Author Archives: mbj

In Him It Is Always “Yes”

It may be tempting sometimes to think of church as a predictable place, a haven where the liturgy becomes soothingly familiar and nothing much ever changes and we can basically sit back and relax.  And then along come readings like the ones we heard this morning, readings that begin and end with surprise and that tell us that God is up to something new.  The first line of the first reading is that wonderful passage from Isaiah: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old; I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”  [Isaiah 43: 18].  And the last line of the last reading, Mark’s story of Jesus healing the paralytic, is the cry of amazement from crowds, “We have never seen anything like this!” 

“I am about to do a new thing.” “We have never seen anything like this!”  These opening and closing lines stand like brackets around today’s readings, like two open arms that hold the power of God to transform our lives.  And in the middle of the middle reading is a phrase that says it all: “in him it is always ‘Yes'” [2 Corinthians 1:19b].  Here’s what leads up to that line in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians: “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been ‘Yes and No.’ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.'” For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.'” [2 Corinthians 1:18-20].

That’s the core message of today’s readings: God’s word to us is Yes.  Yes, I love you.  Yes, I formed you for myself.  Yes, I will make a way in whatever wilderness you may be lost and wandering.  Yes, I will make rivers spring up in your desert.  Yes, I will free you from whatever is paralyzing your spirit and keeping you stuck.  Yes, I will forgive the sins that are burdening your soul.  Yes, I will put my seal on you and place my Spirit in your heart.  Yes, I am about to do a new thing.  Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  You have never seen anything like this.  My word to you is Yes.

As I reflected on these passages I found myself wanting to sit for a long time with that line: “in him it is always ‘Yes.'”  For the fact is: everyone knows what it’s like to hear the word No.  We know what it’s like to be disappointed.  We know what it’s like to come up against obstacles that we just couldn’t dodge, or to run into walls that stopped us in our tracks.  Maybe we heard No when it came to our dream of finding a life partner or our hope of conceiving a child. Maybe we heard that No when we lost a job or got a diagnosis, when our marriage fell apart or when someone close to us died. 

There are plenty of No’s we may be hearing right now in our personal and family life, and we may feel the weight of No’s in our national life, too.  Anyone who longs desperately for peace in the Middle East or Iraq, or for decisive action from our national government to address poverty or education or climate change – well, we may feel as if we’re listening to a lot of No’s right now.

When faced with a No, we are thrust into a spiritual wrestling match with God, as we try to make meaning of our lives.  Questions confront us: What am I going to make of this?  What are God and I together going to make of this?  How does this No affect my relationship with God?  What is this No saying about who I am called to be and what I am called to do? How will God use this ‘No’ to draw me deeper into the heart of God?  How will God transform this death into a crucifixion that will bring new life?  How do I pray with this No, so that the Holy Spirit can integrate it into my life with God?

Prayer can help us integrate our No’s at a deeper level.  And it will take some time.  Prayer becomes a necessary discipline.  We may need to face feelings that we’ve denied – maybe shock or anger, anxiety or sorrow.  We will need to grieve our losses, but in a special way – within the embrace of God’s love.  Mourning is one thing, but mourning-in-God is something else.  It’s so tempting, when we hear any kind of No, to let it fuel our chronic self-rejection.  We may start telling ourselves, “See? This loss or disappointment just shows how inadequate I am, how incompetent, how worthless, how basically unloved.”  Every No tempts us to reject ourselves, to add to the pain that comes with any No the additional (and unnecessary) suffering of self-hatred. 

When we pray our losses within the embrace of God’s love, we bring all the inevitable No’s of life into the embrace of God’s Yes.  For God is always saying Yes to us: Yes to our belovedness; Yes to the steadfast tenderness with which God’s holds us each in love.  There may indeed be losses we have to suffer.  There may be deaths we have to die.  But at some deep level of our being, God is always saying to us: Yes. “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ… was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.'” For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.'”

There may even come a point in our lives when it becomes impossible to decide conclusively which events in our lives represent a Yes and which ones represent a No.  In a book that psychiatrist Gerald May published last year, shortly before his death, Jerry described how difficult it finally became to decide which events in his life were “good” and which ones “bad.” 

He writes, “Some things start out looking great but wind up terribly while other things seem bad in the beginning but turn out to be blessings in disguise.”  He writes, “I was diagnosed with cancer in 1995, which I thought was a bad thing.  But the experience brought me closer to God and my loved ones than I’d ever been, and that was wonderfully good.  The chemotherapy felt awful, but it resulted in a complete cure, which I decided was good.  I later found out it may also have caused the heart disease that now has me waiting for a heart transplant.  At some point I gave up trying to decide what’s ultimately good or bad.  I truly do not know.” (1)

Jerry never did get his heart transplant, but the heart with which he wrote his final book was so filled with the love of God, so filled with awareness of God’s basic Yes to us, no matter what, that you sense his inner freedom.  Jerry’s words remind me of the freedom that St. Paul enjoyed in his prison cell, when he wrote in his letter to the Philippians, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have.  I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty.  In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.  I can do all things through [the One] who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:12-13). 

