Resurrection... Real or what?

So here we are.  Jesus has ascended and we are waiting impatiently for the Holy Spirit, the promised Advocate to come.  I know that the church year ends with Christ the King way out in November sometime, but for me it feels like we are coming to an end here in June with the long days of Ordinary Time lying in front of us.  In our reading from The Revelation of John of Patmos we hear the clear message “Surely I am coming soon”   You may remember from last week that scholar and professor Mitzi Minor offered a 1^st C understanding of “coming soon” not as a time frame, but as an assurance that the coming of God’s Kingdom is inevitable – God will not be stopped.  Bishop Barbara Harris was fond of saying “the power behind you is greater than the obstacle in front of you,”  Easter is the message for us that there is indeed an awesome power behind us and it will not be stopped.

We hear a similar message in the Paul and Silas story where the jails of the Empire cannot prevent the spread of the Word of God.  Paul and Silas would definitely have understood Bishop Barbara’s mantra.   Although our John reading does not fall at the end of the Gospel, it is part of Jesus’ Final Discourse, the message he gave to the disciples about his death and resurrection which he describes here as “being one with God”.  As we wrap up yet another Easter season I want to think a bit on just what it is that we mean when we say Resurrection.  What is it that you and I hold dear about that foundation of Christianity.  After all a whole lot of our faith and our hope hangs on that word.

Resurrection was not a new concept that was invented by Jesus or by his followers.  The hope of resurrection had crept into Jewish thought before the time of Jesus, but it bore very little resemblance to the concept of hope in the Resurrection that is woven into Christianity today.  Jewish faith - Jesus’ faith – involved what we call proleptic hope, that is hope that is not a single, unwavering expectation, but rather a complex emotion and one that does not claim a specific path or outcome.  It's a hope for renewal, restoration, or a new beginning.  Proleptic hope acknowledges that hope can be present even in the face of uncertainty and hardship and that it can be a source of resilience and strength. 

If you are not familiar with that term, join the club, it is a new learning for me also.  But it makes sense.  We know that several Jewish sects were active in Jesus’ time and some leaned toward the possibility of life after death.  Jesus talked a lot about how the “Kingdom of God” had drawn near.  But this man was not all about talk he called for actions that would speak louder than words.   He set about in his life to live into the Kingdom of God with love at the center of his being - even in the uncertain world of Roman occupation, poverty, and injustice.  In the end his radical notions about love and charity and service and worthiness got him executed but for his disciples and for us - all of that is bound up in a proleptic hope for resurrection and the inevitable coming of God’s Kingdom.

During the Easter season we open our liturgy with the words, The Lord is Risen..  And the response…  The Lord is risen indeed.  But without empirical proof some would say our proclamation of resurrection is just imagination.  But this morning I believe that I can say with confidence that there is indeed evidence for resurrection.  For one thing there is the fact that all four Gospels not only recount the empty tomb, but they claim that it was women who first arrived at the empty tomb and witnessed to the other disciples.  Now if the disciples had wanted to create a hoax, I’m pretty sure they would have used male witnesses cause you know women couldn’t be trusted.  And then there is the fact that before the resurrection the disciples thought they were waging a military style insurrection – remember Peter took a sword with him to the Garden of Gethsemane.  That notion of military victory went out the window on Calvary, but after encountering the resurrected Jesus on the beach they were able to envision a different kind of victory.  And there is the attempt to scare Jesus’ followers with gore and death  – after the resurrection – that tactic failed miserably.  Instead of creating fear and submission the disciples became imitators and bearers of the Love that Jesus had taught.  There is no doubt in my mind that something created a sea change in those men and women who knew Jesus before his death and that change resulted because they also knew Jesus after – that sea change resulted from knowing a resurrected Christ. 

