of it: the good, the bad and the ugly) will take on a new meaning shaped by the cross of Christ and his resurrection. As you are baptized and grow into this new life of grace, you will find that nothing, absolutely nothing, is disposable: not things, not people, not God, and not even the parts of you that you’d prefer be disposable. You see, nothing is wasted – God wants to redeem all of you and all of us for the sake of the kingdom. And this is the core of the good news of God in Jesus Christ. As a baptized child of God, you are being commissioned (as each of us has been commissioned) to spread this good news of redemption by both your words and your deeds. Now that may sound simple, but you’d be amazed at how difficult it is for people to believe it … to trust that it is true. We often feel we have to earn this salvation (which we can’t) or that we are not worthy of it (and no, we aren’t worthy of it because of anything in ourselves but because God has made us worthy through Christ to receive it). Trusting that God doesn’t “do waste” and that nothing in our lives is beyond redemption is a lifelong task for Christians. But this is what God in Christ has done for us and in it God has assured us that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus. This is our hope and promise … and it becomes yours today too, Daegan. “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” … the Gospel of the Lord?! Really??!! Yechhh! It sure doesn’t sound like gospel to me, what about you?
One of the challenges of being a priest in the Episcopal Church (and being clergy in the Roman Catholic and Lutheran traditions as well) is that we follow a very systematic way of reading the Scriptures in our worship. Between the three-year lectionary cycle we hear read on Sundays and the two-year daily office readings, one can encounter about 90% of the Bible within this three-year period. It surprises many of my more Protestant friends that the Catholics, Episcopalians and Lutherans actually encounter more Scripture on a Sunday morning than more evangelical Christian denominations. This lectionary does bring a challenge to the preacher because it means we must confront and preach on difficult texts – like the execution of John the Baptist. Wise clergy, I suppose, choose their vacation times to be away this Sunday – and yes, there is a temptation to plan one’s absence from the pulpit around these sorts of readings (note to self for next summer …). And while Luther admonishes good preachers to squeeze every passage of Scripture until you can find the good news in it … well, it just doesn’t work today, does it? Today’s story is one of abusive power, corruption, intrigue, incest, death over dishonor, protecting the status quo – the sort of thing that would make the Desperate Housewives, Snooky and the Jersey Shore gang, and Tony Soprano blush! And, with the exception to Herod’s wondering whether Jesus is John the Baptizer resurrected, Jesus isn’t mentioned in this story at all. So why does Mark put this story right here in his narrative? And why, for a gospel known for being sparse on details, does Mark go into such gory detail in telling about John’s death? This passage opens with King Herod (this would be Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great) hearing about healings and demons being cast out by Jesus’ disciples. There is a buzz about the identity of Jesus – “He’s John the Baptizer raised from the dead,” or “He’s Elijah,” or “one of the prophets of old” (the same buzz will appear later in our Gospel readings when Jesus asks the disciples who they think he really is). But Herod believes it is John the Baptizer, whom he beheaded, raised from the dead. Mark then tells the story of John’s execution in retrospective – the only time in his gospel when he uses the literary device of retrospection. When an author does something out of their literary character, we need to pay attention. Mark begins the story of John being arrested on the count of Herodias, Herod’s wife who had been married to Herod’s brother Philip. Let's hold a moment there as you need to know a bit about the intrigue of the Herod family - a family who make the Borgias look like rank amateurs. The first Herod we encounter in scripture is Herod the Great – this is the King Herod of the birth narratives of Jesus. Herod the Great had nine sons total; however, he ordered three of them executed because of threats to his power. This left six sons to potentially inherit his kingdom upon his death. There had been a change of wills at the last minute naming Herod Antipas as successor and the sons all ended up going to Rome to plead the case of the inheritance of titles and land. During this trip, Herod Antipas fell in love with Herodias who was the wife of his brother Philip. Philip was a mere Tetrarch who really was a third rank power, so Herodias divorced Philip in order to “marry up” to a better station by being the King’s wife rather than a Tetrarch’s wife. While wives divorcing husbands was perfectly legal in Roman law, it was not legal in Jewish law (of course, husbands could divorce wives under either system … yes, double-standard, but that’s the way things worked). Herodias, under Jewish law, was still married to Philip and her marriage to Herod was not lawful – and puts Herodias in a very precarious position. She could not return to Philip if Herod turned her out of the house. It also