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Gentleness Rules

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Gentleness Rnles

Jason Byassee Vancouver School of Theology, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

“And what is a merciful heart’? It is the heait’s burning desire for people, for birds, for animals, and even for demons. At the remembrance and at the sight of them, the merciful one’s eyes hll with tears which arise at the great compassion that urges the heait. It grows tender and cannot endure hearing or seeing any injury or slight sorrow for anything in creation…. Such a one continually offers teailul prayers, even for irrational animals and for enemies of truth and all who harm it, that they may be guarded and forgiven.” St. Isaac the Syrian)

Paul’s lists tend to blur under our gaze. Reading the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, we might ask how “kindness” differs from “goodness”’? “Peace” from “self-control?” And for our purposes, what precisely is “gentleness”’? How does it differ from, say, “patience’?” Or from other viltues not in this list but in other New Testament passages, like humility’? Perhaps these are not so much entries in a catalogue as they are facets of the same jewel. Studied in the context of the whole canon and two contemporary exemplars, gentleness seems to me now to be a glimpse into God’s very heait. God’s way with humanity is not forceful or impatient. Instead God slowly WOOS US, entices US, and waits for us to return to God’s embrace. God is endlessly patient with Israel and church and world. God calls Abram and then waits for thousands of years for Israel to obey God’s law. God waits for US, church, to live as God shows US in the way of Jesus. It took the church some TOO years to hammer out the doctrine of the Trinity, which Christians agree with near unanimity is essential to our faith. The teaching is present in the Bible, brrt it took centuries of disagreement to see this clearly. (Do you remember what you were up to in the year 1616′?) God is unimaginably patient with humanity. God will have the world God wants. But God isn’t going to use violence to bring it about against the will of such hckle creatures as US. Thankftrlly, Scripture is not hckle. An exercise like this series of articles on the fruits of the Spirit can help US slow down and chew on each individual fruit for the sake of preaching to our congregations. Medieval interpreters borrowed from our Jewish forebears the image of a passage of scripture being like a particular spice. Those with a sensitive palate work to chew on the spice so as to crack it open in the best possible way to get all the havor locked therein. As ever, a theology of creation is closely related to the practice of the interpretation of scripture. God has left that havor for US in the spice just like God leaves a gift in every stroke of scripture. We do well to take our time and linger over these mysteries. Commentators both ancient and modern point out that Paul uses the singular here, fruit, not the plural, fruits of the Spirit. Each of these viltues is the full presence of the Holy Spirit, poured out among US in Pentecost, reconhguring the world until it’s the one God wants. What, then, is gentleness’? One time tested way to approach a theological dehnition is to stait with what something is not. Especially with regard to God, we cannot

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positively say what God is; we can only properly say what God is not. Such negatives shape our not-understanding in fruitful ways. حI write this during the primary campaign for president of the USA of one Donald j. Trump. 1 write assuming his campaign will have faded by the time you read this, but that’s what is commonly said about demagogues before they assume greater power. People are afraid, andTrump names names: it’s the Mexicans, no it’s the Muslims, no it’s the liberals, no it’s powerful women who are ruining America. Mexicans are rapists, and Syrian refugees are terrorists, and women say hard truths about him. His rivals are “weak,” “low energy,” “stupid,” “losers.” Trump’s supporters say they appreciate that he’s not “politically correct,” that he’s “ballsy,” that he “tells it like it is. “Americans have fliited with demagogues in high office before, from Huey Long to Joseph McCaithy to George Wallace. We just haven’t done it recently for an office this impoitant. But a generation of cable news and talk radio has coarsened our rhetoric. Whoever eventually displaces Trump on the right will not do so by repudiating him. White males feeling disempowered economically and socially feel they have a champion. Carefully stoked racism is no small pait of the concoction. And the more the left yells its outrage at Trump, echoed by the media, the more his supporters rally aiound him. One thing nobody accuses the Donald of is being gentle. Alpha male playgiOund bullies don’t moderate or they lose their whole raison d’etre. His whole shtick is to keep the kettle of rage boiling. If he lets it off the heat or loosens the lid by showing evenanounce ofintrospection or second-guessing, he is done.Trump’saggressiveness is working. You see this in other areas of life—“the eaily bird gets the worm,” the aphorism goes. Ayoung 1-year oldentrepreneur honored by VancouverMagazineior his business acumen says his faith is “hustling”—he never lets a minute pass without developing his bland. ؛And those who act aggressively (not recklessly) on the spoits field or in politics or in dating or in warfare are often rewarded for their effoits. In this world, under current arrangements, gentleness is not the way to success. By contrast, gentleness is central to the gospel of Jesus. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heait, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Mt 11:28-30). That burden doesn’t look easy when Jesus is carrying his CIOSS. And Jesus can get quite testy elsewhere in Matthew (see especially chapters 23-2Τ). Whatever he means by gentle, Jesus doesn’t mean infinitely pliable and accommodating, spineless, or “weak” in the Donald’s sense. To cite one Old Testament passage that may have informed Jesus’ own teaching, the psalmist says, “The meek shall inherit the land, and delight in abundant prosperity” (37:11). Jesus’ more famous formulation in his Sermon on the Mount is that the meek are blessed, “for they shall inherit the eaith” (Matthew 5:5). We Christians often spiritualize that promise, as if Jesus is referring to some otherworldly reality. But the land is as eaithy as God’s promises get, and so is the center of Jewish faith. It is what God promises to Abram and his children forever. Its loss is a devastating crisis in Israel’s self-understanding. And a promise of regaining the land is what the psalmist and Jesus offer. “Gentleness”then has to do with waiting on God, putting ourselves in an attentive posture of anticipating God’s making good on God’s promises, not taking matters into our own hands. And those promises are as abundant as the PiOmised Land and Jesus’ offer of a gentle yoke—life under his disciplining and joyful CIOSS.

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One of our most important reflections on the fruit of the Spirit is Phil Kenneson’s Life on the Vine4 He argues that the fruits are not individual accomplishments or feelings . The fruits are economic—having to do with how the whole household (1oikos) of the church is ordered. The fruits are about how we all together can pursue the soit of poverty, affliction, humility, and lowliness to which Christ calls US. Virtues are never individually acquired. They are communally cultivated—paitly by learning how, in the church, to make our lives with one another and to put up with one another. Any family or lOommate or spouse knows how easy it is to become anything other than gentle. The persons we live with are also sinners. So are we. And only living in close, difficult, and graced piOximity can we learn what sinners we are, how much grace we need, and so how gentle we ourselves have yet to become before we are fully human.5 Scripture describes humility as God’s prescription for the tumor of our pride: “The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord, and the neediest people shall exult in the holy one of Israel” (Is 29:19). Humility is hard to find among humankind in general, and even in Israel and church—the priestly people between the rest of us and God. Israel instead is often described in scripture as “stiff-necked, ” that is, refusing to bow to God in submission to God’s yoke and refusing to bow to the image of God in the neighbor (Ex. 32:9, Deut 9:6,2 Chron. 30:6-8). DesmondTutu says that whenever we see another person, we should genuflect. The other is a living icon of God, deserving of our full reverence. God will amend this stiff-necked situation one day in Israel and in us, the prophets promise: “On that day . . . you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain. For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord” (Zeph. 3:11-12). Jesus’ ministry announces and enacts a great reversal: the humble will be exalted, and the proud will be biOught low (Mt23:12, Luke ΡΤ6-55 & IT: 11). InJohn’s gospel especially, Jesus offers us intimate access to the inner nature of God. There is a soit of deference within the very Trinity itself as we are invited into the mutual love of the Beloved, the One who sent him, and the Advocate (Jn 1Τ:26, 15:26 & 16:13-15). The rest of the New Testament commends gentleness as a spiritual gift necessary for those who would risk leadership (James T: 10 & 1 Peter 5:6). The pastoral epistle elaborates, “The Lord’s servant must be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, patient, an apt teacher, correcting opponents with gentleness” (2 Tim 2:2Τ-25). Cleaily the danger of being in leadership is that of taking one’s power as a personal privilege and then exercising authority with harshness instead of with Christ-like gentleness. But God’s own power is most cleaily seen in its self-outpouring in the flesh and CIOSS of Christ (Php. 2:5-11). It is not for him. It is through himO? ־others. Kenneson takes a step beyond most academic books by offering actual steps toward gentleness. One, he suggests that we alter our posture thiOugh prayer, which is “the seed of gentleness and the absence of anger. ” ٥Kenneson suggests that we kneel, as those aware we’re in God’s presence. My wife Jaylynn noted on a retreat to a Trappist monastery that we civilians stood for worship all kinds of disheveled ways—leaning back, hands on hips, etc. The monks’ bodies, by contrast, are all bent, ready to bow, like a Swiss Army knife that won’t quite close anymore. The monks bow so often—at the doxology, after every psalm, to pass the peace to guests—that their physical posture has been altered. Secondly, we should learn to yield. Paul appeals to his readers in Corinth “by the gentleness and meekness of Christ” (2 Coi’ 10:1). People

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like me—relatively privileged straight white males—are accustomed to having our way. It is perhaps then especially impoitant for US to look for opportunities to defer. Three, Kenneson suggests that we spend time intentionally with those whom the world considers of no account. Like Jesus’ dinner party in Luke IT: 12-1Τ, we too should invite into our lives those who cannot reciprocate. The church not only teaches these practices. She gives us abundant opportunity to learn them by the simple practice ol regularly gathering us with sinners like us. Gentleness, like the other virtues, is a communal practice on the way to becoming a sort ol second nature. One living saint who embodies gentleness itsell is Jean Vanier, the internationally celebrated founder ol L’Arche, a community for intellectually disabled people and others to live together in community where each is honored.^ Vanier didn’t set out trying to develop an alternative model to house the disabled, though one was needed in mid-20* century France, where the disabled were often warehoused or kept in cages. Vanier just invited two men to live with him in his home. This is encouragingly doable, gentle even. It is nothing heroic, much less impossible, to invite other people into one’s home. Raphael and Philippe and Vanier became what we now call an intentional Christian community, doing all the ordinary things Lamilies do together. Soon that community grew, other houses opened, and some 130 ol them now exist in 35 countries on hve continents. Vanier says ol L’ Arche, “Love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.“؟ I conless 1′ ve been guilty ol thinking ol L’ Arche as a response to an “issue”—that ol what to do with disabled people. But disabled people aren’t problems to be solved. They’re people—mysteries to be adored—without whom our communities are impoverished . L’Arche’s ambitions are actually greater than I used to think, precisely by aiming to do nothing more than discern Christ in the neighbor: they’re modeling a whole new way ol being human. بVanier speaks ol the assistants who work with L’ Arche residents as those who have to grow to understand their own woundedness, for the “Holy Spirit in a mysterious way is living at the centre ol the wound.” Our enemies are also wounded people, like US, and until we see that about them, “gentleness is not possible.” L’Arche is a grace-bearing institution, a chalice that contains something precious, to replace the shards ol the shattered institutions that preceded it. And this has implications for the other soits ol institutions that stitch our lives back together—like colleges, hospitals, and parishes. Vanier says in his great book Community and Growth, “In the past, Christians who wanted to follow Jesus opened hospitals and schools. Now that there are many ol these, Christians must commit themselves to these new communities ol welcome, to live with people who have no other Lamily and to show them that they are loved and . . . that they, in turn, can love and give lile to others. ”)٥ Those who lead such institutions must be gentle. We might contrast this with Trump’s vision ol strength as loud-mouthed domination. We can also contrast it with the soit ol Leigned friendliness for which the mainline churches are known—one that wears a permanent Lalse grin and avoids conflict at all costs. God’s own strong-weakness is a CIOSS. Christ is executed as a revolutionary for saying cleaily things that rankled religious and governmental leaders both. He does not quietly slip away to save his skin or avoid substantial matters thiOugh small-talk. He speaks and acts and submits in a way that brings about his death as the inauguration ol God’s kingdom.

