Jesus, Mary, Gustav Mahler, Brother Martin, and the Magi
Sermon
CHANNELING GRACE
SERMONS FOR LENT AND EASTER
No doubt you are wondering what Jesus, his mother, Mary, the composer, Gustav Mahler, Martin Luther and the three Wise Men (the Magi) have in common. The list sounds like it comes from one of Johnny Carson's "Carnak" bits, doesn't it? The simple answer is that all of these people were willing to take a new look at the traditions they had inherited. Like Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof, they could celebrate the glory of tradition! But, like him, they also realized that tradition must remain in dialogue with a changing world.
Pinchas Peli is a modern rabbi-turned-teacher who likes to say "I don't come to preach - I come just to think along with you." In his book, Torah Today, published in 1987, he displays his special gift for blending tradition with new ideas and insights. He says that people who see no reason to be in touch with their religious traditions are like people who say "I've listened to enough concerts, I've read enough books, I quit." Then he adds: "There are concerts, books waiting. Why deprive yourself?" Peli reminds us that the Jewish Talmud encourages and welcomes differing opinions. It assumes that we will do new thinking on old issues but that we will always check these new ideas and new issues against a tradition that is more than 3000 years old. It has been said that if progressive John XXIII had been Pope at the time of Martin Luther there would still be a unified church under the papacy, and "St. Martin of Germany" would be known today as the founder of the Lutheran Order. Perhaps, too, if there had been more leaders like Rabbi Peli at the time of Jesus, the Christian interpretation of what the "Messiah" was all about would have been better understood.
Let us think along together about this parable of the tenants who thought that they could usurp the prerogatives of the owner of their land. They thought that they were "set" in their position and didn't have to listen to any new messages from the owner. Clearly, they represent the Jewish leaders who in the name of their tradition refused to listen to prophets and to Jesus when they came with new and challenging messages. In the Gospel of Matthew this criticism of the "lawyers and Pharisees" is stated in its strongest terms. Stephen Schwartz paraphrased these famous "woes!" in his musical Godspell like this: "Alas for you, lawyers and Pharisees, Hypocrites that you be ... Sure that the kingdom of heaven awaits you ... I send you prophets and I send you preachers, Sages in rages and ages of teachers, Nothing can mar your mood. Hypocrites ... who murdered the prophets ... Blind guides! Blind fools!" Now it needs to be said as strongly as possible in this post-Holocaust world that these kinds of strong condemnations are not directed ultimately at any one, specific group of people! This is a condemnation of all hypocrisy, of all arrogant traditions, religious or otherwise, that blindly destroy anything that criticizes or challenges their established notions and authority. To put it another way, there is an anti-establishment theme in the Gospels (especially in Luke), along with the theme of sympathy for the outsider, the outcast and the poor. Somewhat ironically, today we must take note of Rabbi Peli's observation that the vast majority of Jews have always known what it means to be the "eternal outsider." Anyone can become the outsider with whom God symphathizes, and anyone can slip into being the hypocritical oppressor who rejects God in the very act of claiming to uphold God's will and law.
We Christians, too, can fall into this trap of being traditionbound. When Lutherans, especially, celebrate their heritage as a reformation movement, they should remind us all of the danger of holding our traditions too tightly.
"Jesus ... may our eyes be ever turning to behold your cross anew." (Savonarola)
Reformers like Girolamo Savonarola, who admonishes us in his hymn "Jesus, Refuge of the Weary" to be always willing to take a new look at the Cross, and Martin Luther, who was declared an outlaw for his new vision of the old traditions, stand in a long tradition (!) of seers who took a new look at an ancient faith. The "Wise Men" or "Three Kings" in Matthew 2 are actually more specifically identified in the Greek as "Magi." That is, they were priests of the Zoroastrian faith, the ancient Persian religion. That these leaders of another religious tradition were willing to take an open-minded look at a new and perhaps different faith is cause for us designating them as especially wise. (We must also note here that the Persian/Zoroastrian king Cyrus is described in the book of Isaiah as "God's anointed" - God's Messiah! - when he allows the Jews to return home from captivity in Babylon.) The point is that the Bible celebrates people who are open to new ideas, open to new visions of ancient traditions, open to the unpredictable ways of God.
The philosopher Frederich Nietzsche's vision of the relationship between Christianity and Zoroastrianism embodied a bold criticism of the Christian faith, a critique later adopted by Malcolm X and others. Nietzsche took Zoroaster's name - his famous book is called Thus Spake Zarathustra (same name, different version) - as the symbol of a religion for the strong, as over against Jesus whom he saw as promoting a religion of weakness. Nietzsche wanted a religious figure who would stand for strength, self-reliance and assertiveness, in contrast to the emphasis Jesus put upon mercy, love and "turning the other cheek." Of course, the philosophy of the "superhuman," or "superman," that he developed apparently fails to understand that it takes strength to love and to forgive, but Nietzsche's ideas have stimulated some creative thinking. Malcolm X forced a lot of us to ask if we might not be using "a lily-white Jesus" to oppress people of non-European races and cultures, and he hoped that Muhammad might better symbolize black independence. The great composer Gustav Mahler was an adherent of Nietzsche, and not "typically devout," but he was deeply spiritual in his own way. His great "Resurrection Symphony No. 2" is one of the great contemporary statements of the Christian theme of resurrection. It would be impossible to calculate how many people have been inspired by this amazing piece of music.
Nietzsche's virtually irreligious notion of self-reliance seems to fly in the face of the Christian message of reliance upon the grace of God, but on one level at least, these opposite concepts lead to a similar attitude. Out of traditional Christian reliance upon the grace of God, comes the seemingly nontraditional concept of "religion-less Christianity." To rely totally upon the grace of God is tantamount to affirming that ultimate "religious" concerns like my eternal destiny are so much in God's hands that I can in a sense forget about such matters and concentrate my attention on the here-and-now. I can, so to speak, thank God that I am freed from "religious worries" to relax and concentrate on taking responsibility for this world that we have been given! Paradoxically, Nietzsche's doctrine of self-reliance and the Christian doctrine of reliance upon the grace of God converge to produce what might quite appropriately be called "religious secular humanism!"
I realize that upon hearing of such non-traditional, paradoxical notions as "religionless Christianity" and "religious/secular humanism," some Christians may have a first impulse to kill or quash the bearer of such a message. But before we jump to the conclusion that this kind of thinking denies our tradition, we should refer ourselves to this parable that Luke directs at the religious leaders who rejected the prophetic voice. The Bible, the Talmud, the Mishnah, the history of Christian doctrine - all reflect an ongoing process of reinterpreting tradition. The reinterpretation of tradition is not necessarily a denial of that tradition.
