The readings, for the thorough, may be found here 

The reading this morning from the Gospel according to Mark tells us a story of a mis-conversation, if you will, between Jesus and the disciples.  

This time it’s those Zebedee brothers… They have a bit of a reputation, and true to form they begin with a request that seems outrageous. Grant us to sit at your right hand and your left… In other words, make us your number one and number two guys, your top assistants… put us in line right behind you and, to the chagrin of the other disciples, ahead of everybody else. It seems presumptuous and arrogant and oh so many other things. 

It doesn’t go well. But not in exactly the way I would expect. I would expect an angry Jesus to knock them both down a peg a two… who do you guys think you are? Get out of my sight… But that is not Jesus’ response. He tells them that they don’t know what they are asking for.  

There is something important behind this misunderstanding. The Brothers Zebedee are thinking in a very traditional way. In their view, Jesus is the conquering hero who has come to save all Israel – that is to say the expected Messiah. He will be the supreme ruler and he will need someone extremely trustworthy at his right hand and his left hand – the traditional seats of power next to the king. We still use the phrase “right hand man” to refer to a most trusted assistant.

The problem is that Jesus has not come to replace an old monarch in an ongoing system. Jesus has come to change the system. James and John are thinking that Jesus will just kick out the bad rulers and be a good ruler. And they will all live happily ever after. 

This is not the plan that Jesus and God have in mind.  

But there is more wrong in this Zebedee question. 

Jesus has already told the disciples how bad things are about to get. He has told them that they are on their way to Jerusalem where he will be killed. This is not the standard Messianic vision, but it is what Jesus knows is coming. James and John are very ready to share in the glory, but Jesus knows that glory, in an earthly sense, is not in the future. 

You want to be at my right hand and left… but can you drink the cup that I will drink? Or be baptized as I will be? Keep in mind that the cup Jesus’ refers to will be filled with his own blood. It is a symbol of sacrifice and suffering. And behind the symbol of baptism is the notion of drowning – of dying to life to be raised to new life. The Brothers Zebedee have visions of glory and power and Jesus has a clear vision of crucifixion and sacrifice.  

But then Jesus goes on – the cup I am about to drink you will drink. And you will face the same baptism of death and resurrection. What I hear Jesus saying is you will get what you have asked for – but you won’t like it.  

Time and again Jesus has tried to explain to the disciples that he is not what they want. They want a super hero who will overpower the foe and rule. That would be an improvement, but Jesus has something bigger in mind.  

Br Don Bisson, a Marist Brother and scholar, thinks about change as happening on a spectrum. On one end is a notion of translation and at the other transformation.  

In translation, things remain pretty much the same. For example, there was a tradition in the early church of moving the bones of a saint, when that person was recognized as a saint. So, John Chrysostom died in exile in an obscure place called Pitiunt. But decades later, when those who had exiled him were gone, his bones were returned to Constantinople, where he had been Bishop. And he was recognized as a saint. His bones were, in the proper language, translated. But they were the same bones… Just in a different place… That is the change of translation. 

Ezekiel, on the other hand, in a vision, walks with God through the valley of dry bones. And God tells Ezekiel to speak to those dry bones… and the bones take on sinew, flesh, and begin to breathe. Breath, remember, is Spirit. The bones become filled with Spirit. They are transformed.  

So, Jesus is working to transform the world, not translate it. But James and John, the sons of Zebedee, are lost in translation… 

I am often grateful to the disciples for being kind of thick… a bit slow on the uptake… Every struggle I have in faith they seem to have had as well. There is comfort in that. Jesus didn’t trash his disciples and go get new ones – better ones… smarter ones… As thick as the disciples were, Jesus stuck with them. And I take that to mean that however poorly I proceed on my journey of transformation into the body of Christ, Jesus remains with me. 

The truth is that we would all rather be translated than transformed. That is the human way. Translation is relatively safe – transformation is not safe at all. 

But the story doesn’t end with Jesus interaction with James and John. The other disciples get word of the outrageous request James and John and they are not impressed. If I were one of those other disciples I’d be miffed. And at some level, if I’m honest, I’d be angry because they had the nerve to ask for what I want… The other disciples may have been more subtle in expressing their desire, but they are not more advanced in their understanding. They are still thinking in terms of a new ruler to kick out the old one. Translation rather than transformation…  

It must be a great sadness to Jesus that those who know him best don’t get it. It must be a bit painful and a bit worrisome because Jesus knows his days on earth are numbered with a small number. Will the disciples get it in time? 

So, Jesus gives a very direct lesson on how power will be organized in God’s Kingdom as opposed to how it works now. The version we heard this morning is fairly gentle – Jesus says the people the Gentiles recognize are rulers lord it over them…  

What gets lost here is Jesus contempt for these rulers. Our very polite version does not do contempt too well… In some other instances the word Esteemed appears, which would seem to suggest great respect, except if we could hear Jesus’ tone of voice, we’d hear sarcasm. Some scholars suggest that the best translation would be “these so-called rulers of the Gentiles…”.

