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  • Advent and Animals

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    Advent and Animals

    D. Cameron Murchison

    Black Mountain, North Carolina

    In those traditions where the blessing of animals is practiced, the occurrence is frequently near October 4،h, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. The association is certainly understandable,tied as itis to the patron saint whose care for broader stretchesof God’s handiwork has long called into question an excessive focus on humanity—one that chokes out concern for other creatures also created by God. However, the beginning of the Christian year provides an occasion for pondering whether there are not only historical figures who can anchor concern for other secies (like St. Francis), but also core theological convictions rooted in God’s redemptive project that make our relationship to animals part and parcel of the faith we profess.

    Isaiah t’was foretold it. The rose I have in mind

    Perltaps the most obvious Advent text that raises the prospect of more than only human inclusion in the messianic hope is found in Isaiah 11:1-9. The first part of the text is winsomely called to mind each Christmas season when we sing the classic hymn “Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming.”

    1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3 His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear؛ 4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth ؛ he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfillness the belt around his loins. (Isaiah 11:1-5 NRSV)

    Thus far Isaiah stays fixed on the redemptive messianic work of the one who will transcend the egocentric reign of Israel’s kings, a righteous king governed not by human ambition and self-concern but by the spirit of the Lord, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, of knowledge and fear of the Lord. This righteous king,centered in God’s spirit, will bringjustice and redemption to the people who have been abused and neglected by other kings. But then the text takes a surprising turn. The second section of the passage is probably best expressed hymnically in Carl Daw’s text “0 Day of Peace,” a hymn

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    that is interestingly not associated with Advent or Christmas in most hymnals.

    6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be filll of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9 NRSV)

    The effect of God’s messianic reign suddenly expands from the relationships of power and vulnerability among humans to the relationshipsofpowerand vulnerability among all creatures, as well as between humans and other animals. The fact that, unlike the first section of this passage, this second section has not made its way into the lexicon of Advent and Christmas hymns is mirrored in interpretive traditions. Often commentators have been inclined to regard this second half of the passage as a poetic and metaphorical riff on the all important human-centered redemptive action of the first half. Interpreted in this way, the location of nonhuman animals in God’s redemptive purpose is easily ignored. However, I have been persuaded by Ryan Patrick McLaughlin’s argument that there is a fundamental parallelism between the two parts: the powerful acting favorably toward the vulnerable, both in the animal and the human realms.! The rose that blooms in the first part of this passage for the sake of the meek and poor of the earth blooms also in the second part for the sake of creation as a whole.

    Then shall the wolf dwell with the lamb. Nor shall the fierce devour the small.

    Thus the scope of the redemptive action that Isaiah imagines explicitly and intentionally reaches beyond the merely human. Messianic yearnings are not only for human well being but also for all creatures great and small. An important precursor for this understanding is found in the story of the flood. The rainbow covenant that God establishes in Genesis 9 is too easily read as a promise simply to Noah and his offspring. But the text is palpably more extensive than that.

    8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. 11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to

    Journal fcr Preachers

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    destroy the earth.” 12 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. (Genesis 9:8-13 NRSV, italics added)

    With this strong assertion of the world that God will have that includes all flesh, we have even less reason to dismiss the second half of the Isaiah passage only as metaphors intended to embellish the promise of human well being. The God who wills to create all things wills also to redeem all things. The longing for Christ’s coming and coming again is a longing for the fullness and fulfillment of all things. Mirroring these themes. Second Isaiah heralds the new creation that God wills to bring about, one that removes the sound of weeping from God’s people and brings peace in the animal kingdom as well.

    17 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind…. 23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lordand their descendants as well…. 25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent-its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord. (Isaiah 65:17,23,25 NRSV)

    Paired unequivocally with the redemptive promise to God’s people is the redemptive promise to the whole animal kingdom, where natural antipathies are overcome and where peace and healing reign.As David Clough has put it, “Isaiah’s vision .. .makes it absolutely clear that all creaturely enmity will be overcome in the new creation, and predator and prey will be reconciled to one another.” 2

    “o day of peace that dimly shines” Of course the limitation on messianic yearning is the same as the limitation on all eschatological imagining: it hasn’t happened yet! In his slightly ribald song “Origin of the Species,” Chris Smithers captures the limitation in lyrics that question what the animals on the ark might have eaten.

    How they fed that crowd is a myst’ry. It ain’t down in the hist’ry. But it’s a cinch they didn’t live on cakes and jam. And lions don’t eat cabbage And in spite of that old adage.

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    I ain’t never seen one lie down with a lamb.3

    But by expressing his doubts about life on the ark, Smithers unwittingly calls attention to what amounts to an early version of Isaiah’s vision. The peaceable kingdom is already imagined in the story of the flood. We often read and tell it without marveling at what happened to predatory relationships during the lengthy voyage. It is a mystery as to what the animals ate on the ark, but it is no mystery as to what they didn’t eat-one another! So Isaiah 11:6-9 is the fell imagining of the relationships God wants for all creatures that we find implicitly embodied in the story of the flood. We can also be grateful for another detail in Isaiah that points toward a way to deal with the just mentioned limitation on all eschatological dreams. For in depicting the peaceable kingdom, Isaiah envisages not only new relationships within the animal world nor only an animal world that is safe for humans, but also one into which “a little child shall lead them” (11:6). Or as McLaughlin puts it, “There is a role of eschatological stewardship for humans.” He explores this stewardship in terms of working “toward peace in the human realm that peace may also reign in the cosmos.”* As the earlier verses of Isaiah 11 make plain (vv. 1-5), the messianic age is not built on human initiative, but on a righteous king governed by the spirit of God. But the latter verses (vv. 6-9) show that God’s justice concerns reach beyond the human to the entire creation. So as humans follow the righteous king anointed by the spirit of God, they exercise an eschatological stewardship that likewise reaches toward the entire creation, toward a future of peace with animals. McLaughlin believes that faithful stewards should “not be satisfied with causing animals harm for human benefit simply because nature is structured in suchawaythatharmis ultimatelyunavoidable.” McLaughlin concludes that as humans herald God’s desire that hurt and destruction be banished from God’s holy mountain, they “bear the responsibility to be faithful to it to whatever extent they can within the confines of a disordered world.” 5

    Through all our hopes and prayers and dreams. Guide us to justice, truth and love So if we take an Advent and Christmas journey with Isaiah as our guide, we come face to face with a disordered world that needs counter testimony with respect to how humans relate to animals. It summons US to an eschatological stewardship that takes a hard look at the way we cause animals harm for human benefit. It summons us to a blessing of the animals that brings to the fore not the ones we adore as pets so much as the ones we raise for food on factory farms, or the ones we experiment on that we might improve our medical odds, or the ones we imprison and/or cripple for our entertainment, or the ones we drive to extinction by the changes we make in the earth. In short, eschatological stewardship toward animals requires attentiveness to the particular confines of our disordered world. How we have come to incorporate animals into our food chain through factoty farming is a major case in point. The harms wrought by this system range from raising pigs on concrete slabs where their instincts for rooting can have no expression to breeding chickens for abnormal weight that can scarcely be supported by their legs to “finishing” cattle in feed lots where they stand deep in their own manure and are nourished by com for which their diges­

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    tive systems aie not designed. And in every case, the system crowds these animals into narrow confines that not infrequently lead to brutal interactions among them and between them and their handlers. Taking seriously Isaiah’s eschatological yearning that “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain” encourages US to think afresh about what is faithful response to these disorders in our world. For some of US it might mean reaching toward God’s messianic reign for animals by reaching back to Genesis’ widely disregarded but clearly stated claim that God first gave only plants for food (Genesis 1:29). For others it might mean joining with people like Temple Grandin who has employed her close knowledge of animals’ behavior to make more humane the way they are processed for food. ؟And for still others it might mean supporting farming operations like that of Polyface Farms in Virginia where Joel Salatin raises cows, pigs, and chickens in a manner that allows them to live according to their natural instincts while also sustaining the ecology of the farm on which they live.7 Another case in point that illustrates how our disordered confines stand in need of eschatological stewardship involves experimentation of animals. Such experimentation is often for medical purposes, but there is also experimentation that tests the effects of cosmetics. Complex ethical analysis may well come into play as we seek to stretch toward that eschatological day when hurt and destruction are no more, since much medical research shares that goal. Nonetheless we may be able to do considerably better simply by being aware of the ways animals have been used in research that enable our medicines and our cosmetics. For example, while there may not be more humane ways to produce Premarin than is typically the case, there certainly are alternative drugs not based on the abuse of pregnant mares.؟ Similarly, while many countries, including the U.S., still allow animal testing for cosmetics, more than 500 brands are recognized as cruelty-free because the manufacturer refoses to conduct or commission new animal testing, to use new ingredients only when human safety can be determined without resorting to animal testing, and decline to sell cosmetic products in countries that require animal testing. ؟Our eschatological stewardship yearning to prevent harm to animals by experimentation is a matter of discerning choices based on a knowledge about what products are and are not dependent on mistreatment of animals. Yet another case in point further clarifies the shape of the disordered confines in which we are called to exercise our eschatological stewardship, that of using and abusing animals for financial gain and entertainment. Horse racing, rodeos, circuses, and some zoos and aquariums are all problematic. Despite the great pleasure we take when an American Pharoah wins the Triple Crown, there is a darker side to the enterprise . Whereas a hugely successful animal may be carefully tended and cared for, there are many “also rans” who may be valued only to the extent they can keep running , perversely earning fees not for winning, but simply for entering the race. Thus trainers are encouraged to enter them in races even when they are not “fit.” Rodeos and circuses both generate entertainment for humans, but often at a frightful price to the well-being of the animals involved. And while zoos and aquariums can be places for species preseiwation and human education about the importance of other species, they can also become warehouses or prisons. How to herald the messianic age for all creatures in the face of such “entertainment ” options is a challenging task. But perhaps the most crucial place to start is

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    by asking ourselves whether we really want to be entertained by the abuse of other animals. By and large we have grown past taking enjoyment as human beings are tlirown to lions. Now we should ask whether we really want to throw lions (or other animal species) to humans, all in the name of entertainment for many and financial profit for a few. Thereby we may come to see, for example, that pari-mutuel betting on horse racing is a problem not because of an abstract view about the evils of gambling, but because of a concrete recognition of how it can lead to the abuse of the horses. Whether we do or do not decide to participate in entertainments that feature animals, we owe it to Isaiah’s messianic vision to be aware of what hurt and destruction may be involved. Finally, the most far reaching example of the disordered confines in which we are called to eschatological stewardship has to do with species extinction. Here the problem is not a matter of this or that particular animal, but more consequentially about whole species. Species extinction is consequential because the loss of each species closes the particular evolutionary pathway it uniquely represents—forever.“ From a theological point of view, it reduces the complexity God has built into the unfolding universe by one, leaving God to draw the whole creation toward its fulfillment minus that particular resource. But of course in what is coming to be called the “Sixth Extinction” that may well rival the five great extinctions that have occurred over earth’s history, countless species are being lost. Only this time it is not generated by an outside event like a meteor crashing into the earth. It is generated by US, as we change the composition of the atmosphere that in turn changes the climate and the chemistry of the oceans.“ Eschatological stewardship here presses US beyond care for this sort of animal or that, to care for the earth itself. For unless we find ways to adapt and/or mitigate the effects of climate change, this Sixth Extinction will likely rival the previous five known to science. The earlier great extinctions occurred before humans were on the scene. God’s unfolding universe has proceeded through them to the creation and calling of humanity to lead all things toward a new creation in which the vulnerable of all species are protected by the powerful, that is to a peaceable kingdom.

    The hope of peace shall be fuelled For all the earth shall know the Lord. Funny how beginning with something as innocent as the blessing of animals leads US to this place. But we know full well that Advent and Christmas is never an ending, but always a beginning anew. So we may begin with St. Francis’ communion with other species as a friendly guide and continue with Isaiah’s vision as a provocative prod-of a righteous king who creates a kingdom of peace among people and a peaceable kingdom among all creatures. Thus is set for US a path of eschatological stewardship responsive to the needs of our time and responsible to the God who will make all things new.

    Notes (Much of the material and all of the most poignant insights into the travail of animals included in the foregoing grow out of a teaching partnership with Dr. Carolyn Crowder, also ftom Black Mountain. While I am indebted to her for much, she is not responsible for the conclusions I have drawn, still less for the mistakes I will have inevitably made.)

    1 Ryan Patrick McLaughlin, Christian Theology and the Status ofAnimals (Palgrave Macmillan, New

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    York, 2014),P. 109. 2 David L. Clough, On Animals: Volume One Systematic Theology (Bloomsbury Τ&Τ Clark, New York, 2012),p. 158. 3 Chris Smithers, “Origin of the Species,” Leave the Light On, 2006. 4 McLaughlin, p. 110 . 5 Ibid., p. 113. 6 http://www.grandin.com 7http://www.polyfacefarms.com/story/ 8 http://www.lcanimal.org/index.php/campaigns/other-issues/horses؛ http://www.humanesociety.org/ news/magazines/2015/03-04/premarin.html 9http://www.hsi.org/issues/becrueltyfree/facts/infographic/en/ 10 Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt and Company, New York,2014),p.321. 11 Ibid., p. 2.

  • Pentecostal Babel

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    Pentecostal Babel

    Joshua Rice

    Mount Paran North Church of God, Marietta, Georgia

    “Now, do not go from this meeting and talk about tongues, but try to get people saved!” William Seymour

    One of the reasons that I voraciously enjoy the Journal for Preachers is that I am a Pentecostal. I find myself terrifically motivated by the perspectives of this community of mainline Protestant preachers, who seem to so effortlessly move exegetical and theological dirt around the jobsite to uncover treasures I would never otherwise discover. In this collegial spirit, I thought our readers might enjoy a Pentecostal perspective on the Day of Pentecost, particularly the phenomenon that pushes the entire story off the ground: the gift of tongues. In circles where the emphasis of Acts 2 is typically placed on the birthday of the Church, perhaps moving the dirt around the tongue talking, the early morning racket, and the accusations of drunkenness will reveal some hidden gems.

    The Sign of Tongues in the Pentecostal Tradition It is safe to say that the average man on the street, if he has heard of a Pentecostal , associates US with one of our odder habits: what is typically called “speaking in tongues.” We take this phrase from the King James translation of the book of Acts in the New Testament, a translation that was hammered out during Shakespearean times. You might also call the habit, more contemporarily, “speaking in languages.” Speaking in tongues is what Pentecostals became known for early on, especially at the Azusa Street Revival at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its leader, William Seymour, tried his best to focus people’s attention not toward the phenomenon of tongues, but toward the lifestyle such Spirit-empowerment produced. “If you get angry, or speak evil or backbite, I care not how many tongues you may have, you have not the baptism with the Holy Spirit,” the illiterate Seymour preached. ؛Still, it is hard not to focus on a group of people who spontaneously burst into shouting a bunch of syllables that sound like gibberish. “We believe in speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gives utterance,” my denomination’s faith statement reads, “and that it is the initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Ghost.” As if shaking in tongues were not aberrant enough, this statement seriously upped the ante. If you don’t speak in tongues, you haven’t really had a full experience of the Holy Spirit, we declared. The gift of tongues is the entrance requirement into Spirit baptism and the complete Christian life. If you don’t do it, according to our particular tradition, you’re not a bona fide Pentecostal. Our motives in this effort to encourage the gift of tongues have always been pure, but slapping a bunch of strictures around the activity of the Holy spirit is tricky business at best, like trying to tame the wind. At worst, we can dress up to play the part of God. Certainly God “does not change like the shifting shadows,” James 1:17 says, but neither is God beholden to formulas. In erring to the latter side, I have seen and heard all kinds of personal stories about well-meaning Pentecostals trying to “help” others

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    receive the gift of tongues, and the stories range from the horrific to the hokey. Growing up, there were plenty of altar calls to receive the Holy spirit by way of the “sign” of speaking in tongues (signage is the language for the gift used in Mark 16:17). People often testified of“seeking” the gift for many months (One new convert of our congregation who was in seeking mode remarked, “The Holy Ghost sure is an elusive thing, ain’t He?”). Seekers would crowd the altar, and holy huddles would form around them, swaying back and forth, everyone praying out loud, eight, ten, twelve hands on the seeker’s shoulders and head. At some point after the seeker had been thoroughly leaned on by the group, someone would take the lead. The leader would stand face to face with the seeker, and the oral exam would begin. “Speak out!” “Speak anything that comes to mind!” I have seen people pat the chin of the speaker with the back of their hand up and down, over and over. Judge US if you must, but the Catholics believe that the communion wine transubstantiates into real blood. Are we Pentecostals not also allowed some hocus-pocus?

    individual attention was warranted. The pros were called in with tactical stents. One friend of mine was taken to a room and given practice words. “You can do it!” he recalls the pro’s encouragement. In my mind the scene looks like an interrogation room in an episode of Law and Order, a hanging light bulb over a metal desk, the pro with a walkie-talkie strapped to his belt to relay any breakthrough. Even with such serious help, my friend never did speak in tongues. In fact, I know all kinds of people who identify with Pentecostalism but never crossed the tongues threshold. My denomination is still trying to figure out what to do with them. Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:8 that “the Spirit blows wherever it pleases.” “The Holy Ghost sure is an elusive thing, ain’t He?”

    Glossolalia and the Repair of language There are all kinds of smart studies on the phenomenon of speaking in tongues, typically calledgfoiiolafia in academic circles(from the Greek words gfoisa-language – and laleo – to speak). The experience of tongues is not particular to Pentecostals, or even to Christians, but there does seem to be a common thread uniting those who participate: Glossolalia is the language of the underclass. In the words of Randall Balmer at Barnard University, “It provides a voice to people who feel they have no voice.”2 I fear that such a definition might be interpreted as Marxist escapism, tongues as an opiate for the poor. I have never thought about tongues as some Christian version of The Exorcist, eyes rolling back into the head for a few moments of ecstasy, like a drug hit. Tongues are not the result of some kind of divine possession, which seems to be Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 14:32 —“The spirits of prophets are subject to the control ofprophets.” Instead,atthemostelemental level,tongues are about.. .tongues. Tongues are about language, about words. They beg the question, “Where does language come from and what does it mean to do?” Even the most secular among US would readily acknowledge that the project of human language is in deep disrepair. The Quaker spiritualist, Richard Foster, contends .

