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Lectionary Texts for July 2, the fourth Sunday after Pentecost

These texts seem to explore the paradoxical relationships between pairs of opposites that have been significant in my life lately--life and death, joy and grief, certainty and doubt, abundance and want, ephemeral and eternal. We seem to desire to organize the world into these opposing pairs out of necessity. It is our way of understanding, of making sense. However, these passages address the nature of God (present to us on earth as Jesus Christ) to transcend these definitions, to blow our carefully crafted boundaries out of the water. In some sense, we mature into this attribute of God as we outgrow the need for such black and white clarity. I've been exploring a book lately called Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst and there are several passages that come to mind in reading these texts. First, related to maturing into a more complex understanding of the world:

As healthy adults we can integrate the many dimensions of our human experience, forsaking the simplifications of callow youth. Tolerating ambivalence. Looking at life from more than one perspective. Discovering that the opposite of a very important truth may be another very important truth. And being able to transform separate fragments into wholeness by learning to see the unifying themes.

Also, some of Viorst's words on friendship come to mind with David's exultation of Jonathan:

Greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.

Viorst writes in her chapter on friends:

To take the view that friendship is a diluted version of love, 'much as pink is regarded as a dilution of red,' is surely to do it a serious disservice. Comparing the intimacy of friends and lovers, analyst James McMahon observes that friendships 'differ from one's main relationship in that they generally do not involve the revelation of one's character and most basic needs in an often primitive and regressed way,' meaning by this, I believe, that we can indulge ourselves, with a lover, in significant lapses of manners, control and dignity. ... But in spite of what we reveal and expose within a love relationship, McMahon points out what all of us very well know: That no two people can hope to gratify all of each other's needs. That 'no man or woman can be all things to another.' Thus, even if lover-love is red and friendship is merely pink, pink saves us from a life of monotone. Our friendships can help to provide--in sometimes crucial and central ways--what lover-love lacks.

Which gets at some of what David was alluding to in the difference between the relationship of friend and the relationship of lover. Might be a provocative topic for a sermon... And more from Viorst on friendship, just because I think it rings true, particularly in the context of David's lament:

Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there. Friends furthermore take care--they come if we call them at two in the morning; they lend us their car, their bed, their money, their ear; and although no contracts are written, it is clear that intimate friendships involve important rights and obligations. Indeed, we will frequently turn--for reassurance, for comfort, for come-and-save-me help--not to our blood relations but to friends...

I think there are strong themes of grieving in these texts, as well--of "necessary losses", if you will--and the power of God's love to be present in and overcome grief.

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy." (Matthew 5:7)

In the 1983 film Tender Mercies, there are two main female characters who live vastly different lives. Dixie is a successful country music star who performs in glittering outfits to crowded rooms full of adoring fans. Rosa Lee, on the other hand, lives a modest life as the proprietor of a gas station and motel in the middle of the Texas prairie. Tying these two women together is Mac Sledge, a former country singer battling his addiction to alcohol.

Dixie was deeply hurt by her early marriage to Mac. He was an angry drunk who beat her in front of their only daughter. Unable to forgive Mac or herself, she ends the film confined to her luxurious bed with sorrow, when their daughter marries an alcoholic and then dies for her choice in a car accident. However, Rosa Lee encounters Mac later in his life when he's at his lowest point. As he climbs toward sobriety, and even baptism, the two grow closer, marry and heal as Mac begins writing songs again and becomes a father to Rosa Lee's boy, Sonny.

As the title indicates, Tender Mercies has much to do with the nature and practice of mercy, and the story is useful for exploring tonight's beatitude: "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy."

Let's start with what mercy is not. In the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, a master begins calling in debts from his slaves. When one slave who owes a large sum is unable to pay, the master determines that the slave and his family and his possessions should be sold into in order to recover the debt. However, the debtor begs the master to be patient, and the master not only consents, but forgives the debt entirely. Immensely relieved, the slave leaves the master's presence only to encounter another slave who owes him a small sum, and he chokes and threatens his debtor. The other slave begs for his lender's patience, but the first slave, rather than show the mercy he's been shown, has the debtor thrown into prison until he can pay. Hearing of this, the master sends the forgiven slave to be torture until he too can pay off his debt.