Paul spent his converted life in an active, passionate, creative quest to be a vehicle or channel for the love of God.  Sometimes people responded to him with praise and sometimes with contempt, sometimes with gratefulness and sometimes with scorn.  But in all things Paul kept his focus on God.  Whether life handed him a Yes or a No, whether he got what he wanted or not, Paul learned to place his trust, and to direct his longing, toward the One whose word to us is always Yes.  Paul was a man who was free. 

I think that Jerry May was free, too.  I don’t know if this story is true or not, because I haven’t yet checked it with his family, but someone told me this week that on his deathbed, Jerry struggled to say something to the family gathered around him.  Finally they made out what the dying man was saying. “Trust love,” he told them.  “Trust love.”

I hope that you and I will help each other to trust love – to keep our eyes on God and to live as gracefully as we can with the No’s that will always be woven into our lives.  I hope that we will come to see that God is transforming every No into Yes, including the No that we perceive when the time comes for us to die.  I hope that in every moment of our lives, and even at the grave, we too will come to see that God’s word to us is always Yes.

(1) Gerald G. May, M.D., The Dark Night of the Soul, HarperSanfrancisco: 2004, p. 2.  (I met Jerry 20 years ago, when he was one of my teachers at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation.  His books on spiritual direction, contemplative psychology, and addiction are first-rate.  He died April 8, 2005.)

The Baptism of Our Lord:
Taking the Plunge

Why was Jesus baptized?  What led Jesus to take that plunge into the Jordan River?  John the Baptist was preaching repentance from sin, but Jesus had no sin.  He had nothing to repent and nothing to confess.  He was the Savior, the Son of God, living with unbroken faithfulness to the Father.  He didn’t need to be baptized by John.  He was the Messiah for whom John was waiting, the one more powerful than John, the one about whom John was speaking when John declared that he was “not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals” [Mark 1:7].  Why would the lesser person baptize the greater?  Why would Jesus seek to be baptized at all?

One thing is clear: Jesus’ baptism seems to have made the early Church uncomfortable.  It was an embarrassment that our Savior and Lord humbled himself or “submitted” – as the early writers put it – to baptism by John.  And yet of all the events in his life, Jesus’ baptism is one of the most certain to have actually occurred.  All four Gospels plus two other books in the New Testament – Romans and Acts – refer to his baptism.  The early Church’s very discomfort with Jesus’ baptism, the need to make sense of it, adds weight to the evidence that the event really took place.  John Dominic Crossan, the well-known scholar in the quest for the “historical Jesus,” concludes that “Jesus’ baptism by John is one of the surest things we know about them both.” (1)

So why was Jesus baptized?  He could have held himself apart.  He could have kept his distance above everyone else.  He could have simply watched the masses of people crowding down to the river to confess their sins and receive forgiveness, pitying them from afar for their brokenness and need, but knowing that he himself was in a special category: holy, sinless, divine. 

And yet – he went ahead.  He took the plunge.  He came down from the hills of Nazareth, a town so obscure that one scholar comments that when we say “Jesus from Nazareth,” we might as well be saying “Jesus from Nowheresville.” (2) Nobody of any importance came from Nazareth – just think of the sarcastic question posed by Nathanael in the Gospel of John, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” [John 1:46].  Jesus came down from – well, Nowheresville – and humbly joined the anonymous crowds that were coming to John.  And then, like them, he plunged into the waters of the Jordan. 

Whatever else Jesus’ baptism may mean, surely it means this: he willingly chose to live in solidarity with human beings.  He chose to stand with us, we who are vulnerable and mortal, we who sin and fall short in so many ways.  Rather than holding himself apart as some perfect, untouchable being who looks down on us from afar, he plunged with us into the waters.  As Martin Smith, the Episcopal priest and writer, puts it, Jesus “threw away his innocence and separateness to take on the identity of struggling men and women who were reaching out… for the lifeline of forgiveness.” (3)

I think of Jesus’ decision to be baptized as a plunge into compassion.  Jesus was willing to dive beneath the lie that human beings are basically separate from each other.  He was willing to relinquish the temptation to hold himself apart from and above other people.  A Jungian psychologist once defined sin in this way: “Sin is the refusal to get our feet wet in the ocean of God’s connectedness.” (4) So maybe it’s not surprising, after all, that Jesus, the one without sin, waded into those waters and claimed the truth of our interconnection.  He chose to identify with all human beings, to identify with you, to identify with me.  He became the Son of Man to whom nothing human would be alien or strange (5).

And in that very moment God’s joy was revealed and Jesus was anointed the Son of God.  As he rose up out of the waters he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and he heard a heavenly voice that said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” [Mark 1:11].  The movement of reaching down in love, of reaching out in love to other human beings opened Jesus to a very personal and intimate relationship with God in the Spirit.  In the very act of identifying with other human beings and loving them without reserve or holding back, Jesus discovered his own deep belovedness in God. 

So baptism into Christ isn’t about joining a club or belonging to a tribe.  It isn’t about connecting with people who look like you or think like you.  Baptism into Christ is a radical act of humility and compassion, the sacrament through which we are joined to the One who identifies with every human being and who leads us into the awareness that, like him, we too are the beloved son, the beloved daughter, of God. 