I remember a story from seminary about a 20^th C German theologian and political activist, Dorothee Sölle, who was asked by a reporter, “Did the resurrection happen?”  Dr Sölle responded “That’s the wrong question.”  “The right question is what difference would it have made?”  Perhaps that is the question we must ask ourselves also.  What difference does the Resurrection make in my life or yours?  Jesus lived in a world defined by competition, kill or be killed, where a few powerful rulers had sway over their very life or death.  The Mystery that is the Resurrection changed that dynamic.  In Jesus we know the possibility of renewal, of hope, of being loved by God.  In Jesus we are all God’s Beloved Children.

In today's world, faith in the possibility of resurrection is often dismissed as mere fantasy or misused as a means to impose beliefs on others.  Today, just like each week, the next part of our service is a recitation of belief.  How often, in churches around the globe, do we confine resurrection to manifesto rather than expand it to a way of life?  How often is our faith a statement of rote belief rather than a mission to love and care for God’s people as Jesus did?

Around the time of the protests to the war in Vietnam, Dorothee Sölle wrote a poem called Credo.  I have some copies if you would like to read the whole thing, but here are a couple of snippets:

“I believe in god
who did not create an immutable world
a thing incapable of change…

… I believe in god
who willed conflict in life
and wanted us to change the status quo
through our work
through our politics…

 …I believe in jesus christ

who rises again and again in our lives
so that we will be free
from prejudice and arrogance
from fear and hate…

…I believe in the spirit
that jesus brought into the world
…I believe it is up to us
what our earth becomes
a vale of tears starvation and tyranny
or a city of god
I believe in a just peace
that can be achieved…
(I believe) in the possibility of a meaningful life
for all people
I believe this world of god’s
has a future
amen

Love one another

 Keshia Thomas was 18 when the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in her home town of Ann Arbor. Michigan.  Hundreds of people gathered to hold a counter protest in opposition to the Klan’s presence in a relatively progressive city.

The atmosphere was tense, but controlled. Police dressed in riot gear and armed with tear gas protected a small group of Klansmen in white robes and conical hoods. Thomas was with a group of anti-KKK demonstrators on the other side of a specially-erected fence.

Then a shout, "There's a Klansman in the crowd."

They turned around to see a white, middle-aged man wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt and Nazi tatoos on his arms. He tried to walk away from them, but the protesters, including Thomas, followed.  His clothes and tattoos represented exactly what they had come to resist.

There were shouts of "Kill the Nazi" and the man began to run - but he was knocked to the ground. A group surrounded him, kicking him and hitting him with the wooden sticks.  Mob mentality had taken over. Thomas, in that moment in time, knew that someone had to step out of the pack and say, 'This isn't right.'"  So the black, female teenager, threw herself on top of a man she did not know and shielded him from the blows.

 (excerpt from a BBC report - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24653643)

This is one of those Sundays when all four of our readings are interwoven to support one of the fundamental teachings of Jesus…  “love one another as I have loved you”

1.    There’s the story of Peter’s confrontation with the “believers” in Jerusalem, where he shares God’s declaration on inclusiveness… “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

2.    And the Psalm acknowledging that the sun and the moon, the monsters of the deep , the cattle and the birds, and even the kings and princes, men and women, young and old – all are to stand and praise God with one voice

3.    that wonderful reading from Revelation where we are reminded of the totality of God’s presence, the futility of our efforts at control or to perpetuate our own small worlds in the face of God’s New Creation,

4.    and finally this reading from John, offering his teaching to the disciples and to us - on what it means to grasp the expansiveness and the inclusiveness of God’s love as shown thru Jesus’ life.

It is a high bar to which Jesus’ life and ministry of love calls us.   These are rich lessons that beg to be preached.  They are fundamental to our theology, the core of our faith.  And if we are honest with ourselves they speak of one of the most elusive qualities of being a Christian – they call us to widen our understanding of who is loved by God and who God desires that we love.  The story I recounted of the 18 year old black activist woman laying her body across a man is a tangible living out of the instruction to love one another. 

