How Will This Be? (Luke 1:26 - 38)

Last week, we spoke of Mary and Elizabeth, and the ways in which their encounters with the divine changed them, how their lives had been upended, and how their encounter with one another may have helped them cope with their encounters with the divine.  This week, we back up a little and talk about one encounter and what it foretold.

The Angel Gabriel, making one of only three appearances, comes to Mary in the sixth month of the year, in June,  when things were already blisteringly hot in Palestine, when women like her had already started waiting until evening to water the sheep.  Nazareth was a little sheep town, barely a wide spot in the Jerusalem road, and Mary was engaged to an upstanding young man named Joseph, who was of the illustrious line of David.  And Gabriel says “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” And she’s troubled, because she’d never thought of herself as favored in any way, shape or form, and immediately she’s on her guard.   Because being favored by God wasn’t necessarily all hearts and roses . . . Just look at Isaiah, for Pete’s sake.  He was favored by God and got branded on the mouth by a bunch of flying snakes. Or Ezekiel, who had to eat a whole scroll, without even the benefit of salt.

But the angel tells her to not be afraid—she’s not afraid, she thinks, just troubled,  but never mind—“Do not be afraid,” the angel says, “because you have found favor with God. And behold!  You will conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”  And that was pretty specific, she’s even told what to name him . . . and what a name it is: Jesus, yeshua in Hebrew, savior.  But wait, there’s more!  “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.  the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

And her head is reeling, and she blurts out the first thing that enters it, the million-dollar question: “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”  And the first thing I think of is that she’s asking out of curiosity, she’s asking because she really wants to know.  After all, she is a virgin, she hasn’t known a man or a god . . . How is this going to come about?  Is God himself going to, uh . . . you know? Because she may be a young girl, but she knows what’s what, she knows how babies are made . . . she hasn’t spent the last five years watching livestock for nothing.  Just how is this going to happen, exactly?

I also think she isn’t at all certain which way things are going to go—as Luke says, she’s trying to determine just what sort of greeting this is going to be. I think she’s asking how it will be for her, how will her life be after all this, after being touched by the divine, in whatever form it’s going to take.  Maybe it’s just me, but I hear a fair amount of wariness on her part, a fair amount of suspicion in this brief exchange.  After all, she’s heard the stories of how the call of God can—and usually does—transforms the lives of those who are being called, and most of the time, it’s not in a way they would desire.

But there’s a third sense in which she asks the question, and it’s born out of a deep-seated sense of inadequacy, of insignificance before the power if God.  As we saw last time, she is just a slip of a girl, barely into adolescence, and certainly not mother-of-savior-from-the-house-of-David material.  And  besides, she’s grown up in the toxic stew of the patriarchy, which insists that women were simply appendages to men.  She couldn’t even go into the temple, for goodness sake, to worship her God.  How will this be, she is asking, that something so glorious could come through the offices of something as insignificant as me?

At a church in Starkville Mississippi to which we belonged, there was a Baptist named Lee.  Well, like me, he used to be a Baptist, but now he was a Presbyterian.  And I may have mentioned him before, but he’d joined our church because he was in the Deep South, and he wasn’t from around there, and the Baptist churches in Starkpatch, as we used to call it, were a little too … hard core for him.  Again like me.  But unlike me, Lee was in in the military, and he’d seen a lot of things, a lot of different people and cultures, and he’d outgrown the parochial judgementalism of a lot of Southern Baptist congregations--not all of them, save your cards and letters—but a lot of them, there in the buckle of the Bible Belt.

Anyway, after he’d been there a year, he was elected elder, just like that, and because we’d gotten to know one another in that brief time—probably because of our common ancestry as refugee Baptists—he came to me all upset about his election.  I tried to reassure him that this church did that all time, elected relative newcomers, and that we trusted the Lord to get these things right.  That didn’t reassure him much, and it certainly didn’t help when I related our pastor’s opinion that that congregation elected anybody who wears a suit (I’ve since gotten better at pastoral care).  He kept saying stuff like “I’ve only been a Presbyterian for a year, and here I am an elder already.  How can this be?”

Have you ever asked that question?  I know I have, especially during the early stages of my call into pastoral ministry, at the beginning of my transition from earthy biologist to, well, somewhat less earthy pastor.  And I suspect many of you have asked it as well, and not just at the call of God, either.  Perhaps when you you’ve gotten an unlooked-for promotion, or come into some unlooked for money, or something equally unexpected.  It’s the same question as “why me,” isn’t it?  The same question we ask when bad things happen as well . . . “I’ve had two colds, three fevers, and now this.  Why me, Lord, why me?”

Well.  Gabriel seems to think she’s asking in the first, purely biological sense, the mechanical sense, because he answers that one. Maybe he thinks that’s the only issue, or maybe he knows that it wouldn’t do any good to tell her any more, about the wonder of the shepherds or the star, about the heartache of seeing her child spiked to a tree . . . Maybe he had no answers to give her, maybe he didn’t know how she was worthy, or why God picked her for this terrible, wonderful, journey.

Whatever the case, here’s what he tells her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you . . .” and there’s not a lot of detail here, is there?  There’s not a lot of “here’s how it’s going to happen” stuff that we moderns tend to ask for.  He just tells her that the power of God is going to do it, through the Holy Spirit.  And because of that the child will be called holy, which as you know means he has been set aside and consecrated for the work he will do, and all Mary knows about that work is what she’s been told: he’s going to inherit the throne of David, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

The angel comes down, makes a pronouncement, and boom!  The life she expected for herself—a quiet life as the wife of a carpenter, safe and protected, perhaps even loved—is gone in an instant.  No wonder she questioned, no wonder she wondered how all of this was going to come about, in what  sense she was favored.  We all question when faced with a life-altering circumstance.  I remember for a while I flopped around like a fish on a hook when I felt the call, when I heard something that I knew would change my life forever.  And of course, my call didn’t just change my life, but the lives of my family as well.  Pam likes to say that she didn’t hear God, but her life was changed anyhow.  And in many ways, we were like Mary: virgins at following the will of God.  We didn’t know exactly what we were doing, but it turned out ok in the end.