As is everybody else.  Just listen again to those almost revolutionary words that the apostle Peter says in today’s passage from Acts, words that cut through any pretence that one tribe or nation or even religion has an exclusive claim on God: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” [Acts 10:34]. 

Earlier this week, some of you may have watched the CNN interview with a man named John Casto that aired a few hours after it became clear that only one coal miner had survived the accident in Sago, West Virginia.  John Casto looked like a perfectly ordinary man – he was bearded, maybe in his 40’s, wearing a blue work shirt and carrying a coffee mug.  As far as I could tell, he was no one special.  He wasn’t the mayor or some other town official; he wasn’t wealthy or well educated.  He might as well have been Mr. Nobody from Nowheresville.  In the caption that CNN ran at the bottom of the screen, Mr. Casto was identified simply as “friend of miners.”  

Mr. Casto explained that when he and hundreds of other town residents heard of the accident, they spent a long night in the Baptist church that he’d helped to build, praying to God and waiting for news of everyone’s loved ones, rejoicing when it seemed that twelve of the miners had been found alive, and grieving when it turned out that twelve of them had died. 

“I know the Lord was with us through it all,” said Mr. Casto, his voice breaking with sorrow and exhaustion. 

Although his face was lined and his eyes were sad, he seemed to me so filled with the love of God that he was almost transparent, as if Jesus was shining through his face and speaking through his voice.  Who knows if Mr. Casto has ever gone down a mineshaft, but he’s obviously taken the plunge – the plunge into baptism, the plunge into Christ.

“You know,” he said at the end of the interview, “I’m not kin to none of those people under that hill over there, but each and every one of them is a brother to me, each and every one of them.  Because you’re my brother,” he said, turning to the startled CNN reporter, “and you’re my brother,” he said, turning to the cameraman, “because I love Christ.”

That’s what happens when we are baptized with Christ.  We cast our lot with the friend of miners, friend of mortals, friend of sinners.  And discover that each person we meet is our sister, our brother.

Here on the first Sunday of the Epiphany we have a chance to make a radical new start.  We have a chance to renew and reclaim a covenant more powerful than any stack of New Year’s Resolutions.  This morning we reaffirm our baptismal vows.  We join with Jesus, who joined with us.  And like him, we take the plunge.  Who knows what compassion will rise up from our renewed commitment, what new cherishing of ourselves and of everyone around us, what fresh energy for justice-seeking and for peace-making in this precious world of ours?

1) Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, p. 234 (quoted in “John Baptizes Jesus,” in Jesus Database, http://www.faithfutures.org/JDB/jdb058.html).

2) Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988, p. 128.

3) Martin L. Smith, A Season for the Spirit, Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1991, p. 9.

4) I think of the words of the Roman playwright, Terence – Homo sum: nihil humanum a me alienum puto (“I am a man: nothing human is alien to me”). 

5) Ann and Barry Ulanov, Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982, p. 96.

Let Us Go Now to Bethlehem

 O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel.  Amen.

In most sermons, the preacher usually tries to find just the right anecdote or story to illustrate the main point.  But on this holy morning, there’s no need for another story.  Today we contemplate the big story, the core story of God’s love affair with humanity and all creation.

In deepest night, a town sits wrapped in darkness.  The streets that echoed during the day with jostling crowds now lie in silence, open to the stars.  A small group has gathered in a stable around a newborn baby, to hold him close, to gaze in wonder, to offer gifts.  There’s probably no scene in the whole Gospels on which Christians have lingered with more tenderness than the scene of Jesus’ birth.  We know the characters by heart: Mary, Joseph, and the child, the stable and the star, the ox and donkey, the shepherds and kings (the latter drafted from Matthew’s version of the story) – the whole lot of them surrounded by a company of angels.

Why has the scene so captured our imagination?  Is it mere sentimentality that draws us back to something so familiar that it threatens to become commonplace, even banal?  In a culture so saturated with images, you’d think that the image of Christ’s birth, reproduced every year on millions of greeting cards and Advent calendars, would become just one image among many, another commodity to be mindlessly bought, sold, and eventually discarded like any other piece of merchandise.

But some images resist being cheapened.  Some images bear such power that, if we stop and let them speak to us, they can change our lives. We’re living in a time of uncertainty and fear, a time of violence and war, and now more than ever we long to ground ourselves in the Christ whose light is shining in the darkness.

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us” (Luke 2:15).  If we linger here in thought and imagination – if we, too, gaze a while – perhaps we, too, will find a place to kneel.  As poet Ann Weems puts it,

In each heart lies a Bethlehem,
an inn where we must ultimately answer
whether there is room or not. (1)

When you imagine the Nativity scene that night, what is the stable like?  Is it large or small?  Does it let in blasts of cold air from the starry night outside, or is it snug and warm?  Can you smell the sharp tang of straw – feel the warm breath of the animals against your neck – see the candle or lantern-light cast dancing shadows against the wooden beams?  Can you see the small cluster of men and women bending toward the child, and hear the murmur of their voices?

