Reflections on Matthew 2:13-15,19-23 by The Rev. Margaret Rose
The Flight into Egypt
For many years I have had a standard angle on this text of the Flight into Egypt. Apart from some historical reflection, it is about how its actually okay to flee when one is in danger—either physically or mentally or emotionally. The geographic cure may not last long, but at least there is a respite—from the evil King or from some other more inner adversary. Fleeing is sometimes the best way to cope. Denial is a response which offers us time to find a safe space to return to. I have often thought of this as the Safe House text. A place of shelter in a foreign land when abuse is the only sure thing about home.
But this Sunday I am preaching in a parish which has offered an even deeper look at this text. The parish is St. Augustine’s Church on the lower East Side of Manhattan. Founded in 1828 for the wealthy of that neighborhood, it built “slave galleries” so that African American workers who accompanied their owners to church could worship apart. Likely, it was to ensure that workers remained close at hand to be watched. New York outlawed slave ownership in 1827, but equality was not even a distant hope. However, Free men and women who worshipped together had the opportunity to be together in ways that were not possible during the week. And in spite of the separation, it was a place where African Americans were able to worship, where they learned to read and where it is even possible that a burgeoning abolitionist movement in the area was formed. The slave galleries—box like structures at the rear of the church---still exist today, as a stark reminder of those dark days, a piece of history from which to strengthen resolve for the future. Indeed today, St. Augustine’s is the largest African American congregation in that part of the city.
Over the years, this parish where African Americans had no power or rights, has become a symbol of refuge and liberation—a place of renewal and hope.
And so I return to the story of the Flight to Egypt. Joseph and Mary flee to this place whose memory for the People of Israel was one of slavery and oppression. We claim the of Exodus as the primal liberation story of that people—the hoping of leaving Egypt never to return. The idea that this place of slavery so many centuries later has become a place of refuge for the holy family, offers hope in a political world of danger and torture and seeming despair. Even if it takes centuries, there is this symbolic and very real possibility.
For Matthew—we don’t get to the present, or indeed the future with out the past, without knowing where we have come from, the journey one might say of God’s long standing presence. I always remember Matthew because he is the one—in my childhood memory of the King James Version of the Bible, with the “BEGATS” genealogy was important for Matthew---precisely because in hindsight, one could see things clearly and know that God was involved even when it might not have seemed so at the time. Throughout his Gospel as he tells of Jesus and the events of his life, his words are often prefaced with “As the prophets foretold”….. It is not for nothing that these things have happened. “all this took place to fulfill……”
So for Matthew the past matters.
So also does the present and the signs of the times. Pay attention to the signs: Matthew seems to say --dreams and stars and even your own body. For the whole universe is part of God’s plan for the redemption of history into new possibility of the healing of a broken world. For you never know when a star may lead you to the savior. You never know when a dream will send a message of truth, or when redemption may occur and Egypt, once a place of slavery becomes a place of refuge. Paying attention doesn’t make it easy of course; the Road may well be hard and the journey treacherous. And persistence and endurance are required along the way.
That is how it was with Mary and Joseph. First, the road to Bethlehem where they are hardly settled than a host of visitors arrives having themselves traveled from afar, by the leading of stars and dreams--the shepherds and the strangers from the East, wise men of another religion. They have come to worship or at least check out what has come to pass, courageously defying King Herod. They, too, depart by another route, a new direction—symbolically and literally. No sooner has Herod discovered he has been duped by the wise men than Joseph and Mary flee to safety to the land of Egypt. Safe in Egypt we read of the horrible slaughter of the innocent boys ---Herod’s rage and fear know no bounds. The text of lament, not offered in today’s lesson is that of a mother’s broken heart: A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentations, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled.
All this of course, is Matthew’s account, which historically we know was to establish Jesus credibility in history, his role as a prophet. The new Moses and indeed as Messiah. For us today, this witness is Good News for us in 2009, amid the current events both of violence in Israel and Gaza and fear at home of economic distress.
Reread in this new light, Matthew’s Good news for us goes well beyond permission for flight and denial. And I will know even more once I have actually experienced the day at St. Augustine’s. But my insight from Matthew this week was a gift. In short ---
Know our history, Pay attention to the signs. Be fearless and persistent in the journey, even though dangerous. Expect transformation. Perhaps that can be a message for us as we begin the season of Epiphany. E-piph-a-ny: “a sudden, intuitive perception.” May there be many!
Margaret Rose
January 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Christmas II
Reflections on Matthew 2:13-15,19-23 by The Rev. Margaret Rose
The Flight into Egypt
For many years I have had a standard angle on this text of the Flight into Egypt. Apart from some historical reflection, it is about how its actually okay to flee when one is in danger—either physically or mentally or emotionally. The geographic cure may not last long, but at least there is a respite—from the evil King or from some other more inner adversary. Fleeing is sometimes the best way to cope. Denial is a response which offers us time to find a safe space to return to. I have often thought of this as the Safe House text. A place of shelter in a foreign land when abuse is the only sure thing about home.
But this Sunday I am preaching in a parish which has offered an even deeper look at this text. The parish is St. Augustine’s Church on the lower East Side of Manhattan. Founded in 1828 for the wealthy of that neighborhood, it built “slave galleries” so that African American workers who accompanied their owners to church could worship apart. Likely, it was to ensure that workers remained close at hand to be watched. New York outlawed slave ownership in 1827, but equality was not even a distant hope. However, Free men and women who worshipped together had the opportunity to be together in ways that were not possible during the week. And in spite of the separation, it was a place where African Americans were able to worship, where they learned to read and where it is even possible that a burgeoning abolitionist movement in the area was formed. The slave galleries—box like structures at the rear of the church---still exist today, as a stark reminder of those dark days, a piece of history from which to strengthen resolve for the future. Indeed today, St. Augustine’s is the largest African American congregation in that part of the city.
Over the years, this parish where African Americans had no power or rights, has become a symbol of refuge and liberation—a place of renewal and hope.
And so I return to the story of the Flight to Egypt. Joseph and Mary flee to this place whose memory for the People of Israel was one of slavery and oppression. We claim the of Exodus as the primal liberation story of that people—the hoping of leaving Egypt never to return. The idea that this place of slavery so many centuries later has become a place of refuge for the holy family, offers hope in a political world of danger and torture and seeming despair. Even if it takes centuries, there is this symbolic and very real
possibility.
For Matthew—we don’t get to the present, or indeed the future with out the past, without knowing where we have come from, the journey one might say of God’s long standing presence. I always remember Matthew because he is the one—in my childhood memory of the King James Version of the Bible, with the “BEGATS” genealogy was important for Matthew---precisely because in hindsight, one could see things clearly and know that God was involved even when it might not have seemed so at the time. Throughout his Gospel as he tells of Jesus and the events of his life, his words are often prefaced with “As the prophets foretold”….. It is not for nothing that these things have happened. “all this took place to fulfill……”
So for Matthew the past matters.