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All leadership must show this soit of cruciform strength and weakness. Jesus’ own gentleness shows US how to lead—his is a strength manifest on a CIOSS, a power that brings itself low, that spends itself in honoring the lesser member. L’Arche has institutionalized this soit of slowly-cultivated gentleness in a way that shows the world something it cannot understand but desperately needs. Another embodiment ofthisform ofgentleleadershipis the Orderofthe Cistercians of the Strict Observance, ocso, often known as the Trappists. Their most famous son, Thomas Melton, describes their form of life unforgettably in his Seven Storey Mountain.Π One small community of Trappists lived at Atlas Abbey in Tibherine, Algeria, until the brothers were kidnapped in the mid-1990s by Muslim extremists. They died under circumstances that are still unceitain, though evidence suggests it may have happened in a rescue attempt gone awry. The 2010 French him, OfGods and Men, tells their story beautifully.” The tragedy is the hlm’s horizon, but the story the him tells is actually about leadership. It depicts the transformation toward gentleness of the community’s abbot. Father Christian de Cherge. As abbot, his role is to moderate the community’s internal deliberation about whether to hee in the face of threats from newly violent insurgents or to stay with the Muslim villagers who have grown up aiOund the monastery. The monks’ lives are wrapped up with the villagers with whom they work the land, to whom they sell honey, with whom they celebrate life events and exchange gossip. One brother tells the neighbors that the monks are like birds on a wire, not sure whether they’ll stay or take flight. She corrects him: “We’re the birds. You are the branch. If you go, we lose our footing.” They are the presence of Christ for a people who honor Issa but do not worship him. How can they leave that’? But given the risks, how can they not’? Eaily in the film. Father Christian summarily dismisses an army offer to post a guard at the abbey. Such militarized defense is not consonant with a way of prayer that worships with psalms seven times a day and seeks to live in silent contemplation and gentle regard of neighbor. The other monks are angry, not with the decision, but with the unilateral way it is made. Feadership does not mean skipping over difficult internal deliberation. One monks says to the abbot, “The very principle of community is compiomised by your attitude …. We did not elect you to decide on your own.” As the area’s safety deteriorates, the brothers slowly realize they each feel called to stay. They do so uncoerced by Father Christian, who has learned his lesson. He makes space for others to decide rather than lean on them to decide his way. Finally, only when ready, they vote, and the camera lingers as each brother raises his hand to stay. Then they vote again. Unanimous again. Father Christian already had a long prayed-for gentleness in his own soul. He had left his family and profession and secular hopes for a new name and country and language and rule totally dedicated to prayer—and was trusted by the community enough to be named abbot. The film shows how he learned to lead, not just to pray, with gentleness. Abbot Christian left this extraordinary letter to be read in the case of his death:

Should it ever befall me, and it could happen today to be a victim of the terrorism swallowing up all foreigners here, I would like my community, my church, my family to remember that my life was given to God and to

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this country. The unique master of all life was no stranger to this brutal departure. And my death is the same as so many other violent ones….I’ve lived enough to know I am complicit in the evil that, alas, prevails over the world and the evil that will smite me blindly. I could never desire such a death. I could never feel gladdened that these people that I love be accused randomly of my murder….My death of course will quickly vindicate those who called me naive or idealistic. But they must know that I will be freed of a burning curiosity and, God willing, will immerse my gaze in the Father’s and contemplate with him his children of Islam as he sees them. This gratitude which encompases my entire life includes you….my friend of the last minute, who knew not what you were doing….May we meet again happy thieves in paradise if it pleases God the Father of us both. Amen. Inshallah.

There are oceans of wisdom and gentleness here. We too live in a time of tension between Christians and Muslims. These are exploited by hgures like Mr. Trump and leaders of ISIS for petty gain. Father Christian shows US how to meet those dangers in a way that is Christlike: courageous, not naive, cruciform. Amidst all the noise of recrimination, there are communities of actual people who would rather live in peace and friendship. Those communities need leaders like Dom Christian, like the Muslims inTibherine, who see God in one another and are changed. This is the soit of gentleness our age desperately needs. And as Father Christian’s words show, the gospel can make even US provocateurs of such gentleness.

Notes 11 take the quote from Isaac from a bookmark printed by Eighth Day Books in Wichita, Kansas: http: ״ www.eighthdaybooks.com/?page=shop/index 21 take this formulation from Lewis Ayres. A common objection to this sort of apophatic formulation is to ask how one can hold a doctrinal conviction like the Trinity and also insist on negative theology. The “answer,” such as we have, is that the Trinity faithfully names the God we don’t know. See my Trinity: The God We Don ‘ ؛Know (Nashville: Abingdon, 2٥15). 3 Ryan Holmes, founder of Hootsuite, a tech startup in Vancouver, is #27 in this year’s Power 5 .٥The God of the lews would suggest occasional and regular Sabbath rest. It’s been known to make folks even more productive…. 4 ؟Ip .ﻧﺄlemesorv, Life on tire Vine: Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit in Cliristian Community (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity, 1999). 5 I’m echoing here Steve Fowl’s argument in his “Making Stealing Possible: Criminal Thoughts on Building an Ecclesial Common Life,” in Engaging Scripture (Eugene, Or.: Cascade, 2٥٥8), 161-177. 6 These paragraphs all draw on Kenneson, 199-221, this quote from 212. 7 I draw here on Stanley Hauerwas’s essay “The Politics of Gentleness,” in Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness in Resources for Reconciliation, ed Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity, 2٥٥8), 77-99. 8 Hauerwas, “The Politics of Gentleness,” 77. 9 See Vanier’s book Becoming Human (Costa Mesa Ca.: Paulist, 2٥٥8). 1 ٥Vanier, Cowíwímot’ív and Growth (Costa Mesa, Ca.: Paulist, 1989), 271. I’m grateful to Tim Dickau of Grandview Calvary Baptist Church here in Vancouver for pointing this passage out to me. 11 Merton, Seven Storey Mountain (New York: Mariner, 1999). 12 A longer treatment can be found in lohn Kiser, The Monks ofThibirine: Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria (New York: St. Martin’s, 2٥٥2).

December 31, 2016
Lent Is Where We Live

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Lentis Where We Live

William Goettler Yale Divinity School, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Last fall, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist DeRay McKesson was a guest at Yale Divinity School. I’d invited him to talk about the emergence of what is perhaps the most signihcant movement for social justice in America in decades, about the challenges of addressing racism in twenty-hrst century America, and about the kinds of leadership that are needed if people of faith are to prompt a new set of values in a society that has never fully honored Black lives in our midst. McKesson and others in the BLM effoit are redehning what community looks like, building a viltual, activist community thiOugh social networks. And in profoundly interpersonal ways, they are building the kinds of relationships with leaders in every arena, insisting that the systemic violence that Black Americans have suffered for centuries must at last come to an end. Theclass began withintroductions. Students talkedaboutwhattheywere studying, their hopes for life and for ministry, and about how they were affected by the racism that is so prevalent in church and community. Some were funny and engaging. Some simply had hard stories to tell. McKesson went last. He described himself, dehned himself, as a protestor. He was a protestor, willing to stand with the suffering, and against a society that has failed to value the lives of African American citizens; a protestor, joining with others in lifting voices in anger, in declaration, in hope. Moral voices raised in piotest are necessary, he said, because the society has grown silent; even the churches have failed to demandjustice in the streets of our nation, and clergy have too seldom been in solidarity at the side of people continually harassed by the violence that has become the norm in neaily every American city and town. McKesson said that in August of 2014, he was working as an educational administrator several states away when the news reports came of the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, on the streets outside of St. Louis, Missouri. He traveled to Ferguson and soon Lound himsell in the midst ol a new movement that was spreading aciOss the nation. Using social media and public gatherings, democratizing the news in dynamic and untested ways, the Black Lives Matter movement rendered the invisible visible, made evident the unseen, and made heard that which had been largely unheard. “We’ve reconhgured the public space to be broader. Rendering injustice visible is the piOudest tradition ol piOtest.” That effoit did not end in Ferguson. It has grown into a national movement, Lueled by the new technologies that inform our lives and by the deep commitments ol the young people who refuse to stay silent any longer. The seminary students who gathered at Yale to consider the implications ol the BLM movement had no tiOuble connecting the effoit to speak justice in the public square to the story ol Laith. Harder was envisioning just how the church would respond to such an effoit to make the invisible, visible. As the season ol Lent draws near, I hndthat the witness ol DeRay McKesson and others in the Bla؟k L؛ves Matter movement is still ringing in my ears, challenging

the unseen stories are seen anew. At stake is nothing less than recovering the soit ol Lenten practice that has been at the center ol Christian formation since perhaps Irenaus

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of Lyons. The second century church theologian understood the need for a season for self-reflection and confession in preparation for Easter. Lent was more fully defined by the Council of Nicea in 325 as a foity day period of preparation in the liturgical year, just before Easter, when those who wished to be baptized, and eventually the whole Christian community, might turn again to God and seek to come to terms with their own sinfulness, and to anticipate the assurance of God’s life changing grace in the news of Christ’s resurrection. For Christians in a North American context, these foity days that begin with the final blows of winter and end as we approach the eailiest days of spring move US to consider anew just what it means to preach into and live into a holy season of preparation . We wifi hear and piOclaim the story of Holy Week and finally tell the good news of Easter in light of our ever sharpening awareness of the struggles of the human condition. The question is, in what ways are we willing to engage those struggles and the biOkenness of our own society as a necessary pait of that holy preparation. Irenaeus of Lyon, most likely thinking about Colossians 1:15 (on Christ as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation”) wrote that Christ reinterpreted all things through his own being, “making the invisible visible, the incomprehensible comprehensible, and the impassible passible.”’ I asked McKesson about that and was assured that the BLM protestor has not read much Irenaeus. But clearly they shared an important understanding aborrt the necessity of recognizing the presence and activity of God in the present moment, the Spirit living in the actions of real people in the present moment. For three decades, I’ve led congregations through the season of Lent. We’ve prayed into Lent, and we’ve developed disciplines for reading the Biblical text. We’ve composed Lenten devotional books together, read John Calvin every day for foity days, and explored the use of some of the ancient lltuals of Chilstian practice. We’ve given up practices that have been harmful, designing a carbon fast that caused US daily to consider the eaith on which we live. And we’ve taken on new responsibilities for stewardship, challenging one another to give of ourselves in new ways, that we might live more fully in this holy season. I’ve donned purple vestments, ledTaize chants, and preached on the seven last words of Christ. I wouldn’t dare to say I’ve tried it all, but ceitainly I have tried a good bit of it. Too often, I will confess, 1′ ve been aware during the weeks of Lent of the profound difference between leading a people in the exercise of faith and tnily paiticipating in that life of faith. I’m aware of the chasm between inviting others to consider anew the meaning of a suffering God and actually engaging in that exercise myself. Like my rabbi friend who must work on every Shabbat, I’ve long wondered about what is lost in my own faith by my professional responsibility to lead other people into a meaningful expression of their own faith. As much as I listen to the yearnings of a congregation and respond with sermons and studies that seek to invite a depth of belief and an assurance of the grace of God, I’ve grown aware as well that there isn’t much loom for my own Lenten practice. 1′ ve neglected my own season of wilderness wandering, the soit of meaningful practice that makes faith the center of our being. One of the books I asked students to read for the DeRay McKesson class was the Eden Seminary Professor Leah Gunning Francis’ Ferguson & Faith: Sparking Leadership&AwakeningCommunity.ne1e,theAñicanMethástEpiscopalChmchl United Church of Christ pastor Traci Blackmon writes about her involvement very

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early in the Ferguson piOtests. Responding to an online plea to do something, on the day of Michael Brown’s death, she found herself inviting other members of the faith community not just to pray in isolation and silence, but to gather at the police station in Ferguson after worship the following afternoon.

“If all we’re going to do is wait and pray, can we at least do that at the police station’?” I had a God moment at the police station… .1 didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it was a God moment…. My reach is not… great, even with Id()… that is not a huge congregation in the hrst place. And so I had a God moment when I got to the police station and I saw all these clergy, and I saw clergy of multiple faiths…. I wish I had stayed in that God moment and paid attention really closely because the clergy palt, I got. The youth pait was disconnected…. They were huiting. They were in pain. I missed the opportunity to call young people to the center of worship…. I missed the opportunity to draw that pain into the healing place. …Soit was a God moment that was not ftrlly recognized because… I got caught up in the message and forgot the ministry.?

What if our Fenten practices of prayer, fasting, and works of love were, in this season of preparation, focused not just on the “God moment” in our own lives and experience, not just on the ways that we are open to the holy activity of the Spirit in our own lives and in the lives of those closest to US, but also on the suffering of our brothers and sisters’? Rev. Blackmon’s challenge to herself, and to US all, to draw pain into the healing place might just be a necessary and central theme for Lent’s foity day journey. There is surely no shoitage of suffering at every turn. In a North American context , we cannot help but see Jesus Christ among the young African Americans whose lives are being taken or forever changed by the violent, unrelenting racism of our society. Simply hearing their stories would be a stait for every congregation and every preacher. More signihcant would be opening ourselves to meaningful relationships with those who have walked the way of the CIOSS in this culture, in our own setting, those who have borne the weight of the evil of systemic racism and been marked by the stripes of a society that despises and rejects their very being. And we need not limit our view to this nation. Acioss Africa and the Middle East and Europe, as well as thiOughout Central America, families continue to flee the violence, unrest, and desperate poveity of their homelands and find themselves in the diaspora, refugees in a foreign land. Sometimes, they find welcome. But the morning news, and every agency working with displaced people aiound the world, tells the stories of the many who have been turned away at the borders. Hard though it is for us to embrace the grief and the suffering of those families, every person of faith understands that the trail of suffering that they are walking is known to Jesus the Christ, the one who was despised and rejected, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. Another eloquent telling of human suffering in our day is offered by the Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, who was awarded the Nobel prize for literature last fall. Alexievich writes about the former Soviet Union in a form that isn’t quite journalism, but isn’t just non-fiction either. The Swedish Academy, in announcing

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the award, said that Alexievich has devised a new genre. “I don’t just record a dry history of events and facts,” she writes. “I’m writing a history of human feelings…. I compose my books out of thousands of voices, destinies, fragments of our life and being.3 In hei’ best known book. The Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future, Alexievich tells the story of a generation of suffering, capturing the lives of those who knew Chernobyl as their home. She explores as well the human condition eaily in the twenty-hrst century.

