Word

Christ Church, St. Joseph, 27 January 2013

One of the advantages of having a teenager in the house is that they help you stay up on what’s current in slang. (Maybe that’s an advantage. Maybe not, depending on what new words you get to learn!)

A few years ago, my son, who is now 22, took to answering certain questions by saying, simply, “Word.”

For example, I might say, “Son, would you empty the garbage can in the kitchen?” And he would answer, “Word.”

Some times that would result in the garbage can getting emptied… and sometimes not! So one day I asked him what it meant, and he explained that in today’s slang, “word” means “yes.”

I rather like that. As a person who cares about words and thinks words matter a great deal, I like that “word” means “yes.” It implies a connection between words and action.

Of course, the connection between my son saying he’ll take out the garbage and my son actually taking out the garbage could never be taken for granted! But that’s about teenagers, not about words and action.

Jesus shows us the proper relationship between words and action. But I’m getting ahead of the story. 

Ezra Reads the Book of the Law, by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld

Let’s begin with today’s lesson from the Hebrew Scripture. Two things move me every time I hear this story from Nehemiah (8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10, NRSV).

The first is that the Israelites were moved to tears when they were reunited with God’s Holy Word. For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law, Nehemiah tells us.

It is not clear historically whether the scrolls actually got lost for a time, or if they were simply neglected for a time. We do know that when Nehemiah became governor, he led the people back to God. The scrolls were brought out to be read publicly by the chief priest from a stage built for that purpose.

And the people were so moved they wept. Nehemiah and the priest and the teachers had to tell the people: Do not weep! Go, eat, drink and share with the poor, for this is a day of joy.

Today’s Psalm is a continuation of that theme: Being in touch with God’s word, knowing and hearing and sharing God’s word revives the soul, gives wisdom to the innocent and light to the eyes, and is cause for rejoicing, the psalmist says.

The second thing I love about this story is that it makes clear that Holy Scripture must be interpreted. So they read from the book, says Nehemiah, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. 

Now, I fully realize that this business of interpretation is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, knowing that making sense of scripture is an act of interpretation is liberating.

It is liberating because it enables us to learn and grow and listen to the Holy Spirit and change our minds about what it means. For example, we all know that at one time, Holy Scripture was used to justify slavery!

We all know that at one time Holy Scripture was used to silence women and to prohibit them from exercising spiritual leadership in the church! Thank goodness, we have left those interpretations far behind!

On the other hand, we also know that nothing has caused more dissension within the church, nothing has been more likely to divide God’s one, holy, catholic and apostolic church into warring factions than different interpretations of Holy Scripture. At their worst, disagreements over the meaning of God’s word have caused blood to be shed.

But at their best, disagreements in interpretation also cause us to engage each other in dialogue and to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, arguing over the meaning of God’s word is a fine, long tradition of the church, going all the way back to Peter and Paul, who seriously disagreed on what Gentiles had to do to become followers of Christ!

It took several hundred years after the death and resurrection of Christ for the church to hash out differences and disagreements, and draft the creeds that we take for granted today. And the process continues because the world continuously hands us new problems and issue and situations, and we must decide how to anchor our responses in our growing and sometimes changing understanding of God’s Holy Word.

Here’s where Paul’s “one body” metaphor is so very helpful. The parts of the body are profoundly different in appearance and function, yet each belongs equally to the body.

If we can but remember that we are all part of one body, then contending interpretations need not pull us apart. They become part of our ongoing conversation with God and each other through God’s Word and the Holy Spirit.

Now comes today’s Gospel story (Luke 4:14-21, NRSV). Jesus has been baptized, and he has been in the wilderness 40 days. He returns to Galilee, Luke tells us, filled with the power of the Spirit and begins to teach in the synagogues.

Jesus Reading from the Prophet Isaiah, by Greg Olson

When he gets to his hometown Nazareth, he goes to the synagogue as usual. And what does he do there? He stands to read Holy Scripture and is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

Then, Luke tells us, Jesus unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written… That suggests to me that Jesus wasn’t just following a lectionary as we do today. Rather, he was choosing the passage he wanted to teach on that very special day in his hometown near the beginning of his ministry.

