Author Archives: mbj

God of the living

I have been thinking about change – no surprises there.  Many things have been changing here at Grace: a new rector is on board; work is underway to restore the Parish Hall; a labyrinth has been painted on the chapel floor.  Some changes may be welcome, and some may not, for I am aware of my own mixed feelings as I prepare to leave in two weeks.  It turns out that parish life is like every other kind of life: always in flux.  You’ve noticed that, right?  Nothing holds still.  Moment by moment things are coming and going.  Things are arising and passing away.  Groups form and groups dissolve.  People are born and people die.  This fall, as I watched the colors change in the maple, beech, and sumac trees, I was absorbed by the sight of leaves falling.  Leaves fall with such simplicity!  When the right moment comes, they simply drop – no drama, no fanfare, no resistance, no holding back – they just let go, giving themselves freely to the wind.  I felt as if I could watch those leaves forever, for I’d like to learn to let go like that, with that kind of ease.  Instead, here I am with all my mixed feelings about comings and goings, about impermanence and flux and change, digging my heels in half the time, wanting things to stay put, to be manageable, to be under my control and to turn out the way I want them to.   Thank God for stability and duration, but the problem is that we can get attached to keeping things the same, and then we suffer, and we add to the suffering of others.

My thoughts turned not to today’s Collect, but to a Collect that we hear every year at the end of September.  It goes like this: “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure….” Love things heavenly, and hold fast to what endures.  But what is it to which we should hold fast?  What is it that endures?

For example, does life endure?  Is there life after death?  Is there a heaven?  These age-old questions have surely perplexed human beings ever since we evolved to the point of self-awareness and of realizing that we were going to die.  Over the millennia, across various cultures and traditions, all kinds of answers have been supplied, some of them very elaborate, imaginative, and speculative.  On the other hand, some individuals and groups have been reluctant to make any conjectures about what heaven is like, or whether an after-life exists at all, because they trust only what they have directly experienced.  I heard a story last week about a Zen student who asked his teacher, “What happens to us when we die?”  “I don’t know,” the teacher replied. “But aren’t you a Zen teacher?” the student retorted.  “Yes,” he said, “but I’m not a dead Zen teacher.” 

“I’ll wait and find out for myself” might be what some of us say when we’re asked what we believe about heaven and life after death.  And some people flat out reject any possibility of life after death.  That was the position of the Sadducees, a group within Judaism that considered the Torah, the first five books of Moses, to be their only source of authority – if you couldn’t find something in the Torah, then it couldn’t be true.  Based on this material, they found no reason to believe in the resurrection.  The Pharisees, by contrast, believed that Moses had provided an oral as well as a written tradition, and that the oral tradition justified believing in the resurrection.  Whether or not to believe in the resurrection of the dead was the subject of heated, even violent, argument between the two groups (Acts 23:6-10). 

So when the Sadduccees came to Jesus to ask a question about the resurrection, they were not posing the question from the point of view of a grieving person who is looking for solace or hope, nor were they posing it from the perspective of a seeker who is sincerely searching for truth.  They already knew exactly what they believed – that resurrection and the after-life were a fantasy.  In presenting Jesus with the hypothetical case of a wife who died and found herself confronted in heaven by seven husbands, each of whom presumably wanted to claim her as his own, their purpose was to show that belief in the resurrection or after-life was absurd.  They were out to trick Jesus and to make him look like a fool

What did Jesus say in reply?  Well, he says, the after-life is real; there is a heavenly life beyond the grave.  But our risen life is not merely an extension or repetition of life on earth.  In some sense it is beyond our imagining – there is no marrying there, he says, and no death.  Jesus doesn’t go into details about what heaven or the age to come is like; he does not indulge in fanciful speculation.  But what he does say is that it is real, and mysteriously different from the sensory world that we know on earth, just as the Risen Christ was Jesus of Nazareth, but not recognizable in the usual way.  In today’s passage, Jesus turns to the Torah, the part of Scripture that the Sadduccees recognized as valid, and recalls what God revealed to Moses beside the burning bush: “I am… the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6).  Jesus takes this statement as implicit recognition that resurrection is real: God is God “not of the dead, but of the living, for to [God] all of them are alive” (Luke 20:38).  In God, all live.

What this means is that within all the comings and goings of life there is something eternal. Our loved ones may die, but in God they are alive.  Our days may disappear like smoke, yet within and beyond all the arising and passing away we glimpse something that will never die: the enduring love and life of God.  Where is heavenly life found?  Right here.  And when does it begin?  Right now.  Do we need to die in order to be in heaven?   No – to be in heaven, we need in fact to be very much alive.  Moments when we are caught up in love, moments when we are fully present, moments when we look deeply into life with eyes of love, are moments when we touch what is ultimately real.  

I’ll tell you one way to get a glimpse of heaven.  I invite you to close your eyes for a moment, and to bring to mind someone who is easy for you to love.  Take a moment to relax and to let someone who is easy for you to love come to your mind.  It may be someone who lives close by or it may be someone far away.  It may be someone you saw just this morning, or it may be someone you haven’t seen in years.  Let someone come to mind who is easy for you to love, and if no person comes to mind, see if there is a beloved pet that you want to hold in mind just now.  For just a moment, let’s enjoy what it feels like to gaze with love on this other being, what it feels like to honor fully our affection for him or her.  If you like, you may want to imagine the person gazing back at you with tenderness.  The person sees you just as you are, and loves you just as you are, and you don’t have to change a thing.

