The Greatest of These

 The lyrics of John McCutcheon’s “Children of Abraham” got me thinking about 1 Corinthians 13 and James 2:17. The lyric was simple:

Faith without measure

Hope without end

It is love will make the nations bend. 

Paul was clear the love is greater than faith or hope. James was convinced that faith without works - love in action- is dead.

Even when our faith, our trust in God, wavers,  we can act with love. Even when hope is gone, we can act with love.

He was teaching...

In next Sunday’s  lectionary there is a story from Mark’s account of the Good News about Jesus teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. As I was discussing the story in a Zoom meeting with colleagues I noticed that the Greek word that was translated as taught might be better rendered as was teaching.

That might seem to be unimportant but I think Mark’s choice of the Greek tense wasn’t accidental. For Mark Jesus’ teaching was ongoing. It didn’t happen just once; it happened all the way to Calvary and beyond. It is still happening.

Over the years there have been moments when it was clear that there were lessons I needed. Most often they came when I saw something in Scripture that I hadn’t noticed before, but there were times when something a friend said delivered  the lesson that I needed.

Some of those lessons took years for me to receive. When I was in first grade I was asked to read a sentence that included the word nowhere. When I read it as now here my classmates laughed. If they hadn’t laughed I would probably not have remembered that moment. Years late as I thought about that moment I saw that the memory contains an important lessen.  I need to be now here or I will be nowhere. If I don’t pay attention I will miss what Jesus wants to teach me.

Discipleship

In the Preface of his Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "In times of church renewal holy scripture naturally becomes richer in content for us."

It seems that Bonhoeffer didn’t see church renewal in the same way that many of us do. It certainly wasn’t about programs to attract new members or the revision of liturgical texts to make them more relevant. Church renewal meant, chiefly, the renewal of Christian’s discipleship, of our obedience in following Jesus. It meant, in Bonhoeffer’s case, the obedience that had led him to reject the unholy alliance between the Nazi regime and the German Evangelical Church, a rejection which led to his execution in April 1945.

While the shape of Bonhoeffer’s obedience might seem obvious nearly seventy-six years after his death, it probably didn’t seem obvious to many of his contemporaries, including some in the Confessing Church, and the shape of our obedience today may not be obvious. Knowing, not what would Jesus do, but what Jesus wants us to do takes discernment.

Often Christians think that discerning a call to action should begin by looking inward. I think a better way to start is by looking outward to see signs of what God is already doing. We are called, I am convinced, to share in God’s mission in the world. The church does not have a mission; God’s mission has a church. So we are to look outward, seeking the signs of God’s mission, and only then look inward to see what gifts and passion we offer for the mission.

Cancel Culture

Some of conservative friends complain to me about cancel culture, which they see as a major threat. Recently they have cited some business decisions as terrible examples of the left’s attempts to stifle speech. The earlier of two recent examples was Amazon’s decision to stop hosting Parler. The second was the decision by some retailers to stop selling My Pillow products.

Speech is never really free. It always comes with costs, consequences. (When I was first ordained I decided to stop using certain words, knowing that I would not always be aware of who could hear me. That minor display of wisdom may have saved me from serious trouble.) The consequences of allowing Parler to be used in planning and carrying out an  insurrection might reasonably include having to find a new host. The consequences of spreading lies about an election might well include losing customers.

I don’t want to stop you from speaking but I don’t have to do business with you. 

Being Beloved

On Sunday we will be remembering Jesus' baptism. In all of the accounts in the synoptic Gospels these words are spoken about Jesus, you are beloved. 

Some years ago, at the baptism of a parishioner, I said that those words have been spoken about each of us, all of us. Whether believe it or know it or want it we are loved by God, extravagantly and without exception. 

Without exception? 

Yes, and that challenges me to accept that people I don’t like, people with whom I disagree, people who hate me and want to hurt me - all of them are beloved. 

