Everything Belongs.

Revelation 5:11-14

May 1, 2022 + Smithtown

I.

In his spectacular vision that we call the book of Revelation, the Apostle John sees Jesus in the heavenly throne room in the form of a slaughtered Lamb who is nevertheless alive and victorious.  The lamb image comes mainly from the book of Exodus where God instructs the people to take the blood of a lamb and paint it over the doorways of their homes as a sign to the angel of death to pass over them and preserve them from the final, terrible plague descending on the Egyptians. 

John's vision includes both uncountable thousands of singing angels swirling around God's throne, and “every creature under heaven and on earth and in the sea, and all that is in them,” together singing that the Lamb is worthy “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing,” building to a crescendo.  

We rationalistic, sophisticated, modern people may find it easy and convenient to dismiss angels as mere archaic, mythic decoration.  But angels — in Greek the word is literally “messengers” — serve the important function of mediating God’s will to the world.  Perhaps we could say that, if God is Light, then angels work like photons or rays conveying that Light to our sight, if we have the eyes to perceive it.  

As creatures of heaven, angels deliver, express, represent, and reveal the vast universality and inclusive vision of the Most High God.  The angels point to the Lamb because the Lamb demonstrates the essence and nature of God as infinite, unconquerable, self-giving, self-emptying, self-offering love.

Still bearing the deep gashes of sacrifice, the Lamb shows us how God triumphs over, absorbs, and neutralizes the violence and hatred endemic in the world.  In Exodus, the final plague represents the culmination of the terrible consequences, mostly in the form of ecological disasters, the Egyptians brought down on themselves by holding a people in slavery for 400 years.  Injustice always brings catastrophe.  By the sign of the lamb's blood, God acts graciously to preserve the Israelite people from getting swept away as collateral damage in this comprehensive and unspeakable disaster, the sudden death of every first-born.  Thus the life of the lamb, offered up for the people and brushed on their doorways, protects them from judgment and death.  

In the gospels, John the Baptizer declares Jesus "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," anticipating how Jesus would give his life "for the life of the world," protecting the people from the violent and inevitable consequence of sin in the same way as the Passover lamb protected the Israelites.  Only, because in Christ the Lamb is God, this happens on a cosmic and universal scale and is effective for all creation.  The book of Revelation is about the cataclysmic consequences brought down on any polity or regime that privileges one group, divides others, spawns flagrant inequities, inequalities, violence, and oppression, and destroys the earth.

The point, the meaning, is the same: we get preserved and protected from the violent consequences of sin by the life of self-giving love exemplified in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, and poured into our hearts by the Spirit.  The angels therefore declare the slaughtered Lamb as worthy “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.”  

II.

The Lamb reveals God's truth and goodness in the good news of radical reversal; in which the losers of the world, the broken, bereft, victimized, disenfranchised, marginalized, weak, and rejected, like the abject slaves in Egypt, suddenly win.  By the offering of his own life/blood, the Lamb redeems and saves humanity, disclosing the love that is the meaning and destiny of all creation.  

The most basic and also most deliberately hidden fact about the Bible is that it is written by and for a bunch of escaped slaves and their descendants.  We cannot understand Scripture at all unless we relate to and identify with the situation of those who remember how they were “slaves in Egypt,” but who now know themselves to be, through no efforts of their own, delivered, liberated, redeemed, and saved.  

Those who were nothing, God delivers into everything; while those who make themselves everything, like the Egyptians, inevitably get reduced to nothing.  To know God is to live in praise and gratitude, deeply conscious of what we have received.  It is to say with the old hymn, "I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see."

That good news is always that life is not about what we gain in terms of power, fame, and wealth, or any of the things society would have us believe it is about.  Life is not about what we get for ourselves.  In the Lamb we see that it is really about what we renounce, what we offer up, what we lose.  It is about what we give and share and contribute.   As Jesus says, it is only when we lose ourselves that we are able to receive what God is always seeking to give us.

In response to the angels’ song, in John's vision he then hears “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them” also singing a similar refrain.  Every creature refers to literally everything: every grain of sand and every mountain, every fungus and plant, every microbe and insect, every animal and bird and fish, every molecule and electron, every rock and tree, every cloud, river, puddle, and ocean, everything that God breathes into being by the Word, everything stamped with God's imprint of Holy Wisdom, which is to say everything that is, lives to praise the Creator, who is “the One seated on the throne and the Lamb.”  

The Lamb and the One seated on the throne have become melded together in praise, so that the cross, where God — the Lamb — pours out his life in his blood for the life of the world, the final act of God’s self-emptying, is revealed as the modality by which God does everything.  Even creation itself, which happens by God’s speaking, is God’s self-emptying, as the infinite love of the Trinity overflows and pours into the nothingness to make something, everything.

Everything is thus breathed into being by God, bearing God’s seal, God’s signature, God’s frequency, and God’s identifying mark.  Everything participates in the same eternal outpouring and flow of life and love.  Everything is made out of the precipitation of God’s breath for the purpose of sharing in the goodness, joy, blessing, and praise of God together.  As theologian Richard Rohr as said in the title of one of his books: Everything Belongs.

III.

John sees in heaven the raucous, bright, shining, colorful, wild, diverse, explosive, ecstatic rave of joy and praise, which sets the tone for what is to come.  In some ways it reveals what is in the scroll because it is a blissful celebration of God’s love which is permeated in and through everything.  

This truth has to be established; it has to shape our consciousness, filling us with hope and joy, to give us fortitude and courage to face what is to come later in the book, when the Lamb actually starts opening seals and the awesome goodness of God collides with the twisted and foul corruption, illusion, violence, and hatreds that have pushed toxic tendrils into out souls and through our world.

It is also at the same time a vision intended to govern and inform our approach to the world in which we live.  For if everything is created to praise God, if every voice of every creature is specifically shaped by God for the purpose of participating in the glorious dance of goodness and love, if God designs the whole place and every piece of it to function as a great mosaic of blessing and shalom, then we need to live in response and partnership and communion with others, no matter who or what those others are.  In that knowledge we can only affirm the whole place, and everyone and even everything in it, as a spectacular and miraculous gift, the pinnacle of which perhaps is our very ability to know this and consciously join in the chorus of thanks and praise.