    The tongue is our most powerful weapon of manipulation. A frantic stream

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    of words flows from US because we are in a constant process of adjusting our public image. We fear so deeply what we think other people see in US that we talk in order to straighten out their understanding.^

    Is not such evidence of the seductive and devalued power of language all around us? Just listen to the droll of the cable news wars, in which language is weaponized to the point where logic and objectivity are chess pieces to be played, ninja stars to be thrown. And hasn’t the larger church lost the battle of fighting devalued words with more devalued words that are theological in nature? “Christian language needs to be redeemed,” Marcus Borg argues.* The Church has not been able to save US from the word vomit soup we now swim in. We are all growing increasingly illiterate, shouting words back and forth that have little meaning and less value. All that matters is how shat^ly we can carve out the edges of our words. Historically, Christian thought has been on the forefront of deconstructing the power of words to their constituent elements. There is plenty in the Bible about the potency of language (My mother was fond of quoting James 1:19 in our home, “Be quick to listen and slow to speak.”), and this tradition has grown throughout the centaries . From the first monk, Anthony the Great in the third century, Christian monks attacked word vomit with the powerful weapon of silence. Thomas Merton, the famous trappist monk of the last century, renowned for his vows of silence, considered words to be the building blocks of the “false self’ that we project onto others for our own perceived good. ؛His corrective: create silence. Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish theologian, wrote well over a century ago, “If I were a doctor and could prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modem world, I would prescribe silence.” ؛Scores of similarly beautiful quotations on the power of silence from a thousand Christian mystics fill the literature of church history. Pentecostals are a part of this Christian trajectory but have attacked the same problem of word vomit from a dramatically different angle. You might say that the monastic tradition fought word inflation by raising the interest rates on language. The fewer words in play, the better their value. We Pentecostals did not follow this approach . As an underclass people, perhaps we saw silence as, in the words of Wendell Berry, “the distinguishing characteristic of absolute despair.”? So we just decided to receive a whole new language altogether, and by doing so, to transcend despair.

    The Post-Babel language of God In Acts 2, the followers of Jesus are waiting for the fulfillment of the promise of 1:5: “For John baptized with water but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” And then, like a sandstorm, it hit. “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (2:4). But that is only where the tme story begins. It is the response of the onlookers to the phenomenon of speaking in tongues that constitutes the real meat of the narrative of Acts 2.

    Now there were staying in Jemsalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans?

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    Then how is it that each of US hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites ؛residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism) ؛ Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” (2:5-12)

    Languages old and new, spewing forth from the poor white trash of Galilee, now suddenly linguists. Indeed, what does such an event mean? It is hard to doubt that a very specific Old Testament text stands behind Acts 2, backlighting its meaning. It was way back in Genesis 11 where the nations highlighted in Acts 2 first endured their birth. There, the story of the Tower of Babel adds two great brtish strokes to the burgeoning picture of YHWH in the early days of humanity , a God who is ferociously particular. Those two new particularities painted in Genesis 11 are simply that (1) God doesn’t care much for urban living and (2) really disdains dictatorial regimes with their forced homogeneity. “Come, let US build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves,” the whiz kids of the Mesopotamian valley devised in Genesis 11:4. Armed with their Apple computers, their new brick-making technology, and cool, hom-rimmed eyeglasses, they sought to remake history. But God is not enthused. “Come, let US go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other,” God decides after convening a council of Himself. “That is why it was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world,” scattering them “across the face of the whole earth.” In the Old Testament tradition, God’s response to Babel is where languages (other than Hebrew?) began. The project of multiple languages/tongues was meant to prevent human oppression at the Tower of Babel. Of course, humanity found a way to derail that project of multiple languages as well. The Egyptian Empire would soon rise, forcing everything it could force on those who did not speak Egyptian. The Babylonians would give way to the Persians would give way to Alexander the Great would give way to the Romans. One Tower of Babel was replaced with thousands more ethnically specific. By the time of Acts 2, there are too many towers to count: thousands of ethnic groups, attempting to build bigger towers, to control the “foreigners” around them. And then the Holy Ghost descends, and in one fell swoop, there are no more foreigners. A bunch of tongue-talking, illiterate Galileans turned all the towers of Babel to nibble. Atthe Day ofPentecost,the crisis wherebyhuman languages separated the peoples of the earth, keeping them at odds with one another, is suddenly eradicated. Oppression gives way to the birth pangs of unity. “We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” the astonished nations of the world gather to proclaim. Languages that were once unintelligible are rendered intelligible. Confusion gives way to understanding. “What does this mean?” Every Christian tradition has to answer this question for themselves, of course. There were some in the Jerusalem crowd that simply assumed the disciples had been binging on bloody maries and mimosas,what with all their round-the-clock celebration of Jesus’ supposed resurrection. We tongue-talkers are still considered imbalanced.

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    if not loony. But for Pentecostals, the answer to the question of the crowds still rings out. “What does this mean?” It means in part that God has visited US to change lives and to change history, to forge new creation from the old. This new creation, wrought by the Holy Spirit, requires not silence, but declaration. This new creation requires wonder and bewilderment. Most of all, this new creation requires new tongues – the only intelligible language in God’s new world. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that language is the archive of history. ؟God’s new history operates on new words. Tongues are God’s grand finale of holiness, the final sanctification of language itself so that all things might be made new. T.s. Eliot wrote about his frustration of “trying to leam to use words, and every attempt is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure.” ؟If part of the meaning of the Tower of Babel is that no particular group of people has the comer on the word market, I am certainly not insinuating that Pentecostals have a comer on the tongues market. Such a claim would be transforming tongues to propaganda. I am sure there are abuses and forgeries. Rainer Maria Rilke told a young poet, “Even the best err in words when they are meant to mean most delicate and almost inexpressible things.”״؛ Even so, what I mean to say is that rather than capitulating to word vomit or silence, there is something beautiful about offering the very elements of language as worship unto the God of all language. Our babble somehow levels the towers of Babel all over again. Each Sunday, is this not what we preachers do?

    Notes AaxonlYTeset١Norming the Abnormal: The Development and Function of the Doctrine of Initial Evidence in Classical Pentecostalism (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013), 58. 2 Miller, “BelieWatch: spirit Filled.” http://www.newsweek.com/beliefwatch-spirit-filled-107031, paragraph،. 3 Richard Foster, Celebration ofDiscipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (New York: Harper Collins, 1988), 101. 4Mn,^! ١Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power – and How They Can Be Restored (New York: Harper One, 2011), 2. 5 Fred Herron, No Abiding Place: Thoms Merton and the Searchfor God (Lanham, NY: University Press of America, 2005), 55. 6 Rabindra N. Kanungo and Manual Mendonca, Ethical Dimensions ofLeadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996), 101. 7 Wendell Berry, What Are People Fori: Essays (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2010), 59. 8 Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essays ofRalph Waldo Emerson (Cambridge: Harvard, 1997), 13. 9 T.S. Elliot, Four Quartets (Orlando: Harcourt, 1943), 30. 10 Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (New York: w.w. Norton, 1934), 26.

  • In the dark

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    In the Dark

    John 20:1-18

    Shannon Johnson Kershner

    Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois

    It can be a challenge to proclaim Easter in a Good Friday world, can’t it? Let’s just look at a few things that have happened in our world during this past Holy Week. ؛North Korea systematically shut down the majority of the hotlines they share with South Korea and have stated they are putting their missile and artillery units on “the highest alert.” The KKK tried to have their “biggest rally yet” yesterday in Memphis—only 75 people showed up, and they had a broken megaphone. A female teacher in Pakistan was killed by the Taliban as she walked to work at an all-girls school. And those are just some of the headlines pulled from the New York Times and the Washington Post. It can be a challenge to proclaim Easter in what seems to be too orten a Good Friday world. That challenge is why I am thankful for the way this story from John begins. “Early on the first day of the week, while // was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.. . Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark…. Mary Magdalene certainly lived in what she thought was a Good Friday world. The happenings of the last week must have been a blur to her. The week had begun with such promise and hope—Jesus riding into Jerusalem, surrounded by “Hosanna.” But then, right before her eyes, it all seemed to fall to pieces. Judas betrayed him. Jesus was arrested. And while Jesus was at trial, Peter denied him and was no help atall And then, all those people who, just a few days earlier were singing “Hosannas,” got caught up in the bloodlust and the fear and the political power struggle and started shouting “Crucify” instead. And they did. And now Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried in the tomb. $٠ when the Gospel writer John penned “while it was still dark,” he was making a profound understatement of just how dark it was, just how dark it felt to Mary Magdalene and the others. And I can’t help but wonder if she felt it would be that kind of dark forever. And yet, even while it was still dark, Mary decided to make her way to that tomb. John does not tell us why she was going. Perhaps she just needed to see it again—the tomb, the stone, the finality of it all. Maybe she was on that endless journey to find ever-elusive closure. I wonder if she wanted to make sure the grave looked clean and cared for; if she hoped to put out seasonal flowers. Gr it could have been that she just needed to get out of hergrief-filled, heavy home to get some fresh air. Early morning, damp, dark air. We don’t know her motivation for sure. John simply writes that early on the first day of the w eek,’،/ ر ا7 ا /’/ was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. But when she arrived, Mary felt undone by what she found. The stone had been rolled away. Clearly, someone had desecrated the grave ofher Jesus. Was it not enough they had killed him? Was it not enough they had humiliated him? Was it not enough they had won? I imagine the break in Mary’s heart grew even deeper. She ran back to the male disciples who were all still in hiding, locked up in their own dark rooms

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    of fear and guilt. “They ha¥e taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him.” And even though it was still dark, immediately after Mary’s announeement, ?eter and toe beloved disciple took off to go and see for themselves. But unlike Mary, they did not stop at toe entranee of the tomb, ?eter went in first, and then toe beloved disciple followed. They saw toe tomb was empty. And they saw that the graveclothes that had bound Jesus’ hands, feet, and head were either folded up or rolled up, nicely and neatly. And none of what they found made one bit of sense. Who takes oft toe burialclothes before removingabody?Who folds things up when deseeratingagrave? They did not understand. Like Mary, they believed toe body was gone, but they eould not explain what had happened to it. It was still so dark. It was still so early. It still felt like Good Friday to them. So they returned back to the house with toe others and onee again loeked the door behind them. But Mary? Well, Mary could not leave. Mary stayed right there and refused to be anywhere else with her grief. And as she remained in that plaee, Mary did what most of us do whenever someone dear to us dies: she wept and wept and wept. Afew days ago-they were singing Hosannas. A few days ago, life held such hope and promise. And now, not only did she not have her living Jesus, but she did not even have his dead body anymore. So all she knew to do was stay there and weep. At some point, though, she must have realized that her eyes had adjusted, grown used to the darkness. So she bent down to look inside the tomb for herself. And she saw what John says were two angels in white, sitting where Jesus’ body had been laid. But Mary, having adjusted to being in toe dark, did not have seen them as angels. You ean tell by her response. She did not know who they were, but they brought her no eomfort. After all, she was living in a Good Friday world. And everyone knows you don’t see angels in a Good Friday world ؛you only see strangers. In a Good Friday world, you don’t feel comfort; you only feel threat. In a Good Friday world, you don’t greet people with hope; you only peer at them through eyes dimmed by suspieion. When you live only in a Good Friday world and your eyes have gotten too used to the dark, and you are crying over a stolen body, a stolen hope, a stolen promise, everyone you meet is not a potential friend, but a potential thief.^ Even two angels sitting in an empty tomb. “Woman, why are you weeping?” they ask. “They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him.” Now I must eonfess that Mary showed a lot more restraint in that moment than I might have shown. When I live in a Good Friday world, I get a lot angrier than Mary appears to be. “Woman, why are you weeping?” “I am weeping beeause I just heard ehildren’s voiees on toe radio talking about how their parents had to let their power get shut off in order to buy food.” “It gets awfully dark,” one little voiee admitted. “Woman, why are you weeping?” “I am weeping beeause I keep hearing of new advaneed eaneer diagnoses for people whom I love and I ean’t make it okay.” “Woman, why are you weeping?” “I am weeping because as I watched toe debates outside toe Supreme Court this week, I realized how diffieult it might be for us as chureh family to talk about marriage in ways in whieh everyone feels heard, valued, and loved؛ yet I am eonvieted we must’” “Woman, why are you weeping?” “I am weeping beeause of stories like Stubenville and Newtown and too many others to name.” “Woman, why are you weeping?” “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

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    And after Mary responded to those strangers, you get this sense that she had had enough. So she turned around to leave, but someone was standing there, blocking her way, someone that John tells us is the risen Jesus. But sweet Mary, well, Mary’s eyes had grown so used to the dark. She had adjusted to it. And the shroud of her Good Friday world felt so heavy upon her shoulders. So all she saw was a stranger, someone who looked suspicious, a possible thief. She was in such a Good Friday state that she could not even recognize her Jesus. “Sir, if you have carried him away, just tell me where he is and 1 will go and get him.” Let me just go and get the body and put it back where it is supposed to be, so that we can roll the stone back in place and be done with all of this. Let’s just get back to the way it is now, the way of Good Friday and darkness and pain so that we get adjusted to it and learn how to survive in it. But Jesus did not want her, us, to get adjusted to it. Living in God’s reign is about more than mere survival. So he did the one thing he knew that might clear her eyes. “Mary. Mary.” He called her name. For our risen Savior knows that when you are living in a Good Friday world and your eyes have grown too used to the dark and your heart is broken, and you are tired of weeping and the shroud of grief or loss or brokenness feels so heavy on your shoulders, only one thing can stop you and bring you into Easter life. You have to hear him call your name. “John. Gin. Beth. Brad.” Our risen Lord and Savior knows that the only way to shake us out of the Good Friday haze is to call our name. And God does that in all kinds of ways. God does it with music that frees our souls. God does it with poetry or the hug of a dear friend. God does it with the quick laughter of a child or a warm meal from your deacon. Maybe God does it with a dream or a vision or a real sense of hearing Jesus’ voice calling you. God uses all kinds of people, all kinds of tactics to get to us. For our risen Savior knows that the only way to shake us into Easter newness is to call our name one way or another. So our eyes might be opened to the sun that is starting to rise, so we might remember the darkness does not last forever, so we are reminded that it is precisely when we are in the darkness, surrounded by the shadows 0fG 00dFriday,eyes tired from weeping,souls weary fromfighting, that it is precisely out ofthat kind of stuff that Easter always rises. In the midst of the darkness, in the midst of the chaos and grief, in the midst of hell and brokenness, in the midst of utter hopelessness, in the midst of a Good Friday world, in the midst of God-forsakenness, in the midst of all of that—our testimony standing at the empty tomb with Mary is that our God is still at work, and Easter always rises. God does some of God’s best stuff in the dark. Always has, always will. The risen Jesus calls out Mary’s name and her eyes are cleared and she recognizes him. And then beloved Mary does what we all try to do in response to such powerful Easter moments. She goes from seeing resurrection and confessing her faith to trying to grab it and contain it with both hands.^ Mary immediately embraces him ,ﻞﻟ^لأآةا and expected, but then does not want to let go again. So Jesus has to say to her, “No, stop holding on to me; stop clinging to me.” That is not what you do now. Rather, when you have experienced Easter power and heard the risen Lord call your name one way or another, you give up on trying to contain and control Jesus. That is not what you do now. Instead, you go and you tell. You go and you tell your brothers and sisters that he is risen. You go and you tell your

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    brothers and sisters that though we ean kill God’s Love, we eannot keep God’s Love dead and buried.* ¥٠٧ go and you tell your brothers and sisters that death has lost its sting and that nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, not even the powers and ^ine’ipalities that deal in death. ¥٠٧ go and you tell your brothers and sisters that the risen Lord is also calling their names, and longs for them to see with their own eyes the power and the freedom of being God’s Easter people in what too often looks like a Good Friday world. And then if people say to you, “Prove it.” ¥٠٧ simply say, “1 can’t.” The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God.^ 1 can’t prove it ٠٢ explain it ٠٢ force it to make sense. But, 1 believe it. 1 trust it. 1 have experienced it. 1 know it. 1 base my life on it. For as an Easter people, we can testify that even in those times when we find our own eyes have adjusted to the dark. Good Friday is trying to take hold of our imaginations, the powers and principalities that deal in death are all around and gathering strength, then our testimony as a people is that God always does God’s best work in the dark and that Easter always rises. We believe that on the other side of death and pain is always resurrection, always new creation, always life. $٠ we are invited to listen for the calling of our names to clear our eyes, to go, and to tell. $٠ sisters and brothers, on this Easter Sunday, this is what 1 know: 1 have seen the Lord. The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed Alleluia!

    Notes 1 From the news of Holy W eek in ^أ( ول . 2 This insight is from Anna Carter Florene’e. my preaching professor at ،-‘olumbi ،؛Seminary. She uses this imagery in her article called “?reaching the Text,” on www.goodpreacher.com. 3 Again, thanks to Dr. Carter Florence for sueh wisdom. 4 This great Easter proclamation was preached by the Rev. Dr. William Sloane Coffin, one of my preaching heroes. وBarbara Brown Taylor. “Escape from the Tomb,” Christian Century, April 1,1998.

