Do you not know?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"  (Romans 6:3 - appointed to be read at The Great Vigil of Easter)

Paul asks this question of the early Christian community in Rome, the place that will become so central to the development and spread of the gospel in the western world. Keep in mind that he hasn’t yet met these people. Unlike most of his letters (where he is the founding pastor and he says things like, “tell Chloe I said hey!” or “give my best to Prisca and Aquila”) in Romans he addresses “all of God’s beloved in Rome who are called to be saints.” He is introducing himself to a congregation that he doesn’t know.

Like all of us, St. Paul had his “issues.” Even his biggest fans know that he is not the Christ, that he is hardly the Son of God. He is a sinner like the rest of us. And a saint like the rest of us. But theologically, even when you disagree with Paul, you have to admit he really does get it. And pastorally, even when he needs to get tough with his parishioners, it seems obvious that he really does love the people to whom he writes and that they love him back. That is the very heart of pastoral ministry. So I imagine that when those letters to the early Christians in Corinth or Galatia or Thessalonica were first read aloud, there were a few times when people rolled their eyes or smiled and thought, “oh boy, here he goes again, but that's our guy!” 

But in Rome, they don’t have that kind of relationship with Paul. They can’t hear his voice as the letter gets read aloud to them. So I have this fantasy that as the people gathered in some house church in Rome to hear the scriptures and break the bread together, that when they got to this part in the sixth chapter that some kid in the back yells out, “yes, of course we know that…we know all about baptism!”

And maybe that kid’s mom turns to him and says, “Shhh. I think it’s a rhetorical question, honey.” (To which the kid says, "what's rhetorical mean, mom?")

It’s like when the prophet Isaiah says, “have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?”(See Isaiah 40) Isaiah knows in that time and place that those exiles do know and that they have heard and they have been told their whole lives, even if they have momentarily forgotten. Because remembering can be hard, they know and we know. So rhetorical questions call out from deep within us what we already trust is true. We just need to be reminded...

I think that Paul is doing very much the same thing in the sixth chapter of Romans. “Don’t you know that baptism into Christ is all about dying?” I think he expects the congregation to say, “amen, preach" or if they are quieter 8 o'clock Episcopal congregation then to at least nod their heads knowingly. "Yes we do know that.” 

It’s not an argument. It’s not a question. It’s a statement of faith. Baptism is about dying with Christ. In Mexico, I’m told that when parents bring their newborn children to be baptized in the font they carry them in a little casket to make the point. That may sound a bit scary to us if it's not our tradition, but it’s very good theology. So yes, Holy Baptism is about dying with Christ. It’s what follows that is really Paul’s point. He buries the lead. If you know it, then act like it. 

Christ died, and was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. So if we really have died with Christ, we can now live with Christ. It’s time to walk the talk: if we are freed to walk in newness of life, then we should indeed walk in newness of life.  Sin and death have been defeated. We should then live as Easter people, so the world might believe.

Our experience (and even our common sense) tells us that you are born one day and then eventually we will all die. We can live in fear of that or in denial of that or even as brave soldiers in the face of that. But Paul insists that Holy Baptism turns that whole concept upside down and inside out. Our Baptismal identity is tied up with the three-day journey we are about to embark upon yet again this Holy Week, from death to new life. The Christian journey is meant to mirror that Paschal mystery, so that we put our fear of death behind us in order to get busy living. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into this death? 

Yes, of course. We know. But the reminder takes us back to our roots and back to the heart of the matter. St. Paul reminds those early Christians in the middle of the first century at Rome of their Baptism, and what it means and what it requires of them. And down through the centuries, to this very time and place, we are also being reminded, and in that reminder we dare to hear "a word of the Lord." 

Yep, Paul. We know we have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death, which means that we are now called to live and act toward the promise of new life, to live and act with a kind of defiant hope, to live and act for freedom and the dignity of all, and to strive for justice in an unfair world. 