Can you sense that love?  In a way it doesn’t matter if the person is physically close to you or is somewhere far away.  Even if they have died, they are always as close as your heart.  Love knows no boundaries of time or space.  Sometimes a person may even be more present to us when the person is absent.  Love is reckless, abundant, and ever upwelling.  It crosses time zones; it passes freely between this world and the next; it knows no bounds and no frontiers.  God is God not of the dead but of the living, and when we love, we come alive and we step into heaven.  As St. John puts it in his First Letter, “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another” (1 John 3:14).  Or, as the philosopher Gabriel Marcel once said, you know you have really learned to love someone when you know that you see in the other that which is too precious to ever die.

I wonder if that experience, that knowledge, is what enabled Job to proclaim, even from the depths of unimaginable loss and suffering, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth… [and] in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26). 

That is the Christian message of hope, a message that can carry us through life with joy, even as we watch the leaves fall, even as we recognize the truth of impermanence and change.  When we hand in our stewardship pledges next week, it will be with grateful hearts for the heaven that is proclaimed and made known in this community, and that we anticipate knowing in fullness in the age to come. 

I will end by quoting part of a song¹ recorded by Celtic folk singer Mary Black: 

In your eyes
Faint as the singing of a lark
Somehow this black night
Feels warmer for the spark
Warmer for the spark
To hold us ‘til the day when fear will lose its grip
And heaven has its way
And heaven has its way
When all will harmonize
And know what’s in our hearts
The dream will realize

Heaven knows no frontiers
And I’ve seen heaven in your eyes
Heaven knows no frontiers
And I’ve seen heaven in your eyes.

1. “No Frontiers,” lyrics by Jimmy McCarthy.

Healing and being healed

Hallelujah!  I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart. (Psalm 111:1)

It’s all about healing.  That’s the word from this morning’s readings.  From the Second Book of Kings we have the marvelous story of Elisha the prophet healing Naaman, the “mighty warrior” (2 Kings 5:1) who suffered from leprosy, a debilitating disease that in ancient times was incurable.  My favorite moment in the story is when Elisha sends a messenger to Naaman with very simple instructions: “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.”  And Naaman throws a fit.  He wants a more complicated cure.  After all, he’s important; he’s a big shot.  He has traveled all the way to this foreign country with his horses and chariots and his whole entourage, and now he wants some recognition.  He wants the prophet to come out and greet him, and to carry out a special ritual that’s impressively drawn out and dramatic.  A big man deserves a big ceremony, right?  But instead what he gets is the simplest of invitations, “Wash and be clean.”  Naaman turns away in a rage, and there is a brief moment of suspense. Will he go home with his anger and self-righteousness intact, taking his leprosy with him?  Will he walk away from his own healing?  Luckily for him, his servants persuade him to go down to the Jordan and wash, and after immersing himself seven times in those healing waters he emerges with “his flesh restored like the flesh of a young boy,” and is “clean” (2 Kings 5:14).

Our first reading is paired with a Gospel passage from Luke that tells another story of healing.  While keeping their distance from Jesus – which is what Jewish law required of people suffering from leprosy – ten lepers cry out for mercy.  The text tells us that Jesus sees them (Luke 17:14).  He sees them: he sees their suffering, sees their need, sees above all their basic, deep-down, never-ending preciousness in God’s sight, and, as the law requires, he tells them to present themselves to the priest so that the priest can confirm if their health has been restored.  Sure enough, along the way all of them are “made clean,” and one of them – a foreigner – turns back to praise God.  He gives thanks. 

I am glad that today’s readings are all about healing and being healed, for some of us can use a little healing right around now – at least I can, anyway, for I will soon say goodbye to this community and already I feel the ache in my heart.  By now most of you have heard the news that I have decided to leave parish ministry so that I can focus my energies on tackling climate change.  At the end of November I will leave Grace Church, and soon thereafter will take up a new position in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts as a missioner for creation care.  Actually I’m not sure what my title will be – the bishop and I are still figuring that out – but I like the term “missioner,” which refers to a person of faith who is heading outside the four walls of a church building and into new territory in order to bear witness to God’s power to heal and give life.   And I like the term “creation care,” for right now, creation needs more of us to care.

I don’t know why God placed caring for creation so firmly on my heart.  Maybe it’s partly because my personal journey of healing began with making peace with my body thirty-some years ago, as I did the work I needed to do so that my Higher Power – God – could heal me from a food addiction a day at a time.  The same divine love that showed me how to live peacefully inside this body of mine drew me out to care for the larger body of the Earth upon which all life depends.  Just as one human being can learn to make peace with her own body, is it not possible that all human beings can learn to make peace with what some people call the body of God, with the fish and trees and wind and waters of this shining creation that is lit up with God’s glory whenever we have eyes to see?  The sheer grace of living in this beautiful Pioneer Valley, so alive with nature’s wonders, reminds us day by day of God’s presence in all creation. The urgency of that call to praise God and to protect God’s creation is what spurs me to write and speak and organize around slowing climate change. 