And what is the passage? It is one of several passages in Isaiah we identify as “the servant passages.” So Jesus reads it, and then he interprets it. He makes himself the interpretation of it! 

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, he says. And we know from the remainder of the Gospel according to Luke, he not only teaches it, he lives it.

In that moment, Jesus embraces servant ministry. He takes the identity of The Servant from Holy Scripture and declares it to be his own. And he lives out the calling of servanthood: ministry to the poor, the sick, the prisoner, the stranger. In Jesus, word and action are one. 

So... how will this scripture be fulfilled in our time? By Christ’s body in the world—those who not only claim him in words but follow him in servant ministry.

And that would be us.

AMEN

Show Forth!

Christ Church, St. Joseph, 6 January 2013

 

Here’s a startling thought: If it weren’t for today, Christmas might mean nothing to us!

  

Today is The Epiphany. We have all heard many times that “epiphany” means “to show forth” or “to bring to light” or “to manifest.”

Being a visual thinker myself, I just imagine what we all have seen in hundreds of cartoons: a light bulb going on over someone’s head!

As a teacher, I frequently scan the faces of the students in my classes, looking for that telltale dawning, the expression that says, “Aha, I get that!”

I can assure you it does not happen nearly often enough! But every so often—just often enough to keep a teacher going—the light dawns on a heretofore blank face, and the teacher silently rejoices.

Today, the light bulb going on over our heads is an important step in our journey from the manger to a more grown-up understanding of Incarnation.

The Wise Men from the East by James McConnell

In Matthew’s Gospel (2:1-12, NRSV), that more grown-up understanding is represented by the wise men from the east who show up in Nazareth to worship the baby Jesus and give him gifts.

Tradition has it.., and this is important because we actually know very little about this event from an historical point of view! So, tradition has it that one of these gentlemen was Asian, one African and one Caucasian, and that is how they are depicted in countless artistic representations of the story.

All Matthew tells us is that they were gentiles from “the East,” a general reference to all those mysterious, far off lands and peoples known primarily to Jews like Matthew as “not Jews.”  And that of course is central to their importance to us.

Those of you who follow the Daily Office know that just three days ago was the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. That’s the day, eight days after birth, that Jesus was taken to the temple to be circumcised and named… according to Jewish faith and custom.

In other words, the Feast of the Holy Name is a celebration of Jesus’ Jewishness. We Christians have a strong tendency to want to forget that Jesus was born, lived and died a devout Jew, never once giving any indication he intended to or thought he was starting a new religion.

Thankfully, Matthew, and only Matthew, for this story does not appear in the other Gospels. Thankfully Matthew tells us with this story that Jesus is for us, too. And not just for us, but for all the peoples of the world, and equally so.

We tend to think the concept of “diversity” was invented in the 20^th Century as a tool of “political correctness.” We would be wrong. Matthew and early Christians who interpreted these stories about Jesus were there way ahead of us.

Here’s another slightly shocking thing about this story. These guys probably weren’t kings at all. Matthew calls them “wise men,” which might translate better to “nerd” than “king”!We also call them "Magi," and that word comes from "magician."

We know they were people who believed that the positions and alignments of stars and planets at the moment of a person’s birth were important indicators of who that person was and how they mattered. Today we call such people astrologers and they write horoscopes for mass media!

Of course, today we also have astronomers—the academic and scientific descendents of the wise men. But the distinction between astrology and astronomy is pretty much a modern invention. Two thousand years ago, they were largely indistinguishable.

My point is that the meaning of this story, as with many of the Biblical stories is..., well, it’s the meanings given them by humans struggling to express and explain the experience of God and the miracle that God cares for us and came to live and die among us.

And so we have the wise men bringing gifts to the Christ child, the very gifts we receive from God in the first place: the gold of love, the incense of adoration, the myrrh of pain and suffering. That’s Incarnation.

