Session 25 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 25  Introduction to the Episcopal Church

 In our consideration of the Hebrew Scriptures I would like to suggest you to a mode of dealing with the body of oral tradition that is archived by a community of editors and then re-presented to the editor’s contemporary readership/audience.  Such writing is done with what I would call an anticipatory tense.  In the anticipatory tense the story of the past is told in a way to give reason for the practices of the community at the time of the writing or editing.  The writer assumed that all past writers and oral stories are left open with a future anterior tense of expectancy, “this will have happened” (future anterior is a verb tense that other languages have).  In some way writers bestow a precise divining prophetic gift to peoples in the past.  This gives the writers and the heroic characters of the past authority and it gives extra validity to what was “predicted” since it has already occurred.  By assuming precise prediction it also assumes a God who is directing very specific outcomes.   This understanding of the past in an anticipatory sense of “predicting” a current event is a valid ancient method of interpreting the Scriptures.  It becomes very important for the writers of the New Testament who are using the Hebrew Scriptures as the template to tell the story of Jesus and the church.  Modern historians use their own methods for looking at the past and their methods differ from the method within a committed confession community of seeing the present as predicted or as a template from the past that anticipates the present.  We still have members of the church using the Bible as a precise predictive template for the present, particularly those who use apocalyptic biblical passage as predictive of current events in Israel as we move toward what they believe is a “great battle.”

What were watershed semi-historical events in the lives of the people of Israel?  The life of King David was foundational in understanding Israel’s identity even though scholars and archaeologists disagree about the accuracy of the biblical accounts( c. 1040–970 BCE ) which were written no earlier than 700 BCE.   We know about a time of reform during King Joash when there was perhaps some literary activity 835 – 796 BC.  We know about the time of the exiles (the forced exiles of large number of Jews from their homeland), the destruction of the first Temple and the return of some Jews to rebuild the Temple.  Many scholars place most of the composition of the Hebrew Scriptures after the Persian exile and the re-building of the Temple.

The Hebrew Scriptures include quite a variety of literary forms.  Many of the forms were known from the practices and writing of neighboring communities and the communities of their exile.  There were various names used for the gods of the people in the land of Canaan.   We know that the God of Israel is proclaimed as a competitor without significant rival in the heavenly courts.

The editors and redactors (editor of editors) integrated the legends and sagas of the ancient story tradition of the entire region to point to the significance of the God of Israel who had a special covenant with the people of Israel.  The One God who made covenant did it with individuals in the pre-historic tales of the patriarchs.  Those legends provide the etiology or origination of a place or the defining life message of a person.  One can read the Hebrew Scriptures and simply translate the names of people and places.  The authors link up the connection between the name of a person and a place and a particular action of a person or circumstance of an event.  So, Bethel means “house of El or House of God.”  And this was a place where the famous Jacob had his dream about the angels on a ladder.  Most of the ancient Hebrew names are definitive of an aspect of the person’s character or an event in a person’s life.  Jacob=trickster and supplanter.  When Jacob wrestled with the angel, he received the new name of Israel (the one who strives with God and prevails)  and so we find an origin story beginning the transition from the stories of the Patriarchs to the formation of the identity of people of Israel.

How did the people of Israel get to their land?  How did they get their name?  When did the people of Israel become a settled people?  Were they nomadic Bedouin like tribes before they settled?   What kind of technology did they have?    Why did their ancestors not have kings?  When and why did Israel get kings?  How successful was the period of kings in Israel?  What is the period of the divided kingdoms of Judah and Israel?  Why did the promise in the Davidic covenant end?  Why did God’s people get carried away into captivity?   Why was the Temple important?  What was the proto-model for the Temple?  Who were the Temple ministers or priests and how did they come to be?  What did the priests do?  Were music, singing, dancing, hymns, poems, drum and other instruments used in the worship?  Were there other religious figures besides priests?  Who were the judges?  The Scribes?  The Wisdom teachers?  The prophets?  What is the meaning of the Messiah and the Messianic prophecies?  And what is the type of literature call Apocalyptic is written with very cryptic imagery?

The Hebrews Scriptures were written as a way to inform the community about why things were the way they were.  And it meant theological reflection on the events that had happened.  Why did God’s people get carried away into captivity?  They broke the covenant with God.  (Modern historian might simply say that there were massive armies that came against them).  It was often the task of the scribes and prophets to warn about what would happen in failure to obey God.  There was a belief that God used history to correct God’s people.

