Palm Sunday is a wonderful and triumphant day. Jesus receives a hero’s welcome in Jerusalem. A royal carpet of palms rolls out before him and he gets to ride rather than walk. In Jerusalem 2000 years ago, life didn’t get much better than this.

And in fact, for Jesus and the disciples, life quickly gets much worse. We know that the triumph of today quickly gives way to betrayal, abandonment, and execution – a horrible and humiliating execution.

But we also know the story doesn’t end there. For as great as today’s triumphant ride into Jerusalem may be, the real victory comes next Sunday. The Resurrection.

When you look for meaning, perspective is usually a good thing. Putting things in perspective – in context – is often the only way to make sense of them. But I think for us, for the next several days, it may be very powerful to understand events by taking them back out of context.

What if we didn’t know about Easter – yet? What if, like the followers of Jesus, we experienced the events of this week with no clear knowledge of what comes next?

Well to start with, today would seem like a much bigger deal. Jesus, this man we love and worship and follow, is finally being treated with some respect! Thank God! Praise the Lord! People are starting to get it. Jesus is Messiah. Our Jesus, our beloved friend, up there riding high with a crowd cheering him on. Not in some off the path little town, but in Jerusalem. In the city of the temple – the center of our world. This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Jesus is triumphant and we have lived to see the day.

But within days our great happiness begins to fall apart and by Friday our joy is gone – forever! This great high point of today’s triumph gives way to total, complete, utter defeat, despair. Our friend, our Lord, our Savior dies. Dies on the cross. In agony. In disgrace. On Good Friday two millennia ago, that’s what the disciples knew.

If all we know is what the first disciples knew, on Friday it would seem like our lives as Christians had come to an end. Then we would have to face very hard realities.

And that is what I want to suggest today… That we take time this week in our prayer, our

 meditation, our worship and even our daydreaming to explore what it might be like if we didn’t know about Easter just yet.

What are our dreams as followers of Christ? What kind of tender intimacy do we share with Jesus – like in the garden or at the last supper? What happens when Jesus dies on the cross? What dreams and desires of ours die with him? Where does it hurt? What would we lose that we could not bear to lose?

If Jesus died this Friday and did not rise again, what would that mean to us.

When things start to come to mind, we need to examine them. Are they dreams of working with Jesus to build the Kingdom of God here on earth? Are they our own dreams that we would like Jesus to share with us?

I have to confess when I began examining how I might answer some of those questions… when I began to think of what I would lose: Among the first things that came to mind for me… No Bach B Minor Mass. No Faure Requiem. No Rachmaninov Vespers. Lovers of choral music will be nodding in agreement – others will just be shaking their heads wondering what these things have to do with Christ’s death. That is exactly the point.

We tend to fill our churches and our religion with things of inspiring beauty, things that inspire us. But are they there because Jesus demands that they be there – or just because we like them. Death has a way of clarifying our thinking.

We can use Holy Week to truly examine and test our faith – to let go at least a little of some of the things with which we clutter up our faith – and to focus on the essence of what it means to be a follower of Christ. We can do so with the great advantage the first disciples didn’t have – because we do know about Easter.

Readings for Lent 1 

It’s a bit startling that Lent has started. It seems like so little time has passed since Christmas. And in fact, it’s just over two months since we were joyfully watching Advent give way to Christmas. In the life of Jesus, these events were decades apart, but we experience them compressed together. Which tends to blur them – at least for me.

Lent, in our Christian tradition, has had several purposes. It is a time when we are meant to prepare ourselves for Easter. It is a time when we are meant to repent, to consider our own sinfulness and to find ways to return to God’s ways. It is a time for alms giving – though really, when are we not called to charity? And, in the early days of the church, it was a time when people preparing for baptism were to undergo preparation and instruction.

If the Church, as we know it, still practiced adult baptism, that last item would be critical. But we have largely moved, as of the middle ages, to infant Baptism. And the only thing I want to say about that is that I think much was lost in that move.

The repenting part of Lent is very much front and center in the Church’s current approach to Lent. In the service for Ash Wednesday, the official start of Lent, we are invited to use Lent as a period of self-examination and repentance, and the suggested tools are prayer, fasting, and self-denial, as well as reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. This prepares us for Easter.

But what, exactly, are we preparing for and how do these tools help? These are the questions that call for attention, but there is something else to look at first.

Lent, as I mentioned, was the time when the early church prepared folks for Baptism, and those baptisms took place as part of the Easter celebration. It is still common to have a renewal of Baptismal Vows as part of the Easter Vigil. That is why we read the story of Jesus’ baptism to usher us into Lent.

Or we almost read the story… In this morning’s reading we pick up just after Luke has told us about the baptism. And so, this is the aftermath of the baptism. It’s a really turbulent moment even if Luke is fairly calm about it: Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness for a 40-day stay where he faces a period of deprivation and temptation from the Devil.

That number 40 is worth a little unpacking. Some scholars suggest that 40 was a number casually used to mean “a lot” – 40 days, 40 weeks, 40 years. It’s a way of saying a long time. It doesn’t mean someone literally marked off 40 days on a calendar. But there are other symbolic meanings of the number to consider.

These days we generally think of the length of a pregnancy as 39 weeks. In Jesus time, and throughout Hebrew scripture, the length of a pregnancy was thought to be 40 weeks. So that number 40, while meaning a long time in general, also referred to the period of gestation… the time it took to give birth. 40 days, 40 weeks, 40 years… all share that birth symbolism.