Here’s how one 13^th Century poet explained it, speaking from God’s point of view:

 

Behold, I give thee gold, that is to say My Divine Love;

frankincense, that is all My holiness and devotion;
finally myrrh, which is the bitterness of My Passion.
I give them to thee to such an extent
that thou mayest offer them as gifts to Me,
as if they were thine own property.

(Mechthild von Hackeborn, 1241-1299; The Book of Special Grace, Part 1 Chapter 8)
(From Edge of the Enclosure, online, 5 January 2013)

So… how do we today “show forth” what was first shown to us in a humble dwelling in Nazareth so long ago?

We are given the same gifts today: God’s love, God’s steadfast devotion and righteousness, indeed God’s suffering for our sake. We are given these gifts so that we have something to give--both back to God and, as Jesus put it, to our neighbors as ourselves.

AMEN

                     

Incarnation: "The Word"

From a blogsite of Loyola School of Theology

St. Alban's Episcopal Church, 12 December 2012     

So there we were, just a few hours ago, kneeling at the manger, falling in love all over again with Baby Jesus. Babies grab our hearts. The least maternal among us cannot resist offering a finger for a tiny hand to grasp.

Then along comes the Gospel according to St. John. Every Christmas Day, we read this poetic and compelling yet mysterious prologue to John’s account of Jesus the Christ. It refers to “light,” which we associate with Christmas, but we’re less sure about ”the Word” and its connection to anything.

Where, we might be tempted to ask, is the babe? Where is Mary, the blessed mother, Joseph, the faithful father? The shepherds? Why can’t we just stay at the manger and play with the baby for awhile?!

Here’s a Gospel trivia question for you: Where and how does Jesus the human first appear in the Gospel according to John? In verse 29 of Chapter 1, as a 30-year-old man, when he comes to the river Jordan to be baptized!

John is the only gospel writer who does not tell the story of the babe in the manger.

In John’s interpretation of Christmas, the babe in the manger is “the Word” that not only was with God, but was God, “the Word” spoken in an act of self-communication. He echoes the creation story, and tells us again that God exists outside of time, and that light and life itself are from God.

We readily identify with a human baby. Not so much with an abstract concept.

John reminds us that we can know God only as God comes to us in self-revelation. Nothing we can do—not our most noble aspirations, not our most pious devotions, nor our most dedicated acts of service—can earn or precipitate such an event. Christmas is a celebration of God’s gracious act of coming to us.

But we need John’s account to also remind us that the babe in the manger was rejected. He tells us that The Word came to a world that should have known him, and to people who understood themselves as “chosen,” yet he was rejected.

The remainder of John’s account is story after story of debates and disagreements between Jesus and the religious people of his day, their ultimate rejection of him, and the price he paid, not only for them but for all humankind.

 Of course, some did accept him and we are their descendants and the heirs of their faithfulness. But they aren’t the company we quite expect to find ourselves in: fishermen, a tax collector, a Samaritan woman with a checkered past.

Part of what got Jesus into trouble with the religious authorities of his day was that he just wouldn’t hang out with the “right” crowd. What a motley crew they were!

And what an unlikely community to be called into being to change the world. But they did!

This tells us much about God and God’s intentions: If the apparent division between Creator and creature can be overcome, if a community to change the world can be forged from such a motley crew, then all other divisions and prejudices can be overcome as well.

Certainly it still often seems that God is far away and uninvolved. We have only to listen to the news of wars and violence at home and abroad. We have only to visit the Refuge of Hope or the food bank or walk the streets of our cities to see more than enough human need and misery. And we often feel powerless.

But if we accept in faith that God has seen fit to materialize in human flesh and form, then we can begin to see that we live in a universe of possibility we can hardly imagine.

I learned recently via Twitter that a journalist I follow by the name of Ann Curry started a movement called “26 acts of kindness.” It is people all over the country who are responding to the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut by going around doing all kinds of wonderful things in the names of the victims.

