Easter Sunday, 4/24/11
Reflections on John 20:1-18
Holy Trinity/La Santisima Trinidad/ Good Shepherd, Berkeley
Alleluia! Christ has risen!
Three images of the resurrection have come to me lately to illuminate this holy week.
The image on the banner you might have noticed outside the church today describes the heart of our Gospel reading. If you didn’t, it is also helpfully provided in your bulletin! It is from a 12th century fresco in the Scroveni chapel in Padua Italy, and the artist is Giotto di Bondone.
It depicts the moment after Mary Magdalene has heard the voice of Jesus calling out her name- the moment of recognition. She cries out “Rabbouni!” which means “dear teacher”, and falls to her knees, reaching out to touch him. We know from the gospel that Jesus’ reply to her is "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to my father.”
The angels who stood guard at the tomb are now magically outside of it, appropriately wearing wings and halos, and each brandishing a slender scepter. They are perched high atop what appears to be a huge stone ossuary, and one angel is front and center, with Jesus at the far right and the other angel at the far left. The soldiers guarding the tomb, like the unroused souls in hell, are fast asleep and lie in a heap behind the figure of Mary Magdalene.
Mary, who had already been pulled out of a very dark tomb once by Jesus when he freed her of seven demons, reaches out to touch Jesus as she kneels before him.
A different but equally beautiful depiction of resurrection is on a small plague in our sacristy here. It is 14th century Russian Orthodox icon called “Icon of Victory- The Resurrection.” In this amazing image, The risen Christ, far from resisting their touch, is pulling Adam and Eve from their tombs, grasping them by their wrists and hauling them up into life. They are surrounded by the Old Testament righteous and those souls who Jesus has already liberated from Hell. Below them are the chaotic remains of hell, with Satan bound and gagged and all of hell disintegrated into small sharp fragments. As the old Easter hymn goes,
Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling down death by death,
And upon those in the tombs bestowing life!
Every year at Easter in Guatemala, another work of art is created by the people.
I read a children’s book that described this annual miracle. The surface of the streets are covered in what appears to be flowers, in fantastic ornamental patterns that resemble the exquisite hupiles that the indigenous women all wear. But fact they are not flowers, but patterns made of colored saw dust, laboriously assembled on the surface of the streets, awaiting the great Easter procession.
The children’s book was about a little girl who had taken part in the creation of this ornate carpeting, or alfombra. When the procession carrying the image of Jesus came to the section of the street the little girl had helped to create, she suddenly ran out and blocked the way with her body- she could not bear to see the beautiful work destroyed.
Her father took her by the hand and led her away. “My daughter,” he said. “It is our custom. The alfombras are like offerings to life. They are not fixed in time. The flowers bloom and then die, but they give us seeds for the birth of other flowers. Life follows death and death follows life.”
In this procession, Jesus was trampling down, not the gates of hell, but an equisite offering- a masterpiece of new blossoms, bearing the seeds of resurrection.
The long days of Lent, long before blossoming, long before seeds, and the progression of Holy week, leading up to the desolation of Good Friday have been fullfilled. These days mirror our own lives, our own descents into the tomb. The tomb of loss- loss of a home, a job, a wife, a husband, a child. Losing our health, our wholeness, our spirit, our faith. Looking into that tomb, as Mary did, hopefully, even in her grief, and not even finding the expected body- finding only an empty tomb. Finding only two small piles of desolate rags. And so Mary weeps as do we. Mary despairs as do we.
And then Jesus apprears, but in her greif, as perhaps in ours at first, she does not recognize the risen Christ. Then, in that joyful moment of recognition, she reaches out her hands.
Why does Jesus tell Mary not to hold onto him, when he seems like the only thing worth holding on to? One comentary I read simply said that Mary must learn a new relationship with Jesus- a spiritual rather than a physical one. I think Mary has the same instinct we all do when a loved one has passed away- we want to hold onto them- to have a lock of their hair, to hold onto a possession of theirs, to bury our face in their garment.
But Jesus was in a liminal state, one that could not be grasped. The tomb and the angels had created some kind of Chrisalis for the resurrection. And now in our Gospel reading, Jesus finds himself, in the words of ancient Celtic spirituality, in a “thin place” between life and death, a place where the veil between this world and the next is very thin. Mary has to see, as do we all, that there is a more eternal presence than the physical one. And although we might not be able to hold that presence, it is able to hold us, and eternally.
We don’t always know what resurrection might look like for us- or what it might take to get us there. We don’t know how that blinding light breaking on us from outside of the tomb might feel. To our shock, our sawdust flowers may be swept away to be replaced by the real thing. The familliar comfort of our coffin may be denied us.
But Jesus comes to us, and reaches for our hands, and whether or not we reach for him, he takes our wrists, and pulls us, blinking and gasping, into the bright, unaccustomed brilliance of abundant life.
Amen
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Open Your Eyes...
Reflections on John 9:1-41
Holy Trinity/La Santisima Trinidad, Richmond, 4/3/11
This is a long and astonishing parable on blindness and belief. As always in the Gospel of John, the true believers are the ones who, unfailingly believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The unbelievers are the people of Jesus’ religion and heritage: the Jews.
We hear of the strictness of the Pharisaic code- a man must not work on the Sabbath - even to mix saliva with mud to enact a miracle. A man born blind is simply proof of the sins of his parents or himself- the only question is- which one sinned? But nothing is more chilling than the terror displayed by the parents of the man born blind. When pressed by “the Jews” they would sooner turn in their own son “Let him speak for himself” than suffer the worst thing imaginable for any Jew- to be expelled from the synagogue.
A text now called the Birkat Ha-minim, or Benediction Against Heretics was discovered in the Cairo Genizah in 1896. Apparently, any first century Jew was forced to recite this before they could enter the temple, making it impossible for the Christian Jews to enter their former house of worship.
…And let the arrogant Government (the Romans)
be speedily uprooted in our days.
Let the Nazarenes (the Christians)
And the Minim (the heretics) be destroyed in a moment
And let them be blotted out of the Bood of Life and
Not be inscribed together with the righteous.
Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the proud.
Blindness in the presence of miracles is an oft-repeated theme in the Old and New Testaments. I spoke of Hagar last week, who was certain that she was lost in the wilderness, and so desperate that she left her young son under a bush so that she would not see him die, then she wandered away.
But God opened her eyes- he took away her desperate blindness, and she saw that she was right in front of a well of water. No longer desperate, but filled.
Mary Magdalene, upon seeing the risen Lord, was blind enough to take him for the gardener! And on the road to Emmaus, two of Jesus’ disciples, those closest to him, came upon Jesus on the road, and took him for just some guy who, apparently had a remarkably good handle on the scriptures!
How do we remain blind to the miraculous? After a long cold winter, I took down heavy curtains in my bedroom to launder them. When I woke up, for the first time in a very long time, I was looking directly outside at the dawn. There were exquisite bands of gold and pink stretching across the sky, and I thought-
“Wow! Does this happen every day?” How do we insulate ourselves, how do we protect our selves, how do we all remain blind to the miraculous?
For more than a year, I have been mourning my best friend Alison, who died after a long illness. She used to travel to California from Georgia every summer for 13 years with her young son, Alexander. My eyes were gloriously opened, this Spring, when her beautiful son, now 21 years old and the spitting image of her (except that he is 6’6”) gave us a call. He said he wanted to continue the tradition- he wanted to spend his Spring break with us, and then come back to camp with us in Big Sur in the summer- just as he and Alison always used to do. The miraculous occurred- Alison was resurrected for me in her beautiful boy, and now I too, have a son, and Alexander has the closet thing possible to a mother. He spent a wonderful week with us in March, and his smile, his humor, his sandy blond hair- so much of him was my dear friend come to visit. My daughters were reunited with their new older brother, and it was, for the first time in my life, like having three kids!
Before his visit, I had known, I had seen what was true, which was that there was no resurrection, and I had lost my best friend of 43 years, and there could be no comfort for me. But fortunately, my eyes were opened to the miraculous, in the person of my tall, blond, sweet new son.
Jesus, tells us that he came into the world so that those who are blind may see, and those who see may become blind.
I think all of us err on the side of out-thinking God. We KNOW what will or will not happen. We can just SEE it. We don’t take into account that miracles can and do happen. We are too apt to see what we see, believe what we believe. The disciples of course, were champions at this. There they were, actually in Jesus’ presence, and still, so often, they were blind.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Christian/Buddhist poet and theologian has a lovely passage about this in a meditation about the Eucharist:
The disciples had been following Jesus, and had seen Him, had the chance to look at Him, to look into his eyes, to see him smile, to see Him in reality. But it seems they were not capable of being in contact with that marvelous reality. Then he broke bread and poured wine and said, “This is my flesh and blood, take it, eat it, drink it, and you will have eternal life.” We eat a lot, we drink a lot [we SEE a lot] but what do we eat? We eat phantoms, we drink ghosts. We don’t eat real bread, real wine, real life. But Jesus said, “This is my flesh, this is my blood. It’s a very drastic way of awakening us from our forgetfulness, from our ignorance.
A drastic way of awakening us from our blindness.
Amen.
Holy Trinity/La Santisima Trinidad, Richmond, 4/3/11
This is a long and astonishing parable on blindness and belief. As always in the Gospel of John, the true believers are the ones who, unfailingly believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The unbelievers are the people of Jesus’ religion and heritage: the Jews.