We have to approach “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them” with the respect, compassion, gratitude, and wonder they deserve as instances and expressions of God’s love and wisdom, manifest in time and space.  We must address and cherish everything as an unspeakable miracle with which we only engage according to the sovereign will of the One who created it.  

That means that we may treat no part of creation as a mere object that we may dispose of as seems best to us.  Not people, not animals, not bugs, not trees, not rocks, not water, not air.  Yes, we need to interact with and engage with creation; life is a network of interactive, complementary sharing.  But we only access other created beings for the glory of God, with deep humility and thanksgiving.  We take no more than we need, and we ensure fair and equitable distribution so that no one has too little and no one has too much.  We reduce what we take; we replace what we have taken; we reuse and recycle what we have used; we repair what we have broken; we restore what we have degraded and replenish what we have depleted; we correct imbalances we have made.  We clean up our messes.  We leave the place as we found it if not better.

For we are guests here on this planet, in this creation.  Every Sunday I have reminded you that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all those who dwell therein.”  The world does not belong to us.  We need to behave here only according to the will of our Host, who makes the whole place for joy and praise, love and communion, compassion and blessing, delight and peace, for all.

By what right do we silence, out of our own selfishness, any voice that God created for praise?  By what right do we hoard, commodify, extract, and exhaust beings God fashioned for the benefit of all?  By what right do we poison land, water, and air, kicking the chemistry of the atmosphere out of balance?  By what right do we trash the magnificent vineyard that God has generously placed in our care?

IV.

The Book of Revelation will continue and display in horrendous and gory detail the consequences of not living according to the life of the Lamb... but even all that horror is temporary.  Because God inevitably triumphs in the end with the emergence of a new heaven and a new earth.

Often overlooked in the Exodus story is the fact that once its blood gets smeared over the doors, the people consume the lamb.  They eat it as part of the liberation meal that became both the Jewish seder and the Christian Sacrament.  Thereby we become the lamb; we take on the lamb's life and mission.  We participate in the Lamb's self-offering, compassion, humility, generosity, simplicity, and inclusion.  We become together the sign of God's love, witnessing in our relationships, actions, words, and thoughts. 

Our Westminster Shorter Catechism begins with the amazing affirmation that “the chief end of human life,” that is, our main purpose and function as humans here on the earth, “is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever.”  This is what the angels are doing with their song; this is what the whole creation does in singing as well.  And it is the whole reason we exist at all.

May everything we do, everything we say, everything we even think, be an expression of this awesome sentiment; and may that joyful, humble, awestruck, thankful hymn be ever in our hearts, guiding every thing we do: 

“To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb 

be blessing and honor 

and glory and might 

for ever and ever!”

+++++++

 

God Deals With Inflation By Means of a Conspiracy Theory.

2 Kings 7:1-16

April 24, 2022 + "Holy Humor Sunday"

I.

Today I'm going to talk about a story that involves topics that we may not be able to relate to very well.  I remember learning in seminary that there is a huge "hermeneutical gap" between people in Bible times and today.  It requires great interpretive acrobatics, usually involving highly trained seminary professors, for us to understand such an alien culture.  Three-thousand years ago people lived very differently.  We have fortunately advanced and evolved so much with our sophisticated ways of thinking that I will need to explain for you some of the things going on.  We have the great benefits of science and technology.  We have advanced Capitalism; we have democracy, and a free press, and universal education.  Sometimes we just need to humor these primitive, backward people we meet in the Bible, and be thankful that such things do not happen to us any more.

For instance, back then their economies were still subject to arbitrary forces like supply and demand.  They did not yet understand how free markets solve all our economic problems.  This meant that they were occasionally subject to a phenomenon called "inflation."  That was when prices, even for necessities like food or housing, would skyrocket.  People would literally starve or be left homeless because of difficult circumstances.  I know it may be hard for us to believe, because today we have brilliant and highly compensated people who manage our economy for the common good, using very complicated technologies and economic practices, ensuring that we will never have to deal with such a thing.

Ancient people also had no understanding of public health.  People who had virulent diseases would be quarantined and isolated, cut off from the community so they wouldn't infect anyone else.  People back then did not have the benefit of our scientifically developed and universally accepted medicines and vaccines.  Many people died due to diseases that are perfectly preventable today.

A third thing they had back then that we might find laughably weird was that from time to time a whole population of people would be spooked by an irrational rumor that spread among them.  Without any evidence or proof, people would believe the most outlandish and ridiculous falsehoods that would incite primitive emotions like fear, desire, or anger.  They would invent fantastic conspiracies based purely on their vivid imaginations, and react hysterically and even self-destructively.  Fortunately, we have graduated to a much more rational approach, requiring things like actual evidence and verification before we believe what we are told.

Finally, there was one other terrible thing that we modern people have mostly managed to relegate to the dustbin of history due to our advanced and evolved society, and that is war.  Countries used to invade each other for no reason except the egomaniacal delusions of a psychotic ruler, and inflict untold horror and suffering on innocent people.  I realize that wars do still happen today, mostly in places where the full impact of modern progress has not yet been felt.  But for such a thing to happen here or in, say, Europe?  That's nearly unthinkable.  We are making war virtually obsolete.  And when wars do happen, the whole world gets together and firmly puts a stop to it.... 

Wait, when did I write this?  Oh, 1997.  Nevermind.  (I should really read old sermons when I pull them from the file.)       

II.

Ok, let's start over then, shall we?

In today's reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, the northern kingdom of Israel is involved in another war with the kingdom of Aram, what is now Syria.  The Aramean army has the Israelite capital, Samaria, surrounded and under siege.  They want to starve the Israelites into submission.  And it is working.  Food in Samaria has become so rare, and therefore expensive, that no one can afford it.

The full horror of this situation is illustrated just before this story with the grotesque incident of two starving women who make an agreement to eat their own children; they planned to eat one woman's son one day and the next day they would eat the other woman's son.  So they do eat one baby, but the next day the other woman changes her mind and refuses to let her son be eaten.  So the other mother indignantly brings a case to the king over the unfairness of this.  At this the king finally snaps in frustration.  And this is when the Prophet Elisha enters the scene.