As the Magi were wise enough to be open to a new and tradition-challenging message, so Christians in turn need to be open to the insights of other religious traditions. In an article titled "Private gain and public good in the American Dream," Ronald Thiemann, Dean of Harvard Divinity School, wrote: "Genuine religious pluralism means that Christians, as well as others, must recognize themselves as one religious voice among many in the public conversation ... we must restrain those forces that seek to impose some form of Christian politics on American public life." Then he added, "I am convinced that the mainstream religious communities will recover their public voices only when they seek to appropriate and reform their own religious traditions ... we must develop a new vision of how excellence and compassion, self-interest and virtue, private gain and public good can once again be brought together."
One of the things we can learn from the voice of Hinduism is that there are different styles of being religious. Hindus distinguish between what they call the way of devotion, the way of ritual, and the way of knowledge. In other words, we will understand one another better if we simply accept the fact that there are different "religious personality types." Some people are by nature devotional and pious - they express their faith in very warm, emotional terms, as if "the Lord" is always visible right at their elbow. Other folk express their faith primarily through forms and rituals. And still others tend to be intellectualizers; they might even say of themselves that they are "not religious" when what they mean is that their piety does not take the more typical form of devotion or ritual. We need to learn that God's grace can be channeled through all of these religious styles.
Another religious voice that too often has not been heard is that of women. In recent years a significant number of Christians have taken to clown imagery as a way of expressing their faith, and Dr. Marge Wold, who worked for years as a Director of Ministry in Changing Communities for a major denomination, expounded on that new tradition in a series of lectures in 1985 titled "Clowns, prophets, chaos: hope for the city." Listen to these samples of her way of looking anew at the Cross: "Ministry in the city requires the qualities of a clown and the plot of a comedy. We need the kind of humor that winks at our audacity in entering such a complex sociological system at all with a 2000-year-old rural paradigm about shepherds and lost sheep." Speaking of what it means to be a prophet, she emphasized how difficult it is for a clergyperson/pastor to be the tradition-shaking prophet, and encouraged clergy to support the laity in the prophetic "creative process, and the apparent chaos which is an integral and essential part of it." Dr. Wold laments that "although the people of our churches have been exposed to persons from different backgrounds, worldviews, and cultural value systems through contacts in the work place, in our neighborhoods, in schools and through the mass media, little of this awareness has impacted congregational practices. Any deviation from traditional patterns of behavior, instead of being seen as an opportunity for growth and enrichment of congregational life, is feared as a mark of decay and dissolution." She concludes, "John's vision of the, 'great multitude which no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues' tells us what we are about in a pluralistic society."
Marge Wold understands that it is indeed traditional for the Christian faith to be open to diversity! Have we been guilty of defining people out of the church by a too-narrow view of what constitutes an appropriate Christian lifestyle or value system? A recent survey of the San Francisco Bay Area indicated that only about 3% attend worship regularly. Is this because sophisticated city people are simply irreligious, or is it because Christians are allowing the church to be ghettoized by small-minded notions of what the Christian community stands for? If people are to be "tripped up" by the church, let us be sure that they stumble over Christ - over the "foolishness" of God's vulnerable and unconditional love - and not over some parochial, culturally-limited version of Christianity.
The religious leaders in our text tripped over Jesus, not realizing that he was the cornerstone of something new that God was making with their tradition. Perhaps a modern parallel is to be found in an open letter written to Pope John Paul II by a group of gay church people before his visit to San Franaisco: "Your predecessors condemned Galileo when he said the earth revolved around the sun. Your clergy claimed Galileo was sinful in stating this scientific fact. You have the right to your own beliefs, however incorrect they may be, but you do not have the right to interfere with our lives on the basis of those beliefs." The signatories of this letter were objecting to the Vatican's condemnation of homosexuality. As Christians they were rightly reminding the church of how often in the past, by rejecting what is new, challenging or threatening - by shrinking from the struggle with controversial issues - we have been rejecting the truth and refusing to grow! Even the reform-minded Martin Luther rejected the concepts of Galileo and Copernicus.
Actually, you know, at the very beginning of his Gospel, Luke calls our attention to a young woman named Mary, whose attitude sets the stage for the entire ministry and message of Jesus. We should always remember and ponder her words as we move through our lives: "(God) has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree." We might also paraphrase and say: God sometimes puts aside or modifies our traditions, and breaks into our lives with good tidings of great joy - giving us an exciting new outlook on life!
John 8:1-11 (RC)
Lent 5 (Roman Catholic)
Some Women's Stories
Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. (John 8:7)
This story of the woman caught in adultery might be described as a "second-class story" - because it seems to have been added to John's Gospel as an afterthought. It does not appear in any of the older and more original versions of John, and some experts on the New Testament even think it may belong in Luke. The second-class status of this story is, unfortunately, also mildly appropriate
in light of the fact that throughout history, women have been accorded second-class recognition in most societies. In recent years we have all been more or less in the throes of revising - of "revisioning" - our male-dominated, patriarchal society. Women have probably always had more strength and influence than men would like to admit, but today fewer and fewer women are content to live with limited notions of a woman's role and place in society.
One of the reasons it is appropriate to associate this story with Luke's Gospel, is that along with his concern for outcasts, for the poor and oppressed, Luke also displays perhaps a greater empathy and respect for women than any other writer/editor in the New Testament. Beginning with the provocative story of Mary, who is proclaimed as a prime example of how God exalts those "of low degree," of how God is exceedingly concerned to rescue people from second-class status, Luke pays a lot of attention to women: the prophetess, Anna; the daughter of Jairus; the widow who gave her last mite to help others - these and other women we meet nowhere else, except in Luke. But John also credits Jesus' mother with propelling Jesus into his ministry at the wedding in Cana, and in Chapter 4 he explicitly makes a point of how the disciples of Jesus "marveled that he was talking with a woman" so seriously. It seems clear that, in general, the Gospel writers were ahead of their time in taking women seriously! Both the Samaritan woman at the well and the disciples are surprised when Jesus talks with her because, as is still the case with Orthodox Jews today, strict custom separated men and women in certain ways. It was considered inappropriate for Jesus to talk with a lone woman in such an informal setting - especially an outcast Samaritan woman! It is not at all far-fetched to see Jesus as a forerunner of both women's and men's liberation movements. He was willing to cross artificial barriers and challenge customary sex roles. In this story of the woman at the well, Jesus explains and demonstrates by his actions that those who worship "in spirit and in truth" may find themselves protesting social customs - like the establishment of male dominance - in the name of higher principles.
But the story of the woman caught in adultery from our main text here in John 8 is not just a woman's story. It is a story that reinforces a consistent theme in John's Gospel, the theme stated most eloquently in the famous John 3:16-17 passage: "God so loved the world ... God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world." This story calls into question any type of condemning and judging attitudes that label other people as outcasts. God did not send his son into the world to create outcasts and outsiders, but to celebrate the unity and diversity of many sheepfolds, many mansions. The point of this story is that Jesus is critical only of those who self-righteously condemn others. He says, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her." (A more contemporary version of this saying would be: "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.") The smug self-righteousness of those who were about to stone this woman to death does become an issue of sexism, if we assume that it was men who were so eager to kill her while apparently not being equally eager to stone the male partner in the alleged adultery situation. Be that as it may, the fundamental point remains simply that Jesus is warning against "holier-than-thouism" in all its forms. He is questioning our right to turn anyone into an outcast, an outsider, a second-class member of the human race.
