Hi all,
Here's a few comments about last Sunday's sermon.
Yahweh, the personal name of God, is represented in the Hebrew Bible as YHWH. Years ago one of my professors said it is a strange name in any language, and that observation holds true.
First of all I will dispense with the "Jehovah" business right now. The rendition of YHWH as "Jehovah" originates with Medieval Hebrew, coming from the late 1400's. I don't care about Medieval Hebrew because the Old Testament was not written in Medieval Hebrew. So I have no interest in the name "Jehovah" and I think any claim that "Jehovah" is the one and only way to read YHWH is just bogus and quack scholarship at best, not to mention that its the mantra of a few cults. Now let's go on to the real thing.
When we talk about the name YHWH we're talking about a name from ancient Hebrew here, usually called Classical Hebrew or Biblical Hebrew. It is NOT to be confused with modern Hebrew! Biblical Hebrew is an archaic form of what is spoken today in Israel, and dates to about the time of the Babylonian Captivity. If you're wondering about what was actually spoken before then, what David and Solomon spoke, for example, then you're asking about an even more archaic form of Hebrew than Biblical Hebrew! I think ancient Hebrew is fun because it is literally a couple of steps removed from the Stone Age.
Ancient Hebrew had only three tenses: past perfect (the deed is done and it is over with), past imperfect (you started doing something yesterday but haven't finished doing it), and a present participle (you are doing something now). If you counted the imperative (a command - do this!) then there were four tenses. [Yup, there was NO real future tense in ancient Hebrew!] Ancient Hebrew also had a number of forms we would call voices or moods, although that is not how they are known in Hebrew grammar. And, to complicate all this further (you'll just love this!), ancient Hebrew verbs also had gender (male or female) as well as number!
Why is that important? Because the name of God is formed from a verb, the irregular verb "to be."
Ha-yah means "to be" or "to happen" or "to become." Its pretty much all the same in the ancient Hebrew mind. Actually, if you want to be technical, ha-yah means "it was," "it happened," "it became," and you would conjugate it as a 1st person-singular-masculine-perfect-Qal form.
The name of God, YHWH, is understood by many to be a 3rd person-masculine-imperfect form of ha-yah. That could be written y'h-weh. But most scholars write YHWH as a 3rd person-singular-masculine-imperfect-Hiph'il form: yah-weh.
[NO, it is NOT a 1st person present form, meaning "I am." That would be eh-yeh (see below). Beware of anyone claiming Yahweh means "I am." They don't know what they're talking about.]
Either way, remember that the imperfect tense refers to action that was begun in the past but is on-going, a work in progress, and that it is a 3rd person masculine. For those reasons I render Yahweh as "He who was - he who is", although I admit that is keeping it simple for the sake of story telling in sermons.
Because Yahweh is written as a Hiph'il form, a causative form, the name can be read in other ways. The late great scholar William F. Albright translated the name as "caused things to happen, causes things to happen, and will keep on causing things to happen." That's one way to do it, but a little too long to use easily in sermons.
Some scholars believe the name Yahweh developed from the phrase eh-yeh a-sher eh-yeh in Exodus 3:14-15. That means "I am who I am," or "I am that I am," or "I am what I am." One then has to accept that the phrase was condensed and for some unexplained reason morphed into the single word: yah-weh. I prefer the interpretation that Yahweh is a natural form of ha-yah.
And Yahweh is still a strange name. It incorporates an element of the mysterious. One has the sense that there is someone, or some power, some force, some indescribable thing lurking behind a name like that, something basic, elemental, primal, powerful, intelligent, not-exactly-human, and yet very, very interested in human affairs. Don't forget that it is not until Jesus, the Son, that we get the incarnation of God in human form and then we can say we have a human face to put on God. Moses and Abraham didn't have that. They had to deal with God who was not wearing the face of Jesus. Yahweh must have seemed very alien to Abraham and Moses! - the kind of God that you don't want to think too much about because it will keep you awake far into the night.
This is why I will always be reminded of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when thinking about the name Yahweh. That's a neat movie for a few reasons, not least because at a few points in the movie the music performed by John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra captures the sense of what Yahweh is like: a God who is self-moving, powerful, primal, intelligent, weird, a force with a mind of its own, not-exactly-human, but very interested in human affairs for reasons of its own.
Also - please note that kosher Jews DO NOT say the name Yahweh. This is a prohibition of their religious law. They will substitute titles like A-don-ai (literally, "our Lord") for the name Yahweh rather than say it. The Talmud teaches that when the Old Testament was edited that sometimes the name of God was actually intentionally mispelled, changed from YHWH to things like YY in order to keep the reader from accidentally saying the name Yahweh aloud. I disagree with Jewish Law on this; I think the name was meant to be said, I think Jesus used the name when he gave blessings for healing and I think he taught his disciples to use the name (these are in fact accusations leveled against him in the older editions of the Talmud), and I will say the name, but not in a situation where I think it will offend and hurt my Jewish brothers and sisters. I only ask that you respect the Jews and their practices even as we ask that they respect us and our practices. We are, after all, all spiritual offshoots from the same tree.
I might also add that there is an awful lot of hype out there about the name of God, and a lot of that hype is just plain odd ball. It seems a lot of people have a vested interest in "wrenching the Hebrew", as one of my professors called it, or back-engineering their own peculiar theologies, agendas, and loaded interpretations into the name YHWH, and so one can find all kinds of lunatic fringe and cult stuff on the internet and in bookstores both secular and religious claiming to be authoritative on the subject and yet offering up nothing better than sensationalism and pseudo-intellectual mush that easily makes the head spin. And that, I think, is the ultimate objective of some. Discernment is called for. Let the reader beware.
Peace be with you,
Pr. J.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Lent
OK, here is this Sunday's sermon. This was an odd one to produce for some reason. Just couldn't focus well enough for this one. Too many things on my mind this time, I guess. And each of the three readings could be the basis for several different sermons - a lot of options are possible, which doesn't help when one can't focus - and so this time I am not content with my own work and I was really tempted to just recycle and old sermon for you guys. However, the readings do dove tail, and old Dr. Hoefler at LTSS would have insisted that a truely good sermon touches on all of the readings (which I don't often do.) May this one be helpful to you. I will post some side notes in a day or two. Fred has a good question that no one has ever asked before, and I promised to have an answer soon!
Peace be with you,
Pr. J
3-8-2009, Lent 2B
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, TN
Mark 8:31-38; Romans 4:13-25; Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
no title
Abram didn't expect a visit from his God, Yahweh. He really should have known better.
Abram followed a really strange God. Sometimes it was as if this odd ball God was just following Abram because he had nothing better to do, almost like some strange homeless person wandering about in the desert who had attached himself to Abram. He was a strange God who came and went with the desert wind, who didn’t have a decent home like the other, more respectable gods of Mesopotamia and Canaan and Egypt, didn’t have an image to bow down before, didn’t have a temple to live in, didn’t even have a decent name: he only said his name was Yahweh. I think a lot of professional commentators don’t respect the name enough to do more than give it a superficial and shallow meaning, usually something like “I am.” Actually it’s more like: “He-Who-Was--He-Who-Is,” and that has some really profound implications about God. Linguistically I can tell you why that is so, but you don’t want a boring lesson in linguistics, do you? One of my professors once commented that it’s a strange name in any language; it’s a strange name for a strange God and I think Abram’s relationship with God must have felt pretty strange at times.
I mean, how would you feel if you thought you had some invisible presence following you around, and in some way it speaks to you and it says it’s One-Who-Was--One-Who-Is, it pops in at the most inconvenient moments, it says and does some of the most incredible things, and then it just flitters away as if it’d never been there. You try to tell your friends about it, but they don’t believe you. Are you feeling OK? Is something bothering you? What’s wrong with you? You need to go to church more often, get some real religion, make a right decision to invite a real god into your life, believe in a true prophet, accept a true savior, stop making this stuff up, you really ought to see a shrink, you might have mental problems.
You wonder about poor old Abram and how he coped with this. He had enough problems as it was. He didn’t have any children of his own. True, he led a large group of nomads, his own household; everywhere he went a small ten city popped up around him. He was even able to lead his own group of over 300 armed men on one occasion to rescue his nephew Lot. (Gen. 14:14, 318 men actually, “his trained men, born in his house…”) He had servants, Eliezer and Hagar among them (Gen. 15:2-3; 16:1), he had one servant whose sole job was to manage his money (his steward was Eliezer), he seemed to be financially well off, the wealthy son of a wealthy merchant back in Ur with herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. (Gen 13:2.) He was highly respected. His whole huge household called him Abram, “Exalted Father.”
But Abram and Sarai had no children of their own, and Ishmael, if you recall the story of Abram and Hagar, was not legitimate. (Gen. 16)
It must have weighed heavy on Abram, back at a time when they said if you lived to be 99 then you must be favored by the gods, but if you had no heirs then you must be cursed by the gods because without heirs you have no future. All of those gods were gods Abram had forsaken for that weird invisible presence that seemed at turns to follow him around and then to lead him on and tell him where to go next. And look where it got him. All of his servants and armed men and money and cattle and ancestry meant nothing. He had no legitimate heir. He had no future. He had no hope. In desperation Abram was ready to name his slave Eliezer as his heir.
Then one day Abram’s strange God Yahweh just sort of popped in unannounced in his usual fashion, just seemed to breeze in with the desert wind, and without any explanation at all old Yahweh just sort of casually made the most grandiose claim, "I am God almighty."
As you read it in Hebrew you get the impression of someone who just sort of shows up at Abram’s side and smiles and talks like the cat who just caught the canary. God knows a great big secret, and God is even amused by it all, and now God is going to share it with Abram. The best way to capture the sense of the reading here is to picture Gene Wilder in the 1960’s movie Willy Wonka: big wild eyes, a wild deliriously happy expression that verges on being manic, everything about his demeanor tells you he knows something really, really big and he’s about to drop it on you and he absolutely delights in doing this. That is God as God talks to Abram here.
God says more, "Walk before me, and be blameless, and I will make my covenant between me and you, and I will make you exceedingly numerous."
And now Abram has had enough. This takes the cake. This is too much! This is just too much! Abram fell face down on the ground. [Plunk!]
That didn't faze God in the least, makes no difference to God whether Abram‘s standing before
him or flat on his face. God just kept right on talking and said, "You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, “Exalted Father,” but your name shall be Abraham, “Father of a Multitude” for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. … I will establish my covenant between me and you, and all your descendants, to be God forever to you and all your descendants.”