The king is angry with Elisha to begin with for predicting that the king's corruption and injustice would bring about this disaster.  Elisha understood, and was not afraid to state openly, frequently, and vociferously, the inexorable regression that shows up repeatedly in the Bible, in which idolatry leads to social injustice which in turn leads to some kind of disaster.  In this case it led to a war the Israelites were losing.

Elisha almost never had anything good or positive to say about the king or even about the kingdom at all.  He was considered woefully unpatriotic, and a negative influence undermining the morale of the people.  So when he shows up the king has every reason to assume that Elisha would say "I told you so" and predict still more disaster.  The king is even ready to finally rid himself of this annoying prophet. 

But instead, totally out of character, Elisha makes a wild prognostication that the price of food is going to crash by the next morning.  It would be like someone saying today that by tomorrow gas would be under a dollar a gallon and you could get a latte at Starbucks for 59 cents.  The captain who advises the king scoffs at this ridiculous prediction, which earns him a rebuke from the prophet, who says that because he doubted he would not partake of this coming miracle.  

Meanwhile, we hear about these four homeless men with infectious skin diseases who live isolated in quarantine outside the gate of the city.  Their lives were probably pretty miserable even without a war going on.  They were not allowed in the city because of their condition, and they couldn't go anywhere else because of the Aramean army.  On top of everything, now, like everyone else, they are also dying of hunger.

  So, since they figure they're about to perish anyway, they decide to go out and surrender to the Arameans.  They realize that the Arameans might kill them, but what have they got to lose?  So they wander across no-man's-land to the Aramean camp... and they find it deserted!  The Aramean army had apparently inexplicably departed in such chaos that they left everything behind: animals, tents, weapons, and supplies, including a lot of food. 

The four men wander around the empty Aramean camp in wonder, and basically have a big, instant party, freely partaking of the piles of supplies left abandoned by the army, four hungry guys in this vast, deserted encampment. 

They went out there in defeat, to surrender, fully expecting to simply be executed either for being Israelites or having an infectious disease or both.  Instead, they find more food and supplies than they could imagine.

III.

They would have had no idea why the army was gone, but the narrator informs us that the Arameans had heard some strange noises in the night that they interpreted as the sounds of a great army.  They apparently thought they heard in the distance the sounds of horses, barked orders, tramping feet, rumbling chariots, clanking armor and weaponry.  Rumors started spreading among them that the Israelites must have made an alliance with another, larger military power, perhaps the Egyptians or the Hittites, and this new army has arrived and is getting ready to attack them.  Imagining without any evidence or verification that they are now outnumbered by superior forces, the Aramean soldiers panic, break ranks and run for their lives, abandoning everything in their camp.  It's really quite comical.

This is obviously the work of God, which Elisha has foreseen.  The Lord incites the Arameans' fearful imaginations.  Humans are prone to such conspiracy theories, especially in situations of stress.  And boredom.  And ignorance.  The Arameans are on the very verge of victory: The people in Samaria are resorting to cannibalism, for heaven's sake.  How much longer can they hold out?  Another couple of days, max, and the Arameans could have simply walked into the city, unopposed.  

The story is definitely intended to make the Arameans look really foolish, which is the effect conspiracy theories always have, because they are by nature superstitious and ridiculous.  It is the same with idiotic and outlandish conspiracy theories today, of which we seem to have an epidemic.  The latest one is that Disney (Disney!) and public school teachers are conspiring to "groom" children to make them compliant victims of pedophiles.  It would be laughable were not many people, in particular children, actually being harmed by such paranoid and irrational nonsense.  

Meanwhile, these four men gorging themselves on Aramean loot start to realize that they can't keep this to themselves.  Eventually the Israelites will find out that the Arameans are gone, and they don't want to get in trouble.  They suddenly rediscover their Israelite patriotism.  So they go back to Samaria and tell the gatekeepers, who tell the king.  "Yo, the enemy army is gone!  And the left all their stuff, including food!"

The king, though, when he gets this news, thinks it's a trick by those wily Arameans.  He is afraid that the Aramean army is actually hiding, and if the Israelites all go out and raid the empty camp, the Arameans will ambush and overrun them and storm into the city.  But he agrees to send out a few scouts to scope out the actual location of the enemy army.  They find a trail of discarded materiel going for miles along the road back to Damascus, in the wake of the frantically fleeing soldiers.  They come back and report to the king that the Arameans are indeed gone and the camp is easy pickings.  

So with this confirmation, the starving people of Samaria leave the city and venture out to the Aramean camp and plunder it, bringing back to the city truckloads of Aramean MRE's.  More souvlaki, pita bread, hummus, and babaganoush than anyone has ever seen!  This sudden surplus drives the price of food down so quickly that by the time morning comes the Prophet Elisha's prediction comes true.  Food in Samaria is so  abundant as to be practically free.

IV.

I think we read this story on the Sunday after the Resurrection as an example of how God turns our mourning into laughter, our scarcity into abundance, our certain defeat into amazing victory, our death into life.  For this is what is going on in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  God turns our situation, analogous to a kind of  cannibalism, in which we are forced to consume, compete, and lie to each other, killing our future for the sake of mere survival and instant gratification, wallowing in the misery and depression of imminent death and loss, into a time of exuberant and profligate sharing.  Isn't that precisely what we need to hear as we face the global climate crisis?  That it doesn't have to be this way and God can turn this whole thing around?

Maybe we need to understand that when we interpret the world's random noises as scary threats, stoking our fears, it can drive us to a humiliating defeat in which we really do lose everything.  I mean, what if America is finally on the very verge of emerging into its own promise as a multi-cultural, multi-racial, classless democracy, where there really is equality, freedom, and justice for all... and instead we threw that away because we believed superstitious lies we were told on cable news?  What if the church is placed for an imminent dramatic comeback, but we squandered it out of fear of failure?

