Author Archives: mbj

Ascension and the Time of In-Between

My son Sam came home this week after his first year in college. He brought with him not just several large duffel bags, his tennis rackets, textbooks, and a great heap of dirty laundry, but also a book that he has been reading: God Is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchins. ¹ You may have heard of it — it is one of several bestsellers on atheism attracting readers across the country. As you can imagine, within 24 hours of Sam’s arrival, he and his father and I were engaged in a lively debate about atheism and religious faith. Can a Christian believe in evolution? Is religion to blame for most of the wars and violence in human history? Is religious faith nothing more than childish wish fulfillment? Is God man-made, just a construct of the human mind?

These are worthy questions to tackle, although it may relieve you to know that I am not going to take two hours and address them now. What I do want to say is that this morning seems a good time at least to mention the existence of such questions. Today is the last Sunday of the Easter season, the Sunday after the Ascension, and the disciples’ vivid encounters with the Risen Christ have come to an end. For forty days after that first Easter morning, the disciples have had a series of startling, joy-filled, hands-on experiences in which they touched, and talked, and ate with Jesus, who was filled with and shining with a divine life that the New Testament calls “resurrection.” And then the risen Jesus withdraws from the disciples’ sight. He no longer dwells bodily on earth with his disciples, and they have not yet received the gift and power of the Holy Spirit, whose arrival we celebrate next week at Pentecost. This ten-day period between the Ascension and Pentecost is an in-between time. The old ways of knowing God in Christ have come to an end, and the new way has not yet come.

This seems a good period to dedicate to atheists, agnostics, and seekers everywhere for whom not just Jesus has withdrawn from sight, but also many aspects of the Christian tradition, and maybe Christianity itself. The ten-day span between the Ascension and Pentecost is a gift for all of us — including devout Christians — who have come to a point in our lives when particular Christian doctrines or beliefs for one reason or another now seem opaque, confusing, remote, or completely unintelligible. A religious conviction that we once held dear; a way of imagining God that once made sense to us; an approach to prayer that we once found meaningful — suddenly no longer has any juice. We no longer find it adequate or convincing. The old way of knowing God has gone and the new way has not yet come, and we may feel lost, stranded, anxious, even bereft. “Do not leave us comfortless!” — those are the poignant, candid words of today’s Collect. What once gave us spiritual comfort and meaning has been withdrawn, and here we are on our own, casting about for what is true and lasting and real.

Is there something wrong with us if we find ourselves in this situation? Only if we think that religion requires us to march in lockstep, eyes in front, with no permission to look around and ask questions, as if we were cogs in a machine. But of course we are not cogs in a machine. We are living beings with a living faith, and a living faith behaves like everything else that is alive — it ebbs and flows, it grows and changes, it takes in and it lets go. If we believed at forty exactly the same things about God and the world that we believed at the age of ten, then we would rightly suspect that something in the development of our faith had gone awry. Being willing to bear the discomfort of letting go long-held convictions and certainties and to enter uncharted territory is a necessary part of growing into spiritual adulthood. Spiritual maturity depends as much on un-learning as on it does on learning.

So how do we move forward in faith if we find ourselves in an in-between time? How do we respond to the atheists and agnostics of the world, or to the atheist or agnostic that may be speaking in our own heart? One way is to use our heads and to read works of contemporary theology that help us to grasp and to speak about our faith in more sophisticated terms. Reason and the analytic mind can be good tools for taking our faith to the next level and to communicating it more convincingly to a skeptical world.

But sometimes our deepest knowledge of God comes not through ideas but through prayer, not through explanations of doctrine but through the felt wisdom that speaks through our whole body-self — through our feelings, intuition, and imagination, and through the silence of contemplation. We do want to think critically about our faith; we do want our faith to make sense; we do not want to be ignorant or naive. But at the same time we do not need to limit our knowledge of God to what can be grasped by the most rational little corner of the left side of our brains. As the writer and social activist Joanna Macy likes to say, we are not brains on a stick. We have our whole body-self as a resource for connecting with God.

This is where prayer comes in as way to open us to the vast mystery of God when our ideas of God have become too small. I am talking now about a particular kind of prayer — not prayer that is full of words, however useful verbal prayers can be for spelling out our relationship with God and for naming what we fear and love and long for. I am talking about the kind of prayer that takes place beyond words or below words, the kind of prayer in which not just our thinking mind is engaged but our whole embodied self as we listen intently in silence for the presence of God.

Today’s Gospel gives us a clue about how to pray in an in-between time when the old certainties have fallen away and the new has not yet come. The whole seventeenth chapter of John, from which this morning’s passage is taken, is devoted to Jesus’ final prayer before his crucifixion. In this passage he prays for his disciples and for us, and in the very first line he prays, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world” [John 17:6]. “I have made your name known.” How has Jesus made known God’s name? By bearing the divine name himself. The most powerful disclosure of Jesus’ identity in the Gospel of John may not be how he completes his various “I am” statements — I am the good shepherd, I am the vine, I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world — but in the stark way that he names himself to the woman at the well: “I am.” That is Jesus’ name, and that is God’s name, too. I AM. That is how God names God’s self to Moses: “I AM WHO I AM” [Exodus 3:14]. The word is translated in different ways: I AM WHAT I AM. I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE. As God says to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, I AM has sent me to you” [Exodus 3:14].