From the beginning there has been no law to obey to make God's promise come about. This is why the Apostle Paul talks in Romans the way he does: “…the promise that he would inherit did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, then faith is null and the promise is void.“
Legalisms and litmus tests and decisions and invitations and vows and declarations and devotions and all the other fine points of the Law just don’t cut it when dealing with God. The fine print in the deal says human faith does not exist and God’s promise is void if it depends on Law. The only way to deal with God is to simply trust, which is to have faith in God who, out of sheer good will toward Abram and toward all humanity just casually says, "I am God almighty, walk before me." And when God says, "walk before me and be blameless," God isn't telling Abram to be blameless by following a bunch of laws, by making a decision to follow a God who has already decided to chose Abram as his own, or by inviting God into his life when God clearly did not wait for an invitation to begin with, but invites himself into Abraham’s life and invites Abraham into the kingdom. When God says, “Walk before me and be blameless,“ God is saying, "see what I can do for you." This is the good news that comes to us through Genesis.
Have you ever felt like Abraham? Have you ever been 19, or 39, or 59, and have felt like you're 99? Nothing new is going to happen, everything good that could happen is in the past, life today is boring, you have no prospects, no future. The present doesn't look so good, the future looks worse. And you don't expect visits from God. That happens only in the Bible, not here, not now, not to me.
Then one day, out of nowhere, God pops in unexpectedly and just casually gets the message across to you in some way that is unmistakable to you:
"I am God almighty."
Maybe, like Abraham, you would fall on your face. [Plunk!]
One day, many a year after Abraham God finally appeared for all of us in the person of Jesus.
Jesus taught that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and scribes, and then be killed, and then after 3 days rise again. He said all this very openly and when Jesus began teaching them this they were horrified. Surely he isn’t going to be that kind of messiah! Surely not! NO! Better if Jesus weren’t a messiah at all if he believes he has to suffer and die!
So Peter yanked him aside, I mean just grabbed him with both hands and hauled him off to the side and began to argue with him. Bible waters down the text for our modern ears. If you read this in Greek or even better, if you read the Aramaic New Testament that they use today in parts of the Middle East, then you’ll see this isn’t just a calm disagreement. Peter was in Jesus’ face and he was yelling at Jesus.
But that didn't faze Jesus in the least. Jesus is going to say these things anyway. Jesus is fulfilling God's promise, a promise first made to Abraham, a promise for all people, and Jesus is going to do what he says he will do. As far as he is concerned, this is what God wants to happen; this is the will of God.
So Jesus said to Peter, "Get behind me Satan!" You might say Jesus resorted to name calling here. This isn't some invisible horned devil with a pitchfork Jesus is talking to. This is Peter the disciple. Jesus has just called him his accuser, his adversary, his enemy. There is no stronger way for Jesus to say that Peter is standing in the way of what God wants to do. Jesus tells him "You aren't setting your mind on God's things, what God wants, and God‘s way of doing things. You are thinking about human things, what people want, and the human way of doing things."
I guess those disciples must have felt like falling on their face. Jesus told them how God would redeem them, and they didn't trust what Jesus said, so Jesus took the good news of God straight to the crowd.
Jesus called the crowd and said to them: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." "Be my disciple," Jesus said. And see what he can do for you:
Jesus was going to undergo great suffering and was going to be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and would be killed on the cross, and after three days would rise again. Jesus did this for us. He didn't do this for us because we obeyed the Law. He didn't do this for us because we were good enough to deserve it or because we earned it.
He did this for us because we have not obeyed those laws in the Bible, because we aren't good
enough, haven't deserved it, haven't earned it. He did this for us because God keeps promises. When God said to Abram, "I will make a promise between us, between you and me and between me and your descendants, that your descendants will have a place to live where I will be their God," that was a promise God meant to keep, even if it meant giving God's only Son, the Son of Man, Jesus, so that all who believe in him can live in God's kingdom.
It will not be popular. It is not what Peter wants. It will defy the Pharisees and their obedience to Law for salvation. It will defy the priests and their sacrifices for salvation in the temple. It will defy the Roman Empire and all its power over every single person in the land. And it will defy the enemy of God, evil and death and sin.
Jesus knows he will not take over the world, but he will do something greater, something better. He will set the world free from the power of evil, sin, and death and so he will defeat the enemy of God. He will make the way of salvation for many, and open the gates of the real kingdom of God for all people.
And even as he did this for Peter, his hot headed, loud-mouthed, emotionally unstable number one disciple who became his enemy for a day because he did not understand, so too he has done it for us.
Abraham knew. God is strange. God is strange because God delights in doing things that benefit undeserving people, things that go against common wisdom and defy convention, things like giving Abraham and Sarah a son. God does whatever God wants, regardless of what people think. And what God wants to do is the most incredible thing:
God wants to be our God for all time.
The gates of the kingdom now stand open for us. The gift of salvation has been handed to us. The bonds of sin have been stricken from us, and now we are free people in the sight of God.
All that remains now is for us to accept our freedom and to live as the people of God. Trust this strange God who makes promises, follow Jesus who makes the promise come alive, and just see what he can do for you.
Peace be with you.
Peace be with you,
Pr. J
3-8-2009, Lent 2B
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, TN
Mark 8:31-38; Romans 4:13-25; Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
no title
Abram didn't expect a visit from his God, Yahweh. He really should have known better.
Abram followed a really strange God. Sometimes it was as if this odd ball God was just following Abram because he had nothing better to do, almost like some strange homeless person wandering about in the desert who had attached himself to Abram. He was a strange God who came and went with the desert wind, who didn’t have a decent home like the other, more respectable gods of Mesopotamia and Canaan and Egypt, didn’t have an image to bow down before, didn’t have a temple to live in, didn’t even have a decent name: he only said his name was Yahweh. I think a lot of professional commentators don’t respect the name enough to do more than give it a superficial and shallow meaning, usually something like “I am.” Actually it’s more like: “He-Who-Was--He-Who-Is,” and that has some really profound implications about God. Linguistically I can tell you why that is so, but you don’t want a boring lesson in linguistics, do you? One of my professors once commented that it’s a strange name in any language; it’s a strange name for a strange God and I think Abram’s relationship with God must have felt pretty strange at times.
I mean, how would you feel if you thought you had some invisible presence following you around, and in some way it speaks to you and it says it’s One-Who-Was--One-Who-Is, it pops in at the most inconvenient moments, it says and does some of the most incredible things, and then it just flitters away as if it’d never been there. You try to tell your friends about it, but they don’t believe you. Are you feeling OK? Is something bothering you? What’s wrong with you? You need to go to church more often, get some real religion, make a right decision to invite a real god into your life, believe in a true prophet, accept a true savior, stop making this stuff up, you really ought to see a shrink, you might have mental problems.
You wonder about poor old Abram and how he coped with this. He had enough problems as it was. He didn’t have any children of his own. True, he led a large group of nomads, his own household; everywhere he went a small ten city popped up around him. He was even able to lead his own group of over 300 armed men on one occasion to rescue his nephew Lot. (Gen. 14:14, 318 men actually, “his trained men, born in his house…”) He had servants, Eliezer and Hagar among them (Gen. 15:2-3; 16:1), he had one servant whose sole job was to manage his money (his steward was Eliezer), he seemed to be financially well off, the wealthy son of a wealthy merchant back in Ur with herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. (Gen 13:2.) He was highly respected. His whole huge household called him Abram, “Exalted Father.”
But Abram and Sarai had no children of their own, and Ishmael, if you recall the story of Abram and Hagar, was not legitimate. (Gen. 16)
It must have weighed heavy on Abram, back at a time when they said if you lived to be 99 then you must be favored by the gods, but if you had no heirs then you must be cursed by the gods because without heirs you have no future. All of those gods were gods Abram had forsaken for that weird invisible presence that seemed at turns to follow him around and then to lead him on and tell him where to go next. And look where it got him. All of his servants and armed men and money and cattle and ancestry meant nothing. He had no legitimate heir. He had no future. He had no hope. In desperation Abram was ready to name his slave Eliezer as his heir.
Then one day Abram’s strange God Yahweh just sort of popped in unannounced in his usual fashion, just seemed to breeze in with the desert wind, and without any explanation at all old Yahweh just sort of casually made the most grandiose claim, "I am God almighty."
As you read it in Hebrew you get the impression of someone who just sort of shows up at Abram’s side and smiles and talks like the cat who just caught the canary. God knows a great big secret, and God is even amused by it all, and now God is going to share it with Abram. The best way to capture the sense of the reading here is to picture Gene Wilder in the 1960’s movie Willy Wonka: big wild eyes, a wild deliriously happy expression that verges on being manic, everything about his demeanor tells you he knows something really, really big and he’s about to drop it on you and he absolutely delights in doing this. That is God as God talks to Abram here.
God says more, "Walk before me, and be blameless, and I will make my covenant between me and you, and I will make you exceedingly numerous."
And now Abram has had enough. This takes the cake. This is too much! This is just too much! Abram fell face down on the ground. [Plunk!]
That didn't faze God in the least, makes no difference to God whether Abram‘s standing before
him or flat on his face. God just kept right on talking and said, "You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, “Exalted Father,” but your name shall be Abraham, “Father of a Multitude” for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. … I will establish my covenant between me and you, and all your descendants, to be God forever to you and all your descendants.”
From the beginning there has been no law to obey to make God's promise come about. This is why the Apostle Paul talks in Romans the way he does: “…the promise that he would inherit did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, then faith is null and the promise is void.“
Legalisms and litmus tests and decisions and invitations and vows and declarations and devotions and all the other fine points of the Law just don’t cut it when dealing with God. The fine print in the deal says human faith does not exist and God’s promise is void if it depends on Law. The only way to deal with God is to simply trust, which is to have faith in God who, out of sheer good will toward Abram and toward all humanity just casually says, "I am God almighty, walk before me." And when God says, "walk before me and be blameless," God isn't telling Abram to be blameless by following a bunch of laws, by making a decision to follow a God who has already decided to chose Abram as his own, or by inviting God into his life when God clearly did not wait for an invitation to begin with, but invites himself into Abraham’s life and invites Abraham into the kingdom. When God says, “Walk before me and be blameless,“ God is saying, "see what I can do for you." This is the good news that comes to us through Genesis.