We’ re afraid of everything. We’ re afraid for our children, and for our grandchildren , who don’t exist yet. They don’t exist, and we’re already afraid. People smile less, they sing less at holidays. The landscape changes, because instead of helds the forest rises up again, but the national character changes too. Everyone’s depressed. It’s a feeling of doom. Chernobyl is a metaphor, a symbol. And it’s changed our everyday life, and our thinking.‘־

Do we dare to preach such stories in the season of Lent? Do we dare to speak aloud the huit of every heait, the deep grief that touches so many human families, the reality of living in these days’? We’ve always known that there was reason for prayer and for fasting, for a deepei ־reading of the story of scripture, and for engaging the holy narrative of the human rejection of the Christ. Such faith disciplines have long been effective in drawing believers more fully into the story of Jesus, into the denial and death of the savioi ־of humanity, that we might hnally also understand more fully his victory over death. But are we ready to risk naming such desolation in contemporary terms? Are we ready to ask the gentle folks who gathei ־during Lent to worship and to seek the face of God if they will recognize, in the suffering that is so present in these days, the suffering too of the redeemer of humankind’? Telling such stories is risky, not only because they are unsettling, threatening to disturb the polite peace of Sunday morning worship; that we could dare, if it promised to lead to meaningful understanding and deepei ־expressions of faith. No, the real risk is theological. Linking the stories of human pain caused by the injustice and coldheaitedness of the human society in which we live to the story of Jesus, the Christ, reminds US that the story of life, death, and resurrection is not only to be told in the past tense. The news of Jesus Christ is also to be understood in the present moment. Irenaus of Lyons’ call to render the invisible visible is not limited to describing the activity of God in the life of Jesus of Nazareth; it becomes an invitation to recognize the activity of God in the life of the Christ living in OUI ־midst. Thus the stories of African American men and women killed on the streets of OUI ־nation, the stories of hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking respite from violence and hoping foi ־ new possibilities in new lands, and even the stories of human despaii ־penned by the Belarusmnpurnah:t١Svetlana.AlexieGchbecomeour generatiorigS ho ؛؛narrativ;:

systems will surely disturb the peace of OUI ־settled lives. More than that, it will make us into protestors. Protestors, willing to stand with the suffering and against a society that has failedto value the lives of God’s own, protestors,joining with others in lifting voices in angel ,־in declaration, and in hope. That is the risk that we face. Why do if? Because the faithful souls who gathei־

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during the weeks of Lent to worship the God of their lives are not unacquainted with such sadness, such injustice, such very human pain. Their lives, the lives of every person who makes a way thiOugh our church doors and who dares to join with a community of believers in the midst of a worshiping congregation, have been touched by deep and undeniable anguish, often experienced at close range. And their faith has been challenged, rocked, and disturbed by the deepest anxiety. They have had times when they’ve wondered if God has abandoned them, turned away from them in the hardest of life’s experiences. The radical news of huit in human life is no news at all. In naming the tiOubles of this world, we are not intioducing church members to such hardship. Instead, we are bearing witness to God’s presence with US, God’s attention to our suffering. We won’t too quickly draw our congregations to the end of the story, to Easter morning on the sunlit hillside. Rather, we might confess with them that Lent is really where we reside for much of our lives. And if, even here, God is with US, if, even in the moments of our greatest fears and harshest experiences of the sinfulness and brokenness of this world, God is nearby, then perhaps Easter has a chance. The light will, in its time, overcome the gloom. The love of God will transform this ereation , and God’s justice will prevail, overcoming every place of hint and despair.

Notes t Norman Russell, “The Work of Christ in Patristic Theology,” in Francesca Aran Murphy, ed.. The Oxford Handbook ofChristology, 2٥15, p. 155 on Irenaeus of Lyon, Haer.3.17.6. ‘lUa’aGwÉYgA’íaé,, Ferguson & Faith.: Sparking Leadership & Awakening Community t>؟llocus, MO: Chalice Press, 2015), 25. 3. Svetlana Alexievich, Personal website, 2015. http://www.alexlevlch.lnfo/lndexEN.html 4. Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernoby (Picador, LLC, 1997, 2009).

December 31, 2016
What Paul Forgot

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What Paal Forgot

1 Corinthians 13

Erin Keys First Presbyterian Church of Greenwich, Greenwich, Connecticut

There are endless things I could say about this iconic passage, many of which you are likely to have already heard, as these words are probably, for many of you, quite familiar. Frequently read at baptisms, weddings, and memorial services. First Corinthians 13 is one of the passages of scripture most often recognized by both those within and outside the faith. And for good reason, as its eternal message spans the range of human experience and focuses on the single most impoitant element of our existence: Love. It has been said that love is the most impoitant thing in the world. It is the spark behind our creation and culmination of our destiny. To love and be loved is why we are here. And unlike so many of the ways we hnd to pass the time—working, eating , sleeping, shopping, trips to the post ofhce, standing in line at the bank, hling our taxes—no one, at the end of life ever looks back and says, I wish I had loved less. There could be many other ways we might regret how we spent our precious time here, but loving is never one of them. No, if we have regrets with love, it will always be because we would wish we had done it more. Thisisnottosaythatwenecessarilylackinlovenow, because wedon’t. Culturally we are simply inundated with it. Love is the main subject of practically every song ever written. Turn on the radio at any given moment, and we will be hard-pressed to hnd any song that does not focus on love—wanting love, hnding love, losing love, missing love, searching for love, hnding love again. All great literature devotes at least a few pages to a love story; the primary purpose of poetry is to put language aiound the stirrings of the heait; and practically every play, TV show, and movie casts love as the main character. A decision so lucrative, that advertisers have caught on and frequently feature love as a key component of marketing campaigns. Take, for example, the Apple Watch, the latest technological innovation seeking to captivate our minds and empty our wallets. In the video intiOducing the watch to consumers, the voice of John Ive, Senior Vice President of Design at Apple, repeats words like intimacy and embrace, and we see two watches on either side of the screen, both of their displays relaying messages of love. First comes a picture of howers, followed by the letter I, an image of a heait, and then the letter u. The watches slowly turn to face each other and then move closer and closer together, the way two people might slowly lean in for a kiss, as the voiceover says that with the Apple Watch, we “can even share something as personal as [our] own heaitbeat.” In addition to our culture’s interest in love, we too are quite invested in the word. My guess is that if we counted the number of times on a given day that the word love passes thiOugh our lips, we might be surprised. Often we say the word without even thinking about it, and if we did try to catch ourselves, what we might notice is that in a language consisting of over one million words, we use the same one to describe everything from our affection for the hrst cup of coffee in the morning to the feeling

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of falling asleep in the arms of a cherished other. We love to love it would seem, which is why we see, hear, and say the word almost every single day. What’s more, we love to believe in love, to the point where each of us can probably think of a time, or times, in our lives when, against all the odds, and some might say even against all common sense, we chose to have faith in love. We chose to trust love. We chose to have conhdence that this powerful, emotional, and primal force would not lead US astray and that things would work out in the end if we could just hold on to the promise of love. What is that? Why is that’? How is it that love causes US to practically abandon all that might seem rational for the hope of what might be possible’? Last Sunday in The New York Times, the Op-Ed columnist David Biooks wrote an aiticle titled ” The Moral Bucket List.” In it he writes about the type of people that most of us aspire to be, people who are deeply good. He says these are people who listen well, make others feel valued, and rarely seem to think about themselves. In his admiration of people who embody these qualities, Biooks says that it occurred to him that there are two sets of viltues—the resume viltues and the eulogy viltues.’ The resume viltues are the skills we bring to the marketplace like our intellect, ambition, and accolades. The eulogy viltues are, as their name suggests, the way we are described at our memorial service. Were we kind’? Were we brave? Were we honest and faithful’? Were we capable of deep love’? Brooks goes on to say, “We all know that the eulogy viltues are more impoitant than the résumé ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate an inner light. Many of US are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.”¿ Foitunately, life still offers US many oppoitunities to cultivate our integrity. For example, failure aids in humility; suffering develops compassion; rejection fosters resilience. These experiences make up the moral bucket list, and most of US at one time or another have faced one or more of these challenges. But, as it is trae that wonderful people are made, not born, in order for these challenges to truly shape US and make US into the people we wish to become, we must have, at our core, what Brooks calls “Energizing Love.” This is the love of self, neighbor, and God that is essential to any kind of personal transformation. Character is not created by sheer will power and grit, but rather by the continual choice to let love be our primary motivation and desired outcome. Consider this: if when we fail, we do not love ourselves, we will have greater difhculty hnding the courage to try again. If when we suffer, we do not accept the love of others to help US see it thr ough, we will extend the duration of our pain. If when we are rejected, we do not recognize that our lives are the design of a loving God who is at work in ways we could never comprehend, then we may lose perspective and become inflexible and bitter. In many ways this is antithetical to the way we think it should work. We should be able to change ourselves simply by gritting our teeth and doing so. If we want our lives to be different than they currently are, we should be able to make that change happen on our own, and to some degree, we can. But ultimately, any true and lasting change comes about more subtly than that. The change of a life, the change of a situation, the change of a relationship, is more like the slow unfolding of the petals of a lose. You barely notice it is happening until it is in full bloom. But it is the gentle presence of love, as the Sufi poet Hafiz says, that

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acts as the sun’s rays gently coaxing the blossom to unfuil. Take, for instance, the story of Dorothy Day, a young woman whose life was marked by depression, excessive drinking, and the unrestrained pursuit of any and all desire. Committed to social activism, it wasn’t until the bilth of her daughter, and the love she felt as a result, that Day truly found her calling. She wrote, “No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I often felt after the bilth of my child. With this came the need to worship, to adore.” It was this love for her daughter that changed Day’s life. She became devout in her faith and clear in her call to serve the poor by opening settlement houses and embracing a shared poveity. Her intent became not only to do good, but to be good, in response to the goodness she had received, the sheer and utter gift of grace she had been blessed with in the love she was given in the bilth of her daughter. ’ The theological term for this piOcess by which our lives change to more fully reflect holiness in recognition and response to the grace of God is sanctification. But the common term is love. And it is the transfiguring piOcess of love that Paul describes when he recounts the movement from being a child to becoming an adult; from exchanging a limited perspective for a broader one; from wishing to know, to being known. With love, Paul says, ignorance becomes insight, confusion turns into clarity, and what was paitial becomes whole. This is why, I think, we love to believe in love. Because each of US, in some way, has been marked by its transformative effects. And I think we all have faith that love will continue to shape US and our world until we more accurately reflect all it is we hope to be. This is the promise of love, true love, which is not necessarily the love of pop-songs, romance fiction, or TV drama. It is also not the love usually spoken about in common conversation, because when it comes to describing the unshakable, unconditional, unrelenting force that has the power to turn our lives completely upside down and in the piOcess turn US into the people we wish to be, words, more often than not, fail us. This is why, when Paul describes love, he spends less time on words and more ximtorvcys.Patient.Kind.Generous.Selfless.Gracious.Humble.Accepting. Forgiving. Bearing all. Believing all. Hoping all. Enduring all. Never-ending. Love, according to Paul, is not something we say, but something we do. It is something we become. Given this, I was surprised to notice, at least in this particular passage, in this beautiful and timeless selection ofPauFsletterto the Corinthians,that we so often quote as the authoritative expression of all the things love is, that Paul seems to have forgotten the one thing that, to my mind, is an essential component of love and clear mark of a person’s character. To me, this one action is the immediate response to love and the foundational behavior of any loving relationship. Just this one deed is the key, actually, to really knowing whether true love is really present or not and whether a person is really loving or not. And this one thing is gratitude. Gratitude. Love is grateful. Love recognizes the gift, and love realizes just how little we did to earn it and just how blessed we are by it. Because the truth ol the matter is this: when it comes to love, none ol US really deserve it. Not because we are unworthy , but because by its very nature love is a gift—and there is nothing you can do to deserve a gilt; you can only receive it when it comes and be grateful for what it brings. 1 ؛we think back to the dilficult periods in our lives, the challenging times we Laced, the moments when our character was formed and tested, I believe most ol US

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would admit that it was not our own strength alone that saw US thiOugh, but the unseen hand of love that reached out to us: each time a friend picked up the phone to take our call, each time a loved one sat with us as we cried, each time we were extended kindness by someone we did not know and who was otherwise unaware of the power of their action. And each one of us, in looking at our lives now, knows that we have far more love to be grateful for than we can even manage to name. In fact, to try to list it all might rip our heaits wide open at the sheer revelation of love so great and so deep and so wide that somehow we have managed to make it this far in life. And that somehow we are lucky enough to have people who have been there with US every step of the way. And that somehow there is a God in heaven who loves US enough to try every single day to show US just how much we matter. Each of us has been blessed so much more than we could ever hope to grasp, and so the lasting mark of our character will hrst and foremost be reflected in the amount of gratitude we put foith into the world. Who we are, who we will be come, hinges on our ability to respond to the gifts we are given. And what is there to do but give thanks’?

Notes The New York Times, April 12, 2٥15 (Accessed April 13, 1 David Brooks, “The Moral Bucket List, 2015). 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.