When I pray Compline as I go to bed each night I often pray for Donald Trump, one of God’s beloved. Although my prayer might not always be heartfelt, I pray that Donald would know that he is beloved, that what matters most is not winning, but being loved and loving others. 

White Privilege and Black Lives Matter

On Sunday Jan and I participated in a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Conway. For most of the time we all stood quietly on the sidewalks at a major intersection in Conway Village.  Many of the people driving by honked their horns in support. From  time to time younger members of the group would lead us in chanting “No justice, no peace “ and “Black lives matter .”

It was in more than one sense a privilege to be there. As a person of privilege in our society it was important for me to use that position of privilege to stand up for those who had far too often been pushed to the margins, ignored, oppressed, and  killed. By those enslaved them, by lynch mobs, and even by those whom we authorize to protect and serve.

Two days after the Black Lives Matter demonstration I read a letter to the editor in our local newspaper. After a brief nod to the sorrow so many of us were feeling after the murder of George Floyd, the writer criticized us at great length for failing to condemn the looting that had accompanied some demonstrations in other in other cities. I shouldn’t have been surprised. That kind of response is so common in our society. Unless we condemn all violence the writer seemed  to be suggesting we have no right to condemn police brutality.

I am assuming that the writer of this letter to the editor is white,  a person who is protected by the color of their skin from having a police officer kneel on their neck until they die.  know my white skin protects me from that kind of death.  I just hope that at some point the writer will come to understand white privilege, and that until black lives matter as much as white lives American democracy is threatened.
   

Life After....

Stalking Jesus

A reflection on John 14:1-17.

Exile

Some thought about what we might learn from this time.

We Had Hoped

A reflection on hope in a time when our lives are out of sync.

Although You Have Not Seen Him

Here's my reflection on the Epistle for the Second Sunday of Easter, 1 Peter 1:3-9.

The Way of Life

Here are my reflections on Peter’s sermon in
Acts 2.

Sent Into the World

I'm reflecting this week on the lessons appointed for the Second Sunday of Easter. I begin with the Gospel.

Waiting in Eastertide

Over the last year I’ve realized that I’m not disciplined at writing for this blog. Since the beginning of the pandemic I have participated in countless meetings on Zoom and have posted videos on Facebook. Here’s a video from Easter Monday.

Othering

Pronouns Matter

No, this is not a post about the decision of some newspaper to use "they" when the sex of a person in unknown.

Nor is it about the struggles that we have to use the right pronoun for transgender friends.

It's about the pronouns we encounter in the Lord's Prayer.

Although I share with many a sadness at the loss in common usage of the familiar pronouns - thou, thee, thy, and thine - as well as a sadness that so many people misunderstand their use in prayer, that's not my soapbox here.

Praying the Lord's Prayer is a radically anti-individualistic practice. I am not addressing my Father in separation from others. Only as one within the We can I pray. And, who gets to define that We? Certainly not me or any of the other children. That prayer does not countenance any dividing of children into Us and Them. It does not countenance the kind of superior moralism that I often exhibit and which has been a frequently prominent feature of American Christianity. To oppose evil in society without recognizing and confessing my complicity is betrayal of the Gospel.

The other important pronoun is Thy. It is not our will that is to be done, nor our kingdom that is to come, but God's. And if we think we understand God's will perfectly we are mistaken. We, as Paul wrote, see through a glass darkly. We catch glimpses, most often after the fact, of what God's will is, what God is up to. We making guesses about what God wants us to do, sometimes reasonably good guesses, at other times disastrous. We stumble off the path, yielding to all sorts of temptations, come to ourselves like the younger son in the parable, repent, are forgiven, and carry on. It's all not at all neat and tidy, this walking in the Way of the Cross, but is, as another prayers says, the way of life and peace. 

The return of the Blogger and The Travails of Hagar

I am not a very disciplined blogger. In fact, as most of my friends know, there are many other areas of my life where I lack discipline. After a very long hiatus, two posts in one day! I almost wrote silence rather than hiatus, but then I have not been silent. Preaching at least once a week, and nearly every week this past winter, I have had lots of opportunities to speak. Now that I am called upon to preach much less often, perhaps it is time to return to writing.