Jesus makes plain to the disciples that the current definition of ruler is out. And then he puts a new definition in place. You want to be a great ruler? Start by being a great servant. If you want to be leader, become a slave… Just as Jesus has come into this world to be a servant, not to be served. To rule is to be lowliest of all.  

And Jesus doesn’t put a time limit on this… It would be nice, and far easier to accept, if Jesus had said if you want to rule, then for a while you have to serve… If you want to run the company, you must start out working in the mail room… If you want to be a great General, you have to start in basic training. But Jesus doesn’t say anything about service being temporary, or for the purpose of learning… He just says you have to serve, as Jesus came to serve. Forever… 

The disciples struggled with this. The early church, as witnessed in the various letters of Paul, struggled with this. Certainly, in the middle ages, the church and its leaders became drunk on power and glory, not living like prices, but literally being Princes. After the reformation “fixed” all that, here we are, still struggling to understand how little power has to do with the message of Jesus. 

I know how great the struggle is because it is my struggle. Like James and John, I think it would be really great to sit at God’s right hand… in power and glory…  

But the place I need to sit is with the poorest of the poor and the most broken in spirit – because that is where God’s right hand is.

 

As we head into Spring in the southern hemisphere the days get longer and warmer. And at the same time we are heading toward the season of Advent. It feels very odd indeed.

The days should be growing shorter and there should be less light – so that Jesus comes to a darkened world to bring light… The symbols just don’t work as neatly here. But the world is spiritually darkened Spring notwithstanding. I keep wondering if our notions of holidays and seasons in the church year should be adjusted to this hemisphere. How can one sing great hymns like “In the Bleak Mid Winter” or “O Little Town of Bethlehem” when it is sunny and 85 degrees? I gather the custom for many folks to keep Christmas is a trip to the beach.

But the flowers may make up for all that. Poet Christopher Smart calls flowers “the peculiar poetry of Christ.” Certainly flowers, like all things, tell us something about their creator. Do flowers drape themselves in wild and vibrant color just for us? Or just for them? Or for the bees and bugs that pollinate? Is it just a reckless display of beauty that mirrors the reckless way God loves? All of the above?

There is one flower that has particularly captured my thoughts. It is a Citrus Geranium, which is a native South African plant, but I guess by now is found in garden centers across the globe.

As you can see in this picture, its not the prettiest or most exuberant flower in the world. It has small, little flowers and is a fairly diminutive plant. It is good in wet and dry weather, though in dry conditions its leaves look sad. Its big thing is not its visual beauty. But run your fingers over the leaves and the smell of citrus is huge. This little plant cries out with scent rather than sight.

How fun. Many of the flowering things fill the air with sweet smells, but this little fellow, when you touch him, gives this clean and refreshing blast. That, apparently, appeals to some pollinators. But for the mosquito, it is not welcome at all. I love this plant!

So each of us has our gifts and some are more subtle and quiet. But they are gifts nonetheless. I don’t suppose that a Citrus Geranium ever has doubts about its beauty or envy of the Bird-of-Paradise bursting forth with noisy color just a few feet away.

I also believe that these flowers never lament that their time of beauty can be quite short. One of the beautiful and aromatic shrubs is called Yesterday Today Tomorrow (Brunfelsia pauciflora if you want to be proper). It looks like this:

It has, one day, little buds. That would be yesterday. Today the buds open into the purple flowers that fade quickly to white. And tomorrow they are gone, followed by the next round. It moves on constantly – never getting too attached to the present.

All these flowers have something to say. All of creation has something to say. All creation sings of its Creator. We have a place, an important place, in creation. But we are not the Creator. It is not always clear that we understand our relationship with other parts of God’s creation. And that is our loss and perhaps our path to destruction.

But today, I’ll stop and admire the flowers.

So our Monastic Library here at Mariya uMama weThemba is in a bit of disorder. It was down the hill and had to come up the hill. In the process of being boxed and moved, it also got shuffled. And we are making changes in how it is shelved to make it more friendly – all nice things and primarily my work for the next bit of time.

So I came across this “book” pictured above. It was nestled in with things from Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton, among others. I was whipping my way through books putting them in categories like “Monastic History” and “Religious History”. As I glanced at this book trying to settle in my mind where it would go I saw, in the picture, a monk in a habit pushing some type of broom… Was this some type of contemporary Franciscan thing? Was it a book on the spirituality of cleaning? I struggled to make sense. There are a lot of strange books in a monastic library.

Slowly it began to dawn on me it was no book at all. No quirky monastic order. Just the ever-so-mundane operating instructions for a carpet cleaner that had somehow made its way into the monastic library. But having realized that, I was still left to wonder why the manufacturer had put a monk in habit on the cover of their book… reality eventually crept in.

I find these sorts of things quite amusing; what the mind will do to make sense of things that don’t make sense. BUT if I leave it there then I have left a humbling learning opportunity in the dust.