  • The Samaritan

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    Page 40

    The Samaritan

    Amos 7:7-17; Luke 10:25-37

    James s. Lowry

    Hendersonville, North Carolina

    I suppose a Sunday in Advent is as good a time as any, and better than most, to squirm beneath the standard for doing right, set for the moment uncomfortably beside the standard for doing grace. Setting matters of such consequence side by side on a day when we eagerly long for and anticipate the fulfillment of the promise that the Kingdom of God shall come on earth as it is in heaven may signal that they ought always to be set side by side. Wonder if that is it? To our way of thinking, must the standard for doing right always be set beside the standard for doing grace? “I have seen a vision of a plumb line set in your midst,” said the prophet to the people of God. A plumb line is nothing more than a string with a weight on the end which a builder holds beside a wall to be the standard for straight up and down. “I have seen a vision of a plumb line set in your midst,” said the prophet to the people of God. “Against that plumb line God will judge what you do that is right and what you do that is wrong; what you do that is faithful; and what you do that is faithless; what you do that is true; and what you do that is a lie.” Wonder if the congress has any such sense of a plumb line in their midst, any sense of being judged for doing the right thing? But that was for the Fourth of July holiday. This is the church’s Lord’s day, and it’s the first Sunday in Advent. We’re waiting on the Kingdom of God. Today the question is put to the church. “Against that plumb line,” said the prophet, “there is no margin for error…. I repeat, no margin for error.” Other places the prophet talks of forgiveness, but not here, not in the context of the plumb line. Then, more than half a millennium later, “Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asked Jesus; whereupon Jesus told the lawyer the story of the Good Samaritan, and no one doesn’t know the stoiy of the Good Samaritan, only the Bible doesn’t call him good. The church added the adjective, and what the Samaritan did has become the standard fordoinggra؛.؟

    always be seen side by side: do right, do faithfulness, do truth all on one side; and just beside: do ¡Tace…extravagantly. Maybe that is the way it should always be. According to the way I remember hearing the episode, it happened about mid-afternoon of an uncommonly hot day rather like the uncommonly hot days we had around here last July and August. Heat rose off the supermarket parking lot like the fumes of a perdition and sent what few diehard shoppers there were slow-treading to their cars like tired mules maneuvering the rows of a wasted com field. A rather worn-down African American woman of the age to be a grandmother made her way with a loaded shopping cart to an old ratty looking blue Buick with one scavenged yellow fender barely attached. The head liner was sagging. One child was in the shopping cart. Another was clinging to her skirt. She must have been their grandmother. The only colorful spot in the wasteland was a young European Ameri­

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    can woman fashionably dressed in tennis togs. A small bag of groceries was tucked neatly under her arm. With her free hand, she held a child of six or seven in tow. Just as the tennis-tog woman reached her Suburban station wagon and the worn-down grandmother reached her ratty Buickjust beside it, there erupted a few yards away a bmtal shouting match of a sure and certain domestic nature. A hard-living white couple was coming out of the supermarket cursing each other and shouting at the tops of their voices. My friend who told the tale and a half dozen or so other people were on hand to witness the sad drama. When the fashionable woman with groceries in hand and child in tow saw and heard what was happening, she quickly unlocked the Suburban, got her child and herself inside, and locked the doors behind them … click. The grandmother likewise hurried her charges into the safety of the Buick … click. At that precise moment, the shouting match turned physically violent. The man struck the woman full across the face and sent her sprawling on the hot pavement. With skin scraped from several places about her head, hands, and knees and a trickle of blood emerging from the comer of her mouth, the poor woman got up and ran in a limping gait toward the Suburban. Her attacker was in lumbering and heated pursuit. The badly beaten woman frantically knocked on the window of the Suburban pleading for a place of safety. With a shake of her head and a despairing lift of her hands, the tennis-tog woman denied admission, and the engine of the Suburban roared to life. Just then the door of the Buick swung open. The worn-down grandmother emerged, now come to full life and energy. With her black hand, she grabbed the beaten woman, pushed her into the driver’s side of the Buick, and slammed the door. She then stood squarely in front of the closed door between the attacker and his victim with a hand firmly planted on each of her considerable hips, whereupon the attacker put both hands in his pockets, lowered his head, and began to examine his shoelaces. My friend and several other bystanders gathered about to assure there would be no further acts of violence until the police arrived. Meanwhile, the Suburban circled the parking lot once and returned to the scene. The person inside lowered the window and said to the assembled crowd, “I was afraid of what might happen to my daughter.” “Nothing so harmful as the lesson you have taught her,” said my idealistic friend in disgust as she echoed my own hard thoughts on the subject. And yet…and yet, we do understand, don’t we? I’ve heard one of the first lessons taught to rookie police officers is to be extremely cautious when they have to get involved in a domestic altercation. In all honesty and candor, if it had been our daughter and our grandson in that parking lot, I would have been relieved to see our daughter exercise such caution. The child’s safety really was the matter of priority concern. It may make US all sad and even angry beyond measure at the state of affairs that put her in such a circumstance, but no one, not one can blame her. Just so, in the story of the Good Samaritan, many experts now agree, no one in the hearing of Jesus when he told the story and no one who first read Luke’s account of the story was surprised in the least that the priest and the Lvite passed by on the other side, sad and disappointed perliaps and maybe even angry, but neither shocked nor surprised. ؛You remember the story of the Good Samaritan, I’m sure. A lawyer asked Jesus how to obtain eternal life. Though there is no evidence of hostility, it was a trick question, so Jesus turned the table and asked the lawyer what the law says on the subject. The lawyer answered with the well-known joining of two laws: love

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    God and love neighbor. On that, Jesus and the lawyer agreed, only Jesus added the caveat that the lawyer must do the law and not just know the law. The lawyer then pushed the matter by asking Jesus to define neighbor, whereupon Jesus told the now famous story of the Good Samaritan, only, as I said earlier, we call him good while Jesus only called him a Samaritan. It was enough to make the point unmistakable. The story goes like this: on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho, a man, presumably a Jew, was beaten, robbed, and left for dead. At intervals, a priest and a Levite, both religious leaders, passed by on the other side. As I said, no matter how much preaching to the contrary you have heard and I have preached, neither Jesus’ listeners nor Luke’s readers would have been shocked by their reaction, disappointed perhaps but not shocked. The shocking sunrise, the punch of the parable, was yet to come. As the story continues, a Samaritan not only stopped to help, but the Samaritan went toextravagant lengths in helping: he bound the wounds,provided transportation, provided lodging, and promised to return, all at an extravagant cost. Little wonder the church calls him good. It’s hard for US to grasp the enmity between first-century Jews and first-century Samaritans, just like it’s hard for US to grasp the enmity that still exists all over the world, including the Middle East. The Samaritans were half-breeds. They made a mongrel race of the seed of Abraham ؛but worse, they profaned the faith of Abraham and corrupted the law of Moses. This is more than the stuff of a Hatfield helping a McCoy in western North Carolina or of a Jet helping a Shark in West Side Story or of a Capulet helping a Montague in Romeo and Juliet. More than that and much more real, this is the real life stuff of a Jew helping a Palestinian in Israel or a Serb helping a Croat in Eastern Europe or a Tutsi helping a Hutu in Central Africa or a Sunni helping a Shia in Iraq; or a member of a black gang helping a member of an Asian gang in downtown L.A. And what shall we say of the Yellow Dog Democrats and Tea Party Republicans in Washington or of a red-neck flying an outsize Confederate flag from his outsized pickup stopping to help a white-haired old man change a tire on his Prius with a peace symbol on the rear window. Or what shall we say of the resentment and suspicion that exist between liberal and conservative Christians? This is only a partial list. There’s a lot of suspicion, fear, and hate wafting about our world like sultry and sinister breezes, but even from the partial list, you get the picture; and, once you get over the shock of it all, you soon begin to get the even bigger picture … the picture of some great and eternal tmth, the picture that it is only acts of unlikely and extravagant grace that have a chance at bringing healing to our most gaping and bloody wounds. Devilish thing for me to do on a single Sunday, don’t you agree, especially on a Sunday in Advent: taking the plumb line that sets the standard of right and wrong, faith and faithless, truth and lie, and setting it beside the standard for the grace we must do if there is to be healing. In a day when so little is known of our Bible stories, it is difficult to say any one of them is too well known. This one, however, gets very close to crossing that line. There are laws named for the Good Samaritan which protect pple who stop to render aid from lawsuits. There is a well-known charity named for the Samaritan’s purse. There are awards given out in schools that are likewise named for the Samaritan, not to mention the countless hospitals that bear his name. The danger in such familiarity is that the real point of the parable might be missed. The story, for example, is not

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    a prescription for how we should carry out acts of charity. As a matter of fact, the leaders of most congregations I know strongly recommend that you not give cash to needy people who approach you on the street or in the church parking lot asking for assistance. Of course, there are instances when to do so is the only right thing, and when confronted with such situations, we must each one make the decision of what to do; but the truth is, in almost all instances, the church, with its own resources and in cooperation with other churches and agencies has in place ways we can provide more healing expressions of grace than giving a few dollars in the parking lot. Nor is this mostly a story about hypocrisy among church leaders. As serious and rampant as that problem no doubt is, and even though that is a subtext in the parable, this is not the best text to address that sad subject, lest in doing so, the real punch of the parable be obscured. The text is mostly about extravagant grace coming from unlikely quarters and the healing such unlikely and extravagant grace brings. The late Fred Craddock, one of the best known and most beloved teachers of preaching ever, has said that you can’t really understand this parable until you have identified with the man in the ditch. I think he’s onto something important. Many years ago when I was a very young preacher, there was a controversy festering in the larger church. At the time I was serving a middle size congregation in a small town in the panhandle of Florida. For quite some time presbytery meetings on the subject had been tense. Finally on the day of division, trumped up charges and counter charges were leveled, harsh words were exchanged,bittemess was palpable, and by day’s end, the vote was taken. Division was real. Sixteen congregations left our denomination. It was by far the saddest and most bitter day of my ministty. I continue to believe it was an unnecessary division based largely on lies and counter lies. As it happened, not many weeks after that, a couple having dinner at our home got a frantic call from their babysitter saying their infant was in distress. I drove them home at breakneck speed. From there I drove them with equal speed to our little hospital emergency room and from there, at the doctor’s strong urging, I drove them, again at equal speed, to a regional medical center in Pensacola more than a hundred miles away. It was long before EMS became nearly as sophisticated as it is today. Finally, at about 3:00 in the morning, with the baby stabilized and grandparents were on the scene, I took my leave. Only then, walking through the hospital lobby, knowing we had come into the parking lot on little more than prayer and gas fumes, I realized that in the msh to leave, I had left home without my wallet. I had neither cash nor credit card with which to buy gasoline. When I turned to find a seat from which to ponder my predicament, there, coming down the corridor as if on cue, was one of my most ardent adversaries from the ill-fated presbytery meeting. He was in the hospital at such an unlikely hour to call on a desperately ill member of his congregation. You must know that our respective reasonably sophisticated vocabularies are all that kept the names we had called each other just a few days before from being profane if not vulgar. In my view, he and his ilk had profaned the deepest truth I hold, and he thought the same of me and my ilk. Each of US was certain the other had corrupted the faith of our beloved church. We greeted each other and exchanged a few halfeearted and tired niceties. Finally , I mustered enough courage to tell him my plight. Without the least hesitation, he loaned me twenty dollars for gasoline. I thanked him and turned to go out into the

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    night. As I was starting the car, I looked and saw him nmning across the parking lot. “Wait,” he said. “Take my Visa card just in case you have car trouble or want to stop and get something to eat.” Healing took place there in the parking lot in Pensacola. The church was not reunited. My opinion of his position and his opinion of mine did not change, but healing took place. Just think of it: alongside the measure of right behavior, faithfulness, and truth telling, we have set, at least for today, the measure of just such healing grace as happened in the hospital parking lot. It is the standard of what we must do. There is no alternative. It is the grace we must practice. We have no choice; that is, if we’re to be faithfill to the gospel we profess, we have no choice. You didn’t forget Jesus added that caveat, did you? Just as we must not only know the law, we must do it; we must not only know the Samaritan’s grace, but we must do it. By doing such grace, there will be healing. As to all others out there who on this day hate each other, we cannot force our faith upon them. But we can demonstrate it. No, that’s wrong: we mwi demonstrate it. It is in the demonstration of such radical grace that the hate-tom world has hope for healing, and we dare to await with eager anticipation the sure coming of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

    Notes 1. This is an adaptation of a story I heard at Morning Prayers some considerable time ago at the Mount Pleasant Church. Shirley Hendrix is the person who told the story. Whether she observed the episode or reported having heard of it, I cannot remember. I do remember that the editorial comment was hers. 2. Fred Craddock. Luke from the Interrelation Series (John Knox, اwo)49 اf; Cousar et al, Testsfor Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV₪₪ Year c ( Wcstminster John Knox, 1994),426 f; Robert c. Tannehill, Luke from Abingdon New Testament Commentaries (Abingdon, 1996), 181 f.

    Journal G ٢Preachers

  • Preaching during lent 2015

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    Preaching during Lent in 2015

    Liz Goodman

    Monterey United Church of Christ, Monterey, Massachusetts

    “What we have in mind is not a ‘?reaching the Lenten Texts’ article, but an article on Lenten preaching in 2015 that is a reflection, a kind of musing , on the task of preaching during Lent in 2015…. What are the distinct challenges and opportunities for this particular season?” ~Walter Brueggemann & Erskine Clarke Editors, Journalfor Preachers

    Preaching ?reaching is a funny thing. Formal, it faces now an age valuing informality; and inasmuch as a sermon is^،??־formed, it faces criticism as our culture aggressively (if disingenuously) insists upon “authenticity.” Authoritative, it’s assailed as stifling and pretentious. Really, many would have it shunted aside altogether, many even in toe Church-the sermon swept ؛too toe dustbin of church history. 1 suppose this isn’t true of us—we who read and contribute to such a thing as JournalforPreachers. And yet, it should be said that preaching, though having stood toe test oftime, is teetering before toe test of contemporary relevance. 1 mean, no one believes in the “sage on toe stage” anymore. The room in which I tend to preach makes such criticism even more immediate. Don’t get me wrong: 1 love my sanctuary, our sanctuary. Small and square, lit by natural light through tall, clear windows, there is little room for toe inauthentic. No, toe space here between I and thou is too thin to uphold pretense, “chancel-prancing” 1 once heard it called. (A woman in my congregation always notices my shoes from her pew while 1 stand in toe pulpit, and once even noticed an outbreak of poison ivy on my ankles. A man in toe congregation can, during worship, gauge toe sort ofweek I’ve had based on how bitten are my fingernails.) A “preaching box,” our building might derogatorily be described, and yet there’s truth to it: it carries sound, and there is little to distract toe hearer from listening (except for my shoes, my fingernails). But this means that all 1 have to work with is words This is true for all of us, of course-all of us preachers of whom Barbara Brown Taylor said, “All toe preacher has is words,” and so “watching a preacher climb into toe pulpit is a lot like watching a tightrope walker climb onto toe platform as toe drumroll begins.” 1 And yet, that’s not toe whole truth. No, because toe quality of speech in a sermon is of a different order. This is what DietrichBonhoefferwas getting atwhen he wrote that “the proclaimed word is not a medium of expression for something else, something which lies behind it, but rather it is toe Christ himself walking though his congregation as toe word.” ؛ (So, take your time, dear preacher.) This is also what Thomas Long was getting at when, early in his career, he wrote, “For toe pastor [preparing to preach], toe primary question is not ‘What shall 1 say?’ but ‘What do 1 want to happen?”’3 More recently, he claimed, “Like toe risen Christ himself, preaching is a word from God’s firture embarrassingly and disturbingly thrust into toe present, announcing toe gift of freedom in a time of captivity, toe gift

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    of peace to a world of conflict, and joy even as the lamenting continues.ي These are all writers whose books are likely on your shelves, and so I quote them here not thinking I’m telling you something new, but hoping that to hear them again is reassurance to you as it is to me. Twoothershaverecentlyjoinedthis faithfulchorusofassurance: Charles L. Campbell and Johan H. Cilliars, whose book Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric ofFolly is one 1 can’t shake. As they consider the odd and enduring phenomenon of preaching, they do so with one pulpit in mind: “In South Korea,” they write, “there is a remarkable place, [a sobering place], called the Reunification Observatory, which sits high upon a hill at the border between South and North Korea.” ؛They note that “all around the military presence is palpable-training camps, uniforms, machine guns.” ؛ But also there, they write, are two large statues^ne of the Buddha with his arms open in blessing and the other of Mary, her hands folded in prayer. Both face north, to North Korea, quiet witnesses to a truth not merely stifled ٥٠the other side ofthat absurdly drawn line, the 59* parallel, but criminalized, punishable by imprisonment ٠٢ death, or death-by-imprisonment as is often the case.7 They continue, “A little further up the hill is a chapel, [where upon entering], you notice only one thing. The entire front of the chapel is a large, clear glass window . And through the window you see the hills ofNorth Korea-and the DMZ, the fences, the barbed wire….”8 This is to say that everyone in the sanctuary has the same view as the Buddha and the Mother Mary, and perhaps more provocatively that everyone in the sanctuary joins their quiet witness, there to be seen by those whose true seeing is proscribed. “It is as if that is the point of the chapel.” And as for the pulpit, it is small and right there “in front ofthat window…. And every worship day the preacher stands in between North and South.. .with nothing but a Word. And he [٠٢ she] preaches as the congregation looks toward their enemies, who are also their brothers and sisters. And in that liminal space he [ ٢٠she] keeps ٥٠preaching, week ؛٥and week out, though little ٢٠nothing seems to change.”9 The room ؛٥which I preach could hardly be fdrther from this place; the pulpits from which most ofus preach, I imagine, couldn’t be planted in more different soil. And yet I think it’s true, this which Campbell and Cilliers claim, that

    Whenever we stand up to preach with nothing but a word in the midst of a world shaped by armies and weapons ofmass destruction, by global technology and economy, by principalities and powers that overwhelm both by their seductiveness and their threat, [we do so with surprising power]…. In the face of those structures and institutions and systems and myths and ideologies that so often hold us captive and prevent us from imagining alternatives to their deadly ways, preaching often seems like a weak and fruitless response.’؛؛

    But, “Like the gospel itself, [such an apparently foolish act] interrupts and ٥٥settles normative discourse ؛٥order to unmask the old age and to open a space where the new creation might be perceived.” ” Cne Sunday morning a few years ago, early in Lem, following a snowstorm, our sanctuary held but three or four congregants. It was one of a handful of Sundays in my small congregation when preaching seemed simply too pretentious a prospect for

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    me. I teetered before foe mostty empty sanetuaiy as we embarked on foe service, We sang a hymn, though a capella beeause our accompanist hadn’t come. We recited foe Call to Worship and foe Prayer of Invocation. And when time came for foe scripture readings and sermon, I asked those gathered, “Shall I preach, ٠٢ shall we do more of a Bible study ٠٢ meditation?” A woman up front, after a still moment during which she probably tried to figure out which I’d prefer, gave up that game and said simply, “Please preach to us.” Anri so 1 did.

