Welcome to Sunday School Puppet Show

Gospel Puppet Show

September 9, 2012

Michelle, the emcee, Susie, (Pam) the young girl,  Marilyn (Kathryn) the young girl, and Jesus (Eric)

Michelle: Welcome boys and girls to Rally Sunday.  Do you know what Rally Sunday is?   It is a celebration for the start of Sunday School.  Today is the day we begin our Sunday School Program.  We had a summer vacation and now we start Sunday School.

Susie:  Miss Michelle, I have a question.  Why do we have to go to school on Sunday?  We go to school during the week.  Why don’t we take a break from school on Sunday?

Michelle:  That is a very good question Susie.  We come to Sunday School to remember that we are in the most important school in our lives.

Marilyn:  What School is more important than Charter School?  Or Nordstrom?  Or P.A. Walsh?  Or Jackson Oaks?  Or Oakwood?  Or Paradise Valley?   Those are some of our schools.  Why is Sunday School more important than our schools?

Michelle:  Does anyone know what the followers of Jesus were called?  You remember people like Peter, James, John, Philip and Bartholomew?

Susie:  I think they were called disciples.

Michelle:  That is right Susie, good answer!  But do you know another word for disciple?

Marilyn:  Does it mean pastor or priest? Like Father Phil.

Michelle:  Well, a pastor or priest is a disciple of Jesus but disciple means something just a little different than pastor or priest.  A disciple is a student or a pupil.  So a disciple of Jesus is a student of Jesus.

Susie:  I get it!  So we come to church on Sunday because all of us are students of Jesus.

Marilyn:  So that means that we are always in two schools; we are in our elementary schools and we are in Sunday School.

Michelle:  Jesus was a great teacher and his students learned many things from him.

Susie:  What did they learn?  Did they learn arithmetic?  Did they learn how to read and write?

Michelle:  No, they learn some very important rules about how to live good lives.

Marilyn:  What rules did they learn.

Susie:  They learn the 10 commandments.

Michelle:  That is correct Susie and they learned about loving God with all of their hearts and they learned about loving their neighbors.  And there was something wonderful about how Jesus taught his students.

Marilyn:  How did Jesus teach his students?

Michelle:  How many of you like to hear stories and riddles?  Well, Jesus taught his students using wonderful stories.

Susie:  Are we going to hear stories at Sunday School? 

Michelle:  Yes, each week we read stories in the Bible; we read stories about Jesus.  And we look at the stories to see what lessons we can learn about how we can live better lives.

Marilyn:  Do we have to memorize things?  Do we have to take tests?

Michelle:  When you say memorize, it sound like hard work, but when you say “remember” it seems easier.  When I tell Alex to put on his bike helmet, I don’t ask him to memorize it, I ask him to “remember” to put on helmet.  Why?  Because I want him to be safe.

Susie:  So we learn in Sunday School some important things to remember so that we can live successful lives?

Michelle:  That’s right.  And you know what?  We need get out of Sunday School because we never stop being students of Jesus Christ.  Your parents and grandparents are also still students of Christ.

Marilyn:  What would Jesus do if he were here today?

Susie:  I bet that Jesus would welcome us and he would enroll us in his school as his students.

Jesus appears:

Jesus:  Susie, you are right. I am glad that all of you have come to Sunday School.  I am glad that all of you are students in my school.  And now I want to enroll you in Sunday School for this fall.  Can everyone stand?  Now put your right hand on your heart and repeat after me.

Jesus:  I am a student of Jesus Christ.

All:  I am a student of Jesus Christ.

Jesus:  I promise to follow him as my Lord and Savior.

All:  I promise to follow him as my Lord and Savior.

Jesus:  I promise to learn new things about God each week.

All:  I promise to learn new things about God each week.

Jesus:  I promise to be a Sunday School Student at St. John’s.

All:  I promise to be a Sunday School Student at St. John’s.

Jesus:  With God’s help I will be a good student of Jesus Christ.

All:  With God’s help I will be a good student of Jesus Christ.

Jesus:  May God bless you as a student in Sunday School Amen.

Michelle:  Thank you coming and welcome to St. John’s Sunday School.  We’re going to have a great year.  

Grace, Faith and Good Works; Simultaneous and not Contradictory

14  Pentecost P.18  September 9, 2012

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23  Ps. 146: 4-9

James 1:17-27        Mark 7:31-37     

 Lectionary Link

   The Bible has been a source of disagreement amongst people of faith for a long time.  And in fact it seems as though one portion of the Bible may actually be written to counter another portion of the Bible.  We tend to think that everyone agreed with St. Paul; but we find that he had some disagreements with Peter and others.