Have you ever felt like Abraham? Have you ever been 19, or 39, or 59, and have felt like you're 99? Nothing new is going to happen, everything good that could happen is in the past, life today is boring, you have no prospects, no future. The present doesn't look so good, the future looks worse. And you don't expect visits from God. That happens only in the Bible, not here, not now, not to me.
Then one day, out of nowhere, God pops in unexpectedly and just casually gets the message across to you in some way that is unmistakable to you:
"I am God almighty."
Maybe, like Abraham, you would fall on your face. [Plunk!]
One day, many a year after Abraham God finally appeared for all of us in the person of Jesus.
Jesus taught that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and scribes, and then be killed, and then after 3 days rise again. He said all this very openly and when Jesus began teaching them this they were horrified. Surely he isn’t going to be that kind of messiah! Surely not! NO! Better if Jesus weren’t a messiah at all if he believes he has to suffer and die!
So Peter yanked him aside, I mean just grabbed him with both hands and hauled him off to the side and began to argue with him. Bible waters down the text for our modern ears. If you read this in Greek or even better, if you read the Aramaic New Testament that they use today in parts of the Middle East, then you’ll see this isn’t just a calm disagreement. Peter was in Jesus’ face and he was yelling at Jesus.
But that didn't faze Jesus in the least. Jesus is going to say these things anyway. Jesus is fulfilling God's promise, a promise first made to Abraham, a promise for all people, and Jesus is going to do what he says he will do. As far as he is concerned, this is what God wants to happen; this is the will of God.
So Jesus said to Peter, "Get behind me Satan!" You might say Jesus resorted to name calling here. This isn't some invisible horned devil with a pitchfork Jesus is talking to. This is Peter the disciple. Jesus has just called him his accuser, his adversary, his enemy. There is no stronger way for Jesus to say that Peter is standing in the way of what God wants to do. Jesus tells him "You aren't setting your mind on God's things, what God wants, and God‘s way of doing things. You are thinking about human things, what people want, and the human way of doing things."
I guess those disciples must have felt like falling on their face. Jesus told them how God would redeem them, and they didn't trust what Jesus said, so Jesus took the good news of God straight to the crowd.
Jesus called the crowd and said to them: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." "Be my disciple," Jesus said. And see what he can do for you:
Jesus was going to undergo great suffering and was going to be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and would be killed on the cross, and after three days would rise again. Jesus did this for us. He didn't do this for us because we obeyed the Law. He didn't do this for us because we were good enough to deserve it or because we earned it.
He did this for us because we have not obeyed those laws in the Bible, because we aren't good
enough, haven't deserved it, haven't earned it. He did this for us because God keeps promises. When God said to Abram, "I will make a promise between us, between you and me and between me and your descendants, that your descendants will have a place to live where I will be their God," that was a promise God meant to keep, even if it meant giving God's only Son, the Son of Man, Jesus, so that all who believe in him can live in God's kingdom.
It will not be popular. It is not what Peter wants. It will defy the Pharisees and their obedience to Law for salvation. It will defy the priests and their sacrifices for salvation in the temple. It will defy the Roman Empire and all its power over every single person in the land. And it will defy the enemy of God, evil and death and sin.
Jesus knows he will not take over the world, but he will do something greater, something better. He will set the world free from the power of evil, sin, and death and so he will defeat the enemy of God. He will make the way of salvation for many, and open the gates of the real kingdom of God for all people.
And even as he did this for Peter, his hot headed, loud-mouthed, emotionally unstable number one disciple who became his enemy for a day because he did not understand, so too he has done it for us.
Abraham knew. God is strange. God is strange because God delights in doing things that benefit undeserving people, things that go against common wisdom and defy convention, things like giving Abraham and Sarah a son. God does whatever God wants, regardless of what people think. And what God wants to do is the most incredible thing:
God wants to be our God for all time.
The gates of the kingdom now stand open for us. The gift of salvation has been handed to us. The bonds of sin have been stricken from us, and now we are free people in the sight of God.
All that remains now is for us to accept our freedom and to live as the people of God. Trust this strange God who makes promises, follow Jesus who makes the promise come alive, and just see what he can do for you.
Peace be with you.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sermon for the 1st Sunday in Lent
Hi all,
The readings for the 1st Sunday in Lent are found here, although I will use only the Gospel reading: http://members.sundaysandseasons.com/planner_rcl_view.php?event_date_id=955.
Peace be with you,
Pr. J
3-1-2009, Lent 1B
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville TN
Mark 1:9-15
Adagio for Christ
“And it happened in those days: he came, Jesus, from Nazareth of the Galileans, and baptized was he in the Jordan by John.” The opening line from today’s Gospel reading taken word for word straight from the Greek text.
That’s the way it would have sounded to you had you been alive 2000 years ago, living words for living disciples of Christ. It sounds different from the more familiar phrasing we’ve grown up hearing, but it says the same thing: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”
I personally like the reading straight from the Greek text better, because one can see in the simple wording of the text, in the very placement of the words in the sentence a much older, living, informal, come-as-you-are story underlying the more formal story about the baptism of Jesus.Mark’s story goes on. “And at once, coming up from the water, he saw ripped asunder the heavens, and the spirit like a dove came down into him.”
Once again, straight from the Greek text, and it does sound a little different. Here the spirit of God does not just descend like a dove and alight on Jesus’ shoulder; rather it comes down from God and enters into Jesus.
I prefer this reading because the way we’re used to hearing it you kind of get the image of a pidgeon sitting on Jesus’ head while he’s standing there in the river dripping wet – kind of silly, don’t you think? What a sight that would have been! Here it’s clear that the spirit of God, a spirit like a dove, the spirit of peace so to speak, as well as a sign of salvation and deliverance – remember the story of Noah and the dove? - enters into Jesus, and this will shape his whole mission from this point onward.
What I especially like about this reading is the image of what happens to the heavens, a spiritual reality that you can not see with your eyes or touch with your hands as opposed to the literal sky and infinite space over our heads where we fly in our airplanes and where we send spaceships to the planets. Mark uses a dramatic Greek word to portray the heavens being absolutely and violently and permanently ripped asunder, as if it were a huge sheet and two huge hands somehow grabbed hold of it and ripped it in two and you can hear it going “schiiiiiiiiiidzk!”
This same image, in fact the same word Mark uses for this image comes back in the Gospel story much later at the crucifixion of Jesus (Mark 15:38), where we read that at the time of his death on a cross the curtain in the Temple, THE Curtain, the one separating the Holy of Holies from the Sanctuary in the Temple, the one that was supposed to hide the presence of God from the world, was violently ripped in two and torn its whole length from top to bottom. The significance of something like that is that there is no barrier between us and God. God’s presence can not be hidden from us, God will not allow it; Jesus will see to it that God is revealed to us.
Here, at the baptism of Jesus, the impenetrable heavens, the unbreachable spiritual walls between us and God, have been ripped apart, the spiritual barrier between us and God, a spiritual wall that I think has been put there more by us and our own prideful sin than by anything else, has been completely sundered and torn apart in such a way that it can never be restored so that nothing separates us from God, not even the heavens themselves.And then, after the heavens are ripped apart and the spirit of God comes down into Jesus, we once again meet the mystery voice the Jews have called bat kol since before the time of Jesus.
The Gospel of Mark continues in its own unique voice: “And a voice was born from the heavens, 'You are my son, the beloved, in you I am very pleased.’”
I think if they were to make yet another Jesus movie this would be the perfect place to begin Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” It could cut in a different places throughout the movie right up to the point where the curtain is torn in two in the Temple and we have come full circle back to the images of Jesus’ baptism.
Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” is a piece of music written for stringed instruments that can be played on the organ and was played on the organ throughout Lent at my intern church in Chicago back in 1990. It was a very somber change from the usual type of music that Paul Manz played during, before, and after worship. Paul was known to the ELCA at that time as the Dean of Lutheran church musicians, but to the people at St. Luke Paul was better known as Papa Smerf, and if you ever saw him you would know why - he looked like a smerf.
Old Papa Smerf had a habit of playing very energetic and rousing pieces as prelude and postlude music – Bach, Mozart, Handel, Vaughn Williams, Holst, Copeland, as well as show tunes and commercial tunes cleverly disguised as church music. Who says Lutherans don’t have a sense of humor?! But then in Lent he departed from his normal routine and began playing the “Adagio for Strings,” all 7½ minutes of it, not just once, not just twice, and not just as prelude and postlude music, but every time the church was open and he was playing the organ, which was quite often during Lent, before, during, and after worship. It seemed Papa Smerf was on a Samuel Barber binge.
Some people might get tired of that. But most people did not. For most of the people at the Church of St. Luke the music clearly defined the spiritual atmosphere of the season, Lent, and they thought that was very fitting. It’s music that just kind of grabs you and doesn’t exactly let you go, especially when it is played with as much depth and as much feeling as Old Papa Smerf could play it on the pipe organ-
and you just have to ride with it and experience it and feel it and it really takes you for an emotional ride that somehow leads you first through the depths of despair, an incredible well of pain and sadness which you suddenly realize is all your own and then takes you soaring high above all the world’s pain up to the heights of a heaven that is felt with the soul rather than seen with the eyes and which you suddenly realize is a gift of sheer undeserved compassion from God-
and in the process you have heard, as well as felt the kingdom of God come near to you, and you know in that moment at the height of the music that there are no barriers at all between you, just as you are, transparent before God with all your failings and imperfections, and an infinite cosmic God holding out overwhelming mercy and compassion for you for no other reason than that God can, and God does. It almost defies words. We needed Old Papa Smerf and his pipe organ.
And that is what Lent is about. I think maybe it finally hit me one Sunday, while I was assisting with communion at the Church of St. Luke way back in 1990 (but it took me years to figure out how to express it because it does almost defy words). I had witnessed the pain and hurt that went on behind the scenes, and knew the people’s pain, and watched all 500 of them coming down the long aisle of that modern cathedral church, some of them really crying as Old Papa Smerf played the Adagio for Strings and they let go of their sins and their pain and their despair before the altar and received the assurance of forgiveness in the bread and wine, the body of Christ given for them, blood of Christ shed for them. This is what Lent is like.
And that is what it should be like for us.
Lent, and the whole Christian life from beginning to end, should be like listening with our full attention to a piece of music like the Adagio for Strings, while the Holy Spirit leads us where it will, taking us from the dark depths of human despair, lifting us up and up and up, ever higher with Jesus as he rises from the waters of his own baptism and bringing us up to the very heights of heaven, rending open all the barriers between us and God so that nothing, nothing at all stands between us and God and there, at the height of the music, we see God revealed to us in the face of Jesus newly risen to meet us.