And maybe we need to remind ourselves that in the Bible the catalyst for the turn-around, the people God uses most readily and effectively, is the least likely bunch of losers, people who have effectively hit the bottom of despair and realize they have nothing left to lose, who therefore face death fearlessly.  Those are the people who may awaken to unimaginable abundance.  They can often see God's miracles before everyone else does.

Finally, maybe we need to listen to the prophets among us, the wise and courageous ones who are suggesting to us that it doesn't have to be this way; who are casting a vision for us that seems impossible, unrealistic, and outlandish, yet who are in touch with God's truth and who are proclaiming God's Word.  The ones who are really annoying, because they call us beyond business as usual, and open us to the possibility of new life and a new future emerging with, within, and among us.

Maybe we even need to be those people.  Maybe we need to be the ones who witness to the God of miracles epitomized in Jesus' resurrection.  Maybe we need to communicate to people that these miracles are always happening.  And maybe we need to start living together in God's very different world of abundance, inclusion, and sharing which is being born among us all the time.

+++++++

"The Last Enemy."

1 Corinthians 15:19-26

April 17, 2022 + The Resurrection of the Lord

I.

The good news of Jesus Christ begins with the story we have just walked through over the last few days, culminating in the joyous celebration today.  He willingly dies at the hands of the Romans, giving his life for the life of the world; and he is resurrected from the dead on the third day, thus neutralizing Rome’s brutality and challenging Rome’s rule.  He now guides his gathered disciples by his Spirit in their new life in God’s Kingdom.  

Paul calls the resurrected Christ the “first fruits of those who have died.”  This means that his resurrection is not just something that happens to him alone, it is also something that happens to all of us.  Christ reveals what is by God’s grace the truth of the human nature we share with him: eternal life with and in God.   

Everyone subject to death, which is to say everyone, will be embraced by God’s life.  “For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”  This destiny has been revealed to us in Jesus; now we await and live into its fulfillment.  Christ shows us our future: all will be made alive.   

The figure of Adam represents our bondage to the power of death, which is the pattern and template for our whole existence.  It is all we know.  It is our ego-centric identity, which is caught in the dark illusion of separation, and therefore mired in fear, anger, shame, and hatred, and gets expressed in the blind and violent selfishness we call sin: this is what Paul calls our old self, or our self of “flesh.”  It is the only self we are even aware of until our true essence is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.  

From Jesus Christ we inherit our liberation from the power of death, a power which he defeats on the cross by absorbing and withstanding unspeakable human injustice and violence, and emerging with a new kind of life.  Christ reveals to us our true essential nature, as human beings made in God’s Image for participation in God’s life, a life which gets expressed in acts of compassion, humility, generosity, forgiveness, love, and joy.

So we receive the good news that the resurrection of Jesus Christ reveals to each and all of us our true nature.  Christ shows us a reality that we may experience when we trust in him by living as he shows us.  

In other words, the world-as-we-know-it doesn’t have to be this way.  We do not have to exist under the power of death.  We do not have to muddle through by violence and lies.  We do not have to tolerate injustice, inequality, and exploitation.  We do not have to put up with people stoking our fear, inciting our anger, setting us off against each other as enemies and competitors.

By his resurrection Christ shows us that we may be in touch with our true nature, which is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God in peace and joy; to glorify God and to enjoy God forever.  

II.

But we do live in a between-time after Christ’s resurrection yet before the final fulfillment of this revelation.  What is going on in this time, Paul says, is that Christ is busy destroying “every ruler and every authority and power.”  He is putting "all his enemies under his feet.”

This is how the apostle Paul sees the life and work of the church, the gathered community of those who trust in Jesus Christ and seek to live according to his commandments.  It is our job to be witnesses, in his name, of this, well, destruction so that the truth of his resurrection, his victory over death, may emerge among and within us.

Because, as we know, the world remains in the grip of evil.  Bad things continue to happen.  Death continues to rule.  Bad leaders are propped up to make bad decisions, for which we will all suffer the consequences.  

But the early church understands how the grip of evil is shaken and weakened by the resurrection of Jesus.  Because if Rome’s worst instrument of terror — crucifixion — is not effective in snuffing resistance to its regime, then the whole imperial edifice could collapse.  It means that the new king, Jesus, is indeed Lord, and the Emperor is not.  If Christ is the truth, then the Emperor’s power isn’t ultimately real, and he only exerts what power we give him.

The fact that we nevertheless let him have such power means that the place where the resurrection must take hold first must be in our own hearts.  For the tyranny of rulers, authorities, and powers always begins within us.  We give them power because of our fear, our anger, our desire, our ignorance.  This is where the battle is lost or won: in the human heart.    

When we realize the truth and power of the resurrection within us, and come to trust in the good news of God’s love revealed in Jesus — that is, when we can stop trusting in what our selfish, lonely, fearful ego is telling us — that is when we start to see every ruler and every authority and power destroyed in the sense that they no longer have a voice or influence over us.  That is when Christ becomes enthroned within us, and the various pretenders and imposters get thrown out of our hearts like Jesus casts the merchants from the Temple.

That is when the world itself starts to change.  When people begin to trust and follow Jesus Christ, living his life of compassion, gentleness, humility, generosity, forgiveness, and love, not reacting in selfishness and fear all the time, then our relationships evolve, and our social and political and economic life gets transformed.  

People who trust in the resurrection cannot be tempted into engaging in lies and violence.  We will not be dominated by greed or envy or the other self-centered sins.  We will not hate or fear others; for we realize that in Christ there are no “others.”  For we are all one in him, sharing in his humanity and in his resurrection.

III.

Paul refers to death as “the last enemy,” probably because death is the the root of the fear that forces us into the selfish violence of sin. 

But in the resurrection of Jesus Christ God finally reveals the “perfect love which casts out all fear.”  “Because he lives all fear is gone,” is the way one gospel song puts it.  When the risen Christ is enthroned in our hearts, when we live by the power of his resurrection, it means that all fear has been cast out of us, overwhelmed and washed away by the awesome ocean of God’s love.  

The good news we see and know in the resurrection is at heart the truth that death has been defeated.  All are made alive in Christ.  Jesus says that all are alive to God.