Easter isn’t something we “prove”—it’s a way of life. Each year, sometime in Holy Week, I return to the Easter sermon of a fourth-century preacher who was nicknamed “golden tongue” to get my bearings and to remember what this week is about and where we are headed. All that we do this week culminates at the empty tomb, so that we can remember who we are.

Good old St. John Chrysostom's Easter sermon has stood the test of time. While faith is always new and has to be responsive to the needs of our contemporary context, if we are not careful, our desire to be relevant can become pretty shallow. So I find it helpful to get back to the roots - back to Paul's Letter to the Church in Rome and back to the Easter sermon of a golden-tongued preacher in the fourth century. Since Easter was the time that the newly baptized converts to the faith would also come to the Table to share in their first communion with the faithful, Chrysostom extended this invitation to all who gathered at the Easter Vigil “to taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” Here, in part, is what he said - more poetry, I think, than prose:

        First and last alike receive your reward;
        Rich and poor, rejoice together!
        Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
        You that have kept the fast and you that have not.

        Rejoice today for the table is richly laden!
        Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
        Let no one go away hungry.
        Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
        Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!       

        Let no one grieve at his poverty,
        For the universal kingdom has been revealed.
        Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
        For forgiveness has risen from the grave.
        Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
        He has destroyed death by enduring it. *

Yep. We know. Help us, Lord, to walk the talk. 

* Chrysostom's full sermon can be found here.

Disturb us, O God, and vex us...

Estimates of the population of Jerusalem in Jesus’ day run around 40,000. But on high holy days (like Passover) as many as 200,000 pilgrims would travel to Jerusalem. Think about cities when they host the Olympics or the Super Bowl and you begin to get some sense of the electricity and the buzz. And the crowds...

But add to that the political context of Roman occupation. In their book, The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’ Final Week in Jerusalem, John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg remind us that King Herod and  Pontius Pilate are in town for a political rally: to display Roman imperial power and flex political muscle. Why? Because the Roman authorities are worried that a riot might break out as these religious pilgrims gather to remember that old, old story of the Exodus: that story about how the bonds of Pharaoh’s oppression were loosed and the captives went free. If people start to see the connections between Pharaoh and Caesar, they might just start telling old Caesar to let God’s people go (again!)

This weekend as Jews celebrate Passover, Christians will again celebrate Palm Sunday. While this is our second Holy Week in a row during the pandemic, the story remains the same even when the palms are "to go." In that story we are told by the gospel writers that Jesus enters the holy city on a donkey and that people wave their branches and shout, "hosanna, hosanna." The question needs to be asked: what exactly is Jesus up to? Are they singing “We Shall Overcome?” Is Jesus reminding his people that Passover isn’t just a remembering of the past, but a challenge to all misuses of power and authority in every time and place? 

Politicians fear angry mobs, although on occasions when it serves their purposes, they also stir them up. When they want to squelch peaceful protests, however, they call them "angry mobs" and insist that they are just "keeping the peace.” The truth, however, is that the Pax Romana was less about pax and more about holding onto Romana power. Jesus comes to bring lasting shalom with justice that exposes the Pax Romana for what it really is. 

There is a temptation for Christians (especially North American Christians) to turn Palm Sunday into a parade. When we do that, the liturgical move to the Passion always feels jarring. But this is not a Thanksgiving Day parade; this is more like a march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Understanding that dynamic makes it clearer what Jesus is up to. Borg and Crossan remind us that Jesus' procession into Jerusalem is not the main event that will be covered by the press on this day, but a kind of counter-protest to the Roman propaganda machine. 

Over the years that I served as a parish priest, we always did the dramatic reading of the Passion Narrative on Palm Sunday and then again on Good Friday. In addition to the assigned roles, there is the part of the crowd which is "played" by everyone in attendance.  Usually at least one person (and sometimes more than one) would confess to me at the door: "I didn’t say my lines. I don’t like to do that. I refuse to shout out, crucify him, crucify him.” 