December 31, 2016
Reflections on Kindness As Fierce Tenderness

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Reflections on Kindness As Fleice Tenderness

Micah 6:1-8

Kathleen M. O’Connor

Decatur, Georgia

When Paul names kindness as fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-23), he is not inviting Christians to engage in conventional social behaviors. He is not urging the practice of good manners, nor asking readers to be “nice persons” whose primary moral compass is the feelings of others as we might think among some circles in the United States. For Paul, evidence of the indwelling Spirit is a church that is hlled with herce practitioners of kindness as a work of justice and mercy. Of course, Paul surely includes gentle behavior toward others and the self in his reference to kindness, but to limit kindness to pleasant social behaviors is to dwarf the Spirit among US. As a practicing, educated Jew, Paul does not invent his potent understanding of kindness; he impoits it from Old Testament traditions of hesed. Hesed is one of those Hebrew words so rich in meaning that no single English term can translate it satisfactorily. Biblical translators often eschew “kindness” for more muscular English phrases such as “loving kindness,” “steadfast love,” or the more socially disruptive word “mercy.” Kindness (hesed ) in the Old Testament is rooted hrmly in covenant relationships. It describes how covenant partners are to relate to one another; above all, they are to be loyal to one another no matter the conditions aiound them. In Israel’s covenant relationship with God, humans are to show absolute loyalty to God who loyally piotects and cares for them. Ratherthan encouraging conventional social actions, kindness (/?gvgd) challenges socially accepted ways of treating others. A multifaceted term, hesed presses in many directions at once, a fact that Paul surely understood when he included kindness as evidence of life in the Spirit among Christians. A famous passage of the prophet Micah illustrates the boundary breaking power of “kindness” and shows why some modern American notions seem only to brush the suilace of kindness from a biblical perspective. The book of Micah appears within the books of the twelve minor prophets of the Old Testament. Like most piOphetic books, this one is a composite of passages and piOphetic speeches drawn together over a long period of time. It probably takes hnal form during the Persian Period when the people of Judah are re-establishing themselves in the land after the terrain-altering catastiophes of the Babylonian Period.! Whatever time is its historical incubator, however, the book reflects much distress following destructions of various kinds. The people have urgent questions about who they are and about their relationship to the land. They have doubts about their future existence as a people. Above all, they wonder if their relationship with God can survive the great devastation they have experienced thiOugh warfare, invasions, and displacement. After catastiophe and traumatic violence, people often make sense of the world by blaming God and each other. They normally require explanations, accurate or inaccurate, for such interpretations give them a sense that the world has order to it, that random chaos does not prevail.? Into this pile of tiOubles, Micah casts a memorable passage about a dispute

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between God and the people (Mic 6:1-8). That dispute takes the form of a covenant lawsuit (rib) wherein God and the covenanted community argue about the state of their broken relationship. God opens the legal case with harsh complaints against the people (vv. 1-5). Next, a speakerpresumably the prophet on behalf of the communityresponds by asking how to repair the breech that has arisen between them (vv. 6-7). Finally, Micah quotes God announcing that they already know how they should behave in this relationship (v. 8). This is where kindness (.hesed) comes in explicitly, but we do not have to wait for the famous last line of the text to discover that lovingkindness/mercy is a quality of God.

Divine. Dissatisfaction (Micah 6:1-5) God, the Judge and Accuser in this couit scene, commands the people to rise up and plead their side of the case. Surely, God assumes, they have something against him for their world has collapsed. Although God appears initially as the offended paity in this legal case, God also recognizes that the people have issues with this relationship. Other participants are called to the court as well. In a typical feature of covenant lawsuits, the mountains and hills will serve as witnesses. God demands that the people plead their case before the earth itself. Whatever beliefs lie behind this literary motif, the presence of the mountains and hills means that the dispute between God and the people has cosmic signihcanee. A voice, perhaps that of the bailiff in this imagined courtroom, invites these earthly witnesses to attend the hearing, “for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend (rib) with Israel” (v. 2). The earth “all the way to its foundations” observes the consequences of the broken relationship between God and the people for all creation. When God testihes in person in the case, readers expect heated charges against the people because this is a legal setting. Yet the divine voice comes without anger, without direct accusation, without shaming or blaming. God speaks, instead, in the lamenting voice of someone who is vulnerable and wounded, forlorn and abandoned, a covenant partner who considers his/her responsibility for troubles between them, “o my people, what have I done to you, in what have I wearied you’?” (v. 3). What kind of legal preceding is this’? God’s question presses inward rather than outward toward the opponents. God wants to know how she/he has contributed to the demise of their relationship. Perhaps God’s own self turned “my people” away by action or by omission. Micah’s daring depiction of the Holy One, self-reflecting and questioning, is itself a demonstration of hesed, an example of biblical kindness exhibiting mercy, loyalty, and lovingkindess in divine-human interaction. God’s question is a gesture of kindness, for it opens up the possibility of mutual understanding in the midst of crippling divisions. God is confounded and perplexed about the people’s behavior in light of the catalogue of good things God did previously on their behalf. God biOught them out of slavery in Egypt, piOvided leadership of Moses and Aaron and, yes, Miriam, and now God reminds them of miraculous events involving Balak and Balaam (Num 22-2Τ). All these saving acts God did for them, so how could things have disintegrated like this’? Where did God fail them to make them turn away’? Legal aspects ol the couit case have Laded already and been replaced by an intimate expression ol pain. God’s vulnerability and willingness to take some responsibility for the split between them

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opens the way to renewed relationship.

Micah Asks Ηο١ν to Heal tire Breach (Mic 6: 6-7! When the prophet Micah responds to God on behalf of the people, he acts as if the dispute is completely settled, as if the community’s complaints have evaporated in the shock of divine vulnerability. He does not answer God’s questions about what Godhasdonetowearythemnordoeshebringforwardanycharge orcomplaintagainst God. Micah rushes, instead, to satisfy what he believes to be divine expectations to restore the covenant relationship. He asks what God wants from them. “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the Lord on High’?” (Mic 6:6). He needs to know how the people can please “God on High” and how the two sides can reunite in covenant lile. He makes proposals for what they can do to please God in the guise ol more questions. For any worshipping community with liturgical piotocols and traditions, Micah’s questions should set off alarm bells. They assume that humans must do something and give something truly costly to win divine appiOval. They imagine lile with God as a bartering system. Does God want “burnt offerings” according to priestly notions and practices ol the time’? Does God desire rivers ol sacrihced animals, or more shockingly, does God want the people to offer their hrst born children in sacrihce. Child sacrihce was rare but probably did happen in Israel and other places in the ancient world. The prophet’s questions, aimed at ameliorating the situation, assume things about the inner lile ol God that are mistaken. They take for granted the belie ؛ that God needs to be appeased, recompensed, that God is angry over the behavior ol opponents in the lawsuit. Micah’s questions in this passage reveal that the people do not know before whom they stand. The prophet and people speak to God as it the Holy One were a vengelul being who requires pain, loss, and horrible sacrihces to balance some imaginary scale ol justice. Micah and his people do not know how to repair the biOken relationship nor how to set the cosmos back in order because their theology is wrong. Based on fear, they Lalsely place on God human standards ol retributive justice and distoited scales ol human retaliation. They think God wants heaps ol animal carcasses or the deaths ol precious children as a way to make things even, as a way to make peace between them. The community does not know, or more precisely, no longer remembers that their God is a God ol mercy and loving kindness, showing hesed down to the thousandth generation. Perhaps the forces ol military invasions and the violent destruction ol lives made them doubt what they have long known. The Psalms testily abundantly to a different knowledge ol God, a knowledge that God piotects and nourishes because God acts with loving kindness.

How precious is your steadlast love (hesed), o God! All the people may take refuge in the shadow ol your wings. They Least on the abundance ol your house And you give them drink from the river ol your delights…. o continue your steadlast love to those who know you. (Ps 36: 7-10) Live in Radical Kindness. (Mic 6:8)

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What God wants of the people, what God requires of them in this lawsuit, what God has already told them is good for them to do, are three things, “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic 6:8). This three-pronged list overturns again any expectations raised by the legal form of the passage. There is no punishment, there are no charges; there is only a description of what the healed relationship between God and the people will look like. Already known to them from their tradition, especially the Psalms and the words of other prophets, God offers three things for them to do to restore the relationship. These three requirements do not exist apait from one another and seem to urge similar things from different angles. What God requires is for the community to act like God in abundant, forgiving, merciful kindness. The hrst divine requirement in Micah’s list, to do justice (;mishpat), is at the heait of the viltue of kindness. God seeks justice from them because God is just. God expects the people of the covenanted community to do, enact, fulhll justice, for actively doing justice characterizes the community of believers. Doing justice is a way of behaving toward people that expresses profound respect for their dignity, their needs in order to live and to flourish. Justice is at the loot of kindness; it is an assumed aspect of hesed. Justice in the Bible is not about giving people their rights; it is, rather, about meeting basic needs for physical and spiritual existence. Justice is a mark of the covenanted community and written into Israelite law. It is Torah, divine instruction, communal glue, and they already know it. Doing justice piOvides the measure against which kings and rulers arejudged, and doing justice reveals that the community lives with God. God’s second requirement of the community, to love kindness (hesed), also expresses a quality that belongs to God. God exhibits mercy, loving kindness, and covenant loyalty in this couitiOom scene and demonstrates it in this passage. By being vulnerable and open before the people, God surprises them with a kindness that overturns their expectations of shame and punishment. God makes reconciliation possible by interpreting justice through the lens of loving kindness in this lawsuit. Righteousness and justice, steadfast love, and faithfulness go inseparably together (Ps 89:1-1). The commandto“lovekindness,”embedded between God’scall“todojustice”and the invitation “to walk humbly with your God,” binds the other requirements together. To love kindness takes on elements of its neighboring phrases and illuminates them. Kindness is linked to justice. Kindness without justice is the opposite of kindness; it is cruel unkindness. Kindness without justice can lead to surface relationships that deny reality. Kindness without justice can build a veneer of moral living and respect that easily slides into selfishness and indifference. Micah’s understanding of kindness requires a way of living that does not simply do kindness. Tor Micah, the people must “love” kindness, be devoted to kindness. To love kindness (hesed) is to make it a priority, to live committed to it, to act from it ftrlly. This is the kindness that God wants, the kindness that characterizes the believing community. Kindness in Israel and later in Paul’s list of signs of the Spirit in the Christian community is a moral stance, a way of relating to self, to others, and to the cosmos. It is a response to God’s own loving kindness (hesed). The very capacity of worshippers to enter the temple and worship God in the praying community depends upon divine kindness. “I thiOugh the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter

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your temple (Ps. 5:7). Justice and kindness, not showy sacrifices and violent gifts, is the worship God desires (cf., Amos 5:21; Hos 6:6). The third element needed to restore covenant relationship summarizes the other two. Essentially, God calls the people to live fully in the covenant relationship. ‘To walk humbly with your God” is not merely an invitation to put aside arrogance and live in the reality of limitation and creaturehood. To interpret the phrase that way is to stress the adverb and oveilookthe essential verb that it accompanies. To “walk with God” means to live in God, to share the path with God, to live in intimate companionship with God, to become one with God. Walking humbly with God gathers up the requirements of doing justice and loving kindness and sets them within the larger frame that makes them possible. God’s call to the people in Micah 6:8 reminds them of what they know already. “Mercy and truth will meet, righteousness and peace will kiss” (Ps. 86:10), for “God’s mercies never end; they are new every morning” (Lam 3:22-23). They are a people, and they have life and purpose because they are God’s people. To walk with God is to dojustice and love kindness. If these are not characteristics of the believing community, then it is not walking humbly with God. If kindness is merely appreciation of friends or well-oiled business dealings or polite exchanges with strangers, it does not yet reach the level of divine requirements. If it does not reach out toward immigrants and displaced peoples, if it does not seek peaceful lives for everyone near and far, the racially demeaned, the sexually excluded, the broken and disabled, it is not yet kindness. At stake in biblical kindness is focus and direction of life. Learning to walk humbly with God is the purpose ol lile. God acts humbly with steadlast love in this text by asking the community if he has offended them. God now requires ol them to be like God: “He has told you, o moital, what is good and what does God require ol you but to dojustice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Each ol these characteristics ol the believing community-doing justice, loving kindness and walking with God requires the other two to be real, to be authentic, and to avoid limp acquiescence to cultural norms that maintain an unjust status quo. In Micah and the rest ol the Old Testament, kindness is fierce tenderness, courageous insistence on justice, and is rooted firmly and deeply in God’s own being. It has more to do with breaking with how things are than calmly living with relationships as they exist. Does Paul, the educated Jew, really have this expansive sense ol covenant loyalty in mind when he describes the fruit ol the Spirit in the Christian community’? Almost ceitainly he was among those who have been told what it is good to do and tried to live by this ancient teaching. He would have been among those who knew that hesed describes lile in the covenant community ol Israel. He knew that kindness has an unfaltering, resolute quality about it, but would he mean to exclude gentle, respectful treatment ol others, polite manners, and accepting geneiOsity from the fruit ol Spirit’s lile among Christians’? Ceitainly not, he might say, as long as such acts ol kindness meet justice and flow from humble walking with our God.

Notes t See Julia M. o’Brien, Micah (Wisdom Commentary; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2٥15) 917 . 2 Kathleen M. O’Connor, Jeremiah: Pain and Promise (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2٥11) 2-27.