Thanks be to God.
The readings for the 1st Sunday in Lent are found here, although I will use only the Gospel reading: http://members.sundaysandseasons.com/planner_rcl_view.php?event_date_id=955.
Peace be with you,
Pr. J
3-1-2009, Lent 1B
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville TN
Mark 1:9-15
Adagio for Christ
“And it happened in those days: he came, Jesus, from Nazareth of the Galileans, and baptized was he in the Jordan by John.” The opening line from today’s Gospel reading taken word for word straight from the Greek text.
That’s the way it would have sounded to you had you been alive 2000 years ago, living words for living disciples of Christ. It sounds different from the more familiar phrasing we’ve grown up hearing, but it says the same thing: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”
I personally like the reading straight from the Greek text better, because one can see in the simple wording of the text, in the very placement of the words in the sentence a much older, living, informal, come-as-you-are story underlying the more formal story about the baptism of Jesus.Mark’s story goes on. “And at once, coming up from the water, he saw ripped asunder the heavens, and the spirit like a dove came down into him.”
Once again, straight from the Greek text, and it does sound a little different. Here the spirit of God does not just descend like a dove and alight on Jesus’ shoulder; rather it comes down from God and enters into Jesus.
I prefer this reading because the way we’re used to hearing it you kind of get the image of a pidgeon sitting on Jesus’ head while he’s standing there in the river dripping wet – kind of silly, don’t you think? What a sight that would have been! Here it’s clear that the spirit of God, a spirit like a dove, the spirit of peace so to speak, as well as a sign of salvation and deliverance – remember the story of Noah and the dove? - enters into Jesus, and this will shape his whole mission from this point onward.
What I especially like about this reading is the image of what happens to the heavens, a spiritual reality that you can not see with your eyes or touch with your hands as opposed to the literal sky and infinite space over our heads where we fly in our airplanes and where we send spaceships to the planets. Mark uses a dramatic Greek word to portray the heavens being absolutely and violently and permanently ripped asunder, as if it were a huge sheet and two huge hands somehow grabbed hold of it and ripped it in two and you can hear it going “schiiiiiiiiiidzk!”
This same image, in fact the same word Mark uses for this image comes back in the Gospel story much later at the crucifixion of Jesus (Mark 15:38), where we read that at the time of his death on a cross the curtain in the Temple, THE Curtain, the one separating the Holy of Holies from the Sanctuary in the Temple, the one that was supposed to hide the presence of God from the world, was violently ripped in two and torn its whole length from top to bottom. The significance of something like that is that there is no barrier between us and God. God’s presence can not be hidden from us, God will not allow it; Jesus will see to it that God is revealed to us.
Here, at the baptism of Jesus, the impenetrable heavens, the unbreachable spiritual walls between us and God, have been ripped apart, the spiritual barrier between us and God, a spiritual wall that I think has been put there more by us and our own prideful sin than by anything else, has been completely sundered and torn apart in such a way that it can never be restored so that nothing separates us from God, not even the heavens themselves.And then, after the heavens are ripped apart and the spirit of God comes down into Jesus, we once again meet the mystery voice the Jews have called bat kol since before the time of Jesus.
The Gospel of Mark continues in its own unique voice: “And a voice was born from the heavens, 'You are my son, the beloved, in you I am very pleased.’”
I think if they were to make yet another Jesus movie this would be the perfect place to begin Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” It could cut in a different places throughout the movie right up to the point where the curtain is torn in two in the Temple and we have come full circle back to the images of Jesus’ baptism.
Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” is a piece of music written for stringed instruments that can be played on the organ and was played on the organ throughout Lent at my intern church in Chicago back in 1990. It was a very somber change from the usual type of music that Paul Manz played during, before, and after worship. Paul was known to the ELCA at that time as the Dean of Lutheran church musicians, but to the people at St. Luke Paul was better known as Papa Smerf, and if you ever saw him you would know why - he looked like a smerf.
Old Papa Smerf had a habit of playing very energetic and rousing pieces as prelude and postlude music – Bach, Mozart, Handel, Vaughn Williams, Holst, Copeland, as well as show tunes and commercial tunes cleverly disguised as church music. Who says Lutherans don’t have a sense of humor?! But then in Lent he departed from his normal routine and began playing the “Adagio for Strings,” all 7½ minutes of it, not just once, not just twice, and not just as prelude and postlude music, but every time the church was open and he was playing the organ, which was quite often during Lent, before, during, and after worship. It seemed Papa Smerf was on a Samuel Barber binge.
Some people might get tired of that. But most people did not. For most of the people at the Church of St. Luke the music clearly defined the spiritual atmosphere of the season, Lent, and they thought that was very fitting. It’s music that just kind of grabs you and doesn’t exactly let you go, especially when it is played with as much depth and as much feeling as Old Papa Smerf could play it on the pipe organ-
and you just have to ride with it and experience it and feel it and it really takes you for an emotional ride that somehow leads you first through the depths of despair, an incredible well of pain and sadness which you suddenly realize is all your own and then takes you soaring high above all the world’s pain up to the heights of a heaven that is felt with the soul rather than seen with the eyes and which you suddenly realize is a gift of sheer undeserved compassion from God-
and in the process you have heard, as well as felt the kingdom of God come near to you, and you know in that moment at the height of the music that there are no barriers at all between you, just as you are, transparent before God with all your failings and imperfections, and an infinite cosmic God holding out overwhelming mercy and compassion for you for no other reason than that God can, and God does. It almost defies words. We needed Old Papa Smerf and his pipe organ.
And that is what Lent is about. I think maybe it finally hit me one Sunday, while I was assisting with communion at the Church of St. Luke way back in 1990 (but it took me years to figure out how to express it because it does almost defy words). I had witnessed the pain and hurt that went on behind the scenes, and knew the people’s pain, and watched all 500 of them coming down the long aisle of that modern cathedral church, some of them really crying as Old Papa Smerf played the Adagio for Strings and they let go of their sins and their pain and their despair before the altar and received the assurance of forgiveness in the bread and wine, the body of Christ given for them, blood of Christ shed for them. This is what Lent is like.
And that is what it should be like for us.
Lent, and the whole Christian life from beginning to end, should be like listening with our full attention to a piece of music like the Adagio for Strings, while the Holy Spirit leads us where it will, taking us from the dark depths of human despair, lifting us up and up and up, ever higher with Jesus as he rises from the waters of his own baptism and bringing us up to the very heights of heaven, rending open all the barriers between us and God so that nothing, nothing at all stands between us and God and there, at the height of the music, we see God revealed to us in the face of Jesus newly risen to meet us.
Thanks be to God.
Sermon for Ash Wednesday
Hi all,
Here is Deacon Leslie's sermon for Ash Wednesday. The readings for Ash Wednesday may be found here: http://members.sundaysandseasons.com/planner_rcl_view.php?event_date_id=954.
Peace be with you,
Pr. J
In 2007 the third in the three part movie series, “Pirates of the Caribbean” was released.In it we meet the character Davy Jones, and we meet temptation.
“Do you fear death? Do you fear the dark abyss?”
It was a dark and stormy night at sea. Not a dry inch was to be found on deck or sailor. The seas pitched, the ocean roared, chill salt water ran down men’s faces and cascaded from their chins.
Below deck men’s bodies shook, not from cold, but dread fear. The storm was frightful to behold, true enough, but that was not what made these men quake. It was the terror which stood before them, holding their lives in his hands.
Davy Jones, approaching one of the ships survivors, asks: “Do you fear death? Do you fear the dark abyss?”
The man questioned nods and whimpers, his eyes glued to the floor planks.
“All your deeds laid bare. All your sins punished?”
More nods are made.
“I can offer you an escape.”
Another prisoner, holding a crucifix in his shaking hands calls out, “Don’t listen to him!”
Davy Jones approaches this new prisoner saying, “Do you not fear death?”
“I’ll take my chances, sir!” he responds.
Davy Jones turns to his crew and commands, “to the depths!”
At which point the man of faith has his throat cut and his body thrown overboard.
Yet another of the five prisoners cries out, “Cruel blackguard!”
“Life is cruel,” Davy Jones responds. “Why should the afterlife be any different? I offer you a choice, join my crew and postpone the judgment. One hundred years before the mast. Will ye serve?”
“I will serve,” tumbles from the first man’s terrified lips.
“There!” Jones proclaims with a satisfied smirk.
And another man is recruited to the Flying Dutchman by Davy Jones.Davy Jones is a person of folklore and is the villain in the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.” It seems he fell in love with a woman who caused him a great deal of pain; so much pain, in fact, in the words of the character Tia Dalma, “Him carve out him heart, lock it away in a chest and hide the chest from the world.” His own heart became his treasure, a heart he would give to no one, a heart that could no longer feel.
Be careful to what or to whom you give your heart. In a world constantly telling us to buy our happiness, to take everything we can, and give nothing back, the true treasure of life becomes obscured, our hearts become wooden. We are too easily seduced into thinking the filling of our desire to acquire is the answer to the pains of life. More food, more stuff, more money, more friends, more knowledge, more power. It is, of course, not so easy but our hearts are easily deceived. We then find that we are left with an emptiness, always with something missing. Life’s true treasure cannot be acquired or achieved or earned. It can only be gratefully accepted.
What is your treasure?
Where is your heart? Has it known terrible pain? Has it been bruised by the wrongs and injustices of this life? Has it been shared with others? Is it still? It is no easy thing to live this life without laying our hearts aside in a locked chest to keep them safe, to keep us safe. I might go so far as to say it is well nigh impossible. I have pulled mine out to face the storms of life for just so long before racing to lock it safely away again for a time. This is human reality. We cannot perfect our love. We will not submit our hearts to the constant onslaught of life’s pain. And so we are not able to keep our hearts constantly open to God’s love either. The heart of a mere mortal is not equal to the task. So God in his infinite mercy offers up his own for our treasure.
What of the heart of God?
Where is God’s heart? God’s heart is invested in each and every one of us- each bit of his creation. God has given us his heart that we might use it in love.God has given us his son – that our failure to love might be forgiven.
We need not fear death, but we will. It is in the nature of being creature. As we watch and feel ourselves and our loved ones age and sicken, and die, we will know fear. But know that it is in the nature of the Creator to love, and to give and to forgive. We are held within the heart of God; there, in the end, nothing can harm us. Let us use this holy season then, and set aside sacred hours to rest in God’s grace, to serve in God’s love, to glory in the everlasting peace of God.