I used to think that the same crowd that greets Jesus with palm branches shouting, “Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” and the crowd that shouts, “crucify him” a few days later were one and the same, that both crowds were comprised of the same people. Our dramatic reading of the Passion reinforces this interpretation. 

In addition, there are some very good Biblical commentaries that suggest that people are fickle: one minute we are looking for a messiah and the next we are wanting to kill him for not being the kind of messiah we wanted. And it’s not bad theology, actually. We do sometimes set up our heroes in order to tear them down. There is a verse in a rather old Good Friday hymn (by old I mean going back about four hundred years) that I think is very much in synch with that reading of who “the crowd” is. It goes like this:

            Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
            Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
            'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee: 
            I crucified thee.  
            (The Hymnal 1982, page 158, words by Johann Heermann (1585- 1647)

There is wisdom in understanding the Passion Narrative in this way and confessing our own complicity with the evil that rejects Jesus. It keeps us focused on confessing our own sin and our own complicity with evil rather than scapegoating others. It reminds us that we, too, are capable of getting sucked into a mob mentality. And in that sense it is good for us to shout out, “crucify him” because it has the potential to keep us honest and resist the temptation to project our own capacity for evil outwards. Throughout Church History, there is a great deal of evidence that the ones who have been blamed are “the Jews.” Not the individuals who conspired together in a specific context under a specific set of circumstances, but just “the Jews.” They killed Jesus. Singing Hymn 158 or participating in the Passion Reading as written challenges that approach. And that's a good thing. Moreover, as we enter into the events of this holy week it forces us to confront that part of us that wants our God, our Messiah, to fix everything, to be the Messiah we want him to be. And when Jesus disappoints us, we kill him. I crucified thee.

So maybe that is right. We are indeed a fickle bunch. And if we are not careful, we can contribute to the polarization and demonization that are part of the human condition that lead to so much violence and fear in this world, where the innocent suffer and die. We want to stand on the side of justice. But if we aren’t careful we can become what William Sloan Coffin used to call “good haters.”

What I have learned from Borg and Crossan and my travels to Bethphage, however, is that there were almost certainly two events on that Palm Sunday in Jerusalem and therefore two different crowds. The more I've lived with this and watched the news in our own time, the more I've come to believe this is right. There is the pro-Rome rally and there is a a peaceful counter-demonstration on the other side of town. King Herod (the guy literally claims to be “the king of the Jews” without any irony) is in town for all the festivities. And of course Pontius Pilate is there too. In other words, these politicians are there for a big event and no doubt in the midst of all kinds of official festivities, the ones with the brass bands and the marching centurions. 

The suggestion is that our procession, the one that begins in Bethphage on a donkey, is a counter-demonstration made up primarily of outsiders from the hills of Galilee who have finally arrived in Jerusalem. While they have been adding numbers along The Way, they are (at least when compared to the official parades) a much smaller group. In this reading of the text, they totally get it that when they claim Jesus as King of the Jews and as the Son of David, they are directly challenging Herod’s authority - and ultimately Caesar's authority. That’s not a “spiritual” claim. It’s not an otherworldly claim. It’s a direct challenge to the rulers of this world and the claims of the Roman Empire. When they say that Jesus is the true one, the awaited one, it’s a rallying cry. Jesus is Lord; not Caesar. Hosanna in the highest heaven. We shall overcome! Deep in my heart, I do believe…

In this reading, essentially what is about to unfold as we remember the last days of Jesus’ life is that these two crowds are about to collide. And as always happens, the stronger force will win. The powerful will crush the weak. They will silence the demonstrators by executing their leader. They’ll use force to scare them into running and hiding. Well, at least that is their goal. And that is what they will believe that they will have accomplished by Friday afternoon. And yet as it turns out, that isn’t the end of the story. 

In the film version of The Hunger Games, Donald Sutherland plays President Snow. In that film, at one point President Snow says this:

Why do we have a winner? Hope….hope is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective; a lot of hope is dangerous.