In this silly example is an illustration of the way we see what we want or what we expect, not what is in front of us. Its not just that we project what we want to see, but our experience and context pre-disposes us to see things. We look at the world through the lens of our own life. So I see a monk in a habit on the cover of an operating manual for a vacuum device…

In this case it is innocent and silly – and harmless.

But when I am in South Africa looking though my North American lenses, what is distorted? When I look through my white male lenses, what do I mis-perceive about folks who are neither white nor male?

When I looked at this book cover, my monastic lenses clearly filled in some blanks in a way that, I think, is a compliment to the guy on the cover. But in general when we “look” at folks and fail to see who they are, it is no compliment. When we “listen” to people without really hearing what they say, it is nothing less than a lie.

In the Christian tradition we hold that God knows us as we truly are. God sees what is in our hearts and knows what is on our tongues. I firmly believe this, though there are days I wish I didn’t – days when my heart is in an ugly space and when my words have been derisive or dismissive. Yet the faith is that God not only knows us (knows me), but that God loves us (loves me). And I really do believe this.

The opportunity is to take the risk to know myself more deeply and more fully. Knowing that I’m the guy who sees monks on equipment brochures tells me something about what is in my heart and also how my assured judgement is much less than assured.

In fact, I have to give up the entire illusion of certainty. That doesn’t leave me arrested and motionless. It means I have to proceed in faith rather than in certainty.

Now I’m ready to take on that vacuum cleaner and all its spiritual demands…

We started this morning with a cold mist floating about the place. We’re at a high enough elevation that getting wrapped in the clouds is not too uncommon. But it was a strange sort of feeling – like we might have been on some other planet or that the craze of the world might have been quieted.

Sitting in the chapel, where great windows overlook this valley is always a treat, but I really love the misty, brooding sorts of days more than the sunny and perfect sorts of days. So this was the view more or less at Lauds:

Perhaps its a bit crazy – but in some sense this could be the highlands of Scotland in this sort of weather. And I love Scotland…

I suppose in some sense there is a link between Scotland and South Africa (beyond the history of British colonialism). Scotland is at the northern edge of things and has this marvelous coast that looks to the Atlantic and the north pole if you far enough. South Africa is at the south end of things and has this marvelous coast that looks to the south pole… Somewhere with no definitive sort of boundary the south coast of South Africa looks at either the Indian Ocean, or the Atlantic. The Cape of Good Hope more or less points to that boundary, but beyond the land, it really just looks like water that knows no bounds.

I’ve been reading Diarmuid O’Murchu’s “Religious Life in the 21st Century” lately and he spends a fair amount of effort looking at the tendency in religious communities to want to more or less escape the world. And when we are fogged in, it feels like we have. But by mid-morning the sun was out and the world was back…

Part of the monastic challenge, but really the challenge for all people of good will and hope, is to be able to know the world as it is and see it as it could be – a better world. And having seen a better world, then to get about the business of building that better world. There is no one answer as to how to do that. In fact, there are perhaps about 8 billion answers, since that seems to be about the population of the world this year…

Part of the wonder of misty mornings for me is that I get to see an almost unformed world – just a gray, misty blank slate. And I think it is especially important to really stop and look at it – to smell the moist air and hear the soft murmur of things. Then to see what the mist could form into…

The point is not to get too weighed down by what is behind the mist – this is South Africa and behind the mist I know is a great deal of pain, poverty, violence, and corruption. As well as a great deal of humanity and grace. Reality is there no matter what I think.

But the mist reminds me that opportunity is there as well. We don’t change reality by wishing things were different. But we do change reality by seizing opportunity.

 

Here are the readings for today – for the curious… 

There is so much going on in today’s Gospel reading from Mark. Words of comfort, words of caution, words about being good to children and not creating stumbling blocks for those who would follow Jesus. There is the discussion of casting out demons – and who gets to do so… the disciples and Jesus do not seem to be on the same page on this. So many interesting things to talk about… 

So naturally, I don’t want to talk about any of those things. 

Instead, let’s talk about salt. 

In the final two sentences in this section of the Gospel, the word salt, or some form of it, comes up between 4 and 7 times – depending on who’s translation you look at. In the version we heard this morning, it comes up 5 times which is right in the middle, right where Anglicans want to be. 

So, all that talk of salt leads me to wonder what might be standing in the background. Why so much salt? 

We take salt for granted these days. You can go to the store and purchase salt for a very small amount of money. In the United States, where we have very cold winters with mountains of snow and lots of ice, we cover the roads in salt. It melts the ice and is inexpensive. You can drive safely through ice and snow… then your car then rusts to pieces in the Spring… 

If you are a crazy gourmet cook with way too much money to spend then there is an exotic salt extracted from sea water in Korea by roasting it in bamboo and clay – and if you’re curious, it costs about 20 Rands ($1.5) for a single pinch.  