Amen.
Here is Deacon Leslie's sermon for Ash Wednesday. The readings for Ash Wednesday may be found here: http://members.sundaysandseasons.com/planner_rcl_view.php?event_date_id=954.
Peace be with you,
Pr. J
In 2007 the third in the three part movie series, “Pirates of the Caribbean” was released.In it we meet the character Davy Jones, and we meet temptation.
“Do you fear death? Do you fear the dark abyss?”
It was a dark and stormy night at sea. Not a dry inch was to be found on deck or sailor. The seas pitched, the ocean roared, chill salt water ran down men’s faces and cascaded from their chins.
Below deck men’s bodies shook, not from cold, but dread fear. The storm was frightful to behold, true enough, but that was not what made these men quake. It was the terror which stood before them, holding their lives in his hands.
Davy Jones, approaching one of the ships survivors, asks: “Do you fear death? Do you fear the dark abyss?”
The man questioned nods and whimpers, his eyes glued to the floor planks.
“All your deeds laid bare. All your sins punished?”
More nods are made.
“I can offer you an escape.”
Another prisoner, holding a crucifix in his shaking hands calls out, “Don’t listen to him!”
Davy Jones approaches this new prisoner saying, “Do you not fear death?”
“I’ll take my chances, sir!” he responds.
Davy Jones turns to his crew and commands, “to the depths!”
At which point the man of faith has his throat cut and his body thrown overboard.
Yet another of the five prisoners cries out, “Cruel blackguard!”
“Life is cruel,” Davy Jones responds. “Why should the afterlife be any different? I offer you a choice, join my crew and postpone the judgment. One hundred years before the mast. Will ye serve?”
“I will serve,” tumbles from the first man’s terrified lips.
“There!” Jones proclaims with a satisfied smirk.
And another man is recruited to the Flying Dutchman by Davy Jones.Davy Jones is a person of folklore and is the villain in the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.” It seems he fell in love with a woman who caused him a great deal of pain; so much pain, in fact, in the words of the character Tia Dalma, “Him carve out him heart, lock it away in a chest and hide the chest from the world.” His own heart became his treasure, a heart he would give to no one, a heart that could no longer feel.
Be careful to what or to whom you give your heart. In a world constantly telling us to buy our happiness, to take everything we can, and give nothing back, the true treasure of life becomes obscured, our hearts become wooden. We are too easily seduced into thinking the filling of our desire to acquire is the answer to the pains of life. More food, more stuff, more money, more friends, more knowledge, more power. It is, of course, not so easy but our hearts are easily deceived. We then find that we are left with an emptiness, always with something missing. Life’s true treasure cannot be acquired or achieved or earned. It can only be gratefully accepted.
What is your treasure?
Where is your heart? Has it known terrible pain? Has it been bruised by the wrongs and injustices of this life? Has it been shared with others? Is it still? It is no easy thing to live this life without laying our hearts aside in a locked chest to keep them safe, to keep us safe. I might go so far as to say it is well nigh impossible. I have pulled mine out to face the storms of life for just so long before racing to lock it safely away again for a time. This is human reality. We cannot perfect our love. We will not submit our hearts to the constant onslaught of life’s pain. And so we are not able to keep our hearts constantly open to God’s love either. The heart of a mere mortal is not equal to the task. So God in his infinite mercy offers up his own for our treasure.
What of the heart of God?
Where is God’s heart? God’s heart is invested in each and every one of us- each bit of his creation. God has given us his heart that we might use it in love.God has given us his son – that our failure to love might be forgiven.
We need not fear death, but we will. It is in the nature of being creature. As we watch and feel ourselves and our loved ones age and sicken, and die, we will know fear. But know that it is in the nature of the Creator to love, and to give and to forgive. We are held within the heart of God; there, in the end, nothing can harm us. Let us use this holy season then, and set aside sacred hours to rest in God’s grace, to serve in God’s love, to glory in the everlasting peace of God.
Amen.
Sermon for Transfiguartion, Year B
OK, here is the sermon for 22 February, my St.-Mary-of-the-bathtubs sermon. I knew that sermon illustration would grab you. If you find the comments about the vision of the disciples interesting and want to read more, I recommend Bruce J. Malina, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd edition (Fortress Press, 2003) for starters. Malina talks about what he calls "Altered States of Consciousness," and this really goes a long way in explaining a lot of things in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. His commentary on Mark 9:2-9 is on pages 183-184 of that book, and his discussioon of altered states of consciousness is on pages 327-329.
Also, if you want to begin to learn more about traditional Jewish prayer and how this comes into play in the Gospel stories I recommend for starters Bruce Chilton's book, Rabbi Jesus (Doubleday, 2000). Dr. Chilton talks about it in Jewish terms as "riding the chariot" of God. I sat in a number of Dr. Chilton's seminars at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson in New York while I was at the St. John's-St. Thomas Parish and they were absolutely fascinating, even though I may disagree with a few of his consclusions. Overall, his work is very worth reading. Best of all, Rabbi Jesus is written like a novel and is easily read and you can get it pretty cheap at Amazon.com.
Peace be with you,
Pr. J
2-22-2009, Transfiguration Year B
Salem - Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, TN
Mark 9:2-9
Transfiguration
Reading today’s Gospel reading I was reminded of something that I saw many times back around Syracuse, New York. I don’t know if you see this kind of thing in this area, but it’s what I call "St. Mary of the Bath Tubs." If you have not yet seen St. Mary of the Bath Tubs then you need to get out and take a long drive to New York and look at people’s yards. It won’t be long before you’ll see St. Mary of the Bath Tubs, or something similar, like St. Joseph of the Inner Tubes.
Now this is about people taking statues of saints, usually Mary and Joseph, sometimes St. Francis, or an angel with wings, or even Jesus himself, and erecting a little shrine in their yard or their garden. Back when I lived in North Syracuse it seemed there were a lot of people taking old bath tubs and setting them into the ground in such a way as to form a little shelter, painted white, or turquoise, surrounded with white stones and flowers and, of course, housing the saint’s statue. One day I saw Mary’s statue standing in what was obviously an old bath tub in someone’s front yard and I pointed it out to Leslie and said, “Look, its St. Mary of the Bath Tubs,” and the name stuck. That’s not to put down someone’s spirituality, it just means I make these unusual associations, or perhaps the person who thought of turning a bath tub into a shrine makes unusual associations.
Somehow the Gospel reading reminds me of that kind of thing. And at first glance it might appear that Peter wants to build little shrines to Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, but something more is happening.
In the Gospel story we find that Jesus has gone hiking with his disciples Peter, James, and John, but this is not just a casual hike. There is some reason to believe that the time frame for the Gospel reading is sometime in early to mid-October, eight days after the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It was a time of year for many people to go on a pilgrimage because after Yom Kippur another Jewish holy time began, the Festival of Sukkot, called the Feast of Booths. By tradition, those who kept this festival would not work for the first two days of the feast, but on the 3rd day, eight days after Yom Kippur, work would be allowed for those keeping the festival, & that meant pilgrims could travel. And many did. It appears that among the many who were traveling at that time were Jesus, Peter, James, & John.
They came to a mountain, identified by tradition today as Mt. Hermon in northern Israel. You have to picture this. This is a truly high mountain. The summit is usually snowcapped year-round. From high enough up the slope you can see the Mediterranean Sea. And – even in the time of Jesus, Peter, James, and John, - it was - you might say - special. Even then it was considered holy ground, a sacred place for Jew and Gentile alike. Gentiles built shrines and even temples to the gods of Greece and Rome on the slopes of this mountain; Jewish tradition said that servants of God came and went from heaven on this mountain; and everyone, Jew and Gentile alike claimed that strange things were to be seen on this mountain: the Pharisees taught that angels of God encountered people on and near the mountain, and the Gentiles claimed that, no, it was their gods instead that people saw: Apollo, Mercury, Minerva and others. Either way, if you journeyed up this mountain you expected something unusual; you expected to enter the presence of God.
Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the slopes of Mt. Hermon. Common sense alone says they all expected something. They had to. But what?
Treading the path up the slope they would pass the occasional shrine or memorial to a Greek or Roman deity; it must have looked a little like St. Mary of the Bath Tubs to them. They passed several large temples, all dedicated to gods foreign to them, gods of cold dead stone that they could not serve and honor. On up the slope they went, higher and higher, until they passed the tree line and there was nothing but scrub brush on the slopes. Perhaps they went even further up, the slope now almost barren, the ground rocky and rough, their breath now frozen in the air, the blue Mediterranean Sea now plainly visible in the west, the snow covered peak clear and very close. I have a hunch Jesus took them pretty far up the slope, perhaps close to the top, a barren and deserted place that only the most dauntless - or stubborn - pilgrims would seek out in their desire to get close to God.
There he stopped and said, “This is the place,” a place for them to spend some time in quiet solitude to pray, not as we pray in church today, but in the old way of the Jewish teachers, more like the meditation you might associate with a Buddhist monk rather than the petitions of a pastor leading prayers in the congregation. It was a very ancient, very traditional way for the Jewish teachers to wait for the presence of God to come to them. The same thing is done today in Christianity where the practice is called contemplative prayer. I’ve done that - its really neat, especially when you develop the discipline to do it on a regular basis. You ought to try it sometime; it’s different. That is what Jesus and his disciples were doing on the mountain. We can see them sitting around a camp fire at the end of a long day hiking up the mountain, sun going down on the Mediterranean horizon, frozen breath hanging in the air, and all is quiet. They are focused now, deep in the old traditional form of prayer, waiting for the presence of God. And you know what they say: you always get what you ask for.
This is when the unusual happened.
Sometime during their prayer session, while they were meditating, waiting for the presence of God, it was as if a window into God’s presence was opened up for them. The wording of this story in Matthew, Mark, and Luke together tells us they had a spiritual vision, not to be taken literally because it wasn’t a physical vision seen with physical eyes, but in the Gospel a spiritual reality is still something that is very real.
In this vision the disciples saw Jesus in another way, with a new appearance, one that shouted out loud and clear that Jesus has a connection to God. As the vision unfolded who else did they see but Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus; the two greatest authorities of the Hebrew tradition! Moses who by tradition represented all of the Law, and Elijah, who by tradition represented all of the prophets of the past. In this vision Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are talking about his mission and what he is going to accomplish at Jerusalem.