Here’s a few I’ve seen in my Twitter feed:
-giving a toddler whose dad had no cash a ride on the carousel at the mall
-paying for an elderly person’s groceries
-buying $26 gift cards at Target and giving them to the cashier to use as needed
-putting flowers and a thank you note under the windshield wipers of a city maintenance worker’s truck

My favorite is the woman who tweeted that she’d done her 26 acts of kindness but couldn’t stop. Suddenly, she saw human need and something she could do about it like she never had before.

Please understand I’m not suggesting that “26 acts of kindness” is the underlying “reason” that Sandy Hook happened, or that any good that comes out of that event in any way justifies the tragedy.

I’m also not suggesting that the people doing the acts are Christians. I don’t know if they are. They might just as well be Muslims or Jews or Buddhists or nothing for all I know!

I am saying that God comes into this world, over and over again, through human acts of love and kindness and reconciliation.

Here’s how one of my spiritual mentors, Fr. Richard Rohr, explains it: In Jesus, God achieved the perfect synthesis of the divine and the human. The incarnation demonstrates that God meets us where we are as humans. God freely and fully overcomes the gap from God’s side. …For the Christian, spiritual power is always hidden inside of powerlessness, just as God was hidden and yet revealed in a defenseless baby. 

May we this Christmas Day begin to see how we as people of the Word can be God’s healing and reconciling self in the world.

Amen.

Choose Joy

St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Monroe, La., 16 December 2012

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.

That’s the collect we prayed just a few minutes ago, the one we pray every third Sunday of Advent. It goes with the lighting of the third candle of the Advent wreath, the pink candle of joy.               

And that makes perfect sense, because what could bring greater joy to the hearts and minds of God’s people than the expectation that God will once again be stirred by our plea and with great might come among us?

The early part of this week—after turning in my grades in the nick of time Monday—I spent many of my spare moments thinking about what I might say about that today.

I thought of the great joys of this season, the anticipation of children of all ages, the eagerness with which we look forward to not only gifts under a tree and a feast with our families, but the moments sharing familiar carols and kneeling at a manager gazing in wide-eyed wonder at God become flesh to dwell among us.

And then came Friday, and the cruel and senseless deaths of 20 mere babes and a number of adults in Newtown, Connecticut.

How can we light the candle of joy when our hearts are broken?

How can we sing—at all, much less “Joy to the World”—when the worlds of so many have been dealt a blow that will color every remaining moment of their lives?

How can we pray and believe that God has and does and will always come among us with great might when we continue to be so sorely hindered by the evil and tragedy that is so a part of the human condition?

I have just two responses that make sense to me this sad morning.

The first is that joy is something we choose, even when we do not feel joyful.

In other words, we tend to think of joy as only an emotion, something we must feel. And we do feel joyful when things in our lives go well, when our children make good grades or graduate from college. When our work is appreciated. When sick people get well. When the love we feel toward another is returned in kind. When the world makes sense.

But when things do not go our way, when our love is rejected, when good people suffer… and most of all when those we love are snatched from us and this life in the most senseless ways, then frustration, sadness, and deep grief drive the joy from our lives. We are bereft. We cannot imagine ever feeling joyful again.

Yet even then, we can choose joy. Especially then, joy is a choice we make in faith. As children of the living, Incarnate God, we go to the graves of our dreams and plans and exalted expectations, even to the graves of family and friends, and ultimately to our own grave, saying, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

The second response that makes sense to me this morning is to claim for our own what John the Baptizer offers to those who had gathered to hear him preach so long ago (Luke 3:7-18, NRSV). What should we do? they ask.

Now the context of today’s Gospel story is somewhat different from our own. John has been doing what John did so well, namely preaching hellfire and brimstone. Indeed, he has just called at least some of his listener’s a brood of vipers!

Those remarks were most likely directed at the religious leadership of the day, who did not take kindly to crudely dressed prophets drawing ordinary folks away from official religion, telling them the good news of salvation at hand and baptizing them in a river on the edge of the wilderness. John was clearly a threat to their power and influence.