I AM is a mysterious word, suggesting a dynamic, irrepressible flow of being, the very fountain and source of being itself, as if God is more like a living process than a static thing, more like a verb than a noun. The name for God in Hebrew — what we typically pronounce as Yahweh — is actually four consonants — YHWH — that cannot be pronounced at all, for in Judaism the name of God is too holy to be uttered aloud. The only way to say the divine name is to breathe it, one syllable at a time. YHWH. YHWH. Try it. YHWH. Each in-breath is an inhalation of God, and each out-breath is an exhalation of God. YHWH. YHWH. With every breath in, we breathe in God. With every breath out, we breathe out God. YHWH — God in our lungs, on our tongue, on our lips. No thoughts of God, no ideas about God, just God breathing through us, the holy Breath of Life. YHWH. YHWH. God fills each breath.

Try that sort of breath prayer for a while — maybe using the name YHWH, or the name Jesus, or any other word that expresses your intention to be with God — and before long our busy minds grow quiet. Just as Jesus left the earth when he ascended into heaven, so we leave behind our thoughts about Jesus, our thoughts about God. Whatever we think about God and Jesus is irrelevant, because we are not thinking any longer; we are simply being with God, simply breathing God.

What happens when we give some time to praying like this with a patient, innocent openness to whatever comes? Eventually we may discover that everything in us has been gathered up — our thoughts and feelings, our convictions and doubts — and all of it is has been drawn into the heart of God. Where we are, God is. Where God is, we are. It is as if we have stepped into the Trinity and are experiencing within ourselves the flow of love that is always circulating between God the Father and God the Son through God the Holy Spirit — or, to use St. Augustine’s words for the Trinity: the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love that flows between. That is the promise of contemplative prayer: that we don’t have to settle for ideas about God, or thinking about God, but can actually have an experience of God.

Maybe that is our best response to the atheists and agnostics within us and around us: to take the Ascension seriously and to know that there is a time to let everything go, to relinquish our ideas about God and to abide in the holy Mystery for a while. That is a good way to live in an in-between time, too: to pray patiently in the darkness of not-knowing, trusting that love will find us and return in unexpected power to set our hearts on fire.

1. Christopher Hitchins, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, NY: Twelve, Hachette Brooke Group/Warner, 2007.

“Lift up your eyes, and live”

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
– John 3:14

The Fourth Sunday of Lent goes by many names. Among Roman Catholics, it is traditionally known as Laetare Sunday, from the opening words of the Latin Mass that are used on this day, “Laetare, Jerusalem” — “Rejoice, Jerusalem.” Among Anglicans, today is often called Refreshment Sunday. Whatever you call it, today marks the mid-point of Lent. We are more than halfway through this season of repentance and self-examination, and we know where we are heading — toward the joy of Easter.

So I find it interesting that on this Sunday for refreshment, this Sunday for rejoicing, our assigned readings from Hebrew Scripture and from the Gospels focus directly or indirectly on the cross. These two passages are in fact the same ones that we hear in September on Holy Cross Day. We may associate the cross with a lot of things, but I don’t expect that the first thing that springs to mind is “refreshment” or “rejoicing.” So what is that about? Can we find refreshment in the cross?

In the first reading, which is from the Book of Numbers, the people are wandering in the wilderness. They have escaped from slavery in Egypt but have not yet reached the Promised Land, and they are impatient and tired and losing trust in God. Sure, God has taken care of them again and again along the way. When they grew hungry, God gave them a mysterious kind of bread called manna that fell during the night with the dew. When they became thirsty, God made water gush out for them from a rock. But the people are fretful and rebellious, full of discontent, and now, in the last of a long series of complaint stories, the people rail not only against Moses but also against God. Later on, the Psalms will look back fondly on manna as being “the bread of angels” (Psalm 78:15), but to the people wandering in the wilderness it is wretched, boring stuff, and they announce to Moses, “we detest this miserable food” (Numbers 21:5).

At this point the Lord gets angry at their persistent complaints and sends “poisonous serpents” that bite and wound and even kill many people. The wanderers quickly repent and appeal to Moses to pray for them. Moses prays and the Lord relents – though not by making the snakes disappear, but by giving the people a practice or discipline that overcomes the power of the snake. God tells Moses what he needs to do, and Moses carries out God’s instruction: he makes a serpent of bronze and puts it up on a pole, “and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live” (Numbers 21:9). This story, by the way, is the source of the medical symbol of a snake on a pole.

You might ask, what do our ancestors see when they look up at that bronze serpent? They see what most frightens them, what most disgusts and appalls them, the thing that is hurting and killing them. They see a terrifying reminder of suffering and death. They also see a reminder of their own sin, for the reason the snakes came upon them in the first place is because the people were rebelling against God. Snakes, in fact, are a biblical image of sin. Just think of Eve, tempted by the trickster snake in the Garden of Eden, or of Jesus denouncing the scribes and Pharisees as “snakes” and a “brood of vipers” (Mt 23:33). In the Book of Revelation, the Devil himself is called “that ancient serpent” (Rev. 20:2).

So, as the people gaze on the serpent of bronze, they see an image of death. They see an image of sin. They contemplate their broken relationship with God. And they see something else, too: they see the boundless goodness and mercy of God, because they instantly understand that a power greater than snakes and sin has set this image before them. As they gaze on this fearful thing that God has lifted up before their frightened, guilty eyes, they are restored to life. They are healed and made whole.

I wonder if this act of gazing may be a kind of spiritual analogue to homeopathy, the practice in alternative medicine of treating a patient by exposing the patient to a tiny dose of a substance that in large quantities would produce the very symptoms from which the patient needs to be healed. Or maybe we can compare the story to smallpox vaccinations: doctors inoculate their patients against the disease by giving patients a dose of a live virus from the same family as smallpox. Or think of the announcement earlier this week of a small study that showed that when scientists gave children who were highly allergic to peanut butter a tiny amount of peanut flour every day, the children’s sensitivity to peanuts gradually decreased, and a few children were even healed of the allergy. Whatever your opinion of homeopathy or vaccinations or the best way to deal with peanut allergies, my point is that maybe they give something of a physical analogue to the spiritual truth that this story conveys: God lifts up for the people an image, an icon, of what frightens and could actually kill them, and in the act of what we might call contemplative gazing, the people are healed.

