Joy: A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent

Today we light the third candle, the rose one. When Katherine Jefforts-Schori was our Presiding Bishop she liked to jokingly ask, “why is the third candle pink?” To which she’d respond, “just in case it’s a girl!”

In fact, although I think that’s pretty funny, we light the rose candle because today is Gaudete Sunday and Gaudete is the Latin word for rejoice. Today we start rejoicing for the One who is coming into the world to bring…what is it again? Oh yeah, joy to the world. As we heard from St. Paul this morning:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

In John 15:11, Jesus says: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” In the sacristy of this church (that’s the room where the altar guild does their work) there is a print with one of my very favorite sayings from one of the early church fathers, Irenaeus of Lyons. It says this: “the glory of God is the human person fully alive.” I think that joy is a key ingredient in being fully alive.

So what is joy, exactly? Barbara Brown Taylor describes the experience of joy as “almost irreverent.” She writes:

Joy has never had very much to do with what is going on in the world at the time. This is what makes it different from happiness, or pleasure, or fun. All those depend on positive conditions… The only condition for joy is the presence of God… which means that it can erupt in a depressed economy, in the middle of a war, or in an intensive care waiting room… it is a gift…

She’s right, you know. But it sounds so counter-cultural in a culture where we think we can buy happiness which suggests that happiness is some kind of commodity. But happiness is always conditional. We have happy and sad days, and sometimes even weeks or seasons. December can bring out the sadness and unresolved grief even among the most fortunate among us. I found when I was last a parish priest that inevitably I’d have more funerals in December than any other month of the year. And even when people die at another time of year, the holidays can be especially hard. You all know this. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. The point is that no one can be happy all the time.

The only condition for joy, though, is the presence of God. We can feel joy even on the most difficult of days. We don’t need to wait for December 24 to recall that the truest name for Jesus is Immanuel: God with us. Through thick and thin. So if God is present, there is joy.

Do you all remember Debbie Downer from the old SNL skits? One of my favorites is when the family is all gathered at Disney World and the server says that the special of the day is steak and eggs with a Mickey waffle. Debbie says: “ever since they found mad-cow disease in the US. I’m not taking any chances. It can live in your body for years before it ravages your brain.” (Wha, wha…)

Most of us know a Debbie Downer in our lives. And maybe some days we are even like her. Maybe it’s their personality or maybe it’s because of old wounds and sometimes it’s because of a chemical imbalance and they deserve our compassion, not our judgement. But they can wear you down when they need for you to be as unhappy as they are and that isn’t good for building up the Body of Christ.

On the other end of the spectrum are the perennially cheery, quick to find something happy even in the worst of circumstances. Maybe too quick, because we also need space in our lives for grieving. If you are having a really hard day the last thing we need to hear is to cheer up, don’t worry…

But joy is different. Joy isn’t contingent on whether or not the sun is shining. So Jesus tells his friends, which includes us: I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. That is what the good news does in our lives as it takes hold. The only condition needed for joy is the presence of God, even when the world around us is a mess. It is a gift. It helps form disciples of Jesus who are fully alive and this pleases God.

Now I have a question for you to reflect on. How do we cultivate joy in our own lives and in our homes and in this congregation. Let the world be for now, but how can we make it so that we leave Church each week feeling more joyful and less troubled? I often use the phrase, borrowed from the late Bishop of Newark, Bishop Spong, of the “church alumni association.” Recently here in Bristol I heard almost these same words from a local shopkeeper. I had my collar on and I told the person where I work and they said, “oh, I’m an alum of St. Michael’s. My parents used to take me there as a child, when Canon Tildsley was there…”

Why do people leave the Church? In my experience there are two main reasons generally speaking: conflict or boredom. Conflict burns hot sometimes. We get disappointed or hurt or angry about something or someone whom it seems doesn’t behave like a “real” Christian; and we may well have a legitimate gripe. Boredom runs cool to cold; we just feel we’ve gotten all we need from a place as a kid and now we can move on, the same way we move on from senior year of high school. We’ve graduated…

But the Church at its best is in the business of forming disciples and that’s a lifelong process. I’m preaching to the choir I know, by the way. You are all here on a December morning when there are other places you could be. In the midst of a busy month you’ve made it a priority to be here. There may be lots of reasons. You may connect with my preaching or not. You may like the music or not. You may feel the presence of the risen Christ at the Eucharist or not. But somehow I hope that most weeks through these invitations and just by being in the presence of other people who are seeking and serving Christ, you feel a little more hopeful, a little more peaceful, a little more joyful. And even though we have to wait until next week to light the fourth candle, a little more loving as well.

So how do we cultivate practices here at St. Michael’s that lead to people toward full and abundant life, people who embrace joy even when facing sorrow? In my experience, authenticity and laughter are prerequisites. We have to be real, not fake. And our humor isn’t meant to be caustic or hurtful, but it does mean we hold things lightly, I think.

This is part of what I want for St. Michael’s in this season and beyond and I am praying for you all. I am so grateful for the staff here who held things together from the time Canon Michael left until I arrived. Loretta and Alexander and Steve and Betty are all amazing people and as the new kid I am so grateful for their care in doing their work. And you know, I hope, that the vestry has been working hard as well. And now the vestry continues to deepen our commitment to serve Christ and get ready for what will come next. The vestry covenant is more than aspirational; it’s an extension of the Baptismal Covenant. It’s about how we treat each other, how we disagree, how we stay open and curious. In all of this I rejoice.

David Whyte has said that joy is practiced generosity. I take that to mean that we can always find something to be thankful for, and thankfulness cultivates gratitude and gratitude is the path to abundant joy. And joy is a part of what it means to be fully alive and aware of God’s presence in our lives. No. Matter. What.

No matter what life brings, stay in the Spirit. Is that hard? Yes, some days. But we can do hard things, friends. With God all things are possible.

O come, O come, Emmanuel. Rejoice. Rejoice. Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. O Bristol, too.

Peace: A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent

The word for today is PEACE. Like HOPE it is a very good advent word. (To preview coming attractions, JOY and LOVE are the two left!)

But let me confess before we go any further – of these four candles, this one is for me the most difficult to preach on. I can speak from experience about hope, and joy, and love – even if I also have days when those seem in short supply. But peace? I don’t mean just a ceasefire, or the absence of war. The peace that passes all understanding? The shalom that the Bible speaks of to mean completeness and well-being and right relationships: this seems more elusive to me in a nation that feels so bitterly divided. There is no shalom without justice. And so we pray here for the shalom/salaam of Jerusalem, and for peace in Ukraine, and for peace around our tables – at home and in this congregation.