The personal covenants to individual pre-historic patriarch eventually became a body of law for a group of people that needed social ordering.  The Holiness Code was a group covenant requirement.  Covenant means that legitimacy is established beyond the merely human within the Divine and a different kind of authority is accorded to the rules of social cohesion if they are understood to have derived from God.  The writers collected body of laws to prescribe personal and social behaviors for most situations in their community life.  When their kingdoms had failed the religious leaders idealized the most memorable King of all, King David.  He became the prime exemplar of the God’s anointed or Messiah, even as it is amazing how honest the writers were about the weaknesses of David and his family troubles.

One of the theological motives of the Hebrew Scriptures is about theodicy.  Theodicy has to do with justifying the reality of God in the face of the problem of sin and evil and innocent suffering.  How could the religious leaders convince their people about God and justice and the covenant when most of the history of the people reveals the experience of very difficult times?  The notion of resurrection arose in the writings of the prophets as a way to convince people that they could believe in justice.  Times may be bad and evil doers may seem to have the upper had but they will have to face a judgment day in the afterlife.  The possibility of an afterlife is more distinct than simply a holding place of the dead known as Sheol and this became a way to promote a belief in justice.  The case for justice created the conditions for the apocalyptic genre of writing in the Hebrew Scriptures and other extra-canonical writings.  Idealized person, a messiah in the mode of David and an idealized Golden utopian age of harmony in nature became a part of the visionary literature of the prophets in the apocalyptic mode.  The way in which we can understand apocalyptic writing is to see it as a kind of visualization pain management.  People in suffering need to be able to have narratives of hope to help them endure in difficult pain, even as a modern cancer patient might undergo visualization therapy for pain management.  Apocalyptic literature is completely true in the intent of comfort of the message for suffering people.

Please remember in reading the Hebrew Scriptures that they were functioning to hold together and forge the identity of a threatened people.  The truth of this function is known in a variety of narratives and literary forms.  Remember to seek the greater truth behind the very reason for the Scriptures themselves and not the particular detail of the specific people whom the writings were originally addressed.  In this way you and I can match up the corresponding truths that we seek in our own formation in our personal faith and faith community.

  

Exercise:

If we are God’s people why do we suffer?  Why do children have to suffer?  How can we believe in God’s love and in justice when there seems to be so much in life that is unfair?  You and I understand these great questions and we live into them today and we try to help each other as we face these questions.  Try to read the Hebrew Scriptures with these great questions in mind. Their faith leaders were trying to keep the faith community together and seeking the “other world” narrative to comfort the community in this world.

Father Phil

Parable

Parable

Resisting our role as stewards of God's creation in recognizing God's ownership of all is like the vicar who was upset because his bishop and congregation required him to work on Sundays.

The Afterlife as Living at the Grand Canyon

19 Pentecost, Cp21, September 29, 2013 

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16

1 Timothy 6: 11-19  Luke 16:19-31

Lectionary Link

Youth Dialogue Sermon

Connor: In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Please be seated.

I was rather interested to find out in reading today’s Gospel that one of the images of the afterlife fits the biggest attraction in the State of Arizona.

Kalum: Are you speaking about 120 degrees in the shade in the summertime?  And are you implying that parts of Arizona resemble Hades in summertime?

Connor: That is not what I had in mind.  But the New Testament was written in Greek….and so it is all Greek to me but there are two Greek words in our Gospel lesson which refer to the main attraction of Arizona.  Can you say, Mega Chasma.

Kalum: Mega Chasma.  They both are retained in the English…Mega means very big.  Chasma means Chasm.  But how does that refer to Arizona?

Connor: Mega Chasma can mean Grand Canyon.  The image that Jesus uses for the afterlife is a Grand Canyon.

Kalum: Well, the Grand Canyon is a magnificent work of water and wind erosion that has been created over many, many years.  But do you think that this Grand Canyon of the afterlife is an attractive tourist site to visit?

Connor: Well, I think the point of the parable of Jesus is this: The attraction of the Grand Canyon of the afterlife depends upon which side of the Canyon you are stuck on.

Kalum: The good side to be on is with Abraham and Lazarus the leper.

Connor: The bad side to be on is the side of the rich man.

Kalum: This parable uses the story theme of “trading places” as a way for people to learn about empathy; learning how to walk in other people’s shoes.

Connor:  Do you think that this means if we have it good in our current life, then as way of cosmic balance, we will have to have it bad in the afterlife?  Does justice mean that the afterlife is a way of balancing out the experience of good things and bad things among all people?

Kalum: I guess it could mean that.  But the parable is a story about giving insights on how to live now.  It really is not about the afterlife.

Connor: What do you mean?

Kalum: It could be that each of us find ourselves in this life on one side and there are people whom we neglect, don’t see, don’t care about who live on the other side of the canyons of our lives.

