Books are time travel devices on their own. But when you take a book off your shelf that you have read, all kinds of associated memories come rolling back. Re-reading three books this week, weaving in and out of time, life comes up.
I first learned about T.H. White’s novel “The Once and Future King” from one of the X-Men movies where Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier has his students reading it (that was X2 in 2003). I’ve loved King Arthur stories and legends since I was a kid–when I was 9 years old I named our new Golden Retriever “Morgan” after King Arthur’s devious half-sister Morgan Le Fay. So it didn’t take much prompting, finding out White’s novel was a modern, moving, funny re-telling of the Arthur story, I was all in. My brother-in-law mentioned he’s given more copies of that book to people than any other book and he named a bearded dragon King Pellinore after White’s version of the character.
Merlyn is phenomenal, from his physical introduction in the story, to his life philosophies:
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
Learn why the world wags and what wags it.
I’ve started the book maybe three times over the years, read 100+ or 200+ pages and life has happened in a way that has made me put it down, despite being drawn in.
2018 was the last time I tried to make time to read “The Once and Future King.” I found a note I left myself on page 154–that is where I stopped. This past week, studying the Pre-Reformation Church in England for seminary, Sir Thomas Malory’s “Morte D’Arthur” was discussed and a quick line about White’s updated telling. That was enough to motivate me. I started again and knocked out 30 pages this morning, making a goal to finish it before the end of the year.
Sitting on the campus of the National War College in DC 10 years ago, I read Tracy K. Smith’s “Life on Mars” on my lunch breaks. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. My mind was thrown open and my jaw was frequently dropped while reading.
My friend John Miller and I are going to lead a discussion on Smith’s book in January and February for Chesapeake Forum. I grabbed my copy from the bookshelf in my bedroom and the bookmark I had in the book was my ordering receipt from Barnes and Noble, May 2012. I have lived in three houses since the house it was delivered to.
This morning I read this, from the poem, “My God, It’s Full of Stars”–
…I want to be One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial. Wide open, so everything floods at once. And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time, Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.
Reading today, what I read 10 years ago, finding the receipt with an old address on it from what feels like a different life, time did curl in on itself.
“My God, It’s Full of Stars” is how I feel every time I look up at a clear night sky.
The last book doesn’t go back so far, but it washes over me in new ways each time I read it. I found Rowan Williams’ “Being Christian” in 2019 and have led three classes using it for perspective on what the things we do as Christians are all about. This fall we have 20 people in our newcomers class at Christ Church Easton, a new group of folks wading through Williams. Last week, we talked about baptism, but the former Archbishop of Canterbury goes deeper than most of us go. He talks about how we have lost our identities, we have let go of them. Our default settings aren’t the way they should be. Enter Jesus.
“And when Jesus arrives on the scene he restores humanity to where it should be. But that in itself means that Jesus, as he restores humanity ‘from within’ (so to speak), has come down into the chaos of our human world. Jesus had to come down fully to our level, where things are shapeless and meaningless, in a state of vulnerability and unprotectedness, if real humanity is to come to birth.
“This suggests that the new humanity that is created around Jesus is not a humanity that is always going to be successful and in control of things, but a humanity that can reach out its hand from the depths of chaos, to be touched by the hand of God.”
Baptism is going down into the chaos and coming up as new people, in a new relationship with God in Christ. Not as perfect or flawless, but one where we can reach out to be touched by God. That’s not generally what we think about when we attend a baptism, though it’s all right there in the vows.
Williams has this wonderful way of looking at the kind of life that is begun anew through baptism:
A life that gives us resources and strength to ask questions; a life that reconciles and builds bridges and repairs broken relationships–a life that reflects God’s wisdom and order. That sounds like a life worth living.
My mind moves forwards and backwards in time re-reading books, wandering through memories, and leaning into both goals and daydreams. “Once and Future,” stands out as a phrase that touches on something about that.
For those of us who have been in and around Easton for any time, Waterfowl Festival is an event that moves in both directions as well. As a kid, I watched my mom cut greens and decorate buildings and saw my dad cooking and serving food with the Kiwanis Club in town. Over the years, it’s been a fun reason to either walk through town as a spectacle, or avoid town altogether.
For the past six years (of my life, the church has been doing it much longer), Waterfowl Festival has meant Christ Church coming together to decorate, to serve food, to be together, to raise funds that go back out into the community, where they are needed. That points to Williams’ idea of a communal life that “looks toward reconciliation, building bridges, repairing shattered relationships.” It’s a step in the right direction. It’s among the work we are sent out to do.
Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. October 8-9 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for October 9 was Luke 17:11-19, where Jesus heals 10 men with a skin disease and only one, a foreigner, comes back in praise and gratitude.
“Faith and Gratitude”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. Over the past few weeks, we have seen him talking to and teaching his disciples. But today there is a bit of shift.
He’s approached by 10 lepers. What do we know about lepers during this time?
They kept distant from non-lepers.
They formed their own colonies.
They positioned themselves near trafficways so that they could make appeals for charity.
To be let back into society they had to be checked out by a priest, in a kind of certification process.
Leprosy was estrangement from both God and other people. It had a stigma.