Peace speaks to our deepest yearnings, I think. Yet it seems to be in short supply. Even so, this month we are preparing our hearts and minds and souls for the coming of the Prince of Peace, the one who comes to bring peace on earth and goodwill to all people.

The Biblical prophets dare to speak of a time when swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. In his farewell address to this nation in 1961, President Eisenhower sounded like the Biblical prophets when he warned of the dangers of the military industrial complex and the opportunity for a lasting peace dividend.  That promise is our hope for the world and yet we live in the meantime – in the meantime of unsettledness and dis-ease, of wars and rumors of wars. I wonder if the four weeks of Advent are a kind of glimpse into what the journey of faith is all about. Hopeful expectation. Active waiting. Participation in God’s dream for this world. There is nothing passive about Advent or about the Christian journey: it’s always an invitation to participate, to become followers of Jesus, to do the work God has given us to do. It’s impossible for you or I or even a president or a secretary of state to make peace. But all of us can choose, daily, to embrace the ways that lead to peace rather than pouring gasoline on the fire. In my experience this requires and enormous amount of energy and commitment – which is why I find hope and joy and love easier to preach on than peace. We are so used to might being used for wrong but let’s be clear, even might used for right isn’t the path to peace. Jesus models another way to understand power as the one who falls on his knees with a towel and basin and washes feet. Servanthood ministry – non-violent action, turning the other cheek are all practices Jesus teaches us to work for peace. Shalom. We light this candle today as an act of resistance.

God’s shalom is about way more than a “cease-fire.” It’s about healing and gratitude and hospitality; about a willingness to share and a table set with fine wines and a feast for everyone. It’s about a community where trust is a given, and where walls that once divided are broken down.

Sometimes people say to me that the Old Testament is hard to read because it is so violent. There is a great deal of truth in that statement and there is violence there because that’s part of the struggle in the middle east and around the world. But there’s another way to look at it–a way that makes it so near and dear to me in fact. The Old Testament (and I believe the New Testament as well!) refuse to be “pie-in-the-sky.” They refuse to live in a dream world. They dare to look squarely at what really is. The Old Testament especially does not avoid geo-political realities, but although more subtle in the New Testament it’s there too: the challenge of living under Roman imperial power whose violence degrades and hurts God’s people. (And we are all God’s people!) We heard hints of it today:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 

 And we’ll hear it again on Christmas Eve: in those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus…

We have always lived in a world with leaders we sometimes respect and sometimes fear. The prophets are honest about what is. But they also refuse to settle for the status quo of thinking that is what will always be. They dare to dream of the dawn of a new day, of a time when God really is the ruler of heaven and earth, a time when justice and peace go hand in hand.

And so Malachi, a near-contemporary of Ezra and Nehemiah, can speak in his context (sometime after the people have come home from Babylon after the Exile) of a day when the people really will be made holy and righteous. He can look beyond the struggles of daily life to a time when the Covenant will be fulfilled. It is difficult for us to hear his words without hearing the music of George Frederick Handel in our heads. For he is like a refiner’s fire…

I’ve always appreciated the song, “Let there be peace on earth...” not just for the memories it evokes from my childhood, and not just because it’s an easily singable tune, but because of the next clause: “and let it begin with me.”

I think that is a very Biblical prayer. We ask God for peace on earth. But in the very next breath we need to listen long enough to hear God’s consistent call for a response from us.  In the end it is not the politicians and the generals who will bring about peace on earth. It’s people like Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and fishermen, and tax-collectors, and teachers and people like you and me who are meant to pray not only “let there be peace on earth,” but also “let it begin with me.”

Each and every one of us are called to be “preparers of the way” this Advent season. Each of us are called to be instruments of peace. “Let there be peace on earth.” And let it begin here, and now on this Second Sunday of Advent. To find our way into that peace that passes all understanding, we need to be able to be still, and quiet. Which is no easy task in December, in a consumer society. But with God, all things are possible! What might we need to let go of in order to find a sense of that peace that Christ offers us in this season of Advent?

I don’t know how we can ever be instruments of God’s peace if we are out of tune and conflicted in our own hearts. It has to begin with us. Advent is so counter-cultural – the month when we are feeling pulled toward freneticism is the very time when we insist, “slow down, you move too fast…” We are invited to take time to reflect this month and to see that as a part of our preparations. We are invited to keep first things first.

As we continue to find our way through this season of transition at St. Michael’s I hope you all took time to read the vestry covenant of behavior. I think that is a very important call to each of us, not just those currently serving on vestry. People feel drawn to a community where there is hope and peace and joy and love. Wherever there are two or three gathered together, there will always be differences and disagreements, sometimes even passionate conflict. But that represents an opportunity, actually. It offers us an invitation to do the work of healing and reconciliation we are called to. It asks us to create a community where the Church is a laboratory that is helping us to learn how to ask for forgiveness when we wrong someone and to offer forgiveness when it will open the door to a new possibility. This is a place where we are, with God's help. learning to grow into the full stature of Christ, Jesus is the light of the world, who shines in the darkness. But we, as the Church, as His followers, are called to do the same: to be the Light of the world. ,

I’m absolutely convinced that most disagreements are not zero-sum games, and that many of our worst disagreements get to that point because of bad communication or mis-communication or no communication. And that this is true in intimate relationships as it is in global politics. So what might it look like for peace on earth to truly begin with us, and then begin to ripple across generational lines and gender lines and different political views, as we come together to learn how to be one in Christ?

What happens when we take seriously our calling to be “preparers of the way” and therefore allow the peace that Christ pours into our hearts to extend to one another, to soften our hard edges, to make us better communicators and more open to healing, and to forgiveness, and grace?

I think what happens is that peace starts to become palpable. People feel drawn into the love of God even more deeply and ministries are energized. We become, through the gift of community, ever more “the Body of Christ.” And as that happens, we learn what it means to be salt, and light, and yeast for the sake of this broken world. When we leave this place to take our place in this community as citizens we don’t leave our core values behind. We take them with us to be little lights shining in the dark.

This may all sound a little naïve and I get that but as we continue to get to know each other, I hope you will realize that I’m not naïve about very much. It’s hard work to be followers of Jesus and as I said when I began, I am fully aware that peace is a challenge. We won’t always get it right. But we try, one day at a time. And when we do fail we ask for forgiveness from God and one another and we begin again. And again. And again.

Keep praying for one another, and especially pray for those who get under your skin and who may even be taking up residence in your head rent free. Let there be peace on earth indeed! But let it begin with us, with each and every one of us. And let it extend to our families–so that between now and Christmas we find ways to reconcile and to be reconciled if there is strife in our extended families. And as we practice forgiveness and love at home, let it extend beyond those walls. If we can do just that much we will make this a holy Advent and the adventure of faith will continue to unfold in God’s own time.