A joke has been told about this story, that when Jesus said "Let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone at her," there was a sudden silence; but then all at once a huge boulder slammed down on the woman, and Jesus turned behind him and said, "Mother! Really!" The assumption is that Jesus' mother, Mary, was immaculately conceived and hence sinless, so she could throw a stone; but if Jesus himself doesn't condemn the woman, why should Mary do so? If even God's ultimate power to judge is always tempered with mercy, how much more should we beware of a condemning attitude! Certainly we can admonish people on the basis of ethical principles, and we can resist and restrain harmful actions, but it is never our prerogative to condemn, to expel a person from the human race, to label anyone as beyond God's love.
We have to realize that our ethical principles and evaluations are not flawless. The church is right to stand up for the traditional ethic of marital fidelity. But conservers of tradition also have to deal with the fact that circumstances alter cases. Strict ethical standards must stand in tension with the old Native American saying that one should not criticize others if one has not walked a mile in their moccasins. Take, for example, the stories of two fairly young women. Both have husbands who have been severely injured and who require permanent nursing home placement. The one wife decides eventually to divorce her husband and marry another man. She continues to care for her former husband, but knows she cannot survive without the multi-dimensional love and intimacy that her new husband can provide. The other wife remains married to her invalid husband, but she develops an intimate relationship with another man whose wife is also in permanent nursing home care. I think Jesus would tell us not to judge or condemn either of these women on the basis of some general principle. We have not walked in their shoes.
We do not know the total situation of the woman accused of adultery in the presence of Jesus. Perhaps Jesus did know. When he told her to go her way and sin no more he was not necessarily condemning what she had done to get in the fix she was in. The author of the story may be thinking of Jesus as being aware of extenuating circumstances. (The Gospel of John does have a rather lofty notion of Jesus' God-like special powers.) But regardless of all that, the admonition to "sin no more" is simply Jesus' way of giving the woman another chance. The whole point of the New Testament emphasis on forgiveness in not to focus on past sins but continually to remind ourselves that tomorrow is another day, that God always offers us a new opportunity to improve, to do good, to love rather than to condemn.
At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last. (13th Century Liturgical Composite)
Not long ago a woman who had been brutally raped and blinded came on the Sally Jessy Raphael TV talk show to share her experiences. She made a remarkable witness to the way in which she deals with her anger toward the man who so irreparably damaged her life. She said, "He has already taken too much of my time and energy; I'm not going to waste any more of my life by focusing on him." At the Cross, Jesus tells John to take care of his mother. Life goes on. Past losses do not preclude new opportunities to live and love.
As the ancient Stabat Mater hymn says, Mary stood by her son's cross to the very end, even though he had been condemned as a criminal, an outcast. In doing so she is not a pathetic character but a strong person who has taken to heart her son's teaching that we are not to condemn others. She is a strong, full-fledged human being taking her stand with the outsider, the oppressed, the one who has been mockingly treated as a second-class outcast.
It would not be accurate to suggest that the Bible is a "feminist" statement in the modern sense, just as it cannot be said that the Bible takes a stand four-square against the institution of slavery. But the seeds of the abolitionist and feminist movements are sown in the Scriptures. While the New Testament writers do not envision the end of the institution of slavery and Saint Paul admonishes a runaway slave to return to his master, Philemon, the New Testament does use the practice of redemption, of buying a slave and then setting him or her free, as a symbol of everything that Jesus accomplishes through his cross. The freeing of slaves becomes a model for the central Christian doctrine of Redemption, and thereby leads inexorably to the ultimate abolition of the entire institution of slavery under the leadership of Christian activists. Saint Paul was not a feminist. In fact, he had an almost embarrassingly patriarchal view of the world. But the insight and inspiration he shares with the Galatians provides the deeper truth which we have come to appreciate more and more today: "There is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)
A recent survey of inactive former church members found that many felt that the church could improve its ministry by "being more accepting of different kinds of people and different lifestyles." One of the most successful churches in San Francisco, Glide Memorial Methodist, celebrates pluralism; and when its pastor, Cecil Williams, received a Social Justice Award he said, "It's dangerous to be just with your own kind ... the church must say 'I accept you as you are,' not 'I'll accept you when you get like me.' " It has been noted that the "baby-boom" generation tends to be much more accepting of non-traditional life-styles. Must we not face the fact that true mission is not simply the same as promoting tradition? Must we not expand our horizons on what it means to be channels for God's grace?
A woman named Jo Brans has written a book called "Mother, I Have Something to Tell You," in which she discusses the reactions of parents when they discover or are told that their child has an unorthodox life-style or perhaps has not chosen the career that the parents had hoped for. More often than not, she concludes, the appropriate response for the parents is to expand their horizons, to continue to give unconditional love and to try to understand their child. We can create a lot uf unnecessary stress for ourselves by harboring overly-restrictive notions of what constitutes a fulfilling lifestyle.
It seems that a disproportionate number of women are attracted to the kind of metaphysical teachings that have recently found a spokesperson in Shirley MacLaine. She was even asked on the Phil Donahue Show why so few men seem to follow her guidance. Could it be that the world of psychics, palm readers, "past lives" trance channeling, and many other nontraditional movements like Christian Science, tend to be a woman's world because women have been effectively barred from playing major roles in the more traditional Christian churches? Our culture has done a great job of teaching women to express their emotional and intuitive side, but then has failed to take seriously enough the role of feeling and intuition in our theology and our institutions. Walter Wangerin Jr., pastor and author of The Book of the Dun Cow and other successful books, has observed that for a majority of Christians, literature is suspect "because it does not seem explicit enough." Many Christians "fear ambiguity," he says, and stories that function more on the level of inference, intuition and emotion, stories about particular people and moments in time, don't seem to meet our need for clear-cut answers. "But then," he adds, "we can meet Christ only in particulars, and it is always in the one we think is the most unlikely."
Which brings us right back to our story about the woman accused of adultery. Even if this were an apocryphal story, we learn as much from it about the message and meaning of the life of Jesus as from any other story or statement in the New Testament. Far from being too simple, too particular or too insignificant because "it's only about a sinful woman, an outcast of low degree," this story teaches in an exquisite way how much God loves and forgives every one of us! This story, along with John's story about the conversation Jesus has with the Samaritan woman at the well (discussing her life and profound issues of theology) shows Jesus to be a person of great feeling, intelligence and intuition - we might even say with no negative stereotype or condescension intended ... just like a woman!
