More Than Enough

This Sunday, the ninth after Pentecost, I was with the people of Christ the King - Epiphany Church  in Wilbraham. It's a merged ELCA and Episcopal congregation that has just called a new pastor. One thing they do now as they have regathered is to keep a tradition they began during Zoom worship of having conversation after the sermon. It was great to have that opportunity for dialogue. 

At the beginning of the sixth chapter of the mystical fourth gospel, Jesus feeds a large crowd of thousands with a couple of fish and five barley loaves. This "feeding of the 5000" is a favorite of my boss, the Rt. Rev. Douglas Fisher. So I hear about it all the time. (And I do mean ALL the time!)

It is a story found in all four gospels, each with its own tiny little nuanced differences. Don’t let those differences trouble you; I think they are all right in the same way that is confirmed whenever my family is gathered for a big gathering and the four kids – now all grown up – start to tell stories from our youth. We agree on the broad strokes but we slant the story as we remember it based on birth-order, gender, etc. It’s similar for the four gospel writers.

So, only in John’s gospel do the fish and loaves come not from the disciples, but from a small boy, suggesting that his willingness to share the lunch his mother packed for him is an integral part of the miracle. The common thread in all four tellings, however, is that it is so clearly a Eucharistic story.  Jesus takes, blesses, breaks and gives the bread. Those four verbs are meant to trigger the imagination of God’s people from one generation to the next, because in a very real way we re-tell the story of the feeding of the five thousand every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist.

There is more than enough. There is always room for one more at the Table. In this taking, blessing, breaking and giving we see Jesus for who he really is. We see God for who God really is, the maker of all things, and the Giver of abundant blessings. 

As John tells the story of the feeding of the 5000, it is immediately after this that the crowds try to make him a king. We are reminded of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and the danger of being able to perform such great signs. People often flock to miracle workers, missing the deeper meaning. So Jesus withdraws to the mountain to be still, to be with his Abba in prayer. The disciples get back in their boats and cross to the other side of the lake. That’s when Jesus comes to them, with another sign: walking on the water, and calming the storm as they cry out in fear.

The next day some persistent “groupies” find Jesus and the disciples on the other side of the lake. They want him for the miracles he can do. They want more magic. But Jesus pushes them to go deeper…to look for the true bread, not the bread that perishes. And then when they ask for that true bread, he says “I Am.”  I am the bread of life.

Once more, John is teasing us with Biblical language; sacramental language. Our culture (not just our so-called secular culture but even, very often, our church culture as well) has a hard time with this kind of talk. We lack the imagination for it. So we hear people say, “well, it’s just a symbol.” But anyone who says “just” when they talk about symbols really doesn’t understand symbols. 

Can you imagine anyone saying, “it’s just a wedding ring?” Or it's just the house where we raised our children? Or it's just the church where my grandchildren were baptized. It's just silly to use the word "just" when talking about sacramental truths: outward and visible signs that convey something deeper, something more.

Such talk assumes that only literal truth is real. But the facts alone can never convey the deepest truths of our lives: what we care about, how we love, what we dream of and yearn for. One of the great gifts of our Lutheran and Episcopal heritages to the wider Church is our profound respect for mystery and sacramental language. Water and oil, bread and wine convey profound truths about what is really real. You can touch and taste and smell and see them, and yet what they convey goes deeper, to the heart.

Outward signs convey inward, spiritual truths. So Jesus says, “I am” like the Voice from the Burning Bush called to Moses and told him to Go tell old Pharaoh to “let my people go!” I am… the bread of life.” And he really means it. It's really true. Week after week we are invited to test that reality by "tasting and seeing."

The great privilege of priestly ministry, of presiding at the Lord's Table, is to take and bless and break and give the Body of Christ to the Body of Christ. Doing that stretches my faith and invites me, as a priest, to see how the Body of Christ is not just to be discerned as present in the bread, but also in the people of God. The Church continues to be formed and transformed around that Table: male and female, young and old, gay and straight, traditional and progressive. Lutherans and Episcopalians! We are many members, but one Body, taken, blessed, broken and given for the world. 

Nearly twenty years ago, I read one of those books that stays with you for a very long time: Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics and the Body of Christ, written by William T. Cavanaugh. It’s a very challenging and even disturbing book about Pinochet’s Chile, where torture was a part of daily life. “Torture,” Cavanaugh writes, “creates victims.” We might just as well say that fear creates victims. Family strife, wars and viruses, consumer society gone amuck, trauma: they all create a society of victims that desperately search the self-help section of the bookstore looking for easy answers to profound questions.