So also does the present and the signs of the times. Pay attention to the signs: Matthew seems to say --dreams and stars and even your own body. For the whole universe is part of God’s plan for the redemption of history into new possibility of the healing of a broken world. For you never know when a star may lead you to the savior. You never know when a dream will send a message of truth, or when redemption may occur and Egypt, once a place of slavery becomes a place of refuge. Paying attention doesn’t make it easy of course; the Road may well be hard and the journey treacherous. And persistence and endurance are required along the way.
That is how it was with Mary and Joseph. First, the road to Bethlehem where they are hardly settled than a host of visitors arrives having themselves traveled from afar, by the leading of stars and dreams--the shepherds and the strangers from the East, wise men of another religion. They have come to worship or at least check out what has come to pass, courageously defying King Herod. They, too, depart by another route, a new direction—symbolically and literally. No sooner has Herod discovered he has been duped by the wise men than Joseph and Mary flee to safety to the land of Egypt. Safe in Egypt we read of the horrible slaughter of the innocent boys ---Herod’s rage and fear know no bounds. The text of lament, not offered in today’s lesson is that of a mother’s broken heart: A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentations, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled
All this of course, is Matthew’s account, which historically we know was to establish Jesus credibility in history, his role as a prophet. The new Moses and indeed as Messiah. For us today, this witness is Good News for us in 2009, amid the current events both of violence in Israel and Gaza and fear at home of economic distress.
Reread in this new light, Matthew’s Good news for us goes well beyond permission for flight and denial. And I will know even more once I have actually experienced the day at St. Augustine’s. But my insight from Matthew this week was a gift. In short ---
Know our history, Pay attention to the signs. Be fearless and persistent in the journey, even though dangerous. Expect transformation. Perhaps that can be a message for us as we begin the season of Epiphany. E-piph-a-ny: “a sudden, intuitive perception.” May there be many!
Margaret Rose
January 2009
The Flight into Egypt
For many years I have had a standard angle on this text of the Flight into Egypt. Apart from some historical reflection, it is about how its actually okay to flee when one is in danger—either physically or mentally or emotionally. The geographic cure may not last long, but at least there is a respite—from the evil King or from some other more inner adversary. Fleeing is sometimes the best way to cope. Denial is a response which offers us time to find a safe space to return to. I have often thought of this as the Safe House text. A place of shelter in a foreign land when abuse is the only sure thing about home.
But this Sunday I am preaching in a parish which has offered an even deeper look at this text. The parish is St. Augustine’s Church on the lower East Side of Manhattan. Founded in 1828 for the wealthy of that neighborhood, it built “slave galleries” so that African American workers who accompanied their owners to church could worship apart. Likely, it was to ensure that workers remained close at hand to be watched. New York outlawed slave ownership in 1827, but equality was not even a distant hope. However, Free men and women who worshipped together had the opportunity to be together in ways that were not possible during the week. And in spite of the separation, it was a place where African Americans were able to worship, where they learned to read and where it is even possible that a burgeoning abolitionist movement in the area was formed. The slave galleries—box like structures at the rear of the church---still exist today, as a stark reminder of those dark days, a piece of history from which to strengthen resolve for the future. Indeed today, St. Augustine’s is the largest African American congregation in that part of the city.
Over the years, this parish where African Americans had no power or rights, has become a symbol of refuge and liberation—a place of renewal and hope.
And so I return to the story of the Flight to Egypt. Joseph and Mary flee to this place whose memory for the People of Israel was one of slavery and oppression. We claim the of Exodus as the primal liberation story of that people—the hoping of leaving Egypt never to return. The idea that this place of slavery so many centuries later has become a place of refuge for the holy family, offers hope in a political world of danger and torture and seeming despair. Even if it takes centuries, there is this symbolic and very real
possibility.
For Matthew—we don’t get to the present, or indeed the future with out the past, without knowing where we have come from, the journey one might say of God’s long standing presence. I always remember Matthew because he is the one—in my childhood memory of the King James Version of the Bible, with the “BEGATS” genealogy was important for Matthew---precisely because in hindsight, one could see things clearly and know that God was involved even when it might not have seemed so at the time. Throughout his Gospel as he tells of Jesus and the events of his life, his words are often prefaced with “As the prophets foretold”….. It is not for nothing that these things have happened. “all this took place to fulfill……”
So for Matthew the past matters.
So also does the present and the signs of the times. Pay attention to the signs: Matthew seems to say --dreams and stars and even your own body. For the whole universe is part of God’s plan for the redemption of history into new possibility of the healing of a broken world. For you never know when a star may lead you to the savior. You never know when a dream will send a message of truth, or when redemption may occur and Egypt, once a place of slavery becomes a place of refuge. Paying attention doesn’t make it easy of course; the Road may well be hard and the journey treacherous. And persistence and endurance are required along the way.
That is how it was with Mary and Joseph. First, the road to Bethlehem where they are hardly settled than a host of visitors arrives having themselves traveled from afar, by the leading of stars and dreams--the shepherds and the strangers from the East, wise men of another religion. They have come to worship or at least check out what has come to pass, courageously defying King Herod. They, too, depart by another route, a new direction—symbolically and literally. No sooner has Herod discovered he has been duped by the wise men than Joseph and Mary flee to safety to the land of Egypt. Safe in Egypt we read of the horrible slaughter of the innocent boys ---Herod’s rage and fear know no bounds. The text of lament, not offered in today’s lesson is that of a mother’s broken heart: A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentations, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled
All this of course, is Matthew’s account, which historically we know was to establish Jesus credibility in history, his role as a prophet. The new Moses and indeed as Messiah. For us today, this witness is Good News for us in 2009, amid the current events both of violence in Israel and Gaza and fear at home of economic distress.
Reread in this new light, Matthew’s Good news for us goes well beyond permission for flight and denial. And I will know even more once I have actually experienced the day at St. Augustine’s. But my insight from Matthew this week was a gift. In short ---
Know our history, Pay attention to the signs. Be fearless and persistent in the journey, even though dangerous. Expect transformation. Perhaps that can be a message for us as we begin the season of Epiphany. E-piph-a-ny: “a sudden, intuitive perception.” May there be many!
Margaret Rose
January 2009
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Advent 4B
A reflection by Janine Goodwin on Romans 16: 25-27 and Luke 1: 26-38
I knew exactly what I would write this week: I would take the story of Mary and talk about what God wants to bring to birth in us. Then, as I sailed through the readings, I hit a snag.
The snag was one word in the very brief reading from Paul: obedience.