Some of you may know that I was ordained twenty-five years ago, in 1988, just when American newspapers first broke the news that scientists were concerned about the effects on the planet’s climate and ecosystems of burning fossil fuels.  At that point, Christians in my neck of the woods heard next to nothing in sermons or Sunday School or adult education about the connection between faith in God and care for God’s creation.  A year later, on Good Friday of 1989, the Exxon Valdez supertanker struck a reef in Alaska and spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil across hundreds of miles of sea.  That’s when I stepped into the pulpit of my suburban church and launched into the first sermon I’d ever preached, or ever heard, about the environment.  Into that sermon I poured my outrage and sorrow about our disturbed relationship with the Earth, and made an ardent appeal for eco-conversion, for a transformation of consciousness and behavior as radical as the conversion that St. Paul experienced on the road to Damascus. When I sat down, I thought rather smugly that I had done a pretty good job, but after the service, a baffled parishioner came up and said,  “I don’t get it.  What does religion have to do with ecology?”

I’ve spent the years since then trying to answer that question, searching Scripture, tradition, and my own life of prayer.  Those of you who’ve been at Grace Church for a while know – maybe only too well – how deeply I am convinced that our Creator God loves the Earth and wants us to share in God’s mission of restoring all people and all creation to unity with God and each other in Christ.  I have such gratitude for all the people in this Valley, some of whom are in this room, who give such heartfelt attention to saving our farmland and wildlife habitat and who do everything you can to safeguard the life-giving quality of our air and water.  I give thanks for the local land trusts that use every means at their disposal to legally protect our Valley from total domination by human commerce and dwellings.

I trust that you will continue this work.  And now my sights are on the big picture, beyond our Valley.  So I am leaving parish ministry in order to do what I hope will be healing work.  I hope that it will be justice work, too.  There is no healing without justice.  Healing the climate is closely connected with securing racial justice, and environmental justice, and economic justice.  The front-line communities most affected by fossil fuel pollution are often low-income communities and communities of color.¹  So we have a battle on our hands.  Fossil fuel companies and the politicians they have bought seem to be completely willing to push the climate past certain tipping points beyond which life as it has evolved on this planet will be impossible to sustain.  Just this week we read about the alarming study that shows that by around 2047, greenhouse gas pollution, if it continues unchecked, will raise global temperatures to such an extent that in any given geographical area, “the coldest year in the future will be warmer than the hottest year in the past.”² 

The fossil fuel industry does not want you to know this.  Big Coal and Big Oil are spending a fortune to lobby against scientific fact and to spread disinformation.  Last year I was invited to preach about climate change in a Boston-area church, and when I got to the part about Jesus calling us to transform the social and economic systems that propel climate change, two people walked out.  A sympathetic friend of mine suggested that maybe the two people who walked out of my sermon were overcome with sorrow for planet Earth and needed a place to weep in private.  But of course that wasn’t the case: as folks who knew them were quick to tell me, the two were climate skeptics.  And it’s true.  Many Americans believe that the natural world is here for only one purpose: human consumption.

So there is work to be done, a battle to fight, an Earth to heal, and a God to praise.  I look ahead with excitement, and with resolve, but as I gaze at your faces, I also feel a pang of loss and a surge of gratitude.  For it’s all about healing – that’s what you and I have been up to for these past nine years.  Every time we walk into this sanctuary to pray, every time we receive Holy Communion, every time we are sent out into the world to love and serve God with gladness and singleness of heart, we make ourselves available again to be healed, and we allow God to make us instruments of healing.  Every single one of us is a missioner for God, a person chosen by God to offer whatever gifts we’ve been given to serve the common good. 

And I’ve seen a lot of healing take place in this community, a lot of healing given and received.  Whenever someone feels like Naaman, too proud or too ashamed to ask for God’s help, I’ve seen people coax each other back down to the River Jordan to admit their need for God and to be immersed again in God’s healing love.  We have helped each other to find that river, and to put our trust in the baptism by which we were united forever with God in Christ and marked as Christ’s own forever.  And, just as Jesus saw deeply into the suffering and the beauty of the lepers who cried out to him, I have seen you look deeply into each other’s lives, seeing not only the brokenness or the woundedness of the other person, but also the person’s basic beauty, the invincible preciousness of the person’s being.  There is healing in a gaze like that, for everyone longs to be seen and known and loved.  And like the single leper who turned back to give thanks, I’ve seen us help each other to remember the power of giving thanks, the healing power of looking at life with eyes of gratitude, not with eyes of cynicism, despair, or scorn. 

I have never been as happy as a parish priest as I’ve been at Grace Church.  I have never served as long in a parish as I’ve served here.  I have never been as engaged in a congregation’s life as I’ve been in the life of this congregation.  I am glad that that we have a good seven weeks ahead in which to say goodbye.  As I stand here this morning, I am grateful beyond words for the healing and the blessings given and received, grateful that each of us has a call from God, grateful that Tom is the new rector and that he will guide this congregation into the next chapter of its life together, grateful to the God who gives us life, and grateful to the Christ who meets us in every Eucharist and whose Spirit renews the face of the Earth.  

Hallelujah!  I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart.  Amen.