More than anything else, the church is this place where we come together to celebrate and remind ourselves of God’s life and love.  At this Table we partake of the One who gives us his life, thus inoculating us against death.  In baptism we realize that we have died with Christ and are raised to new life with and in him.  The church is the crucible in which we find release from the powers that would enslave us, and so begin to experience the resurrection.  

Thus the church is this place of acceptance and welcome, forgiveness and peace, generosity and healing, love and joy.  It is where people change, learning to see how Christ destroys and sets us free from all within us that would kill or harm us, “every ruler and every authority and power.”  He liberates us from our fear, dissolves our anger, wipes out our shame and hatred, and restores us to new life together, so that we will be ready to receive the fulfillment of resurrection with him “at his coming.”

For the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is a revelation of our own future.  It is like an acorn realizing that its true and final form is as an oak tree.  Or like a caterpillar becoming conscious of its destiny as a butterfly.  Resurrection life is encoded and embedded within our spiritual DNA as beings made in the Image of God.

Yes, we can blow it.  We can imagine that our hope is only about getting ahead or receiving benefits in this existence.  Like becoming really fat acorns or caterpillars.  But Paul says this would be a pitiable excuse for life because we would be missing the glory and wonder of who we really are, and who God makes us to be.  We would be missing our true destiny as participants in the divine nature and agents of God’s explosive, expansive, inclusive love.

In the resurrection God reveals our true life, our true future, our ultimate meaning and purpose to us: a life beyond the power of death.  A life we can begin to experience even now as our chains are being broken.  A life filled with wholeness and joy.  And the wonder is we don’t have to do anything, except let go of our fear, and let God fill us with love.

+++++++

Caesarian Section.

John 19:31-37

April 15, 2022 + Good Friday

The final callous, brutal act of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus is this incident where the soldiers come to break the legs, and thus hasten the death, of the crucified men, so as not to have them hanging there over the holiday.  This was a concession because the Romans liked to have victims in plain sight even long after their death, as birds and animals would come and pick at the bodies.  Crucifixion was even more of a deterrent if everyone saw the bodies desecrated and obliterated in this way.  

They break the legs of the other two criminals, but when they get to Jesus they see that he is already dead, and to prove it one of the soldiers thrusts his spear into the flank of Jesus’ body.

A flow of blood and water issues from the wound, pouring out onto the ground.  This is a big enough deal for some reason that the gospel writer feels it necessary to add his own personal verification as an eye witness, “so that you also may believe.”  How does hearing about this blood and water pouring out of Jesus’ body aid our faith?  How does it make us more likely to trust in him?  

As Jesus is being lifted up, a process that begins on the cross and culminates in the resurrection, all he leaves behind of himself, of his physical flesh, on the earth is this puddle of watery blood in the dust.  Lifted up for the life of the world, he leaves a bit of his life in the world.  For water is the life of the planet and blood is the life of life.  In this way he does not abandon us, but leaves some of himself — literally and physically — on the physical earth, sanctifying it, blessing it, infusing it with himself.

The water and the blood represent the two sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which constitute the continuing gospel community.  We are reborn in Christ by the water of Baptism, and fed by him in the blood of the Eucharist.  It is almost as if Jesus is in labor on the cross, giving birth to the church by the Caesarian section administered by a Roman soldier.  I have watched enough episodes of Call the Midwife to know that birth involves a flush of blood and water.  What the soldier intended to prove death, actually becomes the new birth of the church.  In that act the old humanity dies, and the new humanity is born.  Jesus’ wound is actually the birth canal of the Church, the vanguard of the new humanity.  Jesus is the mother of the Church.

And it has to be “Caesarian,” that is, it has to be a final, gratuitous act of violence by the epitome of power and hatred that is Empire.  Empire itself has to be neutralized; it has to be turned against itself, so that the Empire’s reign of death is doomed in the birth of God’s reign, and the brutality of one inhuman lord in Rome and his lackeys is swallowed up and permanently overwhelmed in the victory of God in the self-offering of the true Lord, Jesus Christ.

And what happens to that bloody water, shining there under the horrible cross, reflecting the sky, the water that once constituted the living body of Christ our God?  Well, it evaporates.  It continues its eternal participation in the cycle of water on the Earth.  It becomes cloud.  It precipitates back down to the earth as rain or snow.  It flows in rivers.  It joins the ocean.  It is taken into plants and animals.  It is mixed and scattered, dissipated and infused, over and over and over, over years, and centuries, and millennia.  And over all this time, the very water molecules that were part of Jesus' body literally touch and bless the whole earth.  His life is now literally in every living thing and each one of us.

The Lord Jesus also leaves a third thing with us: his breath, which he gives up in verse 30 when he dies.  Sometimes when we die we do it with a long, final exhale.  I have seen this happen with people whose death I have witnessed.   The risen Jesus will later more formally bestow the Holy Spirit on his disciples by breathing on them.  

In his first letter, the apostle John will remind us of these three things that the Lord Jesus, the Word of God, leaves of himself in the creation: the Spirit, the water, and the blood.  These are Christ's continued Presence, with, within, and among us and all creation.  In a sense, they are his resurrection life, persisting everywhere.  

In this way Jesus’ lifting up becomes the life of the world, when we see in him, by the power of the Spirit, that because of the cross it is all holy, it is all sacred, it is all blessed.  He fulfills God’s initial declaration of the goodness of creation, and indeed embodies it literally. 

Because of the cross, the final produce of which is this outpouring of God’s life in the water and the blood, and the breath, from the body of the Lord, we may now walk in that "newness of life" of which Paul speaks, which is the new life of compassion, nonviolence, humility, forgiveness, thanksgiving, and love which Jesus embodies.  Because of the cross we are now able to see the truth that this whole place, and every life, and every person is good and precious.  Because of the water and the blood and the breath, animating the Church and every believer, we are reborn, we are fed, we are inspired now to know and therefore trust our lives to the goodness of the God who by this grace is everywhere and fills all things.         

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"For Us."

Romans 5:6-8

April 10, 2022 + Palm/Passion Sunday

I.