Now, following in the footsteps of many before him who built nearly two dozen temples on the side of the mountain, Peter decided that this vision was enough for him and perhaps he wanted to build some shrines of his own, what our reading calls dwellings. The Hebrew word was sukkot, and it was time for the festival of Sukkot. In this festival pilgrims would build small huts called sukkot in which to live for up to seven days, a way of remembering the wanderings of the Hebrew people in the wilderness. But here Peter seems to have something else in mind. He seems to want to enshrine Moses, Elijah, and even Jesus! Perhaps. Maybe, as some suggest, it was his way of trying to hold on to the presence of God as long as he could. Or maybe there something more going on, some connection to the festival at hand. (Leviticus 23:40-43) Anyway, this is where I am reminded of St. Mary of the Bath Tubs – I know, an unusual association, but whenever I see one of those Mary shrines in someone’s front yard it makes me think of this Gospel reading.
What if Peter had had a few bath tubs or inner tubes handy? He might have set up his three dwellings right then and there, three homemade shrines to Moses, Elijah, and Jesus – a testimony to the presence of God. But that was not to happen.Peter and the other disciples are still in the midst of this vision which is still unfolding. As the vision continued as they heard a voice coming from the cloud, and this voice said to them that Jesus is God’s son, God’s chosen; “listen to him!” the voice commanded.
Then as suddenly as the vision began it was over with and they were back in what we would call the “real world.” There was no shining cloud, no Moses, no Elijah. Jesus looked as he always had, and so did the world around Peter, James, and John, but the world has been changed forever. God had acted. God had done a new thing. God was going to redeem this fallen world.
There was the Good News. God’s presence is made known in Jesus. Jesus has a mission to fulfill in Jerusalem. As the Gospel story plays out we will see Jesus fulfill his mission as he is crucified at Jerusalem and in that way he will accomplish the salvation of a fallen humanity.
In the church we are about to change seasons and enter Lent. We are now going to spend a whole season walking with Jesus as he leaves that mountain and journeys to Jerusalem where his mission will be completed. The important thing for us is to remember that what Jesus did when he reached Jerusalem was done for all of us, for all people of all times and all places. It was an act of compassion for all the fallen, broken down, imperfect, rejected, sinful people of the world; in some way or another, it was for every single human being who has ever lived or ever will live. God’s grace and compassion span all time past and present without boundaries, radiating outward from the cross across all eternity and throughout all space because God is a God of all places and all times.
God’s grace and compassion are here today for one and all, you and me and everyone you can possibly think of and more. Let that compassion work for you today. Let your troubles, your failings, your anxieties, your imperfections, yours ills, your sins be taken up into the hands of Jesus, the son of God shining brightly on a mountain top. Let him take you by the hand to transfigure your life as he makes you into a new person with an eternal home in God’s new creation.
Peace be with you.
Also, if you want to begin to learn more about traditional Jewish prayer and how this comes into play in the Gospel stories I recommend for starters Bruce Chilton's book, Rabbi Jesus (Doubleday, 2000). Dr. Chilton talks about it in Jewish terms as "riding the chariot" of God. I sat in a number of Dr. Chilton's seminars at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson in New York while I was at the St. John's-St. Thomas Parish and they were absolutely fascinating, even though I may disagree with a few of his consclusions. Overall, his work is very worth reading. Best of all, Rabbi Jesus is written like a novel and is easily read and you can get it pretty cheap at Amazon.com.
Peace be with you,
Pr. J
2-22-2009, Transfiguration Year B
Salem - Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, TN
Mark 9:2-9
Transfiguration
Reading today’s Gospel reading I was reminded of something that I saw many times back around Syracuse, New York. I don’t know if you see this kind of thing in this area, but it’s what I call "St. Mary of the Bath Tubs." If you have not yet seen St. Mary of the Bath Tubs then you need to get out and take a long drive to New York and look at people’s yards. It won’t be long before you’ll see St. Mary of the Bath Tubs, or something similar, like St. Joseph of the Inner Tubes.
Now this is about people taking statues of saints, usually Mary and Joseph, sometimes St. Francis, or an angel with wings, or even Jesus himself, and erecting a little shrine in their yard or their garden. Back when I lived in North Syracuse it seemed there were a lot of people taking old bath tubs and setting them into the ground in such a way as to form a little shelter, painted white, or turquoise, surrounded with white stones and flowers and, of course, housing the saint’s statue. One day I saw Mary’s statue standing in what was obviously an old bath tub in someone’s front yard and I pointed it out to Leslie and said, “Look, its St. Mary of the Bath Tubs,” and the name stuck. That’s not to put down someone’s spirituality, it just means I make these unusual associations, or perhaps the person who thought of turning a bath tub into a shrine makes unusual associations.
Somehow the Gospel reading reminds me of that kind of thing. And at first glance it might appear that Peter wants to build little shrines to Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, but something more is happening.
In the Gospel story we find that Jesus has gone hiking with his disciples Peter, James, and John, but this is not just a casual hike. There is some reason to believe that the time frame for the Gospel reading is sometime in early to mid-October, eight days after the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It was a time of year for many people to go on a pilgrimage because after Yom Kippur another Jewish holy time began, the Festival of Sukkot, called the Feast of Booths. By tradition, those who kept this festival would not work for the first two days of the feast, but on the 3rd day, eight days after Yom Kippur, work would be allowed for those keeping the festival, & that meant pilgrims could travel. And many did. It appears that among the many who were traveling at that time were Jesus, Peter, James, & John.
They came to a mountain, identified by tradition today as Mt. Hermon in northern Israel. You have to picture this. This is a truly high mountain. The summit is usually snowcapped year-round. From high enough up the slope you can see the Mediterranean Sea. And – even in the time of Jesus, Peter, James, and John, - it was - you might say - special. Even then it was considered holy ground, a sacred place for Jew and Gentile alike. Gentiles built shrines and even temples to the gods of Greece and Rome on the slopes of this mountain; Jewish tradition said that servants of God came and went from heaven on this mountain; and everyone, Jew and Gentile alike claimed that strange things were to be seen on this mountain: the Pharisees taught that angels of God encountered people on and near the mountain, and the Gentiles claimed that, no, it was their gods instead that people saw: Apollo, Mercury, Minerva and others. Either way, if you journeyed up this mountain you expected something unusual; you expected to enter the presence of God.
Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the slopes of Mt. Hermon. Common sense alone says they all expected something. They had to. But what?
Treading the path up the slope they would pass the occasional shrine or memorial to a Greek or Roman deity; it must have looked a little like St. Mary of the Bath Tubs to them. They passed several large temples, all dedicated to gods foreign to them, gods of cold dead stone that they could not serve and honor. On up the slope they went, higher and higher, until they passed the tree line and there was nothing but scrub brush on the slopes. Perhaps they went even further up, the slope now almost barren, the ground rocky and rough, their breath now frozen in the air, the blue Mediterranean Sea now plainly visible in the west, the snow covered peak clear and very close. I have a hunch Jesus took them pretty far up the slope, perhaps close to the top, a barren and deserted place that only the most dauntless - or stubborn - pilgrims would seek out in their desire to get close to God.
There he stopped and said, “This is the place,” a place for them to spend some time in quiet solitude to pray, not as we pray in church today, but in the old way of the Jewish teachers, more like the meditation you might associate with a Buddhist monk rather than the petitions of a pastor leading prayers in the congregation. It was a very ancient, very traditional way for the Jewish teachers to wait for the presence of God to come to them. The same thing is done today in Christianity where the practice is called contemplative prayer. I’ve done that - its really neat, especially when you develop the discipline to do it on a regular basis. You ought to try it sometime; it’s different. That is what Jesus and his disciples were doing on the mountain. We can see them sitting around a camp fire at the end of a long day hiking up the mountain, sun going down on the Mediterranean horizon, frozen breath hanging in the air, and all is quiet. They are focused now, deep in the old traditional form of prayer, waiting for the presence of God. And you know what they say: you always get what you ask for.
This is when the unusual happened.
Sometime during their prayer session, while they were meditating, waiting for the presence of God, it was as if a window into God’s presence was opened up for them. The wording of this story in Matthew, Mark, and Luke together tells us they had a spiritual vision, not to be taken literally because it wasn’t a physical vision seen with physical eyes, but in the Gospel a spiritual reality is still something that is very real.
In this vision the disciples saw Jesus in another way, with a new appearance, one that shouted out loud and clear that Jesus has a connection to God. As the vision unfolded who else did they see but Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus; the two greatest authorities of the Hebrew tradition! Moses who by tradition represented all of the Law, and Elijah, who by tradition represented all of the prophets of the past. In this vision Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are talking about his mission and what he is going to accomplish at Jerusalem.
Now, following in the footsteps of many before him who built nearly two dozen temples on the side of the mountain, Peter decided that this vision was enough for him and perhaps he wanted to build some shrines of his own, what our reading calls dwellings. The Hebrew word was sukkot, and it was time for the festival of Sukkot. In this festival pilgrims would build small huts called sukkot in which to live for up to seven days, a way of remembering the wanderings of the Hebrew people in the wilderness. But here Peter seems to have something else in mind. He seems to want to enshrine Moses, Elijah, and even Jesus! Perhaps. Maybe, as some suggest, it was his way of trying to hold on to the presence of God as long as he could. Or maybe there something more going on, some connection to the festival at hand. (Leviticus 23:40-43) Anyway, this is where I am reminded of St. Mary of the Bath Tubs – I know, an unusual association, but whenever I see one of those Mary shrines in someone’s front yard it makes me think of this Gospel reading.
What if Peter had had a few bath tubs or inner tubes handy? He might have set up his three dwellings right then and there, three homemade shrines to Moses, Elijah, and Jesus – a testimony to the presence of God. But that was not to happen.Peter and the other disciples are still in the midst of this vision which is still unfolding. As the vision continued as they heard a voice coming from the cloud, and this voice said to them that Jesus is God’s son, God’s chosen; “listen to him!” the voice commanded.
Then as suddenly as the vision began it was over with and they were back in what we would call the “real world.” There was no shining cloud, no Moses, no Elijah. Jesus looked as he always had, and so did the world around Peter, James, and John, but the world has been changed forever. God had acted. God had done a new thing. God was going to redeem this fallen world.
There was the Good News. God’s presence is made known in Jesus. Jesus has a mission to fulfill in Jerusalem. As the Gospel story plays out we will see Jesus fulfill his mission as he is crucified at Jerusalem and in that way he will accomplish the salvation of a fallen humanity.
