The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

 

All things are possible for God

 

           I grew up with this Bible story of the Rich Young Man's entreaty for eternal life. Sadly, the Young Man cannot part with his possessions.  Jesus then uses this as a teaching moment, not to excoriate the rich, per se, but to show how powerful we cling to that which impedes us from entering the Kingdom.
           There is a popular story that attempts to deflate the hyperbole of a camel struggling to go through the eye of a needle. Without any historical evidence, some claim that there was a lesser gate in the wall surrounding Jerusalem that was opened at night, and to be able to move a camel through it, the camel had to crouch and kneel; it becomes inconvenient, but far from impossible. The rich feel better.
            Both the Jerome Biblical Commentary (Catholic commentary) and the Interpreter's Bible (Protestant) dismiss this "urban legend". What is telling isn't that this myth of the "eye of a needle" has had so much traction. This parable, however, isn't a story about the rich, but a story about the nature of faith.

The power of hyperbole is essential for this parable. It is more comfortable to believe that God rewards Christians who "do their duty", who obey the ordinances of the institution; however, Jesus is asking us to live this impossibility of dispossession---to get rid of anything that stands in the way of living the gospel.

Sometimes this can be rather a spectacular grace, but often, it is "whispering grace", grace that comes through a "chance encounter" with a stranger, or a growing sense of being loved by others who have experienced God's grace.  We then enter the Kingdom. We breach the impossibly narrow gates we've constructed to keep God's riches out.

Later in this gospel passage, Jesus declares to his disciples: "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God".  The nature of the Kingdom isn't an earthly institution we can control or enter through our wits to gain an advantage.  The Kingdom is ubiquitous.  It is all around us.  The Kingdom is revealed when we open our eyes to the grace of our poverty in Christ.  There is no greater act of downsizing than committing oneself to following the way of Christ rather than the commands of the Church. 

The wealth we need to jettison is the wealth of the false faith that is too often the false security of the institutional Church rather than the will of God.  When the institution doesn't reveal the Good News, we must live the Good News, not by fighting the church, but by modeling to the church what the Good News looks like.  We must live for the sake of Christ and the gospel, not the institutional grace of following rules and spending time trying to enter the Kingdom with what we mistakenly believe is essential. 

 

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

 

“Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

How long does it take to have faith that God will spare you from the ravages of a storm? What reason did the disciples have to think they would be spared? Jesus had not saved them from such harm before.  What does it take to have faith to face the wind, rain, and choppy seas with serenity?

I have always taken issue with Jesus’ rebuke and wish one of the disciples would have stood up and said, “Hey, we have left everything and followed you. You heal the lame, and feed the thousands with only a few fish and loaves of bread; you are an amazing guy, but who wouldn’t be afraid of being swamped in a small boat in the middle of a storm?”

We have no such comment (at least not one recorded), and should look more deeply to find the truth the gospel writer was trying to reveal in this story of terror and faith.

Mark’s story is in a long tradition of Old Testament stories where prophets still storms. The story's focus is to reveal Jesus’ identity as one “whom even the wind and sea obey”. The story is meant to establish Jesus’ association with God. The disciples’ faith is not yet fully developed and won’t be until Jesus’ crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit.

Yet, we who have the great advantage of hindsight, and the great gift of the Holy Spirit, often are stuck in the boat without the strength of faith. What excuse do we have?

From the Letter to the Hebrews: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, of things unseen”. Trust engenders hope, and hope, faith. Father Henry Nouwen wrote, “The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good…in some way, we cannot see”(Turn My Mourning into Dancing). Nouwen makes this crucial connection between trust and hope in writing that a “person in difficulty can trust because of a belief that something else is possible. To trust is to allow for hope.”

We don’t hope because of what God has done, but what God can do. We live within this relationship made real and present by the Spirit such that whatever happens to us, God is always present, not as a spectator, but as one who is with us, Emmanuel.  He is with us in and through the stormy weather. Our hope is not that every anxiety is assuaged, but that our connection with God is never broken. Our faith may not quell the storm, but it will allow us to see through it.