Now set this story beside the passage in the Gospel of John. Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, has come to Jesus by night to meet this man who has come from God. In explaining why he has come, Jesus mentions the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up in the wilderness, and declares that he, too, will be lifted up in order to show God’s boundless, steadfast love for the world. For Christians, it is Jesus lifted up on the cross that conveys our healing. When we gaze at the cross of Christ, we see everything that we are afraid of, everything that is sinful and broken and shameful and spoiled, and at the very same time we also see God’s perpetual, outpouring love for the world.

I don’t know how many of you spend time gazing at the cross, apart from Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Only some of us carry a cross in our pocket or on a necklace around our neck. Fewer still have placed a cross on a wall at home, maybe because of not wanting to look morbid or not wanting to seem embarrassingly pious. But the pair of readings this morning point to the healing power of gazing at the cross. Today’s Gospel tells us that Jesus was “lifted up [so] that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:15). And as Jesus says later in John’s Gospel: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people (all things) to myself” (John 12:32).

So what do we see when we look at the cross? We see everything we are afraid of. Most of us want to live out a comfortable life and not suffer when we die. We want to live what we think of as our allotted fourscore years and ten – or maybe more. We want to die peacefully in our beds, with our loved ones standing by and murmuring nice things. When we look at Jesus dying an agonizing death on the cross, we look squarely at suffering and death, at violence and torture, at rejection and humiliation, at poverty and helplessness – at everything, in fact, that frightens us and does us harm. And we see that all of it has been taken up by Jesus, that all of it has been embraced by God. There is nowhere we can go, nothing that we can experience, that God in Christ does not share with us. Even our sin, even our willfulness, self-centeredness, and greed, our impatience and envy, our laziness and despair – all of that, and more, is met on the cross by the love of God, by the one who says, “Father, forgive.”

Christ came down to earth and was lifted up on the cross for our healing, so that we too could be set free from the fear of death, free from the grip of sin, and raised to new life in him. Every time we lift our eyes to the cross, we have a chance to hand over our fears, to confess our sins, and, through the grace of God, to begin to live no longer for ourselves alone, but for the one who lived and died and rose for us. That is refreshment, indeed. That is reason to rejoice. No wonder we call this Refreshment Sunday!

As we move through these last weeks of Lent, I invite us, as a spiritual practice, to turn to the cross whenever we feel afraid or overwhelmed, tempted or confused, whenever we need again to take in the healing love of God. Let me also add that there is particular power in remembering the cross just now, because we are all living in a time of extraordinary turbulence. As Rob mentioned in his sermon last week, writer Thomas Friedman recently quoted a business expert who dubbed this chaotic time as the beginning of the so-called Great Disruption. ¹ Friedman argues that historians will look back on the year 2008 as the year that a civilization based on living beyond its financial means and living beyond its ecological means finally hit the wall.

Set this crisis in the light of the cross, and we understand it as a moment of judgment, a moment of reckoning. Our society’s recent way of living – what the Episcopal bishops of this Church decry in their new pastoral letter as “unparalleled corporate greed and irresponsibility, predatory lending practices, and rampant consumerism” ² – is not a way of living that is in any way close to the cross. As a society, we are all being invited into Lent, into a season of self-examination and repentance. I hope that in prayer we will bring not only ourselves to the cross, but our country, as well, so that what needs to die can die, and what needs to be transformed, can be transformed, and that together we can find healing, and be renewed, and discover a path to new life.

1. Phrase by Paul Gilding, as quoted by Thomas L. Friedman, “The Inflection Is Near?” New York Times, March 7, 2009. [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html]

2. “A Pastoral Letter from the Bishops of the Episcopal Church” meeting in Hendersonville, North Carolina, March 13-18, 2009 to the Church and our partners in mission throughout the world. [http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_106036_ENG_HTM.htm]

“Oh yes, you did laugh”

When I chose the readings for this service, I couldn’t resist including the wonderful story of the Lord visiting Abraham and Sarah by the oaks of Mamre.  I don’t think there’s any story in all of Scripture that is so filled with laughter.  Abraham – a hundred years old if he’s a day – is drowsing by the entrance of his tent in the noonday heat when he suddenly sees three men standing nearby.  Abraham doesn’t realize that they are angels representing the Lord himself, but he’s a generous host, so he scrambles to his feet – never mind his creaky back or arthritic knees – and runs to greet them.  Bowing before the strangers, he offers them water to wash their feet, a comfortable spot to rest under the oak trees, and a little something to eat.  Together with Sarah, he sets out to serve his guests a feast.

Then comes the funny bit.  This act of hospitality is met with a promise so patently absurd that Sarah, who is secretly listening at the entrance to the tent, bursts out laughing.  Her husband is 100 years old and she is 90.  They are no spring chickens, either one of them, so how can their pleasant but obviously rather obtuse guests expect the two of them to bear a child?  When in the preceding chapter God made the same promise to Abraham, Abraham found it so funny that he “fell on his face and laughed” [bbllink]Gen. 17:17[/bbllink].  Now it’s Sarah’s turn to enjoy the joke.  Of course, when the Lord asks about it, she denies that she laughed, maybe for fear of causing offense, but the Lord knows the truth, and I can imagine the twinkle in his eye and his wagging finger when he says, “Oh yes, you did laugh” [bbllink]Gen. 18:15[/bbllink].