See: here come the shepherds, weary from too much work, busy with making a living, startled from the endless round of labor by a sudden rush of angels whose hands are full of stars.  To these weary, lowly folk is given what Herbert O’Driscoll calls “the familiar and yet almost inexpressible good news”: tonight your heart’s deepest desire has been fulfilled.  Tonight the One you seek has come into the world and is waiting for you.  Come and see!  Straggling into the stable, poor and dirty, the shepherds come.  Roughly dressed, members of a despised trade, the shepherds don’t fit into polite society.  They don’t belong.  But it’s to these outcast, despised folk that the good news of God’s coming is given first.

Maybe it’s beside the shepherds that you who are over-worked or stressed or over-burdened may want to kneel.  You’ve done enough.  You can put your burden down.  Come rest a while with the One who has loved you since before all time.

And maybe it’s with the shepherds that you’ll want to kneel if, like them, you suspect that you don’t belong, that you don’t deserve God’s kindness and have no right to be here.  How many of us go through our lives secretly doubting our basic worth, convinced that we’ll never measure up!  But it’s to you that God’s messengers come first, to announce that God has come into the world for you, and longs to draw you close.  Come and see!

Or is it with the kings, the wise men, that you feel drawn to kneel?  Here they are, the accomplished, successful ones, the educated and wealthy.  They know their worth; they have the ear of emperors; they enjoy their privilege and power.  And yet, moved by God’s grace, they don’t consider themselves too good to throw themselves down and kneel before this child.  What a shock for them – but also what a relief!  Pride has no place here, only the simplicity of love.  Is it with the kings that you’d like to kneel? 

Maybe it’s beside Mary that you would kneel, as she gazes on her child with a mother’s fierce tenderness and awe.  Or beside Joseph, who may be covering Mary with his cloak and urging her to rest, or who may be taking up the baby in his arms

and [walking] him in the night,
patting him lovingly
until he [closes] his eyes.(2)

Is there a gift that you’d like to offer the child?  Like the kings, you may be carrying something that you’d like to share or give away.  Maybe you want to offer the joy you feel, the gladness and peace.  Or maybe this morning there is some loss that fills you, a sorrow or concern.  Many people enter a shadowed world this time of year, feeling grief or loneliness or regret. Whatever it is that fills you today, can you offer it to the little One who shines with God’s glory?  Can you lay it at the feet of this baby and let yourself be warmed by the glow of his love?

And then there are the animals, snorting and stamping, stirring in the darkness.  Tradition has it that a donkey and an ox attend the child’s birth, and perhaps other beasts are sheltered in the stable, as well.  They, too, are welcome.  They, too, are here to gaze, to be changed by the One whose presence touches not only human lives, but also the whole body of creation.  With the coming of this child, everything that is now dwells in Christ, and Christ now dwells in all things.  In Christ’s presence we know our kinship with animals, our connection to our fellow creatures that depend on the same air, land, and water that we do.  Our God is not far off, impassive, invulnerable to the body, to its pain and pleasure.  In Christ, God comes into the world through a woman’s body, in blood and mucus, in tears of pain and tears of joy.  The God we know in Christ is intimately present to us in and through our bodies, in and through every breath we draw.  Perhaps it is with the animals that you would kneel, as you sense how much God cherishes their bodies and yours, their energies and yours.

And angels, too, rejoice with the creatures of earth: the incarnation of Christ gathers into one, things earthly and heavenly.  Christ embraces the lowly and the noble, the animal and the human, the intimate and the cosmic. 

Why is it that we are so drawn to the image of the Nativity of Christ?  Because here we see a parable of the soul, a picture of all aspects of the self, all aspects of the world, brought into harmony as they find their center in the purity and compassion of Christ.  When everything in us is centered on that Child – when we offer Christ all that we are and all that we have – then everything in us finds it proper place, its right relation.  The shepherd in us finds dignity and worth; the king in us finds humility; the mother and the father within us feel their strength; the animals beside us find a safe haven, and we hear the angels sing.

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”  Today we gaze on the Child and sense the companionship of all those who gaze beside us.  Do you notice the child’s vulnerability, his innocence, his love?  Trust what you see.  You are in the presence of God, and as you gaze on the Holy One – the One who loves you utterly – you are changed.  You become who you really are.  The Christ on whom you gaze is born within you.  You become what you love.

May the humility of the shepherds, the perseverance of the wise men, the joy of the angels, and the peace of the Christ-child be God’s gifts to you this Christmas season, and always.  Amen.  (3)

(1)  Ann Weems, “In Search of Our Kneeling Places,” Kneeling in Bethlehem, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1980, p. 19. 

(2) Ibid, “Getting to the Front of the Stable,” p. 50.

(3) Frank Colquhoun, ed. Prayers for Every Occasion, #60.

Here will I dwell, for I delight in you

How did the angel come to Mary?  Did Gabriel come in a rush of wings, like a gust of wind suddenly blowing in through the window?  Or did the angel come as gently as snow, quietly approaching from the garden or descending from above, drawing near so silently that Mary had to look up, she had to turn her head: someone else was in the room with her?  Did the angel’s wings gleam like peacock feathers or were they as white as the wings of a swan?  Did they flame out like fire?  Or did Gabriel have no form at all?  Did he come as a column of light, a golden field of energy blazing at the edge of the bedroom, throwing shadows against the wall? 