But as is often the case, the ordinary folk, the ones with the least power and influence, are the ones who take John’s message most to heart. To them, calamity was at hand. And so they ask John, What should we do?

And John gives them simple, gentle instructions about how to live as those who have accepted God’s love and mercy, as those who have chosen joy in faith that God is with us.

Give your second coat to one who has none, says John. Share your food with those who are hungry. Don’t cheat. Don’t bully. Care for one another as God cares for you.

These are the same instructions Jesus the Christ gave us over and over: Welcome the stranger, visit the prisoner, love your enemy. And today, especially in light of Friday’s calamity, find someone who grieves and be with them in their grief.

We cannot all rush off to Connecticut, or to the many places worldwide where violence and suffering abound. But we can reach out in love and kindness to those who suffer in our very own community. It is how we express the joy we have chosen in faith, even when our hearts are heavy.

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.

AMEN

    

Who am I in this story?

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 9 September 2012                      
                                                                 

Who are you in this story?                                   

I mean the one about Jesus and the Syrophenician woman, the one he calls a dog.

Of course, it would be easier to skip right over that and go to the much lovelier story of healing a deaf-mute and being very modest about it. We admire that. But… we’re not going there just yet. Jesus’ obnoxious behavior has something to teach us.

You see, I don’t think there’s any way to gloss over what Jesus does in this story. In fact, in the context of his time, what he said was even harsher than it would be today.

Today we love our pets. Our dogs are part of the family. We pamper them with treats and toys. We are, perhaps, more willing to spend money on pet health care than in taxes to provide health care to poor people.

The American Pets Products Association estimates that U.S. Americans will spend $52.87 billion on their pets this year!

Source: Supply and Demand

 But in Jesus’ time, dogs were not pets. They were scavengers, as the woman in our story well knows and rightly states. Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs, she says (Mark 7:24-37, NRSV).

While in the Dominican Republic in the spring of 2010, I and several other deacons from our group went for a walk to the seashore one evening. And while standing there enjoying an evening breeze, we watched a scrawny, mangy dog root through an overturned trashcan and hungrily consume every scrap of garbage that turned up.

It was sickening. But in a subsistence economy, as in Jesus’ time and in poor countries today, it is not uncommon.

Jesus calls the woman a dog and it was more scandalous then than it is now.

We are followers of Jesus. We seek to emulate him. We try to live our lives after his model. When we have a difficult decision to make, we might well ask ourselves, What would Jesus do?

Of course we know that Jesus understood his ministry to be to the Jews. But if you identify with Jesus in this story, you have to own his narrow-mindedness. His lack of empathy. His self-righteousness. His rather contemptuous treatment of the Gentile woman.

Or, perhaps you identify with the woman in the story? She was desperate! She certainly would have known the social class system of her day. She had no business pursuing a Jewish man into a Jewish home seeking his help. She had absolutely no rights in that situation and no reasonable expectation that this Jewish rabbi with healing powers, whom she had heard about, would give her the time of day, much less help her.

But she was desperate… not for something for herself, but for healing for her tormented child. If you identify with the woman in the story, you must own her desperation, her willingness to throw herself on the mercy of a stranger, and even her immediate acceptance of his humiliating treatment of her.

She does not resist. She claims no rights and expresses no anger. She says not a word about unfairness. Rather, devoid of ego and with humility she accepts her lowly state and asks again for mercy.

So… who are you in this story? The teacher and healer so sought after by the crowds that his popularity has gone to his head? Or the powerless woman under the table groveling for the scraps of his favor? Not a pretty choice, if you ask me!

But then something quite miraculous happens. The proud young man actually hears, sees and learns something… from precisely the poor, low-class woman he has been looking down on.

See, Jesus was not born knowing all he needed to know about God’s plan for the world. He was, after all, fully human. A wise, deeply spiritual human, our Scriptures tell us, but nevertheless, fully human. Therefore, he had things to learn, as all human do.

He knew he had been called to bring the Good News of God’s liberating love and grace to the Jewish people. This is not the only passage in the Gospels that reveals his awareness of that.

