Gospel Puppet Show on the Meaning of Good News

Gospel Puppet Show

January 27, 2013

3 Epiphany 

Puppet Character: Jesus of Nazareth

Fr. Phil: I want to introduce to you today, Jesus of Nazareth.  Let’s give a big hand to Jesus of Nazareth.  Welcome Jesus.

Jesus:  Welcome to you and to all of these children.

Fr. Phil: Why did you welcome us, Jesus?

Jesus: Well, this is a church and so it is my house, is it not?  So can’t I welcome you to my house?

Fr. Phil:  You sure can Jesus, I’m sorry sometimes I forget.  Yes, this is your house and you do make us feel very welcome.  Thank you.  Jesus, if I were to ask you what you preached about what would you say?

Jesus:  I would say that I told people the Gospel.

Fr. Phil: I know that the Gospels are books in the Bible, but what is the Gospel?

Jesus:  Gospel means “good news.”  And I came to tell people the good news.  Do you know what good news is?

Fr. Phil: I think so.

Jesus: Do you think these children know what good news is?

Fr. Phil:  I think so.

Jesus:  Well, I am going to find out.

Fr. Phil:  How are you going to do that?

Jesus: Well, I’m going to give them a quiz to see if they know what good news is?

Fr. Phil:  Oh, oh…I hope you don’t ask hard questions.  How are you going to test us?

Jesus:  I am going to tell you about something and I want you to say good news or bad news.  That should be easy enough.

Fr. Phil:  Okay, are you ready children?

Jesus:  Okay, you get sick and don’t feel well.  Good news or bad news?

Children:  Bad news.

Jesus: That is correct.  After you are sick, you get better.  Good news or bad news?

Children:  Good news.

Jesus:  Correct.  It rains and the water helps the plants grow.  Good news or bad news?

Children:  Good news.

Jesus:  You get angry at your friend and push him.  Good news or bad news?

Children:  Bad news.

Jesus:  Correct. You tell your friend that you are sorry and he forgives you.  Good news or bad news?

Children:  Good news.

Jesus:  Some people have plenty of good food.  Good news or bad news?

Children:  Good news.

Jesus: Correct again.  Some people do not have enough to eat.  Good news or bad news?

Children:  Bad news.

Jesus: Correct.  God loves you very much and so do your parents.  Good news or bad news?

Children:  Good news.

Jesus: Correct.  And now I’m going to give you a very difficult problem.  The 49ers win the Super Bowl.  Good news or bad news.

Children:  Good News.

Jesus:  Wrong.  This is both good news and bad news.  It is good news for the people who like the 49ers; but it is bad news for the people who like the Baltimore Ravens.  So some things can be good for one person and sad for another person.  But you children are very smart and you have past my test.

Fr. Phil:  So what do we do now that we passed the test?

Jesus:  I want you to be teachers now in my Gospel school.  I want you to be teachers in my “Good News School.”  Can you go and tell everybody the Good news about God’s love?  You passed my test and so I want you to be good news boys and girls.  Can you do that?  Can you say, “Yes, we can?”

Children:  Yes, we can?

Fr. Phil:  Thank you Jesus.  We want to be good news people.  Bye, Bye, we hope to see you again.  Children, can we be good news people?  Yes we can.

Children: Yes we can. 

Universal Society of Music Lovers: Bagpipers not welcome!?

3 Epiphany C          January 27, 2013   

Neh. 8:2-10           Ps. 19      

1 Cor. 12:12-27       Luke 4:14-21    

Lectionary Link

   We are familiar with the word Gospel, but what is the etiology of this word?  Gospel comes from the middle English word, god-spell, meaning “good tidings or good news.”  It is a translation of the Greek word “euangellion” meaning the same thing “good news.”  Gospel is the title that we use for the first four book of the canonical New Testament.  These literary accounts used narrative presentations of the life of Jesus to teach and guide the liturgies of the communities from which they were written.