So, was Jesus talking about Amethyst Bamboo Salt (that’s the expensive stuff) or ordinary table salt? The answer is probably none of the above.  

The salt we see today is carefully refined, so it is mostly pure sodium chloride with trace elements in it. That was not the case in Jesus’ time. 

Salt was gathered then in ways similar to today. Salt water from any number of available salty places was dried and the remainder was a white, powdery substance, so it would look like a modern salt. But it contained lots of other things. And it had more uses than just flavor enhancing food. 

(I know the scientists are thinking that there are lots of other substances that are salts, not just sodium chloride… but I’ve got to cut this off somewhere – so “table salt” is the standard). 

Salt, then as now, was used to preserve things. In a world without refrigeration or canning, you either ate things fresh, or you got sick a lot, or you preserved with something like salt. So some of Jesus reference in his 5 or so mentions of salt have to do with the preservative nature of salt. 

Salt also has some anti-bacterial healing properties – it doesn’t feel too good but rubbing salt in a wound can prevent infection. And it is likely that folks in Jesus time were aware that washing a wound with salt water could help, especially given that the “fresh” water was probably none too fresh. So, some of Jesus’ 5 or more references were to this healing property of salt. 

These days we burnt sacrifice is pretty much behind us… However, in Jesus time it was standard practice. Before an offering was sacrificed it had to be salted – probably as a ritual form of purification. And this is certainly in Jesus’ 5 salts… 

Another more obscure way that salt was used then was in the cooking process, but not where we might guess. There was nothing like a modern oven, but there were outdoor cooking ovens that allowed for the roasting of foods. In these ovens, the fuel and the food got to share the chamber and the floor of the chamber was often made up of a layer of salt.  

The salt may have helped control food contamination, but it also helped in combustion for the salt acted as a catalyst for the flames. But not the salt exactly, it was other minerals in the salt that enhanced the fire. Remember that salt was not particularly refined, so there were lots of other minerals and things, not just sodium and chloride.  

At some point, those volatile elements would be exhausted. You’d be left with just a bland block of salt. It would be said to have “lost its saltiness” since it could no longer enhance the fire. It would be tossed onto the footpath as a sort of low-grade paving and fresh salt would replace it. This is clearly part of Jesus’ 5 salts. Today we know that salt cannot actually loose its saltiness – except by becoming something else. But salt was different then… 

Well – back to today’s reading…  

We’ve gone through the discussion on doing good things in Jesus name… We’ve been admonished not to lead people astray or to set up barriers between them and God’s good news… And we’ve been warned in no uncertain terms about millstones around our necks as we are tossed into the sea… We’ve heard about a place where the fire never stops burning and the worm never stops nibbling. I don’t dismiss these warnings, but I think they are meant to grab our attention. They are sign posts along the way. They are not the destination. 

And then the salt… Everyone will be salted… with fire. Translators struggle with this, but the meaning comes through – this is salt in the purifying and preserving sense. Fire purifies, and salt purifies… We will be made pure… We will be preserved. You could say, perhaps, we will be saved.  

But if the salt has lost its saltiness, how can it be seasoned? Everyone in those days knew about salt and its use in the cooking oven and what un-salty salt was worth. I believe what Jesus wants is for us to be the salt… to enhance the flame, the passion, the holy fire of the Gospel.  

We are called to share the good news… to share the Holy Spirit. If you remember the day of Pentecost, the spirit comes in wings of flame. We are called to be part of that flame, to be catalysts as salt was a catalyst in those familiar ovens around where Jesus lived. If we are not part of the reaction, part of the flame, we are of no use.  

And just call to mind where the reading started: The disciples have seen an unknown healer helping sick people and they put a stop to it… The see the fire of God’s healing power and they toss water on it. God is wild, not safe. God’s love is abundant and unrestricted. Too often, we would like to domesticate God… 

Have salt in ourselves? I don’t know about here in South Africa, but in the US the medical advice is to have less salt. It doesn’t matter how much or how little salt you eat, it should always be less. And to be fair in a land fed largely on McDonalds French Fries, there are tons of salt in the diet…  

But Jesus is not being literal or contradicting modern medicine. I think this is yet another concept of salt, as in salt of the earth. We struggle these days with the concept of humility. Left unchecked we can get quite full of ourselves, but on the other hand, many around us value themselves so little that suicide and other forms of self-destruction abound. Humility is tied to the earth – specifically to humus, that rich soil that makes gardens so marvelous. To be humble is simply to be properly grounded in the earth.  

There is an additional dimension to salty that may not have existed in Jesus time, but I think is helpful. Salty is, at least for the English, a somewhat derogatory description for folks who are coarse or common. Sailors were referred to, in days past, as “old salts” partly for their time at sea, but also for the unrefined ways. Still in the US, “salty language” is a euphemism for foul language. 

Jesus is telling us to be salt… I hear a call to be salty, not too proper, not too worried about things being just so. Jesus is always concerned that we be honest and never very concerned that we be polite.  