We hear of the strictness of the Pharisaic code- a man must not work on the Sabbath - even to mix saliva with mud to enact a miracle. A man born blind is simply proof of the sins of his parents or himself- the only question is- which one sinned? But nothing is more chilling than the terror displayed by the parents of the man born blind. When pressed by “the Jews” they would sooner turn in their own son “Let him speak for himself” than suffer the worst thing imaginable for any Jew- to be expelled from the synagogue.
A text now called the Birkat Ha-minim, or Benediction Against Heretics was discovered in the Cairo Genizah in 1896. Apparently, any first century Jew was forced to recite this before they could enter the temple, making it impossible for the Christian Jews to enter their former house of worship.
…And let the arrogant Government (the Romans)
be speedily uprooted in our days.
Let the Nazarenes (the Christians)
And the Minim (the heretics) be destroyed in a moment
And let them be blotted out of the Bood of Life and
Not be inscribed together with the righteous.
Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the proud.
Blindness in the presence of miracles is an oft-repeated theme in the Old and New Testaments. I spoke of Hagar last week, who was certain that she was lost in the wilderness, and so desperate that she left her young son under a bush so that she would not see him die, then she wandered away.
But God opened her eyes- he took away her desperate blindness, and she saw that she was right in front of a well of water. No longer desperate, but filled.
Mary Magdalene, upon seeing the risen Lord, was blind enough to take him for the gardener! And on the road to Emmaus, two of Jesus’ disciples, those closest to him, came upon Jesus on the road, and took him for just some guy who, apparently had a remarkably good handle on the scriptures!
How do we remain blind to the miraculous? After a long cold winter, I took down heavy curtains in my bedroom to launder them. When I woke up, for the first time in a very long time, I was looking directly outside at the dawn. There were exquisite bands of gold and pink stretching across the sky, and I thought-
“Wow! Does this happen every day?” How do we insulate ourselves, how do we protect our selves, how do we all remain blind to the miraculous?
For more than a year, I have been mourning my best friend Alison, who died after a long illness. She used to travel to California from Georgia every summer for 13 years with her young son, Alexander. My eyes were gloriously opened, this Spring, when her beautiful son, now 21 years old and the spitting image of her (except that he is 6’6”) gave us a call. He said he wanted to continue the tradition- he wanted to spend his Spring break with us, and then come back to camp with us in Big Sur in the summer- just as he and Alison always used to do. The miraculous occurred- Alison was resurrected for me in her beautiful boy, and now I too, have a son, and Alexander has the closet thing possible to a mother. He spent a wonderful week with us in March, and his smile, his humor, his sandy blond hair- so much of him was my dear friend come to visit. My daughters were reunited with their new older brother, and it was, for the first time in my life, like having three kids!
Before his visit, I had known, I had seen what was true, which was that there was no resurrection, and I had lost my best friend of 43 years, and there could be no comfort for me. But fortunately, my eyes were opened to the miraculous, in the person of my tall, blond, sweet new son.
Jesus, tells us that he came into the world so that those who are blind may see, and those who see may become blind.
I think all of us err on the side of out-thinking God. We KNOW what will or will not happen. We can just SEE it. We don’t take into account that miracles can and do happen. We are too apt to see what we see, believe what we believe. The disciples of course, were champions at this. There they were, actually in Jesus’ presence, and still, so often, they were blind.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Christian/Buddhist poet and theologian has a lovely passage about this in a meditation about the Eucharist:
The disciples had been following Jesus, and had seen Him, had the chance to look at Him, to look into his eyes, to see him smile, to see Him in reality. But it seems they were not capable of being in contact with that marvelous reality. Then he broke bread and poured wine and said, “This is my flesh and blood, take it, eat it, drink it, and you will have eternal life.” We eat a lot, we drink a lot [we SEE a lot] but what do we eat? We eat phantoms, we drink ghosts. We don’t eat real bread, real wine, real life. But Jesus said, “This is my flesh, this is my blood. It’s a very drastic way of awakening us from our forgetfulness, from our ignorance.
A drastic way of awakening us from our blindness.
Amen.
Jesus Met the Woman at the Well
Holy Trinity/La Santisima Trinidad, Richmond; Good Shepherd 3/27/11
Reflections on John 4:5-42
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
In the Old Testament as well as the new, there is just something about women and wells. For the men, the thing seems to be the parting of waters. But for the women, it’s the wells.
All through the Old Testament, women received blessing, grace, and often husbands, at wells of water. Hagar, the slave of Abraham and Sarah had been cast out into the desert with her young son, and wandered along lost for some time. Her skin of water was empty, and she left her son under a bush and walked away so that she would not have to see him die. She wept loudly in her agony. God answered her by opening her eyes and allowing her to see that she was standing in front of a well of water. God assured her with a further blessing- that God would make a great nation of her son.
When it came time for Abraham to find a wife for his other son, Isaac, he sent a servant to search far and wide. He found Rebecca at a well. She proved that she was the chosen one by her kindness, giving water to the camels, and then agreeing to travel back home to marry Isaac.
Isaac’s son, Jacob, whose well is the one featured in today’s story, first met his favorite (but not his first) wife Rachel at a well. He watered her flock, kissed her and wept aloud. This was apparently enough to win her.
Finally, Ziporah and her sisters came to a well to water their flock. Moses drew water for them and defended them from the other shepherds. Zipporah later became the wife of Moses. And it was Moses who was the first, and the most famous of a series of water-parting male prophets. He raised his staff and parted the Red Sea so that the nation of Israel could be delivered to faith and freedom.
Then Joshua, his protégé, led his warriors through the River Jordan. As they marched behind the Arc of the Covenant, the waters rose up in a heap so that the soldiers could cross on dry land.
Also at the River Jordan, Elijah rode to glory in a flaming chariot, while his protégé, Elisha, watched in astonishment. Then Elisha struck the River Jordon with Elijah’s cloak, and sure enough, the waters parted.
I have heard it said that In the New Testament, Jesus transcends all these parting of the water stories, also at the River Jordan. He parts the waters ABOVE the firmament. At his baptism, the heavens part and the Holy Spirit comes down to pay a call on the New Creation, who was, himself, a well of living water.
The is was a place of pairings. And just as Jesus’ baptism brought the partings of the waters to a new level, Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well brings a new dimension to the pairing stories. This time at Jacob’s ancient well, it was not just a man and a woman who were paired. It was the pairing- the symbolic reconciliation- of two tribes who despised each other with a passion.
A pair of tribes possessed of seemingly irreconcilable differences. Their hatred is well illustrated by a quote from the Book of Sirach, which presents the Samaritans as sub-human:
Two nations my soul detests, and the third is not even a people: Those who live in Seir, and the Philistines, and those foolish ones who live in Shechem [of Samaria]
As a Jewish Rabbi, Jesus could not have chosen a less likely subject with whom to share water than the Samaritan woman. With his offering of living water, Jesus turns the age-old story of tribalism, of hating one’s enemy, one its head. You had only to look at the sky to see what time it was. The time was high noon, and that bright sun shone on a transcendental laying down of arms.
The Samaritan woman is almost an opposite entity to the person of Nicodemus, whom we heard about last week. Nicodemus was not only a Jew, but a respected religious leader, and, of course, a man. The Samaritan woman has so little status that she is not even given a name in our story. She is female, from a despised tribe, has a highly questionable marital history, and is now living unmarried with yet another man. I have read that the normal time of day for women to gather at the well and draw water was early morning- but this woman comes at noon when no one else is there, possibly to avoid their distain. But Jesus does not distain her- does not judge her for any of these things. And more amazingly, he proceeds to have the longest theological discussion with her of any in the New Testament. His conversation with her far surpasses his exchange with Nicodemus, which Jesus cuts short in apparent impatience. But with the Samaritan woman, Jesus blasts through their cultural differences to usher her into the Kingdom of God, which, as he says is not only coming soon, but is now here.
The story’s opening shocker is Jesus asking a foreign woman to lend him her unclean utensil to give him a drink of water. After she sputters her protest, he offers her, as he says, “living water.” She apparently takes this to mean running or flowing water, which would have been precious enough in the parched land of Samaria. Jewish renderings of the apocalypse are filled with lush gardens thick with rivers and streams. The Book of Zechariah describes the Day of the Lord like this: “On that day, living waters will flow out of Jerusalem.”
But Jesus will convince the Samaritan woman that he has replaced the Jerusalem Temple, and the Samaritan Temple. The living water now flows from him.
Even after Jesus offers her living water, the woman perceives Jesus only as a prophet. Since the only prophet recognized by the Samaritans was Moses, the giver of the Law, she asks Jesus a legal question- on the location of the Temple, which Samaritans believe to be on Mount Gerazin, not in Jerusalem.
This question puts the dispute between the Samaritans and the Temple Jews in center place, but Jesus does not take the bait. His response opens the door to salvation for both the Samaritans and the Jews- in fact, for everyone. He says that the location of the temple does not matter anymore. In the Kingdom of God, place is irrelevant. The hour is coming, and is now here, when people will worship the Father, not in any temple, but in Spirit and in Truth. When the woman says that she believes that the Messiah is coming, Jesus simply says,
“I am he.” This seems to be enough for her to believe. She walks away, transformed, and leaves her jar- after all, she certainly does not need it for the Water of Life. And Jesus transforms the Old Testament stories in terms of gender as well. It is he who waits passively at the well, and the Samaritan woman who becomes a leader of her people. Like all those water-parting prophets, she is clearing a path to bring her people to faith and freedom.