  So, we might think that the Gospel originated from Jesus Christ, but today’s portion of our Gospel lesson reveals a more ancient origin for the notion of Gospel.  Jesus is the lector and preacher at a synagogue in Nazareth and he read from the scrolls of the prophet Isaiah.  He read the portion of Isaiah 61:1: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”  The Hebrew word for “good news” is basar, and in the Greek translation of basar the same root word for euangellion is used.  So Gospel comes from the ancient prophetic tradition of Israel.  God sent  messengers to proclaim good news to the poor.  Jesus of Nazareth locates himself within this ancient “good news” tradition.  From euangellion we have the word evangelism and this word sometimes has gotten a bad name in our society.  “Evangelical Christians” are regarded to be a voting bloc in our county and sometimes identified with what is called the Christian Right and they are people who seem to be motivated by only two social issues of our time.

  We are in dire need of rehabilitating the word evangelical, because if we are to be like Christ we are to be evangelical.  To be evangelical is to be in this ancient Good News tradition.  The Good News tradition is a more than a Christian tradition because it pre-dated Christianity.  And we should look for the Good News tradition everywhere in life even if it comes without Christian sub-titles.

  When Jesus read from the ancient prophet Isaiah he read, “"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."   After Jesus read these words, he in effect declared, “My life resembles these words.  My calling is to live this life of the good news.  My life is Evangelical.”

  When one reads these words, we cannot avoid the fact that they have material, physical, social, economic and political meanings as well as spiritual meaning.  What is good news to the poor?  Good news for them would be to have enough to live. What would it mean to release the oppressed?  It would mean the justice of freedom coming to those who were held back by an oppressive authority.  What would sight for the blind mean?  Certainly anyone who has been temporarily blind would know the recovery when it came.  Good news would mean having access to health care.  What would proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor mean?  It would mean that we experience our life circumstances as being fortunate or lucky.  The freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

  Jesus lived in an era of lots of bad news in the conditions of the people with whom he lived.  Jesus did not literally release any political prisoners in his time.  Jesus is known to have brought sight to the eyes of blind people.  And if Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, was he proclaiming the favor of God’s imminent intervention to bring a final cosmic justice to Palestine?

  What happens when words do not seem to have any literal reference?  We are forced into their spiritual meanings to maintain their credibility for our lives.  The kingdom of God did not have an earthly manifestation in the form of an actual perfect government with righteous armies and judges.  Jesus did not bring about a New Deal or Great Society or Social Welfare for the poor of Palestine in his time.  When the Christian movement became the Christendom of the Holy Roman Empire, we find that absolute power corrupted absolutely both empire and church.

   The Good News tradition may indeed always be a parallel inner spiritual tradition that we have access to in order to bring manifestations of good news into actual physical order of our lives.  Justice may never be fully realized but it is always there to be the model for our laws and our social, political and economic behaviors.

  So what would good news be like in the community?  St. Paul believed that good news in his community had to do with the finding and the mutual support and tolerance for the gifts of everyone in the community.

  Can you imagine this oxymoronic sign: Universal Society of Music Lovers: Bagpipers not welcome!  Our kilt wearing friends from Scotland would be highly offended.  How could you proclaim yourself to be universal and exclude bagpipers?

  St. Paul encouraged his community to live up to the universality of God’s love and the good news of God in Christ.  If a person in the community is excluded because of the way in which he or she knows her gift to be available as a valid expression of the good news of their life and the benefit of the community, how can that be good news?  How can the community pretend universal love and good news with exclusionary practices of the gifts of people who want to be contributing members of the community?

  St. Paul was saying, “Live up to the universality of love and good news and this cannot be done by exclusionary practice of those who are gifted for the benefit of the community.”

  My friends, the good news tradition is still an invitation to us.  We are invited to be truly Evangelical as Jesus was in seeking to embody in his life practice what good news is for all people.  Let us not be afraid of the word evangelical today.  Let us renew our commitment to this ancient tradition of the prophets and that was given the ultimate stamp of approval in the life, death and resurrection of Christ.  And now in the resurrection of Christ, the Christ life is within us to keep us firmly in this Good News tradition.  Amen.