St. Nicholas of Myra

Today is the feast day of Nicholas of Myra—Saint Nicholas. He was a real person: a fourth-century bishop of the Church who may have attended the Council of Nicaea (from whence we get the Nicene Creed.) He is remembered as the patron saint of seafarers, sailors, and children. 

Little is known that can be clearly distinguished from the many legends about his life, but one thing we are fairly certain we know is that he was tortured and imprisoned for his faith during the reign of Emperor Diocletian. His memory and example was brought to this country by Dutch colonists in New York, who called him Santa Claus.

For my money, Miraslov Volf, who is the Director of  the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and Professor at Yale Divinity School, is one of the most creative theologians of our time. He wrote an extraordinary book a decade or so ago entitled Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. 

Volf makes an important distinction between God and our images of god. (Paul Tillich was making the same distinction many years ago when he spoke about “the God beyond God.”) That is to say there is this God who is beyond all of our knowing—“I AM” who encountered Moses at the burning bush but would not give a name—the God we can only glimpse and never control. And then there are the images we make—some of them iconic and some of them graven—but all of them limited and therefore always needing to be critiqued.  

Two common (but according to Volf false) images of god are god the negotiator and god the Santa Claus. Sometimes we imagine god as the one with whom we can play “let’s make a deal:” god, if you do this for me then I will do that. And conversely, if I do this for you then I want you do that for me.  Even our prayers (especially our prayers!) can become a means to an end: we want what lies behind door number one or curtain number two. If God will make my child better then we will go to church every Sunday. Promise. Alternatively, we run to the god of consumerist materialism to sit on his lap: the god who knows when we’ve been bad or good, so we better be good, for goodness’ sake! The god who gives everything and yet demands nothing. We go to this god with our shopping lists: insisting that we have discerned not only what we want but what we need.

I don’t want to caricature these images, and Volf doesn’t either. But they permeate American Christianity. And Volf challenges both images as idolatrous, insisting that the God of the Bible is first and foremost a Giver. He insists that the God of authentic Christian faith is the God who has created us and the world in love. But unlike Santa Claus-god, the Giving God’s gifts require a response in us, because God takes us seriously. God’s gifts, Volf writes, oblige us to a “posture of receptivity.” And once we have received God’s gifts, that marks not an end but a beginning. As we move toward gratitude we move also toward a willingness to respond in kind and to act in a similar way in the world. And so his title: it is not only God, but we ourselves who are called to “giving and forgiving” in a culture stripped of grace.  

I think we need to reclaim the Bishop of Myra as a saint of the Church. The problem for us is that "Santa Claus" has been co-opted to the point where the guy at the mall and coming down the chimneys bears little resemblance to the Bishop of Myra, who knew the cost of discipleship and whose generosity most definitely grew out of his encounter with the Giver of all things, the Maker of heaven and earth. So I think that old St. Nick needs a good press agent, and needs to be reclaimed by the Church. This blog aims to do that...

By this we know that we abide in Christ, and that Christ abides in us: because he has given us of his Spirit. Even in Advent, even as we prepare for the birth of the holy child, we remember that in his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to be with us. We have been given gifts—each of us—to do the work of ministry. Some we already recognize and claim and use. Some we are only beginning to claim, or even identify. And still others have been buried deep within us and remain unacknowledged. These, too, need to be unearthed and discovered like pearls in a field so they can be claimed and used for the sake of God’s reign.

This season of Advent puts in front of us an opportunity to once again encounter the God who truly is beyond God—the God beyond all of our doctrines (even the Creed passed at Nicaea!) all of our images, and all of our language. It gives us an opportunity to be still in the presence of this God who refuses to be used by us or domesticated by us or co-opted by us: this God who is the Giver of all things.

My prayer is that this Advent season we might each encounter this living God anew, the One who so loves the world that he sends Jesus into it in order that we might have life and have it abundantly. And that in a couple of weeks we might recognize the Gift that comes to us wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. When we do, I pray that we might receive the Gift with gratitude and then respond with our lives. Or as Christine Rosetti put it:

What can I give him, poor as I am? 
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb 
If I were a wise man, I would do my part. 
Yet what can I give him, give my heart.

 

Hope: A Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent

Our word for today is Hope. On this first Sunday of Advent and of a new liturgical year (and as it turns out this very first day of December) we have lit the first Advent Candle on our Advent wreath to mark the beginning of our Christmas preparations and to remind ourselves that we are a people of Hope. Quite literally, we are a people gathered at the corner of Church and Hope. You can’t make this stuff up!

I want to offer you a visual reminder of something important. I’d like to ask that we turn the lights off, for just a moment. And let our eyes adjust. It’s not the same as if it was midnight here but even on a Sunday morning, I want you to notice what it’s like without electric lights. (lights out!)

 I commend to you a book by Gil Rendle, a church consultant who has written an important book called Quietly Courageous: Leading the Church in a Changing World. At the end of that book, Rendle shares this story about a young boy who lived on a farm. He was instructed by his mother to go out on a pitch-dark night to make sure the barn door was closed and locked. He left through the back door but immediately returned, telling his mom it was too dark. She handed him a flashlight and told him to try again but again he came back pretty quickly. He said the flashlight was too weak and he couldn’t see the barn. His mother said, “you don’t need to see the barn…you just need to walk to the end of the light.”

The Scriptures tell us that a people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. The Scriptures tell us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. What I want you to notice is that it only takes a little bit of light to help us walk in the dark. I know that it’s harder and harder to drive at night as we get older, at least that is my experience. But we don’t need to drive anywhere we just need to walk – one step at a time. It's harder to read in the dark or see the words in the Hymnal. I get that. But for now, for just a moment longer, let’s just take in what is here. We are here. God is here. And the lights shine in the darkness of this holy space – and more importantly still, in the world.

That’s hope. It’s a word sometimes cheapened by everyday usage. We may hope that the Patriots win a game, or we hope that it isn’t raining when we take our vacation next summer. But hope is a bigger word in our vocabulary of faith than that.

“Faith, Hope, and Love,” at least according to St. Paul...seem to be the big three. Love may well be “the greatest of these” but the implication is that the three are somehow connected. I’ve always thought that the journey begins with faith, which isn’t about saying a creed, or about memorizing a catechism, but about trust and more specifically about well-placed (rather than mis-placed) trust. Faith leads us to hope. And hope gives us the courage and the vulnerability and the strength to love God and our neighbor.

Hope is an Advent word–the first word that carries us toward the celebration of our Lord’s birth, and sets the tone for these next four weeks. I often turn, when I am thinking about words, to Frederick Buechner. He writes, in “Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC” -

For Christians, hope is ultimately hope in Christ. The hope that he really is what for centuries we have been claiming he is. The hope that despite the fact that sin and death still rule the world, he somehow conquered them. The hope that in him and through him all of us stand a chance of somehow conquering them too. The hope that at some unforeseeable time and in some unimaginable way he will return with healing in his wings.