I did have a chance to preach at the end of June at All Saints Church in Littleton, NH. The portion of Hebrew scripture appointed for that Sunday was part of the story of the patriarch Abraham and has rather complicated family. It is not a story of great faithfulness, at least not human faithfulness. The longer story begins with God's promise to Abram, as his name was at the beginning of the story, that he would have a son. Over time, however, he and his wife Sarai remain childless. Then, perhaps not entirely trusting God's promise, Abram and Sarai hit upon a plan. Sarai will give her Egyptian slave girl Hagar to Abram and she can give birth to a son. In time Hagar becomes pregnant and, as a result, "looked with contempt on her mistress." Sarai deals with this by treating Hagar harshly and Hagar runs away.

The story might have ended there, but God had been paying attention and an angel speaks to Hagar in the wilderness and tells her to return to Sarai and Abram, promising that the child growing in her womb will be a son and that she should name him Ishmael, which means God sees. Hagar follows the angel's instructions and gives birth to a son. 

The story might have ended there as well, but God was still paying attention. God appears to Abram again, gives him and Sarai new names, and promises that Sarah, in spite of her age, will give birth to a son. In due time she does give birth to a son and they name him Isaac. Now that she and Abraham have a son, Sarah decides that Ishmael and his mother must be sent away. Abraham agrees and provides them with a loaf of bread and a skin of water for the journey. Of course these meager  provisions run out before long. Once again in the wildernesses without hope, Hagar recoils from the prospect of watching her son die. She places him under a bush and walks far enough away so she can longer see him. But the God who sees sees Ishmael and Hagar and opens her eye so she can see a well of water. As the story of Hagar and Ishmael ends we are told that "God was with the boy, and he grew up....and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt." While the cast of human characters have been bumbling along, not trusting God's promise, and falling prey to jealousy and revenge, God has remained faithful. 

For the God who sees the lives of the Egyptian Hagar and her son Ishmael are, in Jesus' words, worth more than many sparrows. The children of Abraham often have trouble remembering that, remembering that the refugee fleeing danger in Syria is as precious in God's eyes as we are. The God who sees, in the person of Jesus, is Immanuel, God with us, and not only with but for us. For Christians, that is those who share life in Christ, that life is to be life with and for others. 

When we moved to New Hampshire last year one of the things that was very encouraging was how the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire used the words our children. For Rob Hirschfeld our children doesn't mean the children who belong to our congregations. It means all of New Hampshire's children. Although New Hampshire Episcopalians can't meet the needs or solve the problems of all the children in the state, we can with them and for them in small ways and great ones. We can become their friends, people they can turn to and depend upon, people who will share their joys and successes, as well as their losses and sorrow.  

Potter Anniversary

Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for The New York Times marked the 20th anniversary with a column The Muggle Problem. Douthat thinks that central problem with the series is not that it portrays conflict as being between good and evil, Dumbledore's Army vs the Death Eaters. What bothers him is that the wizarding world has no real interest in Muggles, no desire to integrate them into the wizarding community. He may be right about that, but I think he's missing the point. Although he's right that the wizarding world is a meritocracy and that getting the Hogwarts admissions letter is a bit like getting one from an Ivy League university, I think he misses the underlying critique of meritocracy in the series.

The battles in the series aren't only about the future of Hogwatrts and  the wizarding world. The Dark Lord's quest for power, if it were successful, would be as disastrous for Muggles as it would be for wizards. As Douthat himself points out Voldemort and his minions want to see Muggles "subjugated or enslaved."  What prevents that from happening are the young heroes of the series - Harry, Ron, Herminone, and, most surprisingly of all, Neville Longbottom.