I'll Have What She's Having

2 Epiphany c          January 20, 2013   

Isaiah 62:1-5         Psalm 36:5-10       

1 Cor. 12:1-11      John 2:1-11       

Lectionary Link 

  One of funniest lines in motion picture history was delivered by a character who was insignificant in the overall plot of the movie.  The movie was “When Harry Met Sally.”  Sally played by Meg Ryan is in a restaurant with Harry played by Billy Crystal.  Sally acts out in the restaurant a state of female ecstasy and when she finishes, a waiter in the restaurant is taking the order of a woman customer and she says in reference to the display of ecstasy by Sally, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

  The experience of drinking water and knowing it to be the best wine is what characterizes the first Sign of  Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John.  The Gospel of John is all about living a parallel existence:  Living in the world but not being of the world.  Having both a natural birth and a spiritual birth.  And what does this mean?  It means the Signs of the Awesome being made known within the ordinary.  While in the natural order everyone thinks that it is just plain water, those who live in this other order of life experience the drinking of the ordinary water as being the finest wine.  And when people see the result of people who have this access to this other way of perceiving the awesome within the ordinary, what do they say or think?  “I’ll have what she’s having.”  And this dynamic expresses the most powerful evangelism of all; when people observe and are drawn and confess, “I’ll have what she or he is having.”

  When people were introduced to Jesus, they were drawn and attracted.  Here in the very ordinary and depressed conditions of Palestinian life in the first century, people saw Jesus and said, “I’ll have what he’s having.”  And what was Jesus saying, “You can have all that I have; you just need to accept that you are a son or daughter of God.  You just need to realize your spiritual birth and heritage in the midst of this very natural and all too human world.”

  How is it that people come to say, “I’ll have what she’s having or I’ll have what he’s having?”  We come to say that when we see people manifest their special gifts.  Some of those gifts get shown on the great media stages of life; we see that in the public performers in politics, sports, theatre, music and cinema.  But we often live best when we can live in communities of mutual admiration.  St. Paul said that there were many gifts but one Spirit.  He wrote that there were different gifts.  One of the main tasks of human life is to find, to discover and develop our gifts.  We are happiest when we can discover the areas of creativity that energize us and that also turn out to be useful to other.  I think that each of us is called in life to access our life force, the Spirit of life and have it come to be manifest as the charisma or charm of our life.  Everyone has a different charm and each has to find one’s own charm.  How many times have we heard someone say something or we have read something and we’ve thought, “I wish I had said that or I wish that I had written that.”  A community is blessed when each can look at one another and say or think, “I’ll have what he or she is having.”  In the midst of our being all too human, we can still access the energy of the sublime that can exude the kinds of expression of attraction that become the glue of how a community maintains itself.  A community survives when each person works to discover the basic force of one’s life as Spirit or as charisma.  We owe it to ourselves to be released into our gifts for the common good.  This is to learn how to taste the ordinary water of life as the finest wine.

  God does extraordinary things through ordinary people who are willing to seek their gifts and not be “hired guns” with their gifts but those who give freely and authentically.  It is one thing to be gifted; it is another thing to discover our gifts, develop them and then share them to enrich the community.

  Following a solo recital in New York City, the great pianist Van Cliburn, was signing autographs and making small talk with his radiant admirers. Near the end of the line, a lady clutching his hands said to him, "I'd give my life to be able to play like that!"  Van Cliburn looked back at her with steady eyes and simply said, "Madam, I have."

  Each of us has to find the gift or gifts we have where we can give our lives.  We owe it to our own joy to do so and we owe it for the benefit of our community to feel the energy of our gifts go forth from our lives.  I have lived with you long enough to know that at various moments I could say about each of you, “I’ll have what he or she is having.”  We at St. John’s live and survive and go into our future because God takes us as ordinary people and allows the charisma or the gifts of the Spirit to arise in us to create enough mutual ministry and mutual admiration to propel us into the future.