Obedience is a word that has been used to keep women down for so many centuries that I've come to wince when I hear it. It reminds me of Ephesians 5, in which a writer who may or may not be Paul tries to work out how the Gospel of love and equality can be lived out in the household code of the first-century Roman empire. That fifth chapter of Ephesians is still being used to preach the subordination of women, although slavery, its neighbor in that passage, has been repudiated by most societies over the centuries. In a lifetime of devotional reading, I have found many lyrical descriptions of Mary's obedience to God's call as contrasted with Eve's disobedience, all coming from people who valued obedience, and several works that praised Eve's disobedience and the rebellion of Lilith over Mary's supposed submission, all coming from people who value creativity and autonomy.
Early on, I was taught to define obedience as unquestioning compliance with the orders of a superior. There is no room for creativity, and little for dignity, in such a definition, that compliance which does not include full and free consent can be very far from any trust, mutuality, or caring. It is power-over, the power that corrupts and controls. My education as a teacher taught me that when a power struggle gets going, everyone loses. A teacher must be able to set and enforce fair rules, but they must be for the good of all. A student must be able to question the rules, and not just be trapped in resisting because they represent limits to her range of possible actions. When a cycle of oppression and rebellion gets set up in any group of people, creativity and dignity die. A family destroys its own, a classroom becomes a place where learning fails, a church becomes a cult. Since I believe in a God of infinite creativity who respects us all, this can't be what God wants. Obedience became a word I hated, the vow I was least likely to take. I believed it was a synonym for oppression.
As I struggled with the idea that God had given me the ability and the need to question authority, a wise Dominican priest told me that obedience came from the Latin "ob audire," and "audire" implied listening—a listening that went both ways, a listening that implied mutual respect, that took my concept of obedience more in the direction of consensus. Another wise Dominican, Herbert McCabe, says that obedience for St. Thomas Aquinas was about learning, not about giving or taking orders. It was a form of mutuality in community, a way of finding a shared identity. I began to live with the idea that a call to obedience did not have to mean the imposition of force, and the practice of obedience did not have to mean violence to a soul God loves. I wasn't sure quite how it worked, but it was better than getting into a power struggle.
These days, I am always looking for what Walter Wink would call a Third Way: neither oppression nor rebellion, but a creative response to the status quo that invites us out of the false oppositions we create and into a different way of being. I believe the life of Jesus and our life of faith is an invitation to the freedom of the children of God (Rom. 18:21).
It became clear to me that I wouldn't get anywhere with either the idea of obedience or with this meditation until I took more time with the passage about Mary and Gabriel. As I reread those long-familiar words, I began to see something that was new to me, something that displaced my previous impressions of it. As a child, I'd seen the appearance of Gabriel to Mary as something like the appearance of the fairy godmother who changes Cinderella into a princess. As an adolescent, I had used it to try and force myself into a docility that my culture told me was required of good girls. As an adult, I had avoided it for fear of finding out that Mary had no choice but to follow orders and comply with a plan God enforced upon her. What I finally saw, reading it over and over again, was not a power struggle but a dialogue; not a series of orders and objections, but a conversation. Mary has courage and a sense of her own dignity; she can meet the apparition of an angel (which is always a frightening experience in Scripture) with a cogent question. Gabriel does not say, "Shut up and do as you're told," but explains what will happen, and waits for her consent. Luke Timothy Johnson translates her response as "Behold the servant of the Lord," explaining that the "handmaiden" of most translations "might obscure the text's obvious implication that Mary is also a 'Servant of Yahweh,'" a reference to the great Servant Songs of the prophet Isaiah. Mary is not knuckling under to divine
force: she is consenting to participate in divine creativity. She knows her dignity and her worth. Gabriel invites her to be part of a holy undertaking. She asks to understand it better, to see her part in it. They enter into dialogue. She consents. The son she raises grows up to be someone who, when asked about himself, says not, "Do as I say," but, "Come and see."
Is this what God wants to bring forth in us? Can God be wanting us to bring our own gifts to birth, to appreciate our own worth, to accept a place in salvation history that places us with the prophets and allows us to talk as equals with angels? Does obedience to God mean entering the work of co-creation and accepting full freedom, dignity, and responsibility? I believe it does. Thanks be to God
I knew exactly what I would write this week: I would take the story of Mary and talk about what God wants to bring to birth in us. Then, as I sailed through the readings, I hit a snag.
The snag was one word in the very brief reading from Paul: obedience.
Obedience is a word that has been used to keep women down for so many centuries that I've come to wince when I hear it. It reminds me of Ephesians 5, in which a writer who may or may not be Paul tries to work out how the Gospel of love and equality can be lived out in the household code of the first-century Roman empire. That fifth chapter of Ephesians is still being used to preach the subordination of women, although slavery, its neighbor in that passage, has been repudiated by most societies over the centuries. In a lifetime of devotional reading, I have found many lyrical descriptions of Mary's obedience to God's call as contrasted with Eve's disobedience, all coming from people who valued obedience, and several works that praised Eve's disobedience and the rebellion of Lilith over Mary's supposed submission, all coming from people who value creativity and autonomy.
Early on, I was taught to define obedience as unquestioning compliance with the orders of a superior. There is no room for creativity, and little for dignity, in such a definition, that compliance which does not include full and free consent can be very far from any trust, mutuality, or caring. It is power-over, the power that corrupts and controls. My education as a teacher taught me that when a power struggle gets going, everyone loses. A teacher must be able to set and enforce fair rules, but they must be for the good of all. A student must be able to question the rules, and not just be trapped in resisting because they represent limits to her range of possible actions. When a cycle of oppression and rebellion gets set up in any group of people, creativity and dignity die. A family destroys its own, a classroom becomes a place where learning fails, a church becomes a cult. Since I believe in a God of infinite creativity who respects us all, this can't be what God wants. Obedience became a word I hated, the vow I was least likely to take. I believed it was a synonym for oppression.
As I struggled with the idea that God had given me the ability and the need to question authority, a wise Dominican priest told me that obedience came from the Latin "ob audire," and "audire" implied listening—a listening that went both ways, a listening that implied mutual respect, that took my concept of obedience more in the direction of consensus. Another wise Dominican, Herbert McCabe, says that obedience for St. Thomas Aquinas was about learning, not about giving or taking orders. It was a form of mutuality in community, a way of finding a shared identity. I began to live with the idea that a call to obedience did not have to mean the imposition of force, and the practice of obedience did not have to mean violence to a soul God loves. I wasn't sure quite how it worked, but it was better than getting into a power struggle.
These days, I am always looking for what Walter Wink would call a Third Way: neither oppression nor rebellion, but a creative response to the status quo that invites us out of the false oppositions we create and into a different way of being. I believe the life of Jesus and our life of faith is an invitation to the freedom of the children of God (Rom. 18:21).