1. See: Wen Stephenson, “The Grassroots Battle Against Big Oil,” The Nation, October 28, 2013.

2. Camilo Mora, quoted in “By 2047, Coldest Years May Be warmer Than Hottest in Past, Scientists Say,” The New York Times, Thursday, October 10, 2013, p. A9.

Finding the lost sheep

Friends, it is especially good to be with you this morning after the accident that broke my wrist and the hospitalization that followed.  I am sitting in a pew today because clergy vestments don’t fit over this enormous cast.  Among other things, I spent the past week discovering what can and cannot be done when you suddenly lose the use of one hand – for instance, forget about tying shoelaces or opening a can, and, for now, at least, forget about driving a car.  But, God willing, I can still preach, and we have a beautiful Gospel passage upon which to reflect this morning.

Those of you who are familiar with the Bible probably remember that after the two parables we just heard – the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin – comes the parable of the prodigal son and his brother.  If you ever forget how loved you are, if you ever want a refresher course in how eagerly and totally God longs to search you out, to heal and forgive you and make you whole, just sit yourself down with the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel and re-read these parables.  You can’t do better than that.  As you can hear from today’s text, they’re all about being lost and being found. 

To illustrate the first parable, I brought in a print that usually hangs in my office in the Old Rectory.  The artist is Marion C. Thomas, and it’s called “Finding the Lost Sheep.”  Fr. Henri Nouwen gave it to us as a gift, and I hope you’ll take a look as you come up for Communion, or after the service.  It’s a picture of the shepherd rejoicing as he carries the lost sheep home on his shoulders, and right now I particularly admire the shepherd’s two strong wrists. Then he calls together his friends and neighbors, and cries, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost” (Luke 15:6). 

Beside it we can place in our mind’s eye an image of the woman searching for her precious lost coin, lighting a lamp, carefully sweeping the whole house until she finds the coin, and then calling together her friends and neighbors, as she, too, cries, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost” (Luke 15:9).  Such is the joy in heaven, Jesus tells us, when a single sinner repents – or, to put this in more contemporary language, when someone who has been running from God or alienated from God turns around and receives God’s love.

As a way of reflecting on these parables of being lost and being found, I’d like to tell the story of how I ended up with this cast.  And because I enjoy listening on public radio to the show, “This American Life,” I’m going to do what Ira Glass does: to tell the story in two parts, and to give each part a name.

Part One: We get lost

I decided to go out for a run on a Friday afternoon.  It was a fine, sunny day; life was good, work was going well, and now it was time for some fresh air and exercise.  My husband and I live on a hill not far from Smith College, and so I put on my running shoes, jogged down the hill, crossed Elm Street, ran across the campus, and headed into the wooded area behind the athletic fields.  As some of you know, there is a wonderful network of trails back there that thread their way through forest and meadows and alongside the Mill River.  I jogged a trail that led through trees, and reached a choice point – I could take a path up the meadow to my left, or I could take a path to the right that led downhill, beside the river.  I decided to take the river path and kept jogging, reminding myself that I’d gone a pretty long distance by now and should probably turn around soon to go home.  Just then, from the right, an unleashed dog came bounding up from the riverbank to greet me.  He was probably being friendly, but it all happened so fast, I can’t even tell you whether he jumped up and knocked me over, or whether he simply got scrambled in my legs and I tumbled over.  All I know is that as I was jogging, I made contact with the dog, lost my balance, and let loose an expletive as I started to fall, taking all the weight of the fall on my outstretched right hand.  I landed on the hard-packed dirt, took a look at my weirdly bent right wrist, and repeated the expletive once again, for good measure. 

I knew almost at once that I was lost.  I had lost my balance, lost my footing, lost control – lost control of my body, lost control of my day.  I tried to stand up, but was too faint to do it.  I lay down again, cradled my right arm with my left, looked up at the trees, and started to go into shock.  Panting for air, with two broken wrist-bones and one bone breaking skin, I lay in the dirt beside the Mill River, lost.

Have you ever been lost?  Do you know what it’s like to feel lost?  Sometimes it happens quickly, when an accident or a diagnosis or the unexpected shock of bad news suddenly pulls the rug out from under our feet, and we feel helpless and out of control.  Sometimes getting lost is a gradual process – over time, we make a series of poor choices that eventually take us to a dangerous place in which we are as alienated and alone as the sheep in today’s parable that wandered away.  Sometimes we get lost when we deliberately choose the wrong path – when we consciously choose to do or say what we know to be unethical and destructive.  We may hate what we’re doing, but we can’t seem to stop ourselves. And sometimes we get lost by accident: we choose one path over another in completely good faith, and yet end up in a place where we feel overwhelmed and at sea.  Sinners, by definition, are people who are lost, and that would be all of us, for none of us is entirely righteous; all of us can step out of relationship with God and can refuse to participate in the love that God is always longing to share with us.  It’s not as if we can neatly divide the world into two camps, with sinners on one side and the righteous on the other, for, as the Soviet novelist and political dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn has written, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart…”¹ All of us get lost – all of us have moments when we lose touch with the love of God, moments when we feel helpless, trapped, off-course or confused, and can’t find our way home to the One who is always loving us.  