This story reveals that mercy is not the same as fair judgment. The master would have been well within his rights to sell the slave with his family and possessions; even agreeing to be patient while the slave paid off the debt would have represented a compassionate response. Likewise, the slave was within his rights to send his debtor to prison; he had no legal obligation to be patient. However, mercy is not legal "fairness." It is not even a simple kind of forgiveness that calls it even and lets it go. Rather, mercy is extravagant compassion that overflows out of the recognition that we ourselves have received mercy. And when the mercy stops with us, we condemn ourselves to the torture of isolation and greed.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant also reveals that receiving mercy is not relative to what we do or don't do. The slave doesn't receive his master's mercy for being an exceptionally hard worker, just as Jesus doesn't heal the lepers because of their generosity, or cause the blind man to see because he observes the law of Moses to the letter. Mercy is also forgiveness in the sense that it forsakes blame. In recent months, Rick and Kay Warren of Saddleback Church in California, have begun emphasizing not just the renewal of the Church in the U.S. through their "purpose-driven" series, but also through the Church's obligation to address the AIDS crisis in Africa. At a recent conference at their church, Kay observed, "Jesus never asked anyone how he or she got sick—only the Pharisees did...If your compassion level goes up when you know it wasn't someone's fault, then there is something wrong." She speaks to the fact that we all know AIDS is often transmitted through consensual sexual activity. While our instinct may be to blame those who become sick as a result of careless sex, a merciful response forgets to place blame while remembering to show boundless compassion in meeting a person's deepest immediate needs. Again, mercy defies our demands for fair judgment and emerges regardless of a person's responsibility for his or her situation.

Mercy is not fair judgment and neither is it sacrifice. Twice in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus reminds his hearers of Hosea 6:6: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." Where sacrifice motivates us out of a quantifiable obligation, mercy emerges from a love that burns like an eternal flame in the core of our beings and motivates us to conduct that warmth to others. With an attitude of sacrifice, we give to others only to see the hole left in our lives by the sacrifice of time or money or possessions. With an attitude of mercy, we give to others out of an infinitely replenishable love that empowers us to give more and more mercy.

But where does this mercy, come from? I think that perhaps that question is a little like the one most of us have heard or asked: Where do babies come from? Before you think this is going to turn into a sex education session, bear with me. Neil Douglas-Klotz, in his book Prayers of the Cosmos, explains that

the key [Aramaic] words lamrahmane and rahme both come from a root later translated as "mercy" from the Greek. The ancient root meant "womb" or an inner motion extending from the center or depths of the body and radiating heat and ardor…. The association of the womb and compassion leads to the image of "birthing mercy."

The relationship of the word "mercy" with the image of a womb ties in nicely with the image we have of the Church as the Bride of Christ. Mercy originates with God, revealed in Jesus Christ. Christ, in a sense, "impregnates" the Church with the experience of mercy and the charge to make that experience fruitful. In this sense, mercy is an act of creation that begets mercy.

Just as there is an element of mystery to the process of conception and birth, there is also an element of mystery to the creation of mercy. Simplistically interpreted, our beatitude for this evening could lead us to believe that works of mercy occur in a one-to-one ratio. If I show you mercy, then you will show me mercy some day. If I show enough mercy to others, I will become worthy of God's mercy. But however much we desire a mathematically accurate path to salvation, the balance of mercy is infinitely more complex than this. Just as we create children who eventually become independent of us, works of mercy create a culture of blessing that has effects beyond what we can control or see. When we are merciful, we change the world and create life against the forces that exist even within our very own hearts that seek to create death. And it is in the merciful transformation of the culture around us, motivated by our experience of God's perfect mercy, that mercy comes to be received by us, less like an even trade, but more like the air we breathe.

In closing, let's return to Tender Mercies. At the beginning of this meditation, I set up a contrast between Dixie, a successful woman who was unable to create a culture of mercy around her, and Rosa Lee, a humble woman who birthed mercy to the extent that it changed her world and the world of those around her. Where Dixie is left asking, "Why has God done this to me?", Rosa Lee is left thanking God for all of the tender mercies that she has received, in spite of the pain of losing her husband at the age of 18. Though their life situations are vastly different, Rosa Lee embodies an ability to desire mercy, not sacrifice. When Mac Sledge lands in her hotel, hung over and penniless, she lets him work off his bill and stay on to grow into a good husband, good father and good mentor. Mac, in turn, learns how to show mercy through his relationship with a young, struggling band. Motivated by the mercy she has received, Rosa Lee changes the world and sets into motion a movement of mercy that goes rippling right over the edges of the film.

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy" is not a tit-for-tat prescription for good spiritual health, but a description of God's Kingdom coming into being here and now. Rather than creating a reward system whereby one earns mercy from God and others by being merciful, this beatitude refers to the creation of a culture of mercy, in which the giving and the receiving of mercy are as ubiquitous as air and as natural as breathing. God—Ultimate Reality—is merciful and we welcome that reality when we embody it as a nurturing mother produces new life. In doing so, mercy becomes and lives to transform people and communities. When we are "fruitful and multiply" mercy, the reality in the Kingdom is that we will experience it ourselves, for "blessed are those who, from their inner wombs, birth mercy; they shall feel its warm arms embrace them."