Jesus comes into Jerusalem to offer a lot of hope, enough hope to cast out fear. But make no mistake about it: that is a very dangerous thing. It can even get you killed. A lot of hope makes the powers-that-be incredibly nervous, and the political and religious elites will respond swiftly and severely. They always do. Pontius Pilate in this reading is not nearly so innocent as he may appear. He’s an astute politician, a first-century President Snow who knows how dangerous too much hope can be. And so, before you know it, there is an angry mob that has been stirred up, a mob that cries out for the death of an innocent man even as a guilty man is set free.

If this reading is correct (and I'm convinced it is) then a whole new set of questions emerge for us as we live our lives in this time and place. With which crowd do we choose to associate? Where do we choose to stand in this world, in the midst of deeply contested narratives about who is lord of our lives and the legitimate ruler of this world? Do we stand in an angry mob or with those who are willing to lose their lives to find them, for the sake of the Gospel? What do we render unto Caesar? And what do we render unto God?

In this reading, the “crowd of protesters” that choose to stand with Jesus (over and against all that hurts or destroys the creatures of God) becomes a visible witness to an alternative way to be in this world, a counter-cultural community over and against an angry mob comprised of those who allow themselves to be manipulated by those who have the most to lose whenever too much hope is unleashed. They are called to be light, and yeast, and salt. 

Yet even here, truth be told, it is probably best to be humble about where we stand. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we stand with the Communion of Saints, a great cloud of witnesses, and we rightly shout out, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” And sometimes we get sucked into the ways of this world and we find ourselves a part of the mob that shouts, “crucify him.” The Good News here, though, is that Jesus dies for the sins of the whole world: not only for the band of faithful disciples but for the sins of the whole lot. Our protesters and the angry mob; Peter and those women who came all the way from Galilee, but also Judas and Barabbas and Pontius Pilate and even Herod. The righteous and the unrighteous. The saints and the sinners. The whole world. 

There is a prayer from the Reform Jewish Prayerbook, for Shabbat, that I have prayed with a kind of holy envy for many years now. I first came across it at the retirement of Rabbi Seth Bernstein, when I was still the rector of St. Francis in Holden. It made a powerful impact on me, and I think it is relevant to the reading of Palm Sunday I've offered above. It may feel especially appropriate as we are again trying to respond to gun violence in our nation, as people who are called to beat swords into plowshares. It goes like this: 

DISTURB US, Adonai, ruffle us from our complacency. Make us dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the peace of ignorance, the quietude which arises from a shunning of the horror, the defeat, the bitterness and the poverty, physical and spiritual, of humans. Shock us, Adonai, deny to us the false Shabbat which gives us the delusions of satisfaction amid a world of war and hatred; Wake us O God, and shake us from the sweet and sad poignancies rendered by half forgotten melodies and rubric prayers of yesteryears; Make us know that the border of the sanctuary is not the border of living and the walls of Your temples are not shelters from the winds of truth, justice and reality. Disturb us, O God, and vex us; let not Your Shabbat be a day of torpor and slumber; let it be a time to be stirred and spurred to action. 
Baruch atah, Adonai, m'kadeish Ha Shabbat

Prophets of a future not our own

In the liturgy for the ordination of a deacon, the first of two suggested options for the Old Testament reading is the call of the prophet Jeremiah. Over the years, it has been my good fortune to preach at several ordinations and I love preaching on this text. Even if you have never been to an ordination service for a deacon before, the words may be familiar. The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you…

That call is met with resistance from Jeremiah. Because when called to do the work God gives them to do, God’s people resist. Moses reminded God that he had a stutter. Isaiah said he had unclean lips. Mary didn’t so much resist as simply ask the obvious question: “how can this be, since I am a virgin?” God's response is always the same: "no worries, I’ll be with you."

