Transfiguration:Bring Light to our Surfaces in Word and Deeds

Last Epiphany A      March 2, 2014

Ex.24:12,15-18,      Ps.99        

2 Peter 1:16-21  Matt. 17:1-9

Lectionary Link

  Did you ever wonder how values in life are formed?  What is it that makes gold a valuable substance?  Is it due to the artificiality that arose in cultures to form the social and psychological value of gold?  If an infant has the choice between gold and bottle of milk; which is more valuable to the infant?  But you say, the infant is not educated to know or appreciate the value of gold.  So value is very contextual and the context also includes the intelligence levels of the participants.

  When we read the words of Holy Scripture we are reading traditions of how people and events came to have value.  Reading the Bible in a serious way involves understanding some of the symbolic order found therein.

  If a man goes up on a mountain called Sinai and receives laws written by the hand of God and if he returns from the mountain and his face is shiny bright from being in the presence of the divine, then you have a story of how and why Moses and Law were important to the people who received and practiced these laws.

  The law within the literary tradition which derived from the people of Israel was so important to them that the people have to believe these profound laws had come from some source of inspiration beyond this earth.  And so there is the tradition of Moses on Sinai receiving the law from God and getting very close to divinity. Sometimes values arise in discovery of something new and useful and those who experience such values develop a program to try to explain to themselves and to others why things are valuable.

  The practice of the Law was so marvelous for the Hebrew people that they needed a story for its genius and the Mount Sinai story is the story about where heaven meets earth and something of heaven is given to a mediating agent Moses who then is popular, heroic and remembered because he is a special contact person with the divine to help deliver the genius of the law.

  The people who had their lives affected by Jesus of Nazareth did not plan for that to happen.  It just did; and the effect of his live upon them did not stop.  He and his life and his message were so significant that the life of Jesus had a domino effect.  The successful impact of Jesus upon the lives of his followers was being passed on and promulgated.  The reason for this success had to be explained.

  And so the writers used the symbolic ordering system that was present to them from the Hebrew Scripture.  And how could the early followers of Jesus account for the success of Jesus?  Why did Jesus have the impact that he did?  Why did he become the most supremely valued person in the lives of so many people?

  Well, Jesus went up on the Mount one day and his face shone.  And the members of the church was there represented by the presence of Peter, James and John.  And the representatives of two strains in the Hebrew/Judaic traditions were also present in this mountain top vision.  Moses represented the Hebrew tradition of the Torah, the only tradition accepted by