God’s generosity is unbounded; it’s astonishing; it’s absurd.  For – what do you know? – Sarah does get pregnant.  As we read a few chapters later, her newborn son is named Isaac, which means: “he laughs.”  Sarah explains it this way: “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me” [bbllink]Gen. 21:6[/bbllink].  The laughter of disbelief has become the laughter of joy.

The scene of the three angels feasting under the oak trees of Mamre – a scene that ends with such blessing and delight – inspired the Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev to write an icon in 1410 that is often called the Icon of the Trinity.  I’m sure you’ve seen it: three figures with golden halos are seated around a table, bending toward a chalice filled with wine.  Rublev portrays Abraham and Sarah’s meal as prefiguring the Eucharist, that sacred meal in which every Christian encounters the triune God afresh.  As the viewer gazes into the icon from the open space at the table, you gradually come to realize that the table has been set for a fourth person.  It has, in fact, been set for you.  You are the one who makes the scene complete.  You are the one who is invited to share in the life of God, to share the feast, to share the laughter and the joy.

During this retreat we have been considering what resources Christian theology and practice might offer us in the face of the environmental crisis now unfolding in our midst, and my short list of essential Christian resources would have to include the sacrament of Holy Communion.  

It is here at this table that we receive the simple elements of bread and wine and realize with astonishment that these apparently ordinary things – like Nature herself – are actually filled with God. 

It is here at this table that we learn to eat mindfully, to take God’s creatures of bread and wine into our hands with reverence and a grateful heart.

It is here at this table that we share the one loaf and one cup and discover that a bit of bread can be enough and a sip of wine can fill us.  We don’t have to grab for more; we don’t have to be greedy “consumers” who must constantly replenish ourselves with material things in order to reassure ourselves that we matter or that we exist.   At this table we discover that in sharing what we have, our hearts are satisfied at last.  

It is here at this table that God gives God’s self to us and we in turn give ourselves to God.  There is no greater joy than this, no greater source of laughter.  It’s here at this table that our bonds with God in Christ, with each other, and with all Creation are restored and renewed.

What I just said is somewhat controversial, and I’d like to tell a story that I hope Bishop Bud won’t mind my telling.  Back in 2002, at a clergy day, Bishop Bud came up to me and said that the bishops of New England wanted to issue a pastoral letter on the environment.  It would be the first pastoral letter on the environment ever released by the Episcopal Church, and the first to be released by a Province, rather than a single diocese.

“Oh,” I said.  “Wonderful!”
“And,” he added, “we want you to write it.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yikes.”

I got to work, and Bud and the other bishops pulled together a group of clergy and lay people to help with the edits.  I wrote a draft that included a line saying that in the Eucharist, Christ restores our connection with God and one another and all Creation, received the approval of the committee, and sent the manuscript to the bishops.  Before long I got back an email from Bud.

Tom Shaw and I really like that line, he told me, but we know how carefully this document is going to be scrutinized and we don’t want it to be challenged on theological grounds.  Could you please leave that line out?

I went back to the committee with the edits that the bishops proposed, and Bud was at the meeting.  What do you think?  I asked everyone.

We can’t leave that line out, the people said.  Christ is the one through all things were made.  In his death and resurrection, he restores all things and heals all things and reconciles all things.  That is what we celebrate in the sacrament of Holy Communion. The line has to stay!

I looked over at Bud and he threw me a grin, and we left the line in.  It is part of the pastoral letter, “To Serve Christ in All Creation,” which the bishops of New England released six years ago.

I tell this story to illustrate how theology is often hammered out — in arguments and give and take.  And, God willing, our theology will continue to expand as our understanding of what Jesus Christ has done for us continues to expand.

I can’t think of a better remedy for the anxiety and dread that so often infect our hearts than to share Eucharist together.  More than one activist for social and environmental justice has turned to the Eucharist as an essential – maybe the essential – source of ongoing strength for the struggles they face. 

That has certainly been true for me.  On the morning of my arrest eight years ago in Washington, DC, I shared Eucharist with a dear friend.  As we ate the bread and drank from the cup, we dedicated the day ahead to God.  A few hours later I was in handcuffs and locked in a police wagon, and over the course of a very long afternoon and into the night was transferred from one jail to another, each one more apparently God-forsaken than the last, as if we were making our own small descent through Dante’s circles of hell.  By nightfall the group had been divided into a row of cells that ran along a corridor, and I found myself locked with fellow priest and environmental activist Sally Bingham in a small, dark space supplied with a dirty toilet and two bare, metal bunks painted olive green and etched with graffiti.  We were anxious and tired, and unsure how long we’d be confined.  Our nerves were frayed.

We hadn’t had anything to eat or drink all day, so when a guard appeared with stacks of bologna sandwiches and donuts wrapped in cellophane, along with Styrofoam cups of Kool-Aid, I took notice.  I was hungry, but I don’t eat meat and I can’t eat sugar, so I wasn’t sure what to do. Eventually I accepted a couple of bologna sandwiches, which the guard passed through a slot in the bars of the cell, and I asked for a glass of water.  I peeled off the bologna and gloomily studied the meal before me: bread and water.  Basic jail food, I guess, but it didn’t do much for me. 

Just then a friend called out from an adjoining cell, “Hey, watch out.  The bread’s moldy.”

With growing despair I examined my slice of bread.  I couldn’t see anything green on it, but it was too dark to get a good look.  All in all the bread looked fairly loathsome.  I took a quick bite, figuring that if I gulped it fast, maybe I wouldn’t notice my disgust.  But as the bread touched my tongue, I remembered the Eucharist that I had shared that morning with my friend.  I remembered how Jesus gives himself to us in the bread and the wine.  My disgust vanished, along with my sense of deprivation.  I took a second, slow bite of the bread and ate it with reverence.  I took a sip of water.  To my surprise, I suddenly saw that I had everything I needed.  My anxiety slipped away.  I was filled with gratitude and completely at peace.  I knew that I was free.  It didn’t matter that I was still in jail.  It didn’t matter that I had no idea when I’d get out.  None of that mattered a bit.  I was being fed from within, as if a river of joy was secretly flowing through me.