I’ll admit that doubts creep into my mind about whether or not he would have done the same for her.  Stretching one’s thinking to embrace - with love - those with whom we vehemently disagree or those who we find to be despicable is just as hard for me as it is for anyone else.  My prayer at the end of the mass for God to intervene and to bless those who we struggle to love is a real life, personal prayer.  The psalmist writes: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”

From the day we slip into this world – perhaps from the day we are conceived – we compare ourselves to others.  Am I as handsome as he is?  Is my skin as blemish free as hers?  How can I outmaneuver him so that I will get that high paying job?  He/she is not as smart/pretty/ upright/motivated, loved/hated as I am because he/she is a man/woman, black/white, native/immigrant, straight/gay, trans/cis, legal/illegal, educated/or not.  You pick the appropriate X versus Y category.  I don’t care who you are or how liberal or enlightened we think ourselves to be - every time you or I walk into a room, we size ourselves up against everyone else – physically, emotionally, financially, intellectually.  We are self-centric organisms.  Anyone or anything that does not fit into our own personal scheme of things becomes the “other”, the “stranger”.   

And there lies the difficulty, because when we see all that is around us from the paradigm of “me me me” then it is really very difficult for us to understand ourselves to be made in God’s image.  Instead we see God through our own image and that makes it really really difficult to understand the magnitude of the love that God feels for you or for me.  If I cannot see the face of God in those who are different from me, then I have narrowed my vision of who God is.  I can only know God partially –  i.e. that part that is like me.  I’m gonna say that again…  If I cannot see the face of God in those who are different from me, then I have narrowed my vision of who God is.  I can only know God partially –  i.e. that part that is like me.  I do not know the part of God that is reflected in the homeless man, the immigrant, the teenage mother, the addict, the perfectly dressed Harvard graduate in the corner office, the trans person, the teen with pink hair and tattoos, or the woman who seems to have everything going for her, perhaps even the other people in this room.   Refusing to let go of preconceptions and misconceptions of stranger makes it very easy to let anger and hatred be our first response to difference.

In the first century the believers in Jerusalem questioned whether or not the Gentiles were deserving of God’s love and grace.  Peter answered that question for 1^st C Palestinian Jews.  Today there are so many people who are being singled out for verbal and physical abuse, caught up in wholesale bombing and starvation, maligned and attacked with threats to freedom and prosperity  – honestly threats to their very existence.   Seeing the suffering taking place tears at our faith and shakes us out of those places where God’s image can be narrowed and limited by our fear of the stranger.

 T

his “new” commandment that Jesus gives us today is not about what we believe to be true or what our image of God might be.  This commandment is about how we live with one another and how our love is reflective of God’s love for us.  It’s not about Christian belief it is about Christian praxis.   And the newness is that the source of the love is Jesus Christ.  When we open ourselves up to the deeply penetrating love of Christ and let it take hold of all that we do and say, then we can begin to appreciate how God’s love takes all of our differences and makes them holy and good.  Breathe in the difference.  Revel in the power of God’s hand at work through each of us.  We can’t stop it no matter how much we dig in our heals and want God to love us better than those strange people next door.     It just doesn’t work that way.  Thanks be to God.  Amen

Run in circles - scream and shout

 

The written text is below.  Here is a link to the preached version.  The occasion was The Fifth Sunday in Lent 2025 and the text was Is 43:16-21 and John 12:1-8.

The words that are spoken are mine Lord - May the words that are heard be Thine.  Amen

In 1933 in his inaugural address, Franklin D Roosevelt told the people of the world, that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  He was really speaking to the millions of Americans who were drowning in the quagmire called the Great Depression, but history has held on to those words that were then and are now profoundly prophetic.  I bring this up because I feel that we are faced today with a lot of fears – both actual and perceived.  The language used by our leaders and others is inflammatory and intended to disrupt relatively peaceful communities.  So I think it’s important to look at what fear does to us as people of God and hopefully what we can do to mitigate its effect on us.  I truly believe that the opposite of faith is fear.  So how do we remain faithful to our God of mercy, kindness, and love in this time of uncertainty?