December 31, 2016
Welcoming an Upside-Down World

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Welcoming an Upside-Down World

Acts 17:1-15

Agnes w. Norfleet

Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

This passage of scripture probably doesn’t get a lot of ailtime because it is not an appointed text in the Common Lectionary, from which so many preachers choose our lessons. That is a shame actually because it is a narrative that shows up in our pews on a weekly basis. Here we have two separate occasions of people gathering for worship and engaging in Bible study with two different responses among the hearers. InThessalonica, some hear and believe, and others do not. They are incitedto fury because the gospel is disturbing the peace; it is interrupting the status quo; and the unconverted just want to keep on keeping on under the rule of the Roman emperor. Away with the rumors of resurrection and away with any attempt to turn the world upside down in the name of Jesus Christ! But in Beroea, the people are more receptive. They welcome the message eageily. Many believe. And when the ruffians from Thessalonica come over to Beroea to stir up tiouble, the believers there piotect Paul, and send him on his way to Athens. Silas and Timothy stay behind for a bit to help clean up the fellowship hall after the brawl, and the protestors from Thessalonica go home. Now, we don’t regularly enjoy so much high drama aiound Bible study in most of our congregations, but at the core of this text is a question that walks into our churches whenever we open the doors. Why do some hear the gospel, believe it, and go on their way rejoicing’? And why do others resist if? Why does one partner in a marriage come to worship alone most weeks because the other either has less loom for faith or little need for the church’? How is it that siblings, raised in the same religious tradition choose differently when they have a choice, and one sinks deep loots into Christian community while the other does not’? How is it we raise our children in the faith, and they get confirmed, or graduate from high school, and they walk away, with little interest or time or inclination to come back to church for more’? Why are the numbers of the so called “Spiritual but not Religious” growing, and those who make the kind of deep commitment to serve the church as active members, elders, deacons, and pastors are in decline’? Well I don’t know whether you would consider this good news, but our scripture reading would ceitainly suggest that this is not a new reality. The same thing happened among the eaily Christians in Thessalonica and Beroea! Some hear the Word of God, take it to heait, believe it, risk embracing a new order of things made visible and tangible in Jesus Christ, and others simply say – leave my world the way it is. Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker ended an aiticle on the fading of faith and the rise of the New Atheism movement, saying: “The wondering [about God] never comes to an end. Relatively peaceful and piOspeiOus societies tend to have a declining belief in a deity. But did we first give up on God and so become calm and rich’? Or did we become calm and rich, and so give up on God’?’” Here in Acts, the same agitating, world changing, transformative Word of God

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proclaimed finds a welcome among some, a slammed door from others. How do we, who find our life in the Risen Christ, pry open that door and invite others to believe’? I prefer to suppoit local bookstores and meander slowly browsing thiOugh the aisles, but occasionally some time constraint will find me clicking a book order online. I know it is simply a function of advertising, but I find it humorous that whenever you order a book from Amazon, the message pops up that others who ordered this same book also enjoyed buying…, and a whole bunch of other titles appear. Say, for example, you are looking for Barbara Brown Taylor’s new book on spirituality. Learning to Walk in the Dark, and a few clicks away you are exposed to the following: Letters to a Young Doubter; A New Kind of Christianity; Simply Christian; Almost Christian; Tire. Future of Faitlr; Religion for Atheists; Invasion of tire. Dead.; Tire. Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in tine. Tate. Modern World; 01′ my favoi’ite new title, Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense.. Even we, we who have come to believe, are searching, it would appear – searching , searching, searching – to understand why some open their heaits to the gospel that the world has been turned upside down by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because death has lost its power. And others do not. Is there any discernible difference between what happens in Thessalonica where there is more resistance to the gospel and in Beroea where Paul’s hearers are more receptive’? Actually there is. In both places, Paul goes into the synagogue and engages in the practice of a biblical exegete – pait teacher, pait preacher. The text uses strong verbs: Paul argued, explained, and piOved, carefully sifting the evidence to mount a persuasive case from the scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah. But in Beroea, Paul also “examined” the scriptures, and this word examined is a legal term used nowhere else in the New Testament for the study of scripture. It is borrowed from the law firm and couithouse, from the cultural language outside the faith as “legal” testimony to give credence to the gospel’s claims about Jesus. Paul uses the secular language of the world to make his case for the faith. Also, in Beroea they studied the scripture not just on the Sabbath, but every day. Those who come to believe in the God revealed to US in Jesus Christ seem to commit to the complicated, hard, communal work of studying scripture together. In his commentary , Robeit Wall says, “Few passages in Acts so cleaily express the importance of scripture” to nurture the Christian life.2 The implication is that if the Thessalonians had taken the effoit to search the promises of scripture not just once a week, but daily like those in Beroea, they too would have come to understand its truth. You know, we can order all kinds of contemporary books to better understand Christianity’s rub against the culture today, but the answer to why people come to faith according to this text is here in the Bible, in our holy script. If we are worried about the numbers declining, it seems this text is above all else calling US, and the people we serve, to deepened, daily, devotional, creative, invitational Bible study. Bible study that welcomes the unconverted to the table, particularly those who question the stuff of faith asking: What difference does it make’? Ijust finished a little novel by Francisco Stork called Marcelo in the Real World. It’s a winner of a family book award for teens, a New York Times notable children’s book, and on a Top Ten list for young adults. Well, I’m no young adult, but I found

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Marcelo to be one of the most captivating piotagonists I’ve encountered in some time. Marcelo is high functioning on the autism spectrum, having been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. He is smalt, quiet, kind, and compassionate with a special love for animals and for God. He has lived a piotected life, attending a private school for children with special needs, and has worked there, caring for therapeutic ponies who help the students gain conhdence amid their special kinds of developmental challenges. ThiOugh the suppoit of this school, his doctor, his family, his Catholic faith, and a Jewish rabbi friend, Marcelo makes great progress in understanding his special way of piOcessing things and how to read the cues that will help him relate better to others. When Marcelo is seventeen, his father, with deep love and high hopes that his son is ready to be mainstreamed into public school, decides it is time Marcelo learn how to navigate the “real world.” A Harvard educated corporate lawyer, his father gives him a summer job in the law hrm mail loom. “This summer you must follow the rules of the… real world,” his father tells him, and Marcelo knows what that means. He will engage in small talk with people, look people in the eye and shake their hands, try to understand their facial expressions, and refrain from discussing his special interest in God. He is to pretend that he is normal according to the dehnition put foith by the “real world.” On the hrst day of his summer job, Marcelo’s father hnds him getting ready to leave the house for work by praying his rosary, and he teaches him yet another lesson about the real world: “I want you to be religious but, at the same time, I want you to participate in the day-to-day world, my world, and your world too now… .People in the workaday world are discreet about their religion. They pray in private. They don’t quote scripture unless it’s a hgure of speech like, I don’t know.. .,’an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…, the blind leading the blind.’ Things like that. Phrases that have common usage.’” “Jesus’ exact words,” Marcleo responds, were, ‘Can a blind man lead a blind man’? Will they not both fall into a pit’?’ Luke, chapter six, verse thirty-nine.” “That’s exactly what I mean,” his father says. “It’s not customary to quote scripture to someone , much less quote him chapter and verse. I think that if you’re going to beneht from this experience, it’s important that you try to act as is customary.” Marcelo takes orrt his little yellow notebook he keeps in his shirt pocket and 1ا١ ؟ه .·,Do rrot pray so tlrtrt others see… do rrot qrrote. scripture… Note: Listen for religious phrases tlrtrt have become ^gures of speech.Those are allowed even i.fnot accurate. Do not provide correct version or cite, where it appears inn tine. Bible.? Thus, Marcelo begins his summer job where he will discover in three month’s time that “the real world” is about competition, the assumption that most people are looking out Lor number one, and making a profit even it sometimes it means inflicting pain on another. As he puts it, Marcelo comes to understand that “the real world will always poke you in the chest with its index finger.” But Marcelo, who reads his Bible and remembers chapter and verse, never lets go ol the words ol Jesus, “Be in the world but not ol the world.” Relusing to let go ol his love for God and his study ol scripture, Marcelo also discovers a whole community ol people out there in the real world who are not just out for number one, who care about people who suffer, who make sacrifices to help those in need, and who break the rules ol the real world when it is the right and just thing to do. It turns out this

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teen with special challenges learns to navigate “the real world” without letting go of his faith, love, and the compassion of Jesus Christ. Why is it that some hear the Word, come to believe, and live the good news of the gospel, and others have no inclination to welcome the upside down world of the Risen Christ’? According to Acts, it has something to do with taking this Word seriously, reading the Bible daily, examining Scripture thoiOughly, and responding in faith to recognize the real world is actually the life we have come to know in the Risen Christ.

Notes t Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, Feb. 17, 2014. 2 Robert w. Wall, The Interpreter’s Bible Coimnentary: Acts, vol. X (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 238. 3 Francisco X. Stork, Marcelo in the Real World (NewV’ork: Scholastic, 2009), 42.

December 31, 2016
The Ethics of Hodgepodge

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The Ethics 0 ؛Hodgepodge

Romans 12:9-21

James s. Lowry

Hendersonville, Noith Carolina

Let love be genuine.

Hold Last to what is good.

Love one another.

Outdo one another in showing honor.

It really is quite a hodgepodge, you know, this list ol what the church is to do. It’s an impressive list, but it’s a little hard to know how one lives out such teachings as we gather speed passing the midpoint ol the second decade ol the twenty-hrst century . In other words, I wonder exactly how you play all this out in a standard brand Christian Church in a post-enlightenment, post-modern, post-Christian world’?

Never flag in zeal. Be aglow with the Spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope. (Try preaching that in Syria.) Be patient in tribulation. (Try preaching that in Equador on the sad day ol the earthquake.)

Still, il we believe in Jesus, this is the way we’re supposed to act. It’s kind ol the Heinz 57 ol right living, the Pandora’s box ol doing right:

Be constant in prayer. Make a financial commitment to the church and keep it. (I reworded that one a little.) Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony. Don’t be conceited.

It’s a laundry list ol ethical behavior with no red thread running through it, no common theme, and no common denominator until you get to the end ol the list:

Repay no one evil for evil. 1 ؛your enemies are hungry. Leed them. Do not overcome evil by evil; Overcome evil with good.

Overcome evil with good’? Umph! That’s pretty radical, pretty easy to say, and far

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too hard to do. Overcome evil with good, indeed. I suppose human beings have wondered about the origin and nature of evil ever since we hrst came up out of the swamp and began to look aiound, as Joanna Adams says. It seems to me, for US, the question came most cleaily into focus when, in the piOvidence of God, we staited to believe deeply in one God who is good. You know the theodicy question. How can there be evil in a world made good’? If God is good, why do bad things happen’? What is evil and from where did it come’? It’s the question we replay with the news of each new locket attack that hits innocent children and the news of each new political standoff. It’s the same question we revisit as we revisit pictures of car bombings and news of yet another senseless act of gun violence, and still there’s no will in sight even to try to do anything to curb it.

Is evil what makes people kill each other in wholesale lots; or is evil the spirit between US when there is stone cold silence at the breakfast table’? Is evil what makes powerful people abuse the weak, or is evil what makes weak people weak’? Is evil what drives the oil and drug caitels, or is evil what causes our pervasive addictions to gasoline and drugs’? Is evil that which, within the lifetime of many in this loom, caused a funny looHng little madman with a funny looking mustache to manipulate fear and anger among the masses with poison words of bigotry and hate, or is evil what made the thousands stand and cheer him on’? Is evil what causes the violence that makes refugees of innocent people, or is evil what causes the refusal of hospitality’?

Whatever it is, because we’re who we are, we are not to overcome evil with evil; but because we’re who we are, we are to overcome evil with good. Let me tell you what I mean. I have raised some very intense questions this morning about which nothing should or shall be made light; but listen carefully and see if in this bit of comic relief, you can hnd serious truth with which to address serious matters and by which to live into the hope of the Christian gospel. Not long before my wife Maltha and I left Memphis for me to stait an interim ministry trek aiound the mid-south and southeast, a well known steakhouse chain adveitised a Monday-through-Thursday two-for-one special on their prime rib. In those days I was taking Thursdays off, so on Thursday of that week Maltha and I decided to take advantage of the bargain by going to an eaily movie and then out for a quiet dinner. As it happened, we were not the only ones to have had such an idea. We arrived at the restaurant promptly at 7:25, just in time for our 7:30 reservation. The parking lot was packed. I let Maltha out at the door to claim our reservation, and I staited circling the lot trying to hnd a parking space. The second time past the door. Maltha came out and said, “Hurry up, our table’s ready.” “Claim the table and order for me—medium rare, baked potato, butter only, blue cheese on the side,” I said, as if after more than TO years she didn’t know such things about me and my taste buds. “ΙΊ1 be there in a minute. ”

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Just then, as luck would have it, some folks came out of the restaurant. I followed them to their car

and waited as they fumbled for keys, and waited as the gentleman opened the door for his lady, and waited as they made nests in the car for themselves, and waited as she put on lipstick, and waited as she blotted the lipstick, and waited as he adjusted the rear view mirror, and waited as they put on seat belts, and waited as they backed out at a snail’s pace.

Then, just as they were hnally backing out, a big white luxury sedan came bopping in right off the street, into the parking lot, and zap, right into «’ ‘״parking place. Now friends, no matter your metaphysical understanding of evil and regardless of your theological considerations of its origins, greed like that is evil’s manifestation —a minor manifestation, mind you, but a manifestation all the same. The white haired couple of shameless greed bounced out of their luxury car giggling and acting more immature than any two teens of my knowing. Now, it’s test time. I want you to take out your bulletin and be ready to write your answer. So far, the story is absolutely true in every detail. Now I’m going to give you three possible conclusions to the story, only one of which is true. I want you to write down the letter corresponding to the conclusion as you think the story really played out:

a) As the couple bounced giddily aciOss the parking lot, I lOlled down the window and snailed at the driver: “Hey, buddy, enjoy your dinner, but if you get choked on your prime rib, I hope there’s nobody in there who knows the Heimlich maneuver!” b) I glared at them with a look that would kill, but said nothing, and when I hnally found another parking space, I went inside where I was unable to enjoy my meal until Maltha rolled her eyes at me and said, “Get over it and eat your prime rib.” c) I went inside, and seeing the couple aciOss the dining loom, I asked the waiter to add their bill to our tab, and I sent them a note which said, “Your meal is compliments of the person in the parking lot, the one in the modest dark green Saturn.”