What was it like for this woman to have been accepted, taken seriously, to have been so respected by Jesus- to have been offered the water of life? What was it like for her? What is it like for those of us who can’t believe that Jesus would offer US the water of life? It is astonishing. It is confounding. How comforting it is for those of us who have, during our lives been wedded to at least five things that were supposed to make us happy and did not. Or for those of us who may have long worshipped at the wrong temple, and I don’t mean the one on Mount Gerazim.
But Jesus does come to us. And just as he scandalously requests a drink of water from the Samaritan woman, he asks something of us as well. Something that we, at least at first, may have no idea how to give him. We may believe, as the Samaritan woman did, that the obstacles are great, that societal conventions forbid us to answer his request. But Jesus breaks down all those barriers. He parts the waters and sweeps away mountains and leads us to the well. And when Jesus gives us this living water, then we have a pairing from which we need never part. We are like the Prodigal Son in the arms of his father, like the lost sheep in the arms of the shepherd, like the child who unquestionably owns the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen
Reflections on John 4:5-42
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
In the Old Testament as well as the new, there is just something about women and wells. For the men, the thing seems to be the parting of waters. But for the women, it’s the wells.
All through the Old Testament, women received blessing, grace, and often husbands, at wells of water. Hagar, the slave of Abraham and Sarah had been cast out into the desert with her young son, and wandered along lost for some time. Her skin of water was empty, and she left her son under a bush and walked away so that she would not have to see him die. She wept loudly in her agony. God answered her by opening her eyes and allowing her to see that she was standing in front of a well of water. God assured her with a further blessing- that God would make a great nation of her son.
When it came time for Abraham to find a wife for his other son, Isaac, he sent a servant to search far and wide. He found Rebecca at a well. She proved that she was the chosen one by her kindness, giving water to the camels, and then agreeing to travel back home to marry Isaac.
Isaac’s son, Jacob, whose well is the one featured in today’s story, first met his favorite (but not his first) wife Rachel at a well. He watered her flock, kissed her and wept aloud. This was apparently enough to win her.
Finally, Ziporah and her sisters came to a well to water their flock. Moses drew water for them and defended them from the other shepherds. Zipporah later became the wife of Moses. And it was Moses who was the first, and the most famous of a series of water-parting male prophets. He raised his staff and parted the Red Sea so that the nation of Israel could be delivered to faith and freedom.
Then Joshua, his protégé, led his warriors through the River Jordan. As they marched behind the Arc of the Covenant, the waters rose up in a heap so that the soldiers could cross on dry land.
Also at the River Jordan, Elijah rode to glory in a flaming chariot, while his protégé, Elisha, watched in astonishment. Then Elisha struck the River Jordon with Elijah’s cloak, and sure enough, the waters parted.
I have heard it said that In the New Testament, Jesus transcends all these parting of the water stories, also at the River Jordan. He parts the waters ABOVE the firmament. At his baptism, the heavens part and the Holy Spirit comes down to pay a call on the New Creation, who was, himself, a well of living water.
The is was a place of pairings. And just as Jesus’ baptism brought the partings of the waters to a new level, Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well brings a new dimension to the pairing stories. This time at Jacob’s ancient well, it was not just a man and a woman who were paired. It was the pairing- the symbolic reconciliation- of two tribes who despised each other with a passion.
A pair of tribes possessed of seemingly irreconcilable differences. Their hatred is well illustrated by a quote from the Book of Sirach, which presents the Samaritans as sub-human:
Two nations my soul detests, and the third is not even a people: Those who live in Seir, and the Philistines, and those foolish ones who live in Shechem [of Samaria]
As a Jewish Rabbi, Jesus could not have chosen a less likely subject with whom to share water than the Samaritan woman. With his offering of living water, Jesus turns the age-old story of tribalism, of hating one’s enemy, one its head. You had only to look at the sky to see what time it was. The time was high noon, and that bright sun shone on a transcendental laying down of arms.
The Samaritan woman is almost an opposite entity to the person of Nicodemus, whom we heard about last week. Nicodemus was not only a Jew, but a respected religious leader, and, of course, a man. The Samaritan woman has so little status that she is not even given a name in our story. She is female, from a despised tribe, has a highly questionable marital history, and is now living unmarried with yet another man. I have read that the normal time of day for women to gather at the well and draw water was early morning- but this woman comes at noon when no one else is there, possibly to avoid their distain. But Jesus does not distain her- does not judge her for any of these things. And more amazingly, he proceeds to have the longest theological discussion with her of any in the New Testament. His conversation with her far surpasses his exchange with Nicodemus, which Jesus cuts short in apparent impatience. But with the Samaritan woman, Jesus blasts through their cultural differences to usher her into the Kingdom of God, which, as he says is not only coming soon, but is now here.
The story’s opening shocker is Jesus asking a foreign woman to lend him her unclean utensil to give him a drink of water. After she sputters her protest, he offers her, as he says, “living water.” She apparently takes this to mean running or flowing water, which would have been precious enough in the parched land of Samaria. Jewish renderings of the apocalypse are filled with lush gardens thick with rivers and streams. The Book of Zechariah describes the Day of the Lord like this: “On that day, living waters will flow out of Jerusalem.”
But Jesus will convince the Samaritan woman that he has replaced the Jerusalem Temple, and the Samaritan Temple. The living water now flows from him.
Even after Jesus offers her living water, the woman perceives Jesus only as a prophet. Since the only prophet recognized by the Samaritans was Moses, the giver of the Law, she asks Jesus a legal question- on the location of the Temple, which Samaritans believe to be on Mount Gerazin, not in Jerusalem.
This question puts the dispute between the Samaritans and the Temple Jews in center place, but Jesus does not take the bait. His response opens the door to salvation for both the Samaritans and the Jews- in fact, for everyone. He says that the location of the temple does not matter anymore. In the Kingdom of God, place is irrelevant. The hour is coming, and is now here, when people will worship the Father, not in any temple, but in Spirit and in Truth. When the woman says that she believes that the Messiah is coming, Jesus simply says,
“I am he.” This seems to be enough for her to believe. She walks away, transformed, and leaves her jar- after all, she certainly does not need it for the Water of Life. And Jesus transforms the Old Testament stories in terms of gender as well. It is he who waits passively at the well, and the Samaritan woman who becomes a leader of her people. Like all those water-parting prophets, she is clearing a path to bring her people to faith and freedom.
What was it like for this woman to have been accepted, taken seriously, to have been so respected by Jesus- to have been offered the water of life? What was it like for her? What is it like for those of us who can’t believe that Jesus would offer US the water of life? It is astonishing. It is confounding. How comforting it is for those of us who have, during our lives been wedded to at least five things that were supposed to make us happy and did not. Or for those of us who may have long worshipped at the wrong temple, and I don’t mean the one on Mount Gerazim.
But Jesus does come to us. And just as he scandalously requests a drink of water from the Samaritan woman, he asks something of us as well. Something that we, at least at first, may have no idea how to give him. We may believe, as the Samaritan woman did, that the obstacles are great, that societal conventions forbid us to answer his request. But Jesus breaks down all those barriers. He parts the waters and sweeps away mountains and leads us to the well. And when Jesus gives us this living water, then we have a pairing from which we need never part. We are like the Prodigal Son in the arms of his father, like the lost sheep in the arms of the shepherd, like the child who unquestionably owns the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
The Evolution of Angels
Reflections on Matthew 2:13-15,19-23
Good Shepherd Church 1/2/11
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
The readings we have been enjoying in the Christmas season describe a very familiar message from the angels – one that we all know and treasure. A baby arrives, like many babies do, in a cold, unsheltered environment, sheltered only by the love of its astonished parents. This is a very prosaic beginning- a baby human born among his human parents, and several common animals. Even the arrival of the shepherds is not overly surprising, but then, the shepherds begin to tell the tale of what the angels said to them: “To you is born this day in the City of David, a Savior, who is the Messiah. We read that “all who heard it were amazed” and Mary, astonished, treasures this news in her heart.
But in our Gospel reading today, we hear of a new set of angelic messages- beginning with a very ominous one. Joseph is warned by the angels that he must flee with his family, or Herod will surely destroy the child. Joseph unquestioningly follows the advise of the angel and brings his child to Egypt. Twice more Joseph is visited by the angel in a dream, and twice more he obeys, and brings his wife and child to safety in Nazareth.
When did angels first appear in human consciousness? When did the idea of the Holy begin? When did the first notion of God emerge? These questions are beautifully explored in a great book I am now reading. Karen Armstrong’s “The Case for God”, is not only a remarkable and intelligent attempt to answer these questions, it also seems to be an answer to the numerous books we now see that are basically “The Case for Atheism.”
In the beginning of Ms. Armstrong’s book, we find ourselves in France, in the underground caverns of Lascaux. The guide has just switched off his flashlight and, as one visitor recalled,” The senses are suddenly wiped out- the millennia drop away. You were never in a darker darkness in your life.” Then as now, in order to arrive at the caves with the famous prehistoric animals painted on the ceiling, one has to go back to the utter, formless, directionless blackness of... the beginning. Then as now, the pilgrims must “stumble for eighty feet down a long sloping tunnel, sixty-five feet below ground level, penetrating ever more deeply into the bowels of the earth.” They then have the privilege of seeing what seems to be an incredibly ancient precedent to ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The earliest French site at Grosse Chavet, dates from about 30,000 BCE. It is now apparently accepted that these labyrinthine caves were sacred places for the performance of a religious ritual- they were man-made wombs for the Holy. They were temples. Why did humans, in these distant times, express themselves, make their mark, go to such extraordinary lengths and expend so much energy, so much apparently unproductive labor, to create these amazing images of oxen and bison horses and mammoths- these startlingly beautiful images? What angels were they obeying?