When writing his novel, “The Name of the Rose,” Umberto Eco put it like this: “In saying ‘lepers’ we would understand ‘outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the city.’”
They were the fringe of the fringe.
The lepers are keeping their distance and following protocol and they call out to Jesus. And he SEES them. Seeing is important here.
He tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, which is how they would be able to get back into everyday life, to no longer be outcast or untouchable.
And “as they went,” they were made clean. Their healing was connected to their obedience—they did what Jesus told them to do.
One of the lepers, a foreigner, a Samaritan, SAW that he was healed, and his response was to turn back, praise God with a loud voice, and to lie on the ground in front of Jesus and thank him.
It’s notable that the leper doesn’t just thank Jesus as some great healer on the street, he knows the healing has come from God and he praises God before he thanks Jesus.
Jesus SAW the lepers and the one Samaritan leper saw that God had healed him through Jesus. And he was grateful.
We see a lot of healing stories in the Gospels, but in this case, the story Luke tells is less about the healing and more about the response of the one leper.
The three questions Jesus then asks are not really addressed to the grateful Samaritan but they underscore the point of the story:
Were not 10 made clean?
Where are they?
Were none of them found to return and give praise except this foreigner?
Why the Foreigner?
This is not a knock on the nine who did what they were instructed. They followed orders. They were healed. We don’t know what happened to them after—they may have gone on to spread their own stories and good news for the rest of their lives.
But the foreigner, the stranger was different. Why is that? What was it that made him turn around while the others went on their way?
I like a thought that Fred Craddock shared in his book, “Interpretations: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching—Luke.” In thinking through the stranger in our time, he said:
“It is often the stranger in the church who sings heartily the hymns we have long left to the choir, who expresses gratitude for blessings we had not noticed, who listens attentively to the sermon we think we have already heard, who gets excited about our old Bible, and who becomes actively involved in acts of service to which we send small donations. Must it always be so?”
Fred Craddock
I wonder, do I get complacent? Do we sometimes go about our business doing what was asked of us, but not stopping to give thanks and praise for both remarkable and everyday things that bring us joy? Or those things that connect us to God and to each other?
Reading Scripture: WWJD?
Studying Scripture has so many layers to it, any of which can give us pause, can make us think, can stop us and meet us where we are.
We need to understand the context in which something was written; we need to think about the audience the writer, in this case Luke, was writing for; and we have both God’s Word in the Bible and any number of great commentaries that have been written to help us understand it.
And then we also want to figure out the relevance of something for our lives. What do we do with what we read? Why does it matter? What is the “so what?” of ten lepers getting healed more than 2,000 years ago? Why should we care?
Fr. Bill Ortt often says to think about Scripture as a prism, where you can turn it around to see different facets of it. And if we do that in this story, we’ve got the grateful leper, we’ve got the other nine who were healed, and we’ve got Jesus. We may have a tendency not to put ourselves in Jesus’s place in the story, because, well, he’s Jesus and we’re not.
But these stories are shared for us to learn from. For us to ponder, to take in. And who is the main character in the New Testament who we want to learn about? Jesus.
And why? Maybe to be more like him. What’s the bumper sticker—what’s the saying that is used over and over again: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
And how do you know, how can you consider what Jesus would do if you don’t read Scripture to get to know him better?
So in this story, what does Jesus do?
Seeing and Doing
First, Jesus sees the lepers who call out to him. Really sees them and what their problem is. And what he sees is human beings, not lepers. Luke illustrates this point over and over again in his Gospel:
When we meet the demoniac at Gerasene, Luke calls him, “a man from the city who had demons.”
Here, Luke doesn’t say 10 lepers, he says, “10 men with a skin disease.”
In writing his Gospel, Luke doesn’t define people by their afflictions, by their diseases, by what’s wrong with them. Because Jesus doesn’t define people that way. Jesus sees our humanity. And he sees the humanity of these 10 men.
And what does he do once he sees? He acts, he steps in to help, to heal.
If we want to model our lives after Jesus, where does that leave us?
We need to see. Do we take the time to see what is going on around us? We can look nationally and globally—the devastating damage in Florida from Hurricane Ian; the ongoing war in Ukraine; insert your news of struggle and suffering going on in the world.
We can also look closer to home: our family, our friends, our neighbors, and people in our community. We’ve got a lot of people barely holding on around us. Do we see them?
Then, what do we do when we see them? Do we reach out? Do we pray for people? Do we come alongside them when we can and walk with someone who is having a hard time.
Do we do…what we see Jesus doing time and time again in Scripture, and especially in Luke’s Gospel, and in today’s story? See, help, heal.
What do we see?
Do we see the needs, the struggles of others?
And what do we do?
Let’s take some pressure off of ourselves for a minute. Living like Jesus is certainly the goal, but wow, is that tough. Sometimes getting out of bed in the morning and getting through the day without telling someone off seems more attainable.
Gratitude
Let’s look more closely at the Samaritan who was healed and who came back. Let’s walk in his footsteps.
Back to seeing: what does the Samaritan see? He sees that he has been healed. He recognizes that God was at work. And he praises, he humbles himself, and he gives thanks.