Luke 22:1--23:56
Passion Sunday/Palm Sunday
Comfort the Disturbed/
Disturb the Comfortable
He stirs up the people teaching ... (Luke 23:5)
Years ago many of us celebrated this day as Palm Sunday. It was almost like a mini-Easter - a prelude to the ultimate celebration of the Resurrection. But in recent years we have been reminding ourselves that the more historical name for this day is Passion Sunday. Palm Sunday tended to be a day of waving palm branches, of joy, of singing "Hosannas." Passion Sunday has made the day more like the prelude to Good Friday - a day of somber reflection on the suffering, the passion, of our Lord.
The fact is that both names for the day are appropriate. This is above all a day of contrasts, a day of opposites! It is a day of opposite moods - joy ... and pathos. It is a day of opposite motifs - a "theology of the Cross," ... and a "theology of glory." It is a day of opposite and mixed messages. On the one hand we celebrate the uplifting and comforting message that we will be with Jesus around the table in his kingdom (Luke 22:30); but on the other hand we are reminded that Jesus does come to rock the boat, that Jesus does "stir people up with his teachings," that Jesus brings both peace and a sword. (Luke 22:36)
During these Sundays of Lent we have been stirred up with some rather intense analysis of what the Christian message and mission is really all about. To some degree we have passed right over some of the finer points of traditional theology - like the subtle differences in various "theories of the Atonement" and "doctrines of Justification" - in favor of a somewhat simplified message founded on the basic meaning of the name "Jesus" itself! It will be totally appropriate for us to argue over whether or not such a simple message of trust in God's grace is an adequate touchstone for Christian identity. We will be totally in keeping with the spirit of Jesus if we are stirred up by discussing and pondering the issues we have been considering and will continue to consider in the Easter season. We should learn from the basic complaint lodged against Jesus in our passion story from Luke, that he was stirring up the people with his teaching. We should learn not to fear and condemn those who stir us up with their message, with their teaching. (You should expect your pastor, your priest, to upset you once in a while! Too many preachers have been reduced to the level of doing little more than humoring people with pious cliches and platitudes, for fear of offending someone.)
You see, there is more than one aspect to being "biblical." One facet of a Bible-based faith is a matter simply of becoming biblically literate. That is, we need to regularly retell the old, old stories. But another aspect of what it means to be biblical is that we should continue to do the kinds of things that the great pioneers of faith did in their day. Just because Abraham left his native land and went west, trusting that God was leading him, does not mean that we must all do exactly the same thing and act as if "go west young man" was a commandment from on high. We do not blindly imitate the actions of Abraham, but we can find our own ways to emulate the faith that gave Abraham the courage to go forward into new and unknown territory. Similarly, we cannot simply quote Jesus as an answer to every problem that confronts us in the modern world. There are many issues on which we have no direct word from the pens of those who have told us stories about Jesus. To be truly biblical is to take a cue from the kinds of things that Jesus said and did. Jesus emphasized the spirit of the law as over against the letter of the law, suggesting that to follow the spirit is even more difficult than following the letter. Jesus is constantly pictured as entering into controversy. He is not afraid of stirring people up with his teaching! We should imitate the form and style of what Jesus was about, but some of the actual content of what we say and teach will be new. Jesus got involved in social issues aplenty, but we will look in vain for his comments on what to do when pastors in Pennsylvania become involved in protests over the closing of factories and the resulting unemployment. We can note that Jesus was known to have
registered a few dramatic protests of his own - it was on "Palm Sunday" that he went through the cheering crowd, straight to the temple where he proceeded to drive out the established temple business people. (Luke 19:45-46)
One approach that clearly is not biblical is to identify one particular religious, political or social ideology as the Christian program for creating social justice and the perfect society. This error can manifest itself in any number of ways, including when we start talking about "the Christian candidate" (as if Jesus was running for office) or when we identify the Gospel with unions and socialism as over against capitalism and corporations. Rather than pretending to have all the answers, we should wade into the struggle just as Jesus did and leave the ultimate outcome and judgments to God. The New York pastor, Richard John Neuhaus, has written: "As Christians ... we have no illusions that we are going to establish a social order of absolute truth and justice here on earth. Our responsibility is to strive for as much truth and as much justice as is possible in a democratic and pluralistic society. And, at the same time, we Christians always should be stretching our society's understanding of what may be possible."
It is extremely difficult to become meaningfully engaged in the struggle for a more just society without self-righteously identifying our partisan understandings and commitments as "the gospel" and any other point of view as "evil." But we must learn from Jesus to leave things somewhat open-ended - as when he said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." (Luke 20:25) The church should never be totally for or totally against a particular society or culture. As Jesus and the prophets were to some degree gadflies in their society, so to a large degree the church must play the role of social critic. We can work for our particular causes with a sense of urgency, but we must face the fact that it will be a rocky road, and devout believers will frequently disagree with each other over goals to some degree and even more so over tactics and methods.
Lord, be my consolation ... Remind me of thy Passion. (Bernard of Clairvaux)
Jesus preached a message that said "Come unto me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Jesus came to comfort the disturbed. He understands that we come to church to receive consolation when we are troubled, that we come (as some people say) to "have our batteries recharged for the week." He understands that we come to celebrate the wonder of life and to be inspired by a sermon that reassures and strengthens us. But Jesus was also a teacher. He understands that we also come to remember his Passion, his conflicts. He knows that we need sermons which are part lecture - an opportunity for learning and growing in our understanding of life. Jesus understands that sometimes we are too comfortable and need to be disturbed, to be challenged. His message is also "take my yoke upon you and learn from me." We will discover that his yoke which challenges our complacency, which stimulates us with new ideas and new insights, actually lightens our burdens by helping us to cope with life on a deeper level.
So, this Passion/Palm Sunday is a day of contrasts, and its central figure, Jesus, is a person of contrasts who comes to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Of course, we all need to be both comforted and disturbed. And, ironically, we often receive the most effective comfort precisely when we are being disturbed or when we forget about our own need for comfort and express our concern for the suffering of others.
The story has been told for centuries of the Chinese woman who asked a holy man how she could bring her only son who had died back to life. He instructed her to bring him a mustard seed "from a home that has never known sorrow." As she went from home to home, the mansions of the wealthy and the hovels of the poor, she found that there was no such thing as a home that had never known deep sorrow. She became so involved in helping and comforting others in their grief that she forgot all about her quest for the magical mustard seed. To envy others, assuming that they have life easier than we do, is a common misunderstanding of the reality of things. As we know, there was a lot of misunderstanding in that Palm Sunday crowd, and no doubt some folk there were envying Jesus because of all the attention he was getting. Misunderstanding indeed!
The great psychologist, Erich Fromm, was perhaps the first to observe that the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" in the U.S. Constitution is a contradiction in terms. Happiness, he said, never comes when we go out with the deliberate intention of acquiring happiness. Happiness is always the by-product of other activities that are meaningful for us. We get busy interacting with other people and the world around us, and, lo and behold, suddenly we realize we are happy. It's the same way with comfort. If we seek it too deliberately as an end in itself it will elude us. But if, with Saint Francis of Assisi, we "seek not so much to be consoled as to console," then we will have it dawn on us that we too are comforted. Lo and behold, as we sing in the Christmas Carol "Silent Night," we will experience "the dawn of redeeming grace."