Our Lenten series at St. John's is focusing on the Beatitudes, with a different speaker and topic each Wednesday evening. I'll be speaking on March 22 on, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy," which appealed to me because of my fascination with Dorothy Day, who often talked about "acts of mercy." The following are some of my notes for getting my bearings.

• Neil Douglas-Klotz writes in Prayers of the Cosmos that there is a connection in Aramaic between the word translated as "mercy" and the word for "womb". This leads me to think about how mercy is a creative act, requiring relationship, as well as (usually) pain and sacrifice that are well worth it for the effects they produce beyond ourselves.


• We can learn about mercy by contrasting it with judgment. A quote from a recent issue of Sojourners comes to mind:
  

  
  Jesus never asked anyone how he or she got sick--only the Pharisees did...If your compassion level goes up when you know it wasn't someone's fault, then there is something wrong. [from Kay Warren in the context of her work with her husband Rick to address the AIDS crisis in Africa]
  

  
  ...which also makes me think of Portia's speech in The Merchant of Venice.


• It seems as though, while "acts" of mercy and "disposition" of mercy can be distinguished from one another, they inform and reinforce one another. This brings to mind C.S. Lewis' idea that if we don't love someone, acting as though we do will lead to the emotion of love. If we don't feel merciful toward others, will acting merciful lead to the disposition of mercy?


• What does it mean to "receive mercy"? I think that rather than creating a "reward system" whereby one earns mercy from God and others by being merciful, this refers to the cultivation of an economy of mercy. Our actions and attitudes live and have the power to change people and communities. God--Ultimate Reality--is merciful and we welcome that reality when we embody it. This is another way of talking about cultivating the Kingdom. From Thomas G. Long's commentary on Matthew:
  

  
  The Beatitudes proclaim what is, in the light of the kingdom of heaven, unassailably true. They describe the purpose of every holy law, the foundation of every custom, the aim of every practice of this new society, this colony of the kingdom, the church called and instructed by Jesus.
  

  
  This comes back again to the notion of mercy as a creative act. When we cultivate mercy, it becomes, it lives. So when we are "fruitful and multiply" mercy, the reality (not the reason) in the Kingdom is that we will experience it ourselves.

That's all for now...

Lectionary Texts for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

In a recent discussion with a friend of mine who's very familiar with the lectionary, he explained that one of the things he doesn't like about the lectionary is its tendency to undermine the mystery and meaning of stories in the Hebrew scriptures by making New Testament connections that lead to overly simplistic interpretations of the older texts. I think there is certainly value in making these connections toward understanding the arc of the bilibcal narrative, but he's right in that we don't often live fully into earlier texts because there's a subtle impression that the gospels trump the Hebrew scriptures. Something worth considering, even as I proceed to display my own inability to let this Sunday's Numbers text "stand on its own."

I was immediately fascinated by the Numbers text and so I'd like to look at the story more closely. If Lent is intended to follow Jesus' model of spending forty days in the desert of suffering and self-examination, then a story that comes out of Israel's time in the desert should have something to offer us in this context.

The Israelites have come to view their situation not as a journey toward promise full of the Lord's providence, but a burdensome, compulsory, never-ending journey on which they have no food or water...or, at least, they don't have anything they like to eat. Just when they think it can't get any worse, poisonous snakes invade their camp and start killing them off.

I don't like to think of God as killing people off just as a lesson against self-pity. And in fact I can't reconcile the image of a mysterious, loving, just, wise God with one who says, "Oh, yeah, you think you're in a bad situation now--well, take this!" It seems awfully childish, but it resonates with C.S. Lewis' general contention that we don't in fact know if death is really a bad thing. We objectify death as a bad thing to be feared; however, we also have the interpretation that death is merely a transformation into our final state. Anyway, this is sort of a tangent to say that I don't think this story is about God playing a juvenile trick on the whining Israelites.

in response to the snakes, the Israelites cry out to God for mercy--or more specifically, they ask Moses to talk to God for them (junior high recess, anyone?). Moses concedes and God's response is so complex and perfect. Rather than take the snakes away from them entirely, God enables Moses to construct a means by which people who are bitten can live.

And here is where the text speaks to a larger issue than just that of self-pity. God is teaching us how to suffer--or rather, God seems to be teaching us where to look when we suffer. God doesn't take away all agents of suffering, but mercy lies in the reality that we are saved even in our suffering. And of course the bronze serpent is an image that is recalled later in linear time when God will literally show us the way through suffering to eternal life.