So Jeremiah says, “but I’m only a boy.” To which God says, “Do not say I am only a boy. Do not be afraid, I’ll be with you…”

The reading abruptly ends at verse nine, however, and then everyone sings "Here I am, Lord." That is unfortunate, however. Because it is in verse ten that we get a job description of what exactly God wants Jeremiah to do, and that matters. The God of the Bible isn’t very interested in happy generalities. The God of the Bible is into particularity: specific people doing specific things at specific times and in specific places. So Moses has to go tell old Pharaoh to let God’s people go; not just declare in vague generalities that God cares about the oppressed. Mary carries that child, Jesus, in her belly for nine months. In the case of Jeremiah, his ministry can be nicely summed up with just six verbs. The work God gives him to do is to pluck up and pull down, destroy and overthrow, build and plant.

Notice that two thirds of those verbs are about the hard work of deconstructing the old order. It’s like going into a new construction project to open up the kitchen area but before that vision can be implemented some walls need to be knocked down. Isaiah and Micah and Amos and Hosea all tried to warn God’s people to do justice and love mercy by caring for the widow and the orphan. They got clear in the course of their respective ministries, however, that denial is not just a river in Egypt, as their words fell on deaf ears.

So as Walter Brueggemann puts it, it falls to Jeremiah “to speak Israel into exile.” That's not a fun job! There is no room left for denial once the Babylonian army marches in and reduces the Temple to a pile of rubble and carts off the leaders to Babylon. Now there is grief and despair as they lay up their harps and weep: for how could they sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

I remember, in the aftermath of 9/11, hearing words from the eighth chapter of Jeremiah read aloud that Sunday in the congregation that I was serving at the time and for the first time in my lifetime, those words made total sense, not just to me but to everyone in the congregation. You could have heard a pin drop. 

My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land:" Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not in her?"…Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? 

It’s only centuries later that the old spiritual will dare to claim that there actually is a balm in Gilead. For Jeremiah and the exiles, in the midst of all that plucking up, tearing down, destroying and overthrowing, it is simply left as a haunting rhetorical question. And for a time it must have seemed as if the clear answer was “no.” No balm in Gilead. No cure for the sin-sick soul. No hope; it's all dried up.

It had become almost cliché for theologians and Biblical scholars as they look around at the how the church has been changing in the past few decades to borrow this metaphor of Exile to speak of the challenges of trying to be a Christian in North America at the dawn of the twenty-first century. We are not unacquainted with grief and loss. But this pandemic has accelerated that process. Do we really believe that the Church is a building or a people?  We know how the song goes, and we also know the buildings mean a lot to us. 

But if we are to take seriously the metaphor of exile, then we do well to remember that after all that difficult work of plucking up and tearing down, of destroying and overthrowing, the story isn’t over. God isn’t finished. There is a time and a season for everything under the sun and after all that work of deconstructing, it is a time for building and a time for planting. Eventually the exiles come back home and when they do, they begin again. That is the story of faith and of life itself: how endings give way to new beginnings. 

This brings us to the Old Testament reading appointed for the fifth Sunday in Lent, which comes from Chapter 31 of the Book of Jeremiah, the second half of what the Biblical scholars call "the Book of Comfort."  In the face of death, Israel has to learn anew that God really will and can work new life. The days are surely coming, Jeremiah says. 

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and [I will] remember their sin no more.

We rehearse this same kind of language when we recite the Paschal mystery and we do it more slowly and intentionally in Holy Week. What does it mean to remember not only that Christ has died, but is risen, and will come again? What would it look like for us to begin to live it not just as words on our lips, but in our lives by truly becoming an Easter people? The days are surely coming, Jeremiah insists. Do we believe that, as we approach Easter 2021?  

The days are surely coming when the covenant is written on hearts, not just on page 350 of The Book of Common Prayer. The days are surely coming when love of God and love of neighbor define God’s people and the Lord is made known not because of our buildings but because through us we show the world that God’s love knows no boundaries. The season ahead will be a time for planting and building. 

Thirty-one years ago, on March 24, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was martyred while presiding at the Holy Eucharist in El Salvador. His witness, and that of the people of El Salvador reminds us that in all seasons of the Church’s life we are called to faithfulness, even if not always to success.