 Today we have read from the Letter of James.  We read this: What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

  There was a famous theologian who had difficulties with the apparent contradiction between the emphasis of the letter of James on works and the writings of St. Paul with an emphasis on faith and grace.  This theologian was Martin Luther.  Luther was so troubled by the writing in the letter of James, he did not regard this letter to have the authority of the apostles.  In short, it was not a part of “his” Bible.

  One of the results of the modern historical study of the Bible is that we don’t need to have the kinds of dilemma with biblical writings that Martin Luther  had.  In our study of the Bible we don’t believe that somehow God’s word happens unfiltered in the biblical writings.  We don’t believe that words of Bible have one self-evident meaning that can be discovered to be the same by everyone who reads them.  In short, we believe that the words of the Bible happened within a context, a very human context.  And the context means that persons are asking questions that pertain to that particular context.

  Martin Luther was reading the Bible in reaction against what he perceived to be an emphasis on salvation achieved because of one’s good work.  Luther believed that if salvation was due to one’s works then it diminished the grace of God.  Luther observed too many clergy using guilt and work to manipulate lay people.  One extreme form was the alleged selling of Indulgences by clergy for lay persons to receive official remission of their sin.  So, Luther, from his reactionary context, could not accept the context from which the letter of James was written.

  You and I from our own context probably cannot identify with the context of Paul or the letter of James or Martin Luther.  Our context is different and different questions arise for us in our time and place.

  In our time, we are beneficiaries of many more years of biblical studies.  Some of the letters that Martin Luther assumed were written by St. Paul are no longer regarded to have Pauline authorship even though they may have been written by some of Paul’s disciples.

  Most of the New Testament was written with an imminent expectation of return of the Son of Man in the clouds.  For these people, salvation was defined by whether they would be “saved” or embraced by the Son of Man.  We know that there is amongst modern biblical fundamentalists an effort to maintain this imminent return of the Son of Man tradition and they do so in specifically predicative ways.  So they worry about every current event in Israel because they see portions of the Bible as precise blueprint for what is going to happen in the future.

  How can you and I from our contexts find some insights in this ancient discussion of faith, grace and works?  What relevance does this have for you and me? 

  I think what we learn from Jesus is that I am not supposed to judge anyone except myself.  In short, we are not supposed to think that we are more worthy of God’s grace and favor than anyone else.  We might be fooled to think so when we start comparing ourselves with others.  But if we think it worthwhile to compare ourselves with others, why wouldn’t we just compare ourselves with Jesus, St. Francis and Mother Teresa of Calcutta and find ourselves woefully lacking.  Usually our judgmental attitudes come because we compare ourselves with someone whom we already think we’re better than.  In fact, we actually might like to have “notorious” obvious sinners around just to make us look good.

  Jesus reminded us that we need to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect; so that our moral direction is so high and unattainable, we definitively need grace to tolerate ourselves in light of God’s perfection.  And we need grace to tolerate ourselves for not yet being who we can become.

  If we are always lacking in our progress to become better, we always need grace and so we need to have faith to accept that grace.  The Christian notion of grace means that the act of faith is accepting that God makes up what we lack in perfection at any time in our life.

  The act of faith is indeed a human work and it is a significant work even though it is a work that is overshadowed by the grace offered.  Put in monetary terms, should I be congratulated for my gracious work of taking a million dollars; or should it be of greater importance that someone who was generous offered me a million dollars? “ Congratulation, Phil, you’re so great and wonderful for taking that million dollars.”

  On the other hand, if I don’t take the million dollars, do I have the million dollars?  If you understand this you can understand how the relationship between grace and work and faith is a matter of emphasis.

  And that brings us to the question in the letter of James.  It is a kind of what comes first, the chicken or the egg type of argument.  Are you saved and have you received grace?  Well, then why are you treating people so badly?  You show no evidence of having taken the “million” dollars.  Works of charity manifest the proof that someone has indeed taken the gift of God’s grace.  We don’t give to get something; we give as proof that we’ve already received the gift and grace of God.   In the Gospel words, if we are abiding in the grace of Christ, we will bear fruit; we will produce the evidence of our relationship with Christ.  The writer of James was essentially saying that one has to show the evidence of receiving God’s grace by sharing that grace through the love and kindness of one’s life.  In this way we can understand that grace, faith and works are not really contradictory but mutually reinforcing and co-existence.  And so one cannot divide grace, faith or works; they all happen together at the same time.  One cannot presume that one’s works occurred without a prior event of grace; to deny the event of grace is the sin of pride.

  The Gospel presents God’s grace in the form of the stories of Jesus.  God restores us to our lost childhood joy as we overcome all of the interior forces that keep us from freshness of life.  God continually heals our hearing because we always need to hear new things and new insights for our lives.