We shouldn't diminish the reality of suffering by saying that the serpent is ultimately alluding to what's really real on the other side of death. That interpretation leads to an escapist idolatry of death. Rather, I think the image of the serpent and its connection to the cross assure us that reality is both our suffering on this side of death and our release from suffering in eternal life. God is present to us in the desert and we discover this presence when we are watchful. What are the symbols that remind us this is true? We do well to be attentive, particularly when we feel as though the suffering has become too much to bear. God may be in the last place we expect to meet Him, as He was in the image of a fiery serpent.

Texts:

• Genesis 2:4-9 (KJV)


• Mark 1:9-15 (NRSV)

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Perhaps you remember singing the nursery rhyme as a child, "Ring Around the Rosy." We held hands and danced in a circle, shouting at the tops of our lungs:

Ring around the rosy,
Pockets full of posey,
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down!

It's a strange childhood game when we consider the rhyme's origins. In the 17th century, England was hit by the Bubonic Plague. "A ring around the rosy" or a red circular rash was the first sign of infection. Believing that the disease was transferred by smell, but also to counteract the literal stench of death, people carried sweet-smelling herbs or "posey" in their pockets. Unfortunately, before the great fire of 1666 killed the rats who were carrying the disease, the plague caused the deaths of 3 out of 5 people, and their bodies literally fell down into ashes. Or rather, if we understand God's creation of humanity out of dust and breath, their bodies returned to ashes.

I begin this morning at the beginning—the beginning of human life and the beginning of Jesus' ministry as a human being—in the hope that we can discover what these stories may have to offer us as people at the beginning of this year's Lenten journey.

The nature of human life commonly understood since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers is that we are composed of two parts: a body and a soul. According to this philosophy, the soul is the higher part of ourselves that we must seek to nurture and gratify, while the desires of the body are to be contained and despised. However, the story of God's creation of Adam provides a very different model from this body/soul dichotomy—one that I believe is closer to what we know about ourselves from our experience as human beings. The equation in Genesis is not body + soul = human; rather, the equation is dust + breath = soul[1]. To know fully who we were created to be, we must reconcile ourselves with both our dust and breath qualities, and we'll explore each of these in turn.

The ritual of Ash Wednesday—placing a cross of ashes on the forehead—reminds us of our dusty origins. The imposition of ashes is accompanied by a sobering reminder: "From dust you were created; to dust you shall return." In this ritual, we remember one of our names, that of finite mammal destined to die. A Byzantine funeral liturgy connects the imagery of ashes and dust with death with the words:

Come, brothers and sisters, let us consider the dust and ashes of which we were formed. What is the reality of our present life and what shall we become tomorrow? In death where is the poor and where the rich? Where is the slave and the master? They are all ashes.[2]

The ritual reminder of Ash Wednesday initiates the season of Lent, forty days in the wilderness of self-examination, stripping away illusions until we rediscover the core of who we are in God. With this process comes the risk of pain and doubt—we have to face the darkest, scariest parts of who we are in order to engage the things that turn our faces away from God.

The discipline of Lent, like Jesus' fast in the wilderness, would crush our spirits if our dust contained no breath. Thankfully, our "breath" heritage is named in another ritual of the Church: baptism. Baptism names our identity as beings who receive the breath of life from God, the first Parent of all humanity. In baptism, we acknowledge our identity as beloved children of God. We claim our spirit-filled nature. And it is this knowing ourselves as beloved children of God that empowers us to examine the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves during Lent or during any period of intense isolation and suffering.

It is appropriate that Mark's account of Jesus' time in the wilderness is preceded by an account of his baptism. What we hear the voice of the Eternal revealing to Jesus here is the same assurance we receive as heirs of the Kingdom: "You are my [child], the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased." It pleased God to claim Christ and it pleases God to claim us. This pronouncement empowers us for what comes next.

Even with that glorious baptism, the Spirit was not finished preparing Jesus for ministry. Imagine Jesus rising out of the waters of the Jordan River, affirmed in his identity as the beloved child of God and soaking wet. Immediately, without warning, the Spirit "[drives] him out into the wilderness"—from the hospitable environment of the dove to the hostile environment of the scorpion, from the life-giving waters to the dry isolation of the desert. It's as if Jesus must learn, now that he's assured of his identity as God's son, how to wrestle with his identity as a human being who is vulnerable to temptation. He must face his own darkness before engaging in the task of calling others to repentance.

As the Spirit was not satisfied to send Jesus straight from baptism into proclaiming the good news, neither should we be satisfied to claim our breath identity without wrestling with our dust. We must follow Jesus into the desert to discover our mortality, our temptations, our drought. Though this process can be uncomfortable and painful, it is necessary, and we enter in the hope that God will "attend to" us there. We tend to experience the most growth during these painful desert moments of our lives because, in fully confronting our weakness, we are most open to change.