There is a prayer that I believed for years was written by him, which it turns out was not. The best I can find out, the prayer was composed by the late Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw. Even so (and perhaps in a similar way as the prayer attributed to St. Francis)  I can't think about Oscar Romero without thinking also of this prayer, which it seems does resonate with his life and witness even if he didn't actually write the words.  I think Jeremiah could also have written it after all that deconstructing: 

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything,
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders;
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future that is not our own.

We are indeed prophets of a future that is not our own.  May we find ways, in the time that is given to us after so much loss, to build and plant. To plant seeds that hold future promise and to build foundations that will need further development. May we do what we can, in hope. 

Faithful Leadership in Difficult Times

The second half of 2003 was the hardest year of my ordained life, which has now spanned more than three decades. The hardest year, of course, until 2020.

I want to be clear that I celebrated, then and today, the good news that came out of St. Paul's Church in Concord, New Hampshire on June 7, 2003, when the Canon to the Ordinary in the Diocese of New Hampshire was elected to serve as their Bishop-elect. That election made the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson the first openly gay bishop in The Episcopal Church.  

The reactions in the suburban parish I was serving at the time were mixed. Some (even most) rejoiced.  Some were confused. A few were angry. And a subset of that angry group were livid. Those folks made my life difficult for a while. Most of them either went back to the Roman Catholic or evangelical congregations that had shaped their theologies; or they eventually found their way to a breakaway denomination, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA.) But not before they kicked me a few times on their way out. And of course, they took their pledges with them, which left some challenges for the rest of us.

It is not my intent here to relitigate the past or nurse old wounds. It is not my desire to demonize the people who were mean to me; I gave that up for Lent many years ago. Leaders always take some hits in anxious times and this came less than two years after 9/11, don't forget. We all did the best that we could. Here is the point I do want to make: I almost left parish ministry then. If I could have found a way to do so, I would have. I was exhausted from the financial woes and weary from the theological "debates." I had never imagined myself as a parish priest in the first place anyway. So my first thought was to apply to graduate schools and find a way to teach for the rest of my life. The "ivory tower" seemed to offer such green pastures! I could have done that and might have done that, but it would not have been easy with our home being a rectory and having no savings and having two sons, ages 13 and 9. Even so, it was a possibility that I seriously considered. 

What saved me was that I got invited to go to a program called CREDO, a clergy wellness program of the Episcopal Church. These gatherings are offered all over the country but I was invited to attend in San Francisco. That CREDO conference reframed things for me and I realized that I was not alone, even if I felt isolated. The foundations of the whole church were shaking, even in places where this was a non-issue. It impacted diocesan and national and global budgets and relationships. And the only way through it was to wait for the dust to settle and then move forward, one step at a time. 

Oddly and in a way that I experienced as encouragement, that reframing helped me to see that it would not always be this way. We would get to a new place. There was no going back, but as Bishop Robinson would later say in videos made for LGBTQ youth, "it will get better." And it did get better. The parish I served grew stronger and more inclusive in showing the love of God for all of God's children. Some people did leave, but quite frankly others came - and stayed. And I became a more mature priest, wiser for the experience. 

The past year has been exponentially worse. But in my more reflective moments I think back to that experience, and I think that at least some of the lessons learned are still relevant. I remember feeling so weary in 2003. Not just tired as in needing a good night's sleep. But bone tired, like those dry bones in Ezekiel's vision. I wasn't sure if those old bones could live again. But they did...

This is different in many ways. Interestingly, and in part I think because of how transformative that experience was for me, I currently serve as a faculty member on a CREDO team. In my day job as Canon to the Ordinary, I know that so many of my colleagues who could use a CREDO conference right now. Unfortunately, we are still a ways off before those in-person gatherings. We are all waiting: sometimes expectantly, often anxiously. We are all doing our best to hold on and to trust that things will get better.