We can do that, right? There are times when being grateful is everything. That’s a big part of my story and what has me standing here in front of you.
I caught up with a childhood friend who I haven’t seen in decades. We grew up playing little league baseball together in Oxford and he went on to fly F-16s in the Air Force for 20 years. We had lunch last week and what we both wanted to talk about was faith and spiritual awakenings. And he asked what prompted this calling in me.
My one-word answer was, and is, gratitude.
A little more than seven years ago my younger daughter had a bad seizure caused by brain swelling. She was visiting family outside Pittsburgh and she had to be intubated and flown by helicopter to Children’s Hospital, where she was in pediatric intensive care for 10 days and in the hospital for the next month.
Faith wasn’t a big part of my life then, but as I sat with her in the hospital, as I listened to doctors, as we tried to figure out what was next, people continually reached out to say they were praying and ask how they could help.
And what I could feel, could palpably feel, was a community of prayers changing me. I wouldn’t say I started out where the Grinch was, but my heart grew in significant ways that I am still trying to wrap my head around. And I felt a peace and calm in the midst of so much worry.
When we came home, I was full of capital “G” Gratitude. I didn’t necessarily know where to put it or what to do with it, but a friend invited me to church. That sounded like a good start. And that was the first step on a path that led here, and with gratitude every day it is a walk that is still going.
I saw healing. I felt a change, a kind of healing in me. And giving praise and thanks is my response.
Salvation
Let’s turn our attention back to the grateful leper. Jesus says to him, “Your faith has made you well.” Fred Craddock who I quoted earlier points out that the verb that was used for “made well” is the same word that is often translated, “to be saved.”
Jesus healed 10 people, but only one, the one who came back and was grateful, received something much bigger than physical healing. His faith, as expressed by his gratitude, saved him.
Alan Culpepper in “The New Interpreter’s Bible,” looks at this and says that the story challenges us to regard gratitude as an expression of faith.
That resonates with me. Gratitude feels like a way to express our faith.
Culpepper says further: “If gratitude reveals humility of spirit and a sensitivity to the grace of God in one’s life, then is there any better measure of faith than wonder and thankfulness before what one perceives as unmerited expressions of love and kindness from God and from others?”
Living with a Grateful Heart
What does gratitude look like in our lives? What do we do when we have a grateful heart?
I have one more quick example. When I started working here at Christ Church they gave me the office at the top of the stairs in the Rectory. I end up talking to just about everyone who comes up and down the steps—which aren’t the easiest steps to navigate.
Well, a few times a week, Bruce Richards would come up the steps and go into the bathroom, and when he came out he would stop in and share this amazing smile, and energy, and joy and gratitude.
It turns out at the time that all the Stephen Ministry books, brochures and pins were kept in the bathroom closet, and he would go in to stock up on whatever he needed.
So I had a running joke with Bruce that he had a Clark Kent/Superman phone booth in the bathroom and he would come out as a superhero for pastoral care. Except it wasn’t a joke at all. That’s who Bruce was.
As the years went on, Bruce was slower getting up and down the steps, but his joy, his smile, and his gratitude didn’t change.
We commended Bruce to God on Saturday and I have so many pictures of him on my heart. Bruce carried printed out prayers in his wallet and in his calendar and he sometimes gave me one if he thought I looked like I needed it, or he would tell me to pass it on to someone who did.
Bruce came with us to give Communion to a parishioner in Oxford who had fallen and couldn’t make it to church for a while. For us, it was a special visit, but Bruce did this all the time, in nursing homes, people’s houses, you name it.
And I have a picture of Bruce coming to his door on his 80th birthday, during the height of the pandemic, when a group of us went to sing happy birthday to him with Brenda Wood playing the accordion.
Bruce was a grateful heart personified. He showed us what it looked like to live with gratitude and for him it looked like caring for others, so much so, that he helped begin a new ministry at the church, specifically to care for people going through tough times… by listening to them, praying with them, and walking beside them. And Bruce’s work of 18 years here continues today with all the Stephen Ministers, the care givers and care receivers, who are grateful and helping us create a church community of compassion.
Bruce saw people hurting. He acted, he did something about it, using gifts that he didn’t know he had, always giving thanks with gratitude.
I wish we didn’t have to lose people like Bruce, people in our lives who show us what it is to live with a grateful heart—people we are grateful for. But it makes me even more thankful for the time that we had together and the example he still is for all of us. What a gift to know people like that and to be able to continue their work in love.
Alan Culpepper has a thought here that I’d like to close with, which gets us to the heart of today’s Gospel:
“Faith, like gratitude, is our response to the grace of God as we have experienced it. For those who have become aware of God’s grace, all of life is infused with a sense of gratitude, and each encounter becomes an opportunity to see and respond in the spirit of the grateful leper.”
Lead in: I am about to begin my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. August 13-14 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for August 14 was Luke 12:49-56, which begins with Jesus saying “I have come to cast fire upon the earth and how I wish it were already ablaze!” and then gets more confusing from there.
For my last two preaching weekends, I have had demoniacs and fire-casting Jesus, both of which ask us to get our thinking caps on. The upside to getting the more obscure or confusing Gospel passages is that I generally have a lot of room to work with. We’re all kind of left scratching our heads and wondering what Jesus, and Luke, are talking about.