In some way this 40-day period is notifying us that a birth is taking place. We could say that Jesus is conceived anew in baptism and then born again after 40 days in the womb of the wilderness.

It’s not a scientific or medical process. And, as is the case with symbolic stories, it is certainly not the only explanation for what is going on in this Gospel passage. But for our own time of Lent, I think it is a good image.

On Ash Wednesday we entered our own 40-day period of time in the wilderness. On Easter Sunday we are meant to burst forth from that womb as Jesus burst forth from the tomb. We are never meant to be observers of liturgy, we are always meant to be participants. We don’t watch Jesus rise. We rise with Jesus.

But that is getting ahead of the story… we have to go through Lent… Through gestation.

In the Lord’s Prayer we pray “save us from the time of trial”, or in an earlier English translation that is still pretty universal: “lead us not into temptation.” It’s odd, when you think about it, to ask God not to lead us astray – into temptation. Isn’t following God, almost by definition, about not being led astray? But look at what Luke tells us. Jesus is lead into the wilderness BY the Holy Spirit – one of the persons of the Trinity. That is to say by God.

The forms of temptation that Jesus faces are curious. Jesus is first tempted with food – and after all he has been fasting for a long time… he must be starved. It is a temptation

based entirely upon bodily needs.

Second, Jesus is tempted with great power. The Devil says worship me and I will give you power over all the kingdoms of the earth. I find it very disturbing that, apparently, the Devil has power over these kingdoms, these governments, and can use it for devilish purposes. We know the Devil lies, but Jesus does not contradict Satan. Instead Jesus refuses the offer – which seems to imply it was real, that Jesus might just as easily have accepted the offer.

This power the Devil offers is power, I would have assumed, Jesus already has. Jesus, like the Spirit, is a person of the Trinity – that is to say God. What the Devil seems to be saying is that the Devil, rather than God, has power over the governments of the earth. Part of Lent is meant to be spent in contemplation… and this is something I will need to contemplate.

The final temptation is for Jesus, more or less, to show off. He can hurl himself from the tallest point in Jerusalem and God will keep him safe. Jesus spends much of his early ministry trying to keep his full identity secret. But here, just as Jesus is beginning his

ministry, the Devil is telling him to reveal it all.

It would be quick and easy, but it is not God’s will. It would short circuit all of Jesus ministry. Jesus calls us to love each other and to do justice. But the Devil is tempting Jesus to blow past all the hard work of teaching and leading, and simply to manifest his divinity now. This would command us to Jesus rather than attracting us.

But to me, the most important thing about the various temptations is that they come right after baptism. They are a consequence of baptism. It is tempting to believe that once we are baptized, God is in control and we will be free of temptation. But that is not what the Gospel tells us. We will face temptation as a consequence of baptism. In the parlance of contemporary computer folks, temptation is a feature, not a bug, of baptism.

John Wesley observed that temptation is always part of an adult Christian life – we can’t make choices for good if we are not aware of the other choices, the bad choices. Temptation is not just a fact of life, it is a hopeful sign. We don’t have to fall prey to it. We can choose to follow Jesus. But we make the choice of our free will, not because we lack alternatives.

So, the tools of Lent – self-denial, fasting, prayer, meditation, reading…

St Benedict in his rule offers some good advice. Before a brother takes on some type of self-denial, he must have permission. Our inclination, in the fervor of religious enthusiasm, is to engage in heroic actions. But this isn’t what Jesus asks. The point in asking permission is, if I have dreamed up some super-human activity, the Prior can and should say no. Because the point of self-denial is to turn toward God. Heroic denial is all about self.

The purpose of denial is to free us. A little less of something frees for a little more of something else. I will watch less TV (or for me, a little less YouTube) so that I can read more… I will eat less so that I can pray more… And in all these things I will do them in a modest way, not a heroic way.

Jesus, in his 40-day ordeal, could have behaved in a wild and heroic way. But that is not his choice. He calmly persists in faithful love of God, Devil notwithstanding.

That is our guide for Lent – to pursue a deeper, more prayerful, more loving relationship with God and with all of God’s creation.

I have followed from a distance the work of the United Methodist Church in a special General Conference. I am hesitant to say too much, but I don’t want to say too little either.

For those who may not know, both my mother and father were Ministers in the United Methodist Church. I was more or less born and raised in the tradition, starting in a small congregation in Brandon, Vermont. This church dates back to the late 1700s – the early

days of the Methodist Church – when clergy rode circuits of small congregations by horseback.  At the time my father was appointed there in 1955 there were no longer horses in use, but coal still had to be shoveled into the furnace by hand to heat the parsonage and church – and that is in Vermont winters. I was 3 when we moved, but it is still a piece of my history.

We moved to Averill Park, New York, to a congregation that suffered a fire in about 1959 and built a new, non-traditional building shaped in a circle. This is really the church of my youth. It is a bit non-traditional as things go which no doubt left a mark on me. The congregation merged a Methodist and Presbyterian congregation while we were there. And though the church was Methodist, it had Episcopal ambitions. Previous clergy had taken the congregation as far as they could toward leaving the Methodist Church and becoming Episcopalian. So it was a “high church” Methodist sort of place. I thought this is just the way the Methodist Church was – cross and candles in procession and that sort of thing. It was not until college that I learned that not all Methodist Churches were on the same wave length. 

High School years were in Latham, at Calvary United Methodist Church. Here was a time to become more involved with Conference youth activities partly because it interested me, but also because I did not like Latham. Everything unpleasant about suburban living seems central to Latham. But I did value the increasing Methodist involvement beyond the local church.