The idea that “Christ died for our sins” is basic to Christianity, and important for us to understand as we head into Holy Week.  This “for us” character of Jesus’ death is fundamental to what it means to be a Christian.  Somehow what Christ did he did for us.  

But what does that really mean, to say that “Christ died for us”?  The word “for” is very vague and can mean many things.  My dictionary lists 34 meanings of the word “for” in English.  In the original Greek the word is “‘υπερ,” which is a preposition that can mean “on behalf of,” “in the place of,” “with reference to,” or “on account of.”  Its oldest and deepest meaning, however, is “over.”  From ‘υπερ we get the English prefix hyper-.  Someone who is hyperactive is overly active; hypertension is when blood pressure is above what is normal; if you are hypersensitive you are highly-sensitive.  

  You may have noticed that when I read the passage I did so in this hyper-literal way.  How does that change our understanding?  "Over" can also mean different things, including "because of" or "on account of," as when we say don't get angry or upset "over" something.  To say “Christ died over our sins” with this intent might infer that our sins caused his death.  He died because of us.  This is not hard to imagine.

Humans of every time tend to commit the same sins.  Even if we did not personally commit them, others committed the same sins.  The sins of the religious and political leadership of Rome and Jerusalem, are no different from sins of the dominant system of our time.  And if we are at all honest, we must admit that had we been in the position of the scribes, Pharisees, and priests, or of the Roman authorities, we would certainly have used the same reasoning to do the same thing to Jesus that they did.  

I say this with some certainty because we still do the same kinds of things, using the same reasoning, causing the suffering and death of innocent people all over the world.  We show all the time that we agree with Caiaphas the High Priest who said, “It is better... to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed."  We still reserve to ourselves the right to decide who gets to die to preserve our vision of the way things should be... which is always closely related to what serves our interests.  How many Iraqis, Afghanis, Vietnamese, and so forth, had to die for us?  How many Americans do we in effect sacrifice in various ways to supposedly maintain our way of life, whether it be in industrial accidents, police violence, car crashes, or in the military?   We might even add heart disease, diabetes, and drug overdoses to the things we are willing to put up with rather than change our behavior.  How many lives might we have saved if our nation did a better job keeping the Covid restrictions?

We continue to do the same things Pilate and Caiaphas did.  Christ dies over what they did, and people continue to die unjustly because we underwrite and approve of the same things.  Therefore, when we say “Christ died over our sins,” we literally mean that our sins resulted in his death.  On Thursday night we will sing a hymn with the line “‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied you; I crucified You.”        

II.

If that were all it meant to say that “Christ died for our sins,” our main response might be guilt and self-punishment.  Not to say that this isn’t a major component of the way we Christians have talked about Jesus’ death over the centuries, but this can’t be all it means.  Guilt only goes so far.  Clearly, when we say Christ died for us, we also imply that there is some benefit that we gain by his death.

Indeed, we confess and affirm that we gain salvation, forgiveness, acceptance, new life, and even union with and in God, in and through Jesus’ death.  How does this happen?  How does Jesus’ dying ‘υπερ, over, or “for” us, accomplish this?      

The theological doctrine concerned with the meaning of Jesus’ death “for us” is called the atonement.  For nearly a thousand years the Western church has often thought about the atonement in terms of a payment Christ made in his own blood to satisfy God’s absolute and retributive justice.  This view of the matter is so common that most Western Christians assume it is the only way to talk about the atonement.  According to this approach, “for us” means “instead of us,” or "as a substitutionary gift to us."  The idea is that Christ endured the just punishment of an angry God in our place, taking on himself the punishment we deserved.  Now that God’s righteous wrath has been absorbed and placated, the theory goes, there is no barrier to our being reconciled to God.  We get into heaven because Jesus sacrificed his life for us, in our stead.

Unfortunately, this model has more to do with the feudal context of St. Anselm, who dreamed up this way of putting things in the 11^th century.  We have managed to read the Bible through this lens for a thousand years, even though it bears very little resemblance to the ways the atonement is actually expressed in the Bible.

        Contrary to this view, the God revealed in Jesus Christ is known for boundless love and radical forgiveness.  Think of the absurdly gracious Father in the story of the Prodigal Son.  The God whom Jesus reveals does not have a rigid sense of honor that can only be satisfied by the infliction of punitive suffering.  Other ancient near-eastern deities demanded blood as the price of their favor.  The God we see in Jesus does not.  People draw down catastrophe on themselves by their disobedience, which Paul refers to as "wrath," but this is not God's will.  God is always hoping we will stop hurting ourselves, and each other, and come home.

     In the Hebrew Scriptures, which are the basis for Christian thought, when God does ask for blood sacrifices, it is not to appease or satisfy God’s wrath or buy God’s favor.  Rather it serves to offer back to God what belongs most clearly to God: the life of the animal.  For the Hebrews, blood means life.  Paul makes this connection explicit in verse 10, where he says we are saved by Christ's life.  

When the blood of the lamb is spread on the doorways of the Israelites in Egypt, it is the life of the lamb displayed as a sign of God’s protection of the people against judgment, condemnation, and death.  And the Day of Atonement ritual, when the blood of one goat is sprinkled in and around the Temple, it is not a matter of appeasing God's wrath.  Rather, it restores the purity of the Temple, both protecting it from the effects of the people’s sin and reestablishing the connection between the people and God.  The sin itself is not somehow “paid for” in blood or pain, but loaded on the head of the other goat (the “scapegoat”) which is not punished, let alone killed, but sent away into the wilderness.  

III.

The Hebrew word for atonement is kippur.  And this word means “cover,” “recover,” “cover again,” or “repair a torn or broken covering.”  Atonement, then, has to do with covering something.  This is not so much to hide what is covered, but to protect it or to make it shine.  As we might protect and enhance a silver plate by polishing it, or ourselves from the sun by covering our skin with sunscreen.  It is analogous to the Earth's atmospheric covering which both protects us from, and makes beneficial, solar radiation that would otherwise make the planet uninhabitable.