Well, which do you think it was for your guest preacher, this man of God(‘?) ordained by the church(‘?), set aside to piOclaim the tnith of Jesus Christ(‘?), and foisted off on you for a ceitain Lord’s Day in Easteitide’? Was it a) Vengeance, b) Silent suffering, or c) Returning good for evil’? ΙΊ1 give you the answer at sermon’s end, but for now ΙΊ1 give you a hint: what I did was not paiticulaily noble; but, on the other hand, despite my anger, I did not bring oveit shame on the church I was serving either; and it occurs to me, that’s maybe mostly the way of it for most of us in this work-a-day world on this side of Eden’s garden. We seldom do the really bad thing, but we seldom do the really good thing either. It

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seems to me we do a lot of suffering in silence. Oops! I gave away the answer to the quiz, didn’t I’? The answer is b), I stewed inside but did nothing. The implication of this gospel we follow is pretty radical stuff, you know. This Gospel of Jesus Christ is dehnitely not for sissies. Tor preaching purposes, this week’s text follows logically on the heels of the verses that immediately precede it. In the verses before today’s text, Paul moves from right belief to right behavior. We Reformed Christians, not just Reformed Christians, of course, but especially the followers of the reformers, like to take our cues from Paul, especially I think, from his letter to the Romans. We like Paul’s kind of logic. Tor eleven chapters, as we have now divided it, the letter to the church describes in hnest detail what God has done: “By grace we are saved thiOugh faith,”! said the letter to the church. “The gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God, “2 said the letter to the church. “If God is for US, who can be against us’?”3 said the letter to the church. On and on the letter goes in what is arguably the most masterful expression of Christian thought in existence:

We have been united with Christ in death, we shall also be united with Christ in his resurrection… .4 Nothing can separate US from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord… .5 We have peace with God thr ough Christ.«

On and on and on the letter goes, spelling out what gracious things God has done in Jesus Christ, and at last the apostle says to the church, “now therefore,7 on the strength of what God has done for you, you must do the right thing. ” Actually, hrst the apostle says to trust God completely; then the apostle says for us to do the right thing. Then to illustrate doing the right thing, the apostle gives US this magnihcent hodgepodge list of appropriate behaviors:

Let love be genuine. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another. Never flag in zeal. Be patient in tribulation. Make a financial commitment to the church and keep it. (That’s the one I edited.) Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony. Don’t be conceited.

It really is a hodgepodge list, gathered in from who-knows-where. Some of it appears to have come from the Old Testament; some of it appears to have come from the Apocrypha; some of it came from other letters to the church; but almost nothing on the hodgepodge list is original to this letter. ؟Meaning no disrespect, but, in some

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ways it’s like the apostle borrowed a little from the Rotary Club creed, a little from the Boy Scout or Gill Scout motto, and a little from Benjamin Franklin, put them together in a list and said, “Now, this is the way I want the church to behave.” No red thread, no common theme until the end; but then, at last, to the hodgepodge list gathered in from who-knows-where, the apostle, having done one impoitant thing, did a second impoitant thing. From the hrst he said our motive for right behavior is not like the Rotary Club or the Scouts or Benjamin Franklin. Our motive for right behavior is our belief in Jesus of Nazareth. Then, at the end of the list, he did the second great thing when he said because we believe in Jesus, it is not enough not to do the bad thing; you must do the good thing. And that just may be the greatest contribution we have to make to the world into which God has called you and me to be the church of Jesus Christ. It’s so basic, but it just may be in the neighborhood of most of the problem, the problem and its solution: not doing the bad thing is not enough. Doing the good thing is what is needed. Doing the good thing is what is inspired by Jesus. Nita Pringle is my friend and colleague who until recently lived and preached in Wilmington, Delaware, and now, like me, is retired and preaching only occasionally. Nita points to the peilect example. Any parent of more than one child knows the familiar refrain. It can happen on a family vacation trip of 2,000 miles or on a trip of two blocks to the grocery store. One voice pops up from the back seat: “Daddy, she hit me.” “He staited it.” “Did not.” “Did too. You made a face.” Every parent knows better than to take sides in such an argument. Many parents also know that, as impoitant as stopping the bad behavior is, before it’s really over, in order to break the cycle, someone is going to have to do the good tiling.” Before it’s really over, someone in the back seat is going to have to say something like, “Ouch! That Huit! Here, would you like to play with my Teddy bear’?” They may be foity years old before they say it, but someone’s going to have to say it.

It’s the same with husbands and wives. It’s the same with the Serbs and Croats. It’s the same with the Arabs and Jews. It’s the same with whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and all the rest. It’s the same with rich and poor. It’s the same with Tea Paity Republicans and yellow-dog Democrats. It’s the same with the Al Quaida and the Americans. It’s the same with the Islamic State and almost everyone else in the Middle East. It’s the same with liberal Christians and conservative Christians.

As impoitant as ending the bad behavior might be, and listen carefully, in many instances, the bad behavior simply has to be stopped. Listen now even more carefully, the warm trath is, conflicts will never be over until someone does the good thing, and that is very near the heait of the trath by which we live and the trath we have to offer to a world too often gone mad.

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This hodgepodge of ethics we have here is quite a list. Of itself, the list is quite a contribution borrowed shamelessly by this old preacher from the old apostle who borrowed it from who-knows-where. It is, however, the motive for obedience that is the hrst half of the greater contribution. The second half is the red thread that runs thiOugh the list. For you and me the motive for such behavior is the grace of Jesus. Then for you and me the red thread thr ough it all is overcoming evil with good. I do wish I had picked up the tab for the greedy couple’s dinner. Maybe there’ll be other opportunities to return good for evil. I’m sure of it. Aren’t you’?

Notes t Adapted from Romans 5 with apologies to the saints of Ephesus in whose letter the quote is, of course, much more direct. 2 From Romans 1:16. 3 From Romans 8:31. 4 Adapted from Romans 6:5. 5 Adapted from Romans 8:38 ft. 6 From Romans 5:1. 7 This section of the sermon, with only minor changes, is lifted directly from my sermon on Romans 12:1 ft. 8 Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: ALectionary Coimnentary Based on theNRSV—YearA (Fouisville, Kentucky: JohnKnox/Westminster, 1995), 465-6. 9 A version of this scenario was set up in Pringle’s very helpful paper on the text which she presented to the 1996 meeting of the Movable Feast.

December 31, 2016
As Faithful as the Whirling Sea

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As Faithful as the Whirling Sea

Donyelle c. McCray

Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia

In the more enchanted realm of Black Folklore, faithfulness is modeled by the hurricane. Hurricanes do not simply result from the wind blowing over the warm waters of the Atlantic. Hurricanes are born of grief. The Ocean whirls in anguish as she remembers the millions who died during the Transatlantic slave trade. Her sobs stir up on the Western coast of Africa, blow thiOugh the Caribbean, and then storm the Southeastern United States.’Eachhunlcane season testihes to the Ocean’s faithful memory of the dead. The implicit question is “How faithful are you’?” Stories like this one aim to instill faithfulness to the ancestors and impait an ethic that honors the full humanity of the living and the dead. For some Christian preachers , paiticulaily within the Black Church, instilling such faithfulness to the ancestors is an essential pait of the preaching task. After all, the Middle Passage was no small event. It was the African Holocaust or, in Kiswahili, the “Maafa,” or “Great Disaster.” The Maafa is not only foundational to African-American identity, but the watershed event that bilthed the Black Church. As a result, the Maafa continues to make a claim on the Black Church, and members often feel emotionally indebted to their enslaved ancestors. How might preachers best demonstrate faithfulness to these souls’? This question is as critical for those who preach outside of the Black Church as it is for those who abide within it. We are all gloomed to forget. And in forgetting such horrors, the corrupted Christianity that permitted them in the hrst place is fed and watered. Yet in the Black Church, where ancestors are more often deemed to have a continuing presence, the call to be faithful to their legacy is especially strong. In this context Christian faithfulness is not abstract; faithfulness is tied to particular bodies, life stories, and circumstances, some of which are found at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. I shudder to think about what these bodies on the ocean floor might actually ask of contemporary preachers, but I do think it is worth considering some of the ways black preachers demonstrate their faithfulness to the ancestors. What do these “faithful preachers” do well’? How is faithfulness to the ancestors manifested in the pulpit’?

Asking Faithful Questions Faithful preachers ask questions that interrogate the culture and the church’s role within it. Their questions do not always have an adversarial tone and may even be quite tender, but they tend to reveal a little chutzpah and grit. One might say the faithful preacher is one who has a contrarian bent and is therefore willing to ask the kind of questions that put human motives and actions in stark relief. The golden questions are those that live below the suilace and silently shape listeners’ spiritual and psychological landscapes. Often these questions are mired in fear as Henri Nouwen explains:

When we consider how much our educational, political, religious, and even social lives are geared to finding answers to questions born of fear, it

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is not hard to understand why a message of love has little chance of being heard. Fearful questions neverleadtolove-filledanswers;underneathevery fearful question many other fearful questions are hidden. . . .If this is the case, the nature of the questions we raise is as impoitant as the answer to our questions. Which questions guide our lives’? Which questions do we make our own’? Which questions deserve our undivided attention and full personal commitment’? Finding the right questions is as crucial as hnding the right answers?

Fively questions, as Nouwen seems to suggest, have poetic depth. When the preacher stumbles upon them, they pulsate with life. In the words of the Jamaican poet Claude McKay, these questions are found “touching the surface and the depth of things;/Instinctively responsive unto both.”3 Ultimately, love and freedom drive the faithful preacher’s quest for questions. Alice Walker aiticulates this idea beautifully when she says, “A man who is free, whose life has been signed away several times already is a man I can listen to. What does such a man, unrepentant of his beliefs, have to say’? And what places in the listener’s soul are fed by his words?” }־Walker longs for the voices of those “whose love outweighs their fear.”I * * * * 61 see this love in James William Challes Pennington, a nineteenth-century African-American preacher who served Congregationalist and Presbyterian congregations. He boldly presses the question of whether the Bible endorses chattel slavery: “Is the word of God silent on this subject? I, for one, desire to know. My repentance, my faith, my hope, my love, and my perseverance all, all, I conceal it not, I repeat it, all turn upon this point. If I am deceived here if the word of God does sanction slavery, I want another book, another repentance, another faith, and another hope.”6 Pennington’s core question reveals an inner freedom and a hdelity to enslaved people.And more,his questionraisesethicalimperativesforthe listeners: Whatkindof Christianity will they practice? What perversions of the faith will they denounce’?

Attending to tire Unseen World Faithfulness to the ancestors also informs the preacher’s afhnity for the spiritual world. If hdelity to the dead is to remain strong, there has to be some sense that the legacies of those who died continue to speak. Or, at the risk of sounding eerie, there has to be some contact with the spiritual world. This idea presents a burden for those who deny realities beyond the empirical world, but many in the Black Church have been cultured to clear this hurdle with relative ease. In these contexts, signs, dreams, voices, and uncanny coincidences are not merely tolerated, but sought for their spilltual insight. Cleophus j. PaRue says it best:

I am arguing for the open frontier of the world of spirit, where boundaries are ciOssed and recrossed every day in both directions. I am not arguing that blacks view that world in the same way as their African brothers and sisters. I am arguing, however, that the pared-down theology of the white Western academy that was cut and shaved to ht a small-scale universe was always a tight ht for the theological woild of the black church?

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Engagement with the spiritual world also enriches preaching. “There is some deep preaching to be found in the ciOssing of those boundaries between the empirical world and the world of spirit.” LaRue explains, “Preachers cannot get all of their sermons from biblical commentaries or life experiences. Some paits of the sermon must come from those deep places of unseen reality.”؟ Of course, this openness to the unseen requires humility. When elements of the sermon emerge from the spiritual world, the preacher can only accept them “as gift and grace,” not as the fruit of rational investigation. وGardner Taylor alludes to this idea when asked about his sermon preparation piOcess. “I would want to think that a sermon idea has been decided for me, rather than I just decided it.”’ ٥This more receptive stance can be taken to extremes if the preacher fails to prepare. Yet openness to the unseen world often piOves to be pivotal. The Holy Spirit has a penchant for using the “intuitive channel of communication” when nourishing faith.”

Relying on History Embedding a history lesson in a sermon never huits so long as the bit of history is juicy and the listeners have a stake in it. Faithful preachers understand both these rules and are able to open the history of the African Diaspora like ajewelry box. Week after week, a gem is lifted up and used to relate the scriptures to the contemporary moment. The fact that enslaved Africans were carried to Western shores on vessels with names like Hope, Elisabeth, Madre de Deus (“Mother of God”) and Jesus of Lubeck (affectionately, “The Good Ship Jesus”) has piOven helpful for opening many a sermon on hypocrisy. Similaily, nuggets of African-American history are woven into sermons in ways that summon the voices, idioms, and cadences of those from past generations. )2 When the preacher treats these voices reverently, refusing to reduce them to caricature, the varied traditions that shape African-American identity emerge. It becomes all the more obvious that African-American identity is a composite identity, the result of the forced fusion of a range of very different African cultures and ethnic gioups. Integrating African-American history into the sermon also contributes to the holistic power of the sermon. Listeners experience the gospel in a way that allows them to encounter aspects of their history that are seldom told. The congregation gels aiound this shared history in ways comparable to the bonding that takes place aiound shared scriptures and the shared ritual of Eucharist. History, then, is a critical thread in the formation of Christian identity in the Black Church. One might assume that attention to the Maafa or other specihc instances of African-American history might lead to a melancholy sermon. While the stories are heavy and remembering can be painful, effective preachers rely on the Spirit’s aid in this regard. Remembering becomes a means of suturing that which has been ruptured. Remembering becomes a salve in itself, a means of offering shards of trauma up to God for healing. In the American cultural context, psychic wounds are inflicted by the fact that human atiOcities are willfully forgotten and deliberately erased. )3 As Toni Morrison has lamented, there is “no bench by the road” where one might “summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves.”” This situation makes the preacher’s remembrance a gift and an affirmation of black humanity. African-American history is not wholly tragic. Faithfulness to the ancestors is shown when preachers look back and find creative coping strategies, acts of self

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definition, and episodes of unity, ecstasy, and delight. Recounting these moments of agency is not only essential for accuracy but helpful in reframing the maligned aspects of African-American identity. Overall, history is intiOduced to propel listeners forward, to help them say, “Hitheito hath the Lord helped US,” and step boldly into the future.” When this happens, history becomes a path to awe, and listeners marvel at the mighty action of God.