In response to that harsh reality we live toward a deeper truth: Eucharist creates witnesses. We gather to tell stories about a boy who opens his lunch box to find a couple of barley loaves and five fish that he is willing to share. We remember how he took the risk of offering them to Jesus. We remember the manna in the desert, daily bread for a people in search of the Promised Land. We point especially to this One who is the Bread of Life, the One who satisfies our hungry hearts and quenches our thirsting souls. The One who takes, blesses, breaks, and gives. In so doing, witnesses are formed: a people after God’s own heart who can share the story of God’s love (sometimes even with words) to the world, a world where so many are abused and tortured and victimized in literal and other ways.

In her poem, Logos, Mary Oliver puts it all this way:

Why worry about the loaves and fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.

So, Christ the King – Epiphany: you have had quite the pandemic journey. You lost a beloved pastor and then welcomed a faithful bridge priest. Thanks be to God for both Karen and Barbara. And you have an amazing deacon in Pat O'Connell. Now you called Martha to serve among you as your pastor and priest. I know that it’s been hard enough to do all that, not to mention the complexities of two denominational systems.  Kudos to Joanne and Jean who have been faithful leaders through it all – and to the profile and search committees and vestries. I'm grateful also for the collegiality of the Rev. Steven Wilco. Many hands have made lighter work.

Now what? On the other side of this, you are not victims. You are at the very least survivors but I want to suggest more than that, even: you are witnesses. Witnesses to the power of resurrection. Witnesses to the love of God made known in Jesus Christ.

To paraphrase St. Bono:  You are One. You’re not the same. But you get to carry each other. Carry each other. You have been, and I trust will be, faithful followers of Jesus, with God’s help. The best is yet to come. 

Dancing David

On this day, July 11, I had the privilege to be among the people of Grace Church in the Southern Berkshires, a congregation that searched for their new rector during the pandemic and is now getting ready to welcome her into their midst in a few weeks. I was there today in my role as canon, in between a terrific interim and the arrival of their very talented new rector. As will likely even be obvious from this manuscript, I had fun with the Old Testament reading today, which can be found here. Making that homiletical decision also allowed me to punt on preaching about the beheading of John the Baptist.

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Since June 10, our Old Testament readings have been taking us into the world of First and Second Samuel, a world I find absolutely fascinating. We will continue that journey through August 12. If I were still a parish priest I’d be doing a sermon series but alas, my work is itinerant. I’ve been bouncing from Webster to Worcester, here today and in Northampton next Sunday. First and Second Samuel is an unfolding story primarily focused on the rise of King David to power. Today I want to take a step back and take a wide panoramic view of this narrative as it has been unfolding and as it will continue to unfold in the weeks ahead. And then we’ll dive deep into one tiny little detail…

Taken as a whole, First and Second Samuel represents a period of radical social and political transformation in ancient Israel. If you sit down and read the Book of Judges, what you will find there is a relatively unstable tribal life. It’s pretty barbaric; think Attila the Hun. It’s the stuff that people think of when they say, “I hate all that holy war and violence in the Old Testament.”  By the time you get to First and Second Kings (to which we’ll turn our attention beginning on August 19) we’ll see a strong, centralized monarchy where all the political and religious power converges in the holy city of Jerusalem. Quite literally, First and Second Samuel falls in between those two extremes: it is the story about how the Israelites transitioned from a loose confederation of twelve tribes to a centralized state. (Notice that word – transition – my middle name!)

Second Samuel 6, which is where we are today, takes us right into the heart of all that transition. David is now bringing the ark of the covenant (which is part of the old order going all the way back to Sinai) to Jerusalem, a city that has recently been conquered and has no previous ties to any of the twelve tribes. The ark had been forgotten about for about twenty years (back in chapter seven of First Samuel it was stored in the House of Abindadab.) But David now recognizes the power of using old religious symbols to consolidate his newly claimed political power. (He was neither the first nor the last politician to do that!) And so So David brings the ark to Jerusalem and there is a huge celebration that includes dancing and singing and eating and prayer, all oriented toward legitimizing David’s reign in a new capital city. Some people see the dancing itself as negative: as Canaanite, as sexual. Others see it as a normal part of worshipping YHWH, as liturgical dance. The text itself is ambiguous, so we’ll let the scholars fight that out. What is very clear, however, (especially if you peak ahead and see how it all turns out in I and II Kings) is that this is all benefits the monarchy in general and David in particular.