I looked around my cell in disbelief.  No, I wasn’t hallucinating.  I could see that everything was exactly as it was: the same bleak walls and metal bunk, the same rows of bars.  Nothing had budged.  But everything had changed.  It was as if my outward circumstances had suddenly fallen away, or as if they were filled with some hidden radiance.  Everything material seemed to open beyond itself, to be secretly as spacious as the wild Arctic wilderness.  The powers-that-be thought they had imprisoned me but actually I was free. 

I almost burst out laughing.

God greets an old man and an old woman in a meal, and God’s power and mercy spill out in the birth of a baby.  God greets us in the Eucharist, and like Abraham and Sarah before us, we rejoice at the rebirth of hope.  Abraham laughs, and Sarah laughs, and yes, we laugh, too.  Let your souls be fed today.  We have been invited to a feast.

Following the Star

Dear God, happy are the people whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.     Amen.

Who are the Wise Men?

Nobody knows. Some scholars say they were Zoroastrian priests from Persia. Others say they were Babylonian astrologers. Still others say they were astronomers or philosophers. Despite the familiar hymn, “We Three Kings,“ the Gospel never tells us that they were kings or that there were three of them — all it says is that “wise men from the east“ [Mt 2:1] brought three gifts for the Christ child. Matthew’s Gospel — the only Gospel in which these travelers appear — also does not mention their names or their homeland. We can only guess whether they travelled from Arabia or Mesopotamia, or from lands even further beyond. It was later Christian tradition that decided that there were three of them and that they were kings, and supplied them with names, physical descriptions, camels, and even the dates of their deaths. Their relics are said to have reached Cologne by the middle of the 12th century!

There is a lot that we don’t know about these travelers, but we do know this: the men are wise. I wonder what makes them wise. What is wisdom, anyway? I wonder if the story of the wise men can give us some clues about wisdom as we embark on our own journey into a new year. Maybe the wise men have a gift to give to us as well as to the Christ child.

Here’s what I see. One sign of wisdom: the men are on the move, on a search. However much they already know — and they are called “wise“ from the very start of the story, for evidently they have already learned a great deal– they want to know more. They know what they know, but they also know that there is much that they don’t know. There are truths that we can learn only when we move beyond our comfort zone, and maybe the quest for truth, the quest for God will always take us beyond ourselves, out of a fixed place — our comfortable homeland — and to a place that is new. Wise men and wise women have the humility to admit that they don’t know everything there is to know, and are open to learning more.

So I see boldness in the wise men: they have the courage to set out to an unknown place, because they are fired with a desire to seek the truth. And I see humility in them, too, for to undertake such a journey they must be willing to ask questions (even directions!), to get lost sometimes, to make mistakes, to not know exactly where they are heading or what they will find when they get there. They have to be open to surprise, and heaven knows, the king they seek will turn out to be unlike any other king that they have ever known. The only way to find him is to keep their eyes on the star and to follow the road to God, wherever it leads.

And where does their journey take them? Right into the center of the City of Jerusalem, right into the very presence of King Herod, that brutal, desperate, fear-filled king who wants to cling to power. Herod recognizes in this newborn baby a threat to his rule, and he sets out to do the baby in. At first he works in secret, with sweet talk and lies: he gathers information about the child under the pretense of wanting to pay homage to him, that is, to bow down to the child in worship. He tries to trick the wise men into showing him where the baby can be found. Later on, when these covert operations fall through, Herod unleashes his brutality: he orders his soldiers to kill every child in or around Bethlehem who is two years old or under, and Mary and Joseph must scoop up the baby Jesus and take flight with him to Egypt.

In the midst of Herod’s rage and fear, what do the wise men do? They keep their eyes on the star. They resume their journey. They get back on the road and follow where the star is guiding them. And when they reach their destination, they are “overwhelmed with joy“ [Mt 2:10]. They enter the house, they see the child with Mary, they kneel in adoration, and they offer their gifts. When dream and intuition tell them that God does not want them to return to Herod, they go home by a different road.

Wisdom — it’s all about wisdom. Stay awake, the wise men seem to tell us. There is evil in this world. The voice of Herod is all around us and within us, speaking words of violence and fear, voices that say: Strike. Destroy. Starve. Kill. Voices that say: the only way to peace is to dominate and obliterate, to silence your enemy and to do everything possible to wipe him out. No, the wise men say. Keep your eyes on the star. Keep your eyes on God and bear witness to love. Follow where love is leading you, even if it takes you right into the heart of the world’s suffering and fear, but keep your eyes on the star. If Herod’s voice of hatred tries to coax you back to him, stay on the path of love, the path of peace. Do not return to Herod, but go home by a different road.

This story comes as a gift to us as we enter a new year and take stock of a world so torn by turbulence and hatred. It has been a terrible week in Gaza, with images of fire and blood, rockets and rubble, the sound of shrieks and the smell of fear. As Israeli warplanes pound Hamas targets in Gaza, as Hamas rockets explode in residential areas of Israel, as Israeli troops and tanks cross the border and begin a ground offensive, how in this turmoil and anguish do we keep our eyes on the star? How do we apply our hearts to wisdom? The tangled roots of today’s conflict in the Middle East wind far back into ancient history and deep into the psyche of Arabs and Jews. Who knows where the conflict first began? It seems to have gone on forever, as if it sprang straight from our mythic ancestors, Cain and Abel. In the long years since, both sides have inflicted great suffering on each other, and both sides have endured great suffering, experiencing their own slaughter of the innocents. Both sides have made mistakes, and members of both sides have been driven by fear and rage to the desperate conviction that only violence and retaliation will keep their children safe.