Fear is at times paralyzing.  At other times it creates emotional chaos that drives us to erratic and unhelpful decisions and actions.  Fear can be used as a tool to immobilize effective responses to harmful situations or speech.  Fear divides an otherwise harmonious group into irreconcilable layers of difference by engendering envy, unhealthy competition, and the willingness to throw an otherwise friend under the bus in order to save oneself.  In the end fear can destroy the fabric of community. 

For sure there is nothing new under the sun and these kinds of tactics designed to create fear do from time to time become part of a community’s story.  The images of God restoring the people of Israel and establishing a new world order brought hope into a seemingly hopeless world asking them to forget the ways of the past and instead look forward into the future with hope for God’s mercy.  That fear felt by the oppressed Israelites is, I believe, that same fear that so many around us are experiencing today.  Prophetic language speaks across generations and so this poetry of Isaiah has a lot to say to us today.

Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.

I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Today I believe it is fear that is creating the chaos, confusion and tribalization that we see in our world today.  History is cyclical and we are in a time when the cycle of bellicose hate speech is sending good people into panic mode.  When that happens, we lose the ability to think rationally or to plan and execute a counter message of love.  Instead of rational arguments or productive action we just run in circles and scream and shout.  Fear and uncertainty make us run in circles – we lose clarity in opposing hate, greed, and cruelty.   Without hope and knowledge of or faith in God and the possibility for reconciliation that God offers, the fear can overwhelm us and we find ourselves at the bottom of a very deep well.

Isaiah 43, - we heard just a snippet of it this morning, is prophetic salvation poetry in it’s finest form.  It is a text about who God is and what God has done (and will do) -  God our creator, deliverer, and forgiver.  When hope was hard to come by, it was the prophetic voice of 2^nd Isaiah that awakened a sense of order, purpose, and will that was born in the fires of faithfulness.  God’s work cannot be understood apart from God’s relationship with the people.  In the rich tradition of the prophets the people of God and in fact the faithful today who hold these promises sacred are reminded that God is merciful and that we are precious beloved children of God.

God triumphs over all that causes fear and chaos in our lives, and over all that threatens our existence, be it water, war, or wilderness or the greed of humankind. God will not abandon us.  God is present now just as God was present in Babylon.  Isaiah proclaims that the Lord makes a new way.

In our Gospel this morning Jesus has returned to Bethany and the home of his friends.  There was chaos and danger everywhere.  But for the moment the friends just wanted to enjoy a meal together.  Lazarus was there and Martha Mary was there too and most likely some of the other disciples and maybe even some local guests.  Of course, the room was packed, it was - after all - a party.

Mary, perhaps remembering how she had sat at Jesus’ feet once before, comes to him with an expensive bottle of oil and anoints his feet and then wipes off the excess with her hair.  It is an act of generosity and devotion grown out of love and her awareness that Jesus was about to walk into a situation that would cost him his life.  Of all those watching it was Judas who objected vehemently to the extravagance of the costly perfume.  While Mary’s faith remained strong in the face of fear, Judas’s faith was already compromised and he speaks out of greed and anger .

But I wonder how many of the disciples, when Judas jumped up and objected to a woman attending to Jesus with such extravagance…  I wonder how many of them had a little heartbeat skip and leaned - forward ready to get into the fray and jerk the jar out of Mary’s hand and throw her out of the room?  I suspect, - human beings being who we are - that at least some of them were enticed into a bullying gang mentality.  Are we any different?  Do we speak up when our leaders use hate, anger, and greed to create fear and hopelessness, or do we silently give thanks that it is not us who stand accused? 