For college, keeping with the Methodist theme, I attended West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon, West Virginia. As much as I disliked Latham, I loved WVWC. It was a good school, but also a good school community (not the town, but the campus). In some ways I developed a much greater appreciation of community life through this experience that ultimately shaped my choice to enter a monastery.

In the monastic formation process it is custom to add a “name in religion”. And so the natural thing for me to do was to add Wesley. It paid homage to my routes, honored the way my parents had invested their lives, and nodded to the import work of John and Charles Wesley in shaping the modern Methodist movement as well as the Church of England and Anglican (Episcopal) movement. Many bases covered in one name.

I say this by way of saying I loved, love, care deeply about the Methodist tradition. Still – I walked away from it some 35 years ago. And the decision at the most recent General Conference is part of that process. The United Methodist Church has been debating for decades how it will relate to people identified as LGBTQI. And for all that debate, over all those years, the message has been we love everyone – except there are stipulations…

Years ago my mother attended a seminar at Kirkridge Conference Center in Pennsylvania. The seminar started with folks sharing their memories of the first time the “church” had broken their heart. Mom said this was an eye opener for her and other clergy there. Seems that everyone had a memory and some were very painful. Even my mother had a memory. The point of the exercise was not to show that the church (however each person defined it) was bad, but in the relationships of being church, hurts happen. Just as they do in marriages, or in monasteries for that matter.

I’m afraid what the United Methodist Church has accomplished at this Special General

Conference is to break a large number of hearts. And it seems to have done this same thing over the same topic at regular intervals for the past 3 or so decades.

I have many friends who have devoted their lives to the United Methodist Church – some are young and some are retired. But their love for the church is sincere and persistent. And that makes me all the more sorrowful at the outcome of the Conference. My friends have had the hearts broken… again!

The reason I think of my mother’s seminar experience that explored the memories of the first time your heart was broken is that there is an obvious corollary. When is the last time that the Church broke your heart? As this process continues, some will decide we have had enough and will not wait to have our hearts broken one more time. Others are not there yet. For many, hope lives on still. My caution is that everyone in an abusive relationship lives, for a time, in hope that it will get better. But in the mean time they leave themselves in abuse. And they leave their families in abuse. And they enable an abuser. Sometimes the relationships do recover. But often the answer is to get out.

I also wonder how the United Methodist Church will find a way forward. It is a very big institution, but like so many “main stream” churches, the decline is visible to all. Many of the big Methodist Churches of my youth are now small with only part-time clergy. Many of the small Methodist Churches of my youth are closed. This is not unique to the Methodist Church and is surely a big part of the story in the Episcopal Church as well – so I haven’t walked away from it. I believe the actions of the Special Conference will accelerate the decline as young people will be put off and as many older folks will be sapped of energy by having to fight the same battle more or less forever. In short – I think the United Methodist Church in which I grew up will die sooner because of the Conference’s actions.

That sounds hopeless – but it is in fact the most hopeful thing to say in christian tradition. Without death there is no christian story. Without death there is no resurrection. The “church” as we know it is largely a 19th Century Solution. Today we have 21st Century challenges. It is not just OK, its good that the church will die – then it can get about the business of resurrecting. Into what? I don’t know. The way forward calls for faith. And it calls for a willingness to die, to let go of things treasured and deeply loved. This is true for all faith traditions. Its just a bit more acute in the United Methodist Church at this moment.

But still my heart breaks – not for me… I’m long since through letting the United Methodist Church break my heart – but for so many folks I love who are not through having their hearts broken. Jesus weeps with those who weep.

Readings for Epiphany 7

In the United States (and other places as well) there has been a popular religious refrain that seeks to ask, in various circumstances, what would Jesus do – popular enough that bracelets and other types of jewelry can be found with WWJD printed on them… What Would Jesus Do?

On the face of it, who could be critical… It seems like an obviously good question. Before I act on some impulse, I should consider how Jesus might act on the same impulse. This would be especially good for someone like me driving in heavy traffic… maybe.

But maybe Jesus stuck in traffic would act just as I do… Jesus was fully human, after all…

I don’t think the question, what would Jesus do, is a great question – it yields answers that are a bit too convenient, like my Jesus-in-traffic answer. A better question might be what is Jesus calling me to do? It’s not important for me to decide how Jesus might act. It

is essential that I take responsibility for how I act and work. I, we, as follower of Jesus are called to model that faith, that love of Jesus in the way we live our lives.

And in that light, I want to look at the reading this morning from Luke. Anytime we wonder what Jesus might be calling us to do, this passage is a great starting point. Love our enemies. Do good to those who hate us. Bless those who curse us. If someone hits us, allow them to strike again. If someone wants our shirt, give even more than a shirt. And Jesus concludes with what we know as the Golden Rule – do unto others as we would have them do unto us. What more is there to say…

It is both a familiar list and a daunting list. But keep in mind, the point of the list is poetic. It’s not a check-list. Hebrew poetry is based on elaborating repetition. We have lots of echoes of this in our English liturgy – “O God you are great. You are glorious. Most holy of holy. Most high above all others.”

A contemporary secular editor might encourage us to be concise and avoid repetition… But this repetition is an echo of poetry – especially the psalms. And it is likely that the psalms and their poetry were in Jesus’ ear as well.

This list that Jesus gives is not a list we can consult – what’s on and what’s off… It establishes a principal. It gives us a frame work. Our task is to go from over-arching principle expressed poetically to the details of our lives. We need to live the poetic elaboration.