I think it is safe to say that the disciples were doing the same thing. I can imagine them looking back and forth to each other going, “I have no idea what he is talking about…”
And that is a theme throughout the Gospels: Jesus delivering a message that people didn’t understand or weren’t ready for. Or in some cases, that people didn’t want to hear.
One of the things we find Jesus talking about repeatedly is the way the world is…and the way the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God is. And he wants to help us bring about the Kingdom of Heaven. Which is not how things were, and not how they in the world now. But they could be.
Jesus was not one for the status quo. He didn’t want things to just keep going the way they were. He came to be different and to show us how to be different, and how to live differently.
Thinking about Jesus’s strange message in today’s Gospel, I thought it might be helpful to point out a few things that Jesus IS NOT KNOWN TO HAVE SAID.
Here we go:
Jesus never said, “It’s all good.”
Jesus never said, “You do you.”
Jesus never said, “As long as you don’t hurt anyone.”
And Jesus never said, “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
Jesus followed more in the sandals (not shoes) of John the Baptist, who said, “Repent.” Turn around. Stop doing what you are doing and live differently.
It’s important to put today’s message in context of Luke’s Gospel and the passages that are going on around it.
Over the last couple weeks, we’ve heard Father Charlie Barton distill the preceding Gospel messages to a few key phrases:
“Be rich toward God—don’t make your life about material things or treasures.”
And “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
“The simplest rule of thumb for each of us to ask, ‘Where do we spend our time and where do we spend our money?’ That’s where our treasure is, we can be sure. The focus of your time and money will tell you what your God is and what is important in your life. As others have wisely said, your checkbook and your calendar reveal your true belief system.”
Where we focus, what we value most, that will determine who we become and how we act in the world. So focus on God. Don’t focus on the things of this world, but on what Jesus has been telling us is more important. Things like caring for the poor and the sick, lifting each other up, loving God and our neighbor.
So when Jesus says, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze”—he is talking about the way the world was, those who are storing up earthly treasures, those who are focused on power and not on love.
Burn down the old ways, Jesus is offering something new.
“Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” And what happened to the people of Israel who decided to follow Jesus: division.
Even in and among households. If you are living in the old house and can’t picture what the new one looks like yet, you might not be ready to burn what you’ve got. Or maybe you think this guy is full of nonsense, you have no desire to do what he says or follow where he leads. Some followed, some didn’t. And households became divided.
Well, it’s a good thing we don’t have divided households now [raised eyebrow, pulls at collar] Glad they got that out of the way… or maybe what seemed like a strange, bombastic reading has some relevance.
How many people have family members or close friends who you aren’t speaking to or can’t talk to about religion or politics? How many have divided houses when it comes to big, important issues?
Maybe Jesus was on to something.
We all know the peace-and-love Jesus, and that’s the Jesus we hold dear. That’s the Jesus we want to study and to emulate. And that’s what we should do.
But we also need to remember that Jesus was not afraid to call people out.
Blessed are the peacemakers, absolutely. But the status quo then, AND NOW, isn’t peace. We have a lot of work to do.
Here at Christ Church, in our Bible studies we’ve used commentary by a bishop and theologian named N.T. Wright, and we have found him to be helpful for making sense of Scripture. In talking about this passage, Wright says that there may come a time when Christian teachers and leaders find people have become too cozy and comfortable.
He says that maybe churches might start to omit the Bible readings that talk about judgment, or warnings, or the demands of God’s holiness, because they ask something of us. And that maybe there are times when, like Jesus himself on this occasion, we need to wake people up with a crash. There are, after all, he says, plenty of warnings in the Bible about the dangers of going to sleep on the job.
Cruise control does not serve us well when we are heading in the wrong direction, or off a cliff.
“It’s all good” doesn’t work when it’s not all good for a lot of people, or when power and security are held closer to the heart than love and compassion.
Jesus talks to the crowds about how when you see clouds, you know it’s going to rain and when you see the south wind blowing, you know it’s going to get scorching hot.
Granted, weather forecasters don’t get much credit in our world today, but there are so many things we can know, we can predict, we can figure out. Look at all the technology around us and what we can do. On the simplest scale, I was blown away recently with the thought that I can send my family pictures while I am in Alaska and they get them instantaneously back here.
If we can do so many things, how come we can’t step up for those who can’t stand for themselves? How come we still store up earthly treasures but aren’t rich toward God? Let’s look where our treasure is, where our priorities are, and try to see where our collective heart is?
Jesus came to change the direction humanity was heading.
He came to show us a different way to be—one that isn’t easy, one that not everyone will get… a way that will cause division, and will call for the burning of some of our current, misdirected ways.
And he gave his life for that cause, and in today’s reading, he knew that that’s where he was heading.
Maybe it was fair to call out the crowds. And guess what?
We’re the crowds. Maybe it’s still fair to call us out.
N.T. Wright says:
“If the kingdom of God is to come on earth as it is in heaven, part of the prophetic role of the church is to understand the events of the earth and to seek to address them with the message of heaven.”