    Lent Lent as a season is a tough sell. Known as a time when you “give things up”— things like chocolate or coffee ٠٢ watching TV, things those who mean to give them up tend to enjoy; known as a time for re^foance-cum-penitence-a time for reflecting on your wrong-doing and swearing to do better next time; associated with such burdensome activities as confession, contrition, sacrifice, and selflessness, Lent is a tough sell. Hair shirt, anyone? , ٧٠٧in foe cashmere sweater: yeah, I’m talking to

    Lent during Year B is, if you ask me, all foe more so. Last year, 1 had the pleasure of offering commentary for this publication, commentary for the Lenten readings , plump stories from John’s gospel-Nicodemus and Lazarus, foe woman at foe well, and foe man bom blind, all encounters wifo Jesus that were both intimate and profound. Year ,٨1 found, is something of a delight. Year B, by contrast, is more business-minded, which frankly leaves me a little cold. Indeed, foe word ofthese six weeks is a business word just shy of contract: covenant, which, granted, is warmer in tone, but perhaps only by a couple ٢٠degrees. Week one would have us remember foe covenant God made wifo Noah but which was for all creation-a covenant that obliged God never to set about destroying what God had made and that obliged humanity to have dominion, an enormous responsibility , yet on foe condition that this would be counter-weighted by reverence for all life Week two would have us consider foe covenant God made wifo Abram, now Abraham, but which was for all his descendants-a covenant that obliged God to provide for this people prosperity, place, and faithfulness, and that obliged foe people to walk wifo God and be blameless, which is to say neither casting blame nor defending against blame, but leaving blame out ofthe relating altogether. Week three brings us to Sinai wifo foe people Israel where God struck a covenant wifo Moses, but which lives on as a model for all governance of all peoples-the rule ofLaw. This Law would have God be faithftrl as fois people’s Lord and would have foe people follow ten remarkably light commandments, these which can be said to come down to some honoring, some remembering, and some basic acts of self-restraint. Week four has us in foe wilderness wifo the people, whose suffering now includes serpents and the frightening potential of dying by their poisoned bite. What happens here is more confirmation than fresh covenant—Moses fashioning, wifo foe Lord’s permission, a bronze serpent to be lifted up on a pole so that those b itte n may look upon it and be saved from suffering and death. It’s an odd story on its own terms, one that foe people Israel perhaps appropriated from a neighboring nation. But one thing it might mean is that God wants foe people to be healthy.

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    Week five promises a radical move on God’s part, a new covenant that will he within each person, written on the peoples’ hearts. That’s one way this breaks from covenantal convention. Another is this-that while this covenant requires of God forgiveness of the peoples’ iniquity and remembering their sin ٠٥more, it requires of the people apparently nothing, neither teaching nor testifying, for they all shall simply know the Lord. Week six, of course, brings us to the cross^ither entering Jerusalem with Jesus if we perform the Liturgy of the Palms ٠٢ enduring with Jesus his passion, if this is the Liturgy we choose. The cross is said to be the covenant by which all previous covenants are firlfilled, the cross, by which we see what God is like (forgiving, selfgiving ) and what God means for us to be like (forgiving, self-giving), indeed what salvation, both as a means and as an end, is like: forgiveness, reconciliation, peace. I’ll admit that the concept of covenant has me slow to come around. Though it is arguably the “governing idea of the Bible,”12 though it is certainly the governing idea of Lent, Year B, it’s a concept that has only rarefy captured my faith-imagination or had me feeling closer to God-rarely until now. A covenant is, of course, a contract of mutual accountability. It arose in the ancient w orld-two main types, one between parties equal in power and one between a sovereign and a group offar lesser power. And while it’s true that these were largely understood as contracts among peoples and kingdoms, they found their way into toe biblical imagination so to conceive of how God might relate to humanity. Max L. Stackhouse, in his book Globalization and Grace, explores covenant as a notion that could be useful in humanity’s move from nationalism to globalism. Be notes that such ،:ovenantal relating formed a structure for toe exercising of power that was about mutual obligation rather than coercion or force,12 and “a structured accountability that was intended to help all people to deal with one another.’’’^ What’s more, it was applicable in many relational contexts: “God-human, sovereign-citizen, group-group,.. .friend-friend…,[Andas such, it bound] persons who were once Strangers to new responsibilities and opportunities for reasonable, freely chosen affective associations.” 1* Yes, I’ll admit that talk of covenant has often left me cold. But, listen: I suspect “freely-chosen affective associations” is simply a more intellectual way of saying “love,” and I suspect “structured accountability” and “mutual obligation” are simply more pragmatic ways of saying “I love you.” I remember toe first time “accountability” arose—the word and concept—in my relationship with my congregation. At my first annual meeting, fourteen years ago now, toe moderator wondered how we might make accountability part of our equation : how would toe congregation hold me accountable to my call? This might strike some as funny—those congregations and toeir pastors for whom accountability is written right into toe contract. But mine, as I’ve indicated, is a tiny church in a small town, so this level of formality was new or at least was newly awoken. And, to be honest, it offended me. Young and uppity, I wanted no part of “accountability.” I wanted to be accountable to ٠٥one and nothing except to God. Couldn’t I be trusted just to do my job? Couldn’t I be trusted just to do what’s right? Over a decade later now, I want very much to be accountable to them—for us all to be accountable, obligated to one another. I want us to have enough reverence for what we’re doing together so as to be covenantal about it all. Indeed, it’s one of my

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    aims in their regard: to leave this tiny e©ngregation with sueh a sense of import and purpose that they might engage their next pastor intentionally in eovenant as they have come to do with me. Yes, this is the lesson that I mean to leave them with. But, having said that, 1 do hope they’re slow learners.

    2015 1 cannot claim to he a prognosticator when it comes to the challenges that 2015 will bring. 1 have no secret knowledge and no greater even public knowledge than any other preacher out there. I read the n e w sp a p e rs as much of it as 1 can get to. 1 liston to NPR and various news podcasts. 1 am equal parts enlightened about and mystified by the world around me. That said, 1 trust that the riches of scripture, preaching, and worship can ransom current events from the maw of nihilism that threatens and enthralls. This trust, however, presents as open-ended, as gestions that we preachers might use Lent 2015 to answer. One challenge that 1 imagine will continue into 2015 (and well beyond!) is the crisis of climate change and all that it entails. 2013 saw carbon emissions rise at a record pace. The oceans are acidifying at the fastest rate in 300 million years due to carbon emissions from human civilization. A study by the Audubon Society of America reveals that 40 percent ofbird species could be extinct by 2100 because of global warming. These are three headlines on the website Vox right now. Surely,the covenantthatweenjoywith God throughNoah has something to speak to us now. So 1 wonder what word we preachers might offer on the first Sunday of Lent in this regard-what word of reverence for all life and self-restraint for common good, what word of mutual obligation and hopefitl forward-looking, we might utter in the conviction that this word will have enduring effect. Another challenge that 1 imagine will yet be with us is the crisis in the Middle E ast-in Iraq and Syria, in Israel/Palestine, and inAmerican foreign policy as regards this fraught region. ISIS (or 1S1L or Islamic State) has revealed itself to have great ambition with their expansionist Islamist ideology. Syria is an unstable and brutal place under Assad’s terrorizing leadership, which onfy looks good when compared to ISIS, ¡srael^alestine heats up and cools down, and people die and people die; but these two neighboring relatives can’t seem to settle into common cause. The us, for its part, is the greatest military power in the world, and yet is largely impotent in

    Surety, the covenant that God established through Abraham to all who would be Abraham’s offspring has something to speak to us now, something of living free of blame, neither casting it nor participating in it nor defending against it. So 1 wonder what word we preachers might offer that would witness to the possibilities offorgiveness amidst a region roiling with blame, resentment, and war. Still another challenge that will abide into 2015 is the racism that yet casts a dreadfhl and shamefid pall over American society. The events in Ferguson, Missouri, are fresh yet fading as 1 write this—a crisis that is an opportunity for us, yet one that we might collectively not pursue. Michael Brown is dead, and nothing will change that, and we should be loath to justify it with good intentions now. Thinking more generally, I believe the grip of white power and privilege will be nearly impossible to loosen. Realty, only toe good news of love, the good news to be found in mutual obligation, truly toe joy to be found in love of the stranger in your midst, 1 suspect,

    Lem 2015

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    will accomplish that. Only this will inspire white culture to submit its sometimes aggressive dominance to the mercy of the black (and brown) citizens who’ve lived and sometimes thrived, but more often suffered amidst such gripping dominance. Surely, the covenant that God established through Moses for governance that imagines all people as equal under the Law has something to speak to us now. So 1 wonder what word ofblessed obligation any ofus might utter, what vision ofjustice we might put forth. 1 wonder what word you might let live in your sanctuary and walk amidst your congregation that it might succeed in foe thing to which you, by God’s power and spirit, set forth. The fourth week ofLent seems a good time to think abofo access to healthcare in our society, which is a more complicated thing than the partisan bickering would have us think. ٢٧٠population is aging; foe cost of healthcare is rising, in part because of more effective, though costlier, treatments, ?roviders are tending to specialties that pay well because healthcare as a private enterprise is expensive to get into. But as a public enterprise it gets bogged down in political fights as to what sorts oftreatments are acceptable, justifiable, appropriate. In sum, it’s a mess, and we do little good in preaching of complex problems as if they were easy and we (alone) ^new foe right way through. However, fois we do know, and from foe confirmation offered in foe desert: that God means for God’s people to be healthy and moreover to enjoy equal access to what gives health. Surely then, thinking in terms of covenant could be of help here. Thinking, and then preaching, in terms of structured accountability for foe purpose of love manifest, could unleash a mueh needed spirit of active good will. This is quito an agenda, I realize, exhausting but not exhaustive. Really, I hardly expect any one congregation to get all of this. The truth is, I’m rarely so activist a preacher myself. My congregational context determines this to some degree; why lay on these thirty people foe massive problems of the world week after week? But there’s also foe fact that 1 do wonder how effective human activism is at achieving God’s goal. Are we essential, instrumental, ٠٢ superfluous in God’s working justice and peace into God’s creation, that foe kingdom might come, that all might be made new?^ The covenant the Lord promised through Jeremiah speaks to fois question. Here, God alone is active; here, God alone is obliged. Nothing is required of us, nothing طdemand: foe Law of God will simply be written on our hearts. The covenant of the cross only deepens foe question, ft’s foe old atonement puzzle, you’ll remember it from your ordination paper or your ecclesiastical council ٠٢ your denominational equivalent of these. Does foe crucifixion accomplish atonement ٠٢ does it reveal and lead us in the way of atonement? Does Christ on foe cross win us salvation ٠٢ teach us how to live—cruciform, self-restraining and self-giving—that salvation might be ours, in history and in eternity? Does Jesus’ submission to foe principalities of this age and foe powers of death introduce something new of God into human history or reveal something of God that has ever been and ever will be active? 1 don’t know foe answer to these, but I do like foe questions. What’s more, 1 like foe invitation and foe assurance that 1 might work for God’s purpose, though if 1 don’t ٠٢ can’t, then that will hardly thwart God’s victory in history and in eternity, today and forever—foe triumph of peace, justice, truth, and love. Truly, fois, unlike coercion or force, motivates me to pray and to preach that we all might set ourselves

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    to God’s good purpose in freedom and joy, in thanks and praise. ?reaching during Lent in 2015 might guide us on this grand journey, ة journey that perhaps b e g in s with the suspicion that the cost of true living is just too high and that ends with the revelation that there is hardly a greater joy than “structured accountability ” and “mutual obligation.” The Bible, as we’ve seen, calls such things covenant and shows them as given for the sake that all might have life and have it in abundance. Jesus called it Love, a Law that is indeed written on our hearts and yet also one in whose hope of fulfillment we preach and teach so as to realize that Love in our every day.

    ؛؛ ا؛ وﺀﺑﻢﺀر؛ﺀﺑﻢ

    God’s grace to you, dear preacher. May your words live amidst your congregation by the power of the Holy Spirit that God’s truth might be kuowu, Jesus’ presence might be felt, and the good news of self-giving love might give form to the lives of the people who receive of your foolish preaching, your faithful offering. It’s not much, but it’ll do.

    Notes 1 Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (Boston: Cowley ?ublications, 1993), 76. 2 Dietrich Bonheoffer, “The Proclaimed Word,” in The Company ofPreachers: Wisdom on Preaching from Augustine to the Present, edited by Richard Lischer (Grand Rapids, MI: William R. Berdmans Rublishing Company, 2002), 34. 3 Thomas G. Long, The Witness ofPreaching (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), 32. 4 Thomas G. Long, Preachingfrom Memory to Hope (Louisville: Wetminster/John Knox Press, 2009), 124. 5 Charles L. Campbell and Johan H. Cilliers, Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric ofFolly (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), 126. 6 Campbell and Cilliers, 126. 7 As I write this, toree Americans have recently been sentenced to hard labor in North Korea, one for allegedly leaving a Bible in a public place. 8 Campbell and Cilliers, 126. 9 Campbell and Cilliers, 126. 10 Campbell and Cilliers, 18. 11 Campbell and Cilliers, 216. 12MaxL.StackhousQ,GodandGlobalization, Vol.4 :GlobalizationandGrace(New York:Continuum, 2007), 163. 13 Stackhouse, 163. 14 Stackhouse, 162. 15 Stackhouse, 164. 16 Thomas Long is helpful here in urging preachers to engage in eschatological preaching, this which “promises a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ and invites people to participate in a coming future that, while it is not dependent upon their success, is open to toe labor of their hands.” (Long, Preaching from Memory to Hope, 125.)

  • The Impossible Possibility of Forgiveness

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    The Impossible Possibility ofForgiveness

    Walter Brueggemann

    Cincinnati, Ohio

    Here are three questions a preacher might ponder concerning the opportunity to preach the good news of forgiveness. They are, I submit, not simply questions for preachers ؛they are questions that can be articulated for and pondered by church folks, for the proclamation and experience of forgiveness do not amount to an instantaneous happening for most of US, but belong in the flow of the narrative life of each of US. For that reason forgiveness as a theological possibility needs to be framed in intelligible and critical ways. In what follows I will suggest how each of these questions is processed and resolved in Old Testament texts.

    .lat Makes Forgiveness Impossible? “The Hate Must Stop Somewhere” (The Railroad Man)؛ Forgiveness remains impossible when life is parsed in the mode of “deedsconsequences ,” when it is thought and experienced that deeds have an unbreakable, tight, predictable connection to consequences that arise from them. While this mode of thinking can be imagined positively, that good deeds evoke blessings, most often this assumption is understood and accented negatively, that bad deeds inevitably and inescapably produce negative consequences, whether by automatic results (smoking causes cancer) or by punishing authorities that guarantee moral order (three strikes and you are out). Because the calculus of deeds and consequences cannot be broken or violated, forgiveness is impossible. One must live with the consequences of one’s deeds…to perpetuity! This notion of “deeds-consequences” is pervasive in the Old Testament (and reflected in the probe of John 9:2):2 First,itis the theological assumptionofthe theology ofDeuteronomy,the dominant theology of the Old Testament. Obedience to the commandments yields well-being ؛ disobedience yields covenant curses (see Deut 28:1-68).

    See I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord our God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your hearts turn away and you do not hear (obey), but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. (Deut. 30:15-18)

    The disproportionate accent on curses in chapter 28 indicates that the force of this double “if-then” arrangement is on the negative. Second, this same “deeds-consequences” construct is the structural assumption of the recurring prophetic speeches of judgment that regularly consist in an indictment of Torah disobedience and a sentence that follows from old covenant curses. ؛The

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    two ae chaacteristically connected by a “therefore” that allows for both automatic outcomes and divine agency:

    Hear the word of the Lord, o people of Israel; For the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns. And all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals, and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing. (Hosea 4:1-3)

    Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; Yet they lean on the Lord and say, “Surely the Lord is with US! No harm shall come on US.” Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins. And the mountain of the house a wooded height. (Micah 3:11-12)

    The prophets, reflective of the tradition of Deuteronomy, assume a close connection between deeds and consequences, between covenantal disobedience and covenantal curse. The “divine therefore” permits connections to be made that might otherwise elude US. Third, the same connection of deeds and consequences is the tacit assumption of the wisdom teaching in the book of Proverbs:.

    A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich (Proverbs 10:4). The wage of the righteous leads to life, the gain of the wicked to sin (V. 16). The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short (V. 27). The righteous will never be moved, but the wicked will not remain in the land. (v. 30)

    It is the assumption of both Job and his friends and the governing subject of the dispute between them. The God of the whirlwind is not interested in such a calculus, but it nonetheless dominates the book of Job as an heir to the book of Proverbs.

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    Thus the Deuteronomic, prophetic, and sapiential traditions all agree on this basic assumption. That assumption, on the one hand, operates as social control to motivate people to “get it right.” On the other hand, it serves to assure a moral coherence to reality, so that one’s actions are important and are significant in shaping the future: “What you sow, you reap!” This same assumption is pervasive in popular religion and in civic life among us: First, it is the basis of much right-wing religion that preaches “hell, fire, and damnation” that frightens people into a “moral life.” Wrong living will evoke longterm punishment that is inescapable. It is astonishing to notice that many who have long since left such religion continue to host such assumptions. Second,that same assumptionhas been transposed in powerful waysfromreligion to market ideology, so that obedience to the mandates of the market brings economic preference; those who do not produce endlessly may be left behind with unforgivable , intractable debt. Those who do not shop and consume continually, moreover, are “letting down our side.” The pressure of getting kids into the right preschool and building kids’ “dossiers” with soccer and dance lessons is all a part of the “deedsconsequences ” pressure of the market. If one does not “perform” adequately, one will surely “suffer the consequences.” Third, I dare imagine that the same pressure, less closely articulated, permeates good citizenship among good liberals who perform their duty in generous engaged civic ways, because some liberals are quite like lob; we do not “serve God for naught” (Job 1:9). Indeed I could imagine that the same unspoken assumption operates with some duty-propelled liberal pastors who must endlessly “prove themselves” and even seminaty teachers who must endlessly produce one more published article! The assumption behind these performance-based forms of faith is that God’s world is organized in an inexorable way that yields rewards and punishments. It is this assumption that integrated the major crisis of the Old Testament, the destraction of Jerusalem as divine punishment for long-term disobedience to Torah. The long telling of royal history in the Books of Kings concerns the demise and failure of Jerusalem, its monarchy and temple, that effectively ended the history of Israel in the exile with its shame, deportation, and displacement (see II Kings 24:13-25:21; Jeremiah 52:12-30). The long prayer of Ezra (Nehemiah 9:6-37) and the long recital of Psalm 106 attest to this long term failure. Fourth, I suggest that in contemporary popular culture, the defining anthem of this theology is “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”:

    He’s gonna find out Who’s naughty and nice…. He knows if you’ve been bad or good So be good for goodness sake!