  Let us hear today the insight that grace, faith and the good work of our lives are all simultaneous events.  Amen.

All Laws Are Not Equal

14  Pentecost Cycle B proper 17 September 2, 2012

Song of Solomon 2:8-13 Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10

James 1:17-27  Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Lectionary Link

  The teaching  of the Gospel lesson for today is this:  All laws are not equal.  And while it is important to have laws, having too many laws actually might get in the way of freedom for living.  There are lots of laws that we would like to do without, certain tax laws,  deed restrictions, dress codes and rules that seem to deny some basic freedoms. 

  Human life consists of many laws; some of those laws are what we might call morally passive laws.  We would call scientific laws morally passive since they simply try to describe the behavior of natural phenomenon.  Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level.  It is not good or bad that it does so, and we don’t place any moral value on such a law because human action and motive cannot make it so.

  The laws that pertain to human behavior are many; they are found in human societies ancient and in ours.   For any group of people who have tried to live together well, there is needed structure and order for preserving life and health and the well being of the common good.

   Thou shalt not kill.  That’s a pretty important rule for the health and safety of the human community.  Thou shalt pick up after your dog in the park.  An important rule but not the same level as “Thou shalt not kill.”  Though if it happens on your lawn and the dog owner doesn’t seem to care, it can cause bad thoughts to arise.

  There are also rules that pertain to ceremony and cultural protocol and if one does not know these rules one can truly offend without knowing it.  In a good portion of the world it is impolite to leave your shoes on when visiting someone’s home.  It is protocol to leave one’s shoes at the door.

  Some rules are secret and are meant only for insiders.  Lodges and clubs have secret rules and members take an oath not to disclose the rules.

  So the validity of a rule or law is affected by how widely it is known or promulgated.  The validity of a law is also supposed to be determined by its reasonableness and whether it is truly accessible for whom it is to apply.

  When Jesus walked in Palestine, he found within the Jewish religious community a Judean religious elite.  This elite group had elevated and magnified minutiae and lesser ceremonial rules to the level of the big ones, the Ten Commandments.  The laws of ritual purity were very important to those who believed themselves to be truly the official spokespersons for God and who believed themselves to be the official gatekeepers for those who were to be admitted to God’s favor.

  In Palestine, water was an issue.  Peasants did not always have the same access to water for ritual purity in the same ways that the Judean religious elite had.  The religious elite were wealthy enough to build a micro-society within the greater social order and they had rules for this micro-society that governed membership.  And Jesus found that the vast majority of the countryside peasants and the simple laborers and fisherfolk did not have access to that small micro-society.  And the message of the religious elite was this:  If you don’t and are not keeping the rules of our micro-society, that is a sure sign that you do not have God’s favor.  Because if you are not in our society, you are not in God’s society either.

  And that is what really ticked Jesus off.  The Gospels often portray Jesus as one who is violating these religious rules.  The Gospels have Jesus in sarcasm speaking against the elevation of minutiae to Olympian importance.  In another place Jesus said, “You strain to catch a gnat, but you let the camel go through.”  That is simply an ironic way of saying, “You’re missing the point of God and religion and you’ve got your priorities all wrong.”

  The words of Jesus were meant to indict and convict those who elevated minutiae to top priority while being totally blinded to some very big issue.

  The words of Jesus apply to us because sometimes we are so worried about gnats we do not recognize the camels and elephants that inhabit our world.  It seems as most faith communities fix rules and laws that are exclusionary.  You can’t receive communion unless….You have to be celibate to be a valid sacramental minister…You have to fast an hour before receiving holy communion…you have to believe this particular formula for the salvation of your souls…you have to believe exactly this about the Holy Scriptures…  There are hundreds upon hundreds of subtle little rules that govern who we accept into our company as being valid in God’s sight.  We can get so exorcised about all of the minutiae of church membership we are blind to our great failures to love God and our neighbor as our self.  Our tiny rules can make us blind to justice.

  If the great rule is to love God and our neighbor as our self, should we be more concerned about the correct view of the Holy Eucharist or about the fact that lots of people are starving in our world and in our country?  Should be more concerned about total immersion or sprinkling in baptism than the availability of clean drinking water to all in our world?

  I am not saying we should be over-whelmed by world hunger and poverty; I’m just saying that in the big scheme of things, we should not let the petty church political stuff cause us to lose perspective about the big principle of life, “loving God and our neighbor as our selves.”

  I think if Jesus were here today visiting every church that existed, he would continually challenge all of us about our priorities.  He wouldn't single us out or the Baptists or the Lutherans or the Roman Catholics, because his words are what one might call, “equal opportunity convicting.”  Liberal or conservative, it doesn’t matter, his words will always convict us about our priorities.  His words will convict us about making the petty into the dominant motivation of our lives.