Charles Darwin observed animals – and was a faithful Anglican to boot… There was something that he saw common to every living creature he observed. He could see the same response to a threat. Startle a creature, any living thing, and the same response happens. The eyes go wide, the ears go up, the muscles tense, and all the creature’s senses come to full attention. In the animal world when this happens there are two choices: the animal can flee or fight.

In today’s reading, Jesus is calling us to break with all other living creatures. Jesus calls us neither to flee nor to fight, but rather to go beyond what has been demanded. Someone curses you – bless them. Someone strikes your cheek – offer the other cheek. As far as we know, no other animal can make this choice. In this passage Jesus is calling us to transcend our human/animal nature. Jesus is calling us to reflect the very nature of God.

In fact, Jesus gets right to the point a few sentences later. By doing these things, turning the other cheek, blessing those who curse, and so forth, Jesus tells us that we will be Children of God. This is what Jesus calls us to do.

Sometimes we lose sight of just how radical Jesus tends to be. Paul in his letter to the Romans suggests that if we answer evil with good, we will heap hot coals upon the heads of the evildoer. And that is not Paul’s original thought – he is quoting the Proverbs attributed to Solomon. In Proverbs we are told that if our enemy is hungry or thirsty, we should give food and water – by doing that we heap hot coals upon his head.

Paul and Solomon are probably not being as harsh as it sounds – hot coals upon the head is probably a figure of speech meaning to purify someone. But still their idea is quite at odds with Jesus. Jesus is not interested the purification of the other person. Jesus is interested in the transformation of us.

In this short section of Luke, Jesus has changed the way the world works. Prior to the coming of Jesus, faithful people understood God to reward the good and punish the wicked. But Jesus envisions a God who kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Everything

the faithful have believed about God has just been stood on its head. But more than that, the wicked in the world are my opportunity to be transformed further into Christ.

This would have been shocking to faithful people in Jesus’ time. I suggest it is still shocking today. We like to believe that the good folks are rewarded, and the bad folks punished – at least in the long run. And that God’s Kingdom is built by the improvement of sinners. But what Jesus is telling us is that we’re not here to make other people better – we’re here to be transformed.

This short passage begins with a description of what God’s blessing looks like when we live as Jesus calls us to live. We answer anger with love. We answer poverty with charity. We give without concern for any payback.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. By the end of the reading here comes more poetry. Do not judge… Do not condemn… Forgive…

What does Jesus call us to do?

To care for those who are poor. To comfort those who mourn. To heal those who are sick. These are all part of our own transformation.

Nowhere do I hear Jesus calling us to celebrate those who are rich beyond measure. At the same time Jesus does not call us to condemn the fabulously rich – or anyone else. Instead we are not to judge, but to forgive.

This sermon from Jesus in Luke’s telling is a call for us to live like Jesus – to model the behaviors Jesus models. To try to the best of our abilities to live as we believe God would have us live. And in so doing to provide a worthy example, but more than that, to change ourselves.

That is the good news of Jesus.

The search for Paradise, or Utopia, or Heaven on Earth (pictured above as Hemel en Aarde – Heaven and Earth) has been a thing for humans for probably as long as we have been human. Certainly it has figured in every religious narrative. When Moses lead the Israelites out of Egypt, it was the “promised land” for which they were destined. And for the modern day typical Benedictine Anglican Monastic, it is still a thing…

So when I saw a book titled Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, I heard it call my name. In our modern day Utopia, where instant gratification is highly to be desired, I could download it as an ebook in no time – and I must say my gratification has been quick and significant.

Bregman caught my attention (and that of many others) by telling the assembled billionaires at Davos that they needed to be talking about fair taxation rather than philanthropy. Though he is a young man, wags are now noting that this will be the last time he is invited to speak at Davos… but it is his ideas of Utopia, not taxation, that I want to think about.

Various cultures over millennia have had a common myth that caught the attention of Carl Jung. It is the story of sailors (or other travelers) who somehow come ashore on a tropical paradise where everything they want is provided in abundance. They have no cares and no worries – and after a short time they can no longer stand paradise.

Bregman, in his opening discussion of paradise, or utopia, quotes Oscar Wilde on finding paradise, and it was a revelation for me. Wilde’s notion, as I understand it, is not there is anything wrong in paradise that makes us restless. Its that we must be looking for the next version of paradise. We don’t need to leave paradise to go home. We need to go further.

In medieval times paradise was the land of plenty – where food was abundant and lives were long. And here we are. There are still many problems in the world, including hunger, but we live in a world of great abundance. And we live pretty long lives. We have arrived in someone else’s vision of paradise. We should be grateful and we should be looking for the next paradise.

What, from our perspective, does paradise look like? Bregman drops two clues into this pot. First, he suggests that simple desires beget simple utopias. I think this could be a positive or a negative assertion. Second, the crisis is that we can’t come up with a vision

of what paradise might look like – we can’t envision something better. We surely can envision improvements, but utopia is not an incremental correction.

Utopia can be approached in two different ways. We can either find the place where the folks who make the world less than Utopia are gone. Or we can find the place where everyone can be helped in. Obviously I’m for the second option – because the first route is the path that Hitler, among others, chose. We get rid of the problems and we’ll be left with Utopia. At least that is the thought. The reality of that approach is we are left in hell.

The vision of utopia, or heaven, that speaks to me most is the description found in Revelation: The New Jerusalem, the heavenly city. It has three gates in every direction. All the gates are open by day, and there is no night. It is heaven because everyone can enter. Whatever we may have achieved by way of Utopia these days, this is a still-bigger vision.