Connor: So, like water and wind erode over time, we can with small habits of prejudicial thinking slowly separate people from our lives until we complete ignore them and don’t see them, or worse, mistreat them.

Kalum : Yes, Lazarus was very close to the rich man when they were alive; Lazarus sat at his gate and for the rich man, he was one of those irritating members of the “welfare” class.  The rich man saw Lazarus every day, but he really did not see him in a way that acknowledged his human dignity, his worth and his needs.

Connor: So even though the rich man was close to Lazarus he slowly built a Grand Canyon with his habits of neglect and by the end of his life, the Grand Canyon was what he took with him to the grave.  It became the character of his life.

Kalum: In the parable, the rich man found out too late about this Grand Canyon of separation and he wanted to warn his family not to make the same mistake.

Connor:  In the parable of Jesus, Jesus was not very hopeful about messages from the afterlife.  It is not like Ghosts of Christmas Past can visit Scrooges and frighten them into charity and kindness.   Father Abraham said that if they did not listen to Moses and the prophets, they would not even believe a person who came back from the dead.

Kalum: Does this contradict the main teaching of Christianity?

Connor: What do you mean?

Kalum: Well, Christianity is based upon people believing that Jesus came back to life in some significant way to comfort his disciple and give birth to the church. 

Connor: Perhaps, the church was dealing with the fact that many people were not convinced about the resurrection.

Kalum:  The writer of the Gospel of John obviously knew about the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.

Connor: Why do you say that?

Kalum: In the Gospel of John, the story about a man who is brought back to life is about a man named Lazarus.  And we are told that after Lazarus came back to life, many people still did not believe in Christ.  So this story in the Gospel of John complemented the parable told by Jesus that is recorded in the Gospel of Luke.

Connor: I believe the main point of the parable is to warn us about the slow formation of separation between people that can come because of wealth and poverty, race and gender, national origin or any other form of prejudice.

Kalum: Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Connor: What do you mean?

Kalum: Seems like the division between the wealthy and the poor is a very ancient problem.

Connor: It still is a problem today; one wonders if the message of Jesus has been successful at all in this world.

Kalum: Well, one could also say, what would the world be like if we did not have these warnings and the efforts to correct patterns of prejudice?  The world could be a much worse place if we did not have people who reminded us about our responsibility for the care of all people.

Connor: The Gospel is supposed to be good news.  And the poor need good news.  And God has left it up to all of us to learn how to practice good news with each other.

Kalum: Well, we could really be depressed about the poor conditions for many people in this world.

Connor: Or we can know that we still have work to do in learning how to live together.  Good news would cease to be good news if the conditions were perfect, and we are not there yet, so we have lots to do to bring good news to people.

Kalum: We begin by not letting Grand Canyon of separation build between us and other people.

Connor: The Gospel of Jesus encourages us to accept love and empathy as the greatest calling in our lives, no matter how we earn our living.

Kalum: And if we recognize that Grand Canyons exist between people in this life; if we have inherited Grand Canyons of separation then we have another calling to do some major engineering.

Connor: What kind of engineering?

Kalum: Bridge building.  We need to join people who are separated by building bridges of contact and recognition and empathy.

Connor: So we have lots of work to do.

Kalum: We have preventive work to do.  We need to respect the dignity of each person so that we don’t get separated from each other.

Connor: But we also have to be bridge builders.  We need to be honest about the Grand Canyons that exist between people.  And from honesty we need to build bridges of connection.

Kalum: There’s lots of work to do and I’m tired already.

Connor: But there is good news.

Kalum: What’s the good news?

Connor: The good news is that the Gospel is never going to leave us unemployed.  So let’s get to work.  Let’s work to prevent separation among people.  And where separation exists between people, let us build bridges of connection.

Kalum: Let’s make sure that the Grand Canyon is  but a beautiful place to visit  in Arizona and   not a Grand Canyon of separation that we take to our afterlife.   Let us learn from Christ to build bridges with each other in this life.  Amen.

Liberation Theology, Wealth and the Words of Jesus

18 Pentecost, C p 20, September 22, 2013  

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1  Psalm  79:1-9

1 Timothy 2:1-7   Luke 16:1-13

Lectionary Link

     Perhaps you have heard the phrase “liberation theology” in the media.  Liberation Theology is more generally associated with the Roman Catholic Church and liberation theologians did not have the favor of the two previous popes but there is some indication that Pope Francis, being from South America, the seed bed of Liberation Theology, is bringing the themes of liberation theology back into public view.  Pope Francis is indeed raising eyebrows by suggesting that Roman Catholics not make side issues the main issues and by suggesting that poverty and social justice are more important issues of the Gospel.