  How is the ritual washing of our hands going to help us love God with all of our hearts and loving our neighbor as ourselves?  But how about getting clean drinking water to all of the people of this world?  How about getting water for irrigation to starving people?  This would really be a way of making the world ritually pure through the use of water.

  If the ritual use of water in our faith ceremonies does not inspire us to get water to those who need it, then our ritual behavior is the equivalence of malpractice.  And Jesus was hitting very hard at the malpractice of religion.

  The words of Jesus will always confront us with our potential malpractice of religion where we are content with micro-rules of ritual and doctrine, but let the big issues that pertain to loving God and our neighbors go unattended.

  Let us live under the conviction of Jesus today, knowing that we are failing in some very major ways.  It is a good place to live because it makes it easy to ask God for mercy, forgiveness, and grace for the amendment of our lives.  And if we have the audacity to ask God for mercy, forgiveness and grace, then perhaps we too will offer the same to the people in our world and life.  Amen.

      

Quiz of the Day, August 2012

August 1, 2012

Summertime Quiz

August 1^st is the feast of Joseph of Arimathea.  In the Gospel narrative he,

a.       Provided the thirty pieces of silver to give to Judas

b.      Provided the tomb for the body of Jesus after the crucifixion

c.       Arranged for his friend Nicodemus to meet with Jesus at night

d.      Provided the room for the Last Supper

August 2, 2012

Summertime Quiz

In the New Testament, the word Greek word for “priest”  hiereus is mainly used to refer to:

a.  the person who said the prayers at the Eucharist

b.  the cultic officials of Roman temples

c.  the priests in Judaism who offered the sacrifices in temple in Jerusalem before it was destroyed

d. the apostles and disciples

August 3, 2012

Summertime Quiz

August 6^th is the Feast of the Transfiguration.  What Sunday every year do we read the Transfiguration account from the Gospels?

a.  First Sunday of Lent

b. Last Sunday of Epiphany

c. First Sunday in Advent

d. First Sunday after the Epiphany

August 4, 2012

Summertime Quiz

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.  So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air;

This Olympic metaphor is found in the New Testament.  Where is it found?

a. The Epistle to the Hebrews

b. 2^nd Timothy

c. The Book of Revelation

d. St. Paul’s  First Epistle to the Corinthians

August 5, 2012

Summertime Quiz

Manna is

a. the mysterious substance that fed the Israelites in their wilderness journey

b. a word that comes from the Hebrew meaning, "What is it?"

c. called the bread of angels

d. used by a Gospel writer to teach a lesson about Jesus as living bread

e. all of the above

August 6, 2012

Summertime Quiz 

Who was present at the Transfiguration event?

a.Jesus, James, John, Peter

b.Jesus, Moses, Elijah,  Peter and John

c.Jesus, Moses, Elijah, Peter and James

d.Jesus, Moses, Elijah, Peter, James and John

e.Jesus, Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, John and God the Father

August 7, 2012

Summertime quiz

The Sadducees, a sect of Judaism in the time of Jesus, did not believe in the resurrection from the dead because:

a. It could not be supported from the writings of the Prophets

b. They were pessimists

c. It was not support from the writings of the Torah

d. Immortality was a Greek notion

August 8, 2012

Summertime Quiz

What English word does the new Roman Catholic Liturgy use to translate "of one being with" in the Nicene Creed?

a. transubstantial

b. unified

c. substantial

d. consubstantial

August 9, 2012

Summertime Quiz

Intercessory prayer is

a. asking God for things for ourself

b. praying in a special time

c. praying done with fasting

d. identifying with the needs of other and asking for God's help on their behalf

August 10, 2012

Summertime Quiz

Love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are called by St. Paul:

a. theological virtues

b. cardinal virtues

c. gifts of the Spirit

d. fruit of the Spirit

  

August  11, 2012

Summertime Quiz

Why is the day of worship different for Jews and Christians?

a.  Sunday, the first day of the week is the day of the resurrection of Christ

b. Judaism has maintained its ancient Sabbath tradition

c. The Acts of the Apostles states that the disciples gathered on the first day of the week to break bread and say the prayers.

d. All of the above

August 12, 2012

Summertime Quiz

Why do scholars call the Old Testament the Hebrew Scriptures?

a. It was written in Hebrew

b. Out of respects for the Jews

c. If a person does not recognize a New Testament, their Testament is not old, it's their only Testament

d. all of the above

August 13, 2012

Summertime Quiz

Who succeeded David on the throne of Israel and was regarded to be the wisest person of ancient Israel?