While such self-examination should be, and often is, a part of daily life, Lent allows time for a special focus on this task and we model Jesus' fast in the desert in various ways. The answer to the question of what is usurping our primary identity is different for all of us. For my husband and I, the answer this year is work. We have committed not to work after 7 at night during the forty days of Lent, because we needed space to remember and embody the fact that good work goes on in the world without us. We need to re-discover our identity as Sabbath people. I've talked with others who are engaging in such disciplines as refraining from cynicism or creating a funeral plan. One friend is even giving up Lent for Lent, which reflects a realization of her limitations during a period of both busyness and sorrow in her life.

This year, I'm coming to understand the ways in which Lent is actually permission-granting, rather than permission-restricting. Lent frees us to look at ourselves with clarity and begin to understand the secondary identities that have eclipsed our knowledge of ourselves as breath and dust. Hence, my decision to not work after 7pm takes on the character of something I have the freedom and privilege to do, rather than something I must do out of obligation. Father James Martin explained on a recent radio program[3] that

Lent isn't simply about sacrifice. It is primarily a time to spiritually prepare one's self for Easter. And this may have less to do with not doing something than with doing something.

Lent is not a time to will ourselves to righteousness or to engage in games of prohibition that ease our guilt about unmet goals; rather, it is a time to enter the darkness of our hearts in the hope that the light of God will come back into focus.

Our Lenten journey, like the journey of Jesus in the desert, is prompted by the Spirit. Jesus did not decide for himself that a forty-day fast was just what he needed. Rather, he responded to the movement of the Spirit, who "drove him out into the wilderness." And so we must ask ourselves, before setting our own arbitrary goals for Lenten observance, what the Spirit is prompting us to do. Even though an examination of individual self is central to Lenten discipline, the self is still a member of the whole body of believers and we do well to commune with the Spirit to determine what sort of discipline would be most appropriate. And if the Spirit is hidden, which is often the case, we can also turn to the trusted community around us. Father Martin tells of arguing in college about the validity of Lenten discipline with his Jewish roommates, who believed that choosing a discipline for one's self was too easy. His friends eventually resolved the dispute by determining that they should choose what Father Martin should give up for Lent. Twenty years later, he still receives a call every Ash Wednesday with a pronouncement about what the season's discipline will be. Silly as it may seem, Father Martin's story pinpoints the fact that engaging in a Lenten discipline is not an act of willpower, but an act of obedience.

In baptism, as in Ash Wednesday, we are named. Forty days in the desert helps us remember and reconcile our names—dusty, mortal child of earth and spirit-filled, eternal child of God—replenishing the soul for the Good News of Easter: that suffering will not last. Death will die. The repentance Jesus calls us to is not an act of willpower, but a turning toward a whole new understanding of who we are in God. Jesus could scarce proclaim such good news about the reality of being human in God without engaging his own vulnerability and darkness in the desert. Likewise, our own repentance and proclamation can only be approached through the desert of self-knowledge and suffering. If we say we have no desert to cross in our journey toward God, we are spiritual infants for whom the resurrection holds no real hope. For what need do we have of the transformative power of sacrificial love if we have no sense of needing transformation?

In closing, I offer a poem by Madeleine L'Engle. Listen for the journey she takes in these few lines through the broken and confessing experience of the desert to a transformed and reconciled Easter creation:

O God, within this strange and quickened dust
The beating heart controls the coursing blood
In discipline that holds in check the flood
But cannot stem corrosion and dark rust.
In flesh's solitude I count it blest
That only you, my Lord, can see my heart
With passion's desires tearing it apart
With storms of self, and tempests of unrest.
But your love breaks through blackness, bursts with light;
We separate ourselves, but you rebind
In Dayspring all our fragments; body, mind,
And spirit join, unite against the night.
Healed by your love, corruption and decay
Are turned, and whole, we greet the light of day. [4]

May the Spirit inspire courage within us during this season of Lent to enter into the deepest dusty wilderness of our own hearts to emerge from the desert thirsting for the mysterious refreshment of the resurrection. May we live into our identity as living souls of dust and breath, eager to be reconciled and transformed.

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[1] Wendell Berry, "Christianity and the Survival of Creation" in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (Pantheon, 1992), p. 106.

[2] J. Raya and J. de Vinck, "Verses During the Last Kiss: Funeral of the Dead" in Byzantine Daily Worship (Alleluia Press, 1988).

[3] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5238122

[4] Glimpses of Grace (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), p. 72.