Of course, it doesn’t happen with individuals and families: the lives of whole groups, whole communities can change in an instant at the intervention of God.  It’s kind if what we’ve been talking about for the past year: are we doing what the Lord would have us do?  We have been in a process of discernment, of trying to listen to God and figure out what God would have us do.  And when we find it, when we know that what the will of God is, we might well ask “How will this be?  We don’t have the financial resources, or the people, or the energy to do this, Lord.  How can this be?”

And when that happens, as it surely will, as it surely is happening even as we speak, we would do well to heed ol’ Gabriel’s promise.  To hear it, to understand it, and to accept it, deep down where we live:  “Nothing will be impossible with God.”  Amen.

Three Women (1 Samuel 2:1 - 11; Luke 1:39 - 55)

     Hannah was inconsolable—she could not bear a son.  Her husband Elkanah and she had tried and tried and tried, but to no avail: she couldn’t get pregnant.  Meanwhile, her husband had a second wife, Penninah by name, who could:  she’d given him sons all right, and daughters too, and she never let her forget it.  Not that she ever could, with the Penninah’s children running around like little wild Philistines, running and jumping fooling around, doing typical child stuff, which Hannah saw, and it broke her heart to see them, she yearned so deeply and acutely.  And at the same time, the children knew that her childlessness made her a second-class woman, and it was reflected in how they treated her as well, and with the typical cruelty of children, it could get pretty bad.

Not that it wasn’t that way with Penninah; after all, the children took their cues from her . . . her taunting could be devastating, leaving Hannah in tears.  Of course, dear, sweet, clueless Elkanah never saw it, because Penninah was careful to be miss goody two-sandals around him, then when his back was turned, she’d throw Hannah a dirty look or a rude gesture.

Things would get really bad when they’d all head up to Shiloh once a year, so her husband could make sacrifice to the Lord, as was required of every head of household.  For some reason, Penninah would use these opportunities to really lay it on thick, to really provoke Hannah, who would stand there, outside the gate of the temple (in those days, it was not fixed in Jerusalem), weeping hot, bitter tears. When her husband would see her, he would ask what was the problem, she’d explain that she was heartbroken because she could not give him sons.  Elkanah would always say the same thing: “Am I not more important to you than ten sons?” and he would give her a double portion.  Such is the arrogance of men.

One day, the priest Eli is sitting on the seat next to the temple doorpost, and he observes her crying, and she is moving her mouth, but no sound is coming out.  He concludes that she’s drunk—she is a woman; she couldn’t be praying—and he says “How much longer will you be drunk?  Put away your wine.”  But in fact, she is praying, and she tells him:  “Please don’t consider me a worthless woman; I have made a vow to the Lord, that if the Lord will give me a son, I will dedicate him to God all of his days.”  And moved by her plight and her evident humility—or perhaps just trying to get rid of her—Eli says “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made.”

And lo!  God grants her request, and she bears a son whom she names Samuel.  And true to her vow, she dedicates her son to the Lord, and Samuel becomes the last and greatest of the judges.  More important, as he grows in wisdom and stature, he guides Israel in the choosing of Kings: first the ill-advised Saul,  it then King David, whose return and eternal reign all of Israel awaits.

And Hannah, now joyous beyond belief, and though she knows none of the future of her illustrious son, nevertheless gives God all the thanks and glory, singing “My heart exults in the Lord; my horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation.”

 

 

Mary was frightened . . . She’d told the angel, messenger of God “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” because what else was she going to do?  She knew a done deal when she saw it.  This was an angel of the Lord who was talking, not some penny-ante, two-bit sprite.  An angel of the same Lord who created the earth and the heavens, who brought her people out of the land of the Pharaoh, and who restored the faithful remnant after the captivity in Babylon.  And Mary, just a slip of a girl, barely of marriageable age, had about as much chance of resisting the will of that Lord as a camel had of fitting through the eye of a needle.

And now she was scared, and it was not hard to understand why: the local authorities, the Lord bless them, had a way of dragging adulterous women into a plaza and pummeling them with rocks until they were dead.  And Mary did not like the finality of that one little bit.  Besides, she was betrothed to a wonderful, gentle man, the son of a carpenter, who made her feel safe and warm, and she just knew what he would do when he found out, and she couldn’t blame him . . . after all, Joseph hadn’t seen the Angel, hadn’t felt its power, hadn’t seen its golden . . . she guessed they’d been wings, swirling diaphanously about them both.

What Mary doesn’t know is that Joseph—a kind man who’d been prepared to put her away quietly—would have his own visitation.  But because she doesn’t know, as soon as she can tell she really is with child—she just feels different, somehow—she flees to the countryside, and her distant cousin Elizabeth’s house, who is going through her own identity crisis.  While Mary had gone overnight from young bride to marginalized outcast, her cousin had gone from scorned childless woman, to an aged woman with child, with all the dangers that entails.

When Mary arrives, Elizabeth is preparing supper for her husband Zechariah, a somewhat minor priest.  And immediately when Mary comes in the door, she feels a lurch in her belly as her child leaps in her womb.  A smile of wonder slowly spreads on her face, and a stream of laughter comes burbling out, not one filled with derision, but overflowing with joy.  And in that instant, their eyes meet, and each one knows what has come to pass with the other, and an instant bond comes about between them.  Mary’s uncertainty and fear vanish, while not exactly gone, are diminished, and she feels safe and valued for the first time in a long time.

Now, Luke is focused on the Savior’s coming, and we can’t blame him for that, so he doesn’t give any but the barest details of that visit.  But we have the time to stop and consider the dynamics of that remarkable encounter.  Do the women speak—as women are wont to do—about their respective men?  Do they speak in that loving, yet exasperated, way about straight-as-an-arrow Joseph and crotchety old Zechariah?  I imagine they did . . . But I also think they spoke of other things, deeper things . . . How they both felt about their lives and roles—Elizabeth’s now, and Mary’s soon to be.  I imagine the older cousin gives advice to the younger, and holds her hand as she pours out her hopes and fears, and that Elizabeth worries aloud about the dangers of a late-in-life pregnancy, and Mary is bears witness to that as well.

In fact, I imagine that what the visit is for both of them is pastoral care, what we call a ministry of presence.  But it’s not some hierarchical, one-sided relationship where one person listens to the plight of the other, as important as that can be.  The women are instead present for one another.  It’s a presence based on mutuality, based on trust, based on compassion.