  Let us today find the new gifts that God has for each of us as we seek to serve God here and as we work not to be successful or famous, but just be faithful to the highest values of life, namely the example of love and justice that Jesus Christ gave to us.  Jesus did his first Sign at the Wedding in Cana of Galilee; the Risen Christ still does Signs in our midst today which we can know when the gifts of God happen within ordinary people and we say with admiration, “I’ll have what she’s having; I’ll have what he’s having.”  Amen.

Baptism; Cute Little Sprinkling of Babies or Way of Life

1 Epiphany  c       January 13, 2013    

Isaiah 43:1-7                Psalm 29       

Acts 8:14-17       Luke 3:15-17,21-22

Lectionary Link

  Today is the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ and obviously an occasion to speak about baptism.  And one can think about the question asked by the young child regarding the baptism of Jesus.  Did Jesus become a Christian at his baptism?  There was of course, no Christianity at the time of the baptism of Jesus.  A more relevant question would have to do with the community of John the Baptist.  Did the baptism of Jesus signal a connection between Jesus and the community of John the Baptist?  What was the meaning of the baptism of John the Baptist for all who were baptized by him and what is the meaning of the baptism of Jesus?  What is the meaning of baptism?  In Judaism, there was the practice of proselyte baptism when someone converted to Judaism.  It would be true to say that baptism has accrued meanings and a variety of practices in its history in the religions of the world.

  Baptism involves the use of water, a truly universal substance.  We cannot help but be “water” people, even if we live in the desert.  Our bodies are 50 to 65 percent water,  so getting external water converted into body water is important for our survival.  But our use of water externally is very important too.  For bathing; water is necessary for keeping ourselves clean.  But then there is also irrigation for farming and there are large bodies of water for transportation, not to mention our use of water in our play.

  We also can know water as a threat and it can kill; the flood, the storm and water as a barrier to cross are prominent themes in the Scriptures.  Water can symbolize the Void, the Abyss and the chaotic.

  Living by and with and for water is perhaps a major feature of human life.  It is not surprising that water would be the substance used for our orientation into the community that helps to form our identity.  As humans, we are not technically amphibians; we are voluntary amphibians in that we selective choose how we want to live with and in the water.

  If amphibians are water and land beings, what kind of beings are human beings?  The sweeping biblical cosmology proclaims human beings as land and spirit beings.  Being made of dust and deity sums up the human spiritual psychology.  From dust we have our bodies; from the breath of God’s Spirit we have our interior life of the Word, the life that we call our soul-life.  We live in a physical world and we live in and from an interior world of Word.

  To become fully human means that we discover ourselves to be more than our physical existence; we discover ourselves to be more than our instinctual existence; we discover ourselves to be made to live with the sublime, the uncanny, the wonderful and the awesome.

  In the Christian baptismal rite, we celebrate our birth, our very existence in the two realms of life.  And baptism is always a baptism of repentance; a baptism of education.  In baptism we proclaim that we are not perfect but perfectible; we can always become better.  Perfection always has a future for us.  In baptism we proclaim that we are ready to live towards our spiritual identity with God even while we do not deny our bodies; we bring them along too as the houses to be dwelling places for God on this earth.

  In the baptismal rite we proclaim what our cosmology is; what we believe about God and what we believe about our destiny.  We proclaim that being perfectible is enhanced by the practice of forgiveness.  We proclaim that we can imagine a glorious future of endless possibilities even as we accept daily the limitation of what becomes actual in our lives towards the realization of hope.  In baptism we practice the dynamic interaction of person within community.  As a person who is not isolated we ask the community to teach, inculcate, educate, mark, impress, us with its very best values.  In baptism, each of us says to the community, “move over and make room for me and the gifts that I have to offer.”  In baptism, the community says to us, “Check your ego at the door and let others into your life and join with them to prove that more than be done together than can be done in isolation.”  Baptism is a recognition of this person in community dynamic that defines our entire life. So baptism is not a cute little sprinkling of water on a baby’s head as a photo op for the baby book.  It is a proclamation and a launching of a person into the basic dynamic of life, namely, person within community.