Can we who watch this horror keep our eyes on the star? Can we find ways to call forth the good that is in both sides, to embrace the wisdom that is in both sides, to help each side to look up and see again the star that is shining above them, and shining still within them? The light that is in us is so much brighter than we know, and for all the darkness that surrounds us — for all the violence and the clamor for revenge that fill the world around, for all the fear and hatred that may fill our own hearts, too — for all the Herods around us and within us that counsel rage or despair — the star of love is still shining. We must keep our eyes on that star.

What can we do?

We can try to stop the killing, try to stop both sides from tearing each other apart, and call for a ceasefire.

We can send aid to Gaza, and in your leaflet there is information about how to send money to the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, which is run by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, and where the suffering and need are great. ¹

We can call for vigorous diplomacy to secure a just and lasting peace with a two-state solution, so that both Israelis and Palestinians can achieve the security that both sides so need and deserve. Your leaflet tells you how to sign the Ecumenical Christian Letter to President-Elect Obama, which urges just that. ²

And we can pray – pray that the light of God will enlighten all hearts, pray that God’s mercy and justice will prevail, pray that the suffering will ease and that all peoples will find their path to peace. Next Wednesday we will begin a five-week series on the Holy Land, and I pray that in our discussions — as in everything else we do, wherever we find ourselves, wherever we go — I pray that we will listen with the open-heartedness and humility of the wise men, who, in their quest for truth, were open to learning what they did not know and who, even in the midst of trouble, always kept their eyes on the star.

Let us pray.

O Jesus, be with us as we travel into the fullness of God, that, following your star, we may not wander in the darkness of this world’s night, but may find in you a home, and, as the wise men did, may come at last to kneel before you, overwhelmed with joy. ³     Amen.

1. Send your donation to American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem (AFEDJ), Box 2040, Orange CA 92859 or visit www.americanfriends-jerusalem.org to donate on-line.

2. For more information and to sign, visit: http://action.cmep.org/t/4030/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=173

3. Adapted from Mozarabic Sacramentary, as cited in Prayers for Every Occasion, ed. Frank Colquhoun, Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, 1967, p. 42.

Daring to Say Yes

This has been a season of interruption and disruption. First came the most damaging ice storm in decades, felling trees and downing power lines, followed shortly thereafter by a big snowstorm. Just as we finished shoveling out the driveway, along comes today’s storm. Meanwhile, the restoration project is close to completion, and the final throes of the creative process require a certain amount of upheaval: some of the hallways and offices in the Old Rectory have been helter-skelter as we drag furniture hither and yon, find new uses for old spaces, and prepare to move into spaces that are new. Did I mention the financial uncertainty that stirs up so many minds, or the disruptions of accident, illness, or quarrels? Disruptions are all around us, and they are uncomfortable, and they sharpen our longing. O come, O come, electricity! O come, O come, certificate of occupancy! O come, O come, some semblance of order!

But — talk about disruption! Check out this morning’s Gospel. The angel comes to Mary and announces a great disruption in Mary’s life: she will conceive and bear a son; she will name him Jesus — that is, the one who saves. He will be called the Son of the Most High, and his kingdom will have no end. Mary will conceive not by a man but by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, and the child to be born will be holy; he will be called the Son of God.

We have heard this story so many times that we may not be able to imagine Mary’s shock, or to feel any particular suspense when it comes to awaiting her answer to the angel. We know what Mary will say. She will say yes — she always says yes — because that’s how the story goes! Besides, some theologians claim that Mary had to say yes, that her soul was so pure that the possibility of her saying no was out of the question, that God in fact chose Mary to conceive and give birth to Jesus precisely because in her goodness and purity, she would be incapable of saying no to God. But I will take my place alongside the theologians who say that Mary could very well have said no, just as our answer to God can be no. This seems a good day to talk about our freedom to say no, our freedom to say yes, in the midst of the disruptions of our lives.

I have been watching trailers of a movie that opened around here this weekend, Jim Carrey’s new comedy “Yes Man.” I can’t vouch for the movie or say that it is worth seeing — I haven’t seen it, and so far the reviews are mixed — but I find the premise of the movie quite interesting. It seems that the character played by Jim Carrey is trapped in a life in which he is perpetually saying no. Because he has been hurt in a relationship, he has decided to hunker down and hide out, and to every invitation that comes his way — to every possibility, to every opportunity — his answer is always no. Nope, he’s not going to do it. No, he is not interested, he is not the type, he hasn’t the time, he can’t be bothered, no.

The movie’s turning point comes when he is challenged by some kind of guru to transform his life by saying yes. Jim Carrey’s character makes a covenant to say yes for one year to every request that comes his way, however ridiculous the request may be, and the rest of the movie shows what happens when he unleashes in his life the power of saying yes.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I expect that what makes it funny is not just watching the antics of Jim Carrey as he takes up flying lessons or becomes fluent in Korean or bungee jumps off a bridge, but that he is constrained to say yes, he has to say yes, he now says yes as automatically as he once said no. Theorists of comedy — for instance, Henri Bergson — tell us that one of the things that makes us laugh is watching human beings act as predictably and mechanically as machines. A clown runs across a circus ring and slips on a banana peel. The audience laughs. The clown, unhurt, gets up, brushes himself off, resumes running, heads again toward the banana peel, and — we know what is coming, we know what is going to happen — he slips on it again. We laugh even harder. Clowns and comics revel in showing us that doing the predictable, habitual thing over and over can get pretty funny. So it is funny when Jim Carrey has to say no, and it is funny when he has to say yes.