So, salting ourselves, being offerings in our whole bodies to God, being part of the living flame of the Holy Spirit, being humble and well grounded, and being more honest and less polite enables us to be at peace with ourselves and our brothers and sisters. 

This is no little thing. It literally makes us builders of God’s Kingdom of peace and justice, not in some heavenly sphere, but right here, right on this salty old earth.

South Africa celebrates National Heritage day in a number of ways and at our school it is an important day. On Saturday (not the official day, but a good day for folks to come) the school was open and faculty, staff, parents, siblings, and most of all students were on hand for traditional games, food, and fun.

There were games involving balls and kicking them and running… I don’t know much about even familiar sports, but this sport isn’t like anything I know… There were swing sets… there was jump rope with kids taking turns while others swung the rope… there was singing and dancing and storytelling…

A big feature of Heritage Day is Braai – or what in the northeast of the US we would call barbecue. Our school’s day followed that custom with, among other things, a roast pig donated by one of the families.

The food was abundant and smelled wonderful. Braai is very typically South African and so were the side dishes of corn meal and spinach as well as rice.

It is a lovely group affair and a great treat for the kids – and for the Brothers as it fills the area with energy, sound, and aromas.

Most of the kids in our school come from poverty, so a good meal is more than just a treat. It is a day when they are not food insecure. It is also quite wonderful to see that our school mixes a few kids from pretty comfortable backgrounds into the group quite seamlessly. Keep in mind, Apartheid only ended in the mid-nineties. So a group of racially diverse children has been possible for just over a generation. And its marvelous to see how indifferent these kids were to racial identity. At least for this day and in this safe space…

The class rooms look a lot like any classroom anywhere, but the views from the windows would have kept me distracted for most of the school year… They look out over our valley with its ever changing patters of light and cloud. For most of the students who live in the location of Grahamstown, it is important to be able to spend time in an environment that is not dangerous, not dirty, and not crowded.

The class sizes are small – about 14 per classroom and the teachers and administrators are first rate and so we are very proud of the opportunity the school offers. Kids coming out of our school (which is only primary grades), if they do well, can go to some of the finest schools in South Africa, which happen to be in Grahamstown. Those who are not quite so academically minded can go to the public schools, but they are well positioned to excel because they have learned basics of language, math, and culture.

South Africa for a long time has had world-class prep schools, colleges, and universities and these are largely still functioning. But in Apartheid times blacks could not attend these schools. Mission schools functioned for a long time relatively free of government oversight (and produced folks like Nelson Mandela) but in the 1950s the Bantu Education Act brought Apartheid to education and forced black kids into government schools. In these schools they were taught how to be other folks servants – how to clean other people’s houses, how to cook other people’s meals, how to work in other people’s factories. And while the Bantu Act is gone, the government schools are struggling to say the least. Many still lack basics like indoor plumbing. Teachers are over-worked, under-supervised, and not much education can take place.

The path out of poverty for these young people is education. And our little school provides a place where students can get a good start on education.

Building God’s Kingdom here and now must surely involve equipping young people to be servants of God, not servants of human masters.

And I would be remiss if I left the impression that everything at our school is roses… the Order does not have nearly enough money to run the school and so we scrimp and scrape. But it is not sustainable in the long run. So if you happen to have deep pockets, or know someone or a an organization that does, gifts to the school will always help. Donations for Holy Cross School can always be made through the Order of the Holy Cross, West Park.

The thing about God’s Kingdom is that some assembly is required and it doesn’t build itself…

Yesterday was the Feast of the Holy Cross – at least that is its most basic name. The legend about this particular feast is that it marks the finding of the actual cross on which Jesus was crucified. More about that later.

In the Order of the Holy Cross you can imagine that this is a major feast. And what would a feast be without a feast – so yesterday at midday we dined on marvelous pork belly… This not a common meal in the northern US, but it is the part of the pig from which Bacon comes – so you know it is good. It is basically uncut, uncured, unsmoked bacon that is cooked until tender with various good things.

As for the feast – legend has it that St Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine (who was anything but a saint in spite of his saintly mom), found the cross while leading a discovery through the Holy Land. There are all kinds of political breezes blowing around the story, but you can google that if you like.

The feast has alternative names, but my favorite is “The Invention of the True Cross” – which is so named because of a rather literal trip from Latin into English. The Latin word “inventa” means to find and perhaps our English word “invent” may include some essence of that. Inventors “find” solutions to various things…

I like the notion of invention because it suggests not being too literal about this feast. I know some who insist that St Helena absolutely found the one and only exact cross on which Jesus was crucified – some 300 years after the event… And I suppose it could be true. But the thing about the Romans and their most evil method of execution, the cross, is that each cross was used over and over. Once you were dead, the cross was readied for the next victim. And eventually the cross would be discarded when it was no longer usable. So the notion that this particular cross was somehow stored in a secluded spot so that Helena could later discover it is very unlikely.