Maybe we need to do a better job of addressing the world with the message of heaven.
Maybe we should help burn down some of what’s broken for a new way, for a more loving way, for a more caring way.
It’s hard to know what to say, so I can only speak from my life and experiences. And my life is one of privilege. I haven’t earned the life I live based on my own sweat and effort–I was given a gift of an upbringing and a social and economic status that I had nothing to do with. I try to live up to and into that gift, and I am grateful for it daily. I try to dream and picture what my daughters’ lives might look like, and I know they are only limited by themselves.
When I run through town, I am the maybe overly friendly guy who says good morning or hello to everyone I pass. And I have never gotten weird looks–usually a wave or smile back. People aren’t generally intimidated by or suspect of me at first encounter. Again, none of this has much of anything to do with anything I have done. If my skin were a different color, I’m not sure reactions would be the same.
In my teens and early 20’s, we were troublemakers often enough and had run-ins with police, but I never feared for my life. We live in a small community and over the years, I have come to know more and more police officers as friends, and I know them all to be amazing human beings who help people at an instant. Theirs are friendships I am blessed to have–getting to know the people and not just their jobs. And they have seen me for who I am.
Over the years my heart has hurt and my mind has been jarred by so many events on the news, or listening to others’ experiences of the world. And these stories rise up, make their rounds, and then life goes on. For those not directly affected. But each time, it is only a glimpse; only a flicker. Too many people can change the channel and not have to face something directly.
When people speak up and speak out, they are quickly silenced. Yes, you can protest, but not like that. And no, not like that. Yes, we believe in your right to be heard, but we are watching football right now. How about some other time, some other place, where I can still watch what I want and think how I want and not have to pay attention?
Right now, there is attention. We are not promised tomorrow, so right now is what we have. I can’t know or understand what it is to be black, but I can listen and I can stand.
I am a part of a faith community where I know that people of any race, culture, or religion are welcome, and I consider that a blessing. I have watched our rector befriend a Hindu man who was working in Easton and loved coming to our 5:00pm service. He was happy in his faith, he just loved the music and energy of the service, and it was a beautiful thing.
After the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing protests and riots, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, an African-American man, on Sunday published an op-ed in The Washington Post about choosing love over hate. He also talked about what the path of love might look like in these times:
“Love looks like all of us — people of every race and religion and national origin and political affiliation — standing up and saying “Enough! We can do better than this. We can be better than this.”
“What does love look like? I believe that is what Jesus of Nazareth taught us. It looks like the biblical Good Samaritan, an outsider who spends his time and money healing somebody he doesn’t know or even like.”
There is a way forward through this that looks like love. That looks like the self-sacrificial love that Jesus showed us, taught us, and modeled with his life. And it looks like coming together, in love.
In Bible studies over the past months, we have been studying Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, in which Paul is emphatic about the unity of the church. In his commentary on Chapter 2, scholar and former bishop N.T. Wright says:
“If our churches are still divided in any way along racial or cultural lines, (Paul) would say that our gospel, our very grasp of the meaning of Jesus’ death is called into question. How long will it be before those who claim to follow Jesus, not least those who claim also to love Paul’s thinking, come to terms with the demands he actually makes?”
The way forward in love right now is not about doctrine. If we look at Jesus, when he dealt with the hurting, the sick, the lonely, the disenfranchised–he saw them, he healed them, he loved them, he brought them into the fold. Where Jesus is love, Paul also calls that love into unity.
I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet. But I know I can’t really think or write about anything else with it so large on my heart and mind right now.
In talking about love and faith, Krista Tippett, author and the host of “On Being,” writes:
“Every time I let myself go deeper into the mess and mystery of human loving, I am hit over the head again by theology–an insistence that the love of God is so much fuller than we can usually imagine or take in… I keep pursuing faith, if for no other reason than because it is the place in our common life that keeps reminding me of the necessity of love–not the romantic love of poets, but the practical love of sacred texts–however fraught and imperfect our practice of it may ever and always be… love is not the starting point, but the goal. It is not something we are born knowing how to do, not something we fall into. It is something we spend our whole lives learning.”
That is a love I want to learn to do better. I want to spend my life learning and practicing it. Right now it feels like it starts with listening and with standing.
We all bring something to the table. And what each person brings is necessarily different from what anyone else brings. And if you subscribe to the notion of life taking a village, a community, part of what makes everything work is each of us adding our own gifts.
This week in our Lent small group, we read Matthew 25 in N.T. Wright’s “Lent for Everyone,” which includes the parable of the talents. In the story Jesus tells, the master goes on a journey and leaves a sum of money (talents) with three different slaves. He gives the first slave five talents, the slave turns it into 10; he gives the second two talents, he turns it into four. The master is pleased and rewards them. The last slave is given one talent, is scared, buries the talent, and just gives it back to the master when he gets back. The master is not happy and wants him thrown out into the dark where bad stuff goes down.
The things about parables, about stories, if they aren’t memorable, they aren’t worth much. Some of them are harsh, and each of the stories Jesus tells are meant to get a message across. Whereas a talent in the story is currency or money, it is a word that works for us in our time as well: talking about our own talents.