a. Absalom

b. Jonathan

c. Saul

d. Ahab

e. Joash

f. Solomon

August 14, 2012

Summertime Quiz

August 15 is the Feast of the Virgin Mary. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII infallibly defined that,

a. the Virgin Mary was a saint

b. the apparitions of the Virgin Mary were authentic

c. the Virgin Mary was Assumed or bodily taken into heaven at the end of her earthly life

d. all of the above

 August 15, 2012

The Virgin Mary is:

a. referred to as "Theotokos" or God-Bearer in the Eastern Orthodox traditions.

b. referred to as Mother of God in the Western Church Tradition.

c. has a cousin names Elizabeth according to the Gospel of Luke

d. mother to the siblings of Jesus

e. all of the above

August 16, 2012

Long before UFO and Extra-terrestials, the Bible has presented extra-human figures known and called angelic (messenger) beings.  Visionaries actually divided angelic being into choirs.  Which is not in one  of the choirs?

a.  Seraphim

b.  Cherubim

c. Thrones or Ophanim

d. terraphim

e.  Dominions

f.  Virtues

g.  Powers or Authorities

h.  Principalities or Rulers

i.  Archangels

J. Angels

August 17, 2012

Summertime Quiz

The Four Gospels do not have internal evidence that reveals their actual authors.  The names were attached in the traditions of the church.  Which Gospel would seem to have some evidence of the author?

a. Mark, since he is probably the young boy in the Gethsemane arrest event

b. Matthew, since he was probably Levi

c. John, since he was the beloved disciple

d. Luke, since Luke goes with Acts and he was a physician and companion of Paul

August 18, 2012

Summertime Quiz

The Restoration in English History refers to:

a. The day and period of the restored monarchy in England in 1660

b. The end of the rule of Oliver Cromwell’s son

c.  The ascent to the throne of Charles II

d.  the time when a significant revision of the Book of Common Prayer occurred

e.  all of the above

August 19, 2012

The Prayer for the Sick is a sacrament. It has also been called,

a. the prayer for healing

b. Extreme Unction

c. last rites

d. holy unction

August 20, 2012

Summertime Quiz

In religious terminology, apocalypse means,

a.  literally, an unveiling

b. catastrophic ending of the world as we know it

c. if capitalized another name for the last book of the Bible, Revelations

d. all of the above

August 21, 2012

Summertime Quiz

Before, during and after the time of Jesus when the communities where biblical writings occurred often were suffering and oppressed communities, a pronounced fervor about the end of the world as we know it was common. Portions of the Bible are called Apocalyptic literature. The theological sub-discipline for the study of end times is called:

a. Apocalyptology

b. Parousiology

c. Cosmology

d. Eschatology

August 22, 2012

To what disciple did Jesus, "on this rock I will build my church?"

a. Andrew

b. The Beloved Disciple

c. Peter

d. Simon bar Jonah

e. Cephas

f. two of the above

g. c, d, and e

August 23, 2012

Summertime Quiz

Pneumatology is the sub-discipline of theology and involves the study of,

a. angels

b. breathing techniques in prayer and meditation

c. respiratory illnesses and the prayer for the sick

d. the Holy Spirit

August 24, 2012

Ecclesiology is,

a. the study of the book of Ecclesiastes

b. the study of liturgical practices

c. the study of church architecture

d. the theological study of the church

August 25, 2012

The Gospels often refer to Jesus as the Son of Man; why so?

a. to indicate that he was truly human

b. to use a phrase that refers to humanity in general

c. to translate a phrase in Hebrew that literally means son of Adam

d. to indicate the identity of Jesus with an apocalyptic figure written about in the book of Daniel associated with the end of the world

  

August 26, 2012

According to the Book of Acts, Rabbi Gamaliel was,

a. a leading Rabbi who violently opposed the followers of Jesus

b. a Rabbi who converted when he heard Paul preach

c. a Rabbi who favored the execution of Peter

d. a Rabbi who said if the Jesus movement is of God then no one can overthrow it

August 27, 2012

In the Acts of the Apostles, who was the man who replaced Judas Iscariot and how was he chosen?

a. Joseph Barsabbas elected by the remaining eleven

b. Justus, who was revealed in a dream to Peter

c. Matthias, who was elected by a two-thirds concurrent majority of both disciples and non-inner circle disciples of Jesus

d. Matthias, elected by drawing lots

August 28, 2012

What famous Saint from Africa wrote two of the best known books in Christian history, entitled, "Confessions" and "City of God?"

a. Augustine of Canterbury

b. Augustine of Hippo

c. Origen

d. Eusebius

August 29, 2012

John Bunyan wrote which Christian classic?