Lectionary texts for the Last Sunday after Epiphany/Transfiguration Sunday

I haven't been able to take the time I'd like lately to explore and connect the lectionary texts, but I just read an article this morning called "Waking to Mystery" by Kimberlee Conway Ireton that connects to the Transfiguration passage specifically. She talks about how the disciples' response ("Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.") betrays a desire to hold on to the mystery they behold, instead of letting it flow through them and learning to trust in uncertainty.

The Transfiguration is a revelation, but it's a revelation of something amazingly mysterious that we can only hold in trust and contentment that the God of Love will be true to the promise of redemption. An alternative response is to attempt to contain the mystery in our own language and definitions of reality (as in, "Let us build a dwelling for you") and in doing so, we don't diminish the mystery itself, but we miss the experience of it and potentially distort the experience for others--which leads to the Corinthians passage. God is light, but as people who are both darkness and light, we cannot fully comprehend the light. God is not the maintainer of the veil--the "gods" of the world hold that post--but God is the lifter of the veil ("At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom" [Matt. 27:51]).

Let us be vigilant for the mysterious light of the risen Christ that is all around us, not trying to control revelation or explain it away, but trusting that there will be a time when we will see with clarity who we are and who God is.

Since I've been posting my notes in process for the service, I thought I'd post the meditation in it's entirety as well, for those who are interested. Rob and I were going to attempt to present together, but it looks like the division of labor will have me behind the pulpit by myself. I don't know if this is any good as far as a sermon goes and I'm a bit frustrated with my inability to improvise, but this is what I have to offer for now.

More notes on resources related to a sermon on peacemaking in our local community...

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Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith, a book by Eric O. Jacobsen

In this book, Jacobsen makes a case for the idea that both our environment and our behavior in that environment can be shaped by faith principles. He draws on the ideas of a community development movement called New Urbanism, connecting principles such as human scale, walkable community and local economy with biblical and theological principles. He visits the theme that's prominent in Berry of seeing one's community, arguing that we need to learn a new way of looking at our built environment in order to determine whether it's the healthiest structure that could exist. There are several ways I see Jacobsen's work being drawn into a sermon about peacemaking in our community:

• He discusses the relationship between hospitality toward strangers and neighborliness. If we know our neighbors, they are no longer strangers. And if we know our neighbors are watching out for us and we for them, a stranger in the neighborhood is no longer a great threat and we can show hospitality with confidence.
• Engaging with local businesses for basic needs builds good relationships and multiplies the benefit of our dollars within our local community. We enter into one another's stories and strengthen our communities for future generations.
• Public spaces are important for the cultivation of relationships, fostering public discourse and realizing our interdependence. We do well to be intentional about time spent in public spaces, as well as advocating for their right use and development. Sidewalks are perhaps the most underrated public space, but they offer a place to run into friends and strangers, as well as safety for those who are not able to drive where they need to go.

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"From Housing to Homemaking: Worldviews and the Shaping of a Home," a paper by Brian Walsh

Similar to Jacobsen's ideas about the relationship between the built environment and our behavior in that environment, Walsh's paper focuses on the interaction between worlddview and housing. He quotes Winston Churchill saying, "We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us," meaning that our deepest values guide our personal and cultural decisions about our dwellings and then the actual dwelling shapes our values. Walsh observes:

Beyond the symbols with which we adorn our dwellings, it is important to note that diverse architectures, different terms of tenure, varied constructions of inside/outside, public/private dynamics, house size, building materials and location--all are symbolic of class, status, cultural identity, and most foundationally, worldview. An oversized house in the suburbs on an acre and a half lot with a three car garage may have the external and internal symbols of Judaism, Islam, Christianity or any other worldview, but the very structure of the house may well have more symbolic power and be more revelatory of the practiced worldview of its inhabitants than these more traditional symbols.

Essentially, our houses tell on us by betraying in which worlview we feel truly at home. Relevant to community peacemaking, if peace or right relationship is indeed a deep value, how is it reflected in our home? And if it's not reflected there, is it really integral to our identity? If we hope to make peace in our local communities, we should look at the very plot of land or dwelling we occupy to determine how we might begin within those boundaries to be at peace with our co-habitants, our natural environment, and the thousands--perhaps millions--of people with whom we are in relationship by virtue of the stuff that fills our homes: the artists, the farmers, the laborers, the factory workers, the grocery store clerks, etc.

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"Creating Space for Strangers" by Henri Nouwen from Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

Fear, in large part, is what paralyzes us from the practical work of peacemaking; likewise, as Nouwen asserts in his passage on hospitality, fear limits our ability to be hospitable to friends and strangers alike. The theme passage for the series we'll be preaching during is Micah 4: 1-4. It contains a lovely vision for a world beyond fear:

They shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid...