Whatever his personal and political motivations may or may not be, however, this occasion also functions theologically as a desire to once more place God at the center of communal life. Back in the old days, God could be encountered in the tent of meeting, moving along with God’s people on a journey through the wilderness. But now God’s people are settling down and growing up and becoming like all the other nations and building a capital city. So it does make some sense to bring the ark to one central place. Eventually, David’s son, Solomon, will bring this ark into the inner sanctuary of a newly built temple, into the holy of holies. But that is a story that can be told in August. For today it’s enough to note the theological shift from a God-on-the-move-with-us to a God who lives in a temple you have to go up to.

This sixth chapter of Second Samuel, however, is a key moment in the events leading toward that trajectory. Think of all of the references in the rest of Holy Scripture to this holy city of Jerusalem: all of those references in the psalms about pilgrims coming to the city gates and then into the temple. Think about Jesus riding into this same city on a donkey and taking on the religious authorities, and dying on a cross just outside of the city. Think about how even to the end of the New Testament, all of that imagery in the Book of Revelation converges in talk about the “New Jerusalem.”  None of that happens if Dancing David doesn’t choose to make Jerusalem his capital city and then bring the ark to the city to make it a religious center as well. So this is a very big deal. Are you with me?

As great as it is that we get such a huge chunk of First and Second Samuel to ponder this summer, it’s important to remember that we don’t get it all. And as much as I do love the lectionary, I am constantly reminded that we need to be reading the Bible itself, not just the segments given to us for Sunday mornings. It is particularly important to pay attention to what never gets read in church. So I want to call your attention to Michal, David’s wife—first to the words we heard today and then continuing with an encounter we didn’t hear about. I want us to linger there for just a few moments on what she adds to the narrative.

As the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart.

This little glimpse into David’s unhappy home life in the midst of this political celebration adds a layer of surprise, and nuance, and dissent. Like so many women in the Bible, Michal is hardly ever referred to by her given name: she is alternatively “David’s wife” or “Saul’s daughter.” And it’s probably very hard for her to be both at the same time. Think Maria Shriver when she was still married to Arnold; even at GOP events, she was always still a Kennedy.

When Michal sees her husband leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despises him in her heart. No good ever comes in any relationship when words like “despised” characterize the feelings of one partner toward the other! And then a direct encounter between David and Michael which the lectionary did not include today.  Listen:  

²⁰David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!” ²¹David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me in place of your father and all his household, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, that I have danced before the Lord. ²²I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in my own eyes; but by the maids of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.” ²³And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.

Ah, the royals! It’s like two people going through a divorce who are trying really hard not to fight in front of the kids; and the lectionary has decided to keep this private encounter from us. But the Bible itself includes it and I think that’s “good news.” Here’s why: all along, all of our attention has been on David. But we get a whole new angle from this little verbal exchange. Beneath all of those official press releases about how great King David is, there’s another story waiting to be told and the text itself points us that way, if only for a fleeting moment. We see how David looks from the home front, through his wife’s eyes. Think about what might happen if Michal ever got to sit down for a heart-to-heart conversation with Anderson Cooper! I’m sure she’d be quite eager to tell us that old King David was no picnic to live with! In just two weeks we’ll hear about David’s affair with Bathsheba and the very public political scandal that ensues. But this little scene today keeps us from being too surprised about that.

Michal - this daughter of Saul, this wife of David - is not merely a passive pawn caught between two powerful men. In the sixth chapter of II Samuel we learn that she has a voice and her own opinions. Of course she does! But the point is that in that moment the narrator knows it too. And now we do too. She has a name and a story to tell, even if the dominant narrative doesn’t go very far down that road. So we get this little glimpse of her looking out the window, and then in private telling her husband, the king, that he’s such an ass! With her eye-roll she tells us as readers that the emperor has no clothes and in this case that's actually literally true. 

Michal suggests an alternative narrative, apart from the David propaganda machine. So we’ve been rolling along and rolling along. And then all of a sudden, this encounter invites a double-take, a second look. It may even invite us to what the feminist scholars call a “hermeneutic of suspicion,” which is simply to say we are encouraged to go back to the very beginning of the whole unfolding story we’ve been hearing to ask: who is telling us this story? What is their angle? To linger on this scene invites us more deeply into the complex world of the Bible, which is not a rule book or a morality play. 

Learning to read and mark and learn and inwardly digest Scripture in this way may even give us the skills to read our own lives in a similar way. Most of us are a mixed bag, too; even the brightest among us cast some shadow. So what are the stories we tell ourselves about who we are? As individuals, as a congregation, as a diocese – as a nation? And who are the Michals for us—those people who make us uncomfortable by holding up a mirror and demanding that we take a closer look, which at least holds within it the seeds of possible transformation.