As a devout Jew, which Jesus was his entire life, the rules regarding his interaction with this woman were very strict. He could not touch her. He should not even be interacting with her. She was an obstacle preventing him from being about the work he knew he was called to do.

Yet, he was Jesus, who taught and modeled God’s love, compassion and mercy. Thus when the Gentile woman humbly accepts the lowly status he has conferred upon her but with a touch of chutzpah asks for the very scraps he has said is all she deserves, Jesus himself is touched and transformed.

It is as if Jesus himself sees the wideness of God’s grace and mercy for the first time.

As if Jesus realizes that the Good News is not only for the Jews, but for all people.

As if he understands that God loved the world, as his disciple John would write after his death, not merely the Jewish people.

Author Heidi Husted wrote about Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman in an article published in Christian Century. She said this:

The day the gospel went to the dogs was the day it came to us. We are some of the “dogs” who have received the good news of the gospel! When Jesus opened himself up to mission to the whole world, he opened his church to the world. Now we are to open ourselves to the whole world in mission.

When was the last time you allowed yourself to be transformed by one of the people of the world to whom you are called to minister?

What have you learned about the width and depth of God’s grace and mercy from one who is poor? Lower class? An immigrant? Someone who does not live the way we good Christian folks live and think others should live?

May God bless us all—as He did Jesus—with the gift of a transforming encounter with precisely the person we are most likely to view with disdain.

AMEN

 

Bread

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 12 August 2012

A couple of years ago, I spent 10 days traveling about Europe. Since returning home, I have more than once stood in the bread section of the supermarket thinking, “We U.S. Americans have a great deal to learn from the Europeans about the production of bread!”

Bread in my Spanish Mother's cupboard.*

In Europe, bread is fresh each and every morning, and often still warm when it gets to your table. It comes in a variety of rolls and buns and small loaves, crusty on the outside, soft on the inside, brimming with aroma and flavor. I hardly noticed that, in Europe, bread is often served without butter. It’s so good it doesn’t need butter.

It is no coincidence that bread figures prominently throughout the Bible whenever God has a lesson for humankind. Thus when Jesus taught us to pray for “our daily bread,” he was also teaching us to ask for messages and lessons from God.

The prophet Elijah has had to flee from the death threats of Jezebel ( I Kings 19:4-8, 9-15, NRSV), wife of Ahab, King of Israel. He is discouraged; he believes himself to be a failure. And so he sits under a tree and asks to die.

But God has other plans. He provides food for Elijah, food so nutritious that it sustains Elijah on his long trek back into the wilderness to Horeb, the mountain of God. There was something special about that food, which is called “cake” in this passage, but must have been rather bread-like to have been baked on hot stones.

From the continuation of Elijah’s story, we know that he encounters God on Mount Horeb, just as Moses had before him. It is no coincidence that Elijah’s story reminds us of “manna,” the bread from heaven God provided to the Israelites on their original trek through the wilderness.

Bread from God seems always to have more than one purpose. It is first, of course, to ensure the physical survival of God’s people—the Israelites on their exodus journey, Elijah on his pilgrimage back to the mountain of God.

But bread from God also has spiritual purposes. It reminds us of our dependence on the bounty of the earth for our human existence. Although we indeed must cultivate and plant and reap, we had nothing to do with creating this fertile planet and we cannot control the weather that makes harvest possible and fruitful. Surely I’m not the only one awestruck by the differences between our planet home and the barren surface of Mars, as revealed to us this past week by Curiosity.

Elijah had apparently lost faith in God’s purpose for his life, so he sulked under the tree and—rather melodramatically—wished to die because his prophetic word had indeed raised the ire of those at whom it was directed.

You have heard, “No good deed will go unpunished!” but apparently Elijah had not heard it!

Today’s psalmist seems to have understood that the connection between God and daily bread has meaning beyond physical survival. Taste and see that the Lord is good, he writes, happy are they who trust in him (Psalm 34:8, NRSV). We and Elijah are reminded that bread from God has larger meaning.