Second Sunday of Lent

 

"No Cross, No Crown"

We Catholics seem to love suffering, or so my Protestant friend is fond of saying.  I often retort, "No cross, no crown," which brings a raised eyebrow and suggestion to change the topic.  But, I must admit that it is as easy for Catholics to mistakenly evolve a spirituality of suffering for suffering's sake as it is for Protestants to evolve a "gospel of prosperity" where financial gain and material wealth are the goals of being a Christian.  Both views are distortions of Jesus' mission.
     In the first reading is Abraham's almost-sacrifice of Isaac.  Of this parable, early Judaism focused on the element of God testing Abraham, but with time, shifted focus to see the sacrifice in light of Isaac's willingness to submit to the will of his father and offer himself as a type of sacrificial lamb, a theme later picked up by the early Church's understanding of Jesus' Christhood.  The Pascal Lamb, as you recall, was the sacrifice for the deliverance of the Jews in captivity from  Egyptian oppression; where the blood of the lamb was sprinkled across the lintel of the door as a sign for the Angel of Death to pass over and spare the household.  What began as an understanding of Isaac's sacrifice simply as an act of blind compliance evolved into a deeper, more mature meaning of giving of oneself for the sake of others.
     This notion was picked up in Isaiah's Suffering Servant and is the character Jesus most closely aligned himself and his ministry around.  This understanding of Christ's mission as a servant who suffers for humanity is the foundation of Mark's gospel, which sought to counter the tendency of the early Gnostic-Christian communities' focus on Jesus' divinity revealed in the Transfiguration as the pinnacle revelation of God to humanity, not the suffering on the cross and resurrection; for the Gnostics, Jesus' divinity eclipsed his humanity and made the cross a distraction on the way to the crown.  That is why in Mark's gospel, Jesus continually cautions his believers not to reveal his Christhood because it is only in light of his suffering and resurrection that his mission is significant; he is the Suffering Servant Messiah, not the Warrior King messiah portrayed in Isaiah.

"But he was wounded for our transgressions, 
he was bruised for our iniquities; 
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes, we are healed."

Christ's suffering was in the service of reconciling us to God, of bringing everyone into communion.  Jesus didn't seek out this suffering; he prayed, "Let this cup pass from me," while his disciples slept in the Garden of Gethsemane.  But Jesus also added to his prayer, "Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done."  To some extent, suffering is always a mystery; however, some suffering is beyond our comprehension.  If we suffer and cannot discern its origin, or it is out of our hands, we should pray for the trial to pass and include our willingness to submit to God's will.  We must, however, also not shy away from suffering in the pursuit of justice and love.  In the face of injustice, ours is not a retreat into Quietism, into a passive acceptance of the suffering of ourselves and our neighbor, but to face the suffering that will come when we face the oppressor and the rejection that will come when we give our hearts away to the love of our enemies.  The Crown only has ultimate significance in light of the love from the Cross.

First Sunday of Lent

 

Follow Me.  I Know the Way Out.

Hunger, Powerlessness, and Inadequacy:  These are the weak spots Jesus struggled with.  We often consider the battle and Jesus’ victory and overlook how the desert affected him.  Going into the desert for forty days would involve a backpack full of food; it would be suicide to make such a journey without sufficient food and water; however, we can survive without food for forty days if we are in good health and have adequate water.  Jesus was hungry.  Fasting allowed Jesus to experience the temptation to be independent of needing others to bake his bread and understand that life is more than the sum total of our physical desires and needs.  On a deeper level, Jesus experiences the profound understanding that, though the Son of God, he needs other people and that centering one’s life around physical desires is an error (Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God). Ultimately, we cannot rely completely on human communion but on God our creator.

            Jesus’ next vulnerability was his feeling of powerlessness.  Exploiting this, Satan offers Jesus complete domination over the world’s countries if he would worship Satan.  Look at what being submissive to God the Father had gotten him: hunger pangs and feelings of worthlessness.  There is that famous line from Paradise Lost where Satan says, “Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven.”  This was a test of Jesus’ resolve for the mission; success wasn't on Jesus’ terms but on God the Father’s.  He replies to Satan by quoting again from Deuteronomy, “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.”   How often does our fear of being powerless lead us to believe getting power is the answer, that realigning our priorities to become powerful is our ultimate goal rather than seeking the Kingdom and serving God?