Celebrating Personhood There is nothing like experiencing a sermon that conveys the wonder of human life. Faithful preachers delve into this wonder and illumine the gift of being human, of having great ambitions and annoying limits, surprising capacities for tenderness and baffling piOpensities for carnality. They have a knack for distilling the grandeur of human life, and listeners are left with a high view of the human person. The gift of personhood might be stated explicitly but is more often implied as the preacher tells a story or explains an instance in which someone is being giOund by the powers and principalities of this age. This approach, this method of attending to human worth, undergirds James Eail Massey’s description of the sermon as “functional.”” Listeners need reminders of their intrinsic value in the universe, and the preacher aims to piovide this affirmation. By affirming human worth, the preacher demonstrates fidelity to the ancestors, paiticulaily those African ancestors whose lives were lOutinely debased. A good portion of the sermon might be dedicated to asseiting the belovedness of every human being. This air time rarely rings hollow or sentimental in the Black Church where many have experienced assaults on black life. Rather, the emphasis on the value of all people prompts praise. Ella Pearson Mitchell illustrates this idea in her sermon “All Flesh is Eligible!” based on Joel 2:28. ThiOughout the sermon, she uses vocal fluctuations to call the listeners’ attention to the word all:

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the eligibility of all flesh has been in effect ever since the fa ״of humanity in the Garden of Eden. Scan three of the greatest biblical characters: Moses, David, and Paul. God’s Spirit was poured out in abundance on all three, and yet all of them could be convicted of first degree murder, directly or by conspiracy. All of us are sinners. But all of them and US are still in that sweeping category ca״ ٠ed all flesh. And all flesh is eligible! (Emphasis in original).”

Mitchell challenges human hierarchies and makes it clear that all people are eligible for God’s anointing. This expansive vision demonstrates fidelity to slave ancestors who were not treated as full persons. Another pait of the power of Mitchell’s sermon stems from her engagement with human diversity and her refusal to rank people. At one point she says, “All includes everybody you can think of in every possible human category . . . genders and social classes . . . levels of education, and even ethnic giOupings and all religious affiliations .”’ ؟Mitchell’s sermon is consistent with a holistic vision of preaching in which the body is understood as the site of faith. Human worth is affirmed as the preacher dignifies human bodies in all their diversity. This stance might be expressed quite explicitly as in Mitchell’s sermon. In many cases, however, this step takes place rather

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early in the sermon preparation piOcess as preachers ask themselves a few questions: What are human bodies doing in this passage of scripture or what is being done to them’? What vision of the body’s worth is being related in this text’? How is God being made known thiOugh the body’? These questions lay a critical foundation because faithfulness to the ancestors begins with respect for their bodies. Respect for the body is also, thankfully, a gospel imperative. No account of Christ’s humble bilth, tortured death, miraculous resurrection, or promised return makes sense without it.

À Faithfulness that Transcends Time One of the great treasures in the Library of Congress is the Giant Bible of Mainz. It consists of 459 vellum skin leaves that were hand-lettered by a single monk. He begins the delicate task on April 4, 1452, and hnishes about hfteen months later on July 9, 1453. Sealing his mission with anonymity, he simply signs the bible “a faithful pen. “The signature is a homily in itself that testihes to his faithfulness to scripture and to God. More to the point, the signature also reveals faithfulness to those who would come after him. He senses the sacred bond shared by all who belong to the family of God and knows this bond is timeless. Faithfulness as atimeless viltue also undergirds the preaching of those in the Black Church who seek to be faithful to their enslaved ancestors. The expectation of a shared destiny fuels hdelity and compels preachers to distill a vision of Christianity that is distinguished by its great respect for human life. The approaches noted above, gripping questions, receptivity to the spiritual world, and reliance on history, all grow out of this grand view of the human person. I believe these approaches do justice to the kind of faithfulness envisioned in Galatians 5:22. In the least, they pass on a form of faithfulness that reaches into the depths of the sea.

Notes Y AeisHavaNciY ؟״Haunting Capital: Memory, Text and the Black Diasporic Bod ؟fLKkvawY Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, University Press of New England, 2٥٥6), 78. This hurricane story has inspired the artwork of Deborah Jack. As Sasha Dees explains, “For Jack, the hurricanes of today describe the history of the slave trade. Hurricanes follow the Transatlantic Triangular Trade route: originating in Africa they make their way across the Caribbean, then come to a halt in America. Each storm traces a path of devastation, leaving physical and emotional trauma behind, long after its disappearance . The storms bring the voices of the lost and drowned slaves at sea. We still hear the screams of left-behind family members frantically trying to find their lost ones who were kidnapped from their daily lives and tasks on African soil.” “Deborah Jack,” Africanah.org., last modified May 7, 2٥14, accessed December 3 ,٥2٥15, http://africanah.org/deborah-jack/. 2 YYe.m Inn, Lijesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity and Ecstasy in Christian Perspective .؛New NotY،■. Doubleday, 1986), 6. 3 Claude McKay, “Like a Strong Tree” in Black Writers ofAmerica: A Comprehensive Anthology, ed. Richard Barksdale and Keneth Kinnamon (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972), 494. 4 Alice Walker, foreword to All Things Censored, by Mumia Abu-Jamal (New ‘١ork: Seven Stories Press, 2 ,)٥٥٥16. 5 Ibid. 6 Cleophus j. LaRue, I Believe ΓΠ Testify: The Art ofAfrican American Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2٥11), 88. 7 Ibid., 51. 8 LaRue, 52. 9 Ibid., 55. 1 ٥Ibid., 53. 11 Henry H. Mitchell, Celebration & Experience in Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 199 ,)٥25.

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12 Michael Gomez provides a rich historical analysis of African-American linguistics and identity fotvimm Exchanging Our Country Marks : The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). 13 Erasure of this sort is explored throughout Ken Gonzales-Day’s Lynching in the West, 1850-1935 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2٥٥6). 14 Toni Morrison, “A Bench by the Road,” World Magazine: Journal of the Unitarian Universalist Association 3:1 (1989): 4-5, 37-41. 15Gardner Taylor, The Scarlett Thread: Nineteen Semions (Elgin, IL: Progressive Baptist Publishing House, 1981), 58. 16 LaRue, 33. 17 Martha Simmons and Frank A. Thomas, eds.. Preaching with Sacred Fire: An Anthology ofAfrican American Serntons, 1750 to the Present tbb NotV■. .ו ו .Nottotv & Co., 2ΩΤ0١, ٦ ةة . 18 Ibid., 763.

December 31, 2016
The End of Ordinary Time (or When We Haven’t Got a Prayer): Ephesians 3:14-21

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The End of Ordinary Time

(or When We Haven) Got a Prayer)

Ephesians 3:1421־

David B. Miller

Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminaty, Elkhart, Indiana

By the reckoning of the liturgical year, we are in ordinal^ time. Odd, isn’t it, that the season that begins with the fiery renewal of Pentecost should be designated “ordinary.” By the reckoning of the church in North America, there is little that is ordinary about this moment, unless ordinary means that we have become accustomed to declining attendance, decreasing budgets, church fights, denominational struggles, and diminished hope. The typical established congregation of most any theological stripe can feel mocked by a living memory of full pews and anticipation of ongoing stability and growth based on a Christian majority opinion that not too long ago seemed to be shared in the pubic as well as private spheres. If the internal angst is not enough, the external environment, particularly in social media, has become increasingly hostile toward Christian faith. A rise in fashionable atheism is answered variously by different streams of the church, some in stammering silence that nears acquiescence, while others offer a militant rear guard action of tired apologetics and legal maneuvering aimed at “re-taking our culture for God.” Those who study the mission and history of the church declare that we are well into Post-Christendom. Christendom, that longstanding alliance between the power structures of western society and the church, in which the church was viewed as an essential institution for improving personal morality and insuring that God was on our side in all matters of national importance. In the United States, it was only official in a few experiments during the colonial period. But while the church was never officially established or monolithic in America, the wide array of Christian denominations came to enjoy a de facto establishment favored by law and convention. The church grew large, divided, and unimaginative, giving its attention to management. While denominations competed with one another for primacy, there were enough members to go around to keep most churches established and growing. The decline set in almost imperceptibly at first, then gaining s۴ed coming close, some claim already passing, to a tipping point. Desperate attempts have been made to staunch the loss of members and return to the former days. But this is Post, after, Christendom. The way forward will not be a return to the recent past. The environment has been inoculated and become resistant to these recovery strategies. There will be no easy return to recent past or even continued existence in ordinary time. But post-Pentecost is anything but ordinary time. Pentecost, that moment when the fire-breathing God breathed out the animating breath of life dismissing religious priorities of structure, order, and management for the work breaking down walls of hostility; restructuring relationships so that they would no longer be Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; re-ordering economics, remembering old priorities for the widow, the orphan and the alien; and birthing the church into the life of the Messiah who had, in his hometown sermon, declared that it is for this purpose that the

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Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and it is fulfilled in your hearing. The church shaped by the ordinariness of Christendom lost the imagination and the memory of how to exist within a hostile society. Odd isn’t it that all of the New Testament documents, from gosjæls to epistles to Revelation, are the testimony and documents of an illegal religion in a hostile environment. These ancient texts better understand the world we have entered in western society than we do ourselves. Today’s epistle reading, coming from within decades after Pentecost, offers a formative prayer for a church in a hostile environment. And let US remember that it is a prayer for the church ؛it is not some nebulous personal spirituality, but a prayer that invites US to be formed personally and communally for the purpose of God. It begins with words that are hard to utter: “For this reason I bow my knees be- ؛ore the Father, from whom every ؛amity in heaven and on earth takes its name.” In a world that summoned all to bow the knee before the genius of Caesar, the apostle prays, “I bow my knees before the Father.” In many places and for some good reasons we stumble over this word Father. The subject of patriarchy and paternalism must wait for anther day. But for this moment let US see how this prayer answers Imperial claims with familial claims. Conquest and forced pacification that have generated Pax Romana are not worthy of our worship. No, the wisdom and the hope of the cosmos before whom you and I are invited to bow is not the conqueror who employs the cross, but the common parent of all humanity. When I bow, I acknowledge that this God has named all families. Therefore in bowing I open myself to a kinship for which I will need to be transformed from my habits of thinking about the other as other. But even as we would dare to pray these words, I know far too well my impotence to fix relationships, to overcome animosities, and to make people get along. It is not within me, no matter how hard I try. The apostle understands this, and so after bowing, after yielding, he teaches US to ask for the only power that can accomplish I1″ .·, ؟pray that, according to the riches 0؛his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through؛aith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” The church after Pentecost has learned its need and so risks praying a prayer that will make the pray-er different. That the pray-ers all will understand that to host this power of the Spirit, to welcome this indwelling Christ, is to be formed by and for love. Then, just when we dare think we may have it, we have seized the idea, we possess the tmth and can now tell others what they need to do, the apostle goes on.- “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,and to know the love ojChrist that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be frlledwith all the fullness oj God.” To know the love of God that surpasses knowledge. The prayer is a confession; this love that we seek to know is beyond our knowing. Our best apprehension of it is partial. The moment we think we have grasped it so we can use it, we are reminded that “the love of Christ surpasses knowledge.” In your conflicts, yes, your conflicts in the church, when you, I, we are ready to demonize the other, to declare that love has its limits, we are here formed in prayer to confess; we are called to ever pursue a love that is beyond our knowing, beyond our controlling. We are called not to manage this love, not to parcel it out, but to be relentless in our prayer to see it.

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Of this love, we know only its source and its cruciform revelation in Christ, the One who declared the gospel of peace not as an ethical mandate, but the very fruit of the crucifixion. The One who breached the wall of hostility that runs through our own hearts and minds, that divides nation, race, clan, religion, social status, and gender. So we bow, so we pray to receive, so we confess how imperfect and partial is our love. In bowing, we yield to be remade by and for love by the same power that raised Christ from the dead. Around the year 197, the Christian theologian and apologist Tertullian wrote of the pagan perception of the Christians – “But it is mainly the deeds ofa love so noble that lead many to put abrand upon US.See, they say,how they love one another.. ..See, they say about US, how they are ready even to die for one another…” !Apology!. The church of post-Christendom doesn’t have a prayer. But the church of postPentecost does! Let US then so pray to be made and remade by and for love. And then all that remains-all that can remain-is doxology.