put in question the right of her children to inherit. I suppose you could say Herodias was one of the original Desperate Housewives! Now let’s add one more layer of intrigue, Herodias bore the feminized name of Herod for a reason: she was the granddaughter of Herod the Great and Marianme I thus she is Herod Antipas’ niece – a blood relation. So now we get a glimpse into the grudge Herodias has against John who is repeatedly pointing out to her husband that her marriage is not lawful. It would be easy at this point to paint Herodias as the evil nemesis of John; however, I’d invite you to consider well how she saw John as a threat to her family – to her children’s rights of inheritance, to her security as a king’s wife. Rather than paint her in a one-dimensional villainous way, consider to what degree each of us would fight to protect our family’s security and reputation. We hear, however, that King Herod protected John out of fear because he knew John was a holy and righteous man even though his teachings perplexed Herod. However, no amount of fear on Herod’s part could protect John once personal honor was on the line and an opportunity presented itself. Mark tells us that Herod had a birthday party – this would be where we queue Snooky and the Jersey Shore gang as well as the Kardashian sisters to show up (after all, the love a good party don’t they??). Royal birthday parties are a chance to see and be seen by the who’s who of Jerusalem. A king like Herod would invite all the A-listers to show up for this soiree. As the food and wine flowed freely, the daughter of Herodias danced for Herod and his guests. King Herod was so pleased, and I’m sure he was a bit in his cups, that he made a public oath in front of his guests: “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it … even half of my kingdom!” The daughter runs outside the banquet hall and asks her mother what she should ask for. Herodias seizes upon the opportunity to eliminate her nemesis: “Ask for the head of John the baptizer.” The daughter then rushes back in, this time with Tony Soprano in tow, and in front of the very guests who heard Herod’s original oath, she makes her request: “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” (Doesn’t that silver platter thing sound like a Tony Soprano move?). Herod was “deeply grieved” – this word for “deeply grieved” in the Greek text only appears here and when Mark describes Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Yet deep grief and fear are not as important as protecting one’s personal honor and Herod will not go back on his word and shame himself and his family in front of all these important guests. John is beheaded, his head given to the girl on a silver platter, and she then presents this gruesome gift to her mother. John’s immediate threat to the Herod family is neutralized. While cutting off people’s heads in a literal way may not be how our modern Herod types operate, the sacrificing of reputations and livelihoods of people happens all the time. We’ve all heard the metaphor of being “thrown under the bus,” haven’t we? This is when someone or some group destroys another person or group in order to protect their situation. Look at how that plays out in our world today. Remember how Richard Armitage, Scooter Libby and Robert Novak revealed CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity because her husband Joe Wilson had criticized the Bush administration? Or how about Director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover was doing everything he could to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King and destroy his personal reputation and discredit the civil rights movement prior to his assassination? Or how about all the people whose livelihoods were destroyed when they were blacklisted and labeled as Communists by Senator Joseph McCarthy? Yes, indeed, Herod is alive and well. But where is the gospel in this? Well … it is not here … at least not in this short piece of our lectionary reading. This detailed story of John being thrown under the bus is our story – it is the story of what is and what the powers of this world are capable of doing to us. Mark intentionally sets this story after Jesus being rejected in the synagogue for a reason: we cannot lull ourselves into a false belief that following Christ will somehow make our lives easy. Following Christ means following the Way, the Truth, and the Life – and that means we will at some point find ourselves being thrown under the bus for speaking truth that powerful people just don’t want to hear. The placement of this story right after Jesus’ rejection in his hometown marks the end of innocence for Jesus and the disciples … and for us too. The good news, and there is good news, is this is not the end of the story. We have a whole lot more ahead of us in Mark, including another gruesome death and burial in a tomb, but one which will be followed by an empty tomb and the proclamation of the resurrection of Christ. This is our hope in a world full of Herods and Herodiases, in a world where people who speak truth to power get thrown under the bus. The cross and the empty tomb proclaim that death, in whatever form we encounter it, will not have the last word. God will have the last word – and that word is one which gives life and gives it abundantly. This is our hope and promise. Thanks be to God. |
Archives
October 2017
|
RSS Feed