Wright breaks it down for us in his commentary after the reading:
“…each of us has been put here with a particular purpose and calling, which only we can do. Our task is to find out what that is and to do it. That remains true whether the purpose is playing the trumpet, cooking meals, planting trees, performing heart transplants, or even preaching sermons. Sometimes, of course, it’s a struggle to discover what our calling is.”
N.T. Wright
We could stand to listen to Jesus, and to Wright, during this time of pandemic with COVID-19 calling for so many different responses from all of us. Some of the shining talents that have come to light at Christ Church Easton during this time, are the musical and video editing skills of members of the church’s music ministers, bands, and choirs. “Hold Us Together,” “Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” and “Be Still My Soul,” have each become Facebook phenomena going far beyond anything the church has recorded or media that it has created. The comments about the hope and connection people are feeling from them have had hearts overflowing all over. I still have a hard time getting through any one of the videos without breaking down.
None of this happens if contemporary music minister Ray Remesch doesn’t step up and say he can direct, record, and edit videos; if Alive @ 5 music minister Bruce Strazza isn’t using his technical expertise, above and beyond his musical talent, to make sure the staff and the band have the systems and equipment they need to work remotely; if the musicians and singers don’t make the time to bring their skills to the table; and Tracy Kollinger doesn’t research and figure out the best ways to upload and stream live videos. We’ve had different staff and volunteers who have stepped up and into different hats in both subtle and profound ways.
Obviously these aren’t front-line jobs. The talents of doctors, first responders, school systems and community volunteers working to make sure kids and families are fed; grocery store and restaurant workers coming up with new ways to stay open and feed people; there are so many people offering and stretching their talents in so many ways, that it is nothing short of remarkable. People are stepping up with the gifts they have been given and are increasing their talents, not burying them.
There are also those of us that are waiting, maybe unsure what gifts we bring to the table, and unsure about the timing and way we might use them. In his commentary on the parable of the talents, Wright has some thoughts:
“…each of us is called to exercise the primary, underlying gifts of living as a wise, loving human being, celebrating God’s love, forgiving, praying, seeking justice, acting prudently and courageously, waiting patiently for God’s will to be done.”
Wright
In this case, God’s will has nothing to do with the pandemic virus sweeping the world, but everything to do with how God’s people are called to respond. It’s up to us, to use the talents God has given us to give back to the community, our neighbors, and thereby the world.
It could be praying; it could be reaching out to a friend or family member; it could be supporting local businesses who are going through an unprecedented time; it could be feeding people; it could be staying home and being available when ready; it could be giving hope and humor and peace to someone who needs it.
What’s asked of us is not to bury our talents, but to be open, to increase them, and to share them. There is hope there.
Most of us won’t get to everything on our bucket lists. There’s a good chance we won’t accomplish everything we hope to do in life. And some of that could be on us, but there are plenty of factors beyond our control. Does it make our lives less than?
Mary Oliver’s poem, “Praying” found me this week:
It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest, but the doorway Into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
Maybe we spend too much time waiting for the blue iris–the extraordinary to show up, when we could make more out of a few small stones.
Don’t get me wrong–I want to savor the blue iris moments when I have them, if I have them, but not at the cost of the stones all around me. Those moments, the ones we have right now, are all we know we will get.
Two friends have died in the past few weeks, unrelated to each other. Their deaths were unexpected and tragic and they left behind kids and families. I’m sure each had more they wanted to do, to say, decisions they’d love a do-over for. But when I think of each of them, I smile for how they made me feel; for each of their smiles; their stories; the way they approached each day during the time that I knew them.
We remember how people made us feel. I know I need to be more conscious of that. We remember the time we shared with someone, the stories we told. What I know of Chris and Mike is a small section of their lives, but an intersection I am grateful for. Each of them gave me a gift in knowing them and I am glad Christ Church Easton’s Alive @ 5 service connected and/or reconnected us.
As I think about friends dying, we are reading Chapter 11 in our study of John’s Gospel, which is where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. There is a scene where Mary, Lazarus’s sister comes out to see Jesus as he has arrived.
“When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep.” (John 11:32-35)
It’s a profound thing that Jesus weeps with us in our grief. Jesus knows that he is about to raise Lazarus, that things will be okay in the long run, but he cries with his friends in their shared grief. As we are reading John, we are using N.T. Wright’s commentary in “John for Everyone.” Wright talks about this moment of grief like this:
“It’s one of the most remarkable moments in the whole gospel story… Throughout the gospel, John is telling us… that when we look at Jesus, not least when we look at Jesus in tears, we are seeing not just a flesh-and-blood human being, but the Word made flesh. The Word, through whom the worlds were made, weeps like a baby at the grave of his friend. Only when we stop and ponder this will we understand the full mystery of John’s gospel. Only when we put away our high and dry pictures of who God is and replace them with pictures in which the Word who is God can cry with the world’s crying will we discover what the word ‘God’ really means.”
God is the creator of the Universe. He’s larger than life, the spinner of the cosmos, author of the Mystery, beyond comprehension. And at the same time, He becomes human and cries with his friends. And that is a part of who God is. And it is a way we can get to know Him and draw closer to Him.