I still have much to think about in Bregman’s book, but I am extremely grateful for where it has taken me so far. It is not a book about despair, but rather about hope. We have managed to attain, by many measures, the Utopian vision of our ancestors. Our Utopia is turning a bit dystopian – but that is as it should be. Its time to move toward the next Utopia. Our only mistake is in thinking that we are finished. The journey to Utopia/Paradise/Heaven is a journey made in stages.

 

Lectionary for the day

When that great committee that decided what lessons we would read on various Sundays got together, it must have been it must have been a great challenge to figure out what to put in and leave out – we want scripture to be read in church, but we don’t

want too much scripture to be read in church…

Today’s reading forms a nice little nugget, but without some context its meaning is unclear. This reading is a pivot point in Luke’s narrative. Just a few paragraphs before today’s starting point, Jesus is baptized and then immediately he faces temptation. And then, off he goes for a little time at home…

But this is not rest time at home. For in Luke’s rendition, this is the middle chunk of the story – this point in Luke’s story begins Jesus’ public ministry. Today’s passage finds Jesus visiting the home town synagogue and folks who know him by family now must learn to know him as Messiah. Jesus of Nazareth is becoming Jesus the marked one – that is Jesus Christ.

If you remember the baptism story, it concludes with the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus. Though we have not read that for a few weeks, it would be fresh in the minds of Luke’s audience. So, when Luke reminds us that Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit, he is reminding us of the baptism events. It would seem like a small detail, but in Luke, there are no small details. This is a new, more power-filled Jesus. In today’s marketing jargon, Luke is giving us Hyper-Jesus.

Luke doesn’t just leave it at that – as if to underscore the point, Jesus goes to the synagogue and is given a chance to read. Isaiah happens to be the chosen scroll and Jesus happens to go to the part that begins: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…”

Any chance we can miss the point? Jesus is baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit, comes to Galilee filled with the Holy Spirit and then reads from Isaiah that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him. Isaiah is, of course, referring to himself, but Luke is placing Jesus right beside Isaiah – a major Profit… a person who can speak for God. In this short passage, Luke is transforming Jesus before our eyes.

We know that Luke’s Gospel has a particular dedication to those who are poor and powerless – scholars call it the preferential option for the poor. That is a clinical way of saying that, unlike our world which has great affection for those who are fabulously wealthy, in Jesus’ world, the Kingdom of God, the greatest affection is reserved for those who are powerless, vulnerable, broke.

So Luke is giving us a big foretaste of what is to come in the public ministry – good news will be given to the poor, freedom will be given to those in prison, vision will be restored to those who are blind, and release will be given to the oppressed. All these good things are promised to those who are basically the dregs of Galilean society. If you think ahead, you’ll see that this is exactly what is to come to pass. We’ll hear the same list of priorities, more or less, in the Sermon on the Mount. You’ll also notice that the list lacks anything for the comfortable and powerful.

Things start off well enough. Jesus reads from Isaiah, says that today this scripture is fulfilled, sits down, and everyone admires him. That is where the reading today ends – but just as you have to know what comes before the reading to understand the implications, you also have to have some idea of what comes next.

I suspect the reason the mood in the synagogue is so good is that it takes a bit of time for Jesus’ message to sink in. There is, after all, great comfort in scripture as long as you don’t pay too much attention. But if you dig in a bit, the comfort is replaced by challenge. If the poor and needy are given what they need, if the powerless are lifted up, where will that leave me? If God loves “them” so much, what about me?

We struggle, I struggle, with the challenge of following Jesus. Jesus does not come to make things nice. Jesus comes to comfort the afflicted, but at the same time Jesus comes to afflict the comfortable. Jesus is a revolutionary.

If we continued reading past the end of this morning’s reading, within a few paragraphs we find the once-adoring crowd completely turning on Jesus. They love him right up until they hate him. They love him right up until they understand what he is saying. The comfort of some in our society is closely linked with the discomfort of others.

For those of us who live in comfort, the fulfilling of Isaiah’s prophecy is good news in the sense that it’s the Gospel, but it is also threatening. Our world will be shifted. The world of injustice will no longer do. God’s Kingdom is where we want to live. It is where our spirits are called – we just need to get our minds and bodies on board…

As Jesus begins his public ministry, he calls various people to follow him. Those who would follow me, he says, must leave self behind. Jesus calls people to leave their jobs, leave their families, even to leave their dead to bury the dead. This is not an easy call. Everyone around Jesus struggled – so it’s no surprise that we still struggle. In fact, if we didn’t struggle, it would mean that we are not following Jesus. Anybody who preaches an easy gospel is not preaching the Gospel.

We know what comes before and we know what comes after – in this portion we heard we get a good indication of our call: Bring good news to the poor. Release those who are imprisoned. Provide vision to the blind. Free the oppressed. Proclaim the Lord’s favor.

What does this mean? I don’t know. How do we do it? Again, I don’t know. Where do we start? That I do know. We start in prayer and we start in community. This business of following Jesus is a social business. In community, in church, in some form of congregation we consider how we can proclaim God’s love in word and, more importantly, in action.

And then, in the congregation of God’s children, we get about that action.

Today we remember Aelred, a sort of mid-level monastic type of saint. The Monastery at Rievaulx, near the Rye River in Yorkshire, caught his eye with its beauty and next thing you know, he was a monk…

Well maybe it was not that simple. He was from a religious family, his father was a priest (back in the day when the Church allowed Priests to marry – way before the Reformation mind you), but he seems to have started on a more political than religious path. He served in the Court of the King of Scotland and learned diplomacy and such. It was on a journey for the monarch that he passed by Rievaulx. The building at that time was stunning, even to someone used to life at court, and that really did prompt him to enter.