    In teasing good humor the song is in fact a form of social control with the prospect 0f“c0al” for poor performances that are never forgiven. This applies not only to “our kids” but to many adults as well!

    Wlat Makes Forgiveness Possible? “Without sundering, there is no reconciliation” (James Joyce).؛

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    According to the theology of “deeds-consequences,” the history of Israel would properly have come to an end in the destruction of Jerusalem. That “end” is voiced in the grief of the Book of Lamentations:

    The roads to Zion mourn; For no one comes to the festivals; All her gates are desolate. Her priests groan; Her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter. .. .because the Lord has made her suffer For the multitude of her transgressions… so I say, “Gone is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.” (Lamentations 1: 4-5; 3:18)

    Hope is gone! Deeds have received consequences. Disobedience has evoked covenant curses. Fini! No forgiveness! No possible future! The wonder of the Old Testament, of Judaism, and consequently of Christian faith is that this turns out not to be the end. There is a continuation that is grounded in forgiveness. So the poet in Lamentations can continue:

    But this I call to mind. And therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end; They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. (3:21-23)

    Continuation is grounded in divine steadfast love, faithfulness, and mercy, the “big three” of covenantal possibility. What makes forgiveness possible is the astonishing readiness of God to reach beyond deeds-consequences, to restore and sustain the relationship that had by all proper measure been terminated in disobedience. It is this inexplicable reach of God beyond “deeds-consequences” that makes forgiveness possible. We may see this in two texts that are likely pre-exilic. In Exodus 34, after the Golden Calf incident and the hard negotiations on the part of Moses, Moses utters a final, desperate petition to YHWH: “Although this is a stiff-necked people pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance” (34:9). The answer to the prayer is not certain, which is why the prayer is an act of risky hope. The divine answer, however, opens the future:

    I hereby make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live shall see the work of the Lord; for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. (v. 10) God has moved beyond the indignation over the Golden Calf to generate a new future based in forgiveness.

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    In Hosea 11:5-7, YHW is in a rant against recalcitrant Israel. But then, in midrant , YHWH interrupts YHWH’S own speech with self-questioning wonderment:

    How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, 0 Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? (Hosea 11:8)

    YHWH comes in that instant to realize that YHWH has no inclination to enact fierce anger, but turns the rant into a reach of compassion:

    My heart recoils within me; My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; For I am God and no mortal. The Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath, (vv. 8b-9)

    That divine reach is inexplicable, but it is the indispensible act of God that makes new life possible for Israel. Itis in theexile,when“deeds consequences” reached its completion in punishment and all hope is lost, that there is a surge of divine forgiveness for Israel grounded in God’s reach to generate newness. First, in the tradition of Isaiah, we have had a long condemnation of society in a series of “woes” (Isaiah 5:8-24). But now, at the end of II Isaiah, the poet has God make a bid for restoration:

    Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near…. Let him return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6-7)

    The operational word isThat God’s ways are “higher” may mean, in context, that they supersede “deeds-consequences” in order to make new life possible. What follows in verses 12-13 is an imagined, unexpected glorious procession home, made possible by the God who has broken the tired, killing grip of deeds-consequences. Second, the tradition of Jeremiah has at length castigated Jemsalem and arrived in 19:11 at the harsh ultimate judgment: “So I will break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it can never be mended.” The phrase “cannot be mended,” “cannot be healed” puts Jerusalem beyond restitution. And yet, when we reach “The Book of Comfort “ in Jeremiah 30-31, there is “grace in the wilderness” (31:2), an “everlasting love” (31:3) that culminates in new covenant (31:31 -34). That famous passage ends: “I will forgive their iniquity, and rememter their sin no more” (31:34). “Deeds-consequences” causes US to remember our failure longer than God remembers. Newness in Israel is grounded in YHWH’S readiness to break the cycle of disobedience-punishment with a generous act of forgiveness whereby old calcula-

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    tions about consequences are removed from reckoning. The assertion of forgiveness is reiterated by the prophet in 33:7-8: “I will restore the fortunes of Judah, and the fortunes of Israel, and rebuild them as they were at first. I will cleanse them of all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me” (33:7-8). Third, the prophet Ezekiel, in one of his best known passages, hews to the line of deed-consequences:

    If a man is righteous and does what is lawful and right. ..follows my statutes and is careful to observe my ordinances, acting faithfully—such a one is righteous; he shall surely live, says the Lord God… .But if the wicked turn away from all their sins that they have committed and keep all my statutes and do what is lawful and right, they shall surely live, they shall not die. (18:5,9,21)

    Later on, however, Ezekiel must have concluded that such a “turn” is not possible. In 36:24-27, in a torrent of unconditional divine promises, Israel will be transformed by YHWH’S reach for new beginnings:

    I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.

    It is spectacularly the case that all three “major prophets” have God moved from “deeds-consequences” that issues in punishment to a fresh reach beyond to new possibility . That of course is the point of possibility. I do not think, however, that point has force unless and until we are clear about the weight of “deeds-consequences” in our lives. It is precisely in the hopeless outcome of “deeds-consequences” that generates fear, self-hated, and endless pressure that the divine reach of compassion and forgetfulness has transformative power as it did for ancient Israel. This means that God reaches beyond hell, fire, and damnation to create new life; reaches beyond self-hatred and shame with tender mercy that vetoes such hatred ; reaches beyond the defeats and hopeless pressures to “catch-up” in the market economy to validate those “left behind”; reaches to the pressure of liberals with their endless commitments to enter into an unbelievable sabbath rest. It is not easy for those of US inured to “deeds consequences” to accept such a reach. I think, however, that the preachable point is that such a reach is not easy for God either. God, so the tradition attests is, like US, inured to “deeds consequences” and to acute self-regard that will not be mocked by casual defiance or prideful recalcitrance . Forgiveness, as we may imagine, requires nothing less than God’s capacity to

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    resituate God’s own life outside the orbit of deeds-consequences. It is for that reason, I judge, that it is exactly in the exile that we begin to get new maternal images for God. God must move in new ways if the lethal cycle of deeds-consequences is to be nullified. As a result, the congregation might be led to consider how forgiveness has been experienced, and who has been able to step outside “deeds-consequences” to allow for the slippage that makes new life possible. Since we praj^ “forgive us oursins as we forgive those who sin against us,”we might be invited to consider how we ourselves might step outside “deeds-consequences” for the sake of forgiveness. If as James Joyce asserts, “There is no reconciliation without sundering,” we may ask, “What must be sundered?” And the answer is that God’s way of governing needed to be sundered. And so with US, what must be sundered is our self-concept, our self-presentation, our old habits of holding grudges and keeping score and harboring long term resentments. After the phrasing of the prayer, it is likely that we cannot receive forgiveness unless we are in something of a posture of enacting forgiveness. That is, we cannot entertain God’s reach beyond “deeds consequences” unless we ourselves are alive to the possibility of such a reach beyond. All of our conventional habits of grudge preservation are called to account. Such a sundering may variously pertain to: long held familial alienations, old habits of quarreling in the congregation, old party conversations that regularly excommunicate “red” or “blue” folks in the community. old stereotypes of race, gender, class, old resentment of the “undeserving poor,” old caricatures of those “not like US,” for example Jews or Muslims. The histoty of life beyond “cannot be mended” is the story of the reach that requires sundering.

    III. What Does Forgiveness Make Possible? “When I develop a mindset of forgiveness, rather than a mindset of grievance, I don’t just forgive a particular act ؛I become a more forgiving person. With a grievance mindset, I look at the world and see what is wrong. When I have a forgiveness mindset, I start to see the world not through grievance but through Gratitude.” (Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu)٥ The ancient “assurance of pardon” anticipated that one forgiven would be able to lead a “godly, righteous, and sober life,” that is, a life in sync with the God who forgives. I suggest that the text, beyond such rhetoric, affirms that one forgiven can do anything that one might want to do that is congruent with the reality of forgiveness and with the one who forgives. Forgiveness is an emancipation from the fear, shame, guilt, and self-hatred to a new freedom: It is a break beyond hell, fire, and damnation to be one’s true self; It is a break beyond the claims of market productivity to be rather than to do; It is a break beyond liberal “duty” to bask in a truly accepted, acceptable life. Forgiveness is an emancipation that lifts all the weight of “deeds consequences” and invites to “lightness of being.” A genuinely forgiven person is one who is deeply and gladly attached to the forgiver, not “indebted” but grateful. In the Old Testament prophets, what comes from forgiveness is the capacity to

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    imagine,host, and perform concrete and specific newnesses hat are impossible except for forgiveness. The preacher thus may ponder that what follows from forgiveness is “that all things are possible.” First, in the book of Isaiah, II Isaiah ends, as noted,with promised pardon (55:6-9) and joyous homecoming (vv. 12-13). After that, what follows in the book of Isaiah is a reimagined society that is now possible. In chapter 56 we have imagined inclusiveness for those most eagerly excluded, eunuchs, and foreigners. The new prospect is that “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (56:7). In chapter 58, a new social fabric is proposed that will make possible a common good shared between haves and have-nots:

    Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungty, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see them naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourselves from your own kin? (58:6-7)

    Most especially, in anticipation of “I have a Dream,” 65:17-25 can hold in purview a new Jerusalem, new urban ordering of social power in which they “will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,” i. e., in Jerusalem. An unforgiven urban economy will systematically hurt and will programmatically destroy. But not now! Because urban newness is possible! Second, the book of Jeremiah is rooted in the old Torah memory of Sinai via the tradition of Deuteronomy. When Jeremiah comes to imagine what is possible via forgiveness, he imagines a new covenant in which there will be glad acceptance of Torah commandments, not as coercion, but as a body of teaching that will bring life. The anticipation of a new covenant is a marvel because Jeremiah can recall broken covenant, a brokenness that recurs but that reaches back all the way to broken covenant caused by the Golden Calf (Jeremiah 11:10). But because of forgiveness, restored covenant is possible, and with it a covenantal community and a covenantal ordering of social power. Implicit in “new covenant” is a new neighborly economy that specializes in forgiveness of debts, not a bad thing to think about as public policy in a society that leaves students with unbearable debts and that generates and accepts as normal a permanent underclass. Third, Ezekiel by contrast is rooted in the priestly tradition reflected in the book of Leviticus that is preoccupied with holiness. He has earlier imagined the departure of God’s glory from Jerasalem and its temple because God could not remain in a place of profanation (Ezekiel 9-10). Ezekiel imagines that in time to come there will be a new temple (Ezekiel 40-48). YHWH will return in glory to reside permanently in the new temple. This act of prophetic imagination is counter to all the facts on the ground of Israel’s failed holiness. Ezekiel’s temple is not primarily about architecture. It is about the readiness of God to be with God’s people and to invest their common life with holiness. It is forgiveness that makes the divine presence possible in Israel.

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    This God who will come in glory will, in time to come, be shepherd of Israel:

    I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice. (34:15-16)

    It is worth considering this vision of a new temple and a new sense of divine presence in a society like ours. It is remarkable to think that that glory has indeed departed from among US (thus the collapse of US exceptionalism) precisely because profanation is emphatic in our society…the trivializing of common life and the reduction of everything and everyone to a commodity. But now, forgiven, new temple and new presence!

    w. Conclusion It is useful, I think, to give narrative body to the crisis of forgiveness. Thus the sequence I propose in the Old Testament is: 1. The symmetry of “deeds-consequences”; 2. The reach beyond “deeds consequences” symmetry in generosity that sunders old patterns and old assumptions; and 3. Lightness of being that makes all things possible. It will occur to some readers familiar with my work that this sequence is yetanother articulation of my typology in the book of Psalms of“orientation, disorientation, and new orientation.” ؟Of course the “old orientation” of “deeds-consequences” is on all counts powerful among US and will continue to be so. It is, I propose, a disorientation in God’s own life with the emergence of pathos-filled solidarity that causes a genuine break in old patterns of governance. The performance that that solidarity makes all things new, a possibility never possible under the aegis of “deeds-consequences.” I am of course aware that this dramatic sequence is acted out many times in the narratives that cluster around Jesus. It is reflected, moreover, in the most normative “three point sermon” of sin-salvation-new life, the original classic form of the three point sermon, always the same three points. Except that in the sequence that I have traced, the first accent is not explicitly on “sin.” It concerns, rather, the theologicalmoral assumption of “deeds-consequences” that produces a graceless world. This dramatic sequence is not only definitional for the narrative of Jesus and in the faith of ancient Israel for the destiny of Jerusalem. The same drama is many times performed in the life of a congregation. I hazard that many people come to church along with the assumptions of“deeds consequences.” The best hope (and fear!) is that the claim of “deeds-consequences” will be broken, hope because we yearn for reconciliation, fear because such a break signifies the eclipse of an old order of certitude. The reach beyond such certitude feels to some like a plunge into unbearable relativism. Thus three questions arise: 1. What âes forgiveness impossible? It is the grip of “deeds consequences” that allows no “out.” 2. Whatmakesforgivenesspossible? It is the inexplicable reach of generous graciousness beyond “deeds-consequences.” 3. What does forgiveness make possible? Everything congruent with the forgiver.

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    These are questions that belong primarily (not exclusively) to the Gospel community. What a way to imagine the church, a community that is preoccupied with these questions (and answers) that eventually concern both our personal destiny and our social, communal possibility ! I suggest that preaching forgiveness is not simply a declaration of God’s love, but it is a close attentiveness to costly sundering that makes new life possible. It is a wonder to imagine God’s readiness to be sundered for the sake of newness. It is an equal wonder to consider our readiness for such a break in our way of being present in the world. My title, “Impossible Possibility” is a play on the phrasing of Kierkegaard. The phrase is exactly to the point. We know in our habitual practices about the stubborn impossibility of forgiveness. We only rarely experience the way in which the impossibility of forgiveness becomes possible. But that is the primal truth of our faith. God turns that impossibility to possibility, and from that possibility all other things become possible. This is a truth that our society little suspects. But we know better. We constitute a body that is resolved to receive and embrace this truth, along with the freedom and courage for the “reach beyond” that comes with sundering.

    Notes 1. The phrase is from the film ؛I have not read the book. 2. The classic statement is by Klaus Koch, “Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the Old Testament?” Theodicy in the Old Testament, ed. James L. Crenshaw (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 57-87. 3. See Patrick D. Miller, Sin andJudgment in the Prophets: A Stylistic and TheologicalAnalysis (Chico: Scholars Press, 1982). 4. See Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972), 124-137. 5. Joyce is quoted by Richard Kearney, Anatheism [Returning to God after God] (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). Kearny gives no specific citation. 6. Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu, The Book ofForgiving: The Fourfold Pathfor Healing Ourselves and Our World (New York: Harper One, 2014), 218. 7. Walter Brueggemann, The Psalms & the Life ofFaith, ed. Patrick D. Miller (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 3-32.