  What is Liberation Theology and why has it been controversial?  The controversy of Liberation Theology is due to the fact that theologians borrowed the social theory of Karl Marx to analyze wealth and poverty in society.  Since Marx was an atheist and his theory morphed into State Communism, some have disapproved of any use of Marx’s social analysis.  In Marx’s social analysis, the public propaganda and even the laws of a society function best for the advantage of persons with wealth and power.  The public beliefs statements are called ideology and ideologies were seen by Marx as the justifying reasons that are given for the wealthy to maintain and expand their wealth.

  Roman Catholic priests and religious in Latin America found themselves working among the poor .  They found that the laws worked against the poor.  They found even unhealthy alliance in places between the church hierarchy and the people with political power, the dictators.  When the compromise of church hierarchy with dictators supported the suppression of the poor, those who worked with the poor wanted to expose these conditions.  The liberation theologians did not believe that the church practices could be used to take the side of the wealthy against the poor.  In their theology, they agreed that all theology was ideology on behalf of some group with power.  So they asked the question what is the preferred ideology?  They answered, “The safe and preferred ideology is the ideology of Jesus Christ, and his teaching was overwhelmingly on behalf of the poor.”  Liberation theologians chose to read the Gospel as the infallible teaching of Jesus Christ on behalf of the poor.  And the Gospel of Luke is perhaps the favorite Gospel of liberation theology since there are poignant teaching upon wealth and poverty.  The writer of the Gospel of Luke was also the writer of the Acts of the Apostles and he depicts some of the early communities as living communally; holding all things in common.

  The punch line of the appointed Gospel for today is: “You cannot serve God and wealth.”  One can seek to know in an intuitive way the conditions in which the Lucan Gospel writer was writing.    One could cite the separation from the synagogues of early Christian communities.  Separation within families for loyalty to synagogue or to the Jesus Movement had attending socio-economic consequences.  Many people who were used to flesh and blood family support had to accept their new Christian communities as their extended families.  They had to choose to leave wealth and inheritance.  The writer of Luke is recalling the poverty life style of Jesus to give members of the community support in their choice to continue with the Christian community.

  And as I said before, Gospel writings are context specific, that is, their most telling significance was in their original settings.  The details of their setting cannot be absolutized or literalized to any future setting, including ours.  If we dismiss the literal significance of the Gospel, we do not dismiss the inspired meanings that derive from the Gospel situations but with our appreciation of Gospel meaning we add to that a request for God’s grace to help us apply the corresponding and relevant meanings in our own situation, here and now.

  You cannot serve God and wealth.  That may be true but does that make God totally opposed to any notion of wealth?  How can the wealth of this world be re-appraise as the gifts of God to us to be used for Gospel outcomes?  It need not be a matter of serving God or wealth but how do we make our wealth, our gifts, serve God and divine purposes in our world.  How do we make earthly treasure into heavenly treasure?  This is alchemy of our Christian faith today.  How do we make the wealth of our lives serve higher purposes for our own benefit and for the benefit of the people in our world?

  This is the stewardship question of our lives.  The parable about the dishonest manager is a parable about the adage, “Possession is nine tenth of the law.”  Even though the manager knew for whom he worked, he treated his boss’s assets as his own and used them for his own selfish purposes.  This “apparent absent boss” who trusted his manager so much that he did not do regular audits of his holdings eventually caught the manager red-handed, and the clever manager quickly prepared for  his firing by doing favors to creditors to ensure him future employment.  Jesus wished that people who could be such expert at greed would convert that energy to be equally diligent in their stewardship excellence for God.

  Today, we can come here and pretend that Gospels have salutary teachings about wealth and being wealthy.  We can come here and make saints out of poor people assuming that they do not have problems with wealth and money.  The reason poor people do not have problem with wealth is only because they don’t have as much practice but in their own way poor people also have problem with wealth and money.  We could even use the Gospel to insist that only true Christians are monastic persons adopting the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Or we can accept ourselves as belonging to God and that all of our belongings also belong to God.  We can accept ourselves as gifted people, as wealthy people but as those who are charged with using our wealth in the service of love and justice.

  Today, we can accept the wisdom of the right relationship to wealth as being generosity.  Generosity is expressed in our lives as bubbling with gratitude and such esteem that we believe that we have something to give to the people and situations of our lives.  Faith is expressed as generosity in our relationship to wealth.