What, then, should we make of today’s Gospel reading? In the context of a long history of bread given, received and celebrated as a sign of God’s grace and faithful care, what are we to make of the complaining that breaks out when Jesus claims to be living bread from heaven (John 6:35, 41-51, NRSV)?

And not only do the good church people of that day complain, but they also attempt to discredit Jesus! Notice that they do not complain that he claims to be bread. That metaphor apparently does not give them a moment’s pause.

Rather, they complain because he claims to have come down from heaven. Here’s where the story begins to sound like a family reunion to me, with all the aunts and uncles sitting around gossiping and weighing the merits of people not present by identifying what family they come from.

You have heard these kinds of conversations! “Oh, well, you know, she’s from the Such & Such family,” or “His father is so and so,” “his brother did thus and such,” as if that’s all you need to know about a person to judge him or her.

So here’s my question: Had we been among those listening to Jesus proclaim he was the Bread of Life come down from heaven, how might we have responded?

Complaining is certainly alive and well. When someone else’s version of reality does not line up with our own, we assume it cannot be true. When we do not like something we hear, we belittle it and attempt to discredit the speaker.

We hear this from talk show hosts, as well as from people who call in to voice their opinions, often on things about which they know little and often in ways that label all other points of view as unworthy before they have even been expressed. We hear it at parties and family reunions, in offices and at church.

Jesus said lots of things that did not sit well with the good church people of his day.., and still don’t. Complaining and discrediting are alive and well, in our churches as well as in our politics and throughout everyday life.

Try to tell those who operate on a “teach them a lesson” mentality about turning the other cheek and see how far you get. Bring up what Jesus said about violence in a discussion of, say, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you might be accused of being un-American.

Dare to mention what Jesus said about taking care of the poor when the discussion turns to welfare, or point out that he healed everyone who asked without question in a discussion of health care, and you will be tagged a socialist.

What Jesus taught 2000 years ago is as unpopular today as it was then, even among those who claim to follow him.

Anyone who participates in social media knows that posting pithy quotes is a really popular way to fill up all of that online space and appear to have a lot to say to all of your friends and followers. I scroll over most of them pretty quickly, but recently I saw one that seemed sadly right on. It went something like this: “People will be mean, but nobody’s meaner than the person being mean for Jesus.”

We are about to share in the Eucharistic bread, and we are quite clear that we do it not to satisfy physical hunger but because of its larger meaning. But what do we think it means?

Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, In Holy Communion we have Christ under the appearance of bread. In our work we find him under the appearance of flesh and blood. It is the same Christ.

Jesus said he was living bread, given for the life of the world. And if we look at his ministry along with his teachings, we know that the bread of life lives, not only within us, but within the least desired and least loved of humanity. This is Christ’s true presence.

AMEN

*I took this photo in the summer of 1979 when I was an exchange student in Spain and lived with a Spanish woman. My more recent travel in Central Europe was in the summer of 2009.

Plumb Line of Love

 Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 15 July 2012

When I was a kid, family vacations consisted of the occasional drive from Iowa to Ohio to visit my father’s family. That was before Interstate 80 had been built, and so the journey included passing through Chicago.

My father was always looking for educational opportunities for his children, and so we typically spent a day on the way to Ohio at one or more of Chicago’s amazing museums. It was at the Museum of Science & Industry that we encountered the giant Foucault pendulum, swinging ever so softly and silently, from a domed ceiling high over our heads.

A Foucault pendulum is, of course, a plumb line. It's a weight on a string that obeys the law of gravity by hanging straight down—regardless of what you hang it from. The one in Chicago, as I recall, is a huge brass plumb bob shaped like a child’s top, suspended from the center of the dome on a cable. And it moves because the earth moves!

Foucault's pendulum at the Panthéon, Paris.

In other words, the plumb line must obey the laws of gravity and always hang straight down. But because the earth is not a perfect sphere, and because it moves—rotating on its axis as it traces its trajectory around the sun—the ceiling of that building is also moving, and the plumb bob must constantly adjust it’s position in order to obey the law of gravity and hang straight down.