A thousand years earlier, Hannah—reviled and considered of value only as a brood mare—had two potentially pastoral encounters.  The first, with her husband Elkanah, ended up being all about him: “Surely I am worth more to you then ten sons,” he told her.  In the other, with the priest Eli, she is reviled as a drunk, before he remembers himself, and offers his assurance that her wish will be fulfilled.  But still and all, she sings a song of joy to the Lord.

Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit came upon Elizabeth and Mary, and though he may not have meant it this way, I like to think that the Spirit was there in the relationship between the two.  After all, the Spirit is relationship, is in relationship, an eternal dance with God the Creator and God the one who saves.

And Mary, like Hannah before her, sang her joy and wonder to the Lord: ““My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, who has looked on the humble estate of his servant.”  Amen.

Restoration Dreams (Mark 1:1 - 8, Isaiah 40:1 - 11)

The Dream of the 6^th Century Scribe

We have been under attack for a decade; our king, Jeconiah, has been playing fast and loose with his allies, first paying tribute, then not paying tribute . . . First with the Egyptians, then with the Babylonians . . . It was confusing, to say the least . . . We were in constant turmoil, we always have been, situated on a prime invasion route between the north and the south as we were . . . Then the Babylonians bested the Assyrians, and the deportations began, the first wave ten years ago,  and now it was our turn . . .

An when they come, I am sitting in the gate of the Temple’s outer court, ruling on disputed matters, using the law of the Lord God Adonai as my guide.  Since the time of the judge, this has been left to us scribes.  We are, after all, scholars, experts in the Law.  So it is when I am plying my appointed profession, practicing my holy calling, that I hear the ringing of livery and the tramping of feet, slowly approaching the gate.  And a dozen Babylonian soldiers file into the plaza before the gate and spread out, spears interlocked in close order.  An officer strides forward and stands before me and says “Are you Josiah, scribe of the Jews?” (I am named Josiah, after the great King) And I say “I am . . . Have you come to worship the Lord God Almighty?”

Ignoring the question, the soldier says “I have orders to take you to the caravan.” And he leads me away, out of the city of The Lord God—the only city I have ever known—and to a waiting line of wagons.  It is a long line, and crammed into the wagons I can see many of my friends and acquaintances.  There is the Chief Priest, my counterpart on the priestly side, and his entire corps of sub-priests.  In the wagon they led me towards, I see my assistant, and most of my subordinate scribes.  As a matter of fact, in the closest wagons, I see the entire hierarchy of the Jerusalem Temple, learned men all; indeed, in other wagons he could see all the elites of the city, the cognoscenti—the scholarly and rich, the major land-owners, the landlords of free laborers and merchants . . ..

And with a creaking of harness and a groaning of wheels, the caravan begins to move, and as it does, we see fires bloom like evil sunflowers behind us, all around the city.  A,bove it all, we can see the Temple, burning fiercely—the heart of our religion, the very dwelling-place of God, crumbling before our eyes.  And despair, unending, unutterable despair, descended upon us all, because without a house, without an abode, how could the Lord be among us?  How could our God be on earth?  And we begin to hear the screams, and smell the odor of burnt flesh, and after the sounds and smells fade, we can see the glow of the burning city as we get further and further away.

The trip to Babylon is like an evil dream, a dream filled with deprivation and hunger.  The wilderness between Judah and Babylon is rocky and wasted, and wells are few and far between, and many die of thirst and the elements.  But at last, we came to Babylon, shining city of hanging gardens and the height of Middle Eastern civilization, but all is lost on us, we are bereft, without hope, cut off from our homeland and, more important, our God.  As the psalmist wrote:  “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.”

And over the intervening years, the yearning for our Jerusalem home never went entirely away, but it did dim, a bit.  We in the first generation had it the worst, of course.  The deportees, like myself, had beem important, the cream of Jerusalem society—and we are no longer on that level in Babylon.  For my part, I  went from chief scribe of Judah to day-laborer on the garden walls.  But as time has passed,, the pain had become a dull ache, always there, but more of a dark, background rumble.  In spite of ourselves, we are becoming assimilated.

The Babylonians have never restricted our religion . . . They know, perhaps, that the free practice of religion goes a long ways towards suppressing revolt.  And so tonight, as I walk to the ceremonies at a neighbors house, I look forward to hearing the evening’s portion of Torah, but when I get there, there is a young poet, a descendant of the great prophet Isaiah, who lived nearly two centuries before.  And the verse the poet recites stuns me and all who are present, and stirs something within us that we had long ago forgotten: hope.

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her, that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has served her term . . .” And as the news of this new word from God spreads throughout the exile community, we are comforted . . . Comforted and reminded of the love and mercy of our God.

 

The Dream of the 1^st Century Scribe

People flit like a ghosts through the rubble . . . Children cry because they have little to eat . . . The market is barren, only a little bug-ridden flour and moldy bread to be had, and that at grossly overinflated prices . . . Neighbors gouging neighbors, it’s what the market can bear, even if we cannot. I am one of those fluttering spirits, moving from place to place, visiting old haunts, looking for friends, acquaintances, anyone to give comfort.

The Romans moved out in the night, leaving a skeleton crew of burly centurions, more to be visible, more to remind us of their power and presence than keep the peace.  As if the smoking ruins don’t speak enough of their power, and they certainly look unconcerned with the peace . . . Jerusalem is a wreck, its denizens no more able to mount a resistance than cats and dogs who clog the gutters after a rain.

The Romans crushed the Jewish revolution handily, after letting it fester and congeal for five years before, although it had been building for decades before that.  But almost overnight, their fabled army came through, burning and looting and raping the fight right out of us, leaving us hungry and tired and hopeless, our future bleak and uncertain.

Not that there is anything certain about life outside the city . . . The countryside is divided, with neighbors fearing neighbors, squabbling over what to do.  The price of oil—olive oil, that is—is unreasonably high, once again the result of supply and demand. Furthermore, Emperor Nero died last year, and there is unrest in Rome. Four men have been acclaimed emperor, only to be assassinated, one by one. Now Vespasian, the very general who took Jerusalem, has been crowned. Talk about uncertainty.