But of course that is not where freedom lies. Doing the predictable thing over and over again provides good material for comedians, but it is also the stuff of suffering and sorrow. Saying a repetitive, compulsive no can trap us in a constricted little place, but so can saying a repetitive, compulsive yes. I’ve probably told you that I tend to say to yes to too many requests, and years ago as a spiritual discipline I intentionally spent the forty days of Lent doing the very opposite of what Jim Carrey does in the latter part of his “Yes Man” movie: I said no to every request that came my way, for that was my path to freedom, my path to fullness of life. I needed to learn how to give a bold and whole-hearted no if I was ever going to learn how to give a free and whole-hearted yes.

So I like to imagine that Mary felt no compulsion to say no and no compulsion to say yes. I imagine that she listened deeply to the angel from within the freedom of her heart. I imagine that the words of the angel dropped as gently as a pebble into the depths of her pure soul, and that she took what the angel was announcing as an invitation, not a command. What would she say to the angel? How would she reply? Here on the brink of Christmas, on the last Sunday of Advent, we stand on tiptoe to hear what Mary will say.

The angel is waiting beside you, Mary, and we are waiting, too. Mary, dear Mary, how will you answer the angel’s impossible request? The whole world has been waiting for this moment, and not just for a few weeks, not just for a season, but for generations, for centuries, throughout the whole long course of human history. How long humanity has waited, O Lord, how long we have waited for you to come in great power among us to set things right — to find the lost and heal the broken, to bring good news to the poor, to give sight to the blind and to let the oppressed go free, to bring peace to the nations and peace to our restless hearts. O come, O come, Emmanuel! When will you come?

O Mary, dear Mary, what will you say to the angel?

We don’t just want electricity when the lights go out — we want to see the Light of the World [John 8:12].

We don’t just want to finish a building or to make order in our homes — we want God to make a home with us [Mt. 1:23].

We don’t just want to be financially secure — we want to touch the rock of our salvation [1 Cor. 10:4].

We don’t just want physical healing for ourselves or for someone we love

— we want to meet the Savior who brings eternal life [1 John 1:2; 5:20].

O Mary, we stand with you today because we long for our Savior and because we, too, want to be mothers of God. We want God’s presence and power to be born afresh in our ailing world. We want the love of God to shine out from our eyes and to be expressed through our hands. We want our own little words to convey the very Word of God, so that what we say leads us and those around us toward reconciliation, not estrangement, toward love and forgiveness, not toward indifference and hate.

Dear Mary, the angel is bending close to you, waiting for your reply, and the angel is bending close to us, too, waiting for ours. Will we give ourselves in love to this moment — fully and without reserve, holding nothing back? Will we say yes to the Christ that longs to be born in our hearts?

It is a brave thing to open oneself to love in a world that is so full of anxiety and hate.

It is a beautiful thing to make space to listen inwardly for God, when the world around us wants to cram us full of ego-centered projects and ambitions, with the din and distractions of shopping and entertainment.

It is a daring thing to say yes to hope, yes to new life, in the face of the world’s despair.

When it is spoken in freedom, yes is such a powerful word, a word of acceptance and assent. Yes, I will take a chance. Yes, I will seize an opportunity. Yes, I will do the unexpected thing. Yes, I will open my heart to love, even if the cost is great. Yes, I will take the first step, even though I can’t see the end of the path and can’t possibly know where my yes will lead. Yes, I will say yes freely, because only in freedom, can my yes really be yes. There are times when love calls us to say no, but when love calls us to say yes, what will we say?

O Mary, what will you say to the angel? Help us to say yes with you. Help us to give birth to the Christ that longs to be born in this gathered community and in the secret depths of our souls.

I invite us to take a few moments in silence and to listen inwardly, as Mary listened, and — in freedom, if we feel led to do so — to pray in silence the words that Mary spoke: Yes. Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.

The World is One

Jesus is in trouble again. The Pharisees are out to get him, just as they were in the story we heard last week, when they threw him a trick question about paying taxes to Caesar. Later that same day some Sadducees confronted Jesus and tried to trip him up in a debate about the resurrection. When the Sadducees were silenced, the Pharisees gathered in a third attempt to trap Jesus – and that’s the story that we hear today. “One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” [Matthew 22:34-35]

The way that Matthew’s Gospel tells the story, the question is not asked out of a sincere desire to understand what Jesus is thinking or to connect with him as a person – it is posed from a place of challenge and suspicion, from that wary, critical, mistrustful place where we eye the other person and says, “Who does he think he is? Let’s get him.”

Sound familiar? It reminds me of the antagonistic atmosphere of these days before the Presidential election. Some of us have been unnerved by the degree of mockery and flat-out lies that has marked some of the political maneuvering – a method that stands at a polar opposite from what Paul describes as his approach to the people of Thessalonica, to whom, he writes, his appeal “does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery.” [1 Thessalonians 2:3]

Maybe “deceit” and “impure motives” and “trickery” are inevitable at this stage of a hard-fought election, but they are also a pretty good example of the general human temptation – even in the absence of an election – to treat other people not just as worthy opponents but as obstacles and enemies, as essentially different from us and our tribe, as objects either to be used for our own purposes or to be ignored and pushed aside. Ordinary human consciousness usually perceives things as separate: this is not that; this is separate from that; you are not my really my neighbor – fundamentally you are ‘other.’