  There are many worthy recipients for our generosity in this world.  Our generosity has many forms of wealth: our time, our talent, our treasure in many places of deployment.  At St. John’s we hope that you believe enough in our mission and what we are trying to do to build a vibrant Gospel community to deploy your generosity for our mission and ministry here.  Our needs change and our needs are real and we hope to inspire generosity because we depend so much upon generosity for our ministry.

  You cannot serve God and wealth.  Are you worried about the words of Jesus making you feel guilty about wealth?  We need not feel guilty about wealth if we convert wealth to heavenly treasure through the practice of generosity and gratitude  for the wonderful gifts of God.  The practice of generosity is the most liberating theology of all.  Amen.

Being Lost as Being Valued

17 Pentecost, Cp19, September 15, 2013

Exodus 32:7-14   Psalm 51:1-11

1 Timothy 1:12-17  Luke 15:1-10

Lectionary Link

   It is said that necessity is the mother of invention and there was a great human need:  The need to convince men that they needed to stop and ask for directions.  As men it is humiliating to admit that we are lost and so it is great blow to our ego to have to admit that and ask for direction and take the advice of our spouse to pull over and ask for direction.  And so now we have voice navigation through GPS devices in our phones and automobiles.  And irony of ironies, we men take directional advice from Siri and other women’s voices that give us directional advice and so women do have  the last laugh on the “lost” men of their lives. It is obvious that the parables that Jesus told about the lost cannot apply to men, since men never believe they are lost and now a woman’s comforting voice in a navigational system can help them maintain the illusion..

  The parables of Jesus about “being lost” provides us with a metaphor to give us some insights about the human condition.

  There is on the grand scale of things the mystical value of being lost.  When one stops for a moment and looks in the sky or at the oceans or at the mountains, one can compare oneself with the grandeur of the encompassing environment of Plenitude and in the humble moment of acknowledging the perspective of all things, one can feel lost in this Plenitude.

  Where do I fit in this vastness or as the Psalmist pondered, “What is man and woman that you are mindful of us.”  Indeed we can feel lost in the Plenitude of all.

  But being lost also has more poignantly felt contextual meaning.    “Being lost” is both bad and good news.

  The bad news about being lost is the sense of disorientation.  It means that nothing seems familiar.  It means that while you are lost, there is no one present to help you.  Being lost takes you away from the care of those who can help you.

  The good side about being lost is that if one is lost, by definition it means that the one who is lost is valuable to the one to whom one belongs.  Being lost means that you are valued and it means that someone is making the effort to seek you out.

  When Jesus came he found the emergency rescue services of the religious establishment to be completely lacking.  There were lots of people in Palestine who were not on the religious radar.  The message of the temple and synagogue was not accessible to lots of people. The religious leader regarded all of these people as being unacceptable to their religious message and Jesus believed that their attitude was a misrepresentation of God.  If these forgotten people were lost, the religious leaders did not know or care.

  Jesus said that these forgotten people were lost and they were worthy of rescue.  Why?  Because they were God’s creation and they were made in the image of God and so they were very valuable to God.  It is the responsibility of any who claims to represents God’s plan on earth to seek out all people who need to know that God loves and cares for them.

  So Jesus offered a resounding critique of the religious establishment.  And certainly that critique is still valid for all people of faith today who neglect the lost.  People of faith are supposed to understand the heart of God.  And the heart of God is to care for everyone.  And those who are lost from reach of care are to be sought out because they are valuable to God.  And if the lost are valuable to God, then they should be valuable to us as well.

  Our inability or unwillingness to recognize the lost is perhaps our greatest sin.  When we look at the puritanical sensitivities of our country, we find that sins that pertain to sexual behavior tend to be the only sins that people recognize today, while the scandal of poverty, illiteracy, injustice, illness and hunger seem to thrive without notice.  There are many people lost in our world in many ways and yet there is blindness or unwillingness of leaders to respond to the lost of our world.

   The message of Jesus was rather straight forward in his time:  God cares for the lost.  And his message is also this:  If we claim to be people of faith, we need to be people who seek out the lost ones, the ones who are valued by God and the ones who have fallen through the cracks of significant human care.

  We should be thankful about what Jesus shows us about the priorities of God.

  First, even in our lives of privilege, we too can feel at times lost.  Lost in loneliness or lost in a situation of loss or crises.  There are many times in our lives that we wish that we could know that God cares for us.  And in those times, the care could come from someone if they only knew about our dilemma.

  The parables of Jesus use the lost and found metaphor for the Christian mission of search and rescue.  But it is also a reminder that we too are often lost in a significant problem or dilemma of life when we need to be found by someone who cares.  Sometimes we find ourselves in need of being befriended by the right person who can get through to us and make us feel like we belong.