As a priest who is now almost twenty years older, I have some perspective. I worry about my colleagues, though, especially the younger ones in rectories with kids who may feel like their options are limited. I know (as they do) that we will not "get back to normal." The new thing God is up to will take courageous and imaginative and energetic leaders who are looking ahead. I still believe that Easter life is ahead, as we move forward in faith. That's made more difficult since the tanks are on empty. Fortunately, though, the empty tomb is not about what we do but about what God does. 

I spend a lot of time thinking about clergy. But I worry that the even bigger danger is that lay leaders are in short supply right now. When people spend their whole day as educators or nurses or businesspeople or parents or restaurant owners - all of them trying to find ways to do their jobs - they have little time left to support the Church. Yet the single greatest gift I received (along with CREDO) in 2003 was having gifted, wise lay leaders who could encourage me when I was down. Recently a colleague of mine ran into some opposition in his congregation. That's not unusual. But what he said to me, with some pathos, was that "no one else spoke up. They just listened. Passively."

I write these words almost halfway into the holy season of Lent. It's been Lent for a year. We've all given up too much. But the journey through Lent is really a journey toward Pascha. Easter is not about a resuscitated corpse. It's about resurrection. It's about the promise of new and abundant life, beyond death. Not "some day" in heaven, but in all the ways the New Testament testifies to it happening in Acts. And not just about what happens to Jesus' Body, but what happens to the Body of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Peter finds his voice. Paul changes his mind. The Ethiopian eunuch asks, "what is to prevent me from being baptized?" Easter is not one day but fifty days leading to Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit allows for women and men to do infinitely more than they had asked or imagined. 

Come, Holy Spirit!

The Third Sunday in Lent

The readings for this Sunday can be found here.

The gospel reading for this coming Sunday—the account of Jesus cleansing the Temple—is told in all four gospels. On the essentials of the story, all four storytellers are agreed. 

But as with any story that gets told from four different angles, there are going to be some differences as well. Most significant is the question about when this actually happened? In the synoptic memory it happens in Holy Week: in Matthew and Luke it’s on the same day that Jesus enters the city, on the afternoon of what we would call Palm Sunday. In Mark’s Gospel it’s on the following day—the Monday of Holy Week. In all three cases, in other words, this happens at the end of Jesus earthly life. You could even make the case that it is a precipitating factor in the conflict between Jesus and the temple authorities that leads to his crucifixion. 

Yet as we hear the story from John, notice that we are only at the second chapter of his Gospel, very much at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and on the heels of Jesus first miracle at Cana, in Galilee. In John’s Gospel, Jesus makes several annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem over the course of his unfolding three-year ministry, and this conflict comes right at the very beginning of that first pilgrimage.  

Now you can resolve this by saying that Jesus cleansed the temple twice. But that seems pretty unlikely. Most likely, from an historical perspective, it is probably John who has the timing wrong. But as is John's style, he's far more interested in theology than history. What John is doing with this story is putting Jesus in complete control of the narrative, and suggesting that Jesus is picking a fight very early in his ministry; that he’s drawing a line in the sand from day one. Like the miracle in Cana, it sets the tone for all that is to come.

It’s not a big deal to decide what "really" happened. What is a much bigger deal from our distance in time is that John unfortunately and consistently uses this phrase “the Jews” in his narrative. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is taking on the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. In other words, Jesus is challenging the religious establishment in Jerusalem—the powers-that-be. In context it’s pretty clear that John means exactly what Matthew and Mark and Luke do: after all Jesus is a Jew and so are his followers and many others. John doesn’t mean all first-century Jews (and he certainly doesn’t mean all twenty-first century Jews.) That should go without saying, but Christian anti-Semitism is alive and well so it must be said; it's not being politically correct, it's being accurate. This is not about why Jews are bad and Christians are good; it’s about a danger that is inherent in all human worship. And yet because of the history that followed, the words are jarring and it raises the very same issues raised by certain images in certain books by Dr. Seuss. 