Pinchas Peli is a modern rabbi-turned-teacher who likes to say "I don't come to preach - I come just to think along with you." In his book, Torah Today, published in 1987, he displays his special gift for blending tradition with new ideas and insights. He says that people who see no reason to be in touch with their religious traditions are like people who say "I've listened to enough concerts, I've read enough books, I quit." Then he adds: "There are concerts, books waiting. Why deprive yourself?" Peli reminds us that the Jewish Talmud encourages and welcomes differing opinions. It assumes that we will do new thinking on old issues but that we will always check these new ideas and new issues against a tradition that is more than 3000 years old. It has been said that if progressive John XXIII had been Pope at the time of Martin Luther there would still be a unified church under the papacy, and "St. Martin of Germany" would be known today as the founder of the Lutheran Order. Perhaps, too, if there had been more leaders like Rabbi Peli at the time of Jesus, the Christian interpretation of what the "Messiah" was all about would have been better understood.
Let us think along together about this parable of the tenants who thought that they could usurp the prerogatives of the owner of their land. They thought that they were "set" in their position and didn't have to listen to any new messages from the owner. Clearly, they represent the Jewish leaders who in the name of their tradition refused to listen to prophets and to Jesus when they came with new and challenging messages. In the Gospel of Matthew this criticism of the "lawyers and Pharisees" is stated in its strongest terms. Stephen Schwartz paraphrased these famous "woes!" in his musical Godspell like this: "Alas for you, lawyers and Pharisees, Hypocrites that you be ... Sure that the kingdom of heaven awaits you ... I send you prophets and I send you preachers, Sages in rages and ages of teachers, Nothing can mar your mood. Hypocrites ... who murdered the prophets ... Blind guides! Blind fools!" Now it needs to be said as strongly as possible in this post-Holocaust world that these kinds of strong condemnations are not directed ultimately at any one, specific group of people! This is a condemnation of all hypocrisy, of all arrogant traditions, religious or otherwise, that blindly destroy anything that criticizes or challenges their established notions and authority. To put it another way, there is an anti-establishment theme in the Gospels (especially in Luke), along with the theme of sympathy for the outsider, the outcast and the poor. Somewhat ironically, today we must take note of Rabbi Peli's observation that the vast majority of Jews have always known what it means to be the "eternal outsider." Anyone can become the outsider with whom God symphathizes, and anyone can slip into being the hypocritical oppressor who rejects God in the very act of claiming to uphold God's will and law.
We Christians, too, can fall into this trap of being traditionbound. When Lutherans, especially, celebrate their heritage as a reformation movement, they should remind us all of the danger of holding our traditions too tightly.
"Jesus ... may our eyes be ever turning to behold your cross anew." (Savonarola)
Reformers like Girolamo Savonarola, who admonishes us in his hymn "Jesus, Refuge of the Weary" to be always willing to take a new look at the Cross, and Martin Luther, who was declared an outlaw for his new vision of the old traditions, stand in a long tradition (!) of seers who took a new look at an ancient faith. The "Wise Men" or "Three Kings" in Matthew 2 are actually more specifically identified in the Greek as "Magi." That is, they were priests of the Zoroastrian faith, the ancient Persian religion. That these leaders of another religious tradition were willing to take an open-minded look at a new and perhaps different faith is cause for us designating them as especially wise. (We must also note here that the Persian/Zoroastrian king Cyrus is described in the book of Isaiah as "God's anointed" - God's Messiah! - when he allows the Jews to return home from captivity in Babylon.) The point is that the Bible celebrates people who are open to new ideas, open to new visions of ancient traditions, open to the unpredictable ways of God.
The philosopher Frederich Nietzsche's vision of the relationship between Christianity and Zoroastrianism embodied a bold criticism of the Christian faith, a critique later adopted by Malcolm X and others. Nietzsche took Zoroaster's name - his famous book is called Thus Spake Zarathustra (same name, different version) - as the symbol of a religion for the strong, as over against Jesus whom he saw as promoting a religion of weakness. Nietzsche wanted a religious figure who would stand for strength, self-reliance and assertiveness, in contrast to the emphasis Jesus put upon mercy, love and "turning the other cheek." Of course, the philosophy of the "superhuman," or "superman," that he developed apparently fails to understand that it takes strength to love and to forgive, but Nietzsche's ideas have stimulated some creative thinking. Malcolm X forced a lot of us to ask if we might not be using "a lily-white Jesus" to oppress people of non-European races and cultures, and he hoped that Muhammad might better symbolize black independence. The great composer Gustav Mahler was an adherent of Nietzsche, and not "typically devout," but he was deeply spiritual in his own way. His great "Resurrection Symphony No. 2" is one of the great contemporary statements of the Christian theme of resurrection. It would be impossible to calculate how many people have been inspired by this amazing piece of music.
Nietzsche's virtually irreligious notion of self-reliance seems to fly in the face of the Christian message of reliance upon the grace of God, but on one level at least, these opposite concepts lead to a similar attitude. Out of traditional Christian reliance upon the grace of God, comes the seemingly nontraditional concept of "religion-less Christianity." To rely totally upon the grace of God is tantamount to affirming that ultimate "religious" concerns like my eternal destiny are so much in God's hands that I can in a sense forget about such matters and concentrate my attention on the here-and-now. I can, so to speak, thank God that I am freed from "religious worries" to relax and concentrate on taking responsibility for this world that we have been given! Paradoxically, Nietzsche's doctrine of self-reliance and the Christian doctrine of reliance upon the grace of God converge to produce what might quite appropriately be called "religious secular humanism!"
I realize that upon hearing of such non-traditional, paradoxical notions as "religionless Christianity" and "religious/secular humanism," some Christians may have a first impulse to kill or quash the bearer of such a message. But before we jump to the conclusion that this kind of thinking denies our tradition, we should refer ourselves to this parable that Luke directs at the religious leaders who rejected the prophetic voice. The Bible, the Talmud, the Mishnah, the history of Christian doctrine - all reflect an ongoing process of reinterpreting tradition. The reinterpretation of tradition is not necessarily a denial of that tradition.
As the Magi were wise enough to be open to a new and tradition-challenging message, so Christians in turn need to be open to the insights of other religious traditions. In an article titled "Private gain and public good in the American Dream," Ronald Thiemann, Dean of Harvard Divinity School, wrote: "Genuine religious pluralism means that Christians, as well as others, must recognize themselves as one religious voice among many in the public conversation ... we must restrain those forces that seek to impose some form of Christian politics on American public life." Then he added, "I am convinced that the mainstream religious communities will recover their public voices only when they seek to appropriate and reform their own religious traditions ... we must develop a new vision of how excellence and compassion, self-interest and virtue, private gain and public good can once again be brought together."