  • Miracles

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    Miracles

    Thomas Lynch

    Milford, Michigan

    Our tribe did not read the Bible. We got it in doses, daily or weekly, from a priest bound by the leetionary to give us bits and pieces in Collects, Bpistles, Gospels, and Graduais, which, along with Confíteor and Kyrie, formed the front-loaded, wordrich portion of the Tridentine Mass. These were followed by sacred table work and common feed, to wit laving and consecration, communion, thanksgiving and benediction . On Sundays, it’d all be seasoned with some lackluster homiletics – linked haphazardly to the scriptures on the day. These liturgies were labor intensive, heavy on metaphor and stagecraft, holy theater, ?ossibly this is why few priests put much time into preaching, preferring, as the writing workshops say, “to show rather than to tell.” Still, we knew the stories: Eden and the apple, the murderous brother, the prodigal son, floods and leviathans, mangers and magi, scribes and ?harisees and repentant thieves. 1 remember my excitement the first time I heard about the woman washing the savior’s feet with her tears and wiping them with her long hair and anointing them with perfume. My father, a local undertaker, was especially fond of Joseph of Arimathea and his side-kick Nicodemus, who’d bargained with ?ilate for the corpse of Christ and tended to the burial of same, in Joseph’s own tomb newly hewn from rock “in keeping with the customs of the Jews.” My father claimed this “a corporal work of mercy.” This he’d been told by the parish priest, who furthermore gave him what my father called “a standing dispensation” from attendance at Mass whenever he was called, as he fairly often was, to tend to the dead and the bereaved on Sundays and Holy Hays of Gbligation. The biblical narratives were told and retold through our formative years at school by nuns who had done their little bit of editing and elaboration, the better to fit the predicaments of our station. And though we had a Bible at home – an old counterReformation , Douay-Rheims translation from foe Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome’s 4th Century text – we never read foe thing. It was a holy knick-knack like the statue of foe Blessed Mother, foe picture of the Sacred Heart, foe table-top manger scene that came out for Christmas,the crucifixes over each of our bedroom doors,the holy water font at the front door, all designed to suit our daily devotional lives. We prayed foe family rosary in May and October, kept foe fasts and abstinences of Lent and Advent along with whatever novena was in fashion and most likely to inure to our spiritual betterments. We abstained from meat on briday, confessed our sins on Saturdays, kept holy foe Sabbath, such as we knew it, and basked in foe assurance that ours was foe one true faith. Ours was a Holy, Roman, Irish-American, p()st-%var-b؛rby-b0()ming suburban family – sacramental, liturgical, replete with none-too-subtle guih and shaming, foe big magic of transubstantiation, binding and loosing, foe true presence, cardinal sins, contrary virtues, states of grace, and foe hope for salvation. Litanies and chaplets stood in for scriptures and hermeneutics. That was a thing foe “other crowd” did, godhelpthem, bound to their idolatries about The Good Book, lost, we reckoned, in foe error of their ways. I memorized, through foe weekly instructions ofFr. Thomas Kenny, foe responses

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    to the priests’ incantations at Mass, attracted as I was to the statety cadences ofLatin and the mystery of a secret language. 1 took up my service as an altar hoy at age seven, sharing dudes for the 6:20 AM mass with my brothers Dan and Pat, a year older and younger, respectively, three weeks out of every four, at our parish church, St. Columban’s. Then we’d hustle off to Holy Name School across town where toe day’s tutelage began with a students’ mass at 8:15 read by the saintly, white-maned Monsignor Paddock, beneath a huge mosaic on the general theme, toe good sisters told us, of toe Eucharist. Old Melchizedek was on one side and Abraham and Isaac on toe other, prefiguring the Risen Christ on his Cross occupying toe mosaic space between them, each a different version of priesthood, sacrifice and Eucharist. This was the image 1 stared at all through toe mornings of my boyhood, never knowing toe chapters or verses I might have read for a more fulsome understanding of it all, how Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son prefigured toe death of Jesus on toe cross and how toe bloody business of worship and communion became the loaf and cup of the last supper and toe priesthood of Melchizedek became toe holy orders of churchmen down the centuries . Priesthood is something I understood in toe cassocked and collared, biretta topped celibates, toe parish priests and curates, Jesuits and Franciscans in their habits who’d heard toe voice of Cod – their vocation – and answered toe call. By twenty 1 was happily apostate, having come into my disbelief some few years after puberty when a fellow pilgrim showed me all that she could on toe mystery of life. If toe nuns had been wrong about sex, and they surely had been, it followed, I reasoned, that they were wrong on other things. “Why do you reason about these things in your hearts?” Jesus asks toe naysaying elders in Capernaum, in Mark’s telling of toe healing of a paralytic. They are trying to catch his blaspheming out, in toe way we are always conniving against our spiritual betters. I’d been named for a dead priest, my father’s late Uncle Tom, and for toe famously skeptical apostle whose finger and dubiety still hovers over toe wounds of Christ, waiting, in toe words of that great evangelist Ronald Reagan, to “trust but verify.” True to which code, I questioned everything. The deaths of children, toe random little disasters that swept young mothers to their dooms in childbirth, their infants to their sudden crib deaths, young lovers to their demises in cars, perfect strangers to their hapless ends, seemed more evidence than anyone should need that whoever is in charge of these matters had a hit and miss record on humanity. My work – 1 eventually got about my father’s business – put me in earshot, albeit , over corpses, of some of toe best preaching on theodicy available. The Book of Job, however godawful and comfortless it is, remained for me a testament of faith: “blessed be toe name of toe Tord.” Nonetheless, I remained devoutly lapsed in my confession and praxis. 80 I was fairly shocked when years later, having achieved toe rank of former husband and custodial father, small town undertaker and internationally ignored poet, I got a call from one of my fellow Rotarians to say they were looking for “a good Catholic to join their Bible Study.” “Let me know if you find one,” is what I answered, and we boto laughed a little, but he persisted. “No, really, you’ll like it. We’re going to meet at toe Big Boy on

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    Tuesday mornings at half past six. We’ll he done by 8 so everyone ean get to work.” Before I had time to construet a proper exeuse, he said, “See you then!” and hung up the phone. What harm I thought, it’ll never last. A godawful hour and crummy eatery, not a great book, if a “good” one—like cocker spaniels, serviceable but ineluctably dull. That was going thirty years ago. © ٢٧little study has outlived the restaurant, the Rotary, a few of our roughly dozen charter members, our denominations and divided politics, and still we meet – at my funeral home now – every early Tuesday morning, every season, every weather, to read and discuss various books of the Bible. We’ve done everything from Genesis to Revelation, all of the Gospels, some extra canonical texts, the letters of Paul. Job we’ve done three times, James maybe twice. We’ll likely never do the Apocalypse again. 1 only go to church now for baptisms, funerals, ٢٠weddings. The mysteries of birth and death and sex are regular enough that 1 count as friends the neighborhood’s clergy, whose personal charities and heroics J’ve been eye witness to for many years. But dogma and dicta defy sound reason, and the management class of The Church is uniquely wrong-headed and feckless. What’s more, my own views on same-sex marriage,the ordination of women, priestly celibacy, and redemptive suffering would put me so sufficiently at odds with them as to render me, no doubt, an ex-communicant . ©ddly enough, the less observant I became in belief ٢٠devotion, the better the “good” book seemed to me. 1 didn’t need the religious epic so much as a good story, something to share, a party piece. 1 can’t remember not knowing about the healing of the paralytic, whether 1 heard it at mass or from one of the nuns ٢٠Christian Brothers who werc in charge of my education ٢٠read it as part of our Bible study. There it is, in three gospels out of four, the details more ٢٠less the same. It is one of the three dozen or so miracle stories that punctuate the New Testament, from changing water into wine at Cana, calming the storm, and filling the fishnets to healing of lepers and the blind and lame and raising the dead, himself included. There are endless demons and devils cast out, sins forgiven, and apparitions after his death. It was a poem in a book published a few years back that brought it newly to life for me. The last time I heard Seamus Heaney read was in the Glenn Memorial Chapel at Emory University. It was and remains a Methodist Church which doubles as an auditorium for gatherings of a certain size. It was the second of March of 2013, and I was occupying The McDonald Family Chair, a cushy sinecure with the Candler School of Theology at Emory, teachingacourse with the great preacher and theologian Thomas Long on “The Poetics of the Sermon.” Dr. Long and I were just putting the final touches on a book we’d co-authored called The GoodFuneral, due out later that year and written for clergy, mere mortals, and mortuary sorts. And I was learning words like exegesis and hermeneutics and studying the dynamics of fiction, which Dr. Long regarded as a workable template for homiletics. We examined narrative arc and point of view, plot and character and setting. We read poems and short fictions and published sermons. I was delighted that Heaney would be coming to town. His had been the most amplified and ever present voice of my generation of poets. His work, since I first encountered it forty-five years ago, reading by the fire in the ancestral home in County Clare I would later inherit, had never failed to return a rich trove ٤٠the word horde

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    and metaphoric treasures. Because so much of his poetry came out of a Catholic upbringing in rural Ireland, he became for me a useful guide for the parish of language and imagination. ?ossibly because 1 first encountered prayer as poetry, ٢٠at least as language cast in rhyme and meter, addressed to the heavens as a sort of raised speech, poetry had always seemed sacerdotal, proper for addressing the mysteries of happenstance and creation. That Heaney held the natural world and human work – the chore and toil of the mundane, earth bound, and near-to-hand — in awe and reverence, seemed more attuned to the holy than the politicized religiosity of the culture. Still, the Latin I’d learned as an altar boy in the 1950’s, the sacraments, devotions, and sensibilities I’d been raised with found many echoes in the early poems of the Irish master, even if my own life’s experience and further examinations of scripture and secular texts had left me apostate. Though freighted with doubts and wonders and religiously adrift, I treasured the language of faith as an outright gift — the hymns of Charles Wesley, the angel-wrestling contemplations ofJohn Calvin,theexile and anchoritic adventures ofColumcille, and the rubrics of holy women and men – 1 retained some level of religious literacy given me by nuns and Christian Brothers, but rejected the magisterium of the church. By the time I’d arrived at Emory in the late winter of 2013,1 was deeply devoted to a church of latter day poets, skeptics, and nonc’omplian ؛but kindly sorts. The irony of such a backslidden fellow as myself teaching at a school of theology named for the Methodist bishop and first Chancellor ofEmory, whose brother was the owner of our national sugar water, Coca-Cola, was not lost on me. Though I had been schooled in my apostasy by H.E. Mencken, Robert Ingersoll, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, and by the feckless malfeasance of bishops and abusive priests, I had also witnessed,over four decades in funeral service, the everyday heroics of the reverend clergy and their co-religionists. These were men and women of faith who showed up whenever there was trouble. Their best preaching was done when the chips were down, in extremis, at death beds, in the hospitals and nursing homes and family homes and funeral homes. They pitch in and do their part even though they cannot fix the terrible things that happen. They are present, they pray, they keep open the possibility of hope. And I’d been schooled by my semester among the Methodists and seminarians at Emory and by my friendship with The Reverend Thomas Long, whose scholarship and work in words has re-formed me in a way 1 thought impossible . Thus, Heaney’s reading from the raised sanctuary of Glenn Memorial Chapel seemed a “keeping holy” of a Sabbath, and his poems, portions of a sacred text. And when he said, deep into what would be one of his last public readings, that he’d like to read some poems from his “last book,” and then corrected himself to say “my most recent collection…,” I thought the insertion of the shadow of death was a deft touch by a seasoned performer of his work. It is also true that his “most recent collection,” Human Chain, seemed so haunted a book, dogged by death and impendency and the urgency of last things. On the day he read one of my favorites of his poems. “Miracle” proposes a shift of focus in the scriptural story ٢٠Jesus healing the paralytic, my favorite rendition of which occurs in Mark 2:1-12. Jesus is preaching in Capernaum, and the crowd is so great, filling the room and spilling out the door into the street, that four men bring­

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    ing the paralytie to be healed have to hoist him up to the roof, remove the roof tiles, ٢٠dig through the sod and lower him down on his bed by ropes, whereupon Jesus, impressed by their faith, tells the poor cripple his sins are forgiven. Of course, the begrudgers among them—and there are always begrudgers—begin to mumble among themselves about blasphemy, because “Who can forgive sins but God, alone?” Jesus questions them saying which is easier, by which he means the lesser miracle—“to say, ‘your sins are forgiven’ ٢٠to say, ‘Arise, take up your bed and walk’?” It is, of course, a trick question. Because forgiveness seems impossible, whether to give it ٢٠to receive it, and impossible to see, it would always take a miracle. Nor is God the only one capable of forgiving. Do we not pray to be forgiven our trespasses “as we forgive those who trespass against us”? Who among us is not withered and weighed down by the accrual of actual orimaginedslights,betrayals,resentments,estrangements,and wrongdoings done unto us most often by someone we’ve loved. And in ways 1 needn’t number, we’re all paralyzed, hobbled by our grievances and heartbreaks, by the press of sin, the failure of vision, by fear, by worry, by anxieties about the end. Whereas the scripture directs our attention to the paralytic and to the quibbles between Jesus and the Scribes, Heaney’s poem bids us be mindful of the less learned toil and utterly miraculous decency of“the ones who have known (us)all along,” who lift us up, bear us in our brokenness, and get us where we need to go. On any given day it seems miracle enough. The everyday and deeply human miracle, void 0،’heavenly hosts or interventions, has especial meaning for Heaney who, in August of 2006, woke up in a guest house in Donegal paralyzed by a stroke. He had attended the birthday party for Anne Friel,wlfe of the playwright and Heaney’s schoolmate and lifelong friend Brian Friel. After the night’s festivities, the Heaneys were spending the night with other friends and fellow poets in the local B&B. He awakened to paralysis on the left side of his body. So it was his wife, Marie, and Des and Mary Kavanagh, Feter and Jean Fallon, and Tom Kilroy – ones who had known him all along — who helped strap him on to the gurney and get him down the steep stairs, out of the building and into the waiting ambulance to ride with his wife to k^tterkenny Hospital. In the poem, which took shape in the weeks of what he called “rest cure” in the Royal Hospital, Donnybrook, in Dublin, the narrative power proceeds “not to the one who takes up his bed and walks,” but rather, to “the ones who have known him all along and carry him in,” who do the heavy lifting of his care and transport. They are the agents of rescue and restoration, their faithful friendship miraculous and salvific. Their hefting and lifting and large muscle work is the stuff and substance of salvation. Hero is the short poem.

    Miracle

    Not the one who takes up his bed and walks But the ones who have known him all along And carry him in — Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked In their backs, the stretcher handles Slippery with sweat. And no let up Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable

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    and raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing. Be mindful of them as they stand and wait For the burn of the paid out ropes to eool. Their slight lightheadedness and ineredulity To pass, those ones who had known him all along. (Human Chain, Poems, Seamus Heaney, 2010, FSG)

    This language of shoulders, aching backs, and waiting for the burn ofpaid out ropes to cool honors the hands on, whole body habits of human labor the poet learned as a farm boy in Derry. From comparing his father’s spade work in the turf bog to his own excavations in meaning and language in his poem “Digging” to the town and country indentures of blacksmithing, well-gazing, and kite-flying at the end of Human Chain, Heaney’s work upholds the holiness of human labor and the sacred nature of the near-m-hand. Hearing its maker read “Miracle” from the pulpit at Emory put me in mind of my conversation with him at the funeral of our friend Dennis ©’Driscoll who had died less than three months before on Christmas Eve, 2012, and was buried near his home in Naas, County Kildare. Seamus had been Dennis’s principal eulogist on the day,just as Dennis had been Heaney’s most insightful interlocutor. His book of interviews with Heaney, Stepping Stones, is the nearest thing to an autobiography we will ever have of the Nobel Eaureate and more thoroughly than ever examines the life of the man in relation to the work. Following O’Driscoll’s funeral liturgy, 1 walked with Heaney and his wife in the sad cortege from the church to the cemetery, half a mile or so, following the coffin and the other mourners- We chatted about our dead friend and the sadness we all shared. Maybe his stroke six years before and my open-hcart surgery the year before eventuated in our bringing up the rear of the entourage. We were taking our time, huffing and puffing some at the steeper bits, as we made our slow but steady way up the town, out the road, to the grave behind the hearse. In Ireland the dead are shouldered to the opened ground and lowered in with ropes by the pallbearers. After the priest has had his say, the grave is filled in by family and friends. The miracle of life and the mystery of death are unambiguously tethered by a funiculus of grave ropes and public grieving, religiously bound by the exercise of large muscle duties – shoulder and shovel work and the heart’s indentures, each a linkage in the ongoing, unbroken human chain. And the strain of pallbearers at O’Driscoll’s open grave, as they lowered his coffined body into the opened ground with slowly paying out the ropes, seemed like the faithful and existential labor of the paralytic’s friends lowering his bed through the opened roof in Capernaum to the foot of his healer for a cure. The witness of these things drew a catch in my breath that New Years Eve morning when we buried Dennis O’Driscoll in the new row ofSt. Corban’s Cemetery. Watching his pallbearers lower him into the vacancy of the grave, these mundane mortuary chores replicating the miraculous narrative of the gospels where the paralytic’s pals lower him into the place of his healing, the “slight lightheadedness and incredulity” perfectly articulated in Heaney’s poem, remains caught in my chest, not yet exhaled, and like the scribes in Capernaum that day in Naas, though I’d seen such things all my workaday life, I’d “never seen anything like this before.”

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    And yet I saw it all again, months later in the late summer when Heaney’s death stunned us all on Friday morning, the thirtieth of August 2013. 1 woke to texts and emails from Dublin. “Seamus is dead,” is what they read. “Ah, hell…” I wrote back. Ah, hell, indeed. 1 called David Fanagan, the Dublin undertaker, and asked ifl might ride in the hearse. Someone who knew the poems and the poet should ride along. 1 hew to Shannon and stayed at my digs in Clare that night and drove up to Dublin on Sunday morning, stopping in Naas to visit Dennis’s grave. At Fanagan’s in Aungier Street, Heaney was laid out in Chapel 3, the corpse horizontal and srill, “silent beyond silence listened for.” Marie greeted me and thanked me for making the long journey and was a little shocked to hear that I’d had my ticket in hand for more than a month, long before Seamus had any notion of dying. She told me she thought he must have had a heart attack on Wednesday, complaining of a pain in his jaw, then tripped leaving a restaurant on Thursday which got him to the hospital where they discovered a tear in his aorta. The only thing more risky than operating, she was told, was doing nothing. He was in extremis. A team was assembled to do the procedure at half past seven on Friday morning, just minutes before which he texted her, calm and grateful for the long years of love, and told her not to be afraid. “Noli timere” he wrote at the end, the ancient language englished: be not afraid. He was dead before the operation began. All the way up there people lined the way, on the overpasses and in the halted cars at intersections who got out of their cars to applaud the cortege of the great poet. Women were weeping or wiping tears from their faces. Men held tire palms of their hands to their hearts, caps doffed, thumbs up, everyone at their best attention. “How did you get to be the one?” I asked the man at the wheel of the new Mercedes Benz hearse, no doubt hustled into service for the T.V. cameras. “I drew the short straw,” he told me. “We used to get extra to drive in toe North, what with toe Troubles and fanatics. Now its just a long haul and a long day.” We picked up forty or fifty cars as we made our way, toe roughly three-hour drive north from Dublin, then west around Belfast making for Derry, crossing toe river that connects Lough Beg to Lough Neagh at Toomebridge, the crowds getting bigger the nearer we got. Folice on motorcycles picked us up at toe border just outside of Newry and escorted our makeshift motorcade all toe way to the cemetery as we went down toe boreen off the main road and drove by the family farm and onwards to Bellaghy, where a piper met us at toe entrance to town and piped us through toe village where toe crowd spilled out of shops and pubs and houses and into toe road, every man, woman, and child out applauding, crossing themselves, giving out with bits ofDanny Boy and holding their hearts in signals of respect. The sadness on their faces and toe tribute to the level man behind me in the box was like nothing I’d ever seen, and when we got to toe grave, led there by a cadre of churchmen in white albs and copes and cowls, I took toe family spray up to toe grave through toe cordons of paparazzi clicking photos of everything. I walked with Marie and her family behind toe coffin as we went to the grave, where against my hopes that Seamus would pop out and proclaim it all a big mistake, his sons and his brothers and her brothers bent to toe black ropes and lowered him into the ground, toe paid out ropes and toe bum in toeir arms and hands and the hush of the gathered multitude notwithstanding. Leaves rustled in toe overarching sycamores. The clergy struck up a verse of “Salve Regina” to re-insinuate their imprimatur on it all. We hung around in that

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    sad and self-congratulatory way mourners do after toe heavy lifting is done. The limo had a slow leak in the right front tire that had to be tended to. □es Kavanaugh and his wife Mary came and spoke to me, wondering if I’d be in Galway anytime soon. Brian Friel’s car pulled away; he nodded. Michael, Seamus’ son, came over to thank me for going in toe hearse with his dad, and I was glad of that. And grateful. I stayed until the sod was back on him, and toe flowers sorted on top of that, and then we drove back down toe road, arriving in Dublin right around dark. Anthony MacDonald, his short-straw, long day nearing its end, dropped me at toe comer of Georges Street and Stephen Street Tower. I gave him fifty euros and told him to get something at the off license with my thanks for taking me up and back on toe day, for getting Seamus where he needed to go, and for getting me where I needed to be. “No bother,” he said, “Not a bit.” Nothing out of the utterly ordinary, utterly pedestrian, a miracle Possibly these are toe miracles we fail to see, on toe lookout as we are for signs and wonders: for seas that part for us to pass through, skies that open to a glimpse of heaven, toe paralytic who stands and walks, the blind who begin to see, toe shortfall that becomes a sudden abundance. Maybe what we miss are toe ordinary miracles, toe ones who have known us all along—the family and friends, toe fellow pilgrims who show up, pitch in, and do their parts to get us where we need to go, within earshot and arms’ reach of our healing, toe earthbound, everyday miracle of forbearance and forgiveness, toe help in dark times to light the way, toe ones who turn up when there is trouble to save us from our hobbled, heart-wrecked selves.