It became clear to me that I wouldn't get anywhere with either the idea of obedience or with this meditation until I took more time with the passage about Mary and Gabriel. As I reread those long-familiar words, I began to see something that was new to me, something that displaced my previous impressions of it. As a child, I'd seen the appearance of Gabriel to Mary as something like the appearance of the fairy godmother who changes Cinderella into a princess. As an adolescent, I had used it to try and force myself into a docility that my culture told me was required of good girls. As an adult, I had avoided it for fear of finding out that Mary had no choice but to follow orders and comply with a plan God enforced upon her. What I finally saw, reading it over and over again, was not a power struggle but a dialogue; not a series of orders and objections, but a conversation. Mary has courage and a sense of her own dignity; she can meet the apparition of an angel (which is always a frightening experience in Scripture) with a cogent question. Gabriel does not say, "Shut up and do as you're told," but explains what will happen, and waits for her consent. Luke Timothy Johnson translates her response as "Behold the servant of the Lord," explaining that the "handmaiden" of most translations "might obscure the text's obvious implication that Mary is also a 'Servant of Yahweh,'" a reference to the great Servant Songs of the prophet Isaiah. Mary is not knuckling under to divine
force: she is consenting to participate in divine creativity. She knows her dignity and her worth. Gabriel invites her to be part of a holy undertaking. She asks to understand it better, to see her part in it. They enter into dialogue. She consents. The son she raises grows up to be someone who, when asked about himself, says not, "Do as I say," but, "Come and see."
Is this what God wants to bring forth in us? Can God be wanting us to bring our own gifts to birth, to appreciate our own worth, to accept a place in salvation history that places us with the prophets and allows us to talk as equals with angels? Does obedience to God mean entering the work of co-creation and accepting full freedom, dignity, and responsibility? I believe it does. Thanks be to God
Friday, December 12, 2008
Advent 3
A reflection by Sarah Rogers on: Isaiah 61:1-11, 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28, and John 1:6-28
Advent is it seems dominated by the male figures in the bible, the patriarchs, prophets, now John the Baptist, Mary will get a look in next week. But, let us get past the patriarchal language, that it is of it’s time, and look at the meaning behind it.
John the Baptist quotes Isaiah saying “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” (Isaiah 40:3). John prepared the way for Jesus to come 2000 years ago, but his words could equally well be said by any of us today. After all Advent isn’t just about waiting for the coming of the Messiah in the form of the baby Jesus, God incarnate here on earth, it is about waiting for his coming again and we must be prepared for that, there is so much to be done. The world we live in is a wilderness of famine, of violence, of HIV & AIDS, of environmental concerns and a wilderness where men and women don’t always have the same opportunities. These are all the sorts of issues that those of us who have been involved in UNCSW have been involved in.
The passage from Isaiah is part of a long statement about the role of the anticipated Messiah, is reads:
‘he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners’, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.’ (Isaiah 61: 1-2).
The world has a lot of problems and they wont be sorted out overnight. Jesus the Messiah came to bring release to some of the problems the world faced in his day, and most importantly he died on the cross to bring ultimate release in the redemption of sins.
It goes on to say that those the Messiah binds up and releases will go on to restore the ‘devastations of many generations’, and that ‘you shall be called priests of the Lord, you shall be named ministers of our God.’ The work of the Messiah didn’t stop after the Resurrection. We are all called to continue that work and take our part here and now, we have been redeemed, we have been released and we must go on to restore the ‘devastations of many generations’.
The voice of women becomes more important than ever amongst what appears to be the male dominated Advent period. The patriarchs wouldn’t have got far without the matriarchs, John was a voice crying in the wilderness 2000 years ago and we are that same voice today. We are called to make the path straight because the Messiah will return.
Paul says ‘Do not quench the spirit, Do not despise the words of the prophets.’ So let us be renewed in spirit this Advent, let us listen to the words of the prophet and let us make straight the way of the Lord. Mary rejoiced in carrying our Saviour in the words of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), and focussed on what God had already done and was going to do for all people. God continues to do wonderful things for all people, and finally the voice of women has been released and they are a powerful force, who care about the world, the environment and their communities and they will continue God’s work on earth and prepare the way for the second coming.
Advent is it seems dominated by the male figures in the bible, the patriarchs, prophets, now John the Baptist, Mary will get a look in next week. But, let us get past the patriarchal language, that it is of it’s time, and look at the meaning behind it.
John the Baptist quotes Isaiah saying “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” (Isaiah 40:3). John prepared the way for Jesus to come 2000 years ago, but his words could equally well be said by any of us today. After all Advent isn’t just about waiting for the coming of the Messiah in the form of the baby Jesus, God incarnate here on earth, it is about waiting for his coming again and we must be prepared for that, there is so much to be done. The world we live in is a wilderness of famine, of violence, of HIV & AIDS, of environmental concerns and a wilderness where men and women don’t always have the same opportunities. These are all the sorts of issues that those of us who have been involved in UNCSW have been involved in.
The passage from Isaiah is part of a long statement about the role of the anticipated Messiah, is reads:
‘he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners’, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.’ (Isaiah 61: 1-2).
The world has a lot of problems and they wont be sorted out overnight. Jesus the Messiah came to bring release to some of the problems the world faced in his day, and most importantly he died on the cross to bring ultimate release in the redemption of sins.
It goes on to say that those the Messiah binds up and releases will go on to restore the ‘devastations of many generations’, and that ‘you shall be called priests of the Lord, you shall be named ministers of our God.’ The work of the Messiah didn’t stop after the Resurrection. We are all called to continue that work and take our part here and now, we have been redeemed, we have been released and we must go on to restore the ‘devastations of many generations’.
The voice of women becomes more important than ever amongst what appears to be the male dominated Advent period. The patriarchs wouldn’t have got far without the matriarchs, John was a voice crying in the wilderness 2000 years ago and we are that same voice today. We are called to make the path straight because the Messiah will return.
Paul says ‘Do not quench the spirit, Do not despise the words of the prophets.’ So let us be renewed in spirit this Advent, let us listen to the words of the prophet and let us make straight the way of the Lord. Mary rejoiced in carrying our Saviour in the words of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), and focussed on what God had already done and was going to do for all people. God continues to do wonderful things for all people, and finally the voice of women has been released and they are a powerful force, who care about the world, the environment and their communities and they will continue God’s work on earth and prepare the way for the second coming.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Advent 1
A Reflection on Mark 13:24-37 By The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski
When I was a little girl one of my favorite activities was to lie outside and watch the falling stars. During the month of August my brothers and I would line up on blankets in our front yard excited that we were allowed to stay up way past our bedtimes. We would lie there in great anticipation of seeing the falling stars, hoping to see a really big one! As our excitement eased and we became quiet I found myself pondering the immensity of the universe. I tried with all my might to imagine an endless universe, a space that went on forever and ever. I tried to imagine other planets like ours with life on them. I tried to not be limited by the images of our favorite TV show, Lost in Space. If alien life exists in outer space, I thought, it was probably not dangerous monsters out to harm us, but rather beings that expressed the mystery of God acting in all creation.