One of the things we can learn from the voice of Hinduism is that there are different styles of being religious. Hindus distinguish between what they call the way of devotion, the way of ritual, and the way of knowledge. In other words, we will understand one another better if we simply accept the fact that there are different "religious personality types." Some people are by nature devotional and pious - they express their faith in very warm, emotional terms, as if "the Lord" is always visible right at their elbow. Other folk express their faith primarily through forms and rituals. And still others tend to be intellectualizers; they might even say of themselves that they are "not religious" when what they mean is that their piety does not take the more typical form of devotion or ritual. We need to learn that God's grace can be channeled through all of these religious styles.
Another religious voice that too often has not been heard is that of women. In recent years a significant number of Christians have taken to clown imagery as a way of expressing their faith, and Dr. Marge Wold, who worked for years as a Director of Ministry in Changing Communities for a major denomination, expounded on that new tradition in a series of lectures in 1985 titled "Clowns, prophets, chaos: hope for the city." Listen to these samples of her way of looking anew at the Cross: "Ministry in the city requires the qualities of a clown and the plot of a comedy. We need the kind of humor that winks at our audacity in entering such a complex sociological system at all with a 2000-year-old rural paradigm about shepherds and lost sheep." Speaking of what it means to be a prophet, she emphasized how difficult it is for a clergyperson/pastor to be the tradition-shaking prophet, and encouraged clergy to support the laity in the prophetic "creative process, and the apparent chaos which is an integral and essential part of it." Dr. Wold laments that "although the people of our churches have been exposed to persons from different backgrounds, worldviews, and cultural value systems through contacts in the work place, in our neighborhoods, in schools and through the mass media, little of this awareness has impacted congregational practices. Any deviation from traditional patterns of behavior, instead of being seen as an opportunity for growth and enrichment of congregational life, is feared as a mark of decay and dissolution." She concludes, "John's vision of the, 'great multitude which no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues' tells us what we are about in a pluralistic society."
Marge Wold understands that it is indeed traditional for the Christian faith to be open to diversity! Have we been guilty of defining people out of the church by a too-narrow view of what constitutes an appropriate Christian lifestyle or value system? A recent survey of the San Francisco Bay Area indicated that only about 3% attend worship regularly. Is this because sophisticated city people are simply irreligious, or is it because Christians are allowing the church to be ghettoized by small-minded notions of what the Christian community stands for? If people are to be "tripped up" by the church, let us be sure that they stumble over Christ - over the "foolishness" of God's vulnerable and unconditional love - and not over some parochial, culturally-limited version of Christianity.
The religious leaders in our text tripped over Jesus, not realizing that he was the cornerstone of something new that God was making with their tradition. Perhaps a modern parallel is to be found in an open letter written to Pope John Paul II by a group of gay church people before his visit to San Franaisco: "Your predecessors condemned Galileo when he said the earth revolved around the sun. Your clergy claimed Galileo was sinful in stating this scientific fact. You have the right to your own beliefs, however incorrect they may be, but you do not have the right to interfere with our lives on the basis of those beliefs." The signatories of this letter were objecting to the Vatican's condemnation of homosexuality. As Christians they were rightly reminding the church of how often in the past, by rejecting what is new, challenging or threatening - by shrinking from the struggle with controversial issues - we have been rejecting the truth and refusing to grow! Even the reform-minded Martin Luther rejected the concepts of Galileo and Copernicus.
Actually, you know, at the very beginning of his Gospel, Luke calls our attention to a young woman named Mary, whose attitude sets the stage for the entire ministry and message of Jesus. We should always remember and ponder her words as we move through our lives: "(God) has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree." We might also paraphrase and say: God sometimes puts aside or modifies our traditions, and breaks into our lives with good tidings of great joy - giving us an exciting new outlook on life!
John 8:1-11 (RC)
Lent 5 (Roman Catholic)
Some Women's Stories
Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. (John 8:7)
This story of the woman caught in adultery might be described as a "second-class story" - because it seems to have been added to John's Gospel as an afterthought. It does not appear in any of the older and more original versions of John, and some experts on the New Testament even think it may belong in Luke. The second-class status of this story is, unfortunately, also mildly appropriate
in light of the fact that throughout history, women have been accorded second-class recognition in most societies. In recent years we have all been more or less in the throes of revising - of "revisioning" - our male-dominated, patriarchal society. Women have probably always had more strength and influence than men would like to admit, but today fewer and fewer women are content to live with limited notions of a woman's role and place in society.
One of the reasons it is appropriate to associate this story with Luke's Gospel, is that along with his concern for outcasts, for the poor and oppressed, Luke also displays perhaps a greater empathy and respect for women than any other writer/editor in the New Testament. Beginning with the provocative story of Mary, who is proclaimed as a prime example of how God exalts those "of low degree," of how God is exceedingly concerned to rescue people from second-class status, Luke pays a lot of attention to women: the prophetess, Anna; the daughter of Jairus; the widow who gave her last mite to help others - these and other women we meet nowhere else, except in Luke. But John also credits Jesus' mother with propelling Jesus into his ministry at the wedding in Cana, and in Chapter 4 he explicitly makes a point of how the disciples of Jesus "marveled that he was talking with a woman" so seriously. It seems clear that, in general, the Gospel writers were ahead of their time in taking women seriously! Both the Samaritan woman at the well and the disciples are surprised when Jesus talks with her because, as is still the case with Orthodox Jews today, strict custom separated men and women in certain ways. It was considered inappropriate for Jesus to talk with a lone woman in such an informal setting - especially an outcast Samaritan woman! It is not at all far-fetched to see Jesus as a forerunner of both women's and men's liberation movements. He was willing to cross artificial barriers and challenge customary sex roles. In this story of the woman at the well, Jesus explains and demonstrates by his actions that those who worship "in spirit and in truth" may find themselves protesting social customs - like the establishment of male dominance - in the name of higher principles.
But the story of the woman caught in adultery from our main text here in John 8 is not just a woman's story. It is a story that reinforces a consistent theme in John's Gospel, the theme stated most eloquently in the famous John 3:16-17 passage: "God so loved the world ... God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world." This story calls into question any type of condemning and judging attitudes that label other people as outcasts. God did not send his son into the world to create outcasts and outsiders, but to celebrate the unity and diversity of many sheepfolds, many mansions. The point of this story is that Jesus is critical only of those who self-righteously condemn others. He says, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her." (A more contemporary version of this saying would be: "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.") The smug self-righteousness of those who were about to stone this woman to death does become an issue of sexism, if we assume that it was men who were so eager to kill her while apparently not being equally eager to stone the male partner in the alleged adultery situation. Be that as it may, the fundamental point remains simply that Jesus is warning against "holier-than-thouism" in all its forms. He is questioning our right to turn anyone into an outcast, an outsider, a second-class member of the human race.