Isaiah tells us that God is creating a new thing and our job is to be open to that new way.  We are to be steady, trusting, walking in love and mercy.  Jesus offers the consolation that evil is real, but we do not have to succumb to that evil.  Rather we have the opportunity now to hold onto what is good in our world.  To love and to serve God’s creation extravagantly.  To walk through the chaos around us with love and forgiveness for ourselves and for each other, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, …pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  (Phil 3:14)

Perhaps the over-arching take-home for us today is that God both calls us to holding onto a vision of a generous, ordered world and at the same time blesses us with divine faith to help us get there.  We stand on the verge of Holy Week.  The flowers are ordered, the bulletins are prepared, the choir is already practicing for Easter.  The promise of Easter morning is just a touch away and the Peace of God that passes all understanding beckons from the other side of the grave.   Amen                                                                                                               

Crossing the Jordan and the Prodigal Son ?????

 Year C Lent 4 2025

This is one of those Sundays when the lectionary seems to me to have a plan.  While the connection between our first lesson about the Israelite’s entry into Canaan and the reunion of a wayward child with his father might not be apparent at first look I think it may gain some clarity with a look at the surrounding texts in both Joshua and in Luke.

In the first 4.5 chapters of Joshua we hear the story of the wilderness wanderers making their way to the promised land of milk and honey.  Moses has died before the crossing of the Jordan and he had laid hands on Joshua making him the new leader of God’s people.  When they arrived at the Jordan River Joshua instructs the bearers to carry the Ark of the Covenant into the river and the leaders of the twelve tribes to follow.  Each of the tribes is to select a round stone from the river and carry it to the other side where they placed the stones in a circle.  That place was called Gilgal and it is there that three of the wilderness traditions are broken. 

First all of the men who were born after leaving Egypt were circumcised.  The practice of circumcision had not happened in the wilderness and so the first act of obedience to God was to mark the tribes with this sign of the covenant.  When this is done Joshua declares that the disgrace of captivity is ended. 

The second mark is the celebration of the Passover.  Passover had first been celebrated on the night of the Exodus itself, with blood on the doorposts and the lintel of their houses, as a sign of their faith and their identity.  Passover had not been celebrated in the Wilderness and so this Passover would forever become a time to teach the children about the what, why and where of the first Passover. 

And the third change in the lives of the Israelites was the move to dependance on the produce of the land for their food.  They are no longer dependent on the daily provision of manna.  With that change the manna ceases.  In the next verses the conquest of the land begins with the attack on Jericho. 

The Gospel for the day is the parable of the Prodigal Son, (who in my mind never truly repents but that is a story for another day – perhaps this week’s Bible study…) It has always seemed to me that we fail in our study to pay attention to the actions and feelings of the elder jealous brother, who was bent out of shape because the father had killed a fatted calf to welcome the prodigal brother home.   Of course the father threw a big banquet over his son whom he thought to be dead but who was now alive. But every other day he kept the elder son alive with plenty of food.  Parents who have children living close and others who live far away to this sort of thing all the time.  When Barbra comes to visit I always roast, barbq and bake her favorite recipes – not so much for the children who come to eat supper once a week.  That is more likely to be red beans and rice.  For right or wrong both are ways of showing love for all our children.  Jesus tells this story in response to the Pharisees and scribes criticizing him for associating with people who were outsiders, people not good enough for them.  They want to question his authority.  But what he is telling us is not a claim to authority…  rather Jesus wants us to know without a doubt that God is a god of compassion who welcomes all with joy and celebration

 Sunday after Sunday God invites us sinners to this Table for Eucharistic sustenance.  Others choose to come once or twice a year, (we call them C&Es).  But God receives us all with open arms, not counting - just welcoming.   And for all of us the joy, the love, the forgiveness, the affirmation at the table is so real that we can taste it.  Perhaps the link between these two lessons today is to remind us that our daily supply of food is not to be taken for granted and minimalized as if receiving it meant nothing and even when we have lost our way God welcomes us with the best cut of meat and loads of desserts.