On my vacation last month my husband and I had a rare opportunity to spend five days in the museums and Galleries of the amazing (and free!) Smithsonian Institution, as I had as a child. We were particularly captivated by a wonderful display of early Homo Sapiens and their tools, art work, early rituals and religion. Probably the very first implication of a ritual action, a consciousness of the afterworld, is the fact that among a number of skeletons deposited in a deep cave, was a smooth carved and burnished stone that had been placed there with the bodies. There seemed to be a need to honor them, or to equip them for the afterlife. The evidence is mounting that even these early humans had some consciousness of the sacred.
Far from shrinking from the scientific evidence of creation, as some modern as well as ancient Christianians have done, our own Bishop Marc brought with him, when he first joined us from Alabama, a wonderful presentation called the Cosmic Walk. This is a ritual created to celebrate and illustrate the miracle of the natural history of the universe, using sacred language. A rope is placed on the ground in a great spiral, and candles are lit at important milestones. We are given the opportunity to see what this glorious creation, so often celebrated in our religion, is really all about. I have always noted that this account has much in common with the Genesis story. It begins with “The Great Flaring Forth” more commonly known as “The Big Bang” 14 Billion years ago, and then describes the development of the stars, the supernovas, the universe, the earth, the emergence of plant and animal life, finally detailing human evolution. Here it is in a MUCH edited and abridged form:
5 Million Years Ago – Human Ancestors Walk on Two Legs
In Africa, our ancestors leave the forest, stand up, and walk!
140,000 years ago – Anatomically Modern Human Emerges
The ancestors of modern humans walk the savannah of east-central
Africa. All modern humans are the progeny of one small group of these.
12,000 years ago- A Homo Sapiens artist paints an image on the walls of Lascaux: A large bison that has been pierced by a spear, thrust through its hindquarters. Lying in front of the animal is a man, with arms outstretched, wearing what seems to be a bird mask. His staff, also lying on the ground, is also topped by a bird’s head. The image is repeated many times in different places, and the man depicted is likely a shaman.
Armstrong contends that the very first efforts at art and the very first efforts at worship were one and the same. There was a irresistible pull to soothe or explain the profound discomfort felt even then, by the killing of creatures so much like themselves. The shaman- a early priest, was doing his or her best to span the mystery of life and death- slaughter and survival. As Armstrong writes, “From the very beginning, it seems, religious life was rooted in an acknowledgement of the fact that life depends on the destruction of other creatures”- on sacrifice.
Angel-like, the shaman were thought to have a kind of mystical power of flight- thus the bird-mask. And the paints were composed of animal elements- blood and fat- so there was an attempt to miraculously resurrect those sacrificed beings.
We have seen how all the wonder of creation came about- how the stars were formed, how humans came to be. But the consciousness of the holy, the yearning and pull toward morality, the existence of love for other creatures, seems to have been there from the very beginning. And as soon as human consciousness was born, we felt it. And just as Joseph listened to the angels, humankind responded to this unnamed Holy Spirit. It does not have a scientific explanation, we cannot measure God, but we feel it. All through all the vast darkness of space, through the trials and errors of evolution, the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
This life-giving, loving glory was in the beginning with God, this light, this magnificence, this glorious cosmic creation. It is a vast mystery-we cannot fully comprehend it, anymore than those early artists of Lascaux could. But we have a human incarnation of this holiness, this enfleshment of God’s loving word, this new creation, this reality that outshines every darkness. This is the love of Christ, foretold by the angels, and given by God.
Amen
Good Shepherd Church 1/2/11
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
The readings we have been enjoying in the Christmas season describe a very familiar message from the angels – one that we all know and treasure. A baby arrives, like many babies do, in a cold, unsheltered environment, sheltered only by the love of its astonished parents. This is a very prosaic beginning- a baby human born among his human parents, and several common animals. Even the arrival of the shepherds is not overly surprising, but then, the shepherds begin to tell the tale of what the angels said to them: “To you is born this day in the City of David, a Savior, who is the Messiah. We read that “all who heard it were amazed” and Mary, astonished, treasures this news in her heart.
But in our Gospel reading today, we hear of a new set of angelic messages- beginning with a very ominous one. Joseph is warned by the angels that he must flee with his family, or Herod will surely destroy the child. Joseph unquestioningly follows the advise of the angel and brings his child to Egypt. Twice more Joseph is visited by the angel in a dream, and twice more he obeys, and brings his wife and child to safety in Nazareth.
When did angels first appear in human consciousness? When did the idea of the Holy begin? When did the first notion of God emerge? These questions are beautifully explored in a great book I am now reading. Karen Armstrong’s “The Case for God”, is not only a remarkable and intelligent attempt to answer these questions, it also seems to be an answer to the numerous books we now see that are basically “The Case for Atheism.”
In the beginning of Ms. Armstrong’s book, we find ourselves in France, in the underground caverns of Lascaux. The guide has just switched off his flashlight and, as one visitor recalled,” The senses are suddenly wiped out- the millennia drop away. You were never in a darker darkness in your life.” Then as now, in order to arrive at the caves with the famous prehistoric animals painted on the ceiling, one has to go back to the utter, formless, directionless blackness of... the beginning. Then as now, the pilgrims must “stumble for eighty feet down a long sloping tunnel, sixty-five feet below ground level, penetrating ever more deeply into the bowels of the earth.” They then have the privilege of seeing what seems to be an incredibly ancient precedent to ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The earliest French site at Grosse Chavet, dates from about 30,000 BCE. It is now apparently accepted that these labyrinthine caves were sacred places for the performance of a religious ritual- they were man-made wombs for the Holy. They were temples. Why did humans, in these distant times, express themselves, make their mark, go to such extraordinary lengths and expend so much energy, so much apparently unproductive labor, to create these amazing images of oxen and bison horses and mammoths- these startlingly beautiful images? What angels were they obeying?
On my vacation last month my husband and I had a rare opportunity to spend five days in the museums and Galleries of the amazing (and free!) Smithsonian Institution, as I had as a child. We were particularly captivated by a wonderful display of early Homo Sapiens and their tools, art work, early rituals and religion. Probably the very first implication of a ritual action, a consciousness of the afterworld, is the fact that among a number of skeletons deposited in a deep cave, was a smooth carved and burnished stone that had been placed there with the bodies. There seemed to be a need to honor them, or to equip them for the afterlife. The evidence is mounting that even these early humans had some consciousness of the sacred.
Far from shrinking from the scientific evidence of creation, as some modern as well as ancient Christianians have done, our own Bishop Marc brought with him, when he first joined us from Alabama, a wonderful presentation called the Cosmic Walk. This is a ritual created to celebrate and illustrate the miracle of the natural history of the universe, using sacred language. A rope is placed on the ground in a great spiral, and candles are lit at important milestones. We are given the opportunity to see what this glorious creation, so often celebrated in our religion, is really all about. I have always noted that this account has much in common with the Genesis story. It begins with “The Great Flaring Forth” more commonly known as “The Big Bang” 14 Billion years ago, and then describes the development of the stars, the supernovas, the universe, the earth, the emergence of plant and animal life, finally detailing human evolution. Here it is in a MUCH edited and abridged form:
5 Million Years Ago – Human Ancestors Walk on Two Legs
In Africa, our ancestors leave the forest, stand up, and walk!
140,000 years ago – Anatomically Modern Human Emerges
The ancestors of modern humans walk the savannah of east-central
Africa. All modern humans are the progeny of one small group of these.
12,000 years ago- A Homo Sapiens artist paints an image on the walls of Lascaux: A large bison that has been pierced by a spear, thrust through its hindquarters. Lying in front of the animal is a man, with arms outstretched, wearing what seems to be a bird mask. His staff, also lying on the ground, is also topped by a bird’s head. The image is repeated many times in different places, and the man depicted is likely a shaman.
Armstrong contends that the very first efforts at art and the very first efforts at worship were one and the same. There was a irresistible pull to soothe or explain the profound discomfort felt even then, by the killing of creatures so much like themselves. The shaman- a early priest, was doing his or her best to span the mystery of life and death- slaughter and survival. As Armstrong writes, “From the very beginning, it seems, religious life was rooted in an acknowledgement of the fact that life depends on the destruction of other creatures”- on sacrifice.
Angel-like, the shaman were thought to have a kind of mystical power of flight- thus the bird-mask. And the paints were composed of animal elements- blood and fat- so there was an attempt to miraculously resurrect those sacrificed beings.
We have seen how all the wonder of creation came about- how the stars were formed, how humans came to be. But the consciousness of the holy, the yearning and pull toward morality, the existence of love for other creatures, seems to have been there from the very beginning. And as soon as human consciousness was born, we felt it. And just as Joseph listened to the angels, humankind responded to this unnamed Holy Spirit. It does not have a scientific explanation, we cannot measure God, but we feel it. All through all the vast darkness of space, through the trials and errors of evolution, the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
This life-giving, loving glory was in the beginning with God, this light, this magnificence, this glorious cosmic creation. It is a vast mystery-we cannot fully comprehend it, anymore than those early artists of Lascaux could. But we have a human incarnation of this holiness, this enfleshment of God’s loving word, this new creation, this reality that outshines every darkness. This is the love of Christ, foretold by the angels, and given by God.