Part Two: We get found

So I am lying there in the dirt, unable to walk, struggling for breath, and dimly aware that the dog’s owner has rushed over to express her concern, that a nurse – can you believe it? – just happens to be walking by right then, and that he has a cell phone and can call 911.  (Incidentally, I will never forget how that nurse introduced himself: “My name’s Bob,” he said. “You can spell it either way.”)  Help from the outside was on the way before too long, and I am indebted to the kindness of strangers – to the dog’s owner, who kept me company; to Bob the nurse, who showed the EMT’s where to find me; to the driver of the all-terrain vehicle that carried me out of the woods to the ambulance. 

But what stays with me most vividly is the interior help that reached my soul.  As I lay on the ground, confused, in pain, disoriented, and in shock, the thought occurred to me: “I wonder where God is?”  Inwardly I turned my attention to God, and I did what I’ve been doing for some time: I breathed in, knowing that God was giving God’s self to me in and as this moment, and I breathed out, silently saying to God, “I love you, too.”  To my amazement, suddenly God’s presence was vividly real.  Our loving union was intact.  My wrist might be broken, but my relationship with God was whole.  I had a sense that no matter what might be outwardly happening, inwardly nothing could shake the love that had searched me out and found me.  What a discovery – a divine love that is always with us, no matter what we are experiencing and even if all seems lost!  I felt as if I’d been given the secret of the universe.  I was filled with gratitude and joy even as I lay on the dirt with a bent and broken wrist. 

When we reached the hospital, the EMT’s lifted the gurney off the ambulance and carried me through the emergency room and into the assessment area. I spotted an elderly woman lying in bed, looking grim-faced and blank in her hospital johnnie, and even though I don’t usually do things like this, and even though I must have sounded completely addled, I couldn’t help myself – my joy was overflowing.

“Hello, fellow patient,” I sang out.  “This isn’t how we planned to spend our day, is it?”  I have no idea how she responded to this salutation, for I was carried off to another room, but I can tell you that gratitude carried me through the rest of the day, as my husband waited with me, the doctor examined me, and as I underwent two hours of surgery and the installation of a titanium plate.  Despite the pain, deep down it was all about joy.  “Rejoice with me,” says Jesus the Good Shepherd, “for I have found my sheep that was lost,” and so does he rejoice with each of us, and all of us, whenever we come home. 

What strikes me now, looking back, is how helpful it is to have a spiritual practice in place before a crisis comes along.  Because I was used to turning to God, because I had a familiar form of prayer that readily came to mind, I was able to do something that helped God find me.  I didn’t have to waste time asking useless questions like: “Why did this happen?  What have I done to deserve this?  Why me?”  Instead I could simply turn my attention to the present moment, just as it was, and seek God there. 

I wish I could tell you that this epiphany in the dirt beside the Mill River was a permanent revelation – that since then I have always felt God’s loving presence.  But of course that’s not true.  I’ve had plenty of moments since then of being whiny, sad, impatient or frustrated – in short, plenty of moments of feeling lost, separated from any felt sense of the love of God.  But then I take up the practice that I find so powerful: I bring awareness to the present moment, just as it is, in all its pleasantness and unpleasantness, in its whininess or sadness or impatience or frustration.  I bring awareness to the moment’s particular flavor and texture, and I breathe it in as the very presence of God.  For if God were not breathing us into being in this moment, we wouldn’t be here!  If God were not loving us in and as this present moment, we would no longer exist!  Here is God, breathing life into us in each moment and saying “I love you,” and as we breathe out, we can reply in silence, “I love you, too.” 

In a few moments we will baptize Jackson Coleman into this mystery, the mystery of God the divine Lover who searches out the lost and the strayed, and who carries us home, rejoicing.  I invite us to take a few moments in silence and to receive each in-breath as God secretly says to you, “I love you.”  With each out-breath, we say silently in reply, “I love you, too.”  Practice this for a while and eventually we’ll come to see, as the medieval woman mystic Julian of Norwich saw, that “The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.”

1. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago.

“Friend, move up higher”

I can’t think of another occasion in the lectionary when the first reading is so short – just a single sentence.  It comes from the Book of Proverbs, a collection of sayings that was traditionally attributed to King Solomon because of his legendary wisdom.  Since its advice is so succinct, and since it connects so clearly with today’s Gospel, let’s hear it again: “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble” (Proverbs 25:6-7). 

Listening to this admonition on Labor Day weekend, as we mark the unofficial end of summer, makes me think of the start of summer, when my family and I spent a week at a lake in New Hampshire. Every year our extended family comes to New Hampshire to visit a particular family camp, and we enjoy having a chance to swim, hike, and generally relax.  No one in my family will argue with me when I tell you that I’m not much of a cook, and for me one of the great pleasures of attending this camp is eating meals in the dining-hall, where for once someone else is the chef!  But here is the main thing.  Tables in the camp’s dining-hall are assigned according to a system of ranking that is based on how many years you’ve been coming.  The most coveted spots are tables by the windows, where diners enjoy a breeze, a view of the lake, and maybe the envy of other families.  By contrast, tables near the dessert tray are the least desirable places to sit, because there you are subjected to the noise and pressure of kids pushing past you as they make their eager way to the ice cream.  In between are the middling tables, which are ranked as more or less desirable according to their relative convenience, quiet, and lakeshore views.  Week by week the headwaiter works out which family will sit where, and keeps track year by year of everyone’s progress away from the dessert trays.  Presumably the goal is to work your way up until you, too, have earned the place of honor: a table by the window.