So I imagine Jesus looking into the crowd of confused and hostile faces, and into my own face, too, and answering from the place deep within himself and deep within each of us where we are connected to God. Speaking clearly and with compassion, Jesus answers, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” [Matthew 22: 37-40]

The first verse that Jesus quotes is from Deuteronomy and part of a text called the Sh’ma, which begins “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” [Deuteronomy 6:4-5] This passage is called the Sh’ma – which means Hear or Listen in Hebrew – because that is the passage’s first word, and, as one commentator points out, it is “the basic and essential creed in Judaism, the sentence with which every Jewish service still opens, and the first text which every Jewish child commits to memory.” ¹

The second verse that Jesus quotes is from the passage of Hebrew Scripture that we heard this morning, Leviticus 19:18 – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus’ summary of the law is a completely orthodox, completely Jewish answer. Rabbis often debated which of the 613 distinct commandments in the Torah were the most important, and whether there was a primary commandment in whose light all the others could be understood. Rabbi Jesus is lifting up the same summary of the law – love of God and love of neighbor -that other rabbis had lifted up before, and it’s worth remembering that Jesus and the leaders of Judaism were arguing from within the same heritage of faith. Where they differed, where the tension between them arose, was in how to interpret that heritage of faith, and in who Jesus was.

For Jews and for Christians, and perhaps for people of every other religion as well, loving God and neighbor are completely interwoven. Unless we love our neighbor, our professed love of God is only pious fluff; unless we love God, our professed love of neighbor turns swiftly into co-dependence, into demanding from our neighbor the unconditional love that ultimately only God can give us.

It seems to me that this is why we come together every Sunday to worship: because we want to bring together all the scattered pieces of our lives and of the world that surrounds us. We want to dive beneath the surface differences that so often divide us, and to touch the living God who embraces everything within us and around us, and in whom everything is held together. Especially in the Eucharist, we discover again the deep unity at the heart of reality, that place where we know that everything is connected and that everything is lit up with love. If we want to help a neighbor, it’s no big deal, it’s not such a special thing, any more than it would be a big deal if with one hand I helped the other hand: they may be separate, but they are part of the same body – or if this finger helped that finger: they may be separate, but they are part of the same hand.

Remembering — and experiencing — our basic unity with God and one another is especially important at a time when so much of the world seems so bitterly divided. As religious people, our task is to hold in mind – to hold in heart – the totality of things, because then our thoughts and actions can spring from a deep root of wisdom.

Last year, during the Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue, Jews and Christians and Unitarians and people of other faiths walked across Massachusetts as a way of expressing our shared love for God and God’s Creation. By day we walked, and by night we stopped at various churches and at a Jewish temple for an evening program. One night near the end of the walk, Rabbi Sheila Weinberg led us in a chant written by Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center. ² The chant is based on the Sh’ma, and its purpose is to awaken our awareness that at every boundary, the world is one.

One of the words you will hear as we go along is the word “tzitzit,” which refers to the fringes of a prayer shawl traditionally worn by Jewish men, rather like the fringes you see hanging from the end of this stole.

I invite you to join me in the refrain, which is the first and last word of the opening sentence of the Sh’ma (Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one), four words, two in English and the same two words in Hebrew: Listen, one, Sh’ma, echad. Try it out: Listen, one, Sh’ma, echad.

You sing the refrain like this: ³

Listen… One…Sh’ma… echad…..

And while I speak the verses, you keep holding that note, and when you need to breathe, you take a breath and return to the sound…. Mmmm… and if you want to add a little harmony, you can hum another note that sounds nice….and we return to the refrain and chant together:

Listen… One…Sh’ma… echad…..

OK, here we go…. Mmmm…(Hold that note as I speak…)

And when we come to a doorway between the risky world and our safe homes, when we might believe these are two separate worlds – then we pause at the doorway to remember to remind ourselves:

Listen… One…Sh’ma… echad…..

And when we come to a doorway in time between our active rising up and our dreamy, sleepy lying down, when we might believe these are two separate worlds – then we pause at that moment to remember to remind ourselves:

Listen… One…Sh’ma… echad….

And when we look at our hands and experience our eyes, when we might believe these are two separate worlds, the world of observing, watching, and the world of doing, making – then we pause to bind our eyes and hands together, and we remember to remind ourselves:

Listen… One…Sh’ma… e’chad…

And when we come to the gateway of our cities, the boundary of our own cultures and communities, when we might believe these are two separate worlds – the world where everybody speaks my language and the language of those… barbarians out there – then we pause at that gateway to remember to remind ourselves:

Listen… One…Sh’ma… echad….

And when we look beyond all human life at those beings that do not speak at all – mountains and rivers, ozone and oak trees, beetles and krill – when we might say they live in an utterly separate world beyond us, on which we have no effect at all – then we pause to remember that the poison we feed to earth and air and water feeds us poison, and we remember to remind ourselves:

Listen… One…Sh’ma… echad….

And when we might assert one thing is certain, inside my skin I know what’s what but everything outside me is mysterious and alien – these are two separate worlds – then we look at the tzitzit on the edges of ourselves, we look at these fuzzy fringes made always of my own cloth and the Universe’s air, we look at these threads of connection that bind us to each other, and we pause at that moment to remember to remind ourselves:

Listen… One…Sh’ma… echad….

And when we come to that final doorway whose other side no one has ever seen, and we might think that the world of life and the world of death are two utterly separate worlds – then we pause at that doorway to remember to remind ourselves:

Listen… One…Sh’ma… echad….

1. William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2, revised edition, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975, p. 278.

2. Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Sh’ma: At Every Boundary, The World is One, The Shalom Center, http://www.shalomctr.org/node/230. Rabbi Weinberg used the refrain cited in the sermon; Rabbi Waskow’s refrain is entirely in Hebrew.

3. For information on shruti boxes, try http://www.shrutibox.com.