a. Great Expectations

b. Paradise Lost

c. Holy Living, Holy Dying

d. The Pilgrim's Progress

August 30, 2012

The Synod at Whitby in 663 was significant in English Church history because,

a.   the native Celtic Christians of the British agreed to give up their local customs for Roman Church practices

b.  it included an early version of football

c.  the Celtic Church separated from the Roman Church

d.  the Celtic Church told the Roman Church to leave the British Isles

August 31, 2012

The phrase having "the patience of Job" comes from,

a. the book of Job in the Bible

b. the story of a man named Job who is the most famous example of suffering

c. a writer who wanted to show that bad things happen to good people

d. all of the above

Divided by a Common Religion

With apologies to George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde who made comments about Americans and the British being separated/divided by a common language.

Within the Gospel of John one can find the roots for most of the Eucharistic conflicts that have divided the church, so much so that we could say that Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Methodists are people who are divided by having a common religion.

Winning the Interior Battles with the Presence of Christ

13 Pentecost  Cycle B proper 16  August 26, 2012

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18  Psalm 34:15-22

Ephesians 6:10-20  John 6:56-69

Lectionary Link

  Does faith and the military mix?  Religions have an uneven history with military warfare.  In the Old Testament there was a practice of holy wars, in the sense that Israel as God’s chosen people often thought and believed that God wanted them to wipe out all opposition to their possession of their “promised” territory.  But by the time of Jesus of Nazareth, Israel had been overrun by several empires and with the exception of some short lived victories by the Maccabees, they essentially had been an occupied country since just after the time of King David.  Human nature tells us something about just war theory and war; if one is on the winning side of an empire, it is easier to believe in war than if one is on the losing side of the empire.  Jesus came to an oppressed and occupied people; and there is evidence that he was crucified because he challenged the emperor of Rome, because some believed him to be the King of the Jews.  But in his words, Jesus said to love our enemies; he told his followers to turn their other cheek after being slapped.  As a result of the teachings of Jesus and in the early centuries of Christians living as a persecuted minority, Christians in the first three centuries were pacifists; they would not take up arms.  In fact, for almost four centuries Christians were not allowed in the Roman army.  After Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of his empire, Christian apologists (particularly St. Augustine) revived the just-war theory of the ancient Greeks to give a theological reason for taking up arms.  And at the end of the 4^th century, when Christianity was the official religion of the empire, only Christians could be in the army.  I guess the moral of history is that it is easier to be a pacifist when one has no power.

  What did moderate Muslims do after 9-11 when their extremists were exclaiming “jihad” or holy war?  Most of the Muslim pointed out that “jihad” was not about swords and spears, in fact jihad was an interior battle against one’s carnal nature; a fight on behalf of what is good and right.

  The writer of the Ephesian letter used the body armor of a warrior as a metaphor for weapons of righteousness against all of the enemies of the soul.  This teaching for the Ephesian church asserted that the real battle was against principalities in unseen places and so the spiritual warfare was the primary battle.  You and I know that negative possibilities; things that actually have not happened, things unseen, have a force and a power to keep us from doing good things.  Fearing fear itself has probably hindered more good things from happening than any other actual physical force.

  We have a long history of wars being fought for good religious or Christian reasons.  We have seen tanks and fighter planes and shields decorated with crosses.

  The history of the world is a history of conflict and fighting and war have often come to horrendous expressions, and whose side one is on has often determined one’s view towards war.

  I am not naïve enough to believe that the world will soon be free of war, but I do believe as much as we can we need to embrace the interior conflict of the Spirit against the many forms of selfishness and the forces of fear and anxiety.  I believe that we have battles and wars in our world because the interior battle against all forms of selfishness and anxiety has often been lost.  The battle against greed and selfishness is lost first in the lives of tyrants and when tyranny and oppression occurs tyrants use fear as a force against those whom they oppress.  Against tyrants, the use of war to protect the oppressed may be just, though not easy.

  The bread of heaven discourse in the Gospel of reveals evidence of totally different sort of conflict within the early Christian community; ironically it was a battle of words and understanding about the Eucharist.  Within the Gospel of John one can find the roots for most of the Eucharistic conflicts that have divided the church, so much so that we could say that Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Methodists are people who are divided by having a common religion.