Assigning tables on the basis of seniority is one way to handle the human tendency to scramble for the best seats in the house.  We all know the struggle to be recognized, honored, and admired, to get ahead, to seek our own glory and satisfaction.  We feel the lure, in the words of today’s reading, to “put [ourselves] forward” and to “stand in the place of the great.”  Much of contemporary society encourages us to promote the individual self over the common good, and, in the face of every choice, to ask ourselves: “What’s in it for me?”  “How can I prove myself, promote myself, and show myself to the best advantage?” It is the urgent need to be recognized and valued that drives us to make a bee-line for the seats of honor, jealously to guard whatever rank and position we’ve managed to attain, and to look down from our small eminence on the unfortunate people stuck in the seats below, who presumably lack our wit or wealth or talent or knowledge or training or connections, or who simply haven’t been coming to camp as long as we have.

Everyone needs to be valued, but when we claim a place in the sun at the expense of other people, our perch is precarious.  As Jesus points out in today’s Gospel passage from Luke, when we clamber over others to grab the seat of honor for ourselves, it won’t be long before the host comes along to send us down to the lowest table.  It is a rhythm of our spiritual lives that happens again and again: whenever we proudly hold ourselves apart from other people, claiming for one reason or another that we are better than they are – our theology is better! Our politics are better! Our kids are better!  Our resume is better!  Our obituary will be better! –  God finds a way to burst the bubble and to deflate our pride. In the kingdom of God, there is no place, and no need, for self-seeking.

Here’s an example from my own life.  Back in 1994 I was riveted to the television as the O.J. Simpson murder trial played out in court.  As you may remember, he was tried for two counts of murder following the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend.  The case captured media attention, and has been called “the most publicized criminal trial in American history.”¹  Like many Americans, I had a strong opinion about the case, and I was among those who were convinced that Simpson was guilty.  I wanted him convicted and I wanted him in prison.  But more than that – I felt a malicious excitement, a vindictive thrill, as I watched the trial go forward and as I waited impatiently for him to get what I considered his just desserts.  I felt vengeful pleasure as I watched him squirm.  I was better than he was – I was superior, righteous, innocent.

And then one night I had a dream.  (It’s interesting how dreams can be a source of wisdom!) I dreamed that I casually told someone that I wanted a couple of people killed.  The person carried out my request, and returned to report that the murders had been done.  In the dream I felt no remorse, no guilt, no shame, just a surge of self-protective worry.  Would I get away with the murders?  Would I get caught? Would my bishop find out?  In the dream I didn’t care about the people who had died.  I wanted only to save my own skin. 

When I woke up, I felt a pang of shock and sorrow.  One thing was clear: I needed to pray for O.J. Simpson, and I needed to pray for myself.  I had been visited by a dream that punctured my pride, and showed me that everything that I thought I saw in him – the casual violence, the capacity to kill, the failure to feel remorse, the desire at all costs to save his neck and reputation – was also in me.  On a human level, we might be very different people, but on a soul level, we were basically alike: both of us sinners who failed to live up to the love that made us and that gave everything for us.  I still believed that Simpson was guilty and I still wanted him convicted, but the thrill was gone.  I could no longer watch his trial with self-righteous glee, for in contemplating his guilt, I also saw my own.

Pride tells me to claim the head table for myself, but God, in infinite mercy, sends me back down to the lowest table.

Pride tells me to pretend to be purer than I am, better than I am, other than I am.  God tells me to accept the truth: like everyone else, I am an inextricable mixture of darkness and light, capable of both kindness and cruelty, of both tenderness and malice.  I am not just my idealized self, my “best” self; I am also my “shadow” self, the parts of myself that I want to push away and to project onto other people.

Pride tells me to separate myself from the lowly, the outcast, and the criminal.  God tells me to discover my union with them.

Pride tells me to justify myself by criticizing and condemning other people.  God tells me that nothing human is alien to me, that everything I see outside me is within me, as well.

Pride tells me that there is a shortage of love in the world, and that if I don’t make it to the top, I will lose, I will be left, I will be alone.  God tells me that love is infinite, and that I will taste the sweetness of that love in all its fullness only when I understand that ultimately I am not separate from anyone or anything.

Pride tells me that I must forever earn and deserve and hoard whatever love and recognition I can get.  God tells me that at every moment, all of God’s love is entirely mine – and yours – and ours – no matter who we are or what we’ve done. It’s free, and it’s a gift.

Again and again God gently bursts our bubbles of pride and our impulse to separate ourselves from other people, and deepens the rich soil of humility within which our souls can grow like a vigorous plant.  Isn’t it interesting that the word “humility” is closely related to the word “humus”?  It is in the rich, loamy soil of humility that we are grounded, that human beings come home to our true Selves and discover our union with everyone else and all creation. 

But pride is a tricky thing, and the ego can take Jesus’ parable and turn it into a game of self-seeking way down at the lowest seat at the table.  Pride can turn us into the very paradigm of piety, modesty and unassuming humility – “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of taking not even the lowest seat – no, I’ll just sit here on the floor, thank you, right here in the dirt, no, really don’t trouble about me, I don’t need even a bite to eat, you take the food, eat everything you like, I’ll just wait here, suffering silently, don’t give me a moment’s thought.”  And secretly we’re congratulating ourselves – “What a humble person I am!  Aren’t I selfless and pure and spiritually advanced!” – and essentially claiming the seat of honor.