  Lost and found is a metaphor for life.  There are many people in life who at any given time are lost.  And there are many people who have the ability to be in the search mode.

  And the truth of it all is God is not going to directly intervene in getting to those who are lost.  God wants to inspire us to a sensitivity to look for the lost and the needy and let them know that they are valuable.  Why would God have so much faith in humanity to leave it up to us to fulfill the search and rescue mission in life that is needed to bring dignity of living to all people?

  God has faith in humanity because God values human freedom.  God has given us enough resources in our world to care for one another. We need to have the insights from our relationship to God to understand what our roles are to be in this lost and found dynamic of life.

  If you are feeling lost, I hope and pray that God will use someone to find you in the way in which you need to be found to affirm to you God’s love and care for you.

  There is another aspect of being lost that is addressed in the parables of Jesus in its specific context.  The tax collectors and sinners were people who obviously knew they needed to change their lives.  They went to Jesus for help and the religious leaders criticized Jesus for having anything to do with them.  So, in the thinking of Jesus, these lost people were valuable to God because they were seeking to change their lives.  The religious leaders were not seeking to change their lives; they were acting as though they had arrived at such a plain of perfection that they could judge the obvious sinners.  Through out the Gospels, Jesus is shown to be one who does not care what a person’s condition is, as long as a person is on the path of repentance or seeking to become better.  A person who is willing to repent is the one whom Jesus is seeking.

  Being lost and found is a metaphor for our lives.  Hopefully, life is showing us that we need to repent and in our efforts to repent, we need God to find us with grace and mercy.  And if we have found grace and mercy for our lives, let us be those who help God find those who feel lost from God’s love and mercy and from human care.  With God’s help you and I can become part of the search and rescue mission that God always wants to do in this world.  Amen.

Dying to Our Older Versions of Life

16 Pentecost, Cp18, September 8, 2013

Deuteronomy 30:15-20   Psalm 1

Philemon 1-20 Luke 14:25-33

Lectionary Link

   Let’s see if I want to follow Jesus and be his disciple what do I have to do?  Hate my father, hate my mother, hate my children, hate my brother, hate my sister, hate my life itself, actively seek capital punishment and sell all my possessions.

  How do we continue to read this in church and profess that the Gospels have family values?  It seems that we prefer Jesus to be all love and sweetness; how is it that word "hate" comes out of his mouth?  How can we hate our mother and father and still keep one of the 10 commandments to honor our father and mother?  How do we honor anyone by hating them?  Why do we not censor the reading of such within the church?  We don’t like to read publicly some of the most gruesome tidbits in the Hebrew Scripture but how is it that we can read these words of Jesus?  Should we censor the reading of the words of Jesus if they seem literally problematic?

  Many famous Christian saints have held that the most favored reading of the Gospel is the “plain reading,” the reading which is most literal.  However there are some words of the Bible that force us to read in different ways if we want to maintain our own value systems at all.

  With the enigmatic words of Jesus we scratch our heads and say that something must be missing.  These are words which are looking for a particular context to give them intuitive meaning.

  What we can say about the Jesus movement is that it was eventually divisive.  The Jesus School of Judaism became a different and separate religion.  And as we know from our own day, there is very little passion hotter than religious passions.  We are aware of lots of comments from Bible-believing public figures which make us wonder often if we are not threatened for a return to the dark ages of anti-intellectualism.

  The church did become separate from the synagogue for a variety of reasons.  The success of the Christian movement in the Gentile population and the adoption of Christian practices for Gentiles meant that the traditions of Judaism were threatened.  As a response the Jewish community began to excommunicate the followers of Jesus from the synagogue; they did not want to lose their traditions. Jewish families were caught up in this process of the separation of the Christian movement from the synagogue.  Prominent Jews became proponents of the mission to the Gentiles including both Paul and Peter.  Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 and so if one’s religion made one a rebel against Roman rule and Emperor worship there was even more at stake.  The political and religious times of the formative times of the Gospel writings were very unsettling.  We need to understand that the writings came from times of stress for the people who were seeking to understand their experience of the risen Christ within some very difficult times.

   Christ as an oracle within particular communities in the post-resurrection church was channeled by preachers who were presiding over people who had to make decision about leaving the families of their birth because of their new commitment to the risen Christ.  It was not an easy decision; their families probably thought that they were being traitors to the Jewish traditions.  They probably thought that they were being misled by charlatan preaching.  Followers of the teachings of Jesus probably were being threatened with being shunned and disinherited.  You can see how the selling of possessions is juxtaposed with this incredible family division.  A person had to worry about his or her financial future if one was going to cut ties with one’s family.  Having possessions and remaining loyal to one’s family went hand in hand.