The relationship in English between the words “over” and “cover” is obvious.  A cover goes over something else.  Thus both ‘υπερ and kippur reflect a relationship of one thing over, or covering, another.

On the cross, Jesus is lifted up and dies ‘υπερ us, over us, literally hanging above the heads of the witnesses who gathered around.  At the same time and in the same action, his blood, which is to say his life, covers us, kippurs us, symbolically and figuratively, spiritually and imaginatively.  It protects us and separates us from evil and death like the blood of the slaughtered lamb protects the Israelites during the Exodus.  It also restores us and the whole creation to wholeness like the blood of the the Day of Atonement ritual restores the sanctity of the Temple.  His blood, representing his life, the very life of God and at the same time the true life of humanity, becomes the conducting element, spread out over us, connecting us to God.

Since his blood is his life, we are led to reflect as well on the character of that life: what he does, how he behaves, what he says, the quality of his relationships, what he commands his disciples to do.  His blood covers us when we participate in his life by doing as he does.  We are therefore saved when we realize and reflect and express his life in our actions. 

 

IV.

When we sing, "wash me in his precious blood," as we will later, as gross and even horrifying as that may sound, it really means that his life cleanses and purifies us, revealing the true humanity we share with Christ, freeing us to obey him and act according to the justice, compassion, equality, peace, and joy he exemplifies and embodies.  It is an image of baptism, in which we emerge from the symbolic death of our old selves with new life, his life, God's life, empowered and enabled to live as Christ lives and do as he does.    

This is why we regularly and frequently share in Christ's body and blood in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  When we take in his blood we take into ourselves this connectivity and this receptivity to life, which then permeates every cell of our bodies.  What was over us, covering us, is taken into us and becomes part of us.  Now it sort of covers us from within, which is where the real danger comes from anyway.  His life is ours, within and without, expressed in our actions in his service.

So when we say things like “Christ died for us,” “Christ died for our sins,” Christ freed us from our sins “by his blood,” or even “he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities,” we are saying that by the death of Christ the whole creation is covered by God’s protective and energizing grace over us.  Sin and death no longer have any power over us other than what we choose, out of our fear, blindness, and ignorance, to give them.  Christ’s blood, his life, now intervenes, separating us from violence and injustice, sin and death, fear and anger; his blood is now like a coating of adhesive, uniting us, even every cell of us, to God.

With this blood, this life, over us, covering us, and being expressed in our lives of discipleship, witness, and service, our existence cannot be dominated by the corrupt and destructive rules of secular power.  Under his blood, by his life, we cannot rationalize or justify our actions by the standards of fear, anger, violence, and sin.  

Covered now by his life, the pure love of God may shine fully into our lives, freeing us to live according to his life: characterized by peace and love, goodness and truth, forgiveness and grace, kindness and compassion, faithfulness and hope, justice and righteousness, knowledge, peace and love, that we may perfectly love God and each other, that we may worthily magnify God’s holy name, and walk in beauty forever, together, in Jesus Christ. 

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Jesus the Boundary Breaker.

John 12:1-8 + Lent 5   

April 3, 2022 + Smithtown

I.

Just before Passover, Jesus comes to Bethany for a dinner at the home of his friends, Martha, Mary, and their brother Lazarus.  Jesus has recently raised Lazarus from the dead.  During the meal Mary takes a large amount, nearly a pound, of very expensive perfume and uses it to anoint Jesus’ feet, wiping them with her long hair.  The aroma permeates the whole house.

When we call Jesus by the title, “Christ,” the word is Greek for the Hebrew word "Messiah," which means "anointed."  The gospel has no other story of Jesus being actually anointed with oil except here.  Which means that when we refer to Jesus as “Christ” we are in some ways remembering this particular event, the time when he was anointed by Mary, six days before the Passover.  What Mary does to Jesus is literally what makes him the Messiah, the Christ.  That’s how important it is.

Yet it is a very disturbing story on several levels.  Presbyterian ministers are required to receive what we call “boundary training.”  This is where we learn to recognize and respect various kinds of boundaries between the professional, personal, financial, family, ecclesiastical, romantic, and other aspects of our lives.  Blurring and even crossing these boundaries can lead to misconduct and often disaster for churches as well as pastors and their families. 

But here, as in so many places in his career, we see Jesus throwing boundaries out the window.  Imagine the firestorm of indignation and complaint that would result if this sort of thing were to happen to a pastor today!  Charges would be filed!  Indeed, this event is the final catalyst that sets in motion the apparatus that eventually brings Jesus to the cross within a week!

Not only is it way too intimate for our comfort level even now; but there is the question of the profligate waste of very pricey perfume.  So Jesus manages here to offend both the sexual morality of conservatives and liberals’ concern for social justice.

Jesus is an inveterate boundary-breaker.  He looks at the separations, the divisions, the classes, the different forms of enmity which societies impose on people, and he sets himself to undermining and even overturning them.  He leads one, unified, integrated life.  His faith is not separate from his economics, or his politics; his personal life is his public life; he is the same person saying and doing the same things when he is with his friends, and when he is with his disciples, when he is teaching a crowd of people, and when he is standing on trial in court.  

Our problem is not that we don’t have enough boundaries, separations, distinctions, and regulations in our existence; it is that we don’t have enough integrity to bring our faith and discipleship into the center and let it pervade every part of us, like the fragrance of Mary’s perfume filled her whole house.  Then I wonder if boundaries wouldn't become superfluous.

In Luke, Mary makes a point of sitting with Jesus and listening to his teaching, for which he commends her.  Here she goes further than simply listening to Jesus, and performs a beautiful and meaningful act of worship.  She doesn’t just sit at his feet; she massages them with a heavily aromatic ointment, wiping them with her long hair.

Mary's act is a response to Jesus' raising of Lazarus from death, which represents the breaking into the present of the end times.  The resurrection, according to Jewish theology, wasn’t supposed to happen until the end, “on the last day."  Yet here is Lazarus, walking around and having people over for dinner, after having been dead in a tomb for several days.  He serves as a living anticipation of what Jesus will finally do in Jerusalem.  

II.