And so the pendulum gently swings, translating the earth’s movement into a highly regular, beautifully precise pattern of movement—on a scale that the human eye can actually see.

In other words, we know this planet we call home is, in fact, spinning and hurtling through space at an alarming speed. Yet we detect none of that. It is beyond the capacity of our human senses, our human perspective, our human experience.

But the giant plumb line brings it down to earth. A Foucault pendulum scales it down, transforms it, so that we mere mortals can in fact experience, perceive, see… the very rotation of the earth itself. 

How much of that did I understand as a child, standing in that museum looking at a Foucault pendulum? I don’t know. Probably not much. But I do remember awe and wonderment.

And, in striking contrast to today’s story from the Hebrew Scripture, I remember it as a reassuring experience rather than a threatening one, a peak at the music of the universe, if you will.

Of course, a plumb line is a builder’s tool for keeping walls vertical, such that the outcome of building is beautiful and functional. But a plumb line is also a kind of discipline that reveals quickly anything with a tendency to be crooked. And discipline appears to be on God’s mind in this conversation with Amos (7:7-17, NRSV).

Building a wall with a plumb line.

 ‘Look, I am not going to continue to look the other way,’ God says. ‘In fact, I’m going to put myself right there in the midst of my people Israel. I’m going to be a plumb line showing how crooked they really are. And, by the way, their crookedness is going to get them into all kinds of trouble. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.’

So.., how do we reconcile these contrasting images of a plumb line? Is it an eloquent translation of God’s creation into terms humans can comprehend, or a harsh discipline that ensures moral and mortal failure? Is it a reminder of the order of the universe, or a measure of the chaos humans inevitably create?

I would say it is “both and”—both eloquent and harsh, both about order and about chaos, both reassuring—for it is evidence that God is among us, and frightening—for it shows how utterly unworthy of God’s presence we are.

And if that sounds a bit like Jesus.., well, you’re with me all the way!

But, of course, Jesus was the ultimate plumb line God set amongst the people, but not the first. This conversation from the book of the prophet Amos is God calling Amos to be a plumb line among the Israelites.

We don’t know much about Amos’ life as a prophet. We know in general that the Israelites were not exactly fond of.. and did not necessarily respond to.. the prophets God sent to point out the many ways they failed to love God and their neighbors as themselves.

Today’s Gospel story (Mark 6:14-29, NRSV) is a graphic account of precisely what can happen to prophets. John the Baptizer was the last of the solely human plumb lines God placed among the people. His job was to prepare the way for Jesus the Christ by calling the people to their inheritance as God’s people.

King Herod was a conniver. He connived his way into a marriage with his brother’s wife, and ultimately into a dilemma that required him to murder John the Baptist in order to save face.

Answering God’s call to be a plumb line among the people can mean speaking unpopular points of view. It can mean standing up for the marginalized and calling for justice for the poor and oppressed. It can require speaking truth to power. And very little is more dangerous than people and nations who have gotten themselves into situations that seem to require “saving face.”

But Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (1:3-14, NRSV) reminds us today that regardless of the risks, at the heart of God’s call to be a plumb line among the people is love—God’s love for us as personified and perfected in Jesus the Christ.

God “has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing,” says Paul. God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. [God] destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ… [and] …in [Jesus Christ] we have redemption… forgiveness… the riches of God’s grace... lavished on us.”

And who is us? And what is the proper response to this outpouring of love?

Can you include in us the people you fear the most or like the least? An illegal immigrant, perhaps? A smelly street person? Someone who deviates from sex or gender norms? A Muslim?

Can you welcome into that passage the last person in the world you love and think capable of loving you? Are we willing to see such people as our neighbors and our equals in the eyes of God?

Because that’s the kind of plumb line Jesus is: God among us, saying over and over again, in every possible way: We are all God’s children. We are all in this together. Not one of you is any better than anyone else. Not one of you is loved by me any more or any less than anyone else. Stand by me. Walk with me. Dine with me. And you will know and be God’s love in the world.

AMEN.