But, having said that, I work to liberate myself from a too literal understanding of scripture and tradition. I have no trouble understanding that the stories in Genesis are not literal descriptions of how the earth was formed – the fact that there are two stories and they make no attempt to harmonize underscores that point. Why then should I be confined to a literal understanding of the Legend of St Helena and the Finding of the Cross?

The cross has much to teach us about our own inhumanity. The Romans had a number of methods of execution and the cross was intended to be the most horrible, reserved for the most dangerous folks. On the cross, the condemned person was not only meant to die, he was meant to suffer… and he and his suffering were meant to be on display. I would say he or she, but I don’t think the Romans crucified women.

It is always tempting to think of these things that happened millennia ago as being locked in the past. But what the ancient folks understood about remembering is that it is not locked in the past at all – when we remember (literally put the “members” back together) we live the event now, not then.

It is simply a fact that the cruelty of the Romans is hardly locked in ancient history. I’d note, as an example, the recent US practice of taking children from their parents at the boarder in order to set an example to others. This may not have been literal crucifixion, but it has many of the marks: It is cruel, without doubt. It is intended to create a spectacle that will frighten other would-be migrants into turning back. We are inventing a new cross, as it were.

So I hope you enjoyed the feast – I did… but not simply as a happy celebration. God’s power is what transformed the cross from a hideous and inhumane tool in a wretched and evil system of “justice” in the Roman world into a symbol of love and forgiveness.

We need to hold onto the reality that the cross is made of our most vile intentions. If we loose sight of that then our base nature is set free to do horrible things, and God’s sacrifice is reduced to a sort of magic charm that can be worn as jewelry and nothing more.

There is a pious concept of laying our burdens and troubles at the foot of the cross – and that is a beautiful concept. But I’d suggest also that we hold in mind sometimes that we make up the cross with our hate, indifference, greed, and inhumanity and Jesus is nailed to that cross. Jesus doesn’t crucify himself.

The Feast of the Holy Cross is a very sober feast indeed. Pork Belly notwithstanding.

Fauna of Africa up close and personal…

Yesterday (Monday) we headed to Port Elizabeth, the somewhat nearby city that features a fairly substantial airport. Br Joel was heading out for a few weeks of vacation and family visit in Tanzania. So we had to drop him at the airport.

Heading down the N2, the road that more or less leads from Cape Town in the Western Cape to Durban in KwaZulu Natal by way of Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, we passed through a long expanse of rolling hills and valleys with lots of wildlife. I noticed in the trees many baboons sort of gathered and watching things go by. At first I thought they were large birds. I thought – how nice to see some wildlife to make me feel like I’m in Africa…

We had a very nice time in Port Elizabeth including a sumptuous brunch on the terrace of a restaurant overlooking the Indian Ocean. PE, as it is always referred to, has a population of more than 1 million, a bit larger than Boston. So while it is not a world-known city, it is not small. The port is quite active and I counted more than a dozen freighters scattered around the harbor waiting for who knows what.

Coming home again along that long stretch of N2 through things like Addo Elephant reserve Br Daniel, who was driving, noticed lions to our right in the process of mating. Br Roger refers to it as “nature porn”. It is the first time I have seen lions in the wild (acting wild to boot). They are really big. And I called to mind that it was only about 30 miles from here that lions dined on Rhino poachers at Sibuya Game Preserve. There is poetry in the poachers being poached. 3 people lost their lives, but the population of Rhinos has been reduced by poaching to fewer than 5000, with about 1000 being killed last year alone. It is truly gruesome as only the horns are taken and the giant, elegant creatures of God’s hand are simply left to rot. So I’ll keep my focus on the happy lions…

We came home and I felt quite good about my wildlife encounters – the closest thing to wild living in a monastery…

But this morning, sitting in my room fairly early, I heard the sound of a cow which sounded quite close to my window. Out I looked and, behold, not one cow but a little herd of about 6 cows… munching away as cows do on the grass in our front lawn.

This is not normal… So I grabbed my cell phone and went to see about a picture. Most of the cows seemed to head down the path to some imagined greener pasture before I got there, but this one bull, seen above, seemed quite taken with our courtyard. He posed rather pleasantly for a picture. I’m not particularly afraid of cows, but bulls can be dangerous – and they are really big animals. So I thought best not to push my luck. I got my picture and came back inside.

Cows, I suspect, are not part of the natural flora of South Africa. But I suspect wrong. Cows have been in this region for a few thousands of years and the breed is a mixture of cows from India, Europe, and most particularly the fertile crescent. Who knew?

So baboons, mating lions, and cows are all local fauna doing what they do. I feel privileged to be here to see it.

And I am reminded of the fragility of life – all life. And that we, as great manipulators of the natural environment, have a particular part to play in allowing God’s other creatures to thrive, or at least survive.

If we take scripture seriously, early in Genesis we are given dominion over the earth – which sounds good. But then there are many additional directions given on the responsibility of dominion. In short, exploitation is not dominion.