  So how indeed is the baptism of Jesus different than ours?  If Jesus did not become a Christian at his baptism, what did he become, or what do we believe is expressed in the baptism of Jesus?

  The Orthodox Church has an expression: In Christ God become human so that humans might become divinized.  The baptism of Jesus is part of the narrative of solidarity of God with humanity.  Our belief in the incarnation; our belief that Christ is God is the narrative expression of the acceptance of human experience as a valid way for us to come to know the extra-human life of God through God’s Spirit.  In the narrative of Jesus Christ we proclaim that there is a way to live human life like amphibians or as those who live in two realms.  In the narrative of Jesus Christ, we accept the parallel existence of an inner Spirit-Word realm which can flood our physical lives with a quality of living that can only be expressed with words loaded with extreme meaning, words such as love, joy, hope, peace and faith.  And though such experiences that bring us the sublime occasions to use such words can never be fully spiritual, we know that our physical world can be flooded with the Spirit so that we can know an elevation towards hope, love, joy and peace.

  Our lives are fulfilled in the discovery of our being in this world as Spirit and Body. And this discovery has a community narrative in the event of the baptism of Jesus.  The celebration of this event and the practice of baptism provide the occasions for us to remember always our spiritual destiny in life.

  It is not enough to just regard baptism as a church requirement; we need to see the profound meaning that surfaces in the event of the baptism of Jesus and in the practice of the rite of Christian baptism.

  May God grant us grace as we live as persons within community.  May we bless our communities with our gifts.  May we join our gifts with the gifts of other to multiply the possible good outcomes.  May we have the humility to check our egos at the door; and may the community not force upon our lives cookie cutter limited stereo-types of what people should be.  And may God bless us as we endeavor to make creative advances in love and justice in our world.  This is the life of baptism as given to us by Jesus who himself was baptized.  Amen.

Let Us Be Star Light

The Epiphany      January 6, 2013

Is.60:1-6,9      Ps. 72:1-2,10-17

Eph. 3:1-12   Matt. 2:1-12

Lectionary Link

  Imagine for a moment young children watching a Disney cartoon with kings and queens and talking animals.  The children can take immediate delight in this production of the imagination.  As they enjoy the entertainment, the question does not occur to them as to whether the events in the Disney Cartoon are real or accurately depict life.  If you ask them if it were true, they would probably say “yes, it is true,” meaning that it is true that it is a cartoon video so don’t ask such a dumb question.  One might call this immediate appreciation of the cartoon a primary naïveté; a description that was offered by Paul Ricoeur. It is a ridiculous observation to tell children that their Disney Cartoons are not true.  At the same time, when a child is away from the cartoon the child learns to make a contrast between the animal in the cartoon who speaks actual human words and the child’s pet dog that does not speak.  If a child were to demand that the dog speak human words, then one would be concerned.  But the child learns levels of interaction between language and experience.  On another level of discourse one is suspicious about the reality of speaking dogs.   One’s pet dog may not speak and yet that does not deprive one from enjoying depictions of animals speaking.  And then on a third level there is the Disney creator who imagined and created the art of the cartoon for entertainment, artistic and aesthetic enjoyment and does so not only for children but also for adults who have the child-like ability to appreciate the truth of art without demanding that it be a perfect mirror reflection of actual animals.  This third level of understanding is what Ricoeur called the Second Naïveté.

  These three levels of perception are embedded in our human use of language and discourse and we simultaneously apply them all of the time.  We can however sometimes fall into confusion if we misapply the level of discourse which we are operating in.