A joke has been told about this story, that when Jesus said "Let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone at her," there was a sudden silence; but then all at once a huge boulder slammed down on the woman, and Jesus turned behind him and said, "Mother! Really!" The assumption is that Jesus' mother, Mary, was immaculately conceived and hence sinless, so she could throw a stone; but if Jesus himself doesn't condemn the woman, why should Mary do so? If even God's ultimate power to judge is always tempered with mercy, how much more should we beware of a condemning attitude! Certainly we can admonish people on the basis of ethical principles, and we can resist and restrain harmful actions, but it is never our prerogative to condemn, to expel a person from the human race, to label anyone as beyond God's love.
We have to realize that our ethical principles and evaluations are not flawless. The church is right to stand up for the traditional ethic of marital fidelity. But conservers of tradition also have to deal with the fact that circumstances alter cases. Strict ethical standards must stand in tension with the old Native American saying that one should not criticize others if one has not walked a mile in their moccasins. Take, for example, the stories of two fairly young women. Both have husbands who have been severely injured and who require permanent nursing home placement. The one wife decides eventually to divorce her husband and marry another man. She continues to care for her former husband, but knows she cannot survive without the multi-dimensional love and intimacy that her new husband can provide. The other wife remains married to her invalid husband, but she develops an intimate relationship with another man whose wife is also in permanent nursing home care. I think Jesus would tell us not to judge or condemn either of these women on the basis of some general principle. We have not walked in their shoes.
We do not know the total situation of the woman accused of adultery in the presence of Jesus. Perhaps Jesus did know. When he told her to go her way and sin no more he was not necessarily condemning what she had done to get in the fix she was in. The author of the story may be thinking of Jesus as being aware of extenuating circumstances. (The Gospel of John does have a rather lofty notion of Jesus' God-like special powers.) But regardless of all that, the admonition to "sin no more" is simply Jesus' way of giving the woman another chance. The whole point of the New Testament emphasis on forgiveness in not to focus on past sins but continually to remind ourselves that tomorrow is another day, that God always offers us a new opportunity to improve, to do good, to love rather than to condemn.
At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last. (13th Century Liturgical Composite)
Not long ago a woman who had been brutally raped and blinded came on the Sally Jessy Raphael TV talk show to share her experiences. She made a remarkable witness to the way in which she deals with her anger toward the man who so irreparably damaged her life. She said, "He has already taken too much of my time and energy; I'm not going to waste any more of my life by focusing on him." At the Cross, Jesus tells John to take care of his mother. Life goes on. Past losses do not preclude new opportunities to live and love.
As the ancient Stabat Mater hymn says, Mary stood by her son's cross to the very end, even though he had been condemned as a criminal, an outcast. In doing so she is not a pathetic character but a strong person who has taken to heart her son's teaching that we are not to condemn others. She is a strong, full-fledged human being taking her stand with the outsider, the oppressed, the one who has been mockingly treated as a second-class outcast.
It would not be accurate to suggest that the Bible is a "feminist" statement in the modern sense, just as it cannot be said that the Bible takes a stand four-square against the institution of slavery. But the seeds of the abolitionist and feminist movements are sown in the Scriptures. While the New Testament writers do not envision the end of the institution of slavery and Saint Paul admonishes a runaway slave to return to his master, Philemon, the New Testament does use the practice of redemption, of buying a slave and then setting him or her free, as a symbol of everything that Jesus accomplishes through his cross. The freeing of slaves becomes a model for the central Christian doctrine of Redemption, and thereby leads inexorably to the ultimate abolition of the entire institution of slavery under the leadership of Christian activists. Saint Paul was not a feminist. In fact, he had an almost embarrassingly patriarchal view of the world. But the insight and inspiration he shares with the Galatians provides the deeper truth which we have come to appreciate more and more today: "There is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)
A recent survey of inactive former church members found that many felt that the church could improve its ministry by "being more accepting of different kinds of people and different lifestyles." One of the most successful churches in San Francisco, Glide Memorial Methodist, celebrates pluralism; and when its pastor, Cecil Williams, received a Social Justice Award he said, "It's dangerous to be just with your own kind ... the church must say 'I accept you as you are,' not 'I'll accept you when you get like me.' " It has been noted that the "baby-boom" generation tends to be much more accepting of non-traditional life-styles. Must we not face the fact that true mission is not simply the same as promoting tradition? Must we not expand our horizons on what it means to be channels for God's grace?
A woman named Jo Brans has written a book called "Mother, I Have Something to Tell You," in which she discusses the reactions of parents when they discover or are told that their child has an unorthodox life-style or perhaps has not chosen the career that the parents had hoped for. More often than not, she concludes, the appropriate response for the parents is to expand their horizons, to continue to give unconditional love and to try to understand their child. We can create a lot uf unnecessary stress for ourselves by harboring overly-restrictive notions of what constitutes a fulfilling lifestyle.
It seems that a disproportionate number of women are attracted to the kind of metaphysical teachings that have recently found a spokesperson in Shirley MacLaine. She was even asked on the Phil Donahue Show why so few men seem to follow her guidance. Could it be that the world of psychics, palm readers, "past lives" trance channeling, and many other nontraditional movements like Christian Science, tend to be a woman's world because women have been effectively barred from playing major roles in the more traditional Christian churches? Our culture has done a great job of teaching women to express their emotional and intuitive side, but then has failed to take seriously enough the role of feeling and intuition in our theology and our institutions. Walter Wangerin Jr., pastor and author of The Book of the Dun Cow and other successful books, has observed that for a majority of Christians, literature is suspect "because it does not seem explicit enough." Many Christians "fear ambiguity," he says, and stories that function more on the level of inference, intuition and emotion, stories about particular people and moments in time, don't seem to meet our need for clear-cut answers. "But then," he adds, "we can meet Christ only in particulars, and it is always in the one we think is the most unlikely."
Which brings us right back to our story about the woman accused of adultery. Even if this were an apocryphal story, we learn as much from it about the message and meaning of the life of Jesus as from any other story or statement in the New Testament. Far from being too simple, too particular or too insignificant because "it's only about a sinful woman, an outcast of low degree," this story teaches in an exquisite way how much God loves and forgives every one of us! This story, along with John's story about the conversation Jesus has with the Samaritan woman at the well (discussing her life and profound issues of theology) shows Jesus to be a person of great feeling, intelligence and intuition - we might even say with no negative stereotype or condescension intended ... just like a woman!
Luke 22:1--23:56
Passion Sunday/Palm Sunday
Comfort the Disturbed/
Disturb the Comfortable
He stirs up the people teaching ... (Luke 23:5)
Years ago many of us celebrated this day as Palm Sunday. It was almost like a mini-Easter - a prelude to the ultimate celebration of the Resurrection. But in recent years we have been reminding ourselves that the more historical name for this day is Passion Sunday. Palm Sunday tended to be a day of waving palm branches, of joy, of singing "Hosannas." Passion Sunday has made the day more like the prelude to Good Friday - a day of somber reflection on the suffering, the passion, of our Lord.
The fact is that both names for the day are appropriate. This is above all a day of contrasts, a day of opposites! It is a day of opposite moods - joy ... and pathos. It is a day of opposite motifs - a "theology of the Cross," ... and a "theology of glory." It is a day of opposite and mixed messages. On the one hand we celebrate the uplifting and comforting message that we will be with Jesus around the table in his kingdom (Luke 22:30); but on the other hand we are reminded that Jesus does come to rock the boat, that Jesus does "stir people up with his teachings," that Jesus brings both peace and a sword. (Luke 22:36)
During these Sundays of Lent we have been stirred up with some rather intense analysis of what the Christian message and mission is really all about. To some degree we have passed right over some of the finer points of traditional theology - like the subtle differences in various "theories of the Atonement" and "doctrines of Justification" - in favor of a somewhat simplified message founded on the basic meaning of the name "Jesus" itself! It will be totally appropriate for us to argue over whether or not such a simple message of trust in God's grace is an adequate touchstone for Christian identity. We will be totally in keeping with the spirit of Jesus if we are stirred up by discussing and pondering the issues we have been considering and will continue to consider in the Easter season. We should learn from the basic complaint lodged against Jesus in our passion story from Luke, that he was stirring up the people with his teaching. We should learn not to fear and condemn those who stir us up with their message, with their teaching. (You should expect your pastor, your priest, to upset you once in a while! Too many preachers have been reduced to the level of doing little more than humoring people with pious cliches and platitudes, for fear of offending someone.)
You see, there is more than one aspect to being "biblical." One facet of a Bible-based faith is a matter simply of becoming biblically literate. That is, we need to regularly retell the old, old stories. But another aspect of what it means to be biblical is that we should continue to do the kinds of things that the great pioneers of faith did in their day. Just because Abraham left his native land and went west, trusting that God was leading him, does not mean that we must all do exactly the same thing and act as if "go west young man" was a commandment from on high. We do not blindly imitate the actions of Abraham, but we can find our own ways to emulate the faith that gave Abraham the courage to go forward into new and unknown territory. Similarly, we cannot simply quote Jesus as an answer to every problem that confronts us in the modern world. There are many issues on which we have no direct word from the pens of those who have told us stories about Jesus. To be truly biblical is to take a cue from the kinds of things that Jesus said and did. Jesus emphasized the spirit of the law as over against the letter of the law, suggesting that to follow the spirit is even more difficult than following the letter. Jesus is constantly pictured as entering into controversy. He is not afraid of stirring people up with his teaching! We should imitate the form and style of what Jesus was about, but some of the actual content of what we say and teach will be new. Jesus got involved in social issues aplenty, but we will look in vain for his comments on what to do when pastors in Pennsylvania become involved in protests over the closing of factories and the resulting unemployment. We can note that Jesus was known to have
registered a few dramatic protests of his own - it was on "Palm Sunday" that he went through the cheering crowd, straight to the temple where he proceeded to drive out the established temple business people. (Luke 19:45-46)
One approach that clearly is not biblical is to identify one particular religious, political or social ideology as the Christian program for creating social justice and the perfect society. This error can manifest itself in any number of ways, including when we start talking about "the Christian candidate" (as if Jesus was running for office) or when we identify the Gospel with unions and socialism as over against capitalism and corporations. Rather than pretending to have all the answers, we should wade into the struggle just as Jesus did and leave the ultimate outcome and judgments to God. The New York pastor, Richard John Neuhaus, has written: "As Christians ... we have no illusions that we are going to establish a social order of absolute truth and justice here on earth. Our responsibility is to strive for as much truth and as much justice as is possible in a democratic and pluralistic society. And, at the same time, we Christians always should be stretching our society's understanding of what may be possible."
It is extremely difficult to become meaningfully engaged in the struggle for a more just society without self-righteously identifying our partisan understandings and commitments as "the gospel" and any other point of view as "evil." But we must learn from Jesus to leave things somewhat open-ended - as when he said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." (Luke 20:25) The church should never be totally for or totally against a particular society or culture. As Jesus and the prophets were to some degree gadflies in their society, so to a large degree the church must play the role of social critic. We can work for our particular causes with a sense of urgency, but we must face the fact that it will be a rocky road, and devout believers will frequently disagree with each other over goals to some degree and even more so over tactics and methods.
Lord, be my consolation ... Remind me of thy Passion. (Bernard of Clairvaux)
Jesus preached a message that said "Come unto me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Jesus came to comfort the disturbed. He understands that we come to church to receive consolation when we are troubled, that we come (as some people say) to "have our batteries recharged for the week." He understands that we come to celebrate the wonder of life and to be inspired by a sermon that reassures and strengthens us. But Jesus was also a teacher. He understands that we also come to remember his Passion, his conflicts. He knows that we need sermons which are part lecture - an opportunity for learning and growing in our understanding of life. Jesus understands that sometimes we are too comfortable and need to be disturbed, to be challenged. His message is also "take my yoke upon you and learn from me." We will discover that his yoke which challenges our complacency, which stimulates us with new ideas and new insights, actually lightens our burdens by helping us to cope with life on a deeper level.
So, this Passion/Palm Sunday is a day of contrasts, and its central figure, Jesus, is a person of contrasts who comes to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Of course, we all need to be both comforted and disturbed. And, ironically, we often receive the most effective comfort precisely when we are being disturbed or when we forget about our own need for comfort and express our concern for the suffering of others.
The story has been told for centuries of the Chinese woman who asked a holy man how she could bring her only son who had died back to life. He instructed her to bring him a mustard seed "from a home that has never known sorrow." As she went from home to home, the mansions of the wealthy and the hovels of the poor, she found that there was no such thing as a home that had never known deep sorrow. She became so involved in helping and comforting others in their grief that she forgot all about her quest for the magical mustard seed. To envy others, assuming that they have life easier than we do, is a common misunderstanding of the reality of things. As we know, there was a lot of misunderstanding in that Palm Sunday crowd, and no doubt some folk there were envying Jesus because of all the attention he was getting. Misunderstanding indeed!
The great psychologist, Erich Fromm, was perhaps the first to observe that the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" in the U.S. Constitution is a contradiction in terms. Happiness, he said, never comes when we go out with the deliberate intention of acquiring happiness. Happiness is always the by-product of other activities that are meaningful for us. We get busy interacting with other people and the world around us, and, lo and behold, suddenly we realize we are happy. It's the same way with comfort. If we seek it too deliberately as an end in itself it will elude us. But if, with Saint Francis of Assisi, we "seek not so much to be consoled as to console," then we will have it dawn on us that we too are comforted. Lo and behold, as we sing in the Christmas Carol "Silent Night," we will experience "the dawn of redeeming grace."