It is never easy to predict how someone discovers a monastic vocation – but more on that on some later blog…

It would seem on the face of it that being draw by the exteriors of the building and its location is, to be kind, perhaps a bit shallow. But whatever opens the door…

Aelred is an important voice to many today. He wrote substantially on friendship, especially friendship within the monastery and between the brothers. The model was nothing less than the Trinity – the unending circle of love between God, Jesus, and Spirit. That love – deep, unending, unbreakable – is the model on which we should strive to love.

What we don’t know about Aelred could fill a book. This leads to speculation on who he may have been and what, in particular, may have been his sexual orientation. On the one hand I want to be careful not to retroject 21st Century concerns on a 12th century monk. On the other hand I’ve seen lots of articles that suggest that he was always a faithful Roman Catholic and would never stand in contradiction of Church teaching, so he certainly had no tolerance for anything gay. But that is also retrojection. Aelred’s personal life remains a mystery.

That said, he certainly was a good and faithful Cistercian Monk and chastity was surely part of that. At the same time he encouraged the brothers to be somewhat physically intimate – encouraging them to hold hands for example. Two men holding hands in a 21st Century North American context is unusual. But here in Africa its not so strange – and not sexual. It may be that in the secular world of 12th Century Yorkshire there was more physical affection between men than we think normal today. And Aelred may simply have sought to soften the divide between inside the monastery and outside.

It seems to me that the legacy of Aelred is a more inclusive expression of love and

affection than we accept today. Part of the joy of monasticism is that it tends to de-couple sex from other things. Monks experience very passionate love – it just doesn’t lead to sex. It does lead to intimacy. Thank you Aelred.

In our contemporary culture we seen happy to couple sex with violence – at least in movies and TV. Those little NC-17 notices that slip by will often show the “offending material as “sex and violence”. Its as though there were some natural relationship between the two. But there is absolutely no time when sex and violence should go together – they should never hold hands.

The gentle spirit of Aelred of Rievaulx calls us still to be guided by the love of the Trinity – an unending circle of endless love that can not be broken. Could that love lead to greater intimacy? Certainly. Could it lead to better sex in the right circumstances? Absolutely.

Monasticism has much to share with the world – and the world needs what we have to offer. What the world needs is not some precious, otherworldly, chilly way of living. It needs Aelred – giving us permission to love.

Here we are – coming to the end of the Christmas story – the Kings, who had so much farther than everyone else to travel, have finally arrived. As a child I used to wonder, if these “wise men” were so wise, why didn’t they know to start earlier… 

We are so accustomed to seeing creche scenes with kings and shepherds gathered around the manger that we don’t question them at all. But we have to realize that if we are waiting with shepherds at that creche for the kings to arrive, we will wait forever. Luke gives us shepherds, Matthew, in the Gospel we heard this morning, gives us kings, or wise men, or magi. 

The problem with the Christmas Story is that there is not one story, but two. In our minds they quite easily run together. But when we trust our memories, some important details get dropped. Most of what we know as the Christmas story comes to us from Luke. Luke has shepherds. His telling of the story is particularly good for a warm and fuzzy Christmas. 

But this Feast of the Epiphany directs us to Matthew – the “other” Christmas story. Matthew has wise men. And when you take away all the warm and fuzzy stuff from Luke, Matthew’s story is dark. 

The Gospel of Matthew begins, more or less, by calling the roll of Jesus’ forebears, starting with Abraham – who fathered Isaac, who fathered Jacob, and so on generation after generation. It is a powerful list, full of twists and turns and illegitimate children and such. But it’s hard to imagine a happy family gathering where earnest children ask to hear yet again the first chapter of Matthew…  

When it comes to Jesus’ birth, Mathew is in a “just the facts” mode. Before their marriage, Mary is found to be pregnant, so Joseph is going to quietly end the engagement. But an angel, the first character with a speaking part, gives Joseph the full story. So, Joseph takes Mary to his home and Jesus is born – at home. No muss, no fuss, no long trek to a far-away town, no stable, no details… I haven’t shortened it much because there isn’t much to shorten… 

That brings us up to today’s feast – wise men, or magi, or astrologers appear in Jerusalem from the east. They were following a star, but they somehow seem to have lost sight of it. They have but one question: “Where is the infant king of the Jews?” 

Ooops… This would be like walking into Moscow in the Stalin years and asking, “where is the infant who will be the new leader of the Russian people.” 

Herod, King of the Paranoid, gets wind of the question and, like any truly insecure despot, begins to fight. He learns from his minions that The Messiah is to be found in Bethlehem. And so, in a touch of irony, it is Herod that puts the wise men back on the path to Bethlehem. Star back in sight off they go to meet Jesus. And this is the epiphany – the manifestation: The star points to Jesus – God in man, made manifest. 

The wise men, while they’re there, open their treasure chests and give gifts to the baby – gold, frankincense, and myrrh…  notoriously inappropriate baby gifts… It’s easy to assume that the purpose of the trip was to deliver gifts – bearing gifts we traverse afar, as the hymn says… But in Matthew’s actual telling, it is worship that is the prime purpose of the wise men. The gifts come almost as an afterthought. 