Jeremiah was a prophet of the Babylonian exile. He had a very difficult ministry, called to prepare the people while all seemed to be going well for the Babylonian exile. I’ve come to make a connection between our world and the world of the Old Testament between 586 and 911. (Alright, full disclosure – Walter Brueggemann and others smarter than I am have made this connection, but I fully embrace it!)

9/11 you all get immediately, even if you were a child then or not even born. 586 BCE was the year that the Babylonian Army marched into Jerusalem and destroyed the temple, which led to a period of grief, and despair, and exile in a foreign land. It is a number that marks the end of something, with a future yet to be determined. Jeremiah’s calling was to prepare people who didn’t want to face up to that for what was coming, before it was clear to the pundits what was unfolding.

Imagine our modern prophets in the U.S., as those people who through the 1980s and 1990s tried to warn us that we were on the wrong path in so many ways, that the ferment in the Middle East was not going to go away until there was peace with justice there. We are preparing not just our hearts but our homes, our church, our world for the coming of the prince of peace. There cannot be peace on earth until is begins with us, and surely it needs to include not just followers of Jesus but our Jewish and Muslim cousins as well. Pray today and always for the peace of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah had difficult words to speak in a time before people were ready to hear them. But late in that book–late in that “scroll”–there is this tiny little text of hope, this fragment really of just a few sentences that looks beyond the difficult days to the dawn of a new day.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: "The Lord is our righteousness."

The days are surely coming…all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well, as Dame Julian put it. That’s hope. Learning to see well enough in the darkness to keep on keeping on. All Jeremiah gives us is a dead branch. A stump – out of which a new shoot will come. It’s not a lot to go on, friends! But it’s enough. In fact, I suggest to you that that is the only way any of us get through difficult days, is to know that even if it will be a long haul, that a new day will eventually dawn. I think if we can ponder that reality we begin to get a grasp of what hope is really all about. The image of a “stump of Jesse” that gives way to a “new branch of David.”

I’m sure you’ve all tried to keep maple trees from consuming some piece of property by cutting them off at the trunk, only to come back in the spring and find a new shoot coming up out of the old trunk. That happens, as I understand it, because the root system already there makes new life come about more quickly, even though at ground level it appears that life has been cut off.

Stay with that, because that can guide you through this often frenetic month. Ponder for a moment what that means not only in the Bible, but for the spiritual life. For our real lives. Advent is such a time, a time to contemplate new beginnings and new possibilities. It’s a season of hope.

Jesse is King David’s father. What this metaphor suggests is that even though it appears that the Davidic dynasty comes to an end–that it is only a stump, from that stump new growth will appear. For us as Christians that is language we cannot help but to connect to Jesus, the Son of David who is our hope and our salvation.

And so Advent begins with talk about endings, about the end of the world we know. But don’t be deceived. The Christian paradox is that we begin here because we know that God is doing a new thing. God is birthing a new creation–new heavens, and a new earth, a branch of David out of the old stump of Jesse. For us, every ending is but a transition to a new beginning. That’s what we say at funerals, when a loved one dies, that life is changed, not ended. That our dying leads to new life. So, to, with our families, when old patterns die, and new ones begin to emerge. So, too, in congregations and in the world in which we live, and in this town of Bristol. Signs of endings, all around us. But not the end. Rather, a new beginning.

That doesn’t mean we won’t grieve the loss of what we once knew and loved. I have often said that it’s not really change that people fear, it’s grief. It’s loss of what is known, in exchange for what is not yet known. But we do it because of hope. Hope isn’t naivete, or blind cockeyed optimism. Hope isn’t the power of positive thinking. Rather, hope is the conviction that sin and death never get the last word. It is the conviction that love is stronger than hate, that truth is stronger than lies, that trust is stronger than fear. 

Hope is the knowledge that God is in the healing business, and that health is God’s plan for us–personally, socially, and cosmically. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best thing, Andy Dufrane tells Red in The Shawshank Redemption. Indeed. If we face a choice every day to get busy living or get busy dying, then it seems to me that the key to living is hope.

Hathy and I have had the privilege this week of having our son, Graham, and our daughter-in-law, Cara, with us in Worcester for Thanksgiving. We put our Christmas tree up and put the lights on it. (Please don't report me to the liturgical police!) Watching our one-year old grandson, Julian, watching and noticing and being captivated by those little lights is a beautiful thing to see, and an inspiration. The light of Christ has come into the world. That Light continues to shine in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it. 

Today we begin a new liturgical year together, and we light this first Advent candle to remind ourselves and each other that we are a people of hope, and to remind ourselves and signify to the world that we will not let our worst fears dictate our behaviors. We choose to act and live and move and have our being from that place of hope. We just need to keep on walking to the end of the light. Eventually that will lead us to a barn in Bethlehem. Stay tuned.

The Banality of Evil, Part III

So, how do we conspire against evil? How do we actively resist? In this three-part series (Part I can be found here and Part II can be found here) I have tried to "set the table" for this post by reviewing the notion of the banality of evil. I'm more a preacher than a theologian and most of my posts here are sermons. But these thoughts have been nagging at me - and trying to write it out is helpful to me; maybe a few readers too. 

Along the way I mentioned a previous series of posts on The Book of Revelation and on Walter Wink. In one of those posts, I quoted Wink as writing these words: 

The Church has many functions, not all related to the Powers. With reference to the Powers, however, its task as we have seen is to unmask their idolatrous pretensions, to identify their dehumanizing values, to strip from them the mantle of respectability, and to disenthrall their victims. It is uniquely equipped to help people unmask and die to the Powers. (emphasis mine, page 164)

He goes on to talk about homelessness and how we tackle this problem. 

No social struggle can hope to be effective if it only changes structured arrangements without altering their spirituality. All our letter writing, petitioning, political and community organizing, demonstrating, civil disobedience, prayers and fasting move to this end: to recall the Powers to the humanizing purposes of God revealed in Jesus. We are not commissioned to create a new society; indeed we are scarcely competent to do so. What the Church can do best, though it does so all too seldom, is to delegitimate an unjust system and to create a spiritual counterclimate. We may lack the wisdom to determine how homelessness can be solved; and our attempts as churches to feed, clothe, and house the homeless may only obscure the true causes of homelessness and fill us with false self-righteousness. But what we can do is create an insistent demand that homelessness be eradicated. We are not "building the Kingdom" as an earlier generation liked to put it. We simply lack the power to force the Powers to change. We faithfully do what we can with no illusions about our prospects for direct impact. We merely prepare the ground and sow, the seed grows itself, night and day, until the harvest. (Mark 4:26-29) And God will - this is our most profound conviction - bring the harvest. (page 165)

We humbly plant seeds. We don't "fix" the problem of evil like it's a widget. No technical fix will work on this ultimate adaptive challenge, the human condition. But we can name, unmask, and engage the powers. This is what Jesus did all the time in his ministry and we are called to follow him on this path. 