In the raising of Lazarus–John doesn’t tell us it was because Lazarus had so much more to do with his life, he doesn’t tell us what he had done up to that point or what he goes and does after–that’s not the point. God just does it. As with so many stories in the Gospels, it’s a story of hope. And hope comes in so many ways at so many different, and unexpected times.
We don’t all get Lazarus moments that we can see in this life. Not all our outcomes are how we want them, nor are we on our time. But we can find hope.
And we aren’t guaranteed blue iris moments. But we are given this moment and a few small stones. And we can build something with them, in this life, with those around us, right now. If we are lucky, those moments, those few small stones we share with those we meet, maybe, as Mary Oliver says, they can be “the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.”
Jesus walked. A lot. Walking, praying, eating with friends, hanging with the unruly–these are some of the things he spent the most time doing. The pace and intentionality of Jesus’ life are among his key examples for us.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book “An Altar in the World,” talks about Jesus’ walking practice:
“Sometimes he had a destination and sometimes he didn’t. For many who followed him around, he was the destination. Whether he was going somewhere or nowhere at all, going with him was the point. Food tasted better at the pace he set. Stories lasted longer. Talk went deeper. While many of his present-day admirers pay close attention to what he said and did, they pay less attention to the pace at which he did it. Jesus was a walker, not a rider. He took his sweet time.”
[Aside: it makes it really hard to stomach when some bonehead says if Jesus lived today, he’d have a private jet to go around the world. You might want to go back and review the Sermon on the Mount, or say, anything he said in the Gospels…]
When I think about my best days, there is some part of each of them that have been spent walking, exploring, hiking, doing something at a slower, intentional pace, even if it’s around the yard. We’re in a hurry often enough, taking time to walk, to slow down, seems essential.
I like any chance I can get to drop some wisdom from Gary Snyder. In “Practice of the Wild,” he links walking with adventure and humility:
“Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.”
I think that’s part of it, the slow pace of walking and the vastness of the planet, it is humbling and beautiful at the same time. It puts us in our bodies and lets our souls breathe.
If you’ve been around Oxford for any period of time, you’ve likely come across Bruce Mills. When I was growing up, Bruce lived down the street from us, and spent a lot of time in the park, playing electric guitar, spreading out black and white photographs he had taken and developed, laughing and philosophizing, later on doing Tai Chi. For the better part of a few decades, Bruce rides his bike from Trappe to Oxford to paint houses. The times that he’s had a car, he felt like he missed out.
“When I get into a car, I turn the key and I’m there,” he once said. “When I ride my bike, I can breathe, I can smell the earth, I can get my thoughts together, I take my time.”
I like so much about that. I think Jesus might have a bike if he lived bodily in today’s world. But it wouldn’t be a fancy, upscale bike, and I can’t see him decked out in spandex with a GPS and figuring out his pace and heart rate. Personally, I think Jesus would have a beach cruiser, letting go of the hurry, and smiling in the breeze.
If you’d told me 15 years ago that I would find laughter, joy, friendships, tears, questions, answers, life, sorrow, challenges, confusion, exhaustion, and exhilaration, all in a Bible study, I am sure I would have dismissed it.
At the beginning of October 2017, two groups at Christ Church Easton started a journey through Matthew’s gospel, using N.T. Wright’s “Matthew for Everyone” as a touchstone. We weren’t sure whether to end at Christmas, part-way down the path, but both groups wanted to see it through. With three weeks left to go, Jesus has been arrested, and we know what’s coming.
Wright looks at where we are in the story and compares it to standing at the bottom of a huge rock face.
“That is how we should feel as we stand at the foot of the final ascent of St. Matthew’s gospel. We have walked at a steady pace through the hills and the valleys of the story. We have sat down to hear Jesus deliver another parable or discourse. We have marched with him along the road, enjoying the sunshine of the early days in Galilee, and the remarkable views as the disciples gradually realized more of what the kingdom was about. We have arrived in Jerusalem at watched dramatic events unfold. But we are now standing in front of a sheer wall of rock, and if we don’t find it both compelling and terrifying, we haven’t got the right spectacles on.”
I feel that. I feel it in my life and I feel it as we read and work through Matthew. I feel it as we approach both spring and Easter. With all the beauty and questions, there is death ahead. There is rebirth and renewal after, but it only comes after and because of a death. I think that is also true of our lives. It is of mine–some of the most beautiful and meaningful times come after loss, come after the low, come after the crap. And sometimes they only happen because of the painful experience that preceded it.
Wright goes on:
“The theories about why Jesus died–theories of the ‘atonement,’ as they are called–are like maps or old photographs, taken from a distance. They may be accurate in their way, and the’re helpful particularly when it’s cloudy and you can’t see too much for the moment. But they’re not the same thing as climbing to the top yourself, and perhaps, if you’re lucky, getting there on a clear day when you can see the view. When that happens, you will find you quickly run out of words to describe what you are looking at.”
It’s not the same thing as climbing to the top yourself. What we find in Scripture is a lot like what we find in life–we get out of it what we invest in it, what we live into it. And if we are going to understand Scripture, or life, it is going to help to have guides, and friends to share the journey with, and the views. We are going to stumble and we are going to need help.