The surprise, of course, is that there is nothing grim or gloomy or self-hating or secretly self-aggrandizing about true humility.  Do you think that the people in Jesus’ parable who were sitting at the lowest place spent the whole meal picking at their food and hanging their heads in self-hatred, or congratulating themselves on being so holy?  I don’t think so.  As I imagine it, throughout our lives God sends us back to the lowest place, until finally we begin to notice that it is those who can happily sit at the lowest place who are truly free.  They are the ones who are no longer puffed up with pride.  They are the ones who have finally accepted the fact that they are utterly dependent on the grace of God.  They are the ones who claim nothing for themselves and who can then hear the tender words, “Friend, come up higher.”  It is when we are in that place of emptiness and poverty, that place of honest humility, that God in Christ touches us with love and fills us with joy.  Yes, when I awoke from my so-called “O.J. Simpson” dream, I was embarrassed and chastened and ashamed of my self-righteous pride, but in that moment of repentance and of finding myself in the lowest place, I also tasted a quiet joy, the relief of being set free from the desperate, endless tendency to pull myself up by putting someone else down.  There is joy in facing the truth: we are one with all human beings and with the merciful love of God. 

And so I imagine all of us finally coming to laugh and sing at the lowest place at the table.  The hunger in our hearts for status and recognition will have been satisfied at last: we will know that we dwell within the infinite embrace of God, within a circle of love that has no top and no bottom, no first and no last.  “Friend, move up higher,” the Host will say to us, but there will be no “higher”: the first will be last, and the last will be first, and the terms “first” and “last,” and “higher” and “lower,” will no longer have any meaning, for all of us will be drawn into the holy circle of love that invites all of us to the feast and that leaves no one out.    

We taste that feast this morning, as we come together to celebrate the Eucharist.  None of us has earned a place at this table.  None of us has done a thing to deserve to be here.  But we are all invited.  We are all welcome.  We are all loved to the end, whatever our status or lack of status in the world.  What a gift!  The kingdom of God is near.

1. “Confusion for Simpson kids ‘far from over'”, USA Today. February 12, 1997, cited by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_murder_case (retrieved on 8/31/13).

Fires of Love

Today’s Gospel is one of those startling passages that practically grabs you by the lapels and shakes you awake.  Forget about sliding into the pew on a quiet August morning and cruising through church half-asleep – Jesus’ words are urgent, edgy, and unsettling.  “I came to bring fire to the earth,” he cries, “and how I wish it were already kindled! … Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!  From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Luke 12:49, 51-53).

“Hey, what a sec!” we may be saying to ourselves.  “What’s going on here?  Isn’t Jesus supposed to be the Prince of Peace?” And if we’re thinking of dismissing this passage as something that the historical Jesus couldn’t possibly have said, we may be chagrined to learn that some contemporary New Testament scholars argue that the pointed sayings of Jesus – the ones we want to set aside because they make us uncomfortable – are often the very ones that are most historically accurate. 

Still, on the face on it, this is quite a prickly passage.  Heaven knows the earth already has enough fire to go around!  We see fire everywhere we look, and also within ourselves: fires of anger that can consume the soul, fires of lust that can fuel infidelity, jealousy, and revenge, fires of hatred that can tear communities and even entire nations apart.  Nearly every family I know has enough conflicts of its own without wanting Jesus to fan the flames of division. 

So what is this fire that Jesus longs so ardently to bring to the earth, and what sort of division does it bring?  It’s not the fire of anger, lust, or hatred; it’s not the fire of greed, possessiveness, or jealousy.  It’s the fire of divine love.  Jesus is on fire with the love of God that alone can quell the fire of hatred and that alone can bring true peace.  Jesus’ mission and quest and deepest longing is for God’s peace, God’s shalom – that Hebrew word that means not just the absence of strife or war, but well-being, wholeness, reconciliation with one another, with God, and with the whole creation.¹ 

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).  At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, Zechariah recognizes Jesus as the long-awaited peacemaker, as the Savior who came “to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79).  Near the end of Luke’s Gospel, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus stops those who are reaching for their swords.  When someone strikes the slave of the high priest and cuts off his ear, Jesus declares, “No more of this!” (Luke 22:51), a cry for peace that echoes down through the centuries.

The early church carried forward Jesus’ message of shalom.  Paul wrote in one letter, “Be at peace among yourselves” (1 Thessalonians 5:13), and in another, “Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual up-building” (Romans 14:19), and in another, “…agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Corinthians 13:11).  Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy is as timely now as it was then, when he advises his readers to “have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies: you know that they breed quarrels” (2 Timothy 2:22b-23).

At the heart of Christian faith is a quest for peace, but what Jesus makes clear in today’s Gospel is that dedicating our selves to God’s peace, to God’s shalom means becoming a people of fire.  Fire is an ancient symbol of God’s presence and power (Gen 15:17, Ex 14:24, 19:18, Deut 4:11, 5:22-24, Isaiah 30:27), and Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire (Luke 3:16).  At Pentecost, when the disciples receive the Holy Spirit in all fullness, “tongues, as of fire” (Acts 2:3) appear among them and rest on each of them.  Divine love is like fire: it warms, it illumines, and it also purifies, burning away everything that is false, deceitful, and impure, everything that is less than love.