Perhaps the best example I know of from human history of resisting the power of evil came from the people of Le Chambon, France during the Second World War.  I want to focus here on the pastor of that congregation, Pastor Andre Tocme. I wrote about him in this post from 2017. For anyone who doesn't click on that hyperlink, read this much at least: 

When people insisted, after the war, that the people of Chambon had done something "good" they refused to accept praise. They insisted that they were simply doing what had to be done. "Who else could help them? Things had to be done and we were there to help, that is all!"

If you read any connections from this three-part series with the times we are living in right now, then thank you for being an astute and careful reader. But in truth the current context simply clarifies some things I've been thinking about in a lifetime of pastoral ministry. I was raising these same questions in a series of blog posts here during my sabbatical in 2017. But as often happens, I got back to work - back to the daily routine. One nice thing about blogging is that there is a record though and I realize that some of the biggest questions are ones that I circle back to over the course of my ordained life. As Eliot put it, we shall not cease from exploration... [and] we do sometimes find ourselves where we began and recognizing it for the first time. 

I'm now back in a parish, in time when our nation and world are facing incredible challenges. I don't think it's helpful to call a person evil, no matter how badly they behave. It's simplistic and unhelpful. It often leaves us paralyzed. I've tried to uncover some truths here and likely I haven't gotten it all right because these are difficult questions. But I've come back to the notion that the Church matters, and right now the Church has to figure out how to resist evil or what Walter Wink called, "the domination system." We have to figure out how to name, unmask and resist those powers that destroy the creatures of God and steal human dignity. 

Perhaps the counter to the banality of evil is the banality of good, or something like that. It's not flashy. The people of Chambon refused to accept praise because they "were just doing what had to be done." So it is with us. I like that Wink quote as well - the Church is not equipped to even begin to solve the problem of homelessness. But we can and must move beyond charity. We insist on human dignity, no matter what. 

We are called to be faithful, not necessarily successful. We are called to trust God but in the meantime to act in good faith, trusting that our small deeds can ripple out and ultimately change this world. The arc of the moral universe is indeed long (long long) but it does bend toward justice. We are called to live like we actually believe that to be true. 

The Banality of Evil, Part II

 This is the second post of a three-part series. Part I can be found here.

Celebrant: Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
People: I will, with God's help. (The Baptismal Covenant, The Book of Common Prayer, page 304)

What do we mean when we speak of evil? What does it look like to persevere in resisting it? There is a film that I still find compelling, and a scene about the devil that I find helpful. It's from Broadcast News:  

I think this clip has everything to do with the banality of evil. It's not about the cartoon devil in a red suit, but about the ways that we miss the mark and lose our bearings and compromise our core values, bit by bit. Bruce Springsteen sings in the title track of Nebraska about a guy who offers this explanation for a killing spree that he and his girlfriend go on: "sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world." (Critics have noted that Springsteen was reading a lot of Flannery O'Connor before writing Nebraska and that these words echo "A Good Man is Hard to Find," if you prefer a more literary reference than the poet from the swamps of Jersey.)

A book that I read many years ago was written by a Jewish scholar, Jon Levenson, entitled Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence. It's a compelling read but for this post it's that issue of the persistence of evil that I want to focus on. I think Levenson would agree to summarize by saying, "sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world." His argument is the drama is still unfolding and that God is still fighting against evil. God's people are called to share in that work. 

I'm currently serving in a congregation that takes it's name from the Archangel Michael who is said, in the Revelation of John, to have kicked the devil out of heaven but not yet off of the earth. 

We need, I think, mythological and not literal language to speak about evil. But we do need to reclaim this language in our time, starting with John's Revelation. I wrote a series of posts, chapter by chapter, seven years ago, beginning here. One superb guide is the late William Stringfellow. So, too, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series or the Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis. We need to reclaim the language of the faith that it is not enough to just go out and do good and think the world will be better overnight. We do battle not against flesh and blood but the powers and the principalities. See this post for more on this topic.

I'll try to figure out how to bring some of these strands together in Part III of this series, so stay tuned. 

The Banality of Evil: Part I

A few years ago, I travelled with my spouse and some friends to Nuremberg, Germany where we stood in the courtroom where former Nazis were tried after the war. Two thoughts kept running through my brain that day and they have lingered: 

The first was a memory of my New Testament professor in seminary, The Rev. Dr. Kalyan Dey. Kalyan loved to shock us and I loved his pedagogical style. More than once he told us (I believe in the context of studying Paul’s Letter to the Romans) that “Adolf Hitler didn’t kill six million Jews. Good church-going beer-drinking Christians did that.”

I knew that he was right, both theologically and historically. But it went against the simplest definition of evil I’d been working with. If you asked people in my small town growing up to define evil they would very likely say, “Adolf Hitler.” But this left us ill-equipped to deal with the real nature of evil. Don’t misunderstand me or my professor here: I’m not defending (in any way) Adolf Hitler. But when you project a theological category onto one (dead) person it leads to a pretty anemic understanding of the nature of evil. 

Kalyan knew this. He wanted to remind us at every opportunity of another Old Testament text, from the prophet Isaiah, that “all our righteousness is as filthy rags.” Although ordained in the United Methodist Church, his theology of sin was pretty Lutheran and his reading of Romans was through that lens. He challenged us, or at least me, to think more deeply about the web of sin and evil rather than locating it exclusively in one individual.

The second memory I had in that courtroom in Nuremburg was a memory of the phrase coined by Hannah Arendt, in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Eichmann had escaped to Argentina and was tried much later, in Jerusalem. But that phrase about the “banality of evil” kept coming back to me in Nuremberg. In those trials, Kalyan Dey was proven right: Hitler didn’t do this by himself. The trials focused on the charge of conspiracy. How and why did these atrocities happen? 

What did Arendt mean by this subtitle? She observed of Eichmann that he did not display either guilt for what he’d done nor hatred for those trying him. He claimed he bore no responsibility (as others had at Nuremberg) because he was “just doing his job.” He didn’t break any laws. (This can lead down a completely different rabbit hole, but I'll resist that for now. When is it “just” to break an “unjust law?" Or to put it slightly differently, can something be “legal” and still morally wrong? Yes!)