  • The shadow of death

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    The Shadow ofDeath

    D. Cameron Murchison, Ir.

    Black Mountain, North Carolina

    In the second half of 2013 I experienced a serious surgical mistake in a procedure that was supposed to have been routine. By the time I returned to the hospital emergency room several days after the initial procedure, infection had made its way to my blood stream, seriously compromising my hold on life. This led to two major surgical repairs four months apart that put parentheses around complicated infection ،ontrol, pulmonary therapy, and a series of ancillary medical complications. Extended hospitalization and even more extended periods of convalescence that totaled almost nine months gave me ample opportunity to be the recipient of care, pastoral and otherwise. What follows are ruminations on the whole experience. My first response is gratitude to many: family, friends, church members, pastors , and hospital caregivers. Care as it turns out, comes in many guises. The second response is wonder about many things: that I have so little memory about the most severe parts of the hospital experience; and that after nine months I am so much better while other friends and colleagues have experienced so much worse. The third response is a new appreciation of some fundamentals: the place of mortality in the becoming of all things and the way God’s care encompasses both living and dying. All of these establish a fresh awareness of the memberships we all have, in the human family, but also in the wider web of creation. Placing my respite from medical difficulties over against the stark encounter others have with death reminds me that the evolutionary biological miracle God has set in motion with the creation of all things is replete with groaning at every level. In the process of creation’s becoming whatever God’s dream for it is, there is much hurt, pain, and yes, dying.

    Having lingered unknowingly in the shadow of death for several days ifnot weeks, I have gained retrospective awareness that death threatens loss for the one who has died as well as for those living on. The loss experienced by those living on is well known in scripture and common human experience. In the concluding wordsofDeuteronomy,the writerevokes the senseofirrevocable absence that follows upon the death ofMoses. “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled…” (Deut. 34:() ال-ا .)There is deep sadness in these brief words which mourn the death of the one who had been cajoled by God into a position of leadership, who had represented the Israelites before Pharaoh and encouraged them in their flight out of Egypt, and who had cajoled God when God seemed tempted to abandon a contentious people in the wilderness—standing boldly in the breech between heaven and earth. “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled….” Something irreplaceable died with Moses. Common human experience says something analogous about almost anyone’s death: something irreplaceable dies with them. At least it can be said by the living who feel the loss ofthe one now dead most fully. Nicholas Woherstorff, professor emeritus of philosophy at Yale Divinity School, has said it morc eloquently than most of us

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    can ؛n his moving reflections published in Lamentfor a Son. He writes not primarily as a philosopher but as a father who would plumb the experience of the death of his 25-year-old son in a mountain climbing accident. He says:

    There’s a hole in the world now. In the place where he was, there’s now just nothing. A center, like no other, of memory and hope and knowledge and affection which once inhabited this earth is gone. Only a gap remains. Aperspective on this world, unique in this world, which once moved about within this world, has been rubbed out. Only a void is left…. The world is emptier. My son is gone. Only a hole remains, a void, a gap, never to be filled ?hilosophers, parents, biblical writers, human beings—all of us know the reality of irrevocable loss which death brings with it. And we are compelled to issue plaintive memorials such as Deuteronomy: ،‘Never since has there arisen a person like … the one we have lost.”

    11 But since 1 unknowingly languished in the shadow of death, 1 have come (again, retrospectively) to appreciate more richly the other side of the equation, the loss that belongs to the one who dies. It is not just that the living experience loss, but in some fundamental way, so does the one who dies. Moses is a paradigm here as well. The pathos of his death is not only in the irrevocable absence it signals, but also in the fundamental frustration it creates. The story tells us: “Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of ?isgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land.” … “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants; 1 have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.’ Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab…” (Deut. 34: 1-5). Of all the people of Israel who deserved to go into the land of promise, whose name would be before tire name of Moses? His death meant that he would never know the fulfillment of the promise that he had safeguarded for Israel at every point at which Israel threatened to squander it. Thus Moses embodies the mystery of death that takes away possibilities arbitrarily and randomly, often from those for whom the promise seems most fitting. “1 have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” Throughout the book of Deuteronomy there is a struggle with this frustrating destiny of Moses. It is discussed several times prior to this concluding chapter. On each of those occasions attempts are made to say why it should be so. Some times it is said that Moses would not enter the Promised Land because of the sin of the people. At other times it is said that Moses would not enter because ofhis own sin. Yet neither explanation will suffice. Why should the people’s sin be taken out on Moses? And exactly what heinous sin Moses is thought to have committed himself is never clearly specified. So just as Job’s friends fell silent in explaining to him the reason for his misfortune in life, so the narrator falls silent with explanations ofM oses’ destiny. No reason is given here at the end. There is just the painful, frustrating mystery of death that stops one short of fulfillment. “1 have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall

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    not cross over there.” Again, it is Nicholas Wolterstorffwho helps ns see Moses’ fate as reflective of a wider human experience. For in addition to articulating the deep aching loss he feels as afather who has lost a so n ,^ ltersto rff recognizes that his son has lost something too. He writes:

    Loss is his as well. How very strange! Yet I feel it acutely. His sudden early death is not just our loss but his: the loss of seeing trees, of hearing music, of reading books, of writing books, of walking through cathedrals, of visiting friends, of being with family, of marrying, of going to church, and—dare 1 say it—of climbing mountains.*

    When I contemplate what 1 stood to lose as I lingered in death’s shadow, 1 find myself somewhere between the venerated prophet and the promising young adult. 1 could not have complained that my life had been incomplete ٢٠unfulfilled. And I certainly could not have complained that I deserved to lead anyone into a promised fulfillment. Nonetheless, 1 stood to lose much that is dear to me: cherishing a young granddaughter as she develops and blossoms; relishing a different season of life wife my spouse; vicariously enjoying fee lives of our adult children; and taking up new intellectual, social justice, and theological challenges unconstrained by other (paid) responsibilities.

    Ill Thus fee shadow of death has become a tutor who reminds me what is most important to my living. It has reminded me not only of what is dear to me and thus deserving of my best energy and effort, but also that the time for postponing focused attention on these priorities is over. Nicholas Wolterstorff serves as a guide here as well as he reflects on the regrets he feh at the death of his son.

    What do I do now wife my regrets—over fee time I neglected to take him along hiking,over the times I placed work ahead of being with him,over fee times I postponed writing letters, over fee times I unreasonably got angry with him—over all the times 1 hurt him, times I noticed fee hurt and times I didn’t but should have. Over fee times he was sad and I saw, but did little ٢٠nothing to console. … Over all fee times he was something wonderful or did something fine and I was oblivious or silent—sometimes because my own projects were my single-minded pursuit, sometimes because my own worries were my single-minded concern. And sometimes because I did not want his excellence to “go to his head.”3

    In something ofa reversal on Wolterstorff’s experience, fee shadow of death that lifted wife my recovery provides me a chance for do-overs. For just as losing someone to death leaves us wife regrets for what we have done and left undone in relationship to them, when we die our regrets towards our families, friends, and enemies necessarily die wife us. So fee shadow of death has awakened me to a rare opportunity to lessen fee burden of regrets I will one day carry wife me to the grave. Still, I know that I wifl not come to my end regret ftee. So Wolterstorff helps me

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    as he continues his rumination on the theme:

    I believe that God forgives m e…. [But] What do 1 do with my God-forgiven regrets? Maybe some of what I regret doesn’t even need forgiving; maybe sometimes I did as well as 1 could. Full love isn’t always possible in this fallen world of ours. Still, I regret. 1 shall live with them. 1 shall accept my regrets as part of my life, to be numbered among my self-inflicted wounds. But I will not endlessly gaze at them. I shall allow the memories to prod me into doing better with those still living. And 1 shall allow them to sharpen the vision and intensify the hope for that Great Day coming when we can all throw ourselves into each other’s arms and say, “I’m sorry.” The God of love will surely grant us such a day. Love needs that.*

    Gf course I am greatly helped by the reminder of what the God oflove will surely grant us. Only now I see it also from the other side, the side of those who have already died. They need it too! They have their regrets toward the living that also await that great day a’coming, when the God oflove will grant us a day to throw ourselves into each other’s arms and say, “I’m sorry.”

    IV Of course, a foretaste of that Great Day is always offered whenever we gather at the Lord’s Table. And it is ol’fered most particularly when we join in praise and thanksgiving to God, not merely with those gathered in a given sanctuary space, but with all the faithñil of every time and place who forever sing to the glory of God’s name: “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might; heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.” The choir that sings around the table is the whole people of God, saints on earth and saints in heaven, the living and the dead, brought together in the embrace of God’s love. And as we sing—and as we live in the presence of all the saints who from their labors rest—we are gathered in God’s arms and thrown together into each other’s arms. That’s what the shadow of death has taught me once more. As Barbara Brown Taylor has recently reminded us, things dark and shadow-like are not inherently bad—our psyches, philosophies, and theologies notwithstanding.5 While 1 rather recently was called to account by the shadow of death, I now recognize it as always with us—and finally ׳as our friend.

    Notes ل Nicholas Woherstorff, Lament For A Son (Grand Rapides, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 33. 2 Ibid., 49. 3Ibid.,64. 4Ib؛d.,65. 5 Cl. Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014), 200 .

    Journalfor Preachers

  • Musings on Advent

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    Musings on Advent

    Amy p. McCullough

    Grace United Methodist Church, Baltimore, Mailand

    Juxtapositions Early in ministry, I served as an associate in a large congregation. Through the whims of the preaching schedule, I preached the second Sunday ofAdvent four years in a row. For multiple, consecutive seasons, I wrestled with the fiery passion of John the Baptist, preaching equally fiery sermons about such cheerful subjects as sin, repentance , and the demanding way of God, sermons I naively believed might actually change the world. But then came the autumn of the sniper attacks throughout the Washington, D.c. area, coupled with several devastating deaths in the congregation and then the build up to the Iraqi war. When the Sunday rolled around yet again, I turned to scriptures I had studied before, reading “Prepare the way of the lord,” and in a moment of existential crisis, realized I did not believe God’s good kingdom would ever come. The prophets might promise all flesh will see the salvation of God, but daily life would not look much different this year than last. War would still be viewed as the best path to peace, urban deserts would persist in impoverished neighborhoods, families would be tom apart for all kinds of reasons, anffjegardless of how early we hung the Christmas lights, we would still wait for a long time in the dark. Ten years after that moment of disillusionment, I am now serving as the pastor of another congregation, living in a new city with my husband and our children. At this point. Advent contains a whirlwind of activity through which I hold my breath, hoping we survive until December 25. There are devotional books to compile, special services to lead, and Christmas Eve worship to plan. There are pageant rehearsals, staff Christmas lunches, and poinsettia placement debates. It was late in Advent the night I walked through the sanctuary after yet another church event,ready to turn offlights and head home.The two trees stood on either side of the altar, dark green against the white walls. The Advent wreath candles burned, casting their light into the Fs-The poinsettias had been settled into place, tucked under the trees and into arches near the ceiling. The sanctuary looked stunningly beautiful: calm, quiet, and expectant. The space seemed to ask, “God, are you coming soon?” and to answer in the affirmative. So loud was the message that I called home, coaxed my husband to get the kids out of bed and walk them over in their pajamas so that we could share the sacred space together. Placed alongside each other, these two experiences embody Advent. The season is a mixture of weariness and anticipation, of waiting and actively readying for an arrival, of cynicism bom from disappointment and persistent hope that promises will be fulfilled. Over the weeks of preparation, the world is judged for its failures to fill the hungry with good things or to remove the too powerful from their thrones. And over the weeks, the world’s dreams are nourished, as ones who know night sense just enough of the coming dawn to hold on a little longer. The Advent preacher enters this overflowing space with the task of shepherding a congregation through its complicated crevices. Amid a well-rehearsed, beloved season, she or he steers the listeners towards darkness in order to catch the light, towards pain in order to learn of longing, towards sin in order to experience salvation. The preacher’s tools include

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    a host of familiar Biblical characters. Isaiah, that monumental prophet of Israel will speak, as will Micah, leremiah, and Zephaniah. Paul will add his voice, and near the end, Zachariah, Elizabeth, Gabriel, Joseph, and Mary will make their entrances. The preacher’s work is strengthened by a growing momentum in the congregation as sermons are offered alongside the choir singing “Comfort, 0 comfort my people,” the children placing an empty manager on the altar, and unexpected faces finding their place in the pews. With all the expectation in the air, it’s a weighty time to preach and a privileged one as well. Liturgical scholar Gordon Lathrup argues worship happens when two opposing elements are brought together.‘ Meaning is bom in the juxtapositions of sacred text and meal, silence and speech, praise and petition. Just as holy people are transformed by encountering the One who is truly holy, the combining of these ancient things calls forth new hope. We who long for the hope contained inAdvent live amid contradictor experiences. We want God to come just as we resist being transformed by the refiner’s fire. We dream of mountains being made low and valleys being lifted up just as we ask like Zechariah,”How will I know that this is so?” Preaching inAdvent invites the juxtaposition of anticipation and doubt, hope and disappointment, darkness and light. It asks preachers to place the grim statistics of our violent world alongside visions of God’s peaceable kingdom. For in the juxtaposition, holiness empts.Traversing the arc of the Advent message, the preacher contains the contradictions. As second coming leads back to first birth, judgment looks forward to promise, and repentance harkens into joy, the Advent path shows redemption at work. This is a familiar path, but like God’s promises that are new evety morning, it is worthy of another journey.

    The Second Coming Advent begins with contemplation of the second coming. Christ’s return is a jolting notion to ponder. Preachers can be slightly embarrassed by the texts assigned for the first Advent Sunday. Often coming at the end of a holiday weekend, with its Black Friday shopping sprees and evergreens tied to car rooftops, the day’s images are of the sun becoming dark, fire raining down, and thieves knocking at the door. The world is awash with Christmas, and we are asked to face the end of time. However dark the scriptures, they point towards redeeming our days. Be alert, they cry, for by watching closely, you will discern the time. Modem society lives intimately attuned to time. My smart phone serves as a stopwatch at my son’s 5k race, an alarm when I’m traveling, and an audio calendar pinging about my next appointment. We bemoan how short the days are by lamenting, “If only I had the time.” But Advent’s time is different than living imprisoned by our calendars. Advent invites US out of our jail cells into cosmic time, when the God in and beyond time shows US the divine end for creation. You do know what time it is, writes Paul. The night is far gone; the day is near. Early in our marriage, my husband and I spent Thanksgiving weekend with his family. Traveling home we bantered about whose relatives would provide the more stressful holiday. I suggested it would be the one who needed three kinds of potatoes to keep the peace. He countered with my family’s requirement for proficiency in sports trivia in order to earn a place at the table. It was a light-hearted conversation, but one hinting at the systems that shape US and the ways we are embedded in things to which we remain unaware. Arriving home that evening, I glanced at the newspaper

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    headlines, skimming a story about the then current humanitarian crisis in Darfur. The sihration came suspiciously close to genocide,even as the world community remained unable to name it as such. Similar silent avoidance has happened in subsequent years, including the present tragedy in Syria and the flood of refirgees pouring into Europe. Against our inclinations towards ignorance and blindness. Advent calls forth our awareness, urging US to notice the time in which we live. The truth of our present time only comes into focus when juxtaposed by visions of God in Christ returning to right wrongs and reconcile what is broken. Christ’s second coming proclaims that in the end-whenever and however the end arrivesevetything finds its completion in God’s realm. Christ’s birth says the same thing from the opposite direction. God enters human history to make it possible for human lives to strive towards that completion, offering the fullness of their beings in service to God’s vision. So Advent time, God’s time of first birth and second coming, teaches US the beginning and the end are joined. One feeds our understanding of the other. Alert to the truth that all life will find its end in God, we enact that ending through lives that name systems, are alert to injustice, and fight against the world’s relentless messages of death. Whenever we struggle to live such truths, preparing for Christ’s birth opens the space in US where God enters, reassuring US that we do not labor unaided.