December 31, 2015
There Is a River: A Meditation on Psalm 46

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There Is a River : A. Meditation on Psahn 46

Melissa Tidwell

Decatur, Georgia

It is sometimes pointed out that the Bible begins and ends in a garden. God plants humanity in a verdant garden where every good diing grows in harmony, and all is balanced, abundant, blessed. And God promises that there will be a great re-balancing in the fullness of time, when we will be returned to the state of wholeness God intended, with every tear wiped away, back to the garden. Inside this vision,throughout the biblical witness,runs another powerful metaphor of God’s goodness and compassion, artfully paired with the garden; at the beginning and the end is the river, the source of life. A river flows out from the garden. A river flows through all of salvation history. And at the great summation, we shall gather by the river flowing through the center of the city of God where it waters the ttee of life. In the beginning, there were four rivers that flowed from Eden. Two of them, the Tigris and the Euphrates, are rivers that are present on maps today. My great grandfather’sname was Euphrates AllgoodTidwell,which we took to mean something about our family’s historical and even mythic origins. Those other two rivers flowing out of Eden seem to remind US that the story Genesis tells US another kind of history, another kind of mythic origin, a place we cannot trace the river back to and visit like tourists, a place we must long for and feel the grief of not being able to inhabit. In the center of the biblical story runs the Jordan River, a place where our ancestors crossed over in symbolic and historic ways. A dividing of waters happens at the Jordan as the people at long last enter the Promised Land. Elijah ascends to heaven there. Namaan is cured of his leprosy by washing in the river. It is no coincidence, then, that Jesus appears by the River Jordan to begin his ministry, immersing his story into the larger river story. Every genre of the biblical literature includes river metaphors in some way, from the historical granting of land to Abram, one riverbank to the next; to prophetic declarations of divine providence that will make water flow in the desert; to the many references to the river in the Psalms. Today we focus on one remarkable river passage from the Psalter-well known but not well-studied, quoted often but barely discussed in the commentaries. Psalm 46 gives us a series of remarkable contrasts, the chaos of swirling, raging, uncontrollable waters and the river whose streams make glad the city where God dwells. A warning of God’s desolation appears, and yet when that desolation occurs, it is war that is desolated, the bows broken, the spears shattered. It is a psalm of action, of war, and of destruction, yet it ends with the beloved call to be still and know God. The image depicted by Psalm 46 is a map of the Hebrew imagination, where Zion, the symbolic title for Jerusalem, is the hill where God dwells with humans. Zion sits on the capstone of a deep spring holding back the waters that God tamed at creation, always threatening to explode again. Jerusalem is the center, the oasis in the wilderness of the world where ample water flows, the watchtower from which we can see cultures rise and fall and rise again. It is the navel, the nexus of the spiritual

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plane and the political-social one brought together by the sovereignty of God. There at the center of these two dimensions of God’s activity flows the river for the city. The earth itself may change, but the city will not be moved. And yet the city is not understood to be an impregnable fortress, but it is the presence of God in the city that provides the refuge and strength. Both the waters and the kingdoms roar in this psalm, and both the mountains and the kingdoms tilt and totter.) What is eternal is the presence, not in fixed geographic specificity but in covenantal dependability. And the evidence of that certainty is the river, making glad the city that gladdens God’s people. The river connects it all, flowing ftom time past into time to come. In his poem “Ask Me,” William Stafford reminds US that the river we see here as we stand at the bank is the same as the river upstream and yet not the same-hat what we receive today is the result of something upstream we will never quite see. He puts it this way:

We know the current is there, hidden: and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before US. What the river says, that is what I say.

The river connects place and time, creation and eschatology. Einstein used the river as the symbol for the continual existence of everything that has ever happened, and if we could just move up or down its banks, we could dip into every moment that has ever been, back from the days before this place was built, running upstream to see just in our own great American river, the Mississippi, the sight of Martin Luther King driving into Memphis, of a young river pilot being taught to mark the twain, of pioneers on their way west stopping in awe at the crossing they faced, up the river to the time the river was named maybe by the Choctaws who say their name for the Mississippi means “Here is a river beyond all age.” And if we nin further up the river of time, we might see Ezekiel receiving a poweifol word for the exiles in Babylon by the river Chebar, and Jacob wrestling all night at the ford of the Jabbok and gaining the name Israel, and further back. Pharaoh’s daughter lifting baby Moses out of the Nile. We know that we stand downstream from a long and powerful tradition, a river of promise. And we are called to be its stewards and its students. Last summermy seminaty Explorations class spent part of our time learning about the river from which we get our drinking water here in Atlanta. The Chattahoochee might not be a river many of US think about in our day-to-day life, but even if you drink nothing but purely filtered Icelandic fjord water from a crystal decanter, you need the water from the Chattahoochee to run your bath and water your garden and power your dishwasher. One community in south Atlanta lives in a more intimate way with the Chattahoochee. Proctor Creek is a watershed, an important water source for those who live downstream. Proctor Creek is also a place where the water infrastmcture is poorly designed and frequently inadequate. Because we have so much development in the city, too many parking lots, and not enough green space to absorb the rain, the water running off all these hard surfaces

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goes into the sewers and into the river, carrying gas and oil and trash, pollutants that foul the water downstream. And when it rains hard for days in a row, sewers begin to back up. In Proctor Creek, a poor and mostly African-American neighborhood, the sewers have backed up onto the streets and yards of homes close to the creek, poured out raw sewage so often that some houses there have been condemned, whole blocks tom down, and still the problem is not fixed. Proctor Creek is an essential watershed and a blight; it is covered over with concrete everywhere and still the water moves, underground, unseen but powerful. People who live near Proctor Creek know we are connected. They know that what happens upstream literally and figuratively affects them. Only a short distance from the neighborhood sits the state legislature where decisions are made for them and us and for miles downstream, and they feel the currents of new development and urbanization creating conflicts in the demand for more water. This is the shadow side of the poet’s vision, of the comings and goings from miles away that bring the river before US. There is a remarkable coalition of people who care about the river. The Riverkeepers , who care for and monitor the condition of our streams and rivers. They take water samples to make sure the water is not contaminated, they watch for signs of illegal constmction dumping, they work to educate US about doing our share, and they push for policy that would protect our resources. One of them lives just down the street from the seminary at the end of McKinnon Drive, where she keeps a little creek clean that flows practically from her doorstep down to the Altamaha River which flows all the way to the southeastern coast. You and I are called to join her, to be river-keepers in a literal and in a spiritual sense. We are called to watch out for the way the river moves, to feel its currents from upstream, to care about what happens along her banks, to know how connected we all are. The gospel of John tells US that a river flows out of the heart of every believer, so there is no wonder that our bodies and our spirits thirst to be there, to stand in it, to drink deeply of its delights. Kingdoms roar and totter, but the center holds; out of it flows a healing tide, and in it we can rest. That contrast between the constant flow of the river in our psalm and the stillness it calls for is something Brother Richard Rohr, a Franciscan spiritual director, speaks of when he descries God as a riverbed of mercy… vast, silent, restful, and resourceful, receiving and letting go.2 This riverbed of mercy, the vast flow of love, is our deepest home to which we return over and over; we receive its mercies and pass along its wisdom. It wakens our sense of justice, calls US to let righteousness roll down like mighty water; it soothes our fears and grief; and its continual current will scour granite boulders to sand. It carries mystery, time, and hope. It speaks, it sings, it whispers. What the river says, that is what we say.

Notes 1 James L. Mays, Psalms: Interpretation Commentary Series (Louisville: Westminster JohnKnox, 1994), 185, 2 Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, The Searchfor Our True Self( San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013), 23.

December 31, 2015
Uncaring Christ?

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Uncaring Grist?

Mark4:35-41

Frank G. Honeycutt

St. John’s Lutheran Church, Walhalla, South Carolina

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38)

Soon after the news broke in Charleston Thursday morning, I saw a picture of a woman named Surreace Cox standing at a prayer vigil near Emanuel AME Church. She was heartbroken, tears flooding her face, and she was holding a one-word sign. The sign asked a question: Why? There have been over 60 mass shootings in our country since 1982, just over three decades. I looked it up. Regardless of how you feel about guns and their proper or improper use, we need to have a new national conversation. Christians like US need to be part of that conversation. We cannot Continue with this violence as a new normal —we who follow a man named Jesus and call him Lord, his teachings informing our opinions on these matters most centrally. And this particular shooting in Charleston is doubly-bizarre and tragic because it was racially motivated. Don’t let anyone tell you it was only just another mentally ill person with a gun. As if “only” is any sort of healthy descriptor. Dyllan Roof is a troubled young man, of course. But he was also motivated by racial hatred; he had been marinated and schooled in racial bigotry for a long time. He did not drive up to a church randomly in downtown Charleston and decide to kill nine people. The church’s pastor, our esteemed state senator, was vocal in the movement to equip all law enforcement officers with body cameras after a black man was bmtally killed in North Charleston by a white policeman. Emanuel AME Church has a long history of community activism. This shooting was not random. It was intentional and planned rage against a race of people. But please do not think Dyllan Roof is alone in his convictions. Or that we’re somehow past this as a nation. He isn’t. And we’re not. Go to the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center when you get a moment. Part of their work involves tracking hate groups in our country-racist separatist groups who mean business. Several exist right here in South Carolina, actively recruiting young people like Dyllan Roof. And even worse perhaps, collectively, is the tolerance of the racial slur and the racial joke and the racial innuendo. For the life of me I cannot remember so many jokes aimed at any President of our country-far more than the number of prayers offered up for him I suspect. I’ve stopped believing that this has nothing to do with the color of his skin. Nine people are dead this morning. Several pastors, two of them graduates of our Lutheran seminary in Columbia. A state senator. Three dads on this Father’s Day. A librarian. Acommunity organizer. Key leaders in the city. Regardless of how we parse the meaning of these deaths and how we might now prrceed together, I suspect we all agree with the sentiment expressed on that one-word sign held up at the Charleston prayer vigil: Why? It’s one of the most honest prayers in the Bible.

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Our gospel lesson opens his morning wih Jesus and company trying to cross the lake “to the other side.” Jesus is on he water a lot in the gospels. And it always seems like he and the boys face lots of wind and rain and resistance. Why in the world doesn’t Jesus just stay home? You might know that there are two sides of the sea that Jesus tries to cross_a Jewish side and a Gentile side. The sea was not that wide, nautically speaking, but racially speaking, the two sides of the sea were worlds apart. Jesus doesn’t stay at home on his side of the sea because he understands his mission. In some powerful and elemental and metaphorical way, we should all pay close attention to the theological meaning of these watery crossings. You surely don’t need me to help you make the connection that all this water flying around in this lesson should make US all think of our baptisms and how we’re now called to “walk wet” as a result of our dying and rising in Christ. “Neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female, black or white.” Baptism washes away racial division. Baptism supplies our lifetime marching orders. Baptism invites US to stay in the boat that is the church and welcome more people into the boat on the other side. Baptism is not some holy inoculation into the next life. Baptism is our blueprint for this life. * * * Our family had some friends in town several Sundays ago, and we took them to Arby’s for lunch after worship. Our daughter, Marta, was up from Anderson for the day. Marta was bom in El Salvador. Her ancestors are undoubtedly Mayan. Marta’s been with our family, our daughter, since she was 11 months old. Several years ago we learned that the orphanage where she lived as a baby was completely destroyed in an earthquake. Children died as a result. We settled into our turkey sandwiches. An older man walked up, looked at Marta with confusion, looked at US, and then said with some volume, “Now whar’s she from?” I’m pretty sure this man intended no malice. It came off as mde, for sure, but no intentional malice ؛at least I don’t think so. We told him where she was from, answering him geographically. He went back to his table and his own sandwich. It was a rather awkward moment. Looking back on that encounter, I wish we’d answered another way. I wish we’d said, “She’s from God, by water and his word.” * * * A storm arises for the disciples out there on the sea. Baptism (properly understood ) will lead one into storms and winds of resistance. If you’ve never experienced resistance or pushback in your faith life, then you may have a theologically-cormpt understanding of baptism. The teachings and actions of Jesus raise a mckus. He’s trying to unite different racial sides of the sea, and people won’t like it. Please don’t miss this about him. But there’s more. As the waves lap over the boat, the disciples bailing frantically , Jesus seems to be able to sleep through just about anything—his head even cushioned on a pillow. “How about a glass of sherry, Jesus? Maybe an Andes mint atop your fluffy pillow? ’’ The juxtaposition between the sleeping peace of Jesus and the frantic bailing of his disciples gives rise to one of the most poignant questions in the gospels: “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re all about to die here? Don’t you give a fig that we’re all destined for Davy Jones’ Locker?” It’s a rather loaded question the disciples pose to their sleeping Lord, “Don’t you care about US?”

Journal jor Preachers

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And so we’re back (consistently back, if we’re honest) to that poignant one-word sign held up by Surreace Cox at the prayer vigil lastThursday morning outside Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston: why? Why do these things happen? Why do so many people die in our world so meaninglessly and senselessly? Where is Jesus anyway? Don’t you care about US? Watch Jesus here. With everyone in the boat losing their heads in the storm, he’s able to sleep even in the midst of great anxiety and fear. He will not allow the great anxiety and fear to dictate the nature of his faith. He will not allow the swirling and accusatory reactions of others to keep him from proceeding to the other side. His own questions to his disciples should ring clearly all the way to Charleston and back. “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” * * * They killed him on a Friday for trying to cross over one too many times. They killed him on a Friday because he challenged and bucked the status quo. They killed him on a Friday because his ideas about love and mercy and inclusion were just too threatening for too many. They killed him on a Friday because he would not stay with his own kind. But he rose again on a Sunday. He rose again and proved that no fear and no threat and no earthly power and not even death itself would have the last say. And if all this is tme, people of God, the question comes back to US. And the question is not really “Why?” It’s the divine question from the boat: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

December 31, 2015