Well, I’ll stop there, before I move from preaching to meddling! Let me add just one more word though: when we learn to encounter Scripture in this kind of way it starts to generate way more questions rather than offering simple answers. We may even begin to notice that Jesus asked a lot of questions, and it would be more accurate to say not that “Jesus is the answer” but that he is the right question. And I think that we – the larger we, the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement – need to be part of sharing that good news with a world that is sick and tired of religious people offering simplistic answers to questions they aren’t even asking. Maybe Michal can inspire us to keep our eyes open and not be afraid to speak truth to power.  And at least to lean in and listen more attentively to those who do.

Independence Day Reflections

I am not preaching this coming Sunday, but decided to "re-work" a sermon I preached eleven years ago when July 4, 2010 fell on a Sunday and I opted for the day's readings rather than those appointed for the Sunday in Ordinary Time. That re-edited and updated manuscript follows here. 

I love the Book of Deuteronomy, which easily makes my “top ten” list of Biblical favorites. The narrative premise in Deuteronomy is fairly straightforward: we are meant to imagine Moses and the Israelites on the brink of the Promised Land. They have just spent forty years wandering around the Sinai Peninsula (actually thirty-nine years and eleven months and three weeks to be precise!) Their journey began way back in the fourteenth chapter of Exodus, with Pharaoh’s army at their feet as they miraculously crossed the Sea of Reeds. That journey from slavery toward freedom has continued to unfold through the remaining chapters of Exodus and into Leviticus and Numbers—and then ultimately into Deuteronomy. 

So they now find themselves nearing the end of that long journey, dreaming about owning their own little plot of land flowing with milk and honey, and tending to their own vineyards and owning their own homes and having their own retirement accounts.  

Before they leave Sinai behind them, however, Moses gathers the people one last time to preach one long last sermon. He reminds them that people who have nothing but the shirts on their backs know they are utterly reliant on God and on each other. In the desert, the Israelites have learned to trust in God for daily bread and water. The past thirty-nine years and eleven months and three weeks have not been easy. There has been a good bit of complaining and whining along the way. But they have also learned that faith is lived one day at a time. In the desert the most basic things (like bread and water) are received as gifts and the most primal faith response to receiving such gifts is an attitude of gratitude.

There isn’t really any narrative action in Deuteronomy; they don’t go anywhere. Unlike Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers, they now finally stand on the brink of this Promised Land: it's in sight! And the whole premise of Moses’ sermon (which is basically what the Book of Deuteronomy is) hinges on this concern that Moses has about what affluence will do to this people: if they are not careful, affluence will lead to amnesia. Moses is worried that faithfulness to God’s covenant will actually be harder in a land flowing with milk and honey than it was in the desert. He is worried that an attitude of gratitude will give way to greed and fear, as people become more focused on protecting what they perceive to be their own rather than on sharing with those in need. They will start to think more about “me” and less about “us” and when that happens the neighborhood will be in serious jeopardy.

Self-sufficiency and independence should not overshadow our awareness of interdependence, and perhaps the past fifteen months have reminded us of that. You can pick up the Book of Deuteronomy and pretty much pick any random chapter and that is basically the message you will find there: love of God and love of neighbor are at home in the wilderness. Difficult times make community not only possible, but necessary.

So there is a paradox here: they stand on the verge of an answered prayer, about to enter a land of hopes and dreams. They will never have to eat manna again, because there will be bakeries on every corner with warm crusty breads and soft pitas. That is a very appealing thought to people sick and tired of manna. But Moses sees that there is a shadow side to prosperity. His understanding of human nature is that it won’t take very long before the bread will be in the hands of a few and the strong will have more than their fair share of the good bread, while the more vulnerable members of the community ("the widows and the orphans") will be hungry. Moses is convinced that it will actually be harder to be God’s covenant people in the Promised Land than it was in the Sinai Desert. And he is worried that words like self-reliant, self-made, self-centered will start to dominate the conversation. When that happens, the neighborhood is in trouble.

I want to be clear: Moses is not saying faith is impossible in the Promised Land. He’s simply saying that one shouldn’t be deceived into thinking it will be easy or automatic. I see Moses as a realist, not a pessimist, who simply wants to be as clear and honest as possible about the challenges that lie ahead. The temptation is to think that the hard days are behind them because survival in the wilderness was so difficult. The temptation is to think they will soon be on easy street. But what Moses is saying is that all of our stuff can actually get in the way of loving God and neighbor. It can make one forgetful about the fact that we need God and we need our neighbors.  The key to being faithful in the Promised Land will be memory. It is a word that comes up again and again throughout Moses’ sermon: remember that you are only ever one generation removed from being slaves in a foreign land.