The wise men go home, and the story gets much darker. In our calendar the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents has already come and gone, but its proper place in the sequence of things is still to come. Herod realizes that he has been betrayed by the magi. He doesn’t want to worship the new king, he wants to kill him. And since the magi have failed to identify the precise child, Herod has all the little children in Bethlehem killed. This is why Hallmark cards tend to stick to Luke’s version… 

Mysterious, cold, paranoid, violent… these are the kinds of adjectives that Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus bring to mind. No cattle lowing… no shepherds proclaiming glory to God… no peace on earth… little if any goodwill toward anyone. 

Matthew is so sparse with details, of course, that over the centuries we have had to invent them. First these mysterious visitors acquire a gender – they become wise men; a

quantity – there are three of them (because there were 3 gifts); upward social mobility – they become kings; they get names – Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar; and perhaps most surprising – they acquire race, or least one does – one of them is black. 

The good news of these mysterious wise travelers from a far is not that their journey was easy or direct, or that they were such gifted detectives – they needed the help of Herod after all. The good news is that they persevered. 

It’s quite fun and heartwarming to locate ourselves in Luke’s Christmas story – we can be shepherds, or perhaps cattle and sheep, or maybe even, for a lucky few, Joseph or Mary. 

Locating ourselves in Matthew’s Christmas story is less charming, but a good spiritual exercise, nonetheless. I can find myself among the magi who wander and get lost… If I’m honest I can find myself among the greedy minions who cling to Herod for power and protection, even when it calls for committing atrocities. And ultimately, I am Herod – who would rather commit unspeakable acts than tolerate Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us… God with me… 

The joyful good news, the Gospel, is not that I’m prepared for Jesus in my life. The good news is that Jesus comes into our world just as surely as Jesus came into Herod’s world. Jesus comes not in spite of our failure, but because of our need. Jesus comes because our world is dark, unjust, cruel, and wicked. 

In our world we know power which enforces its desire with force and violence. Jesus comes to bring an entire new way of living – a world led by authority rather than power. Jesus is the very author of life, the very word of God, who’s kingdom is built with love rather than might.  

Our human instinct is, like Herod, to hang on by force. And the consequences are horrific. But following Jesus is dying to self and living to God. We don’t hang on – we surrender.  

And so, we pray come, Lord Jesus. 

Readings for Advent 1

First, let me wish you a Happy New Year… since the beginning of Advent is just that – the beginning of a new liturgical year. At the end of December there will come a time that also calls itself New Year’s… but it’s an impostor. 

Advent is the beginning of something, but it can feel like little more the prelude to Christmas. Everything in Advent seems to point to Christmas – whether it is candles on a wreath or chocolates behind little doors in a calendar… Advent is only important because what comes next is extremely important… And that is just not true, even though it is not false.

I’ve been reading a new book by Murray Stein. He may not be a household name, but he is perhaps the greatest teacher and interpreter of Carl Jung alive today. And not just Jung the Psychotherapist, but Jung the Theologian. In this new book Stein begins a section with a quote: “Look afar and see the end in the beginning.” Be sure to note that is IN the beginning, not FROM the beginning.

Where does this pearl of wisdom come from? Not scripture. Perhaps in Jung’s writings… maybe in some eastern source that Jung was fond of. Surely Stein is referencing some weighty source, but surprise! Stein found it in a fortune cookie. God works in mysterious ways. 

See the end in the beginning. Here we are, just at the beginning of Advent. What of an ending can we see? 

It would be no fun at all if there were only one ending showing itself in this beginning, but the most obvious end that shows up now is Christmas. We are waiting for the coming of Jesus – that is an end of Advent that we can see in its beginning. 

As a sort of collective secular/sacred amalgam we have a social concept of Christmas. It is a happy, warm, lovely thing… all sweetness and light… all Currier and Ives and Grandma Moses paintings with young people on sleds in the snow and chestnuts roasting on an open fire… yuletide carolers outside and hot, spiced cider inside. This is what I want to prepare for in Advent. I see this in the beginning of Advent. 

This is, sadly, not a very substantial view of Advent nor the reality of Christmas and Jesus doesn’t come into a fantasy world. However well we decorate, this is not a world of joy and happiness. It has great beauty, but it is also a world of sorrow, of injustice, of genocide, of prejudice, of corruption. In other words, it the same world into which Jesus was born two millennia ago.  

It was a cruel and a dangerous world then as now. Jesus did not arrive in a world of decorated trees and eggnog and cozy scenes. They didn’t have tear gas then, but if they did, it surely would have been in use. Jesus arrived in a world that had no space for him at all. He arrived in a barn and bunked with animals – because the polite society (that’s us) couldn’t accommodate him – we live in the same world. 

Anyone with their heart set on a silent, holy, calm, and bright Christmas night, needs to look afar and see the end in the beginning. Pay attention to Luke. In the Gospel for today, Jesus tells us there will be signs among the stars (these are warning signs) and there will be distress among the nations. People will faint from fear. It’s completely inappropriate, but I hear Bette Davis in All About Eve warning us to fasten our seatbelts… it’s going to be a bumpy ride. 

Welcome to Advent. 

I gave serious thought to ending this sermon here… it would be dramatic and clever… but it wouldn’t be right. A message that says things are bad and they will only get worse is not the message of Advent. It is true that things are bad, and they likely will get worse. But that isn’t seeing the end in the beginning. It is only seeing the beginning 

The message of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus, is not one of sorrow. At the same time, it’s not one of simple happiness. In a culture of sound bites and slogans, the complex and rich good news of Jesus too often gets simplified into one of two messages – Jesus loves you very much, so repent or you’re going to hell; or Jesus loves you very much and wants you to be very rich. Neither of these has much to do with Jesus. Neither of them is the message of Advent. 