These two stories are really about how human brokenness separates us from God’s love and God’s forgiveness.  We all participate to a greater or lesser degree in all forms of human brokenness.  There is no offense, no crime, no act of violence that does not have its seeds in our own hearts… as and if we choose power and wealth over humility, generosity and repentance.  What does God ask of the Israelites, but faithfulness to the Covenant.  What does the prodigal’s father ask of the sons, but the willingness to put down the jealousy and selfishness and to be reunited to the family.  What does God ask of us?  I think Micah is hard to beat – to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

Perhaps that is where we are on this fourth Sunday of Lent.   Perhaps it is time for us to turn from our fasts and our penance and allow God to welcome us sinners.  The Lord said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt."   Come join the party, Jesus says. What do you care if others come late, or have checkered pasts — you’re already here with me, and these are your brothers and sisters, so welcome them home! Don’t miss out on an opportunity to rejoice!

The hardest thing Jesus asks of us to show compassion just as God shows compassion.  Not only to be forgiven ourselves, but to forgive others.  This is central to Jesus’ message because we are heirs of God, children of God, created in God’s image.  As long as we belong to this world we act as outsiders, but if we belong to God who loves us unconditionally …then we can also love unconditionally with the radical love of enemy as well as friend  of sinner as well as righteous or white as black, gay as straight, Muslim as Christian

This past week as we considered the parable of fig tree in our mid week Bible study we asked ourselves “who in my life is fertilizer for my faith?  Who or what might be preventing me from blossoming?”  Perhaps a takeaway for us this week and fodder for Bible study is to ask ourselves… What Gilgal have I missed as I hurried past in search of power, money, or comfort”  What gift from God have I forgotten to acknowledge or to tell my children about?  Who is the elder brother in my life that I forgot to invite to the party?  Who would I rather not invite? Who do I wish to exclude?  Reconciliation and repentance here is communal, not individualistic.  God’s love is communal and there for all who choose life. 

Let us pray:

Loving Creator,  I feel the pace quicken, the time draw near.   I am filled with joy as I move toward Easter and to be more fully reconciled with you. 
 Teach me to follow the example of Joshua and the people of God in faithfulness and of the father in love, generosity and forgiveness.  Help me to live each day as Jesus did - turning hatred to love and conflict to peace.  I await the new promised life with eagerness, faith, and a deep gratitude.  Amen

Comments on the Innaugration Sermon by Rt Rev Marianne Budde Delivered Jan 21 at the National Cathedral

It has been a tumultuous week.  We began the week with Annual Meeting, which was a relatively calm meeting as Episcopal Church meetings go.  Then on Monday there was a big thing in Washington DC, a cease fire declaration in Gaza, and on Tuesday an epic snowstorm that brought quiet to the busy highways of the Gulf Coast.  What we might have missed as we frolicked in the snow was a sermon preached by The Right Rev’d Marianne Budde, Bishop of Washington DC and current occupant of the see of our National Cathedral.  In classic prophetic form and the Inauguration Prayer Service, she preached truth to power without regard to her own personal safety.  If you did not hear it here is the link.  It is well worth you time.

With pastoral sensitivity and grounded in Gospel truth, she called for unity in our country that is formed by extending dignity to all, being honest with each other, and walking with humility.  In closing she asked the president for mercy in dealing with those who are scared that they might not be safe in our country now.    

Some will think she was too direct in her sermon and that she should not have addressed the president’s actions in such a public way.  But the prophetic voice in our faith tradition always seeks the openness of public gatherings to call out sin.  This week our lessons begin with Ezra reading the law of Moses in the town square in a way that the “people understood the meaning”.  Paul calls for unity among the Corinthians telling them that they are part of the Body of Christ and all essential to God’s Reign.  And Jesus declares in the synagogue he is sent by God to bring good news to the poor and to let the oppressed go free and all eyes were fixed on him.