And, as I stumble down a dark, rubble-strewn alley, I begin to hear chanting somewhere ahead.  A synagogue, I tell myself, and continue in that direction. The sound grows first stronger, then weaker, and I have to backtrack some, but eventually I arrive outside a house that’s relatively intact, and I hear the chanting from within.  I peer into its candle-lit interior, and as my eyes adjust to the light, I begin to make out the shapes of people, sitting on rows of crude benches, perhaps twenty-five or thirty of people in all.  One of them glances behind as the door shuts and scoots over with a smile, making room for me on the end.

Glancing around, the first thing I see is that the congregation, if that’s what you can call it, is made up of both men and women; I drop my jaw in amazement.  Further, I can see that it is mostly slaves and free laborers—kitchen workers, maids, stable boys—with nary a purple robe in sight. As I take this all in, a woman comes to the fore, and begins to speak, and now I know that I’m definitely not in a synagogue.  In fact, I am suddenly very uncomfortable: what are these people doing, men and women sitting shoulder to shoulder?  And letting a woman say anything, much less come to the fore, in a position of leadership, makes me downright angry.

I am just about to stomp out of there, perhaps to go and report them to whatever Jewish authority that’s left, when I hear what she is reading from the scroll in her hands: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  And I’m thinking “Jesus Christ?  Jesus Christ?  What news could possibly be good news regarding him?  I myself saw him crucified, forty years ago, a toddler sitting on my father’s shoulder, and he was dead, dead, dead.”  And now I know what this place is, who these people are . . . They are people of the Way, follower of an executed Jew, and I sit there in that ruined house, scowling and waiting to hear what could possibly be this good news.  It will just give me more fodder when I turn them in to the San Hedrin.  If I can find out where they’re holed up, that is.

“As it is written in the prophets, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”  And as a scribe, I know she is quoting first from Malachi—the part about the messenger who’ll prepare the way—and then Isaiah, the part about the voice crying in the wilderness.  And I can see that the author is associating these times with those of the deportation, and we all know that after the comfort was predicted, it came about, that the Lord God rescued the faithful remnants from Babylon and restored them to the rubble of a conquered Jerusalem.  Now she has me interested . . .

And I can tell others in the congregation are as well . . . They begin to stir, to utter “hallelujahs” and “amens” and suddenly, as if blinders are removed, I can see what this reading is all about, what this “good news” is all about: it is about the same thing that second Isaiah’s was:  hope.  Somehow, the life and teachings of this wandering rabbi, executed for sedition four decades before, gives them comfort, gives them hope . . .

And as I sit there, bruised and battered from my season of despair, I begin to feel it too, as if it is a contagion.  I tooI begin to feel the presence of the Lord God in that place, and I hear the tale of long-dead John the Baptizer, compared to that long-ago voice in the wilderness, who proclaimed the coming of that good news, who swore that he was not fit even to tie the sandals of the crucified one . . . I listen to the testimony, hear the words of hope, and I begin to believe.  Against all evidence, against all sense, really, I begin to experience hope.  Comfort, comfort, O my people.

 

The Dream of the 20^th Century Scribe

As I work long into the night on an interpretation, laboring to get it right, I try to avoid the nabbed of competing voices, but the filter into my consciousness nevertheless.  Ebola stalking the land, turning West Africa into a charnel house, and sending a world into panic.  ISIS stalking the Middle East, maiming and beheading everyone who gets in the way.  Oil prices—crude oil, that is—while down at the moment, will certainly rise to choking levels by summer’s light.  And violence blooms like evil flowers across the land . . . And I think—not for the first time, nor I suspect, for the last—where is the good news in all this mess?

But it is the time of dreaming, it is the time of hope, and on this second Sunday of Advent, I remember the prophets beat, the multi-lensed, multi-generational, multi-epochal song: comfort comfort, O my people, and I plead: come, Lord Jesus, come.  Amen.

Once and Future (Advent 1B)

I had an out-of-body experience last night.  My spirit rose up, hovering, to the ceiling, and looking back down, I could see the two of us, Pam and me, laying side by side.  And as I look at my sleeping wife, my spirit warms with gratitude at the sight of my life-partner, and how God has blessed me with the gift of her friendship and love.  Over to one side, Bob the dog whimpers and twitches on his bed, chasing phantom bunnies in his sleep, and his partner in doggy crime snuffles peripatetically nearby.  Not for the first time do I reflect on our over abundance of animal friends.

But I am not allowed to stay there for long, because my sprit rises up through the ceiling joists, past the upstairs bathroom that we never use, and out into the Greenhills night.  And it is if I have x-Ray vision—no, not exactly x-Ray, for I couldn’t see through or into things—but I can sense thousands of spirits like mine, hundreds of thousands, really, stripped of the categories we use to discriminate, to feel superior to one another, categories of race and gender and religious affiliation . . . of education level and socioeconomic class . . . of wealth and social location . . . I sense the hundreds of thousands of spirits stripped of these superficial differences and their essential God-breathed humanity is laid bare, there for my wandering soul to see.

And as I rise, I am buffeted about by playful spirits of the air, the invisible sprites that inhabit God’s airy creation.  I can almost see their shining eyes and flashing teeth as they blow my spirit to and fro, and I ask them: what right do you have to blow me around?  As if in response, an especially strong gust carries me almost to Middletown, and I hear a collective Sprite-voice “Oh, mortal . . . that’s a good one . . . do you not know, have you not heard? We are all streams of the breath of God, which bears the voice that spoke the world into being. . . as a minister of the Lord, you of all people should know that . . .” and I hear their tinkling laughter, though it is not in derision but pure, wondrous delight.

Finally, the buffeting slows, my jitterbugging almost stops—just as I had gotten used to it—and behold!  all of Cincinnati laid out before me, in starlight’s glow . . . The Great American Tower, lording it over the Ohio, and it's older brother Carew, brooding in its shadow, dreaming of past glory.  Eden Park, jewel of Mt Adams, museum nestled in it’s leafy side, just downhill from the priciest real estate in town.  And across I-71 another hill—one of seven, or so I’m told—and on it, a University, a beacon of knowledge, but at this hour, the playground of predators and lurkers, and co-eds caught out too late, scuttling from light to light like inconstant moths.

And now I begin to see tiny fire-fly flashes of pistols and shotguns and AR-57s, all around the seven blessed hills, not just on the hill with students—what’re you gonna do?—but there is violence everywhere, brutality everywhere: cheated-on spouses and battered wives. Spurned lovers and abused children.  Armed robbery and drug-deals gone bad.  And I am suddenly sure that these sparks, these violent eruptions are on the increase, even as society becomes theoretically more civil.  Children wielding BB guns confronted by jittery police; all-night shop-owners, blowing looters away; and the occasional suburban homeowner, tired of falling increasingly behind, tired of scraping just to put food on his children’s table.