What did Mary do, when she saw the angel?  Did she stand up like a bride, dressed all in white?  Did she kneel with her long blue robe spread out around her legs, her hands crossed calmly at her breast?  Or was she so startled that she dropped her spindle in amazement and threw one hand up to her hair, her sleeve dropping open to show her bare arm?  Did she recoil from the angel that was bending so urgently toward her, and pull her cloak up tight against her throat?  Did she glare angrily at this intruder, as if everything in Mary wanted to say No, she wouldn’t do it, no, she wouldn’t go through with this, the cost would be too great?

How did the angel come to Mary?  For centuries, artists have returned again and again to the Annunciation to explore this mysterious, numinous encounter between the holy and the human.  As Luke tells the story, the angel Gabriel came twice to announce good news – first, to Zechariah, to say that he and Elizabeth would have a child in their old age [bbllink]Luke 1:5-26[/bbllink], and then to Mary to announce that in her virginity she would conceive and bear the child Jesus, son of David and son of God [bbllink]Luke 1:28-35[/bbllink].  Zechariah and Elizabeth’s child, John the Baptist, would prepare the way for God’s coming [bbllink]Luke 1:17[/bbllink], and God’s coming would be as Mary’s child, conceived of the Holy Spirit.¹

The Annunciation of Jesus is a key moment in salvation history, the fulfillment of the promise of a coming messiah that God made to David through the prophet Nathan, as we heard this morning in the passage from 2 Samuel.  But the Annunciation to Mary is not just over and done with, an event from the past that recedes further into the distance with every passing year.  It is an event in which Christians participate through acts of empathy and imagination.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit – the same power that came upon Mary and that birthed the Christ within her – we, too, are drawn through prayer into experiences that resonate with Mary’s.  In some small way we share in Mary’s experience, for whether we are male or female, her story is our story, too.

Take, for instance, Mary’s sudden sense of being in the presence of something larger than herself.  We know what that’s like, the awe-struck awareness that a Power beyond ourselves has suddenly drawn near.  It can happen anywhere – in some place of wild beauty like the ocean or a mountain, and in humbler places, too, like your own bedroom in the middle of the night, when something wakes you up and you feel drawn irresistibly to prayer, or in a hotel room in a strange city, or by the bedside of someone who is dying.  Even right here in church!  Suddenly we’re pulled out of our usual preoccupations and obsessions, that endless self-absorbed churning of thought, and caught up short.

Oh my goodness, we say to ourselves – maybe with a certain degree of trepidation, even fright. Something’s happening.  There’s mystery here.

Surprise is one thing I look for in prayer.  Authentic religious experience is full of surprise, because for once our busy egos are not in control.

Then what happens?  “Greetings, favored one,” the angel says to Mary.  “The Lord is with you.”  Or, to use another well-known translation of the passage, “Hail Mary, full of grace.  The Lord is with you.”

Do these words sound too formal to our ears, and, after years of hearing them, almost too familiar?   Then listen to a contemporary, very down to earth translation of what the angel says, and see what you think:

“Good morning!
You’re beautiful with God’s beauty,
Beautiful inside and out!
God be with you.” ²

Whatever translation you prefer, that’s what happens when God’s messenger draws near: we are met with love.  Imagine it!  “You’re beautiful with God’s beauty, beautiful inside and out!”  That message may be difficult to swallow.  We don’t feel worthy.  We don’t feel beautiful.  We’re hardly at home in our own skin.  How can God address us so tenderly?  Like Mary, we may be “much perplexed.”  If an angel drew near, bearing the message of God’s love, we’d be tempted to brush it away.  God must have the wrong number.  This must be my own fantasy, just wish fulfillment.  To quote the words of poet Macrina Wiederkehr, in such a moment we may need to pray:

O God,
help me
to believe
the truth about myself
no matter
how beautiful it is!

  “Greetings, favored one!  The Lord is with you.  Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God.”  And the angel goes on to announce the good news: Mary will conceive and bear a son, Jesus, and of his kingdom there would be no end.

“How can this be,” Mary replies, “since I am a virgin?”  Of course there’s been all kinds of theological controversy over the years about the conflicting scriptural claims as to whether or not Mary was “really” a virgin, and whether or not it’s important to believe in the Virgin Birth.  But whether you believe that Jesus had one human parent or two, the significance of the story is the same: Jesus came into the world not through purely human agency, but through a free, creative act of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit that overshadowed Mary is the same Spirit that brooded over the waters of creation.  With God, there is a new creation.  With God, nothing is impossible.

And maybe that is how Christ continues to be born into the world: from out of our virginity.  Thomas Merton, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, speaks of what he calls the “point vierge,” the virgin point at the center of our being.  This is the true identity that we seek in contemplative prayer, a point, he writes, that is “untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth…which belongs entirely to God, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.  This little point…of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.”³

In our own humble way, you and I can participate in the virgin birth.  You and I can share in the birthing of God.  “Here will I dwell,” God says to Mary’s soul, and to our soul, too, as we read in today’s psalm.  “This shall be my resting-place for ever; here will I dwell, for I delight in [you]” [bbllink]Psalm 132:15[/bbllink]

Will we consent to God’s birth within us?  Like Mary, will we say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”?  The holy Presence came to Mary, and so it also comes to you and to us all.  And sometimes our hearts leap for joy.  Sometimes we say yes at once: “Ah!” we say gratefully. “You have come again!  You are here!”  But sometimes we feel too vulnerable and so we pull away, frightened or perplexed. 