But we seem quite proud of exploiting the planet and its resources. Just as those poachers who ended up as food for lions while attempting to exploit rhinoceroses, we do so at our own peril.

This is not as random as it may seem. In South Africa, water heaters are named “geysers” (as in Old Faithful – which spouts hot water as well). But unlike the US, the word is pronounced “geezer” which, at least to me, has a humorously different meaning.

Our old geyser failed a few weeks ago. First it leaked and then stopped producing hot water. Various plumbers were called and, on the third try, we found a plumber who could work on this type of system and with the size unit that was needed – only catch is that the unit had to be shipped from afar. Cape Town? Johannesburg? Somewhere.

So day by day we waited for the uncertain arrival date (there is an adjacent building, so its not like we without any hot water – it was just a few more steps away). And then one day the crew arrived, geezer (oops geyser) in hand. They ascended the roof and, in the picture at the top, you can see the near-final product: a shiny new geyser in place of our old geezer.

The notion of an old geezer on the roof puts me in mind of Green Acres or Petticoat Junction – don’t ask me why. But perhaps I should borrow from Fiddler on the Roof to continue to amuse myself. You ask me why there is a Geyser on the Roof… there has always been a Geyser on the Roof… cue the music.

Of course there has not always been a Geyser on the roof. This is a fairly new thing in South Africa and that, in part, is why it was a bit of a challenge to get the needed device. In the US it would be odd indeed to put the water heater on the roof. These types of things live in basements and crawl spaces, or at least utility rooms in the US. But South Africa does not have the type of cold the US has. And it has extremely abundant sunshine. So the Geyser has migrated up and, in the process, added a solar capacity.

I believe there are 9 Geysers at the Monastery and they feature solar panels as part of the installation all neatly perched on their respective roofs. Apparently ESCOM, the South African energy company has noticed that solar geysers are a thing… electricity consumption has remained flat or declined a bit, even though more homes have hot running water and appliances that consume electricity. I suppose if I were ESCOM I would be less than thrilled. But for residents of planet earth, it is exciting.

South Africa is an interesting place where some folks live in ultra-modern luxury and, generally across a highway of some sort, other folks live in rather primitive circumstances. A plan to try to level this difference by reducing the comfort of the rich is likely to be a disaster in the short run. But a plan to increase the comfort of the poor so that they can live just like the rich is likely to be a disaster for the planet – for the rich (and I count myself in those who live a very comfortable lifestyle) consume energy in an unsustainable way.

It would be nice to think that, through the miracle of technology, we could all live in energy-wasting luxury. I don’t believe that is possible, let alone desirable, let even more alone sustainable. However, ingenuity is endless – perhaps a quality is derives from God’s endless love.

ESCOM is shuffling its long range plans to have fewer power plants and may even look at reducing coal plants (a big political/social intersection because employment is a dire social need and coal mines do employ people). Solar Geysers, or who knows what else, are fascinating because they are so decentralized. And they are not wildly expensive. So you see them in many places around South Africa – on posh homes and on extremely modest homes.

Nature is endlessly creative – I believe a reflection of the wildly creative nature of God. And we, as humans, like it or not, are just another bit of God’s creation.

So this old geezer takes quite a bit of encouragement from the proliferation of solar geysers in this part of the world.

This is my sermon from yesterday in case you’re interested in yesterday’s news…

Readings may be found here: http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp17_RCL.html

Today Mark tells us a familiar story in a familiar style. Jesus is teaching, and some Pharisees and scribes come by to heckle him. This is a formula of sorts – and it never seems to end well for the Pharisees or the scribes…

But let’s not let what we think we know stand in the way of what this Gospel may be telling us. And let’s not let Mark’s own biases distort what we may need to hear.

So what might Mark’s biases be? It’s hard to say with too much precision, since he didn’t leave us a list… but these repeated encounters with the scribes and pharisees tell us something. There was a need for early Christians to differentiate themselves from the larger Jewish community and a need to assert the authority of Jesus.

In a sense, at the opening of this passage when the Pharisees and Scribes fuss over the unwashed nature of the disciples, they are really challenging Jesus’ authority as a teacher. If Jesus isn’t teaching the most basic things about the law, then he cannot be a teacher at all. If the disciples don’t even know to wash their hands, then their teacher is obviously terrible. So by criticizing those dirty hands, the Scribes and Pharisees are really dismissing Jesus.

But before we develop too low and opinion of the Pharisees and Scribes, we must remember it is Mark who wants this fight. There is a purpose in telling the story. And with Mark, who is always economical in his writing, every detail is important. Mark specifically wants to build up Jesus’ stature by diminishing the opposition. The work of building up Jesus and taking down the Scribes and Pharisees is long over. Or is it? We’ll come back to that.

It is also important to remember that the code the Pharisees and Scribes were defending is not a sanitary code. It was not some early Health Code designed to avoid the transmission of germs and disease. It was a Holiness Code. Cleanliness was a theological concept, not a sanitary one as we would have today.