And my spirit cringes in revulsion, it recoils in horror, and cries out “how long, O Lord, how long?”  But it hears nothing except the faint snickers of the sprites of the air, now grown menacing and cold.  And my spirit cries out again: “where are the churches?  Where are the houses of worship, the centers of love and of light, devoted to the King of Creation?”  And, as if my human breath had brought them into existence, holy sites around the city began to glow with lambent, golden light.  I see Christ Church Cathedral, Emmanuel Lutheran and St. Peter in Chains.  Methodist Churches, Presbyterian Churches and all manner of Baptists . . . There are smudges of light all over the city, each of which should have given hope.

Once again I appeal to God: “Then why, Lord, why?  When communities of Christ dapple the landscape, why does violence still blanket the city?  Why do shots ring out with metronomic regularity, why are children dying, why are mothers widowed when there are so many churches in town?”

And my windy guides nudge and buffet my spirit down, down, but this time it’s not gentle or playful or coy, but rough . . . insistent . . . demanding, and I hurtle through the roof of a church and into the pews, and suddenly I know what’s going on, I recognize the action, it’s a Presbytery meeting, a regional meeting of churches, and they’re listening to the report of a sub-committee convened to close down a small, African-American church . . . The participants are ghostly, and I know they cannot see me, but the little church is black and the commission is white . . . And suddenly there is a disorienting shift, and it’s another Presbytery meeting, and another sub-committee reporting, this time about a church wanting to leave the denomination . . . they don’t agree with decisions made at the highest levels of the church . . . and as my spirit eavesdrops, I hear voices raised in anger, names called, each side blaming the other for our denomination’s decline . . .

And I say to my guardian sprites “Enough of this!  I can see what you are telling me . . . We are more interested in arguing and fighting than serving the city . . . more interested in saving money than supporting small, struggling churches where they might do some good . . . I get it . . . but . . . How can we turn it around?  What can we do to make it work?  Where is the hope we all need?”

One more time my spirit rises from this earth, and my guides send it scooting toward the rising sun . . . faster and faster it flies . . . Pennsylvania, New York, the Atlantic coast, faster and faster, and now I see the coast of Britain, and a split-second later, the Norman coast . . . and as we hurtle along, a hymn comes, unbidden into my mind:  “People look east, the time is near” and suddenly, I know where we are going, I know where the Spirits of the Air are taking me, and sure enough we descend like a feather toward a teeming city, white walls gleaming in the sun, and I am afraid—Bethlehem is a dangerous town in this day and age—but as my spirit descends, the houses melt away, the traffic and the noise, and even the bright-white daylight fades, and it is dark and cold, and I am outside a ramshackle building that smells like manure.  The stars burn brightly and I wrap my arms around myself; my breath billows out in puffs of steam.

A donkey brays in the distance; I look up and see figures approaching, and though I cannot see who they are, I know their identity nevertheless, and I shake with excitement at who I am about to meet, but something happens, something even stranger than being in Bethlehem at the dawn of our faith . . . Suddenly, the modern city is back, he cars are back, and my spirit scrambles in terror to get out of the way, but they pass right through me . . . And a wave of sadness washes over me, as I think if what I have lost, the chance to meet the parents of the Christ, but I look up and they are still there, a little closer now, and once again I hear the donkey’s call . . .

Suddenly, I’m no longer in Bethlehem, past or present, but on the Greenhills green, standing in front of the Creamy Whip.  I look to the right, and there’s Winton Road, dark and silent in the pre-dawn gloom, and across from it the church, waiting for the coming of the Son of God.  And once again, from across the green I hear a donkey’s voice . . .

Now I am back in our room, first light peaking through the window, Bob the dog twitching and whining, Pam’s steady breathing by my side.  And one last sibilant whisper fills my head . . . “Now you know, O Mortal, what is good . . . The hope of the world comes on donkey’s hooves in four short weeks . . . Just as he came 2000 years ago, just as he will come again . . .”  And as I lay there waiting for the dawn of Advent’s first day, all I can think of, over and over, is “Come, Lord Jesus, Come!”  Amen.

 .

Identity Politics (Matthew 25:31 - 46)

This morning’s passage is a hard one, from both an interpretation standpoint (there’s no agreement on what exactly it means) and a theological one (seems like works righteousness to me).  So, I decided to scrap our discussion of this passage, and talk about popes instead.  Did you know that there is an online Roman Catholic encyclopedia?  There is—it’s called New Advent, and if you go there, you can find a list of all the popes in the history of the church.  If you start with St.Peter, who they claim as their first, there have been 265 others.  And as we all know, they take on an official, I guess you could call it Papal name, when they take office.  (I’m sure there’s a technical name for it, probably in Latin, but I don’t know what it is.)  Anyway, in 1978, Karol Jósef Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II; twenty seven years later, he was succeeded by Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, AKA Pope Benedict XVI.  Popes have multiple names, which indicate their multiple personas—one might even say identities—depending on where they are (such as residence or palace), who they are with and what hat they are wearing, both literally and figuratively.  They even have different personas depending on which chair they are sitting in: when the Pope sits on  the throne of St. James, then—and only then—is he the infallible mouthpiece of God.

Of course, the Bishop of Rome isn’t the only one with multiple identities . . . Most of us have public personas—ones we show professionally or within different circles of friends—and private ones that we show to our spouse and kids.  In political figures, they can be quite pronounced and formal: Barak Obama is “Mr. President,”, but you can bet that isn’t what Michelle calls him when she asks him to take out the trash.

But back to popes . . . here’s a pope, er … pop quiz: what has been the most popular papal name in the 1900-odd years since the crucifixion? No fair Googling “pope names” or calling 1-800-dial-a-pope, either.  Any guesses?  You’d think it might be Peter, wouldn’t you?  Or maybe Paul, the first great theologian of the church.  But if you guessed those you’d be wrong: the most popular Pope name, at 23 instances—and presumably counting—is John.  Seems even Popes can’t resist being associate with the disciple Jesus loved.

Ok.  One more fun fact: the last singular Papal title (i.e., that doesn’t have number after it) was Pope Lando (no Star Wars jokes, please), eleven hundred years ago.   That’s right: for over a thousand years there hasn't been one original pope name—unless you count John Paul I who took two common names, and who was quickly succeeded by John Paul II anyway.  For eleven centuries there have been no completely first-time pope names until last year when Jorge Mario Bergoglio took the name Francis.

And everybody was surprised—no shocked—that he named himself after St. Francis, they couldn’t believe it, and my question is: why?  Why did naming himself after a verified saint surprise so many within the church ranks, as well as a fair number outside of them?  After all, St. Francis has a whole order named after him.  He may be the most painted saint, generally portrayed in natural settings, festooned with birds and squirrels and the like.  So why the surprise, or—equally interesting—why hasn’t a pope taken his name before now?

Well.  Maybe a look at St. Francis’ life is in order.  After all, when popes name themselves after somebody there’s usually a reason.  Often, they’re making a statement by whom they name, that their papacy will be somehow informed by their illustrious predecessor.  St. Francis was born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone in around 1180 CE to a wealthy Italian merchant family in the town of Assisi.  When he was still an infant, his father came home from France calling him Francesco, which means “the Frenchman;” nobody is certain why.  He  was a wild young man, enjoying all the privileges and pastimes of his class, until he went off to war, where a year in captivity may have caused him to question his vocation; it is certain that a vision he had during his second stint in the military did.  He returned home where he began to immerse himself in spirituality, but not just any spirituality: it was a spirituality from below, a spirituality of the streets.  One of his first occupations was to nurse lepers at a lazar house near Assisi, and when he made a pilgrimage to Rome, he didn’t do it in the luxury those of his class would normally do.  Instead, he joined the the poor in begging outside the churches.

As you might imagine, his wealthy father took a dim view of all of this, especially after Francis sold some goods to restore a poor chapel in the countryside.  He tried to talk him out of it, then resorted to beatings.  Finally, appearing before a Bishop’s court, Francis renounced his father and his inheritance, and proceeded to live first as a beggar and then a  penitent in the region around Assisi, doing food works as he found them.

In February of 1209 Francis heard a sermon that changed his life.  Its was from Matthew 10, and the sending out of the disciples to proclaim the Kingdom of God.  In doing so, they were to “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff” (Matt. 10:8-10a).  From this, he determined to devote himself to the poor.  Clad in a rough-hewn garment, barefoot and without staff or legal tender, he set off to preach repentance, and soon began to accrue followers; from there, the Franciscan order was formed.

Until his death 16 years later, he continued to follow that path: he wouldn’t allow his followers to enter the priesthood, and never himself became a priest.  He and his brothers lived in an abandoned leper house outside of Assisi.  One of his followers, a noblewoman named Chiara, took the name of Clare and founded her own mendicant (or begging) order of women, which after her death came to be nicknamed the “Poor Clares.”  They lived a life “unplugged” from society, an existence off the grid.  Lives outside the power structure of the day.

And yet, they exercised authority in that separation, authority over themselves and their followers, who spread rapidly over Southern Europe.  Franciscan Friar and author Richard Rohr calls it authority from the edge: from a place just inside the church power structure, but close to the people they served—the people on the margins of society.  The poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised.

And now, perhaps, we’re beginning to see why the Roman Catholic cognoscenti were so surprised that Pope Francis took the name that he did.  Saint Francis lived a live that was the complete opposite from that of a pope.  A pope is the quintessential company man, heavily invested in the hierarchy of the church.  Saint Francis was the antithesis of all this: he refused to become a part that hierarchy, as did at least his immediate followers.  A pope is the supreme leader, even—at times—the voice of God.  He leads a church with billions of dollars of assets from the very top.  Saint Francis refused to own anything but the clothes in his back . . . he lived, as Tennessee Williams would say, by the kindness of strangers.  He led, if you could say that he led at all, from very nearly the very bottom.

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio took the name Francis, he identified with that all of that.  He identified with the poor and the marginalized, with leading from below rather than above. Even though he did not take a vow of poverty himself, even though he is firmly entrenched in the Catholic hierarchy, he identifies with the values of the one whose name he took.

And of course, we know who Francis identified with, don’t we?  The one who told his followers to take nothing along on the road with them, not even a staff or an extra cloak.  Who associated with lowest of the low, tax collectors and unclean women, who led from he margins, from the edge, and whose manner and life were so controversial, so subversive—think of the lilies indeed—that they killed him.  Saint Francis identified with Jesus the Christ, who never met an outcast he didn’t like.

But—and here’s the real question—with whom did Jesus identify?  Whose values did he take on, whose did he emulate?  Well, of course, those of his parent, God the almighty, but someone else, as well . . . Paul put it this way:  he “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”  Jesus identified himself with human beings, with us.

But not in just any old way, not in just any old manner, and is is where this morning’s passage comes in (you didn’t really think I’d abandoned it, did you?).  Though there are some problems with the passage, some interpretive travails, the basic gist of it is this: Christ identifies with the poor, the marginalized, those on the edge.  He identifies with them so much that whatever we do to one of those—the stranger, the sick and the hungry;  the thirsty, the naked and the prisoner—we do to him.

Sisters and brothers, on Christ the King Sunday, we’re to think upon how Christ is King, in which manner he rules, how he leads.  And we’ve seen that, as modeled by Saint Francis and countless like him, that he led from below, so much so that he became of of the least of these I. His life, work and death.  And I know it gives me pause, as I think upon leading this church, as I think upon my lust for the latest gadget or electronic toy, and I hope it gives us all pause as we enter the glittering time of Advent, the shining time of Christmas, just how glittery, just how shiny the life and rule of Jesus, who, we name ourselves after, really was.  Amen.

Consecrated (Matthew 6:1 - 6, 16 - 21)

 
     This is a holy day.  Some churches call it “Stewardship Sunday,” others “Pledge Day” or “Pledge Sunday.”  I’ve even heard it called “Loyalty Sunday,” which I think is a terrible idea: it sounds too much like a loyalty oath, something you might sign for a repressive government, like in Nazi Germany or something.  That’s why I’m glad we call it “Consecration Sunday,” because it is very descriptive: it refers to the act of consecrating our pledges for the upcoming year.  And I don’t have to go into the reason for pledging, do I?  I mean, we’re all adults here, we all know that it takes money to keep this place running, to keep the heat on and the lights . . . And we all know that although inflation has been pretty flat lately, it does go up a couple of points every year, and that are expenses are not exempt from that . . . No, we’re all adults, and as Garrison Keillor might have it, above average, and so we all understand the need, and why we need to talk about money at least once a year . . .

So this year, I thought we’d take a look at the verb “to consecrate,” which, of course, the act of consecration comes from: just what does it mean to consecrate something, and why do we use it to describe what we are doing here?  Well, look at the word itself: “con,” or associate with, and “secrate,” from the word “sacred”.  To associate with the sacred.

Now, that’s all well and good, and everything, but what does it mean to be associated with the sacred?  And being a child of the Internet age, the first place I looked—just to get a feel for what the word means, of course—was Google.  And I was heartened that one of the first hits, the first results, was “Consecration Beer.”  Intrigued—in a purely academic way, of course—I clicked on the link and up popped a description: “Dark ale aged in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels from local wineries . . . Rich flavor of chocolate truffles, spice, tobacco, currants, and a bit of Cabernet.  Very full bodied, sip slowly.”  And my first thought was “Sip slowly, I’ll just bet: full bodied is obviously an euphemism for ‘highly alcoholic’,” but my second thought was “All right—the Holy Grail of preaching!  A modern, illustration of the central concept of my sermon.  What deep, theological reason does the Russian River Brewing Company have for naming this brew ‘Concentration,’ and how can I use it in a pithy—yet humorous— ay to illuminate my central point?”

But when I looked into it further, I found that the brewery had beers called “Redemption,” “Benediction,” and (of course) “Temptation,” and that in fact most of their beers have theologically-inspired names.  Apparently, the brewmaster has a fetish for theology; perhaps he’s a disgraced seminarian, or something.  “Rats,” I thought, and looked in a more traditional place: the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and here’s what it says: “to officially make (something, such as a place or a building) holy through a special religious ceremony.”  And I like that definition, the idea of making something holy, except for one thing: the word holy, which is kind of a hot-button word . . . normally, as it says in the hymn  “only thou art holy,” with the “thou” being, of course, God.  So to think of making something holy through a religious ceremony, designed by us Human Being types sounds a little, well, theologically incorrect.  Remember: we’ve talked a lot lately about the worship God likes, and it isn’t necessarily pomp or even circumstance.

So I thought I’d look up another definition, this time in the plain, old Webster Dictionary—maybe it was that newcomer Merriam that messed things up—and it says “to make or declare to be sacred; to appropriate to sacred uses; to set apart, dedicate, or devote to the service or worship of God.”  Well, there it is, I thought,  the third one: to set apart, dedicate, or devote to the service or worship of God.  None of this “making holy” stuff, none of this usurping of God’s role, trying to do the job of the Lord.

Until, of course, I looked again in Webster’s, and found the definition of “holy” to be “set apart to the service and worship of God,” and threw up my hands.  I had to admit it:  when we consecrate something, we are making it holy, we are setting it aside for the service or worship of God.  And it makes sense, in a way.  In a way, we are doing just what we do in our sacraments, in baptism or communion.  We believe that it is God who effects the sacrament: in baptism, God seals the person being baptized to God’s self, and in communion, we are brought into a communion with Jesus Christ that is both intimate and intimate and extraordinary.  In both cases, God dispenses grace through the actions—that is why we call them means of grace.

But even though it is God dispensing the grace, God doing the miracles, they are done through our actions, through the actions of the church, on God’s behalf.  As we’ve noted before, we are the body of Christ, God’s hands and feet on earth, and just like God heals through our actions, just like God feeds be hungry through our actions, so God dispenses grace through our performance of the sacraments.  So I think that in the same way, when we consecrate something—a building, an altar, a playground, even—God consecrates it through our actions.

And you know what?  Everything in this church has been consecrated, hasn’t it?  Everything accumulated in its 76 years has been set aside, dedicated to the service and worship of God.  That first, famous hole in the ground?  Consecrated, set aside for the service and worship of God.  The sanctuary, the education building . . . Consecrated, dedicated to the service of God.  That table over there, the pews, the silverware—all consecrated, made sacred for the service and worship of God.

But wait . . . There’s more!  We spoke of baptism earlier . . . at baptism our lives are consecrated to God.  We are marked as God’s own.  That’s how Martin Luther could get up every morning, look at his reflection in the mirror, and remind himself whose he was: his life had been consecrated to God.

And that applies to most of us here, doesn’t it?  We have, most of us, been baptized, our lives set aside for the service and worship of God.  All our activities, all our work, all our play . . . dedicated to the Lord. 

This morning, we’re asking you to consecrate a portion of your income specifically to the maintenance of this church and its worship and service to the community over the coming year.  As I said before, there’s no need to belabor why we do this, we all know about light bills and heating bills and the like.  But it is important to understand the gravity of what we are about to do, the holiness of the act itself: making our money, which, after all, we have given part of our lives for, making it sacred in the service of God.

So, in a few minutes, as we bring our pledges and offerings forward, as we sing the old hymn “Take my life and let it be, consecrated Lord to thee,” I invite you to not only consecrate your offerings, consecrate your pledge, but reconsecrate, rededicate your lives to the one who, through Jesus Christ, dedicated all to us.  Amen.

Jerusalem Law (Micah 6:1-8)

I’m having a dream.  I don’t particularly want to have this dream, but I can’t seem to end it, can’t seem to wake up.  I am in a law court, in the defendant’s box.  Surrounding me, somehow stuffed into the box with me, is the entirety of the General Assembly, in all its magisterial glory.  I see the representatives from each and every Presbytery, arrayed beside me, and with them the representatives from the Synods and all the people there to observe.  Finally, I see the myriad support persons, the secretaries and scribes, and the moderator—just elected and as big as life—holding forth with gavel and cross.  And I understand that the entirety of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is represented there in that crowded defendant’s box, and that we are on trial, called to the bench for the way we have carried out the will of God.

The prosecutor steps forward, and in my dream I know somehow that it’s Micah himself, prophet of 7^th Century Judea, given life once again to handle this case, or perhaps he has always been alive, I am not certain, but whatever the case, he steps forward and begins his opening statement: “Hear ye, hear ye  what saith the Lord!”  And I think that God is going to take over, that God will be the prosecutor, but I am mistaken:  it is Micah who continues.  “Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.” And I look over in the judge’s box, and there they are, the mountains, and I feel a chill wind blowing off of them, and see birds wheeling around their tops, sheep grazing on their sides.  Clouds gather around their heads, and though they do not move or speak, I know that they are sentient, that they are aware.  They are a fundamental part of creation, god’s created order, every bit as much as I am—certainly as much as the Presbyterian Church (USA).  And I smile at the thought of calling the mountains to jury duty—who would go after them if they didn’t show?—but it hits me that they are not the jury, they are the judges, and they will decide our case.  We are being judged by creation.

As if he hears me—maybe he does, it’s a dream, after all—Micah addresses the judge: “Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth;” and I think “holy guacamole!” and think to run—feels don’t fail me now—because the complainant is the Lord God Adonai!  And we are being judged by the foundations of the earth, the foundations of all creation is our judge, and I am very afraid.

But in my dream I think: what do we have to fear?  Are we not good Presbyterians?  Do we not accomplish things decently and in good order, and provide good, solid, meaty worship?  Do we not sing all the old hymns, and a fair number of new ones to boot?  Do we not provide—and I lift my head a little higher—good, Bible-based preaching?  About what do we have to worry?

And now, Micah finishes his opening statement: “The Lord has a controversy,” and in my dream it’s as if I see the Hebrew shining overhead, like in one of those sub-titled operas, and it is rib, the technical word for a legal proceeding, “The Lord has a legal dispute with his people, and he will contend with the Presbyterian Church (USA).”  And suddenly, a . . . presence fills the room, and when I look at it directly, it’s amorphous, muddled, difficult to apprehend . . . I can only see detail if I glance at it, out of the corner of my eye, but each time in do so, I see something different.  One glance: an white-haired old man, not scary or fearsome, but twinkling and merry, kind of like a grandfather or a favorite uncle.  A second glance, and there’s an eagle, perched on the dais, staring at me from one amused, beady eye.  A third glance, and it’s a woman, ageless and full of grace.  Then, it’s a mother bear, growling over her cubs, and then Ezekiel’s whirling, fiery wheel.  In my dream, it seems I stand there, for an eternity, as image after image flood my mind, and I understand that not only am I in God and God in me, but the same is true of all creation, we are all caught up in the same divine reality.

But though it seems eternal, it is not, for the Lord begins to speak.  And though we expect thundering and blustering and righteous anger, what we get instead is heartache:  “O my people, what have I done to you?  In what have I wearied you? Answer me!”  And God seems anguished, disappointed, hurt, even, and I can’t help but compare it to when I disappointed my parents as a child, the hurt on their faces was somehow worse than anger . . . and as if that isn’t bad enough, God begins recounting all God has done for us, voice almost a sob: “I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery” he says, and in my dream I feel the entire Presbyterian Church cringe as one, and draw in on itself, because it knows what’s coming next.  “I sent my Son—my only Son—to earth to die to set you free from bondage to sin, and when you were caught in other forms of bondage, I sent great men, towering men . . . Martin Luther . . . John Calvin . . . Martin Luther King . . . “

There is a rumbling from the mountains, a disturbance in the hills.  I hear rocks, falling as if from a great height, and birds rose squawking from their heights,  but when I look, they are still. Micah gestures to say that it’s our turn, and the entire host of us, the entire denomination, answers with one voice: “What do you want from us, Lord, how have we displeased you?  Tell us, please!  We have built a strong, fine denomination, although we admit it’s been down a bit lately, but we have a wonderful, exacting constitution, which we follow slavishly, as is your will .  . . we set the standard in world missions, although we admit reduced giving has forced us to cut back a bit . . .” and now our voice takes on a note of whiny desperation: “We’ve built beautiful churches, all fenestrated spire-y heights, although they’ve been rather . . . empty of late, but it’s all been for you, Lord, solely for your glory . . . Our worship is mighty, our hymns roll across the land—only for you, Lord, solely for your glory—and our leaders advise presidents, though they don’t seem to listen much lately.  What do you want from us, O Lord?  Shall we double our mission giving, shall we quadruple it?  Shall we bankrupt ourselves, give away our homes, our cars and our tax-free IRAs?  Just what is it that you want from us, O Lord?”

In my dream, we admit that it is a poor excuse for a defense—we don’t know why that is, with so many lawyers in our midst—but it is the best we are able to do, especially since we’re not sure what we’ve done wrong.  So we watch as the prosecutor stands up, as he goes over and confers with the judges—in our dream, it makes perfect sense that he should be able to talk to the hills, and when he is finished he turns to us.  We brace ourselves for the verdict, we hold onto our seats for the judgment, fiery and devastating, but it doesn’t come.  Instead, Micah gazes at us for a moment, sad-eyed and pensive, and says “God has told you, O mortals, what is good; what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Then I wake up.  And the bed is soaked, I’m sweating so much.  At the same time, I’m so cold that I’m shivering, or maybe it’s fear, because I am sore afraid . . . God requires us to do justice, and I know that it isn’t our anemic, human justice, where the ones with the best lawyers—aka the most money—win, but mishpat, God’s justice, radical, apple-cart-overturning justice, the kind of justice that reforms economic systems that perpetuate poverty, the kind that gets you killed, like Stephen Biko, María Rubio or Martin Luther King.

And when God demands kindness, it’s not being nice to children and refraining from kicking dogs, it’s hesed, otherwise known as loving kindness, God’s kindness, and like God’s justice, it is radical and fundamental, all-in compassing, all inclusive loving kindness, that goes into the highways and hedges, the bars and bordellos, and invites everyone, no matter what their race, gender, and sexual orientation, into full participation in the community of God.

But what really terrifies me is the last requirement, to walk humbly with our God.  Because walking implies a journey, and it’s not just any journey, but our life journey.  This doesn’t demand that we give a ten-percent tithe of all we make—although don’t get me wrong, that’s a good start—nor does it demand a couple of hours a week or forty or even eighty.  Walking humbly with our God implies a total surrender, a total turning over of everything we have to our maker.

And so I lie there in bed, shaking with fear, and wondering at the enormity of it all.  And as I do, as I work through the inescapable conclusions in my mind, I can only think of one thing: thank God it was only a dream.  Amen.