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.

Two Tales and a Prediction (Mark 12:38-13:2)

 

The Tale of the Scribe

As I climb the steps of Temple Mount, my heart is filled with a song of ascents: “I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come?  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”  And as I climb to the Temple platform, where the holiest of holies awaits, I thank the Lord that I am part of God’s order, part of God’s apparatus, enshrined in the sacred place to which I ascend, where the will of the Lord is interpreted and implemented here on earth.  I am truly humbled before God that I have been chosen, even among a chosen people, to interpret God’s holy law and oversee its implementation.  Although I know that it is a gift, I am nevertheless proud that it has been given to me.

I feel the Law, the Torah, coursing through my body.  It is a song of hope, a song of order, a song given by the divine, by that which we do not even name, that which we call ha-shem, the Name, or simply Lord, Adonai.  And the Law has been spoken by the breath of God, by the ruach of God, and the words burned into our lives by that Spirit’s living flame.  And as I climb, other songs of David come to me . . . “O Lord, how I love your law!  It is my meditation all day long” and “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.”  And I am humbled and grateful and proud, at one and the same time, to be your vessel, O Adonai, and as I proudly walk through the marketplace, it shows in my countenance, it shines out through every pore and I know that I am aglow.

But the Law is often easier in the saying, more beautiful in its form, than it is in application.  Often, it is not easily seen how it applies in everyday life, as it surely must be for pious Jews everywhere.  And that is part of my job as Scribe: not only am I keeper of the Law as given, in all its symmetry and beauty, but I am its interpreter as well, I take a stricture and determine how it applies, I spin it out to its logical extent, showing its beauty in every situation.  What does the Law say about touching the unclean?  How long of a touch does it take?  Can the clean eat with the unclean?  Should they?  I and my fellow scribes do the hard and, frankly, thankless work of bringing the Law to the people, in the everyday.

So as I ascend to the Temple Mount, the abode of the Lord, I thank God for who I am, who God has made me, and I reflect on the governor’s feast just the night before, and think with pride of the honor given me to sit at the right hand of the host, the place of honor . . . It shows to me that even our Roman overlords fear the Lord, and respect those who labor in God’s vineyard, for the greater glory of Adonai . . .

And when I get to the platform, and stand outside the women’s court, I cannot help but break aloud into glorious, spontaneous prayer, my fine robes – as befit a servant of the Lord –shining in the morning sun.  And as my prayer rings out it expresses all the beauty, all the theological depth that my training in the Law has afforded me, and I cannot help but notice how it impresses not only the simple women who are about, but their menfolk as well, as they go in and out on temple business.

Which, of course, is what I have on this beautiful morning, after last night’s rain has washed the stink of the burnt offerings out of the air.  Indeed, it is the same business I have every morning at the Roman hour of Terce—and what a fine order the Romans have brought to Jerusalem, oppressors though they are . . . Anyway, my business this morning is to sit in judgment in the Temple gate, to hear the pleas of the people, and to interpret the Law of Moses, which is perfect and our delight, to insure that God’s justice is done for God’s people.  And the first to appear is a landlord and his tenant, a woman who has recently lost her husband, and cannot work the fields and thus cannot pay the percentage due the landlord.  And as much as it pains me to do so, as much as I am personally sympathetic to the plight of the widow—who has three young children—I have to side with the landowner who does own the land . . . after all, the Law is perfect, it is our delight.

 

The Tale of the Widow

I am not an old woman, having seen barely twenty five years, yet I have been a widow nearly half of them.  Married at twelve to a Temple carpenter, a year later he died when a scaffold collapsed on the Western Wall.  And although he left no brother to take my hand, and thus fulfill the Levirate duties of the dead, I was fortunate that my father still lived, and was able to take in my child and me.  Still, it was hard:  my father had little enough to live on, and two more mouths stretched it to the breaking point.  But though we were often hungry, we did not lack a warm, dry place to live.

Until, of course, my father passed in turn, and the landlord had no choice but to turn us out.  He had been generous enough toward the end—as my father’s health sank toward death, he was prevented from working, and could not pay his portion.  The landlord nevertheless let us stay, for which I am grateful, and of course the Lord, but when father died, he had no choice.  He had a living to make, he had mouths to feed himself, and I understood when he turned us out.  What could he do?

With no other male relative to take us in, we went into the streets, where I was to beg for our daily bread.  That first winter, my child died of a terrible, rattling cough.  She had been sick for weeks, hacking through the cold, winter nights, until finally, her body just gave out.  I suppose it is a mercy, because living on the Jerusalem streets is not easy, even within a stone’s throw of the Temple, where people tend to be more generous with their alms.  Still, I managed to survive these past years on the small amount that I was able to beg, a few pennies here, a few there.  Some days, I received several, some days none at all, the begging was as variable as the Palestine climate: beneficial the one day, and the next . . . not.

On this day, I come to the women’s court of the temple to make an offering to the Lord, through God’s priests and scribes and other learned men who bring God to the people, without whom we would surely be at our enemies’ mercy . . . the priests who intercede for us with burnt offerings and the scribes who apply God’s Holy Law equally, and though their judgments are sometimes harsh, they are invariably fair.  And as I throw into the jar the morning's take of two pennies—praise be to God I have the afternoon still to beg—I see the man Jesus, who we on the street all know, and he’s gesticulating toward me and speaking to his followers, though I cannot hear the words.  Then he turns away, trailing his disciples behind.

 

A Prediction

We disciples have a hard time understanding exactly what Jesus means by his words, or at least I do.  “Truly I tell you,” he says, “this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.”  Which, of course, is patently false: she’s put in a grand total of a penny, and there are those we’ve seen, just in the few minutes we’ve been here, who’ve put in many times more.  There’s no way she’s contributed more than all of them put together . . . And his explanation is not much better, that they’ve contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had . . . and to that I say . . . so??  They’ve still put in a far greater amount than the widow, intentions or not.

But maybe that’s the point . . . maybe Jesus can see that her intentions are better than all the others.  Maybe her heart is purer or something, cleaner, though I can’t believe it could be any more so than those of the Temple scribes . . . Or maybe it’s a relative thing, that what she has given is greater than all the others because she has given a greater percentage of what she has.  After all, 100% is certainly more than 10%, or 50%, and he did say they gave out of their abundance . . . It seems kind of a trivial point to make, but so be it.  I’m sure we’ll come to understand it one day, just as I’m sure we’ll understand all those predictions of his own death . . . How is it that the Messiah, born to lead us back to glory, could die?  Perhaps he meant that metaphorically, or symbolically, too.

Well.  As we leave the Temple, Peter—irritating, distractible Peter—says “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” and I’m thinking, sure they are, but a pretty skin hides a rotten core . . . Haven’t the minions of that place persecuted us since the beginning?  Hadn’t we just heard a vivid description of that rot, in the tale of the scribes’ overweening pride and hypocrisy?

And as if to put a seal on it all, Jesus tells us one more thing: “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”  And we don’t have to guess by whom it will be thrown: it is God who decides what lives or dies, what persists or is destroyed, and it is obvious that the Temple has outlived its usefulness, that it is so degenerate, so rotten, so riddled with corruption and vice, that it will be destroyed.

And doesn’t this shed a new light upon the widow’s mite?  Doesn’t it offer a different perspective on the act of sacrifice we just saw?  The widow gives all she has, her whole life for something that is worthless, corrupt . . . Does Jesus really mean to commend that act to us, does he mean to glorify it?  This poor widow, duped into giving her all to an institution riddled with sin, she must not be aware that what she has just given her life to does not deserve it.  After all, who in their right mind would do that willingly? 

 

Amen.