Amen
Friday, December 31, 2010
Lit up
•Christmas Eve 12/24/10 The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
• Isaiah 65:17-25 Psalm 98 •
• 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 •
• Luke 21:5-19
The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness — on them light has shined… For a child has been born to us, a son given to us.
Every Christmas Eve, in every year, I feel the dawning of a wonderful sort of season of innocence, a kind of enchantment not usually celebrated in our society. Fifty years ago CS Lewis said that he felt the deepest need of humanity was for a “re-enchantment” of the species. He certainly did his best to create that, with his wonderful tales of the miraculous.
On my vacation I stayed with friends who have a remarkable 7 year old child. She was making her list up for Santa, in whom she firmly believes, as she also believes in God. But even she has figured out a scientifically sound reason for believing in Santa: “I have a hypothesis about this” she said. Every year she places the cookies and milk in front of the fire place Christmas Eve and every year they are gone in the morning. She reasoned that since her mother never stays awake past 9:00 and her father is lactose intolerant, it just had to be Santa. She has a sunny and grateful attitude that helped support my own seasonal optimism. As I say in the back of the car with her she said, “Its really lucky that I have you back here to talk to. My parents are always sitting together in front and I have nobody here. But then, I am lucky in so many ways.” Back home she wanted to show me every stuffed animal she has, wanted to do summersaults for me, show me how to knit, introduce me to her dog, all her toys, and she said a beautiful grace at supper. She reminded me that Jesus said we have to become like little children before we can enter the kingdom of heaven. She reminded me of what C.S. Lewis insisted was desperately needed fifty years ago, and it seems to me to still be needed today: what he called the “re-enchantment” of our species.
Traveling from Maryland to Washington DC we went from the innocence of that child to the innocence of an old friend of mine who had completely and uncompromisingly kept his pacifist hippie ideals. He had started the Washington Free Press, the Washington Free Clinic, the Washington Free School. He was always working for peace and justice. Since I had seen him, he and his girlfriend of 35 years had adopted 20 foster children. Theirs was not an entirely peaceful kingdom, but they certainly did their best, and their was not a drop of cynicism in the proceedings.
When I think of the innocence of children at Christmas time, I remember the eight Christmases during which I rehearsed children for the annual Christmas pageant at All Souls Church. Every year, a child from 6 to 8 years old would play the part of the angel Gabriel. And every year, the angel would look earnestly into the eyes of the child playing Mary, and say
"And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son”
And I would look into their earnest and innocent eyes and realize that they had absolutely no idea exactly what that meant. They had only a child’s instinct for the miraculous, and no special knowledge of the incarnation.
I do not have the blind, accepting, miraculous faith of a child, and so the meaning of the incarnation has developed slowly over the years for me. I stumble on. When I first came back to the church, I approached Jesus (although he was loudly calling out my name) with great caution and suspicion. I was eased back into the fold only because my priest recommended that I read a book by Marcus Borg and felt assured that I could accept Jesus of Nazareth, the historical Jesus, and I had to go no further. I was truly "Meeting Jesus again for the first Time" which is the title of the book.
Borg talked about what the human Jesus — the "Pre-Easter Jesus" must have been like. What extraordinary eyes he must have had, how brilliant his language skills were, how passionately wedded to justice and compassion he was. The book barely deals with what he calls the "Post-Easter Jesus," a term I now find woefully lacking to describe the Risen Christ. But at first this was helpful to me. When faced with the incarnation, with the divinity of Jesus, I just didn’t want to go there. But slowly, I began to perceive a curious image seemingly just out of my peripheral vision whenever I thought of the incarnation. I seemed to see brilliant rays of light emanating from something which refused to come into focus front and center, but nonetheless streamed blazingly just beyond the edges of my field of vision. There was a brilliance I couldn’t understand, and could not even fully see, that I began to know was present, nonetheless.
It finally came to me that I was seeing those wings of light on either side of my peripheral vision because whether or not I knew it, something was embracing me. I began to have some sense of the great and overpowering Newness of the incarnation, as expressed so heart-breakingly in the precious newness of the infant Jesus. And I began to understand that the miracle of God’s presence in Jesus Christ has little meaning (at least for me) if we did not relate it to Christ’s presence in us- in ALL of us. As I searched for a way to understand the incarnation I also searched for a prayer I could say at waking that would bring this great newness into my life every morning.
Upon opening my eyes one anxiety-ridden, guilt-stuffed dawn, I suddenly realized I could simply repeat the words of Paul: "If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. Everything old has passed away — behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthians)
I finally saw my first flicker of the image of brilliance that had been eluding me, that explosive and irrevocable NEWNESS, blazing right in front of me when I read the words of Father Pierre Tielhard de Chardin:
It is done. Once again the fire has penetrated the earth. Not with the sudden crash of thunderbolt, riving the mountaintops. Does the Master break down doors to enter his own home? Without earthquake or thunderclap the flame has lit up the whole world from within. All things individually and collectively are penetrated and flooded by it, from the inmost core of the tiniest atom to the mighty sweep of the most universal laws of being. (Song to the Earth)
The incarnation- this birth of hope, of light, of innocence and newness in us all- causes us and all things to be lit up from within. It fills us up, embraces us and causes us to be fully alive.
And because the wonder of it is too great to define or comprehend, the best we can do is, like Mary, to behold it, to hold it, and to treasure it in our hearts.
Amen.
Amen.
• Isaiah 65:17-25 Psalm 98 •
• 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 •
• Luke 21:5-19
The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness — on them light has shined… For a child has been born to us, a son given to us.
Every Christmas Eve, in every year, I feel the dawning of a wonderful sort of season of innocence, a kind of enchantment not usually celebrated in our society. Fifty years ago CS Lewis said that he felt the deepest need of humanity was for a “re-enchantment” of the species. He certainly did his best to create that, with his wonderful tales of the miraculous.
On my vacation I stayed with friends who have a remarkable 7 year old child. She was making her list up for Santa, in whom she firmly believes, as she also believes in God. But even she has figured out a scientifically sound reason for believing in Santa: “I have a hypothesis about this” she said. Every year she places the cookies and milk in front of the fire place Christmas Eve and every year they are gone in the morning. She reasoned that since her mother never stays awake past 9:00 and her father is lactose intolerant, it just had to be Santa. She has a sunny and grateful attitude that helped support my own seasonal optimism. As I say in the back of the car with her she said, “Its really lucky that I have you back here to talk to. My parents are always sitting together in front and I have nobody here. But then, I am lucky in so many ways.” Back home she wanted to show me every stuffed animal she has, wanted to do summersaults for me, show me how to knit, introduce me to her dog, all her toys, and she said a beautiful grace at supper. She reminded me that Jesus said we have to become like little children before we can enter the kingdom of heaven. She reminded me of what C.S. Lewis insisted was desperately needed fifty years ago, and it seems to me to still be needed today: what he called the “re-enchantment” of our species.
Traveling from Maryland to Washington DC we went from the innocence of that child to the innocence of an old friend of mine who had completely and uncompromisingly kept his pacifist hippie ideals. He had started the Washington Free Press, the Washington Free Clinic, the Washington Free School. He was always working for peace and justice. Since I had seen him, he and his girlfriend of 35 years had adopted 20 foster children. Theirs was not an entirely peaceful kingdom, but they certainly did their best, and their was not a drop of cynicism in the proceedings.
When I think of the innocence of children at Christmas time, I remember the eight Christmases during which I rehearsed children for the annual Christmas pageant at All Souls Church. Every year, a child from 6 to 8 years old would play the part of the angel Gabriel. And every year, the angel would look earnestly into the eyes of the child playing Mary, and say
"And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son”
And I would look into their earnest and innocent eyes and realize that they had absolutely no idea exactly what that meant. They had only a child’s instinct for the miraculous, and no special knowledge of the incarnation.
I do not have the blind, accepting, miraculous faith of a child, and so the meaning of the incarnation has developed slowly over the years for me. I stumble on. When I first came back to the church, I approached Jesus (although he was loudly calling out my name) with great caution and suspicion. I was eased back into the fold only because my priest recommended that I read a book by Marcus Borg and felt assured that I could accept Jesus of Nazareth, the historical Jesus, and I had to go no further. I was truly "Meeting Jesus again for the first Time" which is the title of the book.
Borg talked about what the human Jesus — the "Pre-Easter Jesus" must have been like. What extraordinary eyes he must have had, how brilliant his language skills were, how passionately wedded to justice and compassion he was. The book barely deals with what he calls the "Post-Easter Jesus," a term I now find woefully lacking to describe the Risen Christ. But at first this was helpful to me. When faced with the incarnation, with the divinity of Jesus, I just didn’t want to go there. But slowly, I began to perceive a curious image seemingly just out of my peripheral vision whenever I thought of the incarnation. I seemed to see brilliant rays of light emanating from something which refused to come into focus front and center, but nonetheless streamed blazingly just beyond the edges of my field of vision. There was a brilliance I couldn’t understand, and could not even fully see, that I began to know was present, nonetheless.
It finally came to me that I was seeing those wings of light on either side of my peripheral vision because whether or not I knew it, something was embracing me. I began to have some sense of the great and overpowering Newness of the incarnation, as expressed so heart-breakingly in the precious newness of the infant Jesus. And I began to understand that the miracle of God’s presence in Jesus Christ has little meaning (at least for me) if we did not relate it to Christ’s presence in us- in ALL of us. As I searched for a way to understand the incarnation I also searched for a prayer I could say at waking that would bring this great newness into my life every morning.