We’ve got three classes left, finishing this ascent during Holy Week as we head into Easter. Our two groups of pilgrims are at the rock face. A journey that started together five months ago. When I look back, when I look around, and when I look forward, I “quickly run out of words to describe” it.
When I look up at the stars, my response is wonder. When I watch a hummingbird hovering in the yard, I am fascinated. In neither case is my first instinct to analyze, label, figure things out.
Likewise, when I think about God, it isn’t to solve the Mystery, but to dwell in the Mystery, sit with it, let it wash over me. Not to try to pull it apart.
The mystery of creation is like the darkness of night–it is great. Delusions of knowledge are like the fog of the morning. – Rabindranath Tagore
Tagore is a writer who I have recently been drawn to more and more. He was the first non-European writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1913. His “Stray Birds” are several, rapid fire blasts of sunlight, glimpses of illumination that cut through the shadows of unchecked rational thought. The painting at the top of the page is Tagore’s as well.
I’ve been sitting with the idea of paradox a lot lately–the notion that two things taken together are seemingly impossible, but actually true. Like when physicists say that light is made up of (behaves like) waves and particles at the same time.
Science and scripture are full of paradoxes. How can Jesus be both a Lamb and a Lion; how are the worldly poor the spiritually rich? Why do you have to let go in order to have everything? Why is surrendering the only way to victory? Jesus loved paradoxes and deep thinkers like Einstein saw them everywhere.
Why is that? One reason might be that our intellect by itself is not the right faculty to get us to the deeper truths. It would be like trying to use smell or taste to figure out the tip when you get the check from dinner–could be interesting, but ultimately not helpful.
I am never more frustrated than when I try to have all the answers; when I want to have things figured out before I move forward. I am never more at peace than when I allow myself to be in the moment, to be happy with/by/from the things and people that make me happy. And it is still hard not to want to know that I am moving in the right direction, doing the right thing, moving further up the mountain rather than backpedaling.
“One of the great constants in life is change.” That was the doctrine of Heraclitus, a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. A paradox and a truth. And not new information.
How we deal with change, how we deal with the mind coming up just short of what it is we want to know, those responses to life are what our lives become. There are all kinds of options: we can doubt, fear, bury our head in the sand and not give it thought, we can lose ourselves in work, we can party like it’s 1999.
I go back to a favorite Thomas Merton thought:
You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.
That feels right. So when I walk outside after the storm and through the boat yard to catch the last bit of sunset and see this…
And I walk back to the house and hear an owl in the top of a tree and then watch he or she take off and fly with outspread wings, I smile and sit with Tagore’s words that have been in my head on a Sunday:
That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.
Jesus was not a city slicker. Sure, he hung out and preached in towns, but when it all got to be too much, or he had stuff to work out, or just needed a break, he went for wilderness. Wilderness, both literal and figurative, was his place of transformation, of discernment, of revelation.
Over the course of my reading life, anytime I have found my peeps, ancestors to whatever aesthetic, experiential, existential tribe I belong to, it’s been the folks who hit the wilderness. Whitman, Thoreau, and the American Transcendentalists; John Muir, Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder; and the British Romanticism crew. When I read Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and company, it almost felt like Superman ditching his tie and collared shirt. Wordsworth in particular, had come to grips and written about his soul’s need to go to nature and finding his way:
The earth is all before me: with a heart Joyous, nor scared of its own liberty, I look about, and should the guide I choose Be nothing better than a wandering cloud I cannot miss my way. I breathe again: Trances of thought and mountings of the mind Come fast upon me.
Wordsworth’s “Prelude” is getting back to nature. The importance and role of nature in the unfolding of our souls and minds, as individuals, was a spark for the Romantics.
One of the things about wilderness, is that it can inspire us, and reconnect us to our own wildness. I could feel that the first times I went trail running. Nothing felt so freeing as running through the woods, the mountains, in tune, in touch, heart pounding and smiling from the soul.
The times I feel most lost, most disconnected, are when I realize I have lost touch with that part of myself. Going outside, way outside, helps. But it’s not the only way. I have to remember to bring something from those times back with me; to ignite that spark; turn it to flame; and keep it burning through the work week; through daily life. Not to lose touch with it.
It often seems like we live in a world where we get points for being tamed. From schools, to cubicles, the better you sit still, assimilate, regurgitate, and fill out your TPS reports, the further along you are.
Yeah… no. That’s never been my path. And anytime I’ve seemed to start down it, God has seemed to redirect and remind me… wake up, look around, is this what you want? There is so much more.
There are daily reminders in town. There is a fox who lives in our neighborhood, whose gait and speed, and coat make me smile and wake me up a bit. Paddleboarding or kayaking. The sublimity of a sunrise. The power of a storm rolling in on the water. The vastness of the stars on a clear night.
At the same time we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. – Henry David Thoreau
We lose our wildness at our own risk. We lose it in as much as we are happy to be tamed. That doesn’t make me happy.
Sparking our sense of wonder. Rekindling our wildness. Every time I do those things, God seems to show me more–about life, the world, myself.
Wright goes on:
