Proper 21, Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15, Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16, 1 Timothy 6:6-19, Luke 16:19-31
09/30/07
This parable is a cartoon. Jesus makes it exaggerated and extreme and he means it to be funny. Don’t use this parable for direct doctrine on the afterlife. But it does have serious elements: it’s the only parable in which a character has a name, and the name is significant. The name "Lazarus" means "God helps." But Lazarus is not the main character. The main character is the man not named.
We need to be clear about something else, because the translation is misleading. The original Greek does not say "There was a rich man," but, in a word order that is atypical and noticeable, it says something like this, "And there was some guy who was rich and dressed in purple, etc."
The subtle difference is significant. "And there was some guy" who had the particular besetting problem of being rich. Just because you’re not rich doesn’t mean he doesn’t stand for you, whatever your own besetting problem is. Of course, let’s not deny that being rich is a particularly besetting problem when it comes to spirituality and fearing God, but there’s a way in which this guy is any one of us. And that has to with how God helps us.
The guy, who was rich, was being helped by God. God helped him by sending the poor man Lazarus to his gate. God was helping the guy by making it easy for him to keep the Laws of Moses. God had given the guy a "stranger within his gates," and so he didn’t have to go across town to feed the poor, he could do it right there at his own house, and even on a Sabbath day — he could do it without breaking any Sabbath laws.
Unfortunately the guy didn’t take God’s help. His life was too good to need God’s help. Maybe he thought: the name of that bum is Lazarus, so let God help him. Which of course is what happened, when the angels took him to heaven and he finally got to eat a decent meal at the celestial banquet, even sitting in a place of honor right next to Abraham.
And the guy who was rich dies too, and now he’s the one who’s suffering and now he really does need help. "Send Lazarus down to cool my tongue." (Jesus is being funny here, he’s playing with the image of the tongue of the man and the tongues of the dogs. And the audience is thinking, ha ha, serves the rich guy right.)
"Nope, sorry, a great chasm is fixed between us, and we can’t cross it and you can’t either."
"Well, then, Father Abraham, help my brothers. Send him to warn my brothers."
"But my son, your brothers already saw Lazarus whenever they came to your house. Shall we send a different beggar to lie at your father’s gate and help them out?"
"I don’t mean send him back as a beggar. I mean as somebody important, like a prophet."
"Oh, I see. But they already know what the prophets say about caring for the poor and needy. If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, why would they listen to Lazarus?"
While the guy was alive he had to step over him every time he left his house. But he didn’t see him. Or he chose not to see him. Had he blinded his eyes, or hardened his heart, or was he preoccupied with what luscious food he would be eating next? Hadn’t he already fixed a great chasm of his own between himself and Lazarus, a chasm within his own heart that he would not cross, a portable separation from the poor that we always have with us?
And what about you, O listener? Perhaps you too are wealthy. Or perhaps your besetting problem is something else. What particular chasm do you keep yourself behind, that you may keep yourself apart from those persons whom God sends into your life to help you, not to help you do the dishes, but to help you face the fear of God and the love of God and the mercy of God?
They typically come into your life not as angels or prophets but problems, as beggars.
I am sure that when you pray you ask God for help, and the kind of help God sends you is not what you were planning on. Sometimes it’s resistance even, an obstacle in the way that you were going, or an imposition in your life. Can you accept that kind of help from God?
You know that a parable is usually about several things at once. One thing this parable is about is repentance. You can think of repentance as recognizing what’s in front of you. Seeing it and facing it. Not avoiding it even when it’s painful and troubling. Crossing over to it and even touching it.
The guy was not repentant. Even in Hades he remained unrepentant. Notice how he kept on disregarding Lazarus. "Father Abraham, tell Lazarus to do this. Father Abraham, tell Lazarus to do that." He did not speak to Lazarus himself, he thought him still beneath him. And he would not take full responsibility for where he ended up. Read between his lines: "I didn’t know, it was not made clear enough to me. I didn’t know what you wanted, it isn’t fair." Repentance is to accept God’s judgement as God’s help.
This parable is also about love. The man loved money more than people. He loved his riches more than he loved the man outside his gate. His love of money was the root of evil in his life. He didn’t think his life was evil, he probably said that God had blessed him, his life felt good to him, but it was evil, in the way that Lazarus was nothing to him.
When other people are not sufficiently important to me, whether they live or die, whether they are happy or suffering, that is evil. It is to live outside of the claims and obligations of human love, and to find a substitute in the love of money, which is essentially the love of self and the love of power. The love of money and security and power and the satisfaction of my appetites are chasms in our lives to keep us separated from those we really are to love.
Too bad for the guy; Lazarus was his opportunity to love his neighbor as himself — for who is a closer neighbor than the stranger within your gate, and why shouldn’t he have sat him at his table right beside him? Abraham was rich and important, and he did that for Lazarus, why hadn’t the guy done that?
If we are blessed with prosperity, it’s not a reward from God for good behavior. Rather, it’s an occasion for our testing, to see what we will do with it. What do we love? Whom do we love? These questions are always relevant for Christians.
Do you see the connection between love and repentance? Repentance is not only saying, "I’m sorry." If it just stays there, it’s no better than saying, "I feel bad." Repentance starts with sorrow and recognition, but it has to go further, it has to say something more, repentance finally has to say, "I love you."
I don’t mean romantic love, and I don’t mean possessive love, in the way that you love your lover, or good food and nice clothes, which I love very much. I mean loving the unlovely, serving the humble, rescuing the perishing. "I love you, I want to serve you, as God has served us in Jesus Christ." The funny thing is, the more you love as God loves, the more pleasure you get from things like good food and nice clothes, and the better you get at romantic love.
This parable is about repentance and about love, but most deeply it’s about Jesus himself. Do you see it? Lazarus is Jesus. Yes, Jesus is a prophet, but he also comes to you as a beggar, and he comes this way to help you. He is the stranger who lies down in your gate so that you have to step over him. His gifts are often only beggar’s gifts. Jesus never overpowers us, though he is king of kings. He "under-powers" us, and comes in weakness.
Why this way? It is your power that he wants to be expressed in the world. He doesn’t want you to be powerless. He doesn’t want you to be a beggar. He wants you to have power, sufficient power, appropriate power, and he wants you to exercise your power lovingly. Not to keep your power, but to give out power, lovingly, sharing the power that you have.
Copyright © 2007 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
Sermon for September 23: The Parable of the Dishonest Steward
Proper 20, Jeremiah 8:18-9:1, Psalm 79:1-9, 1 Timothy 2:1-7, Luke 16:1-13 , Brooklyn, 09/23/07
This parable is notoriously difficult to interpret. I have preached it four times now, and as I look back at my earlier attempts the best I can say is that I tried, and that I trust in God to make good out of bad. I’m going to try it again; would you be so kind as to be hospitable with me today?
The parable is difficult because it plays with conventional morality, and it’s hard to know how funny or sly or sarcastic Jesus was. Also, some of the words that Jesus uses have fluid meanings, depending on the context. Jesus may be doing wordplay in the parable, but it’s hard to be sure.
When Jesus talks about "sons of light," does he mean ordinary Israelites, who are supposed to be the light to the nations, or does he mean the revolutionary zealots, who called themselves the "sons of light,"but who carried daggers and committed violence in God’s name?
Our modern Bibles mislead us by translating the word mammon as wealth. It really means property, as in private property, which is the basis of wealth, but also security. Property ownership was not a secular matter in Israel. The very ground was sacred in the Promised Land, it belonged to God, and its division among the people was supposed to follow the Laws of Moses.
But in Jesus’ day it did not. Most property was held by large landowners, and the ordinary people were tenant farmers and sharecroppers. They were usually in debt to the landowners, and had to pay lots of interest. This whole system was against the Laws of Moses, and so it is literally, "unrighteous property" that Jesus is talking about, not "dishonest wealth."
It’s hard for us to conceive this terminology, because we think in secular terms, but they did not. And they knew from the weekly readings of the Torah in the synagogues that the very ground they lived on was "unrighteous property."
Maybe unrighteous in Israel, but the ordinary way of doing business in the rest of the world, and for the Romans too. But that meant that in the Promised Land the laws and customs of the Romans had more effective authority than the Laws of Moses. That was intolerable to the zealots, the sons of light.
Like today. Imagine if in Saudi Arabia the laws of Islam had to give way to European law, or if Mecca were guarded by American soldiers. No wonder there were zealots and revolutionaries in Jerusalem. Out of the twelve disciples, two had zealot sympathies.
Jesus keeps warning his listeners not to go that route. He tells them it’s not what God wants, and not only that, if they keep it up they cannot win, and the Romans will do like the Babylonians did in the days of the prophet Jeremiah and tear down the temple and level Jerusalem and scatter its inhabitants and send them into exile all over again. Jesus predicted it, and it did happen.
Jesus was a radical but not a revolutionary. He wanted purity and righteousness, but not that kind. He said that the Roman occupation was only the occasion of their problems, not the cause. We are the cause of our problems. He said to live among the Romans as children of light among the children of this age, even when they dispossess us of our land, and we’re scattered among them. To do that, we have to accept the judgement of God on us, accepting it paradoxically as grace, that the scattering which is our judgement is also for the benefit of our mission.
It was for mission that God had given them the Promised Land. Not so much given to them, really, as entrusted to them. They were stewards of the promised land, not owners, for it belonged to God. The Promised Land was to be a special land of demonstration, and the Israelites were to demonstrate a way of life that God had intended for all humanity. That was their mission. A light to the nations.
So in the parable, the rich man stands for God, and the manager stands for Israel. The parable reminds them that even when they were free and independent in the Promised Land they did not follow the Laws of Moses. Old Testament history is full of it, how they failed as stewards of the land that God had entrusted to them, and they could blame that failure on no one but themselves. And to rise up against the Romans and set up a fundamentalist Jewish republic would only end up in other kinds of corruption. Think of the Ayatollah in Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
What Jesus teaches his disciples here is the very strategy carried out in the Book of Acts. After Pentecost, and after the initial euphoria in Jerusalem, the persecution came, and they were scattered, and this was grievous to them. But their scattering resulted in the good news spreading out. They were welcomed by the Samaritans, formerly their enemies. Peter was welcomed by a regiment of Roman soldiers. Paul and Silas were welcomed by the god-fearing Gentiles of Asia Minor, and into the homes of Lydia and the jailer in Philippi, and even in the protective custody of Caesar in Rome, where Paul preached freely and hosted many visitors and guests.
They were scattered and exiled and so they spread and infiltrated and invaded the world with light and life and peace. They had no enemies. Even the kings and high authorities who put them in prison were the beneficiaries of their prayers. And Paul wrote to Timothy what no zealot or religious revolutionary could ever say: I desire that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings, and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right, and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.
I can think of three applications of this parable. First, for Christianity in general. And that is, we should not worry about defending it. Yes, it’s under attack. Intellectually it’s being ridiculed, and maybe even in worse, in people’s lives it’s being ignored. Christian churches are empty and Christian teachings are denied. But we should not get defensive. Or worry about it. We should accept it as God’s judgement, and go with it. If we are scattered and weakened, then what new opportunities does that give us for witness?
Second, for our congregation. We are stewards of this building and these windows and that organ and that piano and a 354-year old organization, the mother church of Brooklyn, and of a tradition and a mission, and we are stewards of it not just for our own enjoyment and benefit but for the benefit of others who do not belong to us. The community.
It’s in our mission statement as our third and fourth missions, to offer sanctuary to anyone seeking spirituality and hope, and to offer hospitality to community groups and the arts. In order to keep on doing this, we need to be good stewards of our own resources. It’s a constant challenge, and though sometimes it feels like a contradiction of interests, it’s really a creative dynamic. We need each other to work this dynamic, we need you to work this dynamic. You can practice your Christian faith precisely in terms of supporting and preserving and caring for this institution but precisely so that it may be of service not only for its members but also for people who do not belong to us.
And third, for each of us ourselves. I think Jesus is saying — what we don’t expect — that you can be at home in the world. You can assume the hospitality of the world, and the security of the world. That’s hard to believe. That sounds foolish. We have to look out for ourselves and take care of ourselves. But when we do that we get stuck on our own security.
Jesus is not calling us to be hippies here, or panhandlers. It’s not that we shouldn’t be shrewd. But we are to expect the world to be generous to us, we are to expect that people we don’t know will be good to us, we are to expect that people unlike us will be hospitable to us. You are to expect that people who might make you uncomfortable actually have your best interest at heart. Not because everyone is so good, we’re all under judgement, a judgement of grace, but because of God being faithful in the world. You can trust that God will be faithful in the world to you.
Copyright © 2007 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
This parable is notoriously difficult to interpret. I have preached it four times now, and as I look back at my earlier attempts the best I can say is that I tried, and that I trust in God to make good out of bad. I’m going to try it again; would you be so kind as to be hospitable with me today?
The parable is difficult because it plays with conventional morality, and it’s hard to know how funny or sly or sarcastic Jesus was. Also, some of the words that Jesus uses have fluid meanings, depending on the context. Jesus may be doing wordplay in the parable, but it’s hard to be sure.
When Jesus talks about "sons of light," does he mean ordinary Israelites, who are supposed to be the light to the nations, or does he mean the revolutionary zealots, who called themselves the "sons of light,"but who carried daggers and committed violence in God’s name?
Our modern Bibles mislead us by translating the word mammon as wealth. It really means property, as in private property, which is the basis of wealth, but also security. Property ownership was not a secular matter in Israel. The very ground was sacred in the Promised Land, it belonged to God, and its division among the people was supposed to follow the Laws of Moses.
But in Jesus’ day it did not. Most property was held by large landowners, and the ordinary people were tenant farmers and sharecroppers. They were usually in debt to the landowners, and had to pay lots of interest. This whole system was against the Laws of Moses, and so it is literally, "unrighteous property" that Jesus is talking about, not "dishonest wealth."
It’s hard for us to conceive this terminology, because we think in secular terms, but they did not. And they knew from the weekly readings of the Torah in the synagogues that the very ground they lived on was "unrighteous property."
Maybe unrighteous in Israel, but the ordinary way of doing business in the rest of the world, and for the Romans too. But that meant that in the Promised Land the laws and customs of the Romans had more effective authority than the Laws of Moses. That was intolerable to the zealots, the sons of light.
Like today. Imagine if in Saudi Arabia the laws of Islam had to give way to European law, or if Mecca were guarded by American soldiers. No wonder there were zealots and revolutionaries in Jerusalem. Out of the twelve disciples, two had zealot sympathies.
Jesus keeps warning his listeners not to go that route. He tells them it’s not what God wants, and not only that, if they keep it up they cannot win, and the Romans will do like the Babylonians did in the days of the prophet Jeremiah and tear down the temple and level Jerusalem and scatter its inhabitants and send them into exile all over again. Jesus predicted it, and it did happen.
Jesus was a radical but not a revolutionary. He wanted purity and righteousness, but not that kind. He said that the Roman occupation was only the occasion of their problems, not the cause. We are the cause of our problems. He said to live among the Romans as children of light among the children of this age, even when they dispossess us of our land, and we’re scattered among them. To do that, we have to accept the judgement of God on us, accepting it paradoxically as grace, that the scattering which is our judgement is also for the benefit of our mission.
It was for mission that God had given them the Promised Land. Not so much given to them, really, as entrusted to them. They were stewards of the promised land, not owners, for it belonged to God. The Promised Land was to be a special land of demonstration, and the Israelites were to demonstrate a way of life that God had intended for all humanity. That was their mission. A light to the nations.
So in the parable, the rich man stands for God, and the manager stands for Israel. The parable reminds them that even when they were free and independent in the Promised Land they did not follow the Laws of Moses. Old Testament history is full of it, how they failed as stewards of the land that God had entrusted to them, and they could blame that failure on no one but themselves. And to rise up against the Romans and set up a fundamentalist Jewish republic would only end up in other kinds of corruption. Think of the Ayatollah in Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
What Jesus teaches his disciples here is the very strategy carried out in the Book of Acts. After Pentecost, and after the initial euphoria in Jerusalem, the persecution came, and they were scattered, and this was grievous to them. But their scattering resulted in the good news spreading out. They were welcomed by the Samaritans, formerly their enemies. Peter was welcomed by a regiment of Roman soldiers. Paul and Silas were welcomed by the god-fearing Gentiles of Asia Minor, and into the homes of Lydia and the jailer in Philippi, and even in the protective custody of Caesar in Rome, where Paul preached freely and hosted many visitors and guests.
They were scattered and exiled and so they spread and infiltrated and invaded the world with light and life and peace. They had no enemies. Even the kings and high authorities who put them in prison were the beneficiaries of their prayers. And Paul wrote to Timothy what no zealot or religious revolutionary could ever say: I desire that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings, and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right, and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.
I can think of three applications of this parable. First, for Christianity in general. And that is, we should not worry about defending it. Yes, it’s under attack. Intellectually it’s being ridiculed, and maybe even in worse, in people’s lives it’s being ignored. Christian churches are empty and Christian teachings are denied. But we should not get defensive. Or worry about it. We should accept it as God’s judgement, and go with it. If we are scattered and weakened, then what new opportunities does that give us for witness?
Second, for our congregation. We are stewards of this building and these windows and that organ and that piano and a 354-year old organization, the mother church of Brooklyn, and of a tradition and a mission, and we are stewards of it not just for our own enjoyment and benefit but for the benefit of others who do not belong to us. The community.
It’s in our mission statement as our third and fourth missions, to offer sanctuary to anyone seeking spirituality and hope, and to offer hospitality to community groups and the arts. In order to keep on doing this, we need to be good stewards of our own resources. It’s a constant challenge, and though sometimes it feels like a contradiction of interests, it’s really a creative dynamic. We need each other to work this dynamic, we need you to work this dynamic. You can practice your Christian faith precisely in terms of supporting and preserving and caring for this institution but precisely so that it may be of service not only for its members but also for people who do not belong to us.
And third, for each of us ourselves. I think Jesus is saying — what we don’t expect — that you can be at home in the world. You can assume the hospitality of the world, and the security of the world. That’s hard to believe. That sounds foolish. We have to look out for ourselves and take care of ourselves. But when we do that we get stuck on our own security.
Jesus is not calling us to be hippies here, or panhandlers. It’s not that we shouldn’t be shrewd. But we are to expect the world to be generous to us, we are to expect that people we don’t know will be good to us, we are to expect that people unlike us will be hospitable to us. You are to expect that people who might make you uncomfortable actually have your best interest at heart. Not because everyone is so good, we’re all under judgement, a judgement of grace, but because of God being faithful in the world. You can trust that God will be faithful in the world to you.
Copyright © 2007 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Sermon for September 16, 2007: Riddles of Rescue
Proper 19, Jeremiah 4:11-12-22-28, Psalm 14, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Luke 15:1-10, Brooklyn, 09/16/07
Is it really true? Does God come after you like this? Will God come after you to find you, like the woman looking for her coin, like the shepherd for the sheep? You are just one of several billion people, and our planet is only one small speck in the galaxy, and our galaxy is one of billions in the universe, and are you to believe that God is so aware of you? Does God get that specific?
It is really true that God gets happy when God finds you and brings you back? So as to throw a celebration with invitations? Is God so emotional? Does God get that personal?
Would you like it to be true? Would you like God to notice when you’re missing? Would you like God to come and find you? Do you want God to be so personal? Or do you prefer it if God is more objective, less emotionally involved, more distant?
But if God is God, then how can God ever lose us in the first place? If God is God, then God already knows where the coin is, and God already knows where every last sheep is.
I suspect these riddles offended the Pharisees. Comparing God to a woman would have been, shall we say, uncongenial to their sensibilities. But picturing God as so passionate and emotional risks a sentimentality inappropriate to the creator of the worlds and the fearful judge of the nations. This kind of God lacks dignity and righteousness and holiness. And self-respect.
That’s their general problem with Jesus. He lacks self-respect and holiness, as with his inappropriate closeness to sinners, eating with them, contrary to the biblical laws of kosher, and with the tax collectors, who not only extort God’s people but show far less interest in the kingdom of God than in the empire of Rome. That Jesus cavorts with them displays a lack of standards and boundaries and discretion, not to mention wisdom and righteousness.
Of course Jesus also ate with Pharisees and scribes. He accepted invitations to their tables too. What’s remarkable about Jesus is how he treats everyone the same, saint or sinner, pious or polluted. He’s not against your being a spiritual success or an ethical paradigm, a regular Mother Teresa, that’s great, but he’s going to treat you just the same as he treats a bum. And he means that God does too. Every single last person has the very same value to God. Infinite value.
It feels unlikely, doesn’t it, that an ordinary person should have infinite value to God. Good grief, I only weigh 93 kilograms, how could I have more relative value than the planet Jupiter? Maybe it made sense five hundred years ago, when people thought the planet earth was the center of the universe.
But, on the other hand, infinite does not necessarily mean vast. That’s a category mistake. And so if God is neither limited nor conditioned by the categories of space and time in which we live, then at least it’s conceivable that God is so aware of you, that God finds you that important, and that God is so personally invested in you.
But doesn’t God abandon some people anyway? Isn’t it our experience that God allows some people to get lost and stay lost? Why didn’t God save Joseph Stalin? Little Joseph started out a lamb like everyone else, and in his youth he studied to be a priest, so when he wandered off, why didn’t God go find him and bring him back? You are acquainted with some people whose lives are unfortunate or miserable, and you are saddened by their bitterness and loneliness, but God just seems to let them go.
"Jesus, isn’t this picture of God a little doubtful?" If it makes God so joyful, then why doesn’t God save absolutely everybody? Why does God let anybody go?
These riddles would offend the scribes and Pharisees for their aggressive anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is describing God in terms of human qualities. Now some level of anthropomorphism is unavoidable, but there are limits. They will have felt that Jesus went too far, that the woman and the shepherd conveyed a God who, for being more human, was less god.
It’s not just pharisaical to be careful of easy anthropomorphism. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that we ought not think of God as having emotions. Emotions are attractive, but emotions are passing and fluid and changeable. God is eternal, and faithful, and absolutely consistent and dependable. God is perfect and perfectly spiritual.
Aquinas agreed with Aristotle, and Luther and Calvin agreed with Aquinas, that God is the "unmoved mover." But in these riddles Jesus describes a God who is certainly moved. The God of Jesus here is passionate. And takes things personally.
One of the hardest issues for people today is whether God is personal. People tell me that yes, they believe in God, but as sort of the spiritual energy of the universe. When I ask them if God is a person, they say No, and they don’t see how that would be a good thing. That kind of God is a jealous God, like in the Ten Commandments, or a wrathful God, like in the stories. No thanks.
It is a problem. There is no question that the God of Moses and Jesus and Paul is in some sense a person, if not a person in the ordinary sense of a human being, which I guess makes God too small, then at least a person in some extraordinary sense. The point is that God is such as to be able to say "I want" and "I desire" and "I prefer" and "I choose" and "I will" and "I do" and "I love" and "I love you." Do you want that to be true, do you want to believe in a God who can talk like that?
Maybe what turns people off from a personal God like this is the implication that such a God can also say, "I do not want" and "I do not desire" and maybe even "I do not love." Someone who can love can also get angry. Someone who can desire can also judge. And a god that is simply the spiritual energy of the universe does not judge and has no anger. Passion means heat.
What if God has to burn me to save me? What if God has to judge me to rescue me? God seeks out the lost sheep, will God also seek out a lost wolf? That’s what the Apostle Paul was. That’s his testimony in the epistle, that he was the worst of sinners, a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man of violence. He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and yet God sought him and found him. And knocked him down and blinded him and sent him off to the desert for a few years first. Paul always regarded his salvation as a surprise, a wonder, he never took it for granted.
I cannot explain to you the riddle of why God apparently lets some people stay lost, why some coins don’t get found and some sheep don’t get rescued. I can tell you that it’s not a matter of how good or bad the coin is, or how much the sheep is worth the rescue. Worthiness is immaterial, as in the case of Paul. We are all worth it, infinitely. But why some, and not all?
What we should not infer from this is that God doesn’t care, that God doesn’t passionately care. That it’s immaterial to God. That God doesn’t love them too, I mean, the coins that are not found and the sheep that are not saved. Many things are not explained to us, and this is one.
Maybe salvation is like physics, that when you get certitude about one thing, that forces uncertainty on something else. We’re at the boundary of successfully inferring one truth from another.
So even Jesus tells it in riddles. But if the riddle leaves the head in circles, it goes directly to the heart. From God’s heart to your heart. That your little life is huge to God. That God chases after you fanatically. That God is the woman with a broom in her hand, and she’s moving the furniture of history to find you, she is sweeping the dust of your life to expose you and to grab you.
Can you be so childish, so silly, as to regard yourself as the center of God’s universe, if only for yourself, and even momentarily? It is what Jesus is inviting you to believe.
But why else repent, why do such a risky and vulnerable thing as repent, unless the sacrifice that Jesus made of his own life represents the deepest truths of existence? When you repent of your sinfulness you are opening yourself to that great and infinite and passionate being, person, whatever, that we call God, who is behind all the matter and energy of the universe. Your repentance is part of the joyfulness of the universe.
Copyright © 2007 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
Is it really true? Does God come after you like this? Will God come after you to find you, like the woman looking for her coin, like the shepherd for the sheep? You are just one of several billion people, and our planet is only one small speck in the galaxy, and our galaxy is one of billions in the universe, and are you to believe that God is so aware of you? Does God get that specific?
It is really true that God gets happy when God finds you and brings you back? So as to throw a celebration with invitations? Is God so emotional? Does God get that personal?
Would you like it to be true? Would you like God to notice when you’re missing? Would you like God to come and find you? Do you want God to be so personal? Or do you prefer it if God is more objective, less emotionally involved, more distant?
But if God is God, then how can God ever lose us in the first place? If God is God, then God already knows where the coin is, and God already knows where every last sheep is.
I suspect these riddles offended the Pharisees. Comparing God to a woman would have been, shall we say, uncongenial to their sensibilities. But picturing God as so passionate and emotional risks a sentimentality inappropriate to the creator of the worlds and the fearful judge of the nations. This kind of God lacks dignity and righteousness and holiness. And self-respect.
That’s their general problem with Jesus. He lacks self-respect and holiness, as with his inappropriate closeness to sinners, eating with them, contrary to the biblical laws of kosher, and with the tax collectors, who not only extort God’s people but show far less interest in the kingdom of God than in the empire of Rome. That Jesus cavorts with them displays a lack of standards and boundaries and discretion, not to mention wisdom and righteousness.
Of course Jesus also ate with Pharisees and scribes. He accepted invitations to their tables too. What’s remarkable about Jesus is how he treats everyone the same, saint or sinner, pious or polluted. He’s not against your being a spiritual success or an ethical paradigm, a regular Mother Teresa, that’s great, but he’s going to treat you just the same as he treats a bum. And he means that God does too. Every single last person has the very same value to God. Infinite value.
It feels unlikely, doesn’t it, that an ordinary person should have infinite value to God. Good grief, I only weigh 93 kilograms, how could I have more relative value than the planet Jupiter? Maybe it made sense five hundred years ago, when people thought the planet earth was the center of the universe.
But, on the other hand, infinite does not necessarily mean vast. That’s a category mistake. And so if God is neither limited nor conditioned by the categories of space and time in which we live, then at least it’s conceivable that God is so aware of you, that God finds you that important, and that God is so personally invested in you.
But doesn’t God abandon some people anyway? Isn’t it our experience that God allows some people to get lost and stay lost? Why didn’t God save Joseph Stalin? Little Joseph started out a lamb like everyone else, and in his youth he studied to be a priest, so when he wandered off, why didn’t God go find him and bring him back? You are acquainted with some people whose lives are unfortunate or miserable, and you are saddened by their bitterness and loneliness, but God just seems to let them go.
"Jesus, isn’t this picture of God a little doubtful?" If it makes God so joyful, then why doesn’t God save absolutely everybody? Why does God let anybody go?
These riddles would offend the scribes and Pharisees for their aggressive anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is describing God in terms of human qualities. Now some level of anthropomorphism is unavoidable, but there are limits. They will have felt that Jesus went too far, that the woman and the shepherd conveyed a God who, for being more human, was less god.
It’s not just pharisaical to be careful of easy anthropomorphism. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that we ought not think of God as having emotions. Emotions are attractive, but emotions are passing and fluid and changeable. God is eternal, and faithful, and absolutely consistent and dependable. God is perfect and perfectly spiritual.
Aquinas agreed with Aristotle, and Luther and Calvin agreed with Aquinas, that God is the "unmoved mover." But in these riddles Jesus describes a God who is certainly moved. The God of Jesus here is passionate. And takes things personally.
One of the hardest issues for people today is whether God is personal. People tell me that yes, they believe in God, but as sort of the spiritual energy of the universe. When I ask them if God is a person, they say No, and they don’t see how that would be a good thing. That kind of God is a jealous God, like in the Ten Commandments, or a wrathful God, like in the stories. No thanks.
It is a problem. There is no question that the God of Moses and Jesus and Paul is in some sense a person, if not a person in the ordinary sense of a human being, which I guess makes God too small, then at least a person in some extraordinary sense. The point is that God is such as to be able to say "I want" and "I desire" and "I prefer" and "I choose" and "I will" and "I do" and "I love" and "I love you." Do you want that to be true, do you want to believe in a God who can talk like that?
Maybe what turns people off from a personal God like this is the implication that such a God can also say, "I do not want" and "I do not desire" and maybe even "I do not love." Someone who can love can also get angry. Someone who can desire can also judge. And a god that is simply the spiritual energy of the universe does not judge and has no anger. Passion means heat.
What if God has to burn me to save me? What if God has to judge me to rescue me? God seeks out the lost sheep, will God also seek out a lost wolf? That’s what the Apostle Paul was. That’s his testimony in the epistle, that he was the worst of sinners, a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man of violence. He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and yet God sought him and found him. And knocked him down and blinded him and sent him off to the desert for a few years first. Paul always regarded his salvation as a surprise, a wonder, he never took it for granted.
I cannot explain to you the riddle of why God apparently lets some people stay lost, why some coins don’t get found and some sheep don’t get rescued. I can tell you that it’s not a matter of how good or bad the coin is, or how much the sheep is worth the rescue. Worthiness is immaterial, as in the case of Paul. We are all worth it, infinitely. But why some, and not all?
What we should not infer from this is that God doesn’t care, that God doesn’t passionately care. That it’s immaterial to God. That God doesn’t love them too, I mean, the coins that are not found and the sheep that are not saved. Many things are not explained to us, and this is one.
Maybe salvation is like physics, that when you get certitude about one thing, that forces uncertainty on something else. We’re at the boundary of successfully inferring one truth from another.
So even Jesus tells it in riddles. But if the riddle leaves the head in circles, it goes directly to the heart. From God’s heart to your heart. That your little life is huge to God. That God chases after you fanatically. That God is the woman with a broom in her hand, and she’s moving the furniture of history to find you, she is sweeping the dust of your life to expose you and to grab you.
Can you be so childish, so silly, as to regard yourself as the center of God’s universe, if only for yourself, and even momentarily? It is what Jesus is inviting you to believe.
But why else repent, why do such a risky and vulnerable thing as repent, unless the sacrifice that Jesus made of his own life represents the deepest truths of existence? When you repent of your sinfulness you are opening yourself to that great and infinite and passionate being, person, whatever, that we call God, who is behind all the matter and energy of the universe. Your repentance is part of the joyfulness of the universe.
Copyright © 2007 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Thoughts on Being Honest Even if it Hurts: or, Yes, I Stole a Backpack
Note: this is a guest entry from one of my parishioners, Julia Hurn. Enjoy.
Recently my husband and I gave a Game Boy to my son Aidan. To say that he really loves it is an understatement. When he first got it, he had no self-control. He could not turn the thing off, despite pleadings, bargainnings and even threats from us. We have had to wrench it out of his hands often. Things are getting better, but while we were on vacation, he was in the throes of Game Boy mania and decided to bring it with him to the beach one day.
On our way home from the beach as we were unloading the car, he decided to take a bucket full of seawater and sea creatures out of the backseat with the same hand that was holding his Game Boy. You can guess the rest.
I don’t know who was more upset, Aidan or my husband who knew by heart every word of the replacement agreement he paid for when he bought the thing…”water damage not covered” was what was echoing through his head. While it did not cost near what a new one cost, it was about the priciest toy we’ve bought him, weighing in at about $60, not including the game cartridges.
Well, Aidan was so dejected. He had this shocked, devastated look on his face. Shawn was hopping mad, and I was watching all this thinking; we never should have done it in the first place. Once the shock wore off and we got safely back to Brooklyn, Shawn had the idea of taking it anyway back to the store and seeing if they would fix it or exchange it, even though water damage was clearly not covered.
I wasn’t happy that he was getting Aidan’s hopes up, but Shawn did a good job of explaining to him that he might not get a new one and he should be prepared for the disappointment. (Big sigh) “yes, dad,” says Aidan.
Not more than an hour later, I hear the happy sounds of chatting and the electronic ping ping ping of a…you guessed it, new Game Boy floating up our stairs. In walks Aidan, happy as a clam. “What happened?” I ask Shawn, incredulous.
Apparently they approached the clerk, and Shawn urged Aidan to speak directly to her about what happened. Shawn did not say he had to volunteer that he dropped it in water. But, Aidan, with sheepish shame, head bowed, muttered “I sort of accidently kind of dropped it in some water.” The clerk took one look at him (the fact that he has sandy blond hair, freckles and huge, gorgeous blue eyes didn’t hurt) and said “the truth will set you free, my friend. Here’s a new one.”
When I heard this story, I have to admit to some feelings of ambiguity. I’m happy he got another one, of course, but a bit saddened that Aidan did not learn about the consequence of his actions.
How does an accidental dropping of a game in water constitute an action, you ask? We had warned him that the likelihood that it would get damaged was very great when he took it in the car to the beach. We told him not to do it, but he went ahead anyway. Because he chose to keep his precious possession in proximity to potential disaster, he has to take some responsibility for what happened.
But I am relieved that, in telling the truth, he was met with mercy and compassion. For a little guy who is six, I think this is very appropriate. See, because now that I’m a parent, I can’t hide from my own parental/moral uprightness. I’m ashamed of something I did recently, and as a way of avoiding being hypocritical (do as I say, not as I do), I’ve just plain avoided the situation.
About a year ago this summer, I was loaned a backpack by the good people at Prospect Park Audobon Center, filled with materials to do an educational experiment. I am ashamed and embarrassed to say that I did not do the experiment, and that the materials (including some clip boards, some plastic containers and mostly papers and bird guides) are sitting in my closet.
My regular backpack started to fall apart recently; and out of desperation, I appropriated the one in my closet containing all the stuff in it, toke the stuff out of it, and voila...new backpack for me. Pretty reprehensible, huh? I have always had some excuse for not returning it all…I don’t have time right now to do the experiment; we will get to it soon; blah blah (it involved observing ducks on the pond in the park).
My husband just recently pointed out to me that in reality, I have stolen that stuff as it was given to me in good faith to be used then returned and I have not returned it, and he doesn’t think I’m ever going to. He said this because it’s been sitting for a year in our closet.
And you know, in my paralysis of guilt, he’s right. I stopped recently thinking I would ever return it. In my mind there was a “statute of limitations” on returning it, and that if I did now return it, I would be really chastised…with questions, like: what took you so long? How could you be such a bad person as to keep this very important and valuable stuff from being used by some other well-deserving person/people?
The anticipation of the scolding and shaming I would receive really was the thing that kept me from doing the right thing. Rather than facing up to the possible bad reception by the staff there and just doing the right thing, I’d best just avoid it all together by keeping it, though every passing week and month I keep it, I feel worse.
Isn’t it the same with our children? The anticipation of the punishment for doing something bad prevents us and them from doing right thing and owning up. Being bad (or the Christian term Sinning) is something we all do because we are human. We screw up; we fail to give back what’s not ours; we try not to take responsibility for something bad we caused so we can get out of fixing it.
I love my husband for being my moral compass in these areas; my morality can get pretty loosey-goosey sometimes (one reason why I think I make a lousy Christian), and he often gently and not so gently reminds me to do the right thing. What does Jesus have to do with this? I think Jesus would laugh at me for keeping the backpack for so long. He would stand over my shoulder and say, “hey, you’ll feel so much better when you give it back,” with a smile and a wink, and then just walk away.
My plan is to go tomorrow to the Audobon Center in a car service to drop it ever so stealthily by the front door of the education dept. Anonymously, of course. If anyone asks me, I’ll just say: “I’m returning something I found to it’s rightful owners,” and leave it at that.
Recently my husband and I gave a Game Boy to my son Aidan. To say that he really loves it is an understatement. When he first got it, he had no self-control. He could not turn the thing off, despite pleadings, bargainnings and even threats from us. We have had to wrench it out of his hands often. Things are getting better, but while we were on vacation, he was in the throes of Game Boy mania and decided to bring it with him to the beach one day.
On our way home from the beach as we were unloading the car, he decided to take a bucket full of seawater and sea creatures out of the backseat with the same hand that was holding his Game Boy. You can guess the rest.
I don’t know who was more upset, Aidan or my husband who knew by heart every word of the replacement agreement he paid for when he bought the thing…”water damage not covered” was what was echoing through his head. While it did not cost near what a new one cost, it was about the priciest toy we’ve bought him, weighing in at about $60, not including the game cartridges.
Well, Aidan was so dejected. He had this shocked, devastated look on his face. Shawn was hopping mad, and I was watching all this thinking; we never should have done it in the first place. Once the shock wore off and we got safely back to Brooklyn, Shawn had the idea of taking it anyway back to the store and seeing if they would fix it or exchange it, even though water damage was clearly not covered.
I wasn’t happy that he was getting Aidan’s hopes up, but Shawn did a good job of explaining to him that he might not get a new one and he should be prepared for the disappointment. (Big sigh) “yes, dad,” says Aidan.
Not more than an hour later, I hear the happy sounds of chatting and the electronic ping ping ping of a…you guessed it, new Game Boy floating up our stairs. In walks Aidan, happy as a clam. “What happened?” I ask Shawn, incredulous.
Apparently they approached the clerk, and Shawn urged Aidan to speak directly to her about what happened. Shawn did not say he had to volunteer that he dropped it in water. But, Aidan, with sheepish shame, head bowed, muttered “I sort of accidently kind of dropped it in some water.” The clerk took one look at him (the fact that he has sandy blond hair, freckles and huge, gorgeous blue eyes didn’t hurt) and said “the truth will set you free, my friend. Here’s a new one.”
When I heard this story, I have to admit to some feelings of ambiguity. I’m happy he got another one, of course, but a bit saddened that Aidan did not learn about the consequence of his actions.
How does an accidental dropping of a game in water constitute an action, you ask? We had warned him that the likelihood that it would get damaged was very great when he took it in the car to the beach. We told him not to do it, but he went ahead anyway. Because he chose to keep his precious possession in proximity to potential disaster, he has to take some responsibility for what happened.
But I am relieved that, in telling the truth, he was met with mercy and compassion. For a little guy who is six, I think this is very appropriate. See, because now that I’m a parent, I can’t hide from my own parental/moral uprightness. I’m ashamed of something I did recently, and as a way of avoiding being hypocritical (do as I say, not as I do), I’ve just plain avoided the situation.
About a year ago this summer, I was loaned a backpack by the good people at Prospect Park Audobon Center, filled with materials to do an educational experiment. I am ashamed and embarrassed to say that I did not do the experiment, and that the materials (including some clip boards, some plastic containers and mostly papers and bird guides) are sitting in my closet.
My regular backpack started to fall apart recently; and out of desperation, I appropriated the one in my closet containing all the stuff in it, toke the stuff out of it, and voila...new backpack for me. Pretty reprehensible, huh? I have always had some excuse for not returning it all…I don’t have time right now to do the experiment; we will get to it soon; blah blah (it involved observing ducks on the pond in the park).
My husband just recently pointed out to me that in reality, I have stolen that stuff as it was given to me in good faith to be used then returned and I have not returned it, and he doesn’t think I’m ever going to. He said this because it’s been sitting for a year in our closet.
And you know, in my paralysis of guilt, he’s right. I stopped recently thinking I would ever return it. In my mind there was a “statute of limitations” on returning it, and that if I did now return it, I would be really chastised…with questions, like: what took you so long? How could you be such a bad person as to keep this very important and valuable stuff from being used by some other well-deserving person/people?
The anticipation of the scolding and shaming I would receive really was the thing that kept me from doing the right thing. Rather than facing up to the possible bad reception by the staff there and just doing the right thing, I’d best just avoid it all together by keeping it, though every passing week and month I keep it, I feel worse.
Isn’t it the same with our children? The anticipation of the punishment for doing something bad prevents us and them from doing right thing and owning up. Being bad (or the Christian term Sinning) is something we all do because we are human. We screw up; we fail to give back what’s not ours; we try not to take responsibility for something bad we caused so we can get out of fixing it.
I love my husband for being my moral compass in these areas; my morality can get pretty loosey-goosey sometimes (one reason why I think I make a lousy Christian), and he often gently and not so gently reminds me to do the right thing. What does Jesus have to do with this? I think Jesus would laugh at me for keeping the backpack for so long. He would stand over my shoulder and say, “hey, you’ll feel so much better when you give it back,” with a smile and a wink, and then just walk away.
My plan is to go tomorrow to the Audobon Center in a car service to drop it ever so stealthily by the front door of the education dept. Anonymously, of course. If anyone asks me, I’ll just say: “I’m returning something I found to it’s rightful owners,” and leave it at that.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Everyone Has A 9/11 Story
It was in the evil tragedy of 9/11 that I was called here, to Old First.
In the summer of 2001, the pulpit of Old First church was, as we say, "vacant." Pastor Otte had moved on to Tarrytown, and an interim pastor, Dr. Washington, was filling-in part-time, while the Search Committee looked for a new pastor to fill the pulpit.
I was the senior pastor at Central Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I had applied to Old First, and had been interviewed. My wife Melody did not want to come to Brooklyn: she had a good job in Grand Rapids, we owned a home (for the first time), and we were near her parents.
The other candidate preached her trial sermon at the "neutral site" of the Flatbush Church on Sunday, 9/9, where the Search Committee had gone to hear her. I was scheduled to preach there on 9/16. It was all very confidential in Grand Rapids; I had used the excuse that our Grand Rapids church was considering a partnership with the Flatbush Church, which was not untrue. Only my church officers and my associate pastors knew the whole story.
On the morning of 9/11 I was visiting a neighboring African-American pastor with whom I was trying to do some joint programming (Grand Rapids is very divided racially). His secretary ran in to the study and told us to come look at the television. We watched, transfixed, unbelieving, and listened to Bryant Gumble, who seemed just as shocked as we were.
I raced back to my own church. Immediately I began working with other city clergy to prepare a city-wide prayer service at the cathedral. And then I got a phone call, from Rick, the vice chair of the Old First search committee. He was at the Grand Rapids airport and could I maybe pick him up, and could he stay with us (the hotels were full) and could we send some clergy to the airport to minister to the people there?
It seems Rick had been flying to San Francisco for business, and his plane got put down in Grand Rapids. Coincidence? Providence? I went to the airport and picked him up. As we drove we agreed that I might have to postpone my trial sermon, as I really had to be with my own people at this time, and Rick understood, but the problem was that the next available date would be in October or November, and they already had a good candidate. I was very disappointed of course.
That afternoon, Melody got home from work, and there was Rick on our front porch. She looked up to heaven, and said, "Did you have to drop him right on the porch?" Then I told her that my trial sermon was now up in the air, so to speak.
That night I led some of the prayers at the cathedral downtown. My congregation's own service was scheduled for Thursday. On Wednesday I met with my leadership. They encouraged me to go to Brooklyn anyway. They said, "Of all the times to preach in New York, it's now. Especially since you're from there. You'll be with us tomorrow. We can cover the rest." Okay. It's on.
So Friday we drove to Brooklyn. No planes were flying, of course, and rental cars were scarce. Rick and Melody drove, and I sat in the back seat and rewrote my sermon.
Crossing the Tappan Zee we could see the fires and smoke at ground zero. Coming in over the Triboro was where it hit me emotionally. It was a familiar route from my childhood, how we drove back home to Bedford-Stuyvesant after visiting my relatives in Jersey. As you know, the whole city felt stunned and shocked and wounded. No airliners over the Grand Central Parkway, but fighter jets circling, a powerful symbol. That's where I "lost it."
We got into Park Slope Friday night. We walked around. The doors of Old First were open, people were there, candles were burning in and out, sheets of newsprint were hanging in the narthex and people were writing their prayers. The laymembers of Old First, without any help from any clergy, had decided to make this grand old building a sanctuary for everyone. I was impressed. This was the kind of church I'd like to serve. And every other church in the neighborhood was closed up and their gates locked.
On Sunday I preached the 9/11 sermon at the Flatbush Church, and the text from Jeremiah was perfect. As I came down the aisle, I was greeted by Mr. Woodson, an elder from the church of my childhood. He calls me Danny and he welcomed me home.
I have never felt so "called" as I felt then. And Melody began to believe that maybe this could be okay.
A week later the Search Committee offered me the pulpit. They made a great offer to Melody as well. Over the next two months we went through the normal approvals of the consistory, the congregation, and the Classis of Brooklyn, and in December, 2001, we moved to Garfield Place.
I am always uncomfortable in pointing to this or that in my life and saying, This was God. That feels presumptuous to me. I certainly do not believe that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an act of God, or was endorsed by God, or desired by God. And I do not want to trivialize 9/11, or make it overly personal for myself, when it was far more personal for many other people.
But it is very strange and mysterious to me how such an evil thing should have been, in my own life, for good. But in the midst of that awful event, I was called here, and I came.
In the summer of 2001, the pulpit of Old First church was, as we say, "vacant." Pastor Otte had moved on to Tarrytown, and an interim pastor, Dr. Washington, was filling-in part-time, while the Search Committee looked for a new pastor to fill the pulpit.
I was the senior pastor at Central Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I had applied to Old First, and had been interviewed. My wife Melody did not want to come to Brooklyn: she had a good job in Grand Rapids, we owned a home (for the first time), and we were near her parents.
The other candidate preached her trial sermon at the "neutral site" of the Flatbush Church on Sunday, 9/9, where the Search Committee had gone to hear her. I was scheduled to preach there on 9/16. It was all very confidential in Grand Rapids; I had used the excuse that our Grand Rapids church was considering a partnership with the Flatbush Church, which was not untrue. Only my church officers and my associate pastors knew the whole story.
On the morning of 9/11 I was visiting a neighboring African-American pastor with whom I was trying to do some joint programming (Grand Rapids is very divided racially). His secretary ran in to the study and told us to come look at the television. We watched, transfixed, unbelieving, and listened to Bryant Gumble, who seemed just as shocked as we were.
I raced back to my own church. Immediately I began working with other city clergy to prepare a city-wide prayer service at the cathedral. And then I got a phone call, from Rick, the vice chair of the Old First search committee. He was at the Grand Rapids airport and could I maybe pick him up, and could he stay with us (the hotels were full) and could we send some clergy to the airport to minister to the people there?
It seems Rick had been flying to San Francisco for business, and his plane got put down in Grand Rapids. Coincidence? Providence? I went to the airport and picked him up. As we drove we agreed that I might have to postpone my trial sermon, as I really had to be with my own people at this time, and Rick understood, but the problem was that the next available date would be in October or November, and they already had a good candidate. I was very disappointed of course.
That afternoon, Melody got home from work, and there was Rick on our front porch. She looked up to heaven, and said, "Did you have to drop him right on the porch?" Then I told her that my trial sermon was now up in the air, so to speak.
That night I led some of the prayers at the cathedral downtown. My congregation's own service was scheduled for Thursday. On Wednesday I met with my leadership. They encouraged me to go to Brooklyn anyway. They said, "Of all the times to preach in New York, it's now. Especially since you're from there. You'll be with us tomorrow. We can cover the rest." Okay. It's on.
So Friday we drove to Brooklyn. No planes were flying, of course, and rental cars were scarce. Rick and Melody drove, and I sat in the back seat and rewrote my sermon.
Crossing the Tappan Zee we could see the fires and smoke at ground zero. Coming in over the Triboro was where it hit me emotionally. It was a familiar route from my childhood, how we drove back home to Bedford-Stuyvesant after visiting my relatives in Jersey. As you know, the whole city felt stunned and shocked and wounded. No airliners over the Grand Central Parkway, but fighter jets circling, a powerful symbol. That's where I "lost it."
We got into Park Slope Friday night. We walked around. The doors of Old First were open, people were there, candles were burning in and out, sheets of newsprint were hanging in the narthex and people were writing their prayers. The laymembers of Old First, without any help from any clergy, had decided to make this grand old building a sanctuary for everyone. I was impressed. This was the kind of church I'd like to serve. And every other church in the neighborhood was closed up and their gates locked.
On Sunday I preached the 9/11 sermon at the Flatbush Church, and the text from Jeremiah was perfect. As I came down the aisle, I was greeted by Mr. Woodson, an elder from the church of my childhood. He calls me Danny and he welcomed me home.
I have never felt so "called" as I felt then. And Melody began to believe that maybe this could be okay.
A week later the Search Committee offered me the pulpit. They made a great offer to Melody as well. Over the next two months we went through the normal approvals of the consistory, the congregation, and the Classis of Brooklyn, and in December, 2001, we moved to Garfield Place.
I am always uncomfortable in pointing to this or that in my life and saying, This was God. That feels presumptuous to me. I certainly do not believe that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an act of God, or was endorsed by God, or desired by God. And I do not want to trivialize 9/11, or make it overly personal for myself, when it was far more personal for many other people.
But it is very strange and mysterious to me how such an evil thing should have been, in my own life, for good. But in the midst of that awful event, I was called here, and I came.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Sermon for September 9, 2007
Note: This was a special interfaith prayer service. The first part of what follows here is the Welcome at the opening. The second part is my homily on Jeremiah 18:1-11, which is the Old Testament lesson for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost. I am sorry that I do not have here the other sermon we heard, which was by Dr. Gazi Erdem.
Opening Welcome
Today we commemorate 9-11. That day made all the difference. We need to interpret that day in terms of God and to pray to God about the repercussions of that day. That day made all the difference to Muslims in America, and so it’s fitting that we do this together with Muslims. We Jews and Christians and Muslims pray to the same God. We tell different stories about God, and our stories don’t all match up, but God is One, and our God is the truest unity we have, so it’s in praying together that our best unity is found.
It was in 2002 that Rabbi Jerry Weider challenged me to use 9-11 to make contact with the Muslims of Brooklyn. Since then we have welcomed here Imam Abdallah Allam of the Dawood Mosque, and then Wa’el Mousfar of the Arab Muslim American Federation, and then Faruq Wadud of the Bangladeshi Baitul Jannah Mosque, and then Debbie Almontaser of Women of Islam.
Today we are pleased to welcome the Universal Foundation, which represents the Turkish community of Brooklyn. But their hospitality was first. They welcomed us to their Ramadan Iftars. It was at the Mosque of the Crimean Turks that I was first invited to join the prayers. That was profound for me. While they prayed in Arabic I knelt beside the wall and I prayed as a Christian, and there, in prayer, I discovered that it was the same God we were praying to. It was in prayer that I found our deepest unity, because the Spirit of God was present there.
Today I am most pleased to welcome Dr. Gazi Erdem, from the Consulate General of Turkey, who is the Mufti or chief Iman of all the Turkish Imams in North America. Sort of like a Muslim archbishop. It’s an impressive office but Dr. Erdem carries it with gentleness and a great sense of humor. I love his laughter and his joy. I have heard Dr. Erdem address a thousand people at the Waldorf-Astoria, but I’m really looking forward to what he has to say within a house of prayer.
Today we are praying side-by-side. Our Christian prayers will be Christian and our Muslim prayers will be Muslim. Our unity is not some unnatural amalgamation. Or unity is in the One God that we worship, and in the loving hospitality that we practice with each other.
Homily
On the basis of Jeremiah, you might get the impression that God was behind 9-11, that God sent the evil against America. That was the claim of some fundamentalist Christians, and ironically, that put them very close to Al-qaeda, as if 9-11 was what God wanted.
On the one hand, we do believe that God has the freedom and authority and sovereignty and power to do whatever God wills to do, and we believe that God is the great judge of the world, and that God judges the nations, but on the other hand, we also believe that ever since Jesus, at least, the way God judges us is not through violence or disaster or weapons or by making use of criminal actions but simply and directly by means of God’s Word.
God’s public Word. God’s open and straightforward Word. In the prophets. In the Book. We are people of the Book, we are people who honor the prophets, because through the Book and the prophets God speaks to us and judges us, and the reason that God judges us is in order for us to hear and learn and turn and live.
The judgement of God is a privilege and a gift. People make judgements all the time, pundits and politicians, police chiefs and generals, CEOs and CFOs, regulators and mortgage lenders, we make judgements all the time, and our judgements affect our freedom and our lives, and amidst the clamor and tumult of all these voice, to get the judgement of God is a privilege and a gift.
And the judgement of God is simultaneously good and bad for us. It is good for us if we honor and accept it and it is bad for us if we refuse it and ignore it. It justifies us if we affirm it and it condemns us if we deny it. It’s up to us whether it’s for evil or for good. God gives us such freedom and responsibility.
This prophecy from Jeremiah combines what many people find paradoxical, the freedom and responsibility of humanity with the total sovereignty of God. But the truth of this, in different ways, is a common conviction of both the Reformed Church and Islam. And so, to push the metaphor, we say to God, "Thou are the potter, I am the clay, mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still." That’s a Christian song, but it perfectly describes the physical attitude of "islam," which is to wait on God, yielded and still.
The enduring significance of 9-11, for us, at least, is not how many died, though that is hugely important. The enduring significance of 9-11 is not why Al-qaeda did it, though we need to be clear about that for our foreign policy. The enduring significance of 9-11 is that we learn from it, that we learn from it rightly and not wrongly, that we interpret it rightly, not on our own, but with God’s wisdom, and that in response to it we examine our own selves, that we search ourselves, and the way that we search ourselves is by means of the judgements of God, and the judgements of God are given to us faithfully and lovingly in the Word of God.
In a moment we will do just that. We will pray selections from Psalm 139, in which we open ourselves to the searching of God. I wish that our lectionary editors had not taken out the last few verses, which are both the most severe and most liberating, but we do with what we have. Psalm 139 is one of the great prayers in the Bible, it’s a profound expression of the religious consciousness, and remarkably modern despite its antiquity, and, as far as I can tell, it’s a prayer that can be said equally by Jews and Christians and Muslims.
We will take a few moments of silence in order for you all to look it over, and then I will invite you to rise together and pray it with me. Our custom here is to do it responsively; I read the first part, and you read together the part in bold print. After the Psalm will come the traditional Gloria Patri, and would the Muslims and Jews be so kind as to indulge the Christians as we sing it with the hospitality of your listening? I thank you in advance.
Opening Welcome
Today we commemorate 9-11. That day made all the difference. We need to interpret that day in terms of God and to pray to God about the repercussions of that day. That day made all the difference to Muslims in America, and so it’s fitting that we do this together with Muslims. We Jews and Christians and Muslims pray to the same God. We tell different stories about God, and our stories don’t all match up, but God is One, and our God is the truest unity we have, so it’s in praying together that our best unity is found.
It was in 2002 that Rabbi Jerry Weider challenged me to use 9-11 to make contact with the Muslims of Brooklyn. Since then we have welcomed here Imam Abdallah Allam of the Dawood Mosque, and then Wa’el Mousfar of the Arab Muslim American Federation, and then Faruq Wadud of the Bangladeshi Baitul Jannah Mosque, and then Debbie Almontaser of Women of Islam.
Today we are pleased to welcome the Universal Foundation, which represents the Turkish community of Brooklyn. But their hospitality was first. They welcomed us to their Ramadan Iftars. It was at the Mosque of the Crimean Turks that I was first invited to join the prayers. That was profound for me. While they prayed in Arabic I knelt beside the wall and I prayed as a Christian, and there, in prayer, I discovered that it was the same God we were praying to. It was in prayer that I found our deepest unity, because the Spirit of God was present there.
Today I am most pleased to welcome Dr. Gazi Erdem, from the Consulate General of Turkey, who is the Mufti or chief Iman of all the Turkish Imams in North America. Sort of like a Muslim archbishop. It’s an impressive office but Dr. Erdem carries it with gentleness and a great sense of humor. I love his laughter and his joy. I have heard Dr. Erdem address a thousand people at the Waldorf-Astoria, but I’m really looking forward to what he has to say within a house of prayer.
Today we are praying side-by-side. Our Christian prayers will be Christian and our Muslim prayers will be Muslim. Our unity is not some unnatural amalgamation. Or unity is in the One God that we worship, and in the loving hospitality that we practice with each other.
Homily
On the basis of Jeremiah, you might get the impression that God was behind 9-11, that God sent the evil against America. That was the claim of some fundamentalist Christians, and ironically, that put them very close to Al-qaeda, as if 9-11 was what God wanted.
On the one hand, we do believe that God has the freedom and authority and sovereignty and power to do whatever God wills to do, and we believe that God is the great judge of the world, and that God judges the nations, but on the other hand, we also believe that ever since Jesus, at least, the way God judges us is not through violence or disaster or weapons or by making use of criminal actions but simply and directly by means of God’s Word.
God’s public Word. God’s open and straightforward Word. In the prophets. In the Book. We are people of the Book, we are people who honor the prophets, because through the Book and the prophets God speaks to us and judges us, and the reason that God judges us is in order for us to hear and learn and turn and live.
The judgement of God is a privilege and a gift. People make judgements all the time, pundits and politicians, police chiefs and generals, CEOs and CFOs, regulators and mortgage lenders, we make judgements all the time, and our judgements affect our freedom and our lives, and amidst the clamor and tumult of all these voice, to get the judgement of God is a privilege and a gift.
And the judgement of God is simultaneously good and bad for us. It is good for us if we honor and accept it and it is bad for us if we refuse it and ignore it. It justifies us if we affirm it and it condemns us if we deny it. It’s up to us whether it’s for evil or for good. God gives us such freedom and responsibility.
This prophecy from Jeremiah combines what many people find paradoxical, the freedom and responsibility of humanity with the total sovereignty of God. But the truth of this, in different ways, is a common conviction of both the Reformed Church and Islam. And so, to push the metaphor, we say to God, "Thou are the potter, I am the clay, mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still." That’s a Christian song, but it perfectly describes the physical attitude of "islam," which is to wait on God, yielded and still.
The enduring significance of 9-11, for us, at least, is not how many died, though that is hugely important. The enduring significance of 9-11 is not why Al-qaeda did it, though we need to be clear about that for our foreign policy. The enduring significance of 9-11 is that we learn from it, that we learn from it rightly and not wrongly, that we interpret it rightly, not on our own, but with God’s wisdom, and that in response to it we examine our own selves, that we search ourselves, and the way that we search ourselves is by means of the judgements of God, and the judgements of God are given to us faithfully and lovingly in the Word of God.
In a moment we will do just that. We will pray selections from Psalm 139, in which we open ourselves to the searching of God. I wish that our lectionary editors had not taken out the last few verses, which are both the most severe and most liberating, but we do with what we have. Psalm 139 is one of the great prayers in the Bible, it’s a profound expression of the religious consciousness, and remarkably modern despite its antiquity, and, as far as I can tell, it’s a prayer that can be said equally by Jews and Christians and Muslims.
We will take a few moments of silence in order for you all to look it over, and then I will invite you to rise together and pray it with me. Our custom here is to do it responsively; I read the first part, and you read together the part in bold print. After the Psalm will come the traditional Gloria Patri, and would the Muslims and Jews be so kind as to indulge the Christians as we sing it with the hospitality of your listening? I thank you in advance.
Watching the Episcopalians
I remember during the heady days of ecumenism that one of the top Lutheran bishops was happy for the prospect of full communion with the Episcopalians because it took them one step closer to Rome. Well, the next step will have to be like Neil Armstrong’s, because right now the Episcopalians are even in trouble with Canterbury.
As I write this, Bishop Gene New Hampshire (that would be Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson) has been uninvited to the next Lambeth Conference, which is a big deal for Anglicans. Is the Archbishop of Canterbury not in full communion with the Bishop of New Hampshire? Shall the rest of the Episcopal Church accept this half of an excommunication of one of their own?
Did Rowan Williams expect this when he became Archbishop? I wonder if he looks back with longing on his quiet days in the see of St. David and the primacy of Wales. All this Anglican Communion politics, when what he’s best at is encouraging the church in a secular England and winsomely representing the gospel there. Canterbury is the head of the Communion, but he’s only the first among equals, and he has little clout compared to Rome and even Constantinople.
We grieve for the Anglican Communion right now. I don’t see how they can work this out, considering the parties and positions. The Nigerians versus the Americans. The Americans are the Nigerians of the Western hemisphere and the Nigerians are the Americans of Africa. Or some would say, the Germans, but Germans are not Anglicans.
From a Reformed perspective, you have to ask, why is Bishop Robinson such an issue when Bishop Spong never threatened the Anglican Communion? I have met Bishop Robinson and heard him speak. He loves the Lord Jesus. He worships the Trinity. He confesses the faith once delivered and he testifies to the gospel. He believes in the Resurrection and the Atonement and the Exodus from Egypt, for Heaven’s sake.
Bishop Spong is still called a Christian only because he calls himself that. He’s an impressive man, especially to himself. Bishop Robinson exhibits repentance, humor, and self-deprecation.
But the Anglicans don’t think from a Reformed perspective. When you finally come down to it, apparently the cliche is true, that for Anglicans it doesn’t matter what you believe. Well, it does, of course, but not enough to pose a threat.
What matters is your ritual. What you celebrate and how you celebrate. This has its virtues. If you attend any Anglican church, the sermon might be thin, but the liturgy will give you a Creed, the Trinity, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus and his coming again, some repentance from sins, some real prayers, some real blessings, and some real miracles — the sacraments. During the sermon you can read the Thirty-Nine Articles in the back of the Prayerbook and thank God for the Belgic Confession.
Anglicans found it problematic when some Canadians and Americans began celebrating gay weddings, or holy unions, or whatever, but even this was tolerable. It used to be the case that all Anglicans, worldwide, were united by the Book of Common Prayer. But since the ’60’s the various provinces have developed their own Prayerbooks, and the New Zealand book is now very different from the British ASB. Liturgical disunity may distress Anglicans, but they’ve been living with divergence for some decades now, and it hasn’t threatened their Communion’s unity.
But a gay bishop! Anglicans are fundamentalists about one thing, and one thing only, and that is the hierarchical episcopacy. In the Seventeenth Century their motivation was political — "No bishop, no king." What their motivation is nowadays is open to question. But as we saw in the process of full communion with the Lutherans, everything is negotiable, except episcopacy.
And when an out gay man is elevated to the episcopacy, then Anglicans are threatened.
What matters is not what he believes but what he is, because a bishop is. The symbol of an hierarchical bishop is not his pulpit but his chair. When he’s just sitting there, holding his staff, he’s at the center of his job. Celebrating Eucharist and baptizing and preaching can be done by mere priests. Only bishops can confirm, but since a Prayer Book Study in the ’60’s it’s agreed that this is not essential but political. It gives the bishop something special to do when he or she visits a parish. Otherwise a bishop has nothing distinctive to do.
A bishop just is. The chief role of a bishop is to represent the church, and, with such Incarnational theology, to represent Christ himself. Well!
The Anglican Communion is at heart a communion of bishops. This communion is objective and linear, like a family tree. They may or may not take the Bible literally, but they are literal about their hierarchical network.
Your ordinary American and Canadian laity are not really in communion with each other. They are in communion with their respective bishops, who are in communion with each other, provided their communion is guaranteed by being in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The crisis shows us what Anglicans are fundamentalist and literalist about!
This past July I attended three different Anglican churches in Canada. The first week I went to the tiny parish near our cottage, where we have prayed for eighteen years. Our lay reader preached on the gospel, and he was good; he preached the text. The next Sunday I had to be in Kingston so I attended the cathedral. An archdeacon preached on the gospel, and he was excellent; he preached the text. The third week our little parish had a union service with the parish in the next town, so with four other locals I went there. I heard another archdeacon preach on the gospel, and he was very good; he preached the text.
Not once did I hear a peep about the troubles of the Anglican Communion. I heard about the Lord Jesus, and his death, resurrection, and coming again, and we confessed our sins, and we praised the Trinity, and we repeated the Creed, and we gave thanks and ate his precious body and blood. I was quite satisfied each time.
As I write this, Bishop Gene New Hampshire (that would be Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson) has been uninvited to the next Lambeth Conference, which is a big deal for Anglicans. Is the Archbishop of Canterbury not in full communion with the Bishop of New Hampshire? Shall the rest of the Episcopal Church accept this half of an excommunication of one of their own?
Did Rowan Williams expect this when he became Archbishop? I wonder if he looks back with longing on his quiet days in the see of St. David and the primacy of Wales. All this Anglican Communion politics, when what he’s best at is encouraging the church in a secular England and winsomely representing the gospel there. Canterbury is the head of the Communion, but he’s only the first among equals, and he has little clout compared to Rome and even Constantinople.
We grieve for the Anglican Communion right now. I don’t see how they can work this out, considering the parties and positions. The Nigerians versus the Americans. The Americans are the Nigerians of the Western hemisphere and the Nigerians are the Americans of Africa. Or some would say, the Germans, but Germans are not Anglicans.
From a Reformed perspective, you have to ask, why is Bishop Robinson such an issue when Bishop Spong never threatened the Anglican Communion? I have met Bishop Robinson and heard him speak. He loves the Lord Jesus. He worships the Trinity. He confesses the faith once delivered and he testifies to the gospel. He believes in the Resurrection and the Atonement and the Exodus from Egypt, for Heaven’s sake.
Bishop Spong is still called a Christian only because he calls himself that. He’s an impressive man, especially to himself. Bishop Robinson exhibits repentance, humor, and self-deprecation.
But the Anglicans don’t think from a Reformed perspective. When you finally come down to it, apparently the cliche is true, that for Anglicans it doesn’t matter what you believe. Well, it does, of course, but not enough to pose a threat.
What matters is your ritual. What you celebrate and how you celebrate. This has its virtues. If you attend any Anglican church, the sermon might be thin, but the liturgy will give you a Creed, the Trinity, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus and his coming again, some repentance from sins, some real prayers, some real blessings, and some real miracles — the sacraments. During the sermon you can read the Thirty-Nine Articles in the back of the Prayerbook and thank God for the Belgic Confession.
Anglicans found it problematic when some Canadians and Americans began celebrating gay weddings, or holy unions, or whatever, but even this was tolerable. It used to be the case that all Anglicans, worldwide, were united by the Book of Common Prayer. But since the ’60’s the various provinces have developed their own Prayerbooks, and the New Zealand book is now very different from the British ASB. Liturgical disunity may distress Anglicans, but they’ve been living with divergence for some decades now, and it hasn’t threatened their Communion’s unity.
But a gay bishop! Anglicans are fundamentalists about one thing, and one thing only, and that is the hierarchical episcopacy. In the Seventeenth Century their motivation was political — "No bishop, no king." What their motivation is nowadays is open to question. But as we saw in the process of full communion with the Lutherans, everything is negotiable, except episcopacy.
And when an out gay man is elevated to the episcopacy, then Anglicans are threatened.
What matters is not what he believes but what he is, because a bishop is. The symbol of an hierarchical bishop is not his pulpit but his chair. When he’s just sitting there, holding his staff, he’s at the center of his job. Celebrating Eucharist and baptizing and preaching can be done by mere priests. Only bishops can confirm, but since a Prayer Book Study in the ’60’s it’s agreed that this is not essential but political. It gives the bishop something special to do when he or she visits a parish. Otherwise a bishop has nothing distinctive to do.
A bishop just is. The chief role of a bishop is to represent the church, and, with such Incarnational theology, to represent Christ himself. Well!
The Anglican Communion is at heart a communion of bishops. This communion is objective and linear, like a family tree. They may or may not take the Bible literally, but they are literal about their hierarchical network.
Your ordinary American and Canadian laity are not really in communion with each other. They are in communion with their respective bishops, who are in communion with each other, provided their communion is guaranteed by being in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The crisis shows us what Anglicans are fundamentalist and literalist about!
This past July I attended three different Anglican churches in Canada. The first week I went to the tiny parish near our cottage, where we have prayed for eighteen years. Our lay reader preached on the gospel, and he was good; he preached the text. The next Sunday I had to be in Kingston so I attended the cathedral. An archdeacon preached on the gospel, and he was excellent; he preached the text. The third week our little parish had a union service with the parish in the next town, so with four other locals I went there. I heard another archdeacon preach on the gospel, and he was very good; he preached the text.
Not once did I hear a peep about the troubles of the Anglican Communion. I heard about the Lord Jesus, and his death, resurrection, and coming again, and we confessed our sins, and we praised the Trinity, and we repeated the Creed, and we gave thanks and ate his precious body and blood. I was quite satisfied each time.
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