Sometimes we lean forward and open our arms to take in the love for which we have yearned for so long.  And sometimes we pull back, afraid to trust that this love is real, afraid to lose control. 

It is a dance that we play at the borders of our self, testing the edges, sometimes moving toward love, sometimes moving away, now opening to relatedness, now closing fearfully in.  But God is always patient and never forces, never compels.  The Spirit comes to us just as the Spirit came to Mary, and waits patiently and eagerly for our assent.  Will we say yes this time?  Will we let go?

And in grace-filled moments, we do.  With Mary, we say yes.  We offer ourselves totally.  We give ourselves in love to Love, for the first time or for the hundredth time, and in these moments of the soul’s embrace, Christ is conceived within us.  A new and wild life takes root.  Surrender to God is not passivity.  It is an awakening of power in the soul. 

So we bless Mary for being the mother of God, but we also remember, as the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart once put it, that we are all called to be mothers of God, because God is always needing to be born. 

How did the angel come to Mary?  That’s a wonderful question, but even more wonderful is the question: how will the angel come to you?  And how will you respond?

1. Fred Craddock et al., Preaching through the Christian Year B, p. 25. 

2. Eugene H. Peterson, The Message, Colorado Springs, Colorado: Navpress, 1993, p. 118.

3. Kathleen Norris, “Annunciation,” entry for November 30 in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, Farmington, PA: The Plough Publishing House, 2001, no page, quoting from Norris’ Amazing Grace (Riverhead Books, 1998).

Parable of the Wedding Feast

What do you make of today’s Gospel?  It’s a prickly one, no doubt about it, complete with a raging king who sends out his troops to burn down a city and later commands his attendants to bind an unfortunate man without a wedding robe and “throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” [Matthew 22:13].  What are we dealing with here?  What is this story trying to tell us about the kingdom of heaven?  For goodness sake, where’s the Good News?

When I went rifling through my commentaries, I was interested to read that the parable of the wedding feast is more like an allegory than a parable.  As an allegory, each part of the story points to something outside the story, to historical persons and events.  If the king hosting a wedding banquet represents God inviting us to share in the divine life, then the first group of servants to call people to the feast represents the Hebrew prophets.  The invited guests refuse to come, just as Israel ignored the prophets, so in the parable the king sends out a second wave of servants, who represent the early Christian apostles and missionaries.  Again the invited guests refuse to come, and many of the king’s messengers are mocked, ignored, and even killed, just as many of the early Christians were similarly mistreated and martyred.  As Matthew saw it, the consequences of refusing God’s invitation were terrible.  In the parable the king destroys the murderers and sets fire to their city – a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies in 70 A.D., which Matthew interpreted as God’s punishment on Israel.  Finally, the king throws open his doors to everyone, good and bad alike, just as the early Christians eventually opened their community to the Gentiles and called everyone to the feast. 

So far so good, I guess – by reading the parable as an allegory, we can tie it to its historical references; we can match each aspect of the story to a corresponding event and see how Matthew makes sense of salvation history.  But the parable is more than a summary of past events – it’s a story about you, a story about me. 

Take, for instance, this business about the king – that is, God – inviting guests to his son’s wedding.  The Bible often uses wedding imagery as a way to express the complete and intimate union that God and God’s people will experience at the end of time.  The Bible sometimes depicts the bridegroom as God; other times, as in this parable, the bridegroom is Christ.  Sometimes the bride is the whole community of the faithful, and sometimes it is the individual soul.  But however the wedding metaphor is played out, the point is that at the end of time, God will draw us – and all creation – to God’s self.  That is where everything is headed.  In that time out of time God and God’s people will be completely and joyfully united.  As Isaiah envisions it, God will make the enemy city a ruin.  Oppression will come to an end.  “The palace of aliens” – or, as some readings have it, “the castle of the insolent” – will finally be destroyed.  And then, says Isaiah, God’s reign will begin with a feast. “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines” [Isaiah 25:6].  When that day comes at last, death will be no more.  Sorrow will end.  Poverty will cease.  Human beings will no longer destroy each other in war, nor continue to hurt the earth and its creatures.  “On that day, says the Lord,” (and here I’m quoting the prophet Hosea) “on that day, says the Lord, you will call me ‘My husband’…and I will take you for my wife forever” [Hosea 2:16, 19].

It’s a beautiful vision, a powerful vision that can give direction to your life and to mine, a vision that can fill us with joy.  And just as the king in Matthew’s parable sent out messengers inviting guests to the banquet, so God is sending messengers to us today.  Who are the messengers that speak to you of God’s hope for the future, of God’s possibilities for peace and social justice on this dear earth?  Are we listening to the messengers in our midst, to Bill McKibben and Jim Wallis, to Wendell Berry and Desmond Tutu, to “Granny D” and Joanna Macy and Terry Tempest Williams – well, you probably have your own band of trusted messengers that inspire you with holy possibility! 