            The final temptation came in a form quite unlike all the others.  It was the ultimate showdown.  In the desert of despair, with no visible sign of God’s presence and Satan close at hand, the desire to experience God’s care and concern in some manifestation becomes Jesus’ greatest vulnerability.  Just give me a sign of your love!  Everyone feels this, especially when things are not going well.  Satan’s answer was to call God’s hand and turn Jesus’ test into God’s test.  Now it is Satan who is quoting Scripture:

“He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,”
and: “With their hands, they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Satan quotes Psalm 91, and Jesus responds with a third passage from Deuteronomy: “You shall not put your Lord God to the test.”  The very source of his reasoning---Holy Scripture—was turned against him.  How often do foes of God’s love and unconditional grace bend scripture to turn it from a source of healing love to a weapon?  This round of Bible Darts over, Satan departs “for a time,” suggesting that the tenacity of Satan grows, not diminishes, with defeat.  Being holy and being hounded has a long tradition of being paired, but like Jesus, we may be paired for a time in the desert; simply because the journey gets tough doesn't mean we walk it alone.  At every turn, the Community, animated by the Spirit, joins us and reminds us that we follow Christ into the desert.  As the man standing at the bottom of a deep pit asks the other man who came to help him why he jumped in to be with him, that now they both were stuck.  The man who jumped in to rescue him said, “Don’t worry. I've been here before, and I know the way out”.

Ash Wednesday

 A Sign of Failure and of Hope

Our parish is a wonderfully humble group of older Catholics who worship in a small, rented space from the Synod campus of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Unfortunately, the Lutheran home parish, The First Lutheran Church of Glendale, no longer exists and the campus has become home to three very different Christian denominations: ourselves (Old Catholics), an evangelical Armenian congregation, and a congregation of Calvary Chapel folks. All of us rent and must seek permission to extend our activities on campus such as the temporary use of a classroom, or any space outside our lease agreement. It gives the whole thing a very tentative feel, a feel of not really having a home.

I think this fits well with our Lenten season that begins today, Ash Wednesday. While our folks come to Mass this morning, outside on the curb a Lutheran deacon (from the Syod office) will be offering “Ashes to Go” so folks can receive ashes without having to leave their car as they pull up along the curb in front of the church. Of course, our sign will also announce our Ash Wednesday Mass at the same time and the Synod plant manager was concerned that this will cause hard feelings on our part that our “competition” will be luring people away from Mass with the option of getting an Ash Wednesday marking on the forehead without having to attend Mass.

Is there anything wrong with skipping Mass and receiving “Ashes to Go”? Isn’t it a bit like wearing an “I Voted!” sticker without having voted? Well, no. What does the sign of the ash on the forehead symbolize? Does it symbolize having attended Mass and, perhaps, endured the homily (the ashes are distributed after the homily)?  The ashes are a reminder of one’s mortality and a sign that part of our mortality is that we are deeply in need of God’s grace. In today’s Mass there is no Penitential Act, or so it seems. Instead, the confession of sins and absolution are replaced with the imposition of ashes. The ashes are an outward marking of our public declaration of our humanity in all its spiritual frailty and need for forgiveness. While we declare very publically of our need for God’s grace with the ashen cross on our forehead, we privately enter a season where the discipline of our will towards fasting and abstinence will either convict us of our spiritual slackness or challenge us with being spiritually prideful in fulfilling the discipline of Lent. If we take this season seriously, we will face many challenges and likely fail. Maybe, instead of a cross on the forehead, we should stamp in big, bold letters of indelible ink that can’t be washed off until Easter: FAIL.