  I wish I could tell you that the history of families, religious movements, social movements and countries were all peaceful and seamless.  The evidence of life is different.  We may regard ourselves to be religiously tolerant Americans and so we cannot understand the passion of religious difference or can we?  When someone child’s converts to another religion, parent’s often want to snatch their children to deprogram them and get them back into the “correct” religious fold.   We don’t like to hear the word “hate” used; it is a word that should be used for things that are truly despicable.  We are horrified by a certain church that pickets funerals of soldiers with “God hates” signs of all sorts.  Hate is a very strong word in our time.

  So how are you and I going to read these hard words attributed to Jesus?  We can read them as intended for one specific circumstance in history; some things do not bear to be repeated.  Some words never need to be applicable again.  All of the Bible does not have to have future one to one exact application; many of the words can simply remain the historical record of a single event in the history of a particular group of people.

  In another way of reading, I would like to think that the Gospels were spiritual manuals and probably not meant originally for general reading.  They were like enigmatic Zen koans or riddles; they were to be read with a spiritual teacher to reveal the inner meanings that arose when one’s character came to the time of insight.

  The operative phrase for me in this Gospel has to do with “hating life itself.”  Rather than being the unwitting promotion of suicide, this notion of life is not physical life, it is psuche or “soul-life” or psychological life.  Psuche is the Greek word from which we get the word psychology.

  Education and repentance is based upon not getting “stuck” in any version of life.  I live by Phil’s version of life at anytime.  Phil’s version of life is my psuche life.  Education is based upon being willing to let go of any version of life to take on another version of life.  So I am always in need of new versions of life for everyone and everything, including God and Jesus.  I need to hate or detest my yesterday’s version in order to be open to new versions.  I need to sell everything;  I need to give up any final investment of anything as a permanent possession so that I might take on new possessions.  This Gospel invites us to discontent with old versions so that we might be creative and inventive and find new ways.

  We need to die to old versions even of the important people in our lives otherwise we may let them have a power over us to determine our lives in ways in which we don’t want them to.

  If the risen Christ is going to have any significant meaning for you and me, it cannot be poetry with no evocative relevant meaning in our lives today.  Who is the Risen Christ?  What does it mean to say that you and I are in Christ?  Did these phrases only have relevance for the early Christians?  What do they mean for us now?

  The risen Christ and being in Christ for me now means the experience of the vision of myself surpassing myself in a future state.  And to get to that surpassing person I am going to have to pass through many versions of how I see everyone and everything, including myself.  So there’s a whole lot of living and dying through successive states or versions of my life.

  You and I are going to go through many versions of our lives whether we want to or not.  Our physical bodies and the constant changes in life will force different versions.  By trying to keep a particular version will mean that sometimes we assume we’re still looking through binoculars at the Grand Canyon when the Grand Canyon is no longer in front of us.  So we cannot make the right judgments in our situation because we’re still seeing through the favorite memory of a different view of life.

  The radical words of Jesus today invite us to this incredible life of repentance and education that we are involved in.  It is not boring; it is life and death.  We are dying to old versions of our lives like a snake getting rid of its skin, so that we might love new life and always answer the call to the beckoning surpassing life that is before us. 

  Our physical lives are constantly being changed; let us accept that our soul life, our psuche life is also being changed.  The Gospels use death and life as metaphors to trace this constant process of taking on new versions.  I hope you find new versions of your soul life today.  But don’t hold onto them; let them go because there are more versions to come.  Amen.

Topography; the Value of Places

15  Pentecost, Cp17, September 1, 2013

Jeremiah 2:4-13 Ps. 112

Heb.13:1-8        Luke 14:1, 7-14

 Lectionary Link

  In the appointed Gospel for today, we have read an account of Rabbi Jesus making some comments about human behavior at a party. He finds that the behavior at a party exposes some underlying motives and values that often determine human behavior.  Motives and values are a manifestation of desire.   Desire is the deep projecting energy of life that brings us to be attached to the things of our lives.  Projected Desire creates hierarchies of values, stated very simply as I like, I prefer this more than that.  I prefer to eat rather than to starve; this is one of the most basic hierarchy of values.  But it gets more complicated and elaborate than that: some prefer to get merely a piece of bread and a cup of soup or some prefer to have Beluga Caviar on Melba toast with Champagne.  Desire can get differentiated in many layers of values.