  The words of Jesus in the written text show the words of the early preachers who spoke in the name of Jesus and who observed the controversies in those early circumstances.  Many people could not believe that the risen Christ was still present in the community.  And some people could not believe in the Holy Eucharist as a way in which Jesus really promised to be present.  They chose to interpret the words of Jesus as a literal “cannibalism” of actually eating flesh and drinking blood.  The disciples represent those who understood the inner meaning of the words. The interpretation that is given by the oracle of Jesus is this:    It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.  Now if you think this settled the issue, the history of the Eucharistic controversies fills the pages of Church history.  So we have different ways of speaking about how Jesus is present in the bread and the wine:  transubstantiation, consubstantiation, a memorial presence, receptionism, a symbolic presence, a spiritual presence,  a real presence and typically Episcopalians hold all of these positions which is another reason why we are always in disagreement within our own family of faith.

  We might clarify the issue by refusing to divide the human person into entities of body, soul and spirit.  Even though we do this for speaking purposes, in actuality the human person is an indivisible entity.  At death it may seem as though the body is separated from what is inside of a person. The belief in the resurrection means that the living spirit and soul through God’s work has the ability to recreate a new body. So the spirit is not separated from the body because the spirit has as it were the potential to clone a new body.  When someone says that there is only a spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist, they seem to mean an incomplete or diminished presence.

  The early Church believed in a very substantial continuing presence of Christ in the church and they believed that his words and command in the Eucharist was a way of actualizing in history a particular and special presence of the risen Christ.  And yes it is a spiritual presence, but it is a presence that involves a substantial presence that can be known “as if” the person of Jesus was present.

  I am not sure that I can precisely tell you how Christ is present.  I used to be able to when fresh out seminary, I knew most everything, or so I thought.  With each day of my life, I become more comfortable with living with mystery and do not feel like I have to explain mystery.  Just as I cannot explain why I find the experience of the sublime in a work of art, a piece of music, a haunting sunset, in love and friendship, I cannot tell you about the science of the sublime presence of Christ in Eucharist.  I believe the Christian life is not really about verifying mystery in reductive ways; it is about the art of living and that art includes finding the sublime presence of Christ in many, many ways.

  I think that we as Christians have the freedom to get ourselves clear of ancient conflicts; conflicts as old as the biblical communities.  We really don’t have to be like biblical communities who came to open disagreement over things that essentially are mysterious.  What we can affirm is that there are many ways of appropriating the great mysteries of life and the great mystery of the sublime presence of Christ in our lives.

  The mystery of the presence of Christ to us today in the Eucharist is there for us to accept and embrace; we need not argue about the forensics of this mystery.  By the way, sacramentum is a Latin word; what is the Greek word for sacramentum?  Mysterion.  Sound familiar?  Since God is greater than we are, the divine presences will always be a mystery to our minds that are smaller than God’s greatness.  Let us embrace the reality of the presence of Christ, while never presuming that we can control it through our own understanding.   Mysteries are a genre of literature, “who dun it” books, crime and detective books.  The mystery of how the risen Christ is known to us is not one to solve.  Christians who think that they can solve it as a mystery with the correct language of description are more interested in controlling meaning.  The Mystery is the presence of Christ is of such a magnitude to keep us humble and to live in hope that this risen Christ will be an interior presence for us to wage a never ending battle against all forms of selfishness and fears and anxiety.   Amen.

Christ as Living Bread and Wisdom of God and All in All

12 Pentecost proper 15  August 19, 2012

Proverbs 9:1-6  Psalm 34:9-14

Ephesians 5:15-20  John 6:51-58

Lectionary Link

  Which do you prefer as a name?  Chokmowth?  Sapientia?  Or Sophia?  These are the words for Wisdom in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.  I suspect that many of us prefer Sophia; it sounds more romantic to our ears and many of us grew up watching a popular Italian actress with that name.  Chokmowth? For us, the guttural sounds that we associate with clearing phlegm from our throats do not sound very romantic, though in other languages they can incite poetic trance.

  From our Hebrew Scripture lesson we have read about Chokmowth or Sophia, we have read about Wisdom.  Wisdom in both Hebrew and Greek are feminine.  And this is interesting since more masculine and patriarchal notions of the divine seem to be more prominent in the Judeo-Christian traditions.  The Hebrew Scripture at times seem to present parallel battles in heaven as on earth.  As Israel asserted a covenant with the Sky God El and the unpronounceable and unspeakable Yahweh became the preferred name of God, Israel was also encountering the Canaanite peoples who had a pantheon of gods and goddesses.  The earth and fertility goddesses were seen as competitors with the one God El, Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai.   So as a radical monotheism came to the people Israel, it would seem that what also came was a notion of a sky or transcendent God who was addressed using masculine pronouns.  Was there to be no place for the use feminine metaphor in referring to God in the Hebrew religion? 