Freedom as it is understood in the Book of Deuteronomy is therefore about something much greater than gaining one’s own liberty or independence. If you flee Egypt and “make it” in the Promised Land, but then promptly turn around and enslave the weakest members of this new society, then all you’ve done is swapped roles from oppressed to oppressor. 

So that is what Deuteronomy is all about, wrestling with these rather large questions about faith and the economy and politics and the human psyche.  And that is what today’s reading from the tenth chapter of Deuteronomy is about as well. Please don't believe those who tell you the Bible is about "spiritual matters" and not about politics and the economy. You have to be a very selective reader of God's Word to believe that for even a second. Theologically, the God of Deuteronomy is mighty and awesome  but because God is also good, God isn’t the least bit interested in accumulating more power. God isn’t interested in bribes. God isn’t interested in helping the rich get richer. Rather, God considers it a good day when slaves are liberated and the hungry are fed and the poor are treated with dignity and respect. God “executes justice for the widow and orphan.”

And God loves strangers. God loves the stranger because God isn’t afraid of what is other—of what is different—of hearing different languages or trying different foods. Since you were yourselves strangers in Egypt not that long ago, Moses argues (on God’s behalf), it would be to make a mockery of the Exodus if you now turn around and treat the strangers in your midst the way you were treated in Pharaoh’s Egypt. That may be the way the world works. But it’s not the way God’s plan works. It's not how God's people are to behave.  

I realize this is all pretty serious stuff for a Fourth of July weekend, when so many of us are breaking out and enjoying the company of friends and family again after a long season of isolation. But in opting for the readings the lectionary gives us for Independence Day, you and I as twenty-first century Americans are invited to reflect on this ancient Torah text in the context of our own Fourth of July celebrations. What kind of nation are we becoming? Freedom is never finished, it seems to me; never something to take for granted. We are in the midst of difficult times, although the older I get the more I have come to realize it's the "easy times" that are rare. Yet as Christians we might ask whether it is possible for such times to shape and form a more compassionate people by reminding us who our neighbors are. We might step back and reflect on what an immigration policy might look like in a nation that loves the stranger as God does, rather than fearing them. We might step back and wonder what our tax code look like if it reflected a genuine concern for widows and orphans?

There is grace in simply asking such questions and maybe it is what we as Christians are intended to contribute to the marketplace of ideas. Whether we are liberals or moderates or conservatives, we can remember (as we pray in the collect for the day) that true freedom does not come easily and is never finished. Perhaps we can even help to re-frame economic precariousness and see it not as something that instills more fear and selfishness, but as a gift that opens us up to one another in new ways. If we are a people who are at least asking such questions, we stand a far better chance of discovering a healthier form of patriotism rather than falling into the trap of xenophobic nationalism. The poet who has written what is, for me, the most patriotic hymn I know, points us in the right direction:

             This is my prayer, O Lord of all earth’s kingdoms; 
                        thy kingdom come, on earth thy will be done.

            Let Christ be lifted up till all shall serve him,
                       and hearts united learn to live as one.

            O hear my prayer, thou God of all the nations,                       
                        myself I give thee, let thy will be done.

This Book of Deuteronomy also has pretty radical implications for a theology of stewardship, which has been on my mind lately. While we may feel more precarious than usual, I am fully aware of my own privilege and the knowledge that most days I live in the Promised Land rather than in the Sinai Desert. I am far more familiar with feeling secure and self-reliant and independent. No one I know (including myself) wakes up in the morning and says, hey, I think I need more precariousness in my life…

And yet it seems to me that those times of precariousness (which even the most privileged among us do face from time to time) are a gift when it comes to our faith. Those times when we find ourselves in the wilderness are also the times when we stand the best chance of experiencing God’s healing presence and the Spirit’s transformative power. Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me…

It is in the wilderness times that we discover (and re-discover) that God is present. It is there that we learn to live life one day at a time and to see all of life as sheer gift. It is in our need that we are able both to give and to receive, and that changes our worldview. It opens us up to become a people with more grateful and generous hearts. When that happens to us, our spirituality can no longer be disconnected from what we do with our time, and our talents, and yes, our money. Summertime gives us a chance to slow down and step back. Whether we are out camping or walking along the beach or hiking up a mountain, it can put us in a place somewhere between the wilderness and the Promised Land, in a place where we can remember that a well-lived life is one that is lived simply, so that others may simply live. We remember what matters (and what doesn’t) and by God's grace we give thanks to the One who is with us through it all.

God bless America and God bless everyone - no exceptions.