  A major value in life is found in the hierarchy of desire expressing where we want to be.  Making the scene, having the best seat to be able to hob nob with the people of money, power and influence; this is the value of place that Jesus was addressing.  Jesus noted that the party goers wanted the best seats in the house so they could be seen to be in places of honor and be associated with important people.  They wanted to be in the best place to schmooze; to connect and promote their cause or personage with the people who matter the most in society.

  Life in society and our lives in particular involve very intricate interactions in systems of topographical value.  Real Estate agents can tell you about the value of places; beach homes on Malibu; why do people want to be there? Such  high demand drives up the prices so that only a few can afford to be there.

  People want to be in front row seats, corporate boxes at sports and entertainment events.  Herein is an expression of the value of place, the value of topography.  Desire is projected upon preferred places because the kind of activities and events which occur in a place.  We value places for the activities and for the people who inhabit a place.

  Look at how we have words of value for places.  A place of value is often called a Mecca, after the Islamic holy place.  We have words that imply a pejorative judgment upon places, “the wrong side of the tracks,” slums, Skid Row and Ghetto.   We have terms of value that place negative judgments upon places that are avoided or segregated by certain people.  We may say that such places has undesirable people or people who frighten us; such places become for us places to avoid.  We cannot promote our influence and power in life by going to such places.

  You may say that I am reading too much into this party seating debate by Jesus of Nazareth but the wisdom of Jesus is that in the ordinary daily interaction he found that we live out the basic values of our lives and so when we zoom out from mere favored party seats to all of the topography of our lives, we can begin to see the values that are assigned, unwittingly to the places of our lives.

  Why are we here, not just in general but why are we in any particular place?  Why we here in this place now?  Obviously the preferred seats in an Episcopal Church are middle to back; front pews are avoided as if the preacher were going to do some major slobbering or ask for money.  Are we here because it helps our political resumes as the “in place” to be seen?  Probably not.

 The words of Jesus ask us to do a values review in uncovering the attachment to the places of our lives.  In doing so, we should also uncover the values we have placed upon the places which we avoid.  Do we avoid them because they have no value to our lives?  Do we avoid them because we want to avoid the people who inhabit such places?  In our survey of the values we put on places we can also note our patterns of segregation.

  Jesus invited people to challenge their patterns of segregation by switching places and sharing spaces.  If we have a party we should invite people on the “D” list or those who would truly benefit from the hospitality that we have to offer them.  Jesus invites us integrate through an open hospitality.  Trading places begins with the imagination of faith as we try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and “feel with them.”  Can we come to value the places of other people so that we value their lives in a different way to act with love, empathy and compassion?  The practice of the faith of the Risen Christ means that we build bridges to connect segregated spaces of people caused by pride, class-ism  racism, and any form of prejudice that divides people and causes them to devalue each other to the point of “extreme avoidance” or suppression or persecution.

  How can we address the problems that we might find in the way in which we value space?  The founding philosophy of our country states that we endowed with certain dignity because of the way in which we have been created. St.Paul said that each person has a body and each body is a location; each body is a place and it is a favored place because it is a temple of the Holy Spirit of God.  God desires and favor each of us as a favored place of the divine presence.  If we accept this incredible favor for ourselves and for other people then we acknowledge the starting point of the dignity of life of all people in all places.  This starting place of the omnipresence of God means there is a profound equality of persons and places in the eyes of God.  This starting place is where we go to evaluate all of our values concerning the values of people and places.  The Psalmist ask, “Where can I can I go from your presence, O God?”  The answer, “No where.”  Jesus was the presence of God in the worst place of life; death upon the Cross.  The divine presence even in death became known to us as the promise of eternal life.

  What Jesus was trying to say is that we all belong together.  The way in which we practice belonging together is by continually building bridges of connection.  To those who are neglected we give recognition; we say, “come up higher, don’t let anything hinder you from human fellowship and human well-being.”

  Today, we are here to remind ourselves that God’s hospitality to us has called us to higher dignity.  We come here to realize our bodies as a location of the presence of Christ as we partake of the bread and wine of Eucharist.  We accept this invitation to “come up higher come to the place of highest power and influence in accepting our bodies as the dwelling place of God’s presence.”  But in accepting this marvelous hospitality of God for ourselves, we also are to be evangelists of the hospitality of God to all.  We are to go forth and invite everyone to the wonderful hospitality of God who is willing to be known to be the God of all and in all.

  Let us do a review today of our values that we have for places; let us examine any unhealthy segregation that we wittingly or unwittingly practice.  Let us be thankful that Christ does not segregate Himself from our bodies as a temple of divine dwelling.  And let us go forth to offer the profound invitation of Christ as we say to all who need to hear it said to them in a personal way, “My friend, come up higher.  Come close to the Good News of God’s Love.  Amen.