In the church we are about to change seasons and enter Lent. We are now going to spend a whole season walking with Jesus as he leaves that mountain and journeys to Jerusalem where his mission will be completed. The important thing for us is to remember that what Jesus did when he reached Jerusalem was done for all of us, for all people of all times and all places. It was an act of compassion for all the fallen, broken down, imperfect, rejected, sinful people of the world; in some way or another, it was for every single human being who has ever lived or ever will live. God’s grace and compassion span all time past and present without boundaries, radiating outward from the cross across all eternity and throughout all space because God is a God of all places and all times.
God’s grace and compassion are here today for one and all, you and me and everyone you can possibly think of and more. Let that compassion work for you today. Let your troubles, your failings, your anxieties, your imperfections, yours ills, your sins be taken up into the hands of Jesus, the son of God shining brightly on a mountain top. Let him take you by the hand to transfigure your life as he makes you into a new person with an eternal home in God’s new creation.
Peace be with you.
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Year B
OK, I did ad lib a little near the end of this one at Salem, especially about reaching out to the community around us and bringing the community into the church, so this is not exactly what I said, but it is very close. I also thought it was interesting how one person who had been through the kind of CPE that I went through focused on that part of the sermon, which was nothing but a semron illustration.
Here is a link to the texts for the day at Sundays and Seasons: http://members.sundaysandseasons.com/planner_rcl_view.php?event_date_id=952
pax Christi,
Pr. J
2-15-2009, Epiphany 6B
Salem-Luther Memorial - Parrottsville, Tennessee
Mark 1:40-45
no title
Back in the summer of 1989 I was doing a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Baptist Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina. That means my job that summer was to be a hospital chaplain and to sit through endless group sessions while a collection of judgmental rank amateur armchair psychologists, otherwise known as my peer group, tried to psychoanalyze every move and every sneeze I made, as if they didn‘t have their own log in their own eye. And I had a lot of sneezes for them. This is what they used to call “cut throat CPE.” I think it was a very unethical way of weeding out people during the seminary training process, but that‘s another story. Needless to say, I survived, and while the members of my peer group psychoanalyzed one another into oblivion they never did psychoanalyze me so I proudly remain an enigma to this day. Those peer group sessions were probably the hardest part of CPE, a complete waste of time, and I didn‘t learn anything from them.
What was easier, although it did not seem easy at the time, and what was the true learning experience of CPE, was to be out on the floors of the hospital answering calls from patients and staff, sometimes at 3 a.m. , what they used to call the “witching hour.”
I got one such call from a nurse who had a near hysterical patient on her hands, a young man. She would not elaborate on his illness. It took about ten minutes to get to the other side of the hospital. I found the room and there was a sign on the closed door: take necessary precautions, report to the nurses’ station. I went to the nurses’ station and told them who I was and where I was headed. They said I needed to wear a face mask; they weren’t sure, but they thought the guy in the room had AIDS. Back then AIDS was still a new disease. No one knew much about it. They gave me a face mask, “Wear this in the room,” they said. So I put the mask on and went in.
There was a young man in the bed, 22 or 24, scrawny and looking very stressed out, and his girlfriend was pacing the floor. They were obviously scared. That’s what you saw at first glance. A closer look and you could see that this man was covered, absolutely covered in tiny little black pimples, all over his arms, his neck, his face, his hands. The doctors told him he might have AIDS; they really didn’t know, and, in their exemplary bedside manner they told him AIDS was fatal - no cure, and that he should get his affairs in order, and so he was terrified. As he talked it turned out that he was a drug addict, had been shooting heroin and sharing dirty needles, and the doctors thought that was how he had gotten AIDS. They weren’t sure. They were doing tests to see if he had the HIV virus. Meanwhile this man was watching his life pass before his eyes, was acutely aware of every mistake he had ever made, especially getting into drugs. He had never been much for religion, but now he decided it would be a good time to pray. Would God really hear his prayer? He doubted it. I told him otherwise; God isn‘t so cheap. He wanted someone to hold his hands while I said a prayer for him. That meant his girlfriend and me, and he put his black pimple-covered hands out for both of us.
You are the chaplain on duty. Absolutely nothing in your training up to this point has prepared you for this; in fact, this is your training. What would you do? Let’s have your peer group in the pews psychoanalyze you.
This is similar to the situation Jesus faced in the gospel reading. A man said to be a "leper" came to Jesus. To be honest, any skin disorder, any skin disorder at all back then was called leprosy. You could have acne! - and you would be a lepros: one who has leprosy. That could be bad news indeed, and not just from a medical standpoint. Here’s what the Law had to say about that in Leviticus (13:45):
The person with the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He shall live alone, his dwelling place shall be outside the community.
The Law went on to say that the unclean person would be banned from the temple, tradition banned him from the synagogue, and he would have to go through an elaborate and expensive series of rituals just to have authorities civil and religious recognize his healing when he did recover.
Did the man have leprosy as we know it today, or did he have some lesser illness? I tend to think he had something other than genuine leprosy. Modern medical leprosy, Hansen’s Disease, was very rare in Palestine in the first century, but who knows what he really suffered from. What really matters is that he has been banned from the community, he has been marked unclean - not from a medical standpoint at all but entirely from a religious standpoint, his humanity has been stolen from him, and he has been branded by a dysfunctional religion as one who is unacceptable to God simply because of an illness. Indeed, Deuteronomy itself (chapter 28) would go so far as to say that this man has been marked by God as punishment for his sin. And the smug and complacent righteous would point their fingers at him and say, “See the sinner in the hands of an angry God!”
And you didn’t think society could be so cruel, did you?
What does Jesus do? The man has come to him, out of sheer desperation, with nowhere else to turn, cut off from his home, his family, his friends and neighbors, shunned by his own faith community as a sinner under punishment from God, homeless, hungry, perhaps starving now, not able to understand why any of this is happening to him, at his wit’s end. He has come as close as he dare under the Law, he has thrown himself down on his knees to beg Jesus, the Holy One of God who now has a reputation for healing people in Capernaum. “If you choose, you can make me clean!”
What does Jesus do?
Now, if you were a first century Christian, and you were reading this text, or more likely if you were listening to this text read to you in Greek then verse 41 alone would be the kind of verse that would make you catch your breath at several places because it is very dramatic in Greek. Right away you would see that Jesus himself immediately had a gut wrenching emotional reaction to the leper. They make it all sound so holy in our cleaned up English version today: “moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him,…”
Actually, the very first word of verse 41 in the Greek text [splagchnistheis] sounds about as bad as it’s meaning and the basic image it conveys has to do with your stomach sort of lurching about and getting all twisted up and tangled up in knots and cramping and making you bend over in pain, really tough stuff here. A very strong emotional reaction is implied, and that one word has been rendered for us as: “moved with pity,” but a better reading is: “moved with compassion.” Jesus "suffered-with" the man. Jesus had no choice but to feel a deep emotional response to what he was confronted with. That‘s the first place where you would catch your breath as a first century Christian hearing the story.
The next place is where Jesus responds: he stretched out his hand, and you catch your breath again - is he going to do the unthinkable? Is he going to touch the untouchable? Surely not!
And then, our sanitized reading merely says he “touched” the man, but listen to the story like a first century Christian familiar with the ancient words and their nuances and layered meanings and you catch your breath again and maybe even jump in your seat because you see that Jesus not just "touched" the man, but he suddenly grabbed him in a clenching grip as one would apprehend a fleeing criminal, and, at the same time, he said a single, sharp word in the Greek text that means, “I choose!” [thelo].
Then he said another single word that has multiple, layered meanings, “Be clean!” “Be innocent!” “Be pure!” [katharistheti], and it is rendered as a command: this is the way it will be: you will be clean, you will be innocent, you will be pure, now! And so Jesus restored this man’s stolen humanity. And in response the man told everyone what Jesus had done, and the word spread - that’s gossip - and the story grew in the telling, and finally became part of the Gospel, the Good Gossip.
Have you figured out what you would have done for the man in the hospital yet? The clock is ticking and he is waiting for you to take his hand and your peers are waiting to psychoanalyze you no matter what you do.
I had no idea what I was getting into, but I took one hand and his girlfriend took the other hand and I said a prayer for him, and he had a very tight grip. He truly thought he was going to die. But in that moment, which he thought would be one of his last, he knew his humanity had been restored to him by Jesus who had compassion for him.
The test results finally came back. He did not have the HIV virus. He did not have AIDS. He had some other condition connected to his being a drug addict and sharing needles, or that‘s what he said. He would live, and his relief was beyond words. And who knows where he is now and what he’s doing, but at least he knew then that there is a God, and that this God of power and compassion is very much present in his life.
Fr. Timothy Crellin, the priest at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Boston, teaches that from the sense of healing and trust in God’s presence that we find in our lives, we move out to the community – to the world around us where we reach across the barriers of our modern world, putting aside fear and prejudice to reach out with courage and compassion to give a healing touch our sisters and brothers.
We have to be Christ for each other, and not just for each other, but for the stranger, those we do not know, and the community around us. We have to be Christ for the community if we are to be true to our calling as disciples, and we have to let others be Christ for us.
Forgiveness, compassion, and love. It begins in our hearts, in our own lives, where Jesus has stretched out his own hand to touch us, and it moves out to the world around us. Jesus gives us power to do the work. He taught us what we need to know to be his disciples by giving us the example of his own unlimited compassion.
Thanks be to God that Jesus invites us to come forward and to show our true selves, heals us, and sends us out to our sisters and brothers with the power of his compassion.
Peace be with you.
Here is a link to the texts for the day at Sundays and Seasons: http://members.sundaysandseasons.com/planner_rcl_view.php?event_date_id=952
pax Christi,
Pr. J
2-15-2009, Epiphany 6B
Salem-Luther Memorial - Parrottsville, Tennessee
Mark 1:40-45
no title
Back in the summer of 1989 I was doing a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Baptist Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina. That means my job that summer was to be a hospital chaplain and to sit through endless group sessions while a collection of judgmental rank amateur armchair psychologists, otherwise known as my peer group, tried to psychoanalyze every move and every sneeze I made, as if they didn‘t have their own log in their own eye. And I had a lot of sneezes for them. This is what they used to call “cut throat CPE.” I think it was a very unethical way of weeding out people during the seminary training process, but that‘s another story. Needless to say, I survived, and while the members of my peer group psychoanalyzed one another into oblivion they never did psychoanalyze me so I proudly remain an enigma to this day. Those peer group sessions were probably the hardest part of CPE, a complete waste of time, and I didn‘t learn anything from them.