You may be feeling that I’m being a bit woefully dramatic and self-loathing. I suppose I would be without one thing: the ending of this season.  The ashes, Stations of the Cross, fasting and abstinence, and Lent's other disciplines and traditions are signs. These signs point us not towards despair when understood correctly, but towards joy; the end of Lent is our destination: Easter! Our humanity seemingly resigned to “unto dust you shall return” is more of a cautionary reminder to not abandon the hope of faith Lent is all about. Our destiny isn’t a return to dust, but we must become dust before we can be resurrected. We must be reminded that without Christ, all we are is dust; but with Christ, dust is simply a waypoint on our human journey to the Divine. Our Creed tells us as much: “We believe in the resurrection of the dead, and in the life everlasting,” but it does not tell us we won't die.

So, if you can’t spare the time for Mass today, but have to get your ashes fast-food style, then do it. And let the lack of time you have to attend Mass remind you of what we all experience: the imperfection of so many of our attempts to order our lives to fit an ideal. But let it also remind us of the willingness to wear our imperfections for a time as ash on our foreheads to remind the world not of our holiness, but of our need and our hope of resurrection. Tell others this when they ask you what is on your forehead.

The Epiphany of the Lord

 

Epiphany means "manifestation", that is, a revealing, an illumination, which is precisely how we experience the jubilation of Israel experiencing the fulfillment of Isaiah 40.  This passage is the joyful song of those who have returned from exile and whose reinvigorated relationship with God will serve as a beacon for "the nations," which signifies the non-Jewish peoples.  The God who has delivered Israel in an act of great salvation becomes, for Christians, the sign of God's supreme act of salvation that saves not only the people of Israel but the world.  Paul's epistle picks up this theme in "the mystery made manifest" and the notion of the Gentiles being "coheirs, members of the same body".  In the Gospel, we have the ultimate revelation of God's salvation in the form of Jesus' birth, being announced to Gentiles, who then come to worship the Christ child, again mirroring the idea expressed in Isaiah that "Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance."  This king has qualities of the Davidic kingship of justice and concern for the poor contrasted with the megalomaniac paranoia of King Herod.  I think there are a few important ideas developed in today's readings.

It strikes me that God's revelation over time with the Jewish people, and then to the Gentiles, has been expansive.  Rather than simply lavishing all His attention on his "chosen", we come to see that the choice is for a role in salvation history.  It is the God who is incredibly lavish with his love and attention, which is a key element in understanding God's manifestation to the world.  It is a God of great inclusion rather than exclusion, yet so much of what we see in Christianity today seeks to privatize God, limit access to communion, set up laws of access, decide who's "in communion" and who isn't, goes against God's essential movement to embrace humanity, all of humanity, in all the messiness and chaos that this momentum encounters.  

We promulgate doctrines that attempt to put a legal tabernacle around God and deny anyone access except through priests who have the stamp of approval from the corporate office; perhaps chaos isn't so much a sign of evil in the world as the facade of unity that is really uniformity.  When we put "Christian" in front of nouns to transform them, like "Christian writer," we mistake God's act of salvation.  The transformation of Christ in the world came from the center of lowliness, vulnerability, and exile as a child in a manger, and expanded through acts of healing and resurrection rather than from the outside in.  A "Christian writer" becomes in this new world a "writer of Christ," one whose work brings Christ to the world and helps manifest Christ.  Now, we can ask if the writing brings Christ's healing and resurrection rather than concentrate on whether or not the writer is a Christian.  "The writer who is Christian" focuses on Christ's presence through the boundless and expansive energy of the Holy Spirit, "the Christian writer" is an investigation as to the legitimacy of affiliation with the Christian community.

When we make decisions as a faith community that defines ourselves over and against those who are not like us, we make feeble attempts to limit the Spirit.  When we reach across denominational and even religious boundaries to recognize the dwelling of the Holy Spirit and of Christ, in those not-like-us, we act most in concert with God, whose saving act in Christ is for "the nations", not "the nation." It is shameful that those who most need God's love and salvation are often handed literature rather than a hug, a dismissive tone rather than a place at the table.  In a modification of St. Francis's admonition, we need to go out and preach the Good News, and if we must, use words.