And what messages are coming to us that we’re missing?  It’s not only – or even mainly – well-known, public people who bring us news of God’s kingdom, but the poor, the forgotten, the person on the margins.   Maybe it’s the homeless man on the street, the annoying fellow who plays really bad music.  Are you going to pass him by without a glance, feeling irritated and guilty, or are you going to slow down long enough to greet him and to look him in the eye?  You stop for a moment to speak to him, maybe you even share a joke together, and my word, what’s this?  It turns out he’s got a wedding invitation in his hands.

Or maybe God’s messenger comes as a young mother from Brazil who cleans restaurants from 11:00 at night to 4:00 in the morning and then shows up every week at 9 a.m. to clean your house.  She barely speaks a word of English, but her hard work and devotion to her family speak volumes about the dignity of the poor and the need in this country for a decent living wage.  She too loves Jesus, just as you do, and in the quiet joy with which she goes about her day, you wonder if she hasn’t learned, as St. Paul says in his Letter to the Philippians, “the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.” You wonder if she hasn’t learned, as Paul did, “[to] do all things through him who strengthens me” [Philippians 4:12-13].  You wonder if she isn’t inviting you into God’s kingdom.

God’s messengers include the famous and the hidden, and not to listen to messengers like these – to shrug hopelessly and to say that we have to settle for being alienated from each other, that we have keep living driven, restless, distracted lives, that we have to make peace with poverty, that we have to condone destroying the earth, that we have to tolerate an endless succession of wars – to say all this is to turn away God’s messengers and to refuse God’s wedding banquet.  Like it or not, the parable is clear: the invitation is urgent.  The banquet is ready – you’ll notice that the word “ready” shows up three times in this passage.  There’s not a moment to waste.  The food is hot.  The time is now.  We’ve been invited to the feast – are we coming or not?

But lest we feel too complacent – lest we mistakenly believe that all we need to do as faithful Christians is to accept God’s invitation and just show up in church – Matthew adds the unsettling parable of the man without a wedding robe.  The king comes in to see the guests, and spots a man without the clean, white garment that is the proper dress for a wedding feast.  The king apparently looks kindly at him and gives him a chance to speak.  “Friend,” he says, “how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” [Matthew 22:12].   But the man is speechless; he can make no excuse.  And so off he goes in chains – not just out to the streets but into hell. 

The point?  God’s door is open to us but we cannot presume on God’s grace.  God’s overflowing, endless, patient, self-giving generosity comes to us as gift, but it comes with responsibility, too.  The parable doesn’t care a bit about the clothes we wear to church or anywhere else; what does concern it is the spirit with which we come before God.  Like the man in the parable, every day we too have a chance inwardly to wear the white robe of our baptism, so that our baptismal vows truly become the framework that guides our lives.  Every day we have the chance to let our lives be shaped and formed by the disciplines of Christian community.  

So it’s worth asking ourselves: are we practicing what it means to give generously, to listen respectfully, and to speak honestly and with love?  And with what garment do we clothe ourselves when we come to worship?  In what spirit do we arrive to share in the Eucharistic feast, that foretaste of the ultimate wedding banquet between Christ and all creation?  Do we come to church wearing the garment of expectation?  Do we come with the garment of penitence and humility?  Do we come with the garment of sincerity, with the garment of reverence? (1) Getting the family organized on a Sunday morning – especially if you have young kids – is no small feat, and sometimes we probably slide into the pews feeling more harried than anything else.  But still, if we can, it’s good to take some time before the worship service begins – maybe the night before – to examine our lives, to reflect on how we have and have not responded this week to God’s invitations, and to prepare ourselves for the feast.

Everyone is welcome.  God’s banquet is ready.  The joy is ours.

(1) William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2, revised edition, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,

A fire in the bones

What would it be like to be so fired with a vision of God’s justice and mercy that you just couldn’t help but speak about it?  What if your experience of God was so vivid and so visceral that you couldn’t contain it, couldn’t keep it to yourself, but you had to express it, had to share it, had to bring it forth into the world?  Apparently that’s what happened to Jeremiah 1500 years ago, for he sounds like a man so possessed by God, so gripped by God’s presence, that he is actually compelled to speak. “If I say ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” [bbllink]Jeremiah 20:9[/bbllink].

This may be a rather irreverent analogy, but Jeremiah’s situation reminds me of the movie “Liar Liar” that came out a while back.  Maybe you remember it: Jim Carrey plays a slick, manipulative lawyer who for one painful and hilarious 24-hour period becomes completely incapable of telling a lie.  However much he tries to restrain himself, however hard he scrunches up his face or twists himself into knots trying to say something that’s not true to his boss, his secretary, his client, his son – even to himself – he simply can’t do it.  The only words that can come out of his mouth are words that are true.  Of course total havoc ensues, and that’s what makes the movie so funny and so telling: being forced to tell the truth turns the man’s life upside down, makes him vulnerable to being mocked and humiliated, and yet in the end restores him to right-relationship with his son and with himself.

That’s rather like the case of Jeremiah, who is similarly unable to speak anything but the deepest truth he knows.  He’s not one to go along and get along.  He’s not one to accept the lie that injustice doesn’t matter or that cruelty is acceptable.  He can’t help but see that his country is running after false gods.  He can’t help but see that his country’s policies are creating violence and destruction.  Forget any governmental or corporate campaign of disinformation – Jeremiah would see right through it.  He’s a man who can’t help but stand up again and again, speaking out day after day for God’s justice, God’s mercy, God’s truth. 