Advent, the season of the church year that we begin today, beckons us in a similar way to imagine the mystery of God acting in creation. Advent is a season of darkness, mystery, wonder, and, like my brothers and me lying on those blankets, a time of anticipation and waiting.
Life provides lots of things to wonder about, lots of things to question. How it is possible for a person to be mauled, run over, and killed, by a mob of Christmas shoppers? Or, as we worry about terrorists randomly shooting people in hotels in India, how do we make sense of this chaos? It makes me want to stand up and, like the robot in Lost in Space, flail my arms and shout, “Danger danger”
I don’t have a simplistic answer to these and other questions. Rather I know that when we focus on who we are as a people of God and trust in God’s faithfulness to us we cultivate a way to understand the anxieties and fears of our lives. Our faith anchors us in the assurance of God’s faithfulness in an uncertain world. Our faith helps us make meaning out of the tragedies of our world. Through the church our faith gives us a language, words like greed and sin, words that point to our brokenness and our need for God. Each Sunday morning, when we gather to worship we hear the story of the history of human brokenness and of God’s response with love and faithfulness.
Stories are important. They remind us of who we are and our place in the world. Stories are shared from generation to generation, stories about our grandparents, our parents, ourselves, and our children and grandchildren. Stories we tell which will then be retold by other generations. Of course each time a story is told it changes just a bit. Even when we tell the same story over and over we might choose to nuance a certain piece of it or we might hear a piece of the story in a new way.
The same thing is true of the stories of salvation that we hear on Sunday morning. Sunday after Sunday, Year in and year out, we listen to scripture readings and sermons and pray the Eucharist. And yet, if we pay attention, the story we hear will not be exactly the same from one Sunday to the next, from one year to the next. In part this is because as a liturgical church we anchor our worship in the seasons of the church. These seasons, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost, tell us the story of the life of Christ, spread out across a year.
Our Gospel reading this morning does not ease us into Advent with a gentle call to wait. Instead it has an apocalyptic tone that reflects the real fears we face of death and annihilation. But, rather than keep us in that place of fear, this reading throws us into the mystery - Jesus’ words are filled with layers of symbolism and complex visual images and sobering ideas. Jesus’ vision propels us out of the comfort and security of our ideas and world and drops us into the mystery of God. This reading reminds us that we cannot know everything. We can’t see everything, we can’t predict everything. Jesus speaks of losing sun, moon, and stars, of darkness, the loss of our usual ways of illumination. Then this reading - and the season of Advent remind us - when the world is deprived of light as we’ve always known it, we are to become that source of light. We are the source through which the light of Christ can shine.
One of the things we are doing at St. Francis is engaging the many opportunities for praying the Eucharist that our rich Episcopal tradition affords us. We are anchoring each of the prayers in the context of the liturgical year, choosing to worship with a particular Eucharistic prayer because it speaks intentionally to the theme of the season we are in.
In the season of Advent we will be praying a particular version of the Eucharistic prayer that conveys the mystery of the Advent season. This story, this prayer, is a dialogue between priest and congregation. It begins with the story of who we are and how Christianity continues the story begun with the Israelites:
We say, “We praise you and we bless you, holy and gracious God, source of life abundant. From before time you made ready the creation. Your Spirit moved over the deep and brought all things into being sun, moon, and stars; earth, winds, and waters; and every living thing. You made us in your image and taught us to walk in your ways. But we rebelled against you, and wandered far away; and yet, as a mother cares for her children, you would not forget us.” Do you hear our story in this? Do hear how this connects to the opening verses of the Book of Genesis and the story of Israelites? And how it connects us to the ways humans act out, ways in which instead of building up the body, we seek to tear it apart? It is an age old story that plays out over and over.
We then begin the salvation history story as it continues in and through Christ, we pray: “To deliver us from the power of sin and death and to reveal the riches of your grace, you looked with favor upon Mary, your willing servant, that she might conceive and bear a son, Jesus the holy child of God.” You see how this prayer tells us the Advent story, the story of God choosing to become human?
The prayer then continues with the story of how Jesus lived his life: “He broke bread with outcasts and sinners, healed the sick, and proclaimed good news to the poor. He yearned to draw all the world to himself yet we were heedless of his call to walk in love.” Sadly, part of the story is our rejection of Jesus….of God’s love…
The story then moves to the last night of Jesus’ life and the institution of the Eucharist itself. We pray,” On the night before he died for us, Jesus was at table with his friends.” Remember the scripture verse where Jesus tells his disciples, “I no longer call you servants, I call you friends?” That is the version of the story we hear in this prayer. When we gather around this table Jesus calls us to gather as friends.
This then is what we pray for, that we can be friends and as friends, the Body of Christ. Then, using these words we pray: “Pour out your Spirit upon these gifts that they may be the Body and Blood of Christ. Breathe your Spirit over the whole earth and make us your new creation, the Body of Christ given for the world you have made..” Not only is the bread and wine consecrated and made holy, but so are we. Our lives, in the story of our salvation history, are made the living body of Christ. Even in the threat of chaos and a world on the brink of collapse, we are called to treat each other with compassion, dignity, respect, and love. We are called to let love be our guide, instead of fear, because we know our purpose is ultimately faithfulness to God.
May the words of this story seep deeply into our hearts. May the words shape and form us as friends, as God calls us to be. May this light of Christ, the love of God, shine into fear and bring hope, shine into the anger and bring peace, shine into hurt and bring healing. May this story truly be our story, Sunday to Sunday, year to year, from one prayer to another, reminding us of the love God has for us.
And, may we be that love.
When I was a little girl one of my favorite activities was to lie outside and watch the falling stars. During the month of August my brothers and I would line up on blankets in our front yard excited that we were allowed to stay up way past our bedtimes. We would lie there in great anticipation of seeing the falling stars, hoping to see a really big one! As our excitement eased and we became quiet I found myself pondering the immensity of the universe. I tried with all my might to imagine an endless universe, a space that went on forever and ever. I tried to imagine other planets like ours with life on them. I tried to not be limited by the images of our favorite TV show, Lost in Space. If alien life exists in outer space, I thought, it was probably not dangerous monsters out to harm us, but rather beings that expressed the mystery of God acting in all creation.
Advent, the season of the church year that we begin today, beckons us in a similar way to imagine the mystery of God acting in creation. Advent is a season of darkness, mystery, wonder, and, like my brothers and me lying on those blankets, a time of anticipation and waiting.