Upon opening my eyes one anxiety-ridden, guilt-stuffed dawn, I suddenly realized I could simply repeat the words of Paul: "If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. Everything old has passed away — behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthians)
I finally saw my first flicker of the image of brilliance that had been eluding me, that explosive and irrevocable NEWNESS, blazing right in front of me when I read the words of Father Pierre Tielhard de Chardin:
It is done. Once again the fire has penetrated the earth. Not with the sudden crash of thunderbolt, riving the mountaintops. Does the Master break down doors to enter his own home? Without earthquake or thunderclap the flame has lit up the whole world from within. All things individually and collectively are penetrated and flooded by it, from the inmost core of the tiniest atom to the mighty sweep of the most universal laws of being. (Song to the Earth)
The incarnation- this birth of hope, of light, of innocence and newness in us all- causes us and all things to be lit up from within. It fills us up, embraces us and causes us to be fully alive.
And because the wonder of it is too great to define or comprehend, the best we can do is, like Mary, to behold it, to hold it, and to treasure it in our hearts.
Amen.
Amen.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
One Stone Upon Another...
Isaiah 65:17-25 and Isaiah 12
Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19
Good Shepherd Berkeley and Holy Trinity/La Santisima Trinidad, Richmond: 11/14/10
Yosef Ben Matityahu, was a highly Romanized historian who dumped his Jewish name for the more politically advantageous “Titus Flavius Josephus.” He describes the blinding brilliance of the Jerusalem temple in 75 AD, five years after the temple was destroyed, but obviously long before it faded in his memory:
"The exterior of the building lacked nothing to astound either mind or eye. For, being covered on all sides with massive plates of gold, the sun was no sooner up than it radiated so fiery a flash that persons straining to look at it were compelled to avert their eyes, as from the solar rays."
Jesus responds to the ooing and ahing of the disciples by pointing out that this temple will be utterly destroyed, not one stone left upon another. And this temple was indeed destroyed in a hideous orgy of violence, by the Romans in 70 AD.
Josephus was present in Jerusalem when the city was captured and the temple was incinerated. You can hear the grief of the Roman-sympathizing Josephus in spite of himself:
"The countryside, like the City, was a pitiful sight; for where once there had been a lovely vista of woods and parks there was nothing but desert and stumps of trees. No one - not even a foreigner - who had seen the Old Judea and the glorious … City, and now set eyes on her present desolation, could have helped sighing and groaning at so terrible a change; for every trace of beauty had been blotted out by war, and nobody who had known it in the past and came upon it suddenly would have recognized the place…"
The temple was meant to imitate the holy with it’s vast solar brilliance. But as we know from other stories in the bible, when humans try to build structures to rival the glory of God, it never ends well.
In great contrast to the magnificent grandeur of this temple, throughout Luke’s gospel we are told of the lowly origins of Jesus, and the devotion with which he cares for the lowly. Jesus had the lowly birth of a homeless child, born, not in a glorious temple, but in a barn, and he will die the lowly death of a criminal. His mentor was the homeless wild man John the Baptist, who wears a mantel of camel skin and survives on what he can scrape together in the wilderness- wild locusts and wild honey.
In his first public declaration, Jesus quotes the words of the social justice loving Isaiah when he says that God has sent him for the poor, the imprisoned, the disabled, the oppressed. He heals those who were most unclean and despised: lepers, the paralyzed, epileptics, a bleeding woman, a girl who was already dead, and the blind, all observed by his apparently blind disciples.
Again and again he speaks with, heals and teaches that despised subset of the population, women, unheard of for a first century Jewish man. He warns that you must not take the seat of honor when invited to a banquet. Jesus particularly speaks against the hording of gold, telling his disciples to store up their treasure in heaven instead.
And the disciples have been with him all this time. So what do they say when they regard the splendor of the vast gleaming temple?
They say something like- “OY! Will you look at that gorgeous hunk of gold-plated real estate!”
But Jesus, ever patient, tries to tell them that, like all wealth, it will tumble, like all things material raised up, it will fall.
Jesus warns that not one stone of the temple will be left on top of another. He knows that this kind of wealth invites violence, that in fact that kind of wealth IS violence, and that violence is soon to come, war and insurrections . The violence and the devastation described by Josephus is the inevitable outcome of those things Jesus railed against over and over again: Power over the poor, hierarchy, greed, hatred.
We are a slow-learning species, and we, as a nation, are, as addictively as ever, worshiping gold and indulging in war, two wars in fact, one at least partially caused by greed, the other by revenge, the opposite of forgiveness. Jesus warns us against false prophets that will come in his name saying “I am he!: And “The time is near!” Jesus warns us not to go after them. We pray that our children do not harken to the call of the false prophets urging them on college and even high school campuses to “Be all that they can be” and help to obliterate modern temples.
Every day we hear about 3,400 other messages from false prophets, according to a film I saw called: Advertising and the End of the World. Every tee shirt you see advertising a name brand, every bill board, every TV or internet commercial, every product placement, every cereal box, every piece of junk mail and every sales man you are accosted by is helping to drive you into the hell of hording, the enchantment of gold, and, as the movie implies, the end of the world through the earth-destroying reality of manufacturing. Each false prophet will urge: “The time is near!”
“This sale ends in two days!”
“Get in on the ground floor of this investment!”
“Enjoy yourself before the economy tanks completely, or before you die, which ever comes first! You deserve it!”
I must confess that the radiant temple at which I worship lately, is my beloved Mac Book Pro, a false prophet I will follow almost anywhere, at almost anytime. My husband asked me what I wanted for my last birthday, and I said I would like a Kindle, an easy way to have a whole library of books at my disposal while I traveled. He immediately said no, He would get me an ipad because that could do the work of a kindle and so much more! Very weakly and for a very short time I protested, and so I now have my Ipad and I no longer worship monotheistically at my Mac book pro. In fact, now that I have a smart phone, there is a kind of unholy trinity of false prophets in my life. This phone is not only inexpressively smarter than I am, but is able to beep and buzz when it wants me to do something, which I pretty much immediately do, except at 3:00 in the morning, which has happened lately. I find that I surf the web with my Ipad (you can do it anywhere!) much more than I read on it, and it is so easy to get lost down the rabbit hole of the world wide web, wherein time slips away, and your life along with it.
But it seems I am not the only one with cyber addictive tendencies to these radiant little temples. I recently heard that the fastest selling application for the Mac is called “Freedom,” and it is simply an application that will make it impossible for an individual to log on to the net for a pre-set number of hours of the day or night. I think I better get that ap, because when I wrote this, staring at my little glowing temple, it was 10:09PM and I hadn’t yet said hello to my daughter, who got home at 4:30. I sometimes think that if this cyber-temple of mine is not destroyed, it will destroy me, that one stone of me will be left upon another.
We risk our very souls when we don’t consciously walk away from all false prophets, electronic and otherwise, when we don’t question the powers and principalities that Jesus warned us about.
But Jesus, of course, preaches a different kind of prophesy, radiates a different kind of brilliance. Jesus is seen, shining like the sun, unsheltered by any temple, surrounded by those who loved him and whom he loved, in the story of the transfiguration, not long after our story of today.
God is not shining in this story, but is hidden behind a cloud, beseeching the ever-clueless disciples to listen to the “Beloved son.” And Jesus, glowing brighter than any gold, seems to have already replaced the blinding temple, by radiating love. He is flanked by his beloved OT prophets, Moses, who taught him about the love of the sacred, and Elijah who taught him about the still small voice of God. At Jesus’ feet are the disciples who he loved so much, in spite of everything they did. Peter, so typically, pops up in the midst of all this brilliance and wants to construct a few little temples of his own- but the voice from the cloud silences him. The vast structure, the brilliant temple, the awe-inspiring edifice that Jesus the new creation gives to us is the miracle of unconditional love. And any rich person can tell you that no amount of gold, no quantity of gigabytes can buy that.
But, as Jesus says, if we can endure this culture, that makes a God out of gold, that makes a sacrament out of war, if we can open the door of our own small temple to the possibility of love without counting the cost, we may just see the new Jerusalem in our lives, a new heaven and a new earth, right here and now. And we may even be able to re-gain our true souls.
Amen.
Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19
Good Shepherd Berkeley and Holy Trinity/La Santisima Trinidad, Richmond: 11/14/10
Yosef Ben Matityahu, was a highly Romanized historian who dumped his Jewish name for the more politically advantageous “Titus Flavius Josephus.” He describes the blinding brilliance of the Jerusalem temple in 75 AD, five years after the temple was destroyed, but obviously long before it faded in his memory:
"The exterior of the building lacked nothing to astound either mind or eye. For, being covered on all sides with massive plates of gold, the sun was no sooner up than it radiated so fiery a flash that persons straining to look at it were compelled to avert their eyes, as from the solar rays."
Jesus responds to the ooing and ahing of the disciples by pointing out that this temple will be utterly destroyed, not one stone left upon another. And this temple was indeed destroyed in a hideous orgy of violence, by the Romans in 70 AD.