Bishop Budde, is the author of How We Learn to be Brave, Decisive Moments in Life and Faith.  She writes: "our relationship with God cannot be based on correct belief, but rather it is based on our willingness to trust and to step out in faith" even when it might not be the convenient place to be.  Epiphany begins with Light.  The light of the star leading the Magi to the Manger.  And Epiphany begins in the waters of Baptism washing us, naming us, marking us.  We come to the waters of baptism as individuals, independent and relatively self-contained, but we come out of that water changed. We are no longer solitary.  We can no longer truly be known without reference to that community into which we have been incorporated- sealed and marked as a beloved and necessary part of the Body of Christ.  After baptism we are more than just ourselves, we are by definition beings in relationship with each other and with God.  Where the spirit of God once moved over the face of the deep and brought life to the world, the Spirit of God remains the source of all life, the breath of the church, moving among us and within us.

Image attribution: Jesus Mural of Faith, Hope, Love, and Peace, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56412 [retrieved January 22, 2025]. Original source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/36847973@N00/3342340183 - CC BY 2.0

The World feels like it is falling apart....

The Second Coming   By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

 Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Lest we fool ourselves into thinking that we are living in an unprecedented time of chaos and confusion about what the future holds, WB Yeats speaks to us of the unravelling of society that was World War 1.  It is a dark poem that holds little hope for the redemption of mankind.  Instead of the second coming of Christ as savior Yeats sees a mythical beast - of our own making - draping the world in shadow.  The fact that our world has been subject to tyranny, hate, oppression and greed on more than one occasion lends little consolation today for those who live in fear.  It will be no surprise that when such chaos reigns the human spirit searches for some hope, some promise of a better outcome. 

The Gospel of Mark is scholars believe the first of the surviving Gospels to be written.  In Mark we hear the struggle of the early church that was confronted with daily turmoil from the occupation of Rome and a world was coming apart at the seams.  Mark tells us that Jesus had tried to teach his followers not to depend on the structures of the world in which they lived, but rather to trust in the abiding presence of God in their lives and the promise that God would not abandon them to the chaos.  Today the disciples ask Jesus for the signs that might give them a heads up so that they might have time to take cover or perhaps prepare for what is to come.

Apocalyptic literature, like these passages about “end times”, comes from a worldview that believes that everything happening on earth represents and correlates with a larger, heavenly struggle between good and evil.   It reads into earthly events a kind of cosmic significance and anticipates future events on earth in light of the coming battle between the forces of good and evil.   And because this literature tends to be highly symbolic, it’s ripe for reading all kinds of sometimes unhealthy things into it – like predictions about the end of the world!     But this chapter in Mark – and other passages,  – were not written to ferret out signs of the end.   Rather to offer comfort to believers struggling to make sense of their world and their lives.   Mark’s people were literally caught up in “wars and rumors of war” and probably found comfort in the belief that Jesus had already anticipated this and was offering words of encouragement to them through this Gospel.

When it comes to our own day and age, that kind of encouragement is still valuable, for though our wars may be different, we are still harassed at times by a fear that the world is falling apart.  If you don’t believe it just turn on the TV.  To twenty-first century believers, just as to first century disciples, Jesus says the same “do not fear.”

This Sunday is the last of our year in the Gospel of Mark.  So it is a perfect time to give some thought to what we have encountered this year and what the take-aways for us might be.   Mark left us breathless as we jumped from encounter to encounter, but over and over we hear Mark telling us that even in the midst of despair Jesus is present and that the world is moving toward a new era of healing, liberation, and love.  God is at work turning the world upside down, serving all, restoring health, freeing captives, doing justice. Our job is to keep watch, to stay alert for God’s coming, take heart — and come!   Be a part of the movement!

While Yeats offers a bleak vision of the future of humankind, one which presents morality as a kind of collective dream that is now turning into a nightmare, Mark is inviting us to move our eyes away from the Beast slouching toward Bethlehem and to remember Jesus’ promise that God will be with us even in the muck that is our world, even when all of our technology fails to reveal God’s presence.   Jesus contends that God is on the move, even and especially where all hope seems lost. For sure the movement is elusive at times…  hard to identify in the midst of exploding bombs, hunger, and hurting neighbors.   But it is my experience that God’s love is often revealed in deeply hidden and unexpected ways, surprising, shocking even, and yet reassuring.  