How do we tend the divine fire that we received in baptism and that longs to blaze up within us?  Tending the fire of divine love has an inner aspect and an outer aspect, and I’d like to say a word about each. Inwardly, we tend the fires of love by cultivating a loving awareness of ourselves.  For instance, we try to become more mindful of our motives: what was it that impelled me to say that thing just now?  Was I motivated by love or by something else?  Cultivating the fire of loving awareness leads many of us to take time to sit in quiet prayer.  If we want to strengthen the fire of awareness, we’ll need stretches of time in which to steady our busy minds and to notice more accurately the whole drama that is going on inside us – the stories that we’re telling ourselves, the thoughts that preoccupy us, the often harsh judgments we make against other people and ourselves.  We’ll need time to listen for the inner voice of love that is always sounding beneath the surface, time to feel the holy love that burns in our hearts like a gentle fire. 

As we sit, we will probably notice all kinds of unhelpful attachments – maybe a need to be praised and liked, a fear of being criticized or found lacking, or an incessant comparing of ourselves to other people, to see how we measure up.  I wonder how many social situations look outwardly peaceful because so many of us are trying so hard to look good, to fit in, and to be accepted, and are so afraid of speaking about our vulnerable places, and about what really matters to us.  In our families we may be so eager to get along “peacefully” with each other that we never face the hard truths of alcoholism or abuse or betrayal. We may avoid speaking our truth, for fear of upsetting those who are closest to us.  Or we may try to fit in by joining the complainers, the ones who tend to look for what’s wrong and who’s wrong.  We’ll join in criticizing someone else to show that we’re angry, too!

But if we want to live with integrity and to love ourselves and others well, we’ll have to quit being so invested in what other people think of us.  We’ll have to quit comparing ourselves to other people, quit being so enmeshed in their opinions.  We’ll have to grow in detachment.  We’ll have to stop as we enter the door of relationship, and to reflect on our intentions, needs and motives. 

There is a wonderful story about how the early Desert Fathers trained their students to love wholeheartedly by learning to die to self and to neighbor.²  A seeker came to Macarius the Egyptian, the great abbot of the monastery at Scete, and asked him how to become holy.  The abbot told him to go to the nearby cemetery and to hurl insults at the dead, to yell at them for all he was worth, even to throw stones at them. “The young man thought this strange, but did as he was told and then returned to his teacher. ‘What did they say to you?’ Macarius asked. ‘Nothing,’ the brother replied. ‘Then go back tomorrow and praise them,’ answered the abbot, ‘calling them apostles, saints, and righteous men.  Think of every compliment you can.’ The young man once more did as he was told, then returned to the cloister, where Macarius asked, ‘What did they say this time?’ ‘They still didn’t answer a word,’ replied [the seeker]. ‘Ah, they must indeed be holy people,’ said Abba Macarius. ‘You insulted them and they did not reply. You praised them and they did not speak.  Go and do likewise, my friend, taking no account of either the scorn of [people] or their praises.’”

That’s what holy detachment looks like, when we’re set free from the ego’s anxious impulse to make an idol of being recognized or praised, of belonging or of fitting in. When Jesus speaks of coming to bring not peace, but division, I interpret that as Jesus coming to root out or burn away everything in us and between us that is false and unjust, everything that inhibits real love.  Upheaval of the old order can be divisive, messy, and painful, but out of that holy disruption, God’s shalom — a deeper, more inclusive peace – is born.

The same holds true in the outer world, as well.  We tend the fire of divine love when we are faithful to God’s longing for the flourishing of life not only within ourselves, our families and our immediate communities, but also in the wider world.  Often enough, standing up for God’s shalom means going against the grain and provoking controversy.  It means refusing to settle for a status quo in which the poor go hungry, landfills overflow, lakes die, entire species disappear, gas-guzzlers foul the air, and the global climate is scorched.  Many of you are engaged in that shared struggle for shalom.  I see it in your witness against drone violence and excessive militarism, in your service to the homeless and the hungry, your search for a just peace in the Middle East, your support of a school in Haiti, your quest to save farmland and open space, your opposition to casino gambling in western Massachusetts, your effort to raise your children in an atmosphere of kindness and respect.

And here is Jesus, living for us, dying for us, rising for us, standing with us and calling us to a life of fire, to a life of inner and outer transformation dedicated to the healing and wellbeing of all, even when such a life creates division and disrupts the powers-that-be. 

John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century mystic, wrote a poem that begins with these lines:

O living flame of love
That tenderly wounds my soul
In its deepest center! 

I invite you in the silence to sense that living flame of love within you, to let it tenderly wound your soul in its deepest center.  Among all the fires of this world, only one can redeem us, the fire of love.³

1. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, abridged in one volume by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1985, p. 209.

2. Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 169, citing Apophthegmata Patrum, The Sayings of the Fathers, Macarius the Great, 23, in Patres Graeci 65.272C.

3. T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” The Four Quartets: “The only hope, or else despair/ Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre — /To be redeemed from fire by fire.” Also: “We only live, only suspire/ Consumed by either fire or fire.”