Model of the Second Temple (Israel Museum)

Most of us probably don’t carry around in our heads a picture of what the Temple in Jerusalem was like. But if you ever get the chance, go to the Israel Museum where I snapped the picture shown on the right and that will change! We need to remember that it’s not the same as a synagogue or a church in terms of its reason for being. It’s a whole complex with courtyards and lots of activity going on. The animals are supposed to be there, and not for a Feast of St. Francis blessing! They are there for the purpose of being purchased and sacrificed. Remember what it says in the first chapters of the Book of Leviticus? That part of the Torah is about making burnt offerings to the Lord. When Jesus was born, at the time of his mother’s purification, Mary and Joseph and Jesus travel to Jerusalem to offer the sacrifice according to the Law. (That’s Leviticus again!) They needed to sacrifice “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons” and they go and do just that. (Luke 2:24b; Leviticus 12:2-8)

The money-changers are also there for a reason. The commandments make it clear that there can be no god but God alone. Yet the Roman coins—the imperial denarii—had the head of Caesar on them. And they didn’t say “in God we trust.” In fact they said that Caesar was Lord. So imagine traveling from a place like Galilee and you come to Jerusalem purchase an ox or a sheep or a pigeon or a turtle-dove. You aren’t supposed to pay with a Roman coin in the Temple, so you need to make an exchange—just like changing into a foreign currency. You trade in your denarii for shekels which don’t violate the commandment. Then you can buy your animal and make your sacrifice according to the Law of Moses. And then you go home and life goes on.

In 70 AD the Romans destroyed this Temple and all that is left of it is the supporting structure for the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall. Judaism changed radically after the destruction of the Temple. The point is that we need to have some sense of this historical background if we are to make sense of what is unfolding. I’ve heard people say that this text shows Jesus was human because he is angry. And yes, Jesus is fully human, and yes, Jesus gets angry. But it’s not the main point of this text.

I’ve heard people say that the moneychangers were charging a high premium for the service they provided or that Jesus is attacking Jewish legalism. But Jesus doesn’t seem to be attacking abuses in the system only, but the whole system and the whole underlying premise of the system. In a very real sense he’s taking on the whole system of sacrificial theology, not its abuses. It’s no wonder those who are invested in the System as it is get mad.  I think that the reason we don’t fully appreciate this text is that we have neglected the Old Testament, and especially the prophets. If we knew Amos or Jeremiah better, we’d have a clearer sense of what is happening here. Consider the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord:

Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house (i.e. the Temple) and proclaim there this word and say, “hear the word of the Lord all you who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’ For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly execute justice with one another, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will let you dwell in this place… (Jeremiah 7:1-7)

Or consider Amos, the shepherd from the small Judean village of Tekoa, standing up to the temple authorities in his own day (some 750 years before the birth of Jesus.)

I hate, I despise your feasts and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings I will not accept them and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look at them. Take away the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.  (Amos 5:21-24)

To the people of Jesus’ day, these actions in the Temple (regardless of whether they happened early or late in his ministry) would have rung bells among his fellow Jews. Jesus’ actions would have reminded them of the prophets of old, of Jeremiah and Amos and others. The issue is not merely a critique of liturgical practices. It’s to say that even very good liturgy is no substitute for doing justice and loving mercy. Full stop. 

Worship is meant to point us toward God, and God consistently and relentlessly points us toward our neighbor. That is the whole of the law and the prophets: love God and love neighbor. Whether we gather in our buildings or virtually, we seek to encounter the living God, who then sends us out to participate in the mending of a broken world. We gather and then we are sent. Worship is about equipping the saints for ministry. If what we do in worship helps us to be better followers of Jesus on Monday and Tuesday then it is a good thing. If not, God takes no delight in our solemn assemblies.  

Worship is always in danger of stopping short of God and becoming a form of narcissism, a kind of self worship. But that is idolatry. And when that happens, the Church is always in danger of becoming a “marketplace.” Our vocation as God’s people is “to let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” It is to care for the alien and the fatherless and the widows in our own time. Worship is meant to bring us closer to the God whose heart is breaking for the needs of the world around us, especially the needs of the most vulnerable.