This Gospel of Mark from beginning to end is about real people, real problems, real relationships, real responsibilities, real decisions.  The first story Mark tells is how Jesus goes out into the wilderness to be baptized by John – a reorienting of his life around the work that God is asking him to do.  By verse 14 in that first chapter Mark tells us that Jesus returns to Galilee with a message for all that God has come near and they are all welcomed at God’s Table.  What follows in Mark is healing, teaching, gathering, feeding – all in the midst of a society where such blessings were rare.  One of the great things about Mark is that he makes no bones about Jesus’ disdain for the oppressive rulers around him and for the injustice that he sees.  Now right before Mark’s Passion Gospel begins Jesus reassures us that the despair we feel when our world comes caving in is not all that there is.  Good things are coming, thanks be to God. And precisely because of this, all of us are called to be watchful and alert, cultivating a mindful attentiveness so that we will recognize and be in awe of God in our world.  Mark reminds us over and over to notice the signs of hope and wonder all around us every day.  Jesus does not make empty promises.  Jesus sets out a way to live that does not focus on either the crumbling of the stones of the temple or on the unrelenting approach of the “rough beast slouching” into our lives.  Jesus offers life….

For sure things may seem like they are falling apart and it’s really hard to find that nugget of hope.  But the message of this short Gospel is that the center will hold because God is at the center and that in this wobbly future there is much faithful work for us to do.  Amen

Reflection on my travels from 2003

 A few years back I spent some time in Israel traveling back and forth into the West Bank.  I want to share with you a reflection that I wrote then.  Given the wars raging around the world and the hostility among those who could be friends we have not made much progress this millenium.   I asked again and again as we went from one devastated town to the next, "Lord, where are you?  How can these atrocities be happening?  Don't you care?  This is what I wrote in my journal.

 “Last Sunday we woke up early and boarded our bus at 7:30.  We had planned to attend the 10 AM Eucharist at St. Andrew's in Ramallah, but we had not been allowed to pass through the checkpoint and so we had continued on our journey the long way, crossing through the occupied territory on roads made for Israelis and internationals only and then heading north on the eastern border with Jordan to make our way to Nazareth.  That is how we ended up, unexpectedly, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee near where Jesus had prepared breakfast for his disciples after the Resurrection.  We had some extra time on our hands and we were hungering for a Eucharistic celebration that the soldiers had denied us earlier in the day.

The beauty and the peaceful quiet of the place contrasted sharply with the grotesque, harshness of the checkpoint.  As I was standing in the shallow water letting the waves wash around my ankles Bishop Tom came up and began to tell me about the topography of the place.  There is a valley running between two mountains through which the wind is funneled onto the lake.  That wind is the cause of the sudden and violent storms that are typical of the Sea.  Tom reminded us of the story in the gospels of Jesus who had wanted to get away for a while and so he asked the disciples to put to sea and to go to the other side of the lake.  But on the way a great storm arose and these fishermen who were thoroughly familiar with the dangers of storms at sea and who should have been able to handle the boat - panicked and ran to Jesus for help.    In response Jesus calmed the wind and the waves and then asked the tense disciples, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" 

In Israel today there is a lot of fear.  The fear manifests itself in suicide bombers and snipers - in bulldozers and tanks, rocket firing helicopters and a system of oppression that is intent on the eradication of the Palestinian people from the Holy Land.  The fear is manifested in a gigantic wall.  You see there is this gaping hole that weaves in and out of the landscape there that takes the form of a gigantic wall of concrete, razor wire, and guard towers.  Cities have become isolated from each other and the barren earth has been violated by with bulldozers and cranes. The Israeli government calls it a security fence.  It is an Apartheid Wall.  It is designed to protect Israel from terror, but in fact only serves to isolate and alienate people who are trying desperately to live their life with some sense of normalcy in a place that is far from normal.  Surely, there are kind, generous, faithful people on both sides of the Wall, but there are also those who are consumed by fear and hatred and their will seems to be dominant. 

Dear Lord help us to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them.....