The opposite of hospitality is hostility, which is what we display when we feel we need to protect ourselves and our possessions (including doctrine, reputation and self-image) from the people around us who threaten our security. Hospitality, on the other hand,

means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.... It is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria for happiness, but the opening of an opportunity to others to find their God to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.

Hospitality, Nouwen ephasizes, is not limited to hosting people in one's home, but is an attitude that can be projected at all times, an attitude that invites people to be themselves and to change. He echoes David James Duncan's sentiment about the change we inspire by small actions:

We cannot change the world by a new plan, project or idea. We cannot even change other people by our convictions, stories, advice and proposals, but we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves, to lay aside their occupations and preoccupations and to listen with attention and care to the voices speaking in their own center.

While we should not minimize the difficulty of being truly hospitable toward others, showing hospitality seems to be one of the most immediate and inexpensive things we can do to shift one more element of the human story a little bit more toward the peace of the Kingdom. I am reminded of my friend Jo Ann's idea that sometimes all we need to do is walk across the street and ask someone to tell us his or her story. She makes this comment relating to racial reconciliation, but I think it applies to all situations in which we're faced with someone who is different from ourselves. I am also reminded, sadly, of the news I heard today about certain church folks in Kansas who have been picketing soldiers' funerals because they say the deaths are a judgment against our country's tolerance of homosexuality. But if hospitality is the way of the Kingdom, such displays of hostility should sadden us, but not cause us to despair.

As I've been thinking about the service Rob and I will be doing on peacemaking in our local community, I've come across some additional resources that I think will be useful. I'll write about a couple of them now and maybe about others later.

As I mentioned in the last Lectionary entry, I'm thinking about peacemaking essentially as cultivating the Kingdom of God in right relationship. I've had several general thoughts on this in the course of reading:

• We practice resurrection by living in the "now" of the Kingdom of God, without fear that the good will be overcome (referred to in the Isaiah text as "wait[ing] for the Lord").
• We begin to see the possibilities for making peace when we have a comprehensive view of life as God's in its entirety, with no artificial separation between "sacred" and "secular." All of life then calls for a faith response.
• The historic context of the Isaiah passage is the exile of Israel: how many of us feel such a sense of displacement in the current age of war, community breakdown and overconsumption? To those who feel like outsiders, this passage is a call to remember who we really are in God and an assurance that God is above all earthly power.

---

Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, a book of essays by Wendell Berry

Berry's writing is so rich with insight that I find myself scribbling and underlining constantly. He has much to offer the topic of peacemaking in our community, starting with his observation in "Christianity and the Survival of Creation" that "possibly the most urgent question now faced by people who would adhere to the Bible is this: what sort of economy would be responsible to the holiness of life? What, for Christians, would be the economy, the practices and the restraints of 'right livelihood'?" By economy, he does "not mean 'economics,' which is the study of money-making, but rather the ways of human housekeeping, the ways by which the human household is situated and maintained within the household of nature." He observes a cycle of give and take, cautioning that we must draw on the interest of nature, never the principle.

He touches on a theme that I've noticed in many of the writings I've been exploring, which is the desire and the ability to see the world around us. He writes, in "Conservation is Good Work":

[Ours] is an absentee economy. Most people aren't using or destroying what they can see. If we cannot see our garbage or the grave we have dug with our energy proxies, then we assume that all is well.... The closer we live to the ground that we live from, the more we will know about our economic life; the more we know about our economic life, the more able we will be to take responsibility for it. The way to bring discipline into one's personal or household or community economy is to limit one's economic geography.

Of course, I would add, as the manager of a fair trade store, that seeing goes beyond our local community and that limiting our economic geography solves one part of the puzzle, but doesn't address the problems we see beyond our few surrounding counties. The local and the global seeing should complement one another, with right relationship being the common theme. But on the local side of things, Berry is a font of wisdom: "If you want to see where you are, you will have to get out of your spaceship, out of your car, off your horse, and walk over the ground. On foot you will find that the earth is still satisfyingly large and full of beguiling nooks and crannies" (from "Out of your Car, Off your Horse"). We can apply this principle, literally and figuratively in our relationship with people, neighborhoods and nature. I think especially of how walking and riding my bike gives me a completely different impression of and appreciation for the neighborhoods through which I pass.

Another theme common to several resources is that of thinking locally and humbly about the work that is within our reach to do. Again from Berry ("Out of your Car..."):

Abstraction is the enemy wherever it is found.... Local life may be as much endangered by those who would "save the planet" as by those who would "conquer the world." For "saving the planet" calls for abstract purposes and central powers that cannot know--and thus will destroy--the integrity of local nature and local community...