Let’s face it, if they washed their hands or not, people in this time were still filthy by today’s standards. Water was scarce and most of it was not what we would consider usable. Soap, as we know it, was a long way off. As for a hot shower or bath, that is more than a thousand years in the future… In our fairly modern world cleanliness may be next to Godliness, but in Mark’s time sanitary cleanliness was just not a concept.

Differentiation was a concept. It was essential for the Jews, who were relatively few in number compared to the Greeks, to differentiate themselves lest they be swallowed up. And that is a duty that the holiness code performed well. Ritual cleanliness or purity was a reminder, both to Jews and Gentiles. The Jews engaged in any number of rituals, including washing before they ate, as a way of maintaining identity… a way of being set apart… of reminding themselves and others that they were God’s chosen people.

So, the Pharisees are understandably upset. They don’t care about the germ content on anybody’s hands… they care that this precious identity of being Jews, God’s chosen people, is being eroded. It is a big deal.

At the time when Mark’s Gospel is being recorded, the peace of Jerusalem was crumbling and the fortunes of the people of Israel were in deep trouble. While the temple was functioning during Jesus’ life, within a few decades of his crucifixion, the temple is destroyed, and the Jews are scattered. That collapse is beginning. A very dark cloud fills the sky above this encounter.

I tend to want to view the Scribes and Pharisees as just “the bad guys” playing opposite Jesus – sort of dramatic foils if you will. But that is not the case. They are devout and faithful Jews and they love the Lord their God with all their hearts, and their souls, and their might. Mark uses the Scribes and Pharisees to differentiate this young Jesus-movement, just as the Scribes and Pharisees use the Holiness Code to different the Jews. There is poetry in this structure.

The next startling thing Jesus does is answer the Scribes and Pharisees, who have questioned him about the law, with the words of a Prophet – Isaiah to be precise. Here is the Good News version of Isaiah as quoted by Jesus: The Lord said, “These people claim to worship me, but their words are meaningless, and their hearts are somewhere else. Their religion is nothing but human rules and traditions, which they have simply memorized.” 

Nothing but human rules… Prophets were not generally a popular lot, and it’s not hard to see why…

But again, Mark is up to something deeper. We often hear “the law and the Prophets” as a collective unity, as when Jesus says the greatest commandment is that you shall love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. This is the commandment on which hang all the law and the Prophets. But the law and Prophets are two distinct things with their roots in different times and different places.

So, the Pharisees and Scribes bring up a point of law and Jesus responds with a Prophet. The expected response to a question of law is to cite more law…

The not-too-subtle message seems to be that the law, without prophetic wisdom, is not complete. For the law is a systematic approach to regulation and management of society, while the prophets are mouthpieces for the radical and unfettered love of God. And this, after all, seems to be the problem for the scribes and pharisees – they are more concerned with good and decent adherence to tradition than to living in God’s love.

In case we missed it, Jesus clarifies: We are not defiled by what goes into us, rather we are defiled by what comes out of us. Then there is a helpful list of defiling things – and if you spend some time with that list the common quality is that it is a list of ways we degrade other people and ourselves: Slander, deceit, avarice, pride and so on.

Jesus pretty much says that you can be a devout adherent to the law and, at the same time be guilty of his defiling list of things. Wash away at those hands… you are still unclean. For all your efforts you are no closer to God. In fact, you may be further away.

So who are our Scribes and Pharisees these days? Who are our dramatic foils? Who, in God’s name, are the folks feeding us words that lead us away rather than closer to God?

Well – being an American I have to say firmly that I believe many of our politicians are worthy of Isaiah’s condemnation. They claim deep devotion to Jesus, but their actions are often to be found on that list of things that defile: deceit, avarice, licentiousness. The is not a peculiarly American thing. But I do think US politicians go much further in cloaking their actions in language of faith – actions that are arrogant, prideful, greedy, and destructive of God’s children and God’s creation.

Being a Christian I would also have to say that there are many who claim to be followers of Jesus and shout the Gospel, as they understand it, from mighty pulpits and, buy the miracle of technology, are heard across the globe. But their way of living is drawn extensively from Jesus’ defiling list. Greed… adultery… theft…

But here’s the thing… I could have a grand time holding forth for hours about the failures of others. I can do so in a kind, loving, and generous way… At least I tell myself I can… I can Scribe and Pharisee with the best of them. And I am not unique… The Pharisee I must contend with is me. And that is just not nearly as much fun as picking apart politicians and televangelists… And it’s not easy to have perspective on myself.

Jesus calls the faithful to follow in some form of community. The disciples, the early Churches, these are communities. Just as this monastery is a community. Jesus understood human nature – he was fully human after all… And I think Jesus calls us to be in some sort of community so that when my inner Scribe and Pharisee starts to take over, my brothers and sisters can smile and say, “have you heard from Isaiah lately?”