In spite of what Douthat seems to believe, meritocracy is not bad. What is bad, perhaps even worth labeling as evil, is a meritocracy which exists solely for itself, in which real and often remarkable talents are used only to enrich those who possess them and not for the common good. When Harry uses his magical powers to protect his cousin from dementors, risking his own future at Hogwarts, we see meritocracy at its best. When Lucius Malfoy beats his house elf with his silver-headed cane, we see a man of great abilities who cares nothing for anyone but himself and those who can enrich him. That's the kind of evil meritocracy against which Harry and his friends risk their lives, a meritocracy that would destroy both wizards and Muggles.

Several years ago I had the privilege of preaching for a congregation of about a dozen members of a search committee. One of the things I said was that in the final battle between Harry and Voldemort what was decisive was not who was the more talented wizard. What mattered was who was the better person. Harry, I said, was willing to die for his friends. Voldemort was willing for the Death Eaters, who were never his friends at all, to die for him. That, I think, is what Rowling was trying to get us to see. Whatever gifts we have, whatever brilliance, out merit lies in our willingness to use those gifts, that brilliance, for others. As Harry might say, that's brilliant. 

Obamacare Repeal and Replace

Jeff Jacoby, a conservative columnist for The Boston Globe,  wrote recently about the “unhinged rhetoric” of critics of the GOP health care bills. I wrote to Mr. Jacoby, agreeing in part with his column, but expressing my opposition to the GOP bills in personal terms.

I agree that there is more than a little unhinged rhetoric in the debates about health care legislation. However, as the CBO analysis states, either of the current bills would result in millions of Americans no longer having health insurance. Without regular access to health care, the consequences for some of them could be disastrous.

Two years ago my my primary care physician noticed something that turned out to be a leaky heart valve. Echocardiograms over the next year revealed that I have an aortic aneurysm. The aneurysm isn't large enough to warrant surgery now but I may need surgery in the future. What would have happened had I lacked health insurance is, of course, not possible to say with any certainty. What is clear to me is that I have a better chance of making it to my 80th birthday because I have health insurance.

Unhinged rhetoric aside, the current bills would do more to hurt than help Americans get health care.

Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine

A friend of mine reminded me of this hymn recently. Although not one of my favorites it is one that I like. But I have a problem with it. 

Jesus is not mine and the idea that he might be possessed by anyone is not only bad theology but dangerous. That be a redundant statement. Bad theology is always dangerous, but this piece of bad theology is very dangerous. 

Believing that Jesus is somehow my possession leads very quickly to the belief that I have the whole truth, that I am right and everyone else is wrong. If I am relatively powerless this delusion may only make my friends uncomfortable. If I have power, especially military power, this delusion can be deadly.

 

It is this delusion that has become deadly with the so-called Islamic State. But it is also this delusion we encounter among some Christians who not only claim that they know Jesus but act like they know him perfectly. When you put it that way it's obvious that they are deluded. We can never know another human person perfectly, so how can we know Jesus perfectly? How can we claim to know, with no possibility of error, the answer to WWJD? (What would Jesus do?)

 

Recognizing that we are not infallible, that our understanding of the truth is always gong to be in some measure wrong, is an important virtue for Christians - and everyone else - in this age. What if the church, as the Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall wrote thirty years ago, "began to understand that it really does not possess any truth? What if it began on earnest to think of itself as being possessed by a truth that forever eludes it?" (Has the Church a Future? p. 106) If, as we Christians confess, Jesus is the Truth, then Hall is right in asserting that our "ideas and doctrines and theological explanations" of Jesus are not the truth. They are, at best, glimpses of the truth, like things seen through a glass darkly, and they are, at worst, self-serving attempts to hijack Jesus, to claim divine sanction for our own desires.

 

The kind of humility which I think we need does not mean that we have to stop bearing witness to the Gospel, to stop speaking and acting as Christians. Far from it. It is arrogance and not boldness that we need to avoid. The awareness that we may well be wrong should not stop us from acting or speaking boldly. It should, however, compel us to listen after we speak, to reflect after we act, and to stand ready to change. We need to trust the promise that we find in John 16:13. "When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth." Trust it as a promise, as something that is already happening, but is not completed.