What was easier, although it did not seem easy at the time, and what was the true learning experience of CPE, was to be out on the floors of the hospital answering calls from patients and staff, sometimes at 3 a.m. , what they used to call the “witching hour.”
I got one such call from a nurse who had a near hysterical patient on her hands, a young man. She would not elaborate on his illness. It took about ten minutes to get to the other side of the hospital. I found the room and there was a sign on the closed door: take necessary precautions, report to the nurses’ station. I went to the nurses’ station and told them who I was and where I was headed. They said I needed to wear a face mask; they weren’t sure, but they thought the guy in the room had AIDS. Back then AIDS was still a new disease. No one knew much about it. They gave me a face mask, “Wear this in the room,” they said. So I put the mask on and went in.
There was a young man in the bed, 22 or 24, scrawny and looking very stressed out, and his girlfriend was pacing the floor. They were obviously scared. That’s what you saw at first glance. A closer look and you could see that this man was covered, absolutely covered in tiny little black pimples, all over his arms, his neck, his face, his hands. The doctors told him he might have AIDS; they really didn’t know, and, in their exemplary bedside manner they told him AIDS was fatal - no cure, and that he should get his affairs in order, and so he was terrified. As he talked it turned out that he was a drug addict, had been shooting heroin and sharing dirty needles, and the doctors thought that was how he had gotten AIDS. They weren’t sure. They were doing tests to see if he had the HIV virus. Meanwhile this man was watching his life pass before his eyes, was acutely aware of every mistake he had ever made, especially getting into drugs. He had never been much for religion, but now he decided it would be a good time to pray. Would God really hear his prayer? He doubted it. I told him otherwise; God isn‘t so cheap. He wanted someone to hold his hands while I said a prayer for him. That meant his girlfriend and me, and he put his black pimple-covered hands out for both of us.
You are the chaplain on duty. Absolutely nothing in your training up to this point has prepared you for this; in fact, this is your training. What would you do? Let’s have your peer group in the pews psychoanalyze you.
This is similar to the situation Jesus faced in the gospel reading. A man said to be a "leper" came to Jesus. To be honest, any skin disorder, any skin disorder at all back then was called leprosy. You could have acne! - and you would be a lepros: one who has leprosy. That could be bad news indeed, and not just from a medical standpoint. Here’s what the Law had to say about that in Leviticus (13:45):
The person with the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He shall live alone, his dwelling place shall be outside the community.
The Law went on to say that the unclean person would be banned from the temple, tradition banned him from the synagogue, and he would have to go through an elaborate and expensive series of rituals just to have authorities civil and religious recognize his healing when he did recover.
Did the man have leprosy as we know it today, or did he have some lesser illness? I tend to think he had something other than genuine leprosy. Modern medical leprosy, Hansen’s Disease, was very rare in Palestine in the first century, but who knows what he really suffered from. What really matters is that he has been banned from the community, he has been marked unclean - not from a medical standpoint at all but entirely from a religious standpoint, his humanity has been stolen from him, and he has been branded by a dysfunctional religion as one who is unacceptable to God simply because of an illness. Indeed, Deuteronomy itself (chapter 28) would go so far as to say that this man has been marked by God as punishment for his sin. And the smug and complacent righteous would point their fingers at him and say, “See the sinner in the hands of an angry God!”
And you didn’t think society could be so cruel, did you?
What does Jesus do? The man has come to him, out of sheer desperation, with nowhere else to turn, cut off from his home, his family, his friends and neighbors, shunned by his own faith community as a sinner under punishment from God, homeless, hungry, perhaps starving now, not able to understand why any of this is happening to him, at his wit’s end. He has come as close as he dare under the Law, he has thrown himself down on his knees to beg Jesus, the Holy One of God who now has a reputation for healing people in Capernaum. “If you choose, you can make me clean!”
What does Jesus do?
Now, if you were a first century Christian, and you were reading this text, or more likely if you were listening to this text read to you in Greek then verse 41 alone would be the kind of verse that would make you catch your breath at several places because it is very dramatic in Greek. Right away you would see that Jesus himself immediately had a gut wrenching emotional reaction to the leper. They make it all sound so holy in our cleaned up English version today: “moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him,…”
Actually, the very first word of verse 41 in the Greek text [splagchnistheis] sounds about as bad as it’s meaning and the basic image it conveys has to do with your stomach sort of lurching about and getting all twisted up and tangled up in knots and cramping and making you bend over in pain, really tough stuff here. A very strong emotional reaction is implied, and that one word has been rendered for us as: “moved with pity,” but a better reading is: “moved with compassion.” Jesus "suffered-with" the man. Jesus had no choice but to feel a deep emotional response to what he was confronted with. That‘s the first place where you would catch your breath as a first century Christian hearing the story.
The next place is where Jesus responds: he stretched out his hand, and you catch your breath again - is he going to do the unthinkable? Is he going to touch the untouchable? Surely not!
And then, our sanitized reading merely says he “touched” the man, but listen to the story like a first century Christian familiar with the ancient words and their nuances and layered meanings and you catch your breath again and maybe even jump in your seat because you see that Jesus not just "touched" the man, but he suddenly grabbed him in a clenching grip as one would apprehend a fleeing criminal, and, at the same time, he said a single, sharp word in the Greek text that means, “I choose!” [thelo].
Then he said another single word that has multiple, layered meanings, “Be clean!” “Be innocent!” “Be pure!” [katharistheti], and it is rendered as a command: this is the way it will be: you will be clean, you will be innocent, you will be pure, now! And so Jesus restored this man’s stolen humanity. And in response the man told everyone what Jesus had done, and the word spread - that’s gossip - and the story grew in the telling, and finally became part of the Gospel, the Good Gossip.
Have you figured out what you would have done for the man in the hospital yet? The clock is ticking and he is waiting for you to take his hand and your peers are waiting to psychoanalyze you no matter what you do.
I had no idea what I was getting into, but I took one hand and his girlfriend took the other hand and I said a prayer for him, and he had a very tight grip. He truly thought he was going to die. But in that moment, which he thought would be one of his last, he knew his humanity had been restored to him by Jesus who had compassion for him.
The test results finally came back. He did not have the HIV virus. He did not have AIDS. He had some other condition connected to his being a drug addict and sharing needles, or that‘s what he said. He would live, and his relief was beyond words. And who knows where he is now and what he’s doing, but at least he knew then that there is a God, and that this God of power and compassion is very much present in his life.
Fr. Timothy Crellin, the priest at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Boston, teaches that from the sense of healing and trust in God’s presence that we find in our lives, we move out to the community – to the world around us where we reach across the barriers of our modern world, putting aside fear and prejudice to reach out with courage and compassion to give a healing touch our sisters and brothers.
We have to be Christ for each other, and not just for each other, but for the stranger, those we do not know, and the community around us. We have to be Christ for the community if we are to be true to our calling as disciples, and we have to let others be Christ for us.
Forgiveness, compassion, and love. It begins in our hearts, in our own lives, where Jesus has stretched out his own hand to touch us, and it moves out to the world around us. Jesus gives us power to do the work. He taught us what we need to know to be his disciples by giving us the example of his own unlimited compassion.
Thanks be to God that Jesus invites us to come forward and to show our true selves, heals us, and sends us out to our sisters and brothers with the power of his compassion.
Peace be with you.
A little more on Capernaum and the house...
For those who may want to learn more about Capernaum and its early Christian house church here's a few tidbits to launch you off on your own voyages of discovery.
You can find a really good website about Kaphar Nahum and the house that may have been the one mentioned in Mark here. This was the first site I found about Capernaum a few years back and it remains one of the best: http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/sites/TScpmenu.html.
There are many (MANY) other websites dealing with Capernaum and the house, far too many to list here, and probably many that are a little lacking in the quality department. You might try looking at these sites:
http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/house-of-peter-at-capernaum-faq.htm
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2000/3/Capernaum-%20The%20Church%20of%20the%20House%20of%20Peter
http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/capernaum.htmlhttp://www.ffhl.org/2006/Capernaum.asp
http://www.facingthechallenge.org/peter.php
I distinctly remember reading in a newspaper article years ago before I started seminary (like the early 1980's or late 1970's) about the Franciscan excavation at Capernaum and how graffitti on some part of the house contained words that we know today as part of the Kyrie: "Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy." Of course, I didn't save that article after all this time and the best references I can come up with on the internet at short notice merely acknowledge that graffitti in Aramaic, Syriac, Latin, and Greek references "Jesus," "Peter," "Christ," and "Lord." So if anyone comes across an actual reference to the "kyrie-like" lines, let me know. I also understand there is now some dispute among the scholars as to the actual reading of some of the graffitti. I also find the reference to 1st century fish hooks in the house to be somewhat interesting (Early Christian symbols of the faith? Long forgotten tools of the trade left behind by a historical Simon Peter? Both?)May you keep thinking, keep asking questions, keep searching, and keep using your historical and spiritual imagination.
Pr. J
You can find a really good website about Kaphar Nahum and the house that may have been the one mentioned in Mark here. This was the first site I found about Capernaum a few years back and it remains one of the best: http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/sites/TScpmenu.html.
There are many (MANY) other websites dealing with Capernaum and the house, far too many to list here, and probably many that are a little lacking in the quality department. You might try looking at these sites:
http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/house-of-peter-at-capernaum-faq.htm
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2000/3/Capernaum-%20The%20Church%20of%20the%20House%20of%20Peter
http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/capernaum.htmlhttp://www.ffhl.org/2006/Capernaum.asp
http://www.facingthechallenge.org/peter.php
I distinctly remember reading in a newspaper article years ago before I started seminary (like the early 1980's or late 1970's) about the Franciscan excavation at Capernaum and how graffitti on some part of the house contained words that we know today as part of the Kyrie: "Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy." Of course, I didn't save that article after all this time and the best references I can come up with on the internet at short notice merely acknowledge that graffitti in Aramaic, Syriac, Latin, and Greek references "Jesus," "Peter," "Christ," and "Lord." So if anyone comes across an actual reference to the "kyrie-like" lines, let me know. I also understand there is now some dispute among the scholars as to the actual reading of some of the graffitti. I also find the reference to 1st century fish hooks in the house to be somewhat interesting (Early Christian symbols of the faith? Long forgotten tools of the trade left behind by a historical Simon Peter? Both?)May you keep thinking, keep asking questions, keep searching, and keep using your historical and spiritual imagination.
Pr. J
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