Jesus is himself the resurrection and the life.  He makes present and available and real now something that  Jews affirmed as part of their faith, but no one expected to experience any time soon, certainly not in this mortal existence.

Jesus takes that future hope and hauls it into our lives today.  He shows that resurrection is something that can begin to happen now.  It is not relegated to some far off termination of linear time; it isn’t even something that we have to wait to receive until after our body physically dies.  Jesus makes God’s promised future a present reality.  He makes it possible for us to die now to our old selves, and be reborn now as our new, true, original selves.  This is a truth that transcends whatever may or may not be happening with our physical, biological organism.

It is like when Paul says we are the Lord’s whether we live or die.  We have his new life within us, the resurrection life, Christ-in-us, and it is real and true whether we realize it now in this mortal existence or later, after our body ceases to function.  That’s why we sing “Alleluia!” when we bury a dead body or inter someone's ashes.  Not because we’re glad the person is gone, of course, and not even because we’re thankful that they are free from death and pain, but because we celebrate that not even death can keep them from the new and true life we all have in Christ.

So when Mary makes Jesus the Anointed One, the Christ of God, she does not apply the oil to his head, as was the case for the kings of Judah and Israel, and the occasional prophet.  But in anointing his feet she addresses the places where his body meets the earth, where he is literally grounded.  His feet are the contact points between Creator and creation, the connection that closes the circuit and allows the energy to flow from heaven to earth.  She anoints the interface between God and the dust upon which we all walk and from which we are all made.  Her anointing prepares him for the day when he will, like all of us, go down to that very dust.  For she is massaging the same feet that will, in a few days, have hammered through them a long, rusty, iron, Roman nail, fixing his body to a wooden cross.  She prepares him in advance for his burial.

Meanwhile, Judas, one of Jesus’ disciples, also attended this dinner.  The narrator reminds us that he will shortly betray Jesus.  Judas complains bitterly about the apparent waste.  “Why was this perfume not sold for three-hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”  

Three-hundred denarii was nearly a year’s wages for a common laborer; a lot of money.  Judas attacks Mary for even having such a luxury item, let alone slathering it sensuously all over Jesus' feet.  That much money could do a lot of good in the community.  It could have been given to people in need.

He has a point.  I know I get impatient when a big, rich church spends thousands of dollars on a pipe organ, or a new steeple, or stained-glass windows, or some other expensive trinket, when there are hungry people around the corner who need to be fed.  I once expressed indignation in a presbytery meeting when a particular church actually cut their mission budget so they could retain the bragging rights of having the highest paid pastor in the presbytery!  Doesn't Judas have a point here?  Shouldn't money be used for mission, not squandered on perfume to anoint someone’s feet, for heaven’s sake?  Why does Jesus allow this?  Isn't this the equivalent of buying the pastor a Mercedes? 

We may be even more shocked because Jesus rebukes Judas and approves of Mary’s use of the costly ointment.  “Leave her alone,” he snaps.  “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”

III.

In order to understand Jesus’ attitude, we have to see that Jesus in these stories, and in the whole gospel of John, embodies deeper essential truths about our life.  When he, the Word of God, becomes flesh to dwell among us, he takes on and reveals our true humanity.  It is through this humanity which we share with Christ, that we are also connected to all people, and even to all of life, and all of creation.  In him we identify with and connect with everyone, especially those in need, the marginalized, the suffering, and disenfranchised. 

That is why Jesus calls out Judas’ hypocrisy here.  “You will always have the poor among you,” he says, “but you won’t always have me.”  Without Christ as our spiritual connection to all, people remain strangers to us.  We see them as just "others," like objects out there among us; we may think about them or not; we may decide to serve them or find an excuse not to.

But with and in Christ, we are connected to them, we are them because we share a common humanity, and so we serve people, not as separate, distant, different beings, but as part of a larger "us," indeed, as us.  Christ affirms this explicitly in Matthew 25 in which service to suffering people is service to him.

To minister to others while still in our egocentricity, without this realization of our solidarity in Christ, easily becomes paternalistic, or guilt-driven, or manipulative and calculating, or forced, or transactional….  It is inevitably self-serving in some way, maintaining and strengthening the walls separating people.  It is better than neglect or violence, of course; but it is not the transforming love that Jesus embodies.    

With the realization that Christ-in-us is the common humanity we share with all people, we are freed from our differences, inequalities, and divisions.  In Christ "there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female," as Paul says.  In truth, the boundaries have been broken; all are united.  Christ is the basis for a radical empathy in which we relate to people at their deepest places of need.

IV.

Our life depends on our understanding that in Jesus Christ we see still further that sharing his true humanity also unites us to God’s living Presence.  For, as the creeds say, he is both "fully God and fully human," two natures in one person.  He breaks the biggest boundary, that between humanity and God, between creation and Creator.  Christ is the Word made flesh, the union of true humanity with God.  When we realize his humanity in ourselves by following him, we at the same time realize the Creator's Presence with and in us.  In and through him we too are connected to, and in truth by grace are made one with, God.

That is what Mary expresses in her act of worship.  Like in a work of performance art, Mary’s perfume represents the way we keep that awareness in ourselves open and working and fragrant and lubricated and cherished and alive.  In our devotional and prayer life we need to let the rich scent of our thanks and praise permeate our souls, to keep that connectivity alive and functional.  It is worth more even than thousands of dollars worth of imported aromatic ointment.  It is the pearl of great price and the treasure hidden in a field.  To realize this in ourselves, and express it in our actions of witness and service, is worth everything we have and are.  It is the doorway to true and eternal life. 

Jesus finally demonstrates that not even death separates us from each other or from God.  Killing the physical organism doesn’t have the permanent effect the killers think it will have on people who have discovered their true life in a deeper and higher and wider place.  We live on in each other and in God.  

To the degree that we find, even for a moment, that connection, that place where we are all one, that Christ within, we live on.  To the degree that we participate in God’s love, poured out into and for the world in Jesus Christ, even a little, we live on.  To the degree that we discover that our life goes far deeper than any of our boundaries, and that we share together in the life of the One who is “the true life of all,” as one old hymn puts it, we do indeed and in truth, live on.

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