  Today is the feast of the Epiphany and the story of the day is the story of the magi.  This story has taken on some interesting assumptions in the history of its presentations.  They became kings and not magi because of their association with verses from the ancient Psalms and Prophets.  So the magi had to be these kings with camels and their expensive gifts would give indication of their royalty.  And if they were royalty, it would only enhance the proclamation of Jesus as the King of Kings.  The story has gotten altered because of Christmas Pageants too.  Every Christmas Pageant director has to make editorial choices, not having the time or the budget of Oliver Stone.  According to most Christmas Pageant scripts the magi are three kings and they arrive at the stable in Bethlehem along with the shepherds and angels.  And of course the moving star is always fixed over the stable.  Whereas the actual Gospel account relates that the magi, after consulting Herod in Jerusalem go to Bethlehem and follow a moving star that stands still over the place where they find Jesus.

  Do you see the sort of problem one can have as a modern person?  But it really is not a problem unless one confuses the codes in understanding this story.

  In the mode of the primary naiveté we can appreciate this lovely story as a child would with the simply wonder of a nice story that forms our identity as a worshipping community and that endears us to a God who is presented as being present within the most vulnerable of all human beings, a baby.

  In our adult commonsense we are not going to tie our faith to a belief in an actual moving and hovering star that is so precise that can hover over a particular house in Bethlehem.  Our commonsense minds understand the difference between journalistic eye-witness accounts and the faith literature that is written to promote the adoration of Jesus Christ.  Our adult minds can study the context for how various kinds of literature were written.  Jesus is presented using the story themes from Hebrew Scriptures.  Jesus is presented using the common type of literature that was also used to encourage Roman citizenry to venerate their Emperors.  At the birth of Emperors, there were reports about the appearance of comets, all after the fact when the Emperor had plenty of propaganda writers to promulgate his image in the Empire.  Understanding this too, will help us understand this story of the magi as a political statement, even daring to present a fantastic birth story to compete with the stories about the Emperor’s birth.  On the level of our logical minds and our suspicion about actual hovering stars we understand how the literature functions in its context.

  So we have experienced primary naïveté and moved to adult suspicion of the literal but there is another level that we experience.  We experience a second naïveté when we move beyond a suspicion that would prevent us from having faith.  We experience the orientation into mystery and meaningful faith.  In this phase of interpretation we understand the significance of the early Christ-communities: they in no uncertain terms were beginning the globalization in the presentation of God’s love through the particular person of Jesus Christ.  Heretofore, the actual practice of Judaism tended to be limited to the ethnic community, in spite of the ancient prophets’ call for the universal invitation of God to all.  This universal invitation became more significantly achieved by the early Christ communities.  The magi are foreign pilgrims to the birth of Christ.  This was the story form of the globalization of the meaning of Christ.  The Epiphany or Manifestation or Showing of Christ meant that God was available, always and already to all people.  This is what Jesus Christ made known about God.  And this is what came to distinguish the practice of Christians from the other faith communities of their time.

  Evangelism simply means that God is globalized and no one can control access to God; no one can put limits upon whom God is available to.  Yes, indeed communities with imperfect and biased and small-minded and controlling people can limit access to their communities but they cannot deny access to God.  God is manifest to everyone, God is available and accessible.  And if we understand this we can enter into the second naïveté regarding the story of the three magi.

  So today, on this feast of the Epiphany, please don’t get tied up into a pretzel regarding belief and truth about the magi.  We simultaneously can live in the childlike wonder of the story; we can be true to our scientific suspicion about hovering stars; and we can enter the second naïveté and plumb the meaningful event of faith and spiritual pilgrimage that is affirmed and encouraged in this story.

  Let us be star light today shining the places of our lives to the event of the birth of Christ that is available to all.  It is not forced; it is available.  Let us be star lights as we help others to be wise persons, magi regarding the fact that indeed God is with us, God is with them, God is with all.  There are no foreigners to God.  Amen.