Arendt observed about Eichmann that he wasn’t able to think for himself. He had a “crippling lack of communication skills” because he relied on cliches and propaganda and euphemisms that made him seem like a normal guy just doing his job. I also find her observation interesting that Eichmann was a “joiner” throughout his entire life. He joined organizations that had a higher “purpose” and he had belonged to groups that he allowed to define him growing up. She also noted that while he clearly had anti-Semitic leanings, he didn’t hate Jews. Joining the SS was part of a pattern. He needed to belong. 

If you Google the word "banal" you find this definition: "so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring." Elsewhere, synonyms like "bland" and "hackneyed" and "vapid" are offered. 

In other words, as I understand Arendt, this isn't like The Exorcist with chairs flying and pea-soup coming out of one's mouth. It's not dramatic. It's boring, but not less real. A lot of bad can be done but never by one person, not even Adolf Hitler. The bad that is done in this world, the evil that hurts and destroys the creatures of God, is done by "normal" boring people who don't know how to think for themselves. 

I've labelled this as Part I with an intent to write two more parts to this series but I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the next two posts so those may not come immediately...

After an Election

I had a perfectly good sermon written, or almost written, earlier this week. (You would have liked it!) But it no longer seemed like the right sermon after this past Tuesday night.

Before I go any further I want to say that if I’ve learned anything at all in my sixty-one years it is that we are not all in the same place today. And whichever candidate we voted for, we are not even in just two camps today. If, though, you were happy about the presidential election, that is your right, and I love you. Perhaps my words will help to bring some understanding and empathy for your neighbors who are in pain right now, and that may (by God’s grace) help you to love your neighbor a little better. But many of us here this morning have experienced dismay and confusion and disorientation since waking up on Wednesday morning. This sermon is primarily for those who are feeling incredible sorrow for our nation right now.

And let me add that this grief is not about one candidate losing and another winning. It’s more about trying to figure out who we are as a nation – what we stand for. And then, what does it mean to be the Church in a time like this?

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The process, as most of us know from experience, is not linear. And it takes time. Trauma is not unlike grief but it’s far more likely that we can get stuck especially if/when we feel re-traumatized. And I know that there is trauma here too. Among others, LGBTQ friends are feeling especially vulnerable right now with all the rhetoric that is quite frankly frightening. In any case I will confess that I’ve been experiencing all those emotions that Kubler-Ross mentions this week except acceptance. I’m just not there yet. But I have been feeling well acquainted with grief and the accompanying emotional roller coaster of denial, anger, bargaining and depression.

As your pastor, at least for a season, I invite you to be gentle with yourself and with your neighbor. Breathe in and breathe out. Keep doing that. Just breathe – in and out. Find your coping mechanisms. For me cooking is one of those and comfort food especially. On Wednesday (a night I usually stay in Bristol) I drove home to make lasagna and a Caesar salad so that Hathy and I could eat together. It helped. A little. A nice bottle of red wine helped as well.

Facebook is at best a very mixed blessing, I know. But I discovered and then shared these words there earlier this week from a woman named Venice Williams, about whom I know very little. As far as I can tell she’s not famous or anything. Yet her words helped to orient me in the midst of so much disorientation. I share them with you today in the hope that you may find them helpful as well.

You are awakening to the
same country you fell asleep to.
The very same country.

Pull yourself together.
And, when you see me,
do not ask me
"What do we do now?
How do we get through the next four years?"

Some of my Ancestors dealt with
at least 400 years of this
under worse conditions.

Continue to do the good work.

Continue to build bridges not walls.

Continue to lead with compassion.

Continue the demanding work of liberation for all.

Continue to dismantle broken systems, large and small.

Continue to set the best example for the children.

Continue to be a vessel of nourishing joy.

 Continue right where you are.
Right where you live into your days.
Do so in the name of
The Creator who expects
nothing less from each of us.

And if you are not "continuing"
ALL of the above, in community, partnership, collaboration?

What is it you have been doing?

What is it you are waiting for?

You may not yet appreciate these words, and that’s ok too. But I offer them as a beacon, perhaps for next week or next month or next year. We don’t always allow time in our culture to grieve. And we need to allow for that space. Grief is disorienting and the Bible has lots of ways to express disorientation, especially in the psalms. My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? A few weeks ago we spoke here about Job, who could not find God when he looked to his left and right and ahead and behind.

But at some point we will need to get re-oriented – we cannot stay in a fetal position forever. The words I shared are there for me and I hope for you to help us to get our bearings and at least know where we might be headed. Yes, there will be many challenges. And yes, it may be worse even than our worst nightmares. Still we are called to be the Church. Still, we are called to continue in the work God has given us to do. That matters. And still we are at a season in the life of this congregation when we are seeking clarity around mission and purpose as we look to identify the next rector of this great parish. Don’t lose heart.

I want to invite you to come, today, any who so desire, to be anointed with oil that was previously blessed by our bishop. Healing is not magic. The oil won’t make it all better instantly. But it might remind you of the claim God has on you. We will skip over the creed today and the prayers of the people and confession. It’s ok – this is not a stealth move to remove them from the liturgy. Only today.  I invite you to pray silently, for yourself and others.

I’ll be up here with oil. Come if you so desire. If you remember back to last Sunday when we celebrated Holy Baptism on All Saints Sunday, we anointed that child, Colton, after the water, to remind him and his parents and godparents and ourselves that nothing can separate him from the love of God in Jesus. Nothing. That he has been sealed and marked and claimed, forever. No matter what.

And that’s true for every person here today. Whether you come forward or not for anointing, I invite you to spend this time in prayer for yourself, for those dear to you, for your neighbors including those who drive you crazy. Pray for family who will gather on Thanksgiving, knowing that this year might be a tense one. Pray for healing in this nation. Pray for this parish, that we will continue to grow together and toward a greater awareness of what we are called to be about in this time and place.

And if you would like, come forward to be anointed with this holy oil – an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace that reminds us all, through it all, that we are beloved.

For All The Saints

I grew up with a Baptist Grandmother. She was one of the many saints of my life. Both of my grandmothers, in different ways, were big influences on my spiritual life from an early age. But Esther Warner Simpson, my dad’s mother, was big on the Bible. One of the ways she showed love for her United Methodist grandchildren was to have us memorize Bible verses.

Jesus wept. That one was pretty easy! Just two words in the Revised Standard Version or, as she preferred, the King James Version. I like the New Revised translation that we used today better on most days, but it bums me out that they require four words when Jesus arrives at the grave of Lazarus, his friend: Jesus began to weep. I like the older version better. Jesus wept.