Obviously this is not a comfortable place in which to live.  Jeremiah is by turns ignored, taunted, and persecuted.  As he tells us in this passage, he’s “become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks [him]” – even his close friends.  That is also the experience of the psalmist, who like Jeremiah, laments to God, “Surely, for your sake I have suffered reproach, and shame has covered my face… Zeal for your house has eaten me up; the scorn of those who scorn you has fallen upon me” [bbllink]Psalm 69: 8, 10[/bbllink].  Today’s Gospel similarly emphasizes that Jesus himself faced conflict and opposition.  So, too, will those who follow him.  “A disciple,” says Jesus, “is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master” [bbllink]Matthew 10:24[/bbllink].  Just as Jesus was contemptuously derided as Beelzebul, an Aramaic name for Satan, so too will his followers be insulted and misrepresented, even when our message is one of authentic love.

So what are we to make of this?  What might the Spirit be saying to us this morning in these unsettling words of Scripture?  The first thing I hear is this: protect the fire in your bones.  Hold fast to your perception of a God who loves mercy and creates justice and speaks truth.  Trust your longing for a society that makes room for everyone – the lonely, the left-out, and the lost, the poor and the marginalized – for this longing has been planted in you by God.  We need people of fire, people who are not afraid to listen deeply to God and then to speak out as clearly and persuasively as we can our vision of a world that is marked by justice rather than oppression, by inclusion rather than division, by truthfulness rather than lies.

A second word I hear is this: Expect opposition.  Don’t be surprised if your efforts are met by conflict or contempt.  Giving voice to the needs of the poor, of racial and ethnic minorities, of the powerless and the forgotten, will very likely provoke friction with the powers-that-be.  Speaking up for social justice or for protecting God’s green earth often begins by provoking scorn, or worse, so don’t be surprised.  That’s the way of the world.

The third word I hear is this: don’t be afraid.  Three times Jesus says this in the short Gospel passage we just heard. “Have no fear,” he says.  And again he says, “Do not fear.”  And yet again, “Do not be afraid.”  And why not?  Because we are loved by God.  Because we belong to a God who knows and loves us, through and through.  “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.  And even the hairs of your head are all counted.  So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows” [bbllink]Mt 10:29-30[/bbllink].  

Listen to that voice of love, the voice we hear in Scripture and in the quiet of our own hearts.  Especially now, in a time of anxiety, violence, and uncertainty, we need the willingness, the discipline, to listen to that voice of love, not to the voices of bitterness and hate.  The inner voice of love may be very quiet and subtle, and in prayer we listen for it attentively and patiently. 

“I have called you by name,” God says to us in the secret center of the self.  “I have redeemed you.  I will not forget you.   I have carved you in the palm of my hand.  I know your sitting down and your rising up.  I am acquainted with all your ways.  I have loved you since before time began.  I give myself to you in every Eucharist and I will be with you every step of the way until I welcome you home at your journey’s end. With me, you can meet whatever comes with your head held high.  Do not be afraid.”

That is the bedrock of our faith, what today’s Collect calls “the sure foundation of [God’s] loving-kindness.”  Touch that bedrock, and you know you are safe.  Touch that bedrock, and you feel God’s passion for a world in which beauty is defined as creating the conditions in which life can flourish.  Touch that bedrock, and you know in your own bones that God longs not for hatred and revenge, not for privilege for the few and deprivation for the many, but for a world marked by compassion and justice.

Like Jeremiah, we may grow weary sometimes, but if it’s the wind of God that is blowing through us, the breath of the Spirit that is animating our efforts, we can take heart.  We are exactly where we’re called to be.  Sure, it’s a risky business, listening to the voice of love and bearing witness to that love in the world.  Bearing God’s word can be a painful path; it is the way of the Cross.  But it is also a path of joy, for it is what we were made for.  We were created to love and to be loved, created to take part in God’s project of reconciliation.  We each have some way we can serve, some way our own lives can make a difference.

Let me close with an email message that a friend sent me not long after 9/11.  He is not a religious man, nor a churchgoer, but after the enormity of those events he felt moved to begin a search that I can only name as spiritual. “All week,” he writes, “I’ve been living with a sense that we are called upon to find something inside we may not have thought we’d ever need, may fear to seek, may dread to find, may fail to acknowledge once found, may doubt is even there.”  

What are we called to seek for and to find, however much we may dread it or want to doubt its reality?  We might call it courage or inner strength; we might call it a fire in the bones.  I would call it God. 

I treasure you, this Grace Church community that I’ve been blessed to be part of for these past ten months.  Together we are creating a space in which the Spirit can move and speak among us, a space in which we can honor the fire in our bones, support each other when our efforts face opposition, and encourage each other not to be afraid.  In these days of stewardship and of the Restoration Project, we have a chance to acknowledge how much it means to us to follow Jesus, how much this community means, and how much we have to offer people like my searching friend who are looking for something they can barely name, the same Holy Presence that long ago inspired and sustained Jeremiah in his own ardent quest for justice and peace.