Life provides lots of things to wonder about, lots of things to question. How it is possible for a person to be mauled, run over, and killed, by a mob of Christmas shoppers? Or, as we worry about terrorists randomly shooting people in hotels in India, how do we make sense of this chaos? It makes me want to stand up and, like the robot in Lost in Space, flail my arms and shout, “Danger danger”
I don’t have a simplistic answer to these and other questions. Rather I know that when we focus on who we are as a people of God and trust in God’s faithfulness to us we cultivate a way to understand the anxieties and fears of our lives. Our faith anchors us in the assurance of God’s faithfulness in an uncertain world. Our faith helps us make meaning out of the tragedies of our world. Through the church our faith gives us a language, words like greed and sin, words that point to our brokenness and our need for God. Each Sunday morning, when we gather to worship we hear the story of the history of human brokenness and of God’s response with love and faithfulness.
Stories are important. They remind us of who we are and our place in the world. Stories are shared from generation to generation, stories about our grandparents, our parents, ourselves, and our children and grandchildren. Stories we tell which will then be retold by other generations. Of course each time a story is told it changes just a bit. Even when we tell the same story over and over we might choose to nuance a certain piece of it or we might hear a piece of the story in a new way.
The same thing is true of the stories of salvation that we hear on Sunday morning. Sunday after Sunday, Year in and year out, we listen to scripture readings and sermons and pray the Eucharist. And yet, if we pay attention, the story we hear will not be exactly the same from one Sunday to the next, from one year to the next. In part this is because as a liturgical church we anchor our worship in the seasons of the church. These seasons, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost, tell us the story of the life of Christ, spread out across a year.
Our Gospel reading this morning does not ease us into Advent with a gentle call to wait. Instead it has an apocalyptic tone that reflects the real fears we face of death and annihilation. But, rather than keep us in that place of fear, this reading throws us into the mystery - Jesus’ words are filled with layers of symbolism and complex visual images and sobering ideas. Jesus’ vision propels us out of the comfort and security of our ideas and world and drops us into the mystery of God. This reading reminds us that we cannot know everything. We can’t see everything, we can’t predict everything. Jesus speaks of losing sun, moon, and stars, of darkness, the loss of our usual ways of illumination. Then this reading - and the season of Advent remind us - when the world is deprived of light as we’ve always known it, we are to become that source of light. We are the source through which the light of Christ can shine.
One of the things we are doing at St. Francis is engaging the many opportunities for praying the Eucharist that our rich Episcopal tradition affords us. We are anchoring each of the prayers in the context of the liturgical year, choosing to worship with a particular Eucharistic prayer because it speaks intentionally to the theme of the season we are in.
In the season of Advent we will be praying a particular version of the Eucharistic prayer that conveys the mystery of the Advent season. This story, this prayer, is a dialogue between priest and congregation. It begins with the story of who we are and how Christianity continues the story begun with the Israelites:
We say, “We praise you and we bless you, holy and gracious God, source of life abundant. From before time you made ready the creation. Your Spirit moved over the deep and brought all things into being sun, moon, and stars; earth, winds, and waters; and every living thing. You made us in your image and taught us to walk in your ways. But we rebelled against you, and wandered far away; and yet, as a mother cares for her children, you would not forget us.” Do you hear our story in this? Do hear how this connects to the opening verses of the Book of Genesis and the story of Israelites? And how it connects us to the ways humans act out, ways in which instead of building up the body, we seek to tear it apart? It is an age old story that plays out over and over.
We then begin the salvation history story as it continues in and through Christ, we pray: “To deliver us from the power of sin and death and to reveal the riches of your grace, you looked with favor upon Mary, your willing servant, that she might conceive and bear a son, Jesus the holy child of God.” You see how this prayer tells us the Advent story, the story of God choosing to become human?
The prayer then continues with the story of how Jesus lived his life: “He broke bread with outcasts and sinners, healed the sick, and proclaimed good news to the poor. He yearned to draw all the world to himself yet we were heedless of his call to walk in love.” Sadly, part of the story is our rejection of Jesus….of God’s love…
The story then moves to the last night of Jesus’ life and the institution of the Eucharist itself. We pray,” On the night before he died for us, Jesus was at table with his friends.” Remember the scripture verse where Jesus tells his disciples, “I no longer call you servants, I call you friends?” That is the version of the story we hear in this prayer. When we gather around this table Jesus calls us to gather as friends.
This then is what we pray for, that we can be friends and as friends, the Body of Christ. Then, using these words we pray: “Pour out your Spirit upon these gifts that they may be the Body and Blood of Christ. Breathe your Spirit over the whole earth and make us your new creation, the Body of Christ given for the world you have made..” Not only is the bread and wine consecrated and made holy, but so are we. Our lives, in the story of our salvation history, are made the living body of Christ. Even in the threat of chaos and a world on the brink of collapse, we are called to treat each other with compassion, dignity, respect, and love. We are called to let love be our guide, instead of fear, because we know our purpose is ultimately faithfulness to God.
May the words of this story seep deeply into our hearts. May the words shape and form us as friends, as God calls us to be. May this light of Christ, the love of God, shine into fear and bring hope, shine into the anger and bring peace, shine into hurt and bring healing. May this story truly be our story, Sunday to Sunday, year to year, from one prayer to another, reminding us of the love God has for us.
And, may we be that love.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Reflection for Christ the King, Year A 2008
By The Rev. Dr. Kate Hennessy
On this Sunday we proclaim that Jesus is our King, the King of Heaven, and we may wonder what on earth that means and what it has to do with us in our lives. The whole idea of kings is not one that has much meaning of us as 21st century Americans. We might think it strange to think of the whole idea of God having a “kingdom” and Jesus “reigning” over it like a monarch. But if we look at today’s scriptures, it seems that isn’t what we are talking about at all. What scripture seems to be telling us is about a different kind of kingdom and a different kind of king, starting all the way back in the Old Testament readings. We are reminded as we hear Ezekiel just how ancient some of these themes are between God and God’s people. Ezekiel lived in Babylon from 593 to 571 BCE. He prophesied among exiles and often had to say things in the name of God that he found incomprehensible, painful, and hard to bear. In this morning’s reading he is called to give comfort to the exiled people by promising a vision of a new kind of shepherd king, one who is not only powerful but nurturing, one will seek the lost and bring them home, feed them with rich pasture, and make them lie down in safety. God's rule as the shepherd king is a rule of justice not exploitation. God will protect the people from "the fat and the strong.” This is a different use of power than the exiles were accustomed to, and perhaps than we are. It might have been easy for them to say, “oh good, we will be able to rest now, we will be safe from ‘them’ picking on us.” But there is more to what God has Ezekiel say. Yes this is a loving shepherd king, but this also a just King, and Ezekiel does give a warning. God is determined to save God’s people whom God loves and there will be justice. If anyone is unjust to another, this shepherd will call them to be accountable. “I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.” God is not simply saying that the powerful from without will not be allowed to hurt one of God’s beloved people, but that even one of God’s own will be called to account if there is injustice done, if the kingdom message is not lived out.