In any case, there is a lot going on in this liturgy today, one of the great days in the church year. Over the weekend, many of you have put pictures of loved ones and candles on the tables in the back and offering prayers for those who shaped our faith and now are among that great cloud of witnesses. I want to invite you to take a moment, whether or not their pictures are on one of those tables, to give thanks for their lives. Take a moment to celebrate what was good about their life and if there is any unfinished business, any lingering need for forgiveness and healing, offer that up to God as well on this day. We trust that in death, life is changed, not ended – so the relationships are still real and the bonds of love are stronger than death. I’ll give you ten seconds.

Just as we wept at the grave of our loved ones, so Jesus wept at the grave of his friend. Grief comes in waves and although time does help, it’s not exactly true that time heals all wounds. Jesus wept for the same reason we do: because death is hard.  Jesus called his friend out and they unbound him and let him go because love is stronger than death. We put our trust in that same truth that nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Jesus and in the love of God we share with those who have gone before us.

At the other end of the spectrum, today is one of those days when the Church celebrates Holy Baptism and we will do that here today. Baptism is about belonging, something we spoke about all last month in our stewardship journey. Today we say that Colton belongs to God – that he will be claimed and marked and sealed as God’s own. Forever. Nothing can change that. Nothing can separate him from the love of God. He will always have a home here and even when the Church doesn’t get it right, we dare to proclaim that Jesus loves us, this we know, for the Bible tells us so.

We promise to be a community of faith that shares that love with all the world. Today we will renew our own baptismal promises to be the Body of Christ, to be the People of God. So similarly, take a few moments to reflect on what you hope for today for this child and his generation in this town and around the planet – maybe for your own children and grandchildren. (Ten seconds)

But that’s not all, folks. That’s enough and that’s always what this holy day is about: birth and death and the love that binds us together into one great fellowship divine. It’s enough and honestly, although I love preaching, the liturgy holds all that today: those candles and photos of our loved ones, the water and the oil and not just one beloved child of God but a whole congregation full of them. What more needs to be said?

Well, I’m not going to belabor this, but in case you have forgotten, there will be a national election on Tuesday. The stakes are very high. I have strong opinions about this election, but those opinions are my own. I have thoughts I’m happy to share with anyone who asks me over a cup of coffee or a beer. But it is NOT my job to tell anyone of you how to use that precious right on Tuesday. I know some Christian leaders do that. I’m not personally afraid to do that, or worried about losing tax-exempt status: I just take very seriously that I am ordained to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, not to be a political operative.

And yet…

And yet, we do well to remember that Jesus lived and moved and had his being in the Roman Empire. He will be executed by the state. Jesus was “spiritual and religious.” The root word for religion is religio. It literally means to bind together. We can be spiritual on our own but we cannot be religious without others, to whom we are bound. For Jesus as a practicing Jew that was about a way of life, set apart. For us, bound together in Holy Baptism, it is also about a way of life. This way of life is about core values – those values found in The Baptismal Covenant. When we remember those, a vote becomes an expression of our identity, and a kind of prayer for the world that looks more and more like God’s will on earth as in heaven.

I want to say three things about this and then I will sit down. First, as this week unfolds, remember who you are and whose you are. Remember that we have promised and still promise to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being, no exceptions. We are a people who are called to seek and serve Christ in all persons, no exceptions.  

This is what our ancestors in the faith taught us, some of whose pictures are back on those tables and all of whom continue to cheer us on whenever we are in danger of losing hope. Always the two great commandments remain: love God and love neighbor. This is what we promise to teach Colton not only with our lips but in the way we live our lives. These promises are not for inside this building only, although that’s a pretty good start. We practice at vestry and committee meetings so that we can do it at home and work and yes, when we vote.

The second thing I want to say is that the opposite of faith is not doubt. Good old Thomas, the patron saint of Episcopalians everywhere, reminds us that doubts and questions can lead to deeper faith. Rather, the opposite of faith is fear. Fear divides us from one another. Fear appeals to our worst angels; faith appeals to our braver angels. We should vote based on our faith, not fear. Faith binds us together – religio; fear divides us.

Third: we may gather here next Sunday and still not yet know the results of the presidential election. It’s going to be very close and there are a lot of ballots (my own included) that went in early but will be counted late. We need to be patient at a time when the stakes are very high. But whatever happens and whenever we know of it, God will still be God and we will still be called to follow Jesus. The work God has given us to do is the work of reconciliation.

When I was an undergraduate in Washington DC in the 1980s, I used to go hang out on the Mall and in particular I’d hang with honest Abe Lincoln there and read the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural. I said earlier I liked the verse “Jesus wept” because it was short, but I’ll tell you that there was a point in my life when I could recite both of those speeches by heart.

You will remember that the second inaugural was on March 4, 1865, when the Civil War had bitterly divided this nation and almost rent it asunder. Lincoln appealed to the nation’s braver angels when he spoke these words, words I feel speak to us across the years to this time and place:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

My brothers and sisters, the work we are called to share in the name of the risen Christ means choosing wisely on Tuesday, choosing in a way that will lead us toward peace on earth and good will for all. Your faith and your life experience will inform how you see fit to vote. But that is your sacred right and it is not my job to tell you which bubbles to fill in.

But on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and next Sunday morning and beyond,  we have work to do together, as followers of Jesus. And it is my job, for a season, to proclaim the good news. It is my job, for a season, to be your pastor and to build up the Body of Christ here, always with God’s help.

With malice toward none and charity for all; firm in our convictions but knowing we don’t ever see fully, we are called to the work of healing and reconciliation, of binding up this nation’s wounds, of seeking and serving Christ in all persons, of respecting the dignity of everyone. No exceptions.

 

Sermon for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost

Six weeks ago, the gospel reading for the day was Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi. Every New Testament scholar on the planet will tell you what an important turning point that is in the gospel, that moment where Peter says to his friend, Jesus, “You are the Christ.”

Since then, we have been on the road with Jesus and his followers from Galilee. The total distance between Galilee and Jerusalem is about 120 miles, basically from here to Kittery, Maine. It would have taken Jesus and the disciples around six days or so to make that journey. The stuff we’ve been hearing about over these past six weeks is what Mark remembers about as the highlights, on the road. The early Christians were known as people of “the Way” – that speaks to me in the times we are living in, a people who are walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

Today we have reached the suburbs of Jericho, about fifteen miles from the city limits of Jerusalem. It’s the last stop on the pilgrims’ journey. In liturgical time it’s almost Palm Sunday, just hours before Jesus will enter the city on a donkey as the crowds shout Hosanna and lay down their branches of palm before him.

Jesus and his disciples were not the first Galileans to travel to Jerusalem. In fact, this religious pilgrimage was undertaken by faithful Jews as many as three times a year and especially to celebrate high holy days like Passover, which is what Jesus and the disciples are doing. Jerusalem’s whole economy was built on religious tourism and the temple. The route the disciples have been taking is the recommended one by AAA and along the way are places to stay in a time long before interstate highways.