    Repentance Being alert to the time necessitates self-awareness. Repentance is a second phase of Advent, those moments when the process of awaking from sleep prompts a close look at one’s attitudes, actions, and their implications. The two middle Sundays, comprising half of the season, dwell on the voice crying out in the wilderness to make clear a highway for our God. Preachers cannot escape the subject of sin. John the Baptist calls US a brood of vipers. The judge stands at the door. The messenger purifies like fullers’ soap, and a prophet speaks to Israel about paying her penalty. But the subject of sin is the teginning rather than the end of the conversation. John the Baptist’s message aims towards the forgiveness of sins. Isaiah reminds the people that their penalty will dissolve into the Lord’s favor. The challenge of Advent becomes naming repentance in a way that enables actual transformation without becoming so engrossed with the transgressions-so in love with the sinning-that salvation cannot come near. In her memoir Lit, Mary Karr recounts a harrowing tale of her descent into alcoholism and then her recovery. At one point when she’s been sober for two months, she remarks that although she feels “fresher inside, albeit a bit scooped out,” she does “not feel redeemed.”2 She says, “I feel fallen, a long way fallen.”3 Feeling a long way fallen is an apt description for having faced truthfolly the evil we have done to ourselves and to others, the mess we have made with the world. In the months that follow, Karr descends further, spiraling through a depression that culminates in hospitalization. Up to this point, she’s resisted those around her who have encouraged her to pray. Unsure of her belief in God, she can’t imagine herself praying. But during her first night in the hospital, unable to sleep, she tries. She goes into the bathroom and kneels on the cold tiles. She writes, “I feel small, kneeling there. Small and needy and inadequate. If you’re God, I say, you know I feel small and needy and inadequate. And tonight I want a drink. The silence fails to say anything back. It feels like a judgment, the silence.”* As she continues kneeling, she thinks of her young son, healthy and safe at

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    home and of her father whom she adored. Teir presence becomes part of her prayer, filling the stillness with gratitude. The memories become a blessing, as love of both son and father push against her soul’s despair. She concludes, “The boundaries of my skin grow thin as I kneel there squinting my eyes shut. For a nanosecond, I am lucent.”؛ A pastor-preacher knows the “long way fallen-ness” existing within any congregation . With its images of the crooked being made straight, the rough ways made smooth, and God’s people being led home. Advent has a way of bringing the brokenness up to the surface: siblings who haven’t spoken in decades, parents mourning children lost to them in every conceivable way, and neighborhoods reeling from racial injustice. Such stories find their way into the pastor’s study and the preacher’s heart. Recounting our pain-filled story, we are asked to acknowledge our responsibility in the destruction. In the terrifying moment of confessing her failures to save herself, Karr moves closer towards her redemption. Real repentance always exists alongside real change. In the moment of brokenness, the Light pours in.

    Hope Alertness to God’s in-breaking time and real repentance accomplishes much in creating room for Christ’s light.Advent people, though, don’t live separated from the wider world, which treads its own harried path towards Christmas glory. Nurturing hope in God’s capacity to enter and alter our darkness is a final Advent task. Hope is a risky, costly endeavor, made riskier by the world’s blind greed and more costly by the depth of our dreams. Washington Foot writer Hank Stueveronce followed three Texas families between Thanksgiving and New Year’s in order to explore modem America’s holiday practices .(‘ He met a single mother with her kids stalking the midnight sales, a childless couple laboring over their extravagant yard light display, and a woman decorating the homes of the wealthy as a side business. Each family evidenced the enormous emotional investment poured into the holidays, with its high expectations for bliss and togetherness. Throughout his investigations Stuever found one word consistently reappearing: believe. Believe is scrolled across shopping bags, monogrammed onto t-shirts, and painted on signs hung over mantels. But what exactly does believe signify ? What are we to believe? Who are we to believe in? If the cultural code word for December is believe, then the Advent opposite is hope. Advent charges US to hope. Hope, Martin Smith writes, “is about something unexpected reviving US, something fresh and new.” ؟Hope creates meaning, as “the future that is real in God seeps into the present.” ؟Hope awakens US from slumber, pointing us towards the dawn. It proclaims change is possible because God makes things new. Hope says no one is bound by the past because God in Christ has come. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the future is cared for. We can tmst what awaits US because we know what God has already done. The Christmas slogan “Believe” feels akin to optimism, suggesting the only thing standing between you and your desires is your mindset. Hope stands not on human effort but upon divine action. We hope because we know God has acted in past, moves through the present, and can be trusted to act in the future. By the time we meet Zechariah and Elizabeth, they have stopped believing a baby will join their family. The years have gone by, the gray hairs have sprouted, their

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    bodies have wrinkled, and the child hasn’t come. But I’m not sure they’ve stopped hoping for a baby. Gabriel’s words tell US that they have prayed for a child, just like one might pray for a Christmas without a family fight, a month without a school shooting , or a holiday without hearing the word relapse. Past experience might suggest it is worthless to pray for such things, but your heart cries out nonetheless, hoping past hope that this year something might be different. The cry holds a flicker of faith in God’s power to revive, the hope that never truly, fully dies. After Gabriel’s visit, Zechariah appears stuck in the need-to-believe realm. How will I know that this is so, he asks. Or, in other words, why should I believe you? Zechariah longs for irrefutable proof, a material sign upon which to hang his trust. Society’s enticement to believe subtly suggests what we desire is there for our taking so long as we have the money to buy it or the skill to acquire it. Zechariah wants solid confirmation, something to grasp at the moment of the announcement rather than the difficult task of living in hope, watching for the news to unfold at its own patient pace. His wish is an understandable one because to hope is to risk heartache. Hope inevitably meets disappointment. The dawn’s light never comes as quickly as we expect.As a young preacher, I hoped a sermon the Sunday after snipers John Allen Mohammad and fee Boyd Malvo were captured might roll the tide away ftom easy access to high powered guns and capital punishment. Thirteen years later, my heart has been broken by too many other lives needlessly lost. Yet I am still hoping. My experience is that hope, the imprint of God’s future alive in our heartfelt imagination, is intrinsic to being human. But hope’s staying power is strengthened through practice. The habit of hope develops as we train ourselves to see what God sees: a wolf lying with the lamb, the desert teaming with flowers,and old bodies bursting with new life. Isaiah is the practitioner of hope extraordinaire. In my mind’s eye, Isaiah is a bent over man with wisps of white hair just above his ears and wrinkles hiding his eyes when he writes, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” Perhaps he had been young and optimistic when he answered God’s call among the singing seraphs in the temple. But by the time he writes this vision, he has lived long enough to suffer disappointment. He has endured warring neighboring nations. He has given advice to kings seeking guidance and watched his instructions dismissed. He’s seen cities razed, the wounded die across a battlefield, and children grow up knowing only war. Isaiah knows something of waiting for a sign from God when the heavens seem disinterested. For him, hope is a tiny plant shooting out from a broken branch. The branch is largely barren, but the new green stem is tenaciously, undeniably there. Hope knows failure. It admits to the vulnerability embedded in human life. But it trusts God hopes alongside God’s creahires and dares to live under the promise that every part of creation will be gathered back into God’s fold. While department stories want US to believe we can buy our salvation, Isaiah, ^chariah, and Elizabeth learn the fulfillment of their hopes comes only as God’s gift. Each experienced the delicate balance of promises fulfilled and promises yet to be realized. They are forced to live between anticipation and arrival, finding in the gap between what is hoped for and what comes a fertile ground upon which to grow their trust in God. The juxtaposition of hope and disappointment creates a sacred space. Whenever the two meet, cherished longings come keenly into view. What do you want for Christmas? A pastor might ask children this question during the children’s

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    time,knowing the risk of opening the floor to an avalanche of answers. The children’s responses might include Barbies, Xboxes, and IPods. Other longings are not easily admitted. I want Mommy and Daddy to live in the same house again. I want Grandpa to not have died. I want more food in the refrigerator. I want a friend to sit with during lunch. Everyone carries such closely guarded, precious longings. The longings themselves are holy, for they are part of the way God’s abundant, hospitable, and light-filled kingdom takes root in US. It is a holiness we cultivate by risking hope. When Advent creates space for US to say how we have hoped and been disappointed and what longings we still hold dear, we discover the space growing within ourselves to welcome God’s infinite gift of intimate presence. Last December, I visited an exhibit on Mary, the mother of Jesus. There were scenes of the Annunciation, of mother and child, and of a grieving mother witnessing the crucifixion .The final section held renderings of Mary as the Queen of the Universe, offering herself to those who crowded around her throne just as she had offered her life to God. Looking at these pictures, I wondered how Mary could have predicted all that was to happen after the angel first greeted her. Perhaps in the beginning she could not quite fathom what Gabriel was saying. Who would be prepared for the task of explaining the situation or the fear at having to do so? Surely she wasn’t ready to give birth away from home or to allow strangers to visit. But I wager she also wasn’t prepared for the joy, the exhilaration of her flesh mingling with God’s flesh. For the joy, who would change the journey? The joy of Advent surprises me every year. As weary as God must be, God still has enough hope for the world to enter into it again. As wandering as we are, God still entrusts US with bringing forth Christ’s birth. For the joy, who would miss the journey?

    Notes 1 Gordon w. Lathrop, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). 2 Mary Karr,.،آﺀ- A Memoir (New York: HarpeÆollins, 2009), 206,208. 3 Karr, 208. 4 Karr, 275. 5 Kart, 276. 6 Hank Stuever, Tinsel: A Searchfor America’s Christmas Freien( ؛Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 20)9). 7 Martin L. Smith, “Hope” in Nativities and Passions: Words for Transformation (Boston: Cowley, 1995), 183. 8 Smith, 184.

  • Love Your Enemies: Luke 6.20-31

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    Love Your Enemies

    Luke 6.20-31

    Sam Wells

    St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, United Kingdom

    If ever a problem were summed up in three words, then the problem of disciple ־ ship would be summed up in these three words spoken by Jesus in today’s gospel: “Love your enemies.” On the face of it this is an absurd thing to say. Enemies are, practically by definition, people whom you can’t love. If the command doesn’t seem strange to US, perhaps we’ve lulled ourselves into a padded cocoon in which we’ve convinced ourselves we don’t have enemies. In America this question has taken on a very particular shape in recent years. On the one hand, there are a lot of people who seem to think Americans wouldn’t have any enemies if they stopped invading other countries and using up a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources. On the other hand, there are voices insisting that 9/11 showed America it has deep and profound enemies pretty much whatever it does, and those enemies can’t be won over with kindness. Either way we can’t really pretend, as we might have done in the 1990s, that Americans don’t have enemies. But does that mean we have enemies, you and I? Jesus gives US a handy checklist of seven categories of enemy: those who hate you, curse you, abuse you, strike you, rob you, demand things from you, and steal from you. He makes it pretty hard to say we don’t have enemies. I’m sure everyone can think of people who have done these things to you. Of course for some of US, the person who has done these things to US is pretty close to home. Some years ago a friend of mine prepared a family of three daughters for baptism. He spent a good deal of time with the family, looking at the shape of the Old Testament story and how it was repeated in the new. The mother and her daughters started to renarrate their own stories in the light of what they were discovering. Eventually my friend asked the mother why it was she wanted something for her daughters she was not going to receive for herself. She said, “I think I might make this step one day, but not today.” Two years after her daughters’ baptism, the mother came to see my friend again and said, “Could you baptize the child of a neighbor of mine?” During the classes the mother said to my friend, “Is it ok if you baptize me this time too?” My friend raised an eyebrow and said, “Do you mind me asking what’s different from two years ago?” There was a long pause. “There was someone I couldn’t forgive,” she said. “And what’s changed?” asked my friend. “He’s died now,” said the mother, with relief. I think the story of this mother takes US near to the heart of Jesus’ words in Luke 6. What this story shows US is the difference between what it means to love and what it means to forgive.The word forgiveness tends to be overused. It becomes discredited when it is used trivially-when for example a person has been subject to unimaginable horror and, rather than listen as they painstakingly recall each individual act of cruelty or violence or abuse, we simply wave them away and tell them to forgive. Even if we have had the grace to listen the person 0ut-a process that may take year-I’m not sure forgiveness is something one can tell somebody else to do. Forgiveness comes when one is utterly fed up with being in the prison of hatred and anger and powerlessness, and reaches out for a greater story that puts the damage one has oneself suffered in

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    the context of a great many other things that are wrong with the world. Forgiveness comes when one can’t bear living any more in the story in which one is simply and only a victim-not because that story has stopped being true, but because it no longer seems like the whole truth. The reason I’m not sure one can tell a friend to forgive is because if the story of hurt and pain does seem like that friend’s whole story, that friend simply won’t be able to hear what you are saying. But notice that when Jesus gives US a list of seven ways we should behave toward our enemies, forgiveness isn’t one of them. He says do good to them, bless them, pray for them, offer the other cheek, give to them, let them take from you, do not ask for restitution. But he doesn’t say “forgive.” Why not? I think the answer is, because he is talking about hatred and abuse and violence ؛to is still going on. To forgive something that is still going on is a kind of category mistake. Jesus gives US plenty of ways to respond and engage while the hostile and cruel and destructive actions are still going on. But forgiveness has to wait until the activity is over. You can’t forgive something that is still going on, because that seems to be saying that what is going on is the whole story and therefore that it’s somehow okay. This is the force, it seems to me, behind the mother in the baptism story saying about the person who had dominated her life and overshadowed her relationship with God, “He’s died now.” There are certain relationships in which trying to be nice about things and using the language of forgiveness prematurely can be a form of collusion, a way of denying what is really going on, a way of suppressing anger and deepening the cycle of despair . In some such relationships there is such a level of self-deception and compulsion and profound disorder that the hurt really is “going on” until the day one or the other person dies. And the mother in the baptism story is saying she is discovering the astonishing, breathtaking resurrecting gift of forgiveness only now, now that that man who overshadowed her life is dead. And we can have the same kind of reaction against people with whom we are at war. We defend our going to war tecause it seems there is no other way to express our profound and utter rejection of the atrocity the other side represents, most plausibly because we have been wantonly and willfully attacked, and we feel the urgency of defending not just ourselves and our loved ones but everything our civilization represents. And it seems meaningless to forgive people who are, even as we speak, plotting and planning to kill if not US, then people just like US, and if not here, then in places just like here. Jesus isn’t asking US to forgive these people just now, because their hostility to us is still going on. Forgiveness may have to wait a little longer. But he is asking US to love these people. By recognizing that loving isn’t the same as forgiving, we can give up on the anxiety that loving means condoning. Loving doesn’t mean a kind of masochism that takes a perverse pleasure in being hurt and wounded; loving doesn’t mean plotting to kill me is no problem. While I’m not sure you can tell someone to forgive, I do think you can tell someone to love. Sometimes when marriages get into trouble, one partner says to another, “I’m sorry, but the love just isn’t there anymore. Ijust don’t feel it. Whatever we had, it’s gone, and I’ve tried to bring it back, believe me I’ve tried, but I just can’t.” But love isn’t just a feeling. Sometimes when our feelings are out of control, we have to fall back on something a bit more tangible. You can’t be told to have a feeling, but you can learn to do tangible things. I wonder if you remember the film “Fiddler on the Roof.” Half way through dis-

    Journal Or Preachers

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    covering his daughters all seem to be passionately in love, Tevye suddenly wonders if he’s missing out on something. He pursues his wife Golde around the house, asking, perhaps for the first time, “Do you love me?” She’s as threatened by the question as he is. Eventually she turns to herself and says, “For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him, fought with him, starved with him. Twenty-five years my bed is his; if that’s not love, what is?” Tevye asks one more time “Then.. .you love me?” and Golde accepts, “I suppose I do.” What they both discover is that love sometimes comes down to simple, faithful actions, especially when you’re not sure you like what you’re feeling . So what does loving mean in the face of hatred and hostility if it doesn’t mean being a doormat and it doesn’t mean a warm feeling? It means carefully and doggedly, not passionately or sentimentally, following the words of Jesus and the seven actions he commends to US. First, “Do good to those who hate you.” Say by your actions, “However much you hate me, I will never hate you.” Remember this will end. Don’t let these people turn you into a monster. Repay evil with good. Second, “Bless those who hate you.” Mind your SFch· Try not to lose your temper. Think of those who are hating and hurting you and see them as tiny children they once were, longing for trust and safety, and speak to them as if they were still those children. Third, “Pray for those who abuse you.” As I have said, sometimes abuse is incredibly difficult to become disentangled from. Remember, God is always as much a part of any story as you are. In prayer, ask God to be made present not just to you but to your enemy. Fourth, “Offer the other cheek.” In other words, not just don’t get into a fight, because then there’ll be no difference between you and them, but don’t let those who hate you think you can be intimidated by violence. Offering the other cheek means saying “I’m not going to accept that violence trumps everything else.” Fifth, “Don’t withhold your shirt.” In other words, sunrise your enemy with your generosity and thus show your enemies you have not become like them. Sixth, “Give to everyone who begs.” Remember that, even when you can only think of how you’ve been hurt, there is always someone worse off than you, and reaching out to them is a way of rescuing yourself from self-pity. And seventh, “Don’t ask for your property back.” I think this means remember you will lose everything when you die, so start living toward your possessions in such a way that they don’t determine who you are. Wen we reach the end of this list, we realize that what Jesus has just described is what is about to happen to him. Jesus went to the cross because he loved his enemies. As he went to the cross, he was hated, he was cursed, he was abused, he was struck, he was stripped of his clothes and humiliated. And yet at every step, he responded not with hatred but with love. And the people who did these things to him were people like US. And only when it was almost over, when he was nailed to the cross, did Jesus go beyond the discipline of love and make that last step and finally say, “Father forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.” Up to that point he had loved his enemies. Wen it was over kforgave them. And then, in the power of his resurrection, he showed US that evil will finally be overcome and that the long shadow of sin over our lives will finally be removed. In Jesus’ resurrection, and only in Jesus’ resurrection, God gave US the power to love. So when Jesus is saying to US today, “Love your enemies,” he is saying, “Tow have been my enemies, and I have loved you. Don’t make me into a creature of your hatred,but let me make you into a witness of my love.Follow me to Jerusalem. Follow

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    me to the cross.” You may be here today at a defining moment in your life when you are surrounded by hatred and hurt and hostility and humiliation. Maybe you’ve tried to bury it and maybe it hasn’t worked and maybe it’s still tying you in knots. Maybe it’s the right moment to ponder Jesus’ words. Am I going to turn into the person who hates me, or am I going to learn what it really means to love? The saints are those who chose to leam what it really means to love. Jesus walked the path to the cross alone. We don’t. Unlike Jesus, we don’t walk alone. When we walk through the storm, we can hold our heads high and not be afraid. We can walk on, because we never walk alone. We are surrounded by the company of saints who have walked before US and now line every step of our way. We can walk the path Jesus walked because he has first walked it for US. Sometimes we can’t find it in us to forgive. Jesus shows US how still to love. We are people who are trying to leam what love really means. Thank God that, with Christ and the saints, we never walk alone.

    Journal ior Preachers