This morning’s Gospel is Jesus’ final talk with his disciples before his passion. In it we hear a theme that echoes strongly the one from Ezekiel and one that has run strongly through all of Matthew’s Gospel, that of discipleship, of following Jesus in living the upside-down, counter-cultural shepherd-king life that he lived. The life that he talks about again this morning in serving those who are least, of including the outcast, of feeding and welcoming and healing and nurturing. In standing up against injustice, in speaking truth to power, no matter what the cost.
Discipleship. Following Jesus in living this Gospel life. It’s what God asks of us and expects of us as a result of our having made and renewed our baptismal covenant. It’s pretty clear. There is accountability in this kingdom of God’s. If we do not meet the expectation there will be a price. Both groups in this morning’s Gospel seemed a little baffled, “Where did we see you…?” I think we get confused sometimes, too. About where we see Jesus and where we are called to respond. It’s maybe easier for us in a way to see the need in the actual poor and homeless and ill and such and to respond to that. Sometimes, it’s easier, at least for me, to see those leasts as “them,” to have a little safe distance, but you know….”they” are also “us.” God is the shepherd of us all. Maybe it’s kind of hard to admit sometimes, we too are all hungering and thirsting for something, that we too are sometimes powerless, lonely and in need, we too can feel a sense of absolute naked vulnerability at times, we too can be sick in body or mind or spirit, we too can be in our own prisons. And this means that as sheep of our shepherd we are called to reach out to that need in each other. As you consider your community this morning, what is it that you have to feed another? What warm garment of concern do you have in which to wrap someone? What good medicine of concern or wisdom might you have to share? What key might you have that could unlock something that has been imprisoning someone’s heart? And as you consider this, also take a moment to ask yourself, what is it that stops you? Is it the fear of the cost? Because we know that this kind of living has a price. Look where it took the King of the Jews. But the cost of not doing so is higher still. It is the price of our very souls, because to follow Jesus is what we were created for. As Paul puts it in Ephesians it is “the hope to which he has called us… the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and…the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.” Perhaps then it is a question of faith. Perhaps, like the slave in last week’s Gospel, we are too fearful to step out in trust, believing that we can flagrantly cast what we have out there, so we bury and hoard and hold on tight. But clearly this is not what God wants of us. Clearly this is not what God asks. In God’s Kingdom where Christ reigns, the shepherd assures the safety of all the sheep that the sheep too may care for one another. May it be so.
On this Sunday we proclaim that Jesus is our King, the King of Heaven, and we may wonder what on earth that means and what it has to do with us in our lives. The whole idea of kings is not one that has much meaning of us as 21st century Americans. We might think it strange to think of the whole idea of God having a “kingdom” and Jesus “reigning” over it like a monarch. But if we look at today’s scriptures, it seems that isn’t what we are talking about at all. What scripture seems to be telling us is about a different kind of kingdom and a different kind of king, starting all the way back in the Old Testament readings. We are reminded as we hear Ezekiel just how ancient some of these themes are between God and God’s people. Ezekiel lived in Babylon from 593 to 571 BCE. He prophesied among exiles and often had to say things in the name of God that he found incomprehensible, painful, and hard to bear. In this morning’s reading he is called to give comfort to the exiled people by promising a vision of a new kind of shepherd king, one who is not only powerful but nurturing, one will seek the lost and bring them home, feed them with rich pasture, and make them lie down in safety. God's rule as the shepherd king is a rule of justice not exploitation. God will protect the people from "the fat and the strong.” This is a different use of power than the exiles were accustomed to, and perhaps than we are. It might have been easy for them to say, “oh good, we will be able to rest now, we will be safe from ‘them’ picking on us.” But there is more to what God has Ezekiel say. Yes this is a loving shepherd king, but this also a just King, and Ezekiel does give a warning. God is determined to save God’s people whom God loves and there will be justice. If anyone is unjust to another, this shepherd will call them to be accountable. “I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.” God is not simply saying that the powerful from without will not be allowed to hurt one of God’s beloved people, but that even one of God’s own will be called to account if there is injustice done, if the kingdom message is not lived out.
This morning’s Gospel is Jesus’ final talk with his disciples before his passion. In it we hear a theme that echoes strongly the one from Ezekiel and one that has run strongly through all of Matthew’s Gospel, that of discipleship, of following Jesus in living the upside-down, counter-cultural shepherd-king life that he lived. The life that he talks about again this morning in serving those who are least, of including the outcast, of feeding and welcoming and healing and nurturing. In standing up against injustice, in speaking truth to power, no matter what the cost.
Discipleship. Following Jesus in living this Gospel life. It’s what God asks of us and expects of us as a result of our having made and renewed our baptismal covenant. It’s pretty clear. There is accountability in this kingdom of God’s. If we do not meet the expectation there will be a price. Both groups in this morning’s Gospel seemed a little baffled, “Where did we see you…?” I think we get confused sometimes, too. About where we see Jesus and where we are called to respond. It’s maybe easier for us in a way to see the need in the actual poor and homeless and ill and such and to respond to that. Sometimes, it’s easier, at least for me, to see those leasts as “them,” to have a little safe distance, but you know….”they” are also “us.” God is the shepherd of us all. Maybe it’s kind of hard to admit sometimes, we too are all hungering and thirsting for something, that we too are sometimes powerless, lonely and in need, we too can feel a sense of absolute naked vulnerability at times, we too can be sick in body or mind or spirit, we too can be in our own prisons. And this means that as sheep of our shepherd we are called to reach out to that need in each other. As you consider your community this morning, what is it that you have to feed another? What warm garment of concern do you have in which to wrap someone? What good medicine of concern or wisdom might you have to share? What key might you have that could unlock something that has been imprisoning someone’s heart? And as you consider this, also take a moment to ask yourself, what is it that stops you? Is it the fear of the cost? Because we know that this kind of living has a price. Look where it took the King of the Jews. But the cost of not doing so is higher still. It is the price of our very souls, because to follow Jesus is what we were created for. As Paul puts it in Ephesians it is “the hope to which he has called us… the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and…the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.” Perhaps then it is a question of faith. Perhaps, like the slave in last week’s Gospel, we are too fearful to step out in trust, believing that we can flagrantly cast what we have out there, so we bury and hoard and hold on tight. But clearly this is not what God wants of us. Clearly this is not what God asks. In God’s Kingdom where Christ reigns, the shepherd assures the safety of all the sheep that the sheep too may care for one another. May it be so.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Proper 28A RCL
A Reflection on Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; 25:14-30 by: The Rev. Jacqueline Schmitt
When I went to my oldest son’s high school 9th grade orientation, the teacher leading the session said, “The clock is ticking!” The message was shape up! Study hard! Your future starts now! Fail now, you’ll never catch up!
