Lectionary Notes: January 2006 Archives

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.

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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.
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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.

Lectionary Texts for January 29, the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

In his book The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggeman calls both conservatives and liberals to account for their distortion of the Church. He writes,

The church will not have the power to act or believe until it recovers its tradition of faith and permits that tradition to be the primal way out of enculturation. This is not a cry for traditionalism but rather a judgment that the church has no business more pressing than the reappropriation of its memory in its full power and authenticity. And that is true among liberals who are too chic to remember and conservatives who have overlaid the faith memory with all kinds of hedges that smack of scientism and Enlightenment.

The Corinthians passage seems to function in a similar manner, calling believers from the extremes not to a middle ground, but to an entirely new way. In essence, the issue of eating meat that's been sacrificed to idols isn't about the meat at all. To those who would say the meat is off limits, Paul warns that they should be careful how much value they assign to false gods. To those who would say that they can eat the meat if they choose because they are under the rule of grace, he says that love is the ultimate guide for behavior, not rights.

This passage makes me think about the abuse of rights and agenda-driven language that damages our ability to truly serve one another in community. Too often, "It's my right" is used as an excuse to do our own will in spite of the transgressions we commit against those with whom we're supposed to be in relationship. I think of attempts to "save the seals" to the detriment of an entire native culture or a stubborn commitment to shop at corporate chain stores in spite of questions about producer and retailer ethics. Our knowledge of a thing's goodness can often be so over-inflated that it smothers the images of God in our midst.

On the other hand, how far will Christians go to keep the law of Moses on life support well into the 21st century? This past weekend, a friend who recently moved to a farm told me a story about moving the chicken house. Though the chickens were introduced to the new location, they all gathered in the evening at the location of the old house. The next evening a few chickens caught on and by the third night they all knew where to go. How long will some of us still feel more at home in the old house? Or are we self-centeredly afraid that the new house will have less to offer than what we already know?

When we act out of fear or ego, we miss the point of living in relationship and serving a God who can heal everything. Jesus gives us an example of life as it should be in the healing of the possessed man. Fear might have led Jesus to doubt the promise of the resurrection, to deny his nature as God, while ego may have led him to make a spectacle of the spirit at the expense of the human being whose body was its puppet. Instead, out of compassion, he claims the name given him--"the Holy One of God"--and uses its authority to heal. Mark's account of the crowd's reaction seems a bit sensational and I picture Jesus rolling his eyes at their superficiality. The healing was not for their sake, or for his own, but for the sake of the man, in an other-directed act of healing love that embodies who God is. We can stand with the groupies fainting in wonder at what we do not understand or we can marvel at the art of Jesus' gesture, responding in turn by addressing that which is within our own power to heal. We tell the story, sure, but we also are the story and we do well to realize that every opportunity to interact with another human being is an opportunity to enter into a complex relationship that will lead us toward the mystery of God.

Lectionary Texts for January 22, the Third Sunday of Epiphany

Something striking to me about the Jonah passage is that the city is three days' walk across--would this be the size of Chicago? Or even bigger? Regardless, the city is huge and I can't blame Jonah for being reluctant and terrified. Imagine walking across a city that size with only your voice to proclaim the message God has given you--no mass media like we know it today to publicize it, no billboards to rent, no television stations to co-opt. What is an individual to do with a calling as ridiculous as this?

But, covered in whale mucus and shocked out of his denial, Jonah changes. And then the city of Ninevah changes. And then God changes his mind. In fact, a common theme in all three of today's passages is the change that occurs naturally when we're in relationship with one another and with God. God is not static and we, as image-bearers, are not static either. And when we're open to change, when we hold so loosely to the past that we can freely regret the sins that tell the tale of who we used to be, God's grace is there waiting to transform us into something better than we were. The angels' assurance still echoes from the Christmas season: "Do not be afraid." Do not be afraid for everything that exists within the reality of a living God is changing all of the time and the news, believe it or not, is all good!