Josephus was present in Jerusalem when the city was captured and the temple was incinerated. You can hear the grief of the Roman-sympathizing Josephus in spite of himself:
"The countryside, like the City, was a pitiful sight; for where once there had been a lovely vista of woods and parks there was nothing but desert and stumps of trees. No one - not even a foreigner - who had seen the Old Judea and the glorious … City, and now set eyes on her present desolation, could have helped sighing and groaning at so terrible a change; for every trace of beauty had been blotted out by war, and nobody who had known it in the past and came upon it suddenly would have recognized the place…"
The temple was meant to imitate the holy with it’s vast solar brilliance. But as we know from other stories in the bible, when humans try to build structures to rival the glory of God, it never ends well.
In great contrast to the magnificent grandeur of this temple, throughout Luke’s gospel we are told of the lowly origins of Jesus, and the devotion with which he cares for the lowly. Jesus had the lowly birth of a homeless child, born, not in a glorious temple, but in a barn, and he will die the lowly death of a criminal. His mentor was the homeless wild man John the Baptist, who wears a mantel of camel skin and survives on what he can scrape together in the wilderness- wild locusts and wild honey.
In his first public declaration, Jesus quotes the words of the social justice loving Isaiah when he says that God has sent him for the poor, the imprisoned, the disabled, the oppressed. He heals those who were most unclean and despised: lepers, the paralyzed, epileptics, a bleeding woman, a girl who was already dead, and the blind, all observed by his apparently blind disciples.
Again and again he speaks with, heals and teaches that despised subset of the population, women, unheard of for a first century Jewish man. He warns that you must not take the seat of honor when invited to a banquet. Jesus particularly speaks against the hording of gold, telling his disciples to store up their treasure in heaven instead.
And the disciples have been with him all this time. So what do they say when they regard the splendor of the vast gleaming temple?
They say something like- “OY! Will you look at that gorgeous hunk of gold-plated real estate!”
But Jesus, ever patient, tries to tell them that, like all wealth, it will tumble, like all things material raised up, it will fall.
Jesus warns that not one stone of the temple will be left on top of another. He knows that this kind of wealth invites violence, that in fact that kind of wealth IS violence, and that violence is soon to come, war and insurrections . The violence and the devastation described by Josephus is the inevitable outcome of those things Jesus railed against over and over again: Power over the poor, hierarchy, greed, hatred.
We are a slow-learning species, and we, as a nation, are, as addictively as ever, worshiping gold and indulging in war, two wars in fact, one at least partially caused by greed, the other by revenge, the opposite of forgiveness. Jesus warns us against false prophets that will come in his name saying “I am he!: And “The time is near!” Jesus warns us not to go after them. We pray that our children do not harken to the call of the false prophets urging them on college and even high school campuses to “Be all that they can be” and help to obliterate modern temples.
Every day we hear about 3,400 other messages from false prophets, according to a film I saw called: Advertising and the End of the World. Every tee shirt you see advertising a name brand, every bill board, every TV or internet commercial, every product placement, every cereal box, every piece of junk mail and every sales man you are accosted by is helping to drive you into the hell of hording, the enchantment of gold, and, as the movie implies, the end of the world through the earth-destroying reality of manufacturing. Each false prophet will urge: “The time is near!”
“This sale ends in two days!”
“Get in on the ground floor of this investment!”
“Enjoy yourself before the economy tanks completely, or before you die, which ever comes first! You deserve it!”
I must confess that the radiant temple at which I worship lately, is my beloved Mac Book Pro, a false prophet I will follow almost anywhere, at almost anytime. My husband asked me what I wanted for my last birthday, and I said I would like a Kindle, an easy way to have a whole library of books at my disposal while I traveled. He immediately said no, He would get me an ipad because that could do the work of a kindle and so much more! Very weakly and for a very short time I protested, and so I now have my Ipad and I no longer worship monotheistically at my Mac book pro. In fact, now that I have a smart phone, there is a kind of unholy trinity of false prophets in my life. This phone is not only inexpressively smarter than I am, but is able to beep and buzz when it wants me to do something, which I pretty much immediately do, except at 3:00 in the morning, which has happened lately. I find that I surf the web with my Ipad (you can do it anywhere!) much more than I read on it, and it is so easy to get lost down the rabbit hole of the world wide web, wherein time slips away, and your life along with it.
But it seems I am not the only one with cyber addictive tendencies to these radiant little temples. I recently heard that the fastest selling application for the Mac is called “Freedom,” and it is simply an application that will make it impossible for an individual to log on to the net for a pre-set number of hours of the day or night. I think I better get that ap, because when I wrote this, staring at my little glowing temple, it was 10:09PM and I hadn’t yet said hello to my daughter, who got home at 4:30. I sometimes think that if this cyber-temple of mine is not destroyed, it will destroy me, that one stone of me will be left upon another.
We risk our very souls when we don’t consciously walk away from all false prophets, electronic and otherwise, when we don’t question the powers and principalities that Jesus warned us about.
But Jesus, of course, preaches a different kind of prophesy, radiates a different kind of brilliance. Jesus is seen, shining like the sun, unsheltered by any temple, surrounded by those who loved him and whom he loved, in the story of the transfiguration, not long after our story of today.
God is not shining in this story, but is hidden behind a cloud, beseeching the ever-clueless disciples to listen to the “Beloved son.” And Jesus, glowing brighter than any gold, seems to have already replaced the blinding temple, by radiating love. He is flanked by his beloved OT prophets, Moses, who taught him about the love of the sacred, and Elijah who taught him about the still small voice of God. At Jesus’ feet are the disciples who he loved so much, in spite of everything they did. Peter, so typically, pops up in the midst of all this brilliance and wants to construct a few little temples of his own- but the voice from the cloud silences him. The vast structure, the brilliant temple, the awe-inspiring edifice that Jesus the new creation gives to us is the miracle of unconditional love. And any rich person can tell you that no amount of gold, no quantity of gigabytes can buy that.
But, as Jesus says, if we can endure this culture, that makes a God out of gold, that makes a sacrament out of war, if we can open the door of our own small temple to the possibility of love without counting the cost, we may just see the new Jerusalem in our lives, a new heaven and a new earth, right here and now. And we may even be able to re-gain our true souls.
Amen.
Beyond Betrayal
Isaiah 1:10-18, Psalm 32:1-7, 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12, Luke 19:1-10
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Berkeley, CA Sunday, 10/31/10
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Beyond Betrayal
In today’s Gospel is the last encounter Jesus has with an outcast before his entry into Jerusalem, and his crucifixion.
Jesus has been seen to help many other kinds of dispised and unclean outcasts in this Gospel- a man possessed by a demon, a hemoraging woman, a man who had dropsy, a who is bend double with her disease, ten lepers and finally, the blind man.
The old prophets continually preached though the scriptures that a righteous Jew should help the poor and powerless, even those who were aliens. In our Old Testament reading we hear “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” But these dictates did not include the ritually unclean, such as the ones I just listed. And Zaccheaus, as a traitor working for the Romans, certainly was among the dispised unclean.
To accept someone like Zacchaeus, to have table fellowship with him was really extraordinary, in fact, inflammatory in Jesus time and place. Zaccheaus status among the Jews would have been a few rungs lower than lepers and the hemoraging woman.
The Tax collectors of the Jesus’ time, had nothing in common with the IRS agents of today. We might feel some level of unease with an IRS agent, but we know they are just doing their job. But the tax collectors described in the New Testament were uniquely dispised as true traitors, true betrayers of their people.
The Greek term teloni, in this case describes an entrepreneur who would pay a contract in advance, and then extort as much money over and above the required Roman tax as he could, for his own personal gain.
Under the rule of Herod Antipas, in the time of Jesus, there were personal, or poll taxes, land taxes, and a host of indirect taxes, such as the tax on transporting goods. Then there were the religious taxes, as well. And on top of that there was whatever the individual teloni could extort. The people were so desperately stretched and impovershed by all this taxation and extortion, that their desperation led to violent uprisings agains the Romans authorities.
So in finding a contemporary equivalent of Zacchaeus, one would not compare him to an IRS agent, but rather to one of a multitude of Bernie Madoffs, who would think nothing of backrupting elderly people and families and driving them out of their homes, just to further increase their already obscene wealth.
But Jesus, ignoring purity codes and ancient predjudices as usual, was willing to love beyond betrayal. And he was oblivious to what people would think of this acceptance of a betrayer of the Jews. Think of the political fallout if President Obama was seen having an elegant dinner over at Bernie’s Madoff’s opulent abode, pre-incarceration of course. But although the crowd around Jesus grumbled bitterly that he was associating with a sinner, Jesus didn’t care.
Jesus also may have sensed the betrayers to come, whom he also greeted with love. He not only accepted Judas’ kiss, but during the last supper, according to the Gospel of John, he gave Judas communion, handing him a piece of bread dipped in wine- forgiving him before he even committed the betrayal. Jesus may have been demonstrating to the beloved disciple by his side, not only who would betray him, but how one ought to respond to a betrayer- offer him the sacrament of forgiveness.
In his wonderful book, Works of Love, Sooren Kiekegaard speaks of the moment after Peter denyed knowing Jesus for the third time. Immediately after the third betrayal, the cock crows, and Jesus turns and looks at Peter, (Lk 22:60-61a). Then Peter leaves him, weeping bitterly. Kierkegaard, extrapolates for sometime on his conviction that the look that send Peter away weeping was simply a look of the purest love and forgiveness.
Then as a further act of compassion, Jesus later allowed Peter to ritually undo his betrayal, when Jesus asked him three time, “Do you love me, Simon Peter?”
Jesus loves through all the betrayals- the betrayal of Judas, the betrayal of Peter, and finally, as he desperately perceives it, the betrayal of God. He repeats the anguished words of the psalmist, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And so Jesus knows how to love beyond the betrayals of the tax collecting Zaccheaus.
And Zaccheaus, in our story of today, miraculusly becomes as a child again, thus beginning his ownership of the Kingdom of Heaven. Given that he was short of stature, he already had a head start, and so he discarded his dignity to run ahead and climb a tree, something any child would have delighted in doing.
And miraculously, Zaccheaus, when he sees Jesus not only looking at him with love, but inviting himself to the tax collector’s house, is able to accept the love, and to be transformed by it. He immediately offers to give away half of everything he owns, and pledges to pay back four-fold, those people he had defrauded. Therefore Jesus announces that salvation has come to the house of Zaccheaus, and that he, this dispised betrayer, is a son of Abraham, a just and faithful Jew. His betrayals are forgotten, and Jesus enacts the forgiveness we heard in our reading from Isaiah “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
This is the happiest ending in a story involving a rich man in the Gospel of Luke. Early in the gospel, it is made clear to whom the Kingdom of God belongs, and it is not to the rich. And in the “woe to you” section, of the beatitudes Jesus tells us “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” A little later, he calls the rich farmer a fool, and demands his soul of him. The sumptuously feasting rich man dressed in purple and fine linen, goes to Hades while the poor man Lazarus rests in the bosom of Abraham. Finally, not long before our gospel of today, Jesus meets a rich young man, who asks him what it takes to earn eternal life. Although Jesus looks at him with love, he tells him that to earn eternal life, he must give away all of his possesions. The rich young man, unlike Zaccheaus, turns and walks away sad.
Jesus then delivers his famous one-liner about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus looked at Zaccheaus, at Peter, at Judas, as he looks at all of us. He sees not a betrayer, but a lost sheep, a broken heart, a lost soul. All of us are broken, all of us are lost at some time in our lives. And perhaps we have the guilt of a traitor. We may have betrayed a child, a loved one, a friend, a master, as Peter did, we may have felt that we betrayed God, and we may have betrayed ourselves. But in our own lives, it is exactly in the guilt of betrayal, exactly in the brokenness of our hearts, the brokenness of our lives, that we meet Jesus. Not in our perfection, not in our riches, not in our perfectly appropriate life styles and professions. Luckily, Jesus came to save the lost, as he says at the end of our Gospel reading. He comes to save us when we need him the very most, wounded by judgements of who we are, judged as a sinner, a betrayer, an abomination before God. Judeged, perhaps most brutally, by ourselves.
This last outcast Jesus heals is a most unlikely convert, a rich man who transforms into someone who could, indeed enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Now, in our story, as we are almost entering Jerusalem, the previous reality is turned upside down. We are approaching the time when Jesus, with his death, shatters the old world order. With the great force of Jesus’ resurrection, a new world, blessed by the Reign of God is opened for us. And here the broken-hearted, the lost, the hopeless, rich and poor alike can and will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, can and will invite Jesus to stay with them, can and will be not lost, but found.
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Berkeley, CA Sunday, 10/31/10
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Beyond Betrayal
In today’s Gospel is the last encounter Jesus has with an outcast before his entry into Jerusalem, and his crucifixion.
Jesus has been seen to help many other kinds of dispised and unclean outcasts in this Gospel- a man possessed by a demon, a hemoraging woman, a man who had dropsy, a who is bend double with her disease, ten lepers and finally, the blind man.
The old prophets continually preached though the scriptures that a righteous Jew should help the poor and powerless, even those who were aliens. In our Old Testament reading we hear “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” But these dictates did not include the ritually unclean, such as the ones I just listed. And Zaccheaus, as a traitor working for the Romans, certainly was among the dispised unclean.
To accept someone like Zacchaeus, to have table fellowship with him was really extraordinary, in fact, inflammatory in Jesus time and place. Zaccheaus status among the Jews would have been a few rungs lower than lepers and the hemoraging woman.
The Tax collectors of the Jesus’ time, had nothing in common with the IRS agents of today. We might feel some level of unease with an IRS agent, but we know they are just doing their job. But the tax collectors described in the New Testament were uniquely dispised as true traitors, true betrayers of their people.
The Greek term teloni, in this case describes an entrepreneur who would pay a contract in advance, and then extort as much money over and above the required Roman tax as he could, for his own personal gain.
Under the rule of Herod Antipas, in the time of Jesus, there were personal, or poll taxes, land taxes, and a host of indirect taxes, such as the tax on transporting goods. Then there were the religious taxes, as well. And on top of that there was whatever the individual teloni could extort. The people were so desperately stretched and impovershed by all this taxation and extortion, that their desperation led to violent uprisings agains the Romans authorities.
So in finding a contemporary equivalent of Zacchaeus, one would not compare him to an IRS agent, but rather to one of a multitude of Bernie Madoffs, who would think nothing of backrupting elderly people and families and driving them out of their homes, just to further increase their already obscene wealth.
But Jesus, ignoring purity codes and ancient predjudices as usual, was willing to love beyond betrayal. And he was oblivious to what people would think of this acceptance of a betrayer of the Jews. Think of the political fallout if President Obama was seen having an elegant dinner over at Bernie’s Madoff’s opulent abode, pre-incarceration of course. But although the crowd around Jesus grumbled bitterly that he was associating with a sinner, Jesus didn’t care.
Jesus also may have sensed the betrayers to come, whom he also greeted with love. He not only accepted Judas’ kiss, but during the last supper, according to the Gospel of John, he gave Judas communion, handing him a piece of bread dipped in wine- forgiving him before he even committed the betrayal. Jesus may have been demonstrating to the beloved disciple by his side, not only who would betray him, but how one ought to respond to a betrayer- offer him the sacrament of forgiveness.
In his wonderful book, Works of Love, Sooren Kiekegaard speaks of the moment after Peter denyed knowing Jesus for the third time. Immediately after the third betrayal, the cock crows, and Jesus turns and looks at Peter, (Lk 22:60-61a). Then Peter leaves him, weeping bitterly. Kierkegaard, extrapolates for sometime on his conviction that the look that send Peter away weeping was simply a look of the purest love and forgiveness.
Then as a further act of compassion, Jesus later allowed Peter to ritually undo his betrayal, when Jesus asked him three time, “Do you love me, Simon Peter?”
Jesus loves through all the betrayals- the betrayal of Judas, the betrayal of Peter, and finally, as he desperately perceives it, the betrayal of God. He repeats the anguished words of the psalmist, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And so Jesus knows how to love beyond the betrayals of the tax collecting Zaccheaus.
And Zaccheaus, in our story of today, miraculusly becomes as a child again, thus beginning his ownership of the Kingdom of Heaven. Given that he was short of stature, he already had a head start, and so he discarded his dignity to run ahead and climb a tree, something any child would have delighted in doing.
And miraculously, Zaccheaus, when he sees Jesus not only looking at him with love, but inviting himself to the tax collector’s house, is able to accept the love, and to be transformed by it. He immediately offers to give away half of everything he owns, and pledges to pay back four-fold, those people he had defrauded. Therefore Jesus announces that salvation has come to the house of Zaccheaus, and that he, this dispised betrayer, is a son of Abraham, a just and faithful Jew. His betrayals are forgotten, and Jesus enacts the forgiveness we heard in our reading from Isaiah “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
This is the happiest ending in a story involving a rich man in the Gospel of Luke. Early in the gospel, it is made clear to whom the Kingdom of God belongs, and it is not to the rich. And in the “woe to you” section, of the beatitudes Jesus tells us “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” A little later, he calls the rich farmer a fool, and demands his soul of him. The sumptuously feasting rich man dressed in purple and fine linen, goes to Hades while the poor man Lazarus rests in the bosom of Abraham. Finally, not long before our gospel of today, Jesus meets a rich young man, who asks him what it takes to earn eternal life. Although Jesus looks at him with love, he tells him that to earn eternal life, he must give away all of his possesions. The rich young man, unlike Zaccheaus, turns and walks away sad.
Jesus then delivers his famous one-liner about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus looked at Zaccheaus, at Peter, at Judas, as he looks at all of us. He sees not a betrayer, but a lost sheep, a broken heart, a lost soul. All of us are broken, all of us are lost at some time in our lives. And perhaps we have the guilt of a traitor. We may have betrayed a child, a loved one, a friend, a master, as Peter did, we may have felt that we betrayed God, and we may have betrayed ourselves. But in our own lives, it is exactly in the guilt of betrayal, exactly in the brokenness of our hearts, the brokenness of our lives, that we meet Jesus. Not in our perfection, not in our riches, not in our perfectly appropriate life styles and professions. Luckily, Jesus came to save the lost, as he says at the end of our Gospel reading. He comes to save us when we need him the very most, wounded by judgements of who we are, judged as a sinner, a betrayer, an abomination before God. Judeged, perhaps most brutally, by ourselves.
This last outcast Jesus heals is a most unlikely convert, a rich man who transforms into someone who could, indeed enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Now, in our story, as we are almost entering Jerusalem, the previous reality is turned upside down. We are approaching the time when Jesus, with his death, shatters the old world order. With the great force of Jesus’ resurrection, a new world, blessed by the Reign of God is opened for us. And here the broken-hearted, the lost, the hopeless, rich and poor alike can and will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, can and will invite Jesus to stay with them, can and will be not lost, but found.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