  Chokmowth or Sophia or Wisdom came to be articulated as a fitting metaphor for God.  If God is purely transcendent or above all or completely different from human experience, then God could not be even known in such inferior human experience.  So the only way we can even confess a transcendent God is to also admit that God is an Immanent Being or a God who is accessible in some way to human experience.  And this is where the notion of Sophia or Wisdom comes in.  God’s omnipresence in the world was called Sophia or Wisdom.   The Hebrew Scriptures have an entire genre of literature called Wisdom Literature.  Books like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and the Book of Job are examples of Wisdom Literature.  And there are more developed examples of Wisdom literature in the books of the Apocrypha. 

  There is something of God in every bit of the world and that something is someone, even the friendly Sophia.  In fact, Sophia, is so friendly one might say, she is downright seductive.  The metaphor from the book of Proverbs states that God is to be known as a seductive real personal force in everyone and everything.  This wisdom or seductive immanent Sophia is particularly successful in drawing the people who are perpetually curious.  Curiosity can be seen as the native quest for wisdom in one’s future.  Curiosity is living perpetually with one’s mouth open and saying “Wow,” what’s next?

  The ancient Greeks gave an invitation for everyone to be in love with Sophia.  They called this love relationship, philo-sophia or as we call it philosophy….the art of being in love with wisdom.

  I believe that this ancient name for God, Wisdom, expresses our belief that the world can be experienced as created and not as chaotic.  Yes, our world can be experienced as a void and as seemingly chaotic, but since there is a word for chaos, that would suggest that even chaos has the order of some definition. Word gives boundary and limitation to chaos and so word is evidence of superior creativity.

  To know God as wisdom is to know that creation is the process that we are forever a part of.  To know Wisdom is to know a continually ordering and structuring of our world for our understanding and for the use of the benefits of what we discover in the world.

  Wisdom as a dominant metaphor for God incarnate invites us to many types of discourses to creatively order our worlds.  Some other metaphors for the divine might be Justice, Law, Reason, Word, Spirit, Hope, Faith and  Love; on and on we can fill this world with various discourses or forms of language usage.

  With the metaphor of Wisdom the ancient writer tried to establish a natural theology; they attempted to show that God can be known in and through what is in the world without the aid of what we have come to call revelation.

  It is unfortunate that we have often been limited to the notion of a masculine sky God who intervenes from outside of the human sphere.  This is often how the presentation of revelation is perceived; God as an alien who packages the divinely different self in human form so that humans can be drawn to seek this transcendent alien.

  The writer of the Gospel of John took the notion of God as wisdom and explicated it using another common Greek word, namely, Logos, or the word for Word.  We know this Greek word in every science:  Theology is Words about God, zoology is words about animal life, biology is words about living organisms…

  In John’s Gospel, the Christ is the eternal Logos who is the creating process of life itself.  And the Gospel of John said this creating process of life itself attained a personality in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ; and though Word became flesh in Jesus, Word was not limited to physical body of Jesus in the 33 or so years that he lived.  The Word like Wisdom continues to be a creating presence that can be experienced as a Personal Being who is interested in us in our lives and who can seduce us to be curious forever about discovery and the integration of our discoveries for the benefit of our lives.

  For the church of John’s Gospel, Jesus as Word could be expansively known everywhere; Jesus could be known as living bread from heaven.  No, Jesus was not a literal loaf of bread dropped out of the sky.  To be drawn to Jesus was to take in Word and Wisdom and have Word and Wisdom become us in the subsequent words and deeds of our life.  And this is not some carnal literal cannibalism that offended those literalists who rejected the teachings of the community of John; the living bread of heaven was the Word of God as personal presence that cannot be trapped within or exhausted by any one human experience.  Living Bread from heaven is not about the literal sky;  it is about the elevated values of life into which we are initiated through our encounter with the Risen Christ as the Word of God who can also be Eucharistic Bread and Eucharistic Wine.

  If Christ can be known in the church gathered as the Eucharistic Bread and Eucharistic Wine, Christ can also be known in life experience itself as the Wisdom who beckons us to further curiosity with the occasions of the sublime presence of God.

  In the writings that have come to be associated with the churches of the Apostle Paul, Christ is called the Wisdom of God and Christ is called All and in All.  Can you and I admit that most of the New Testament literature is waxing poetic about Christ as encounters with the Sublime and it is not stodgy historical reporting about days in the life of Jesus?

  If we understand the writer of John’s Gospel we see that there is a rebuke to those who want to make the Eucharistic words into a literal cannibalism.  If we understand the Risen Christ to be in continuity with the Wisdom tradition, we understand that God arises within our world to encounter us in very personal ways.  We are not here to establish precise details of historical events in the life of Jesus in first century Palestine; we are here to encounter Christ as the living Word of God, the Wisdom of God and the one who is All and in All, and so it is quite appropriate for me to administer communion to you today with these words," The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven. " Amen.