So, of course, along the way there are also beggars because beggars are smart. Beggars don’t hang out where there aren’t any people. They like public places and well-travelled roads. Everyone coming from the north had to go through Jericho to get to Jerusalem. So we shouldn’t be surprised that there is a blind beggar in Jericho; there are no doubt lots of blind beggars in Jericho. But this particular  story is about Timaeus’ son whose life intersects on that day with Jesus, on the road to Jerusalem.

Now this story may well be familiar to many of us, even if we don’t remember the details of this particular healing. We’ve heard plenty from Mark about how Jesus healed people in and around Galilee before this journey to Jerusalem began. We’ve heard about how he made the blind to see and the deaf to hear, about how he healed the woman with the hemorrhage and raised Jairus’ daughter. So it comes as no big surprise and really is no big deal that Jesus makes blind Bartimaeus see. We who have been on the journey already know this is who Jesus is, at least since Caesarea Philippi. He is the Christ – the son of the living God. This is what he does.

There are some details, however, in this story that I want us to notice together. First of all, when Bartimaeus cries out: “Jesus, Son of David…have mercy on me!” he is the first person in Mark’s Gospel to use that title for Jesus. We’ve come all this way since the Jordan River, where God said Jesus was his “beloved Son.” We’ve heard Jesus speak of himself as the “Son of Man.” We’ve heard Peter recognize Jesus as “the Christ/the Messiah.” But now, as we near the city gates of Jerusalem, Jesus is identified—by a blind man no less!—as Son of King David. Timaeus’ kid “sees” what no one else has yet been able to see, that the dawn of a new day is on the horizon. “Son of David” is a political claim. Implicit is that Jesus is Lord; Caesar is not.

The man makes a scene. He cries out and is silenced by the crowd but he cries out all the more until he gets Jesus’ attention. And Jesus then invites him to come to him. I find it interesting that Jesus doesn’t go to Bartimaeus; but rather calls Bartimaeus to come to him. I mean, the guy is blind, remember!? Wouldn’t Jesus be “compassionate” enough, given that he can see where he is going just fine, to walk toward Bartimaeus rather than making Bartimaeus grope in the darkness?

I find that detail interesting because of what it literally says and because of what it metaphorically suggests. Jesus is no enabler. I don’t want in any way to minimize the hardship of being blind or lame or deaf. But sometimes our disabilities can become occasions by which others treat us as less than human. And sometimes we do that to ourselves. Sometimes in our weakness others make us feel even weaker than we are, and then they do for us what we can and need to do for ourselves. Have you ever been around a couple where a “caregiver” feels the need to answer all questions addressed to the “patient?”  It’s not uncommon.

If we aren’t careful, we create dependency rather than truly serving our neighbor. We may not mean to. But there is a difference between “helping people” because it makes us feel good or because we need to be needed and serving people because we see the image of God in them. The difference has to do with allowing people to keep their dignity.

So Jesus treats Bartimaeus with dignity and respect: as a person, as a human being, as a beloved child of God. In so doing I think he is already working toward making him whole, which is about more than simply giving him back his sight. Bartimaeus “leaps up and tosses off his cloak” (notice that this is before he regains his sight) and comes to Jesus. The tossing of his cloak is a bridge-burning act. That coat is the means by which a blind beggar would gather in the coins tossed to him by others and shake them in. What Mark is telling us is that this man completely trusts that Jesus is about to transform his life, and that is about more than healing his blindness. He’s not going to have to beg anymore. So he doesn’t need that cloak anymore.

Yet again, I find it interesting that Jesus asks Bartimaeus a question: “what do you want me to do for you?” It’s tempting to want to spoof a response—as if Bartimaeus might say: “hello…son of David, I’m BLIND…what do you think I want, cookies and milk?!” But I think this falls under that same heading as before: Jesus treats him as a person. Bartimaeus is asked to articulate what he wants, what he needs, what he desires. That’s empowering, in my experience rather than belittling.

I have no problem believing this happened this way. But I also think that the story is laden with metaphorical meaning and implications as well. Above all, we are meant to chuckle at how the blind guy sees better than the disciples who Jesus is and what he is about. He regains his sight and becomes a follower on “The Way.” He apparently has no illusions about what is coming but he has been touched by the amazing grace of Jesus, for he was once blind but now he sees and that is such amazing grace that he cannot but help to respond with his life.

I also think that we are meant to wonder about our own blindness or at least our blind spots? We tend to think we see it all. But that is a great illusion. Each of us sees what we want to see, or what we are able to see, from a fairly narrow perspective. None of us have eyes in the back of our heads. None of us have 20/20 vision, at least not in a spiritual sense. Much is hidden from our understanding. Always we are looking through a dark glass. Part of spiritual maturity is beginning to see things in new ways, to see from new angles. But part of it is also becoming more profoundly aware that we don’t see it all, that we don’t have all the answers, that what we see isn’t all there is to see. In and through Christian community, Jesus helps us to see in new ways, especially by way of other people, whose experiences may be very different from ours. 

We may be tempted to sit back and wait for Jesus to come to us. But I think the journey begins in fact when we find ourselves groping in the dark and crying out, “Son of David, Jesus, have mercy on me” and we stumble along trying to find our way to God. This kind of faith is not passive but active. Somewhere along the line I think some of us have been mistaught a kind of religious passivity, to just sit back and have God do it all. So if we lose our faith or experience doubt or blindness we think God has failed us. But perhaps we have failed God in those moments.

Perhaps it is incumbent upon us to cry out in the darkness, to ask for what we need, and to do our best to get up and move. In that moment, I think Christ encourages us and calls out to us and asks us what we need, what we want, what we desire. And as we begin to articulate that, we are already on the path toward health and insight. It’s not magic; it requires our participation. It requires our desire to see, our willingness to risk throwing off the coats that keep us dependent, and the risk of following Jesus even to Jerusalem – even to the foot of the cross. Prayer is, at least in part, about learning to articulate what we need. There is spiritual growth that comes simply by learning to articulate what we are asking for, not because Jesus needs for us to do that but because we need to do that.

It seems clear to me that what Jesus gives to Bartimaeus and to all of us is vision and what he asks in return is that we begin to live into that vision by following him. He helps us to see our neighbor and to see the stranger and to see the pain of the world and the injustice but also to see the beauty and truth and love and when we see all that we are asked to join him and to do the work he has given us to do. We may well feel that it’s easier to be a blind beggar on the side of the road than it is to be a follower of Jesus. Because it is! But that is the insight that Jesus has been trying to get through the disciples thick skulls for six days, or six weeks, or six years, or six decades, or six centuries: take up your cross! Follow me!