In the middle of this, according to Luke, there is a fig tree. As summer approaches, its limbs grow tender and it puts forth leaves. It does what fig trees do.  

Please – could I have a much more obvious illustration… 

Jesus seems to be saying that as you can tell summer is coming by watching the fig tree, so too you can tell that God is coming by watching… something… 

But the fig tree doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary. It doesn’t do anything unexpected. A philosopher might say it expresses its essential “fig-tree-ness.” As summer approaches, its limbs turn tender and it puts out leaves. But it wouldn’t be a fig tree if it didn’t. And a skilled agricultural society, like the world into which Jesus was born, hardly needs a fig tree to tell them summer is coming…  

Perhaps this fig tree is telling us something more complex. Perhaps its lesson is not about changing seasons, but about ways of living. It lives in the world and responds to it by doing fig tree things.  

Trees turn up in a number of places in our tradition. We start in the beginning with the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The tradition is littered with fig trees. When post-apple Adam and Eve seek to cover themselves, they turn to leaves of the Fig Tree and the Land promised in Deuteronomy is filled with milk, honey, and fig trees. In the Gospels, Jesus curses a fig tree and it withers. And in this morning’s Gospel, we are asked to consider a fig tree. But the great tree reference is, of course, the cross. Jesus is nailed to the tree. See the end in the beginning. 

So, this image that Jesus gives us to consider, the fig tree, is ancient and complex… Beautiful and terrible.  

In asking us to contemplate the Fig Tree, I think Jesus is calling us to live in the world and be present. As the fig tree does what it is called to do, so we, followers of Jesus, are to do what we are called to do. Signs and warnings notwithstanding, we are to get about the business of following Jesus. 

What Jesus calls us to do is not obscure. If we are to live our baptismal covenant with integrity, then we will have to care for the sick, the poor, those who have no power and no defense. We will have to pray and worship God and be prepared to treat the least of God’s children as nothing less than God’s children. We will have to resist the seductive call to accumulate wealth. We will have to be humble. We will have to love our neighbors and ourselves. We will have to make peace. Simple enough… Can we see these ends in this beginning? 

Be on your guard, Jesus says, so that your hearts are not weighed down with drunkenness, dissipation and worries. Now maybe it’s just me, but I thought drunkenness and dissipation were the things we do to keep our hearts from being weighed down… 

Being on guard is not a waiting game. Maybe this is another lesson of the fig tree. The fig tree isn’t in any way waiting for spring, or anything else. It’s just doing the right thing at the right time. This is a lesson we can well learn in Advent. 

We look for the coming of Jesus, but we do not wait for the coming of Jesus. It would be nice if, as soon as Jesus gets here, then we can get to work following Jesus, but it doesn’t work that way. We stay on guard, awake in our faith… faith that must be lived. Christian faith is active. We live our lives in the faith that Jesus could return at any moment and we live our lives in the faith that Jesus has already returned, is already with us. We see the end in the beginning. 

Being on guard doesn’t mean sitting around silently, pensively, nervously drumming our fingers. It means using the gifts we have been given to build God’s kingdom just as the fig tree gets about the business of being a fig tree. 

This is Advent, the start of a new year. If we look afar, we can see the end in the beginning and the beginning in the end.  

Is there a place in what we see for eggnog and carols… decorated trees and scenes from Grandma Moses? I surely hope so. A vision without beauty is no vision. It’s a horror show.  

But if we think we have made the world beautiful because we have decorated, then we are living an illusion. In this beginning time, this Advent, we don’t just see the end, a beautiful world where justice flows like a mighty river… we become the end in this beginning. We become the healing power of God’s love in a very hurting world. Readings for Advent 1

Nothing much clever or thoughtful to post… I’m finishing packing and getting ready for a long journey back to the US. I fly by way of Doha, which may be interesting. At least its inexpensive (and long – more than 32 hours in transit with flights, layovers, and such).

How long will I be in the US? I don’t really have any way to know.

The South African government has still not issued me a visa. Of course, they don’t have to ever issue a visa. But it is a complicated story that I think reflects the state of government in South Africa. Simply put, many parts of the government don’t function. Phones don’t get answered. Email does not get responded to. Aid for education grants don’t get paid. Taxes don’t get collected. So my guess is that my visa application is sitting on somebody’s desk in Pretoria in a pile of stuff that the occupier of the desk will get to when possible.

To be clear, most South African’s that I have dealt with are competent and professional. But that does not make a government work. The new president has made it a priority to get basic government function back on line. But obviously he is starting with economic development so that there may be some jobs created. Visas for charitable volunteers are a low priority in the agenda – and to be honest, if it were me in that position that would still be true.

So I’ll be in the US while I await some answer from the South African Consulate in NY. My initial application was declined because, I gather from the information given me, someone there misread one of the supporting documents. And the appeal was filed (three times… because that is what it took for the office to acknowledge that they had received it once).

It is easy for me to feel a bit of outrage… but if I keep in mind what folks trying to get visas into the US go through, especially if they don’t happen to be white, I realize this is just frustrating. But nothing more than that.

I’ll post something when I’m in the US and I hope to continue to post.

In the mean time, any thoughts and prayers focused on the South African Home Affairs office in Pretoria would be great.

But if you want to worry about something, refugees fleeing for their lives and hitting red tape snags at our boarders are in far greater need of grace and justice.