The right scale in work gives power to affection. When one works beyond the reach of one's love for the place one is working in and for the things and creatures one is working among, then destruction inevitably results. An adequate local culture, among other things, keeps work within the reach of love.

The next resource picks up on this theme...

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"No Great Things," An article by David James Duncan from Orion Magazine

In this article, Duncan reflects on the application of Mother Teresa's words: "We can do no great things--only small things, with great love." In the midst of worrying about the direction our country is taking as a military superpower, her words re-framed his responsibility and gave him "permission to do stuff like play with my kids and go fishing again." His words are worth quoting at length, both here and probably in the sermon:

I have no faith in any kind of political party, left, right or centrist. I have boundless faith in love. In keeping with this faith, the only spiritually responsible way I know to be a citizen, artist or activist is by giving little or no thought to things such as saving the planet, achieving world peace, or stopping neocon greed. Great things tend to be undoable things. Small things, lovingly done, are always within our reach....

Watch a female salmon turn her body into a shovel and beat it into the stone bed of a high mountain stream, smashing aside rock not for the quarter-hour it takes a commentator to make a string of partisan wisecracks, but for the three or four arduous nights and days it takes to build a redd that can house and protect living progeny. There is no disingenuous bullshitting in the life-giving operations of nature, nothing snide, nothing needlessly clever.....

For which reason I'm trying to live and celebrate a dead-earnest, though far from humorless, Mother Teresian politics of no politics. I am focusing on one small thing after another, driven, each time, by the greatest possible love.

I think such a realization will be at the core of the hope that Rob and I can offer the the congregation, which is present in Isaiah 40:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

Know who you are. Know the limits and possibilities of your capacity. Don't faint under the pressure to be God, but discern how you might transform what you're already doing. More later...

Lectionary Texts for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Rob and I have been invited to speak at Florence Church of the Brethren Mennonite on Sunday, February 4, so these notes will serve the purpose of both planning for St. John's and preparing for Florence.

I didn't go into the texts planning to use them for Florence's series, but they connect to the theme in a number of ways. Their services for February, titled "Active Pacifism: Waging Peace in a Time of War," will focus on peacemaking in various contexts. Our week will focus on peacemaking in our local community.

We learned from a conversation with Florence's pastor, Nina Lanctot, that one of her hopes is that the series will counteract the cynicism she sees in herself and others in this particular time and place. How do we maintain action and hope for peace when the spirits of the age seem to be working against the very things we desire and that we believe God calls us to? In this context, the Isaiah passage is very humbling and encouraging:

It is [God] who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to live in;
who brings princes to naught,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
...
Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
"My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God"?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

We are assured the renewal of our strength in waiting. I don't think "peacemaking" at its most effective is about creating some grand plan for the world or staging a huge protest against the war or completing a magnificent act that will turn the tide of an entire culture--though these things can happen and are important pieces of the puzzle. Rather, since Rob's time at Goshen, I've come to think of "peace" as one of several synonyms for the Kingdom of God, which is to say that we can glimpse it, we can work for it (indeed we are called to work for it), but it is only the Creator who will perfect our actions and desires.

I think it's a commonly accepted notion that peace is more broadly defined than just the absence of conflict between people or entities; it's a comprehensive concept that had implications for all areas of our lives (again the parallel to the Kingdom, at least in the way I'm used to talking about it). A state of peace is a state of right relationship: between human and God, between human and human, between human and self, between human and creation, etc. Once we acknowledge peace/Kingdom in this way, peacemaking becomes much more than just political activism. Peacemaking is a daily way of life. We make peace when we are attentive to the environment, when we get "out of your car, off your horse" as Wendell Berry would put it, not just for the sake of reducing fossil fuel consumption, but for the sake of being in relationship with our neighborhoods and neighbors. We make peace when we are intentional about the sources of our food and goods, ensuring that the the people and the creation involved in the process are treated as worthy of our care. We make peace when we open our homes to friends and strangers alike and bring an attitude of hospitality with us wherever we go. We do what we can do. As Archbishop Oscar Romero puts it,

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

And this is where the Mark text for the week comes in. Jesus models for us such a trust in grace when he leave Capernaum, even though he certainly could have spent more time there healing and teaching. The whole city, after all, was gathered outside of his lodging the night before. He does not move on because his compassion is insufficient to stay, but because his compassion is so great and he is attentive to his purpose of spreading the news of salvation. He appears to be trusting God to grow the seed that has been planted there.

I hope to write more in the next few days on some other specific resources I anticipate drawing into this service. In the meantime, I'd welcome any feedback that might be useful for preparation.