The way the church has structured these last weeks of the church year is like that. Certainly last week’s lesson of the wise and foolish bridesmaids is marked by urgency, and the remaining lessons in the 25th chapter of Matthew push that boundary. Urgent, yes, and the standards are high: God is expecting a lot from us.
But the 25th chapter of Matthew is about more than that – about more than a liturgical device to get us ready for Advent, the season which defines getting ready.
Recently, I have come across the scholarship of Linda McKinnish Bridges, through her article, “Preaching the Parables of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel in Ordinary Time: The Extraordinary Tales of God’s World.” (Review & Expositor, 2007.) She reminded me of the strange and destabilizing effect of parables, and this 25th chapter of Matthew has three of the strangest and most destabilizing. The English word “parable,” she reminds us, comes from the Greek “para,” meaning alongside, and “bole” meaning hurl or throw, and so at its very root a parable is more than a sweet story, an allegory whose meaning is to be teased out and neatly fit into a liturgical lesson. In college, I took a class on James Joyce, and every page of Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake had to be read with a glossary in hand, to decipher each symbol and sign. Linda McKinnish Bridges reminds us that we can’t quite do that with parables, which are really too weird and curious. The parable is a metaphor which defies easy explanation, whose purpose is indeed to make us stop and think. The parables are full of everyday images from first century Palestine, and yet they are not historical snapshots. The illustrations come from the commonplace but Jesus puts them together in a way that disturbed his hearers – and those same images come hurling toward us as well, causing us each time we read them to scratch our heads and wonder, what is this about, really?
For the past several years, I have noticed that biblical scholarship has tugged us in new ways. I keep remembering what I heard John Dominic Crossan say in a lecture around the time his book Paul and Empire came out. The Roman Empire is not in the background, but in the foreground of all the gospels, he said. It is not just how we decorate the slide shows of Jesus’ spiritual teachings, but the context which shaped the lives of the followers of Jesus who wrote down his life story in the gospels. The structural oppression of Empire was in the very air they breathed. The Gospel of Matthew, then, is not just the story of Jewish-Christian disciples trying to figure out how to preach to the Gentiles. It is a story of resistance, a “left-handed power” of non-violence – the only way to resist an Empire of power and violence, the only kind of power, Linda McKinnish Bridges says, that evil cannot touch. The gospels themselves are parables, hurled at us over time and space, destabilizing our understanding of religious faith as something that keeps us happy, allows us to accommodate, to be nice, to refrain from controversy. The gospels subvert the power structures of the world, showing us that love and sacrifice and compassion and mercy rule. They use the words of this world – words about economics and power – to undo the conventional wisdom of what the world means by them.
This week we read the middle parable of the three in the 25th chapter of Matthew. The master is not interested in conventional wisdom, in the safe bet, the “prudent man” rule. The master demands that his servants be venture capitalists, taking what he gave them and giving him back more. If last week’s parable shocked us into vigilant preparation – get that oil ahead of time! -- this week’s shocks us into taking risks. We’ll have to wait until next week for Jesus to tell us just what it is we have been given, and what Jesus expects us to produce in abundance.
When I went to my oldest son’s high school 9th grade orientation, the teacher leading the session said, “The clock is ticking!” The message was shape up! Study hard! Your future starts now! Fail now, you’ll never catch up!
The way the church has structured these last weeks of the church year is like that. Certainly last week’s lesson of the wise and foolish bridesmaids is marked by urgency, and the remaining lessons in the 25th chapter of Matthew push that boundary. Urgent, yes, and the standards are high: God is expecting a lot from us.
But the 25th chapter of Matthew is about more than that – about more than a liturgical device to get us ready for Advent, the season which defines getting ready.
Recently, I have come across the scholarship of Linda McKinnish Bridges, through her article, “Preaching the Parables of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel in Ordinary Time: The Extraordinary Tales of God’s World.” (Review & Expositor, 2007.) She reminded me of the strange and destabilizing effect of parables, and this 25th chapter of Matthew has three of the strangest and most destabilizing. The English word “parable,” she reminds us, comes from the Greek “para,” meaning alongside, and “bole” meaning hurl or throw, and so at its very root a parable is more than a sweet story, an allegory whose meaning is to be teased out and neatly fit into a liturgical lesson. In college, I took a class on James Joyce, and every page of Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake had to be read with a glossary in hand, to decipher each symbol and sign. Linda McKinnish Bridges reminds us that we can’t quite do that with parables, which are really too weird and curious. The parable is a metaphor which defies easy explanation, whose purpose is indeed to make us stop and think. The parables are full of everyday images from first century Palestine, and yet they are not historical snapshots. The illustrations come from the commonplace but Jesus puts them together in a way that disturbed his hearers – and those same images come hurling toward us as well, causing us each time we read them to scratch our heads and wonder, what is this about, really?
For the past several years, I have noticed that biblical scholarship has tugged us in new ways. I keep remembering what I heard John Dominic Crossan say in a lecture around the time his book Paul and Empire came out. The Roman Empire is not in the background, but in the foreground of all the gospels, he said. It is not just how we decorate the slide shows of Jesus’ spiritual teachings, but the context which shaped the lives of the followers of Jesus who wrote down his life story in the gospels. The structural oppression of Empire was in the very air they breathed. The Gospel of Matthew, then, is not just the story of Jewish-Christian disciples trying to figure out how to preach to the Gentiles. It is a story of resistance, a “left-handed power” of non-violence – the only way to resist an Empire of power and violence, the only kind of power, Linda McKinnish Bridges says, that evil cannot touch. The gospels themselves are parables, hurled at us over time and space, destabilizing our understanding of religious faith as something that keeps us happy, allows us to accommodate, to be nice, to refrain from controversy. The gospels subvert the power structures of the world, showing us that love and sacrifice and compassion and mercy rule. They use the words of this world – words about economics and power – to undo the conventional wisdom of what the world means by them.
This week we read the middle parable of the three in the 25th chapter of Matthew. The master is not interested in conventional wisdom, in the safe bet, the “prudent man” rule. The master demands that his servants be venture capitalists, taking what he gave them and giving him back more. If last week’s parable shocked us into vigilant preparation – get that oil ahead of time! -- this week’s shocks us into taking risks. We’ll have to wait until next week for Jesus to tell us just what it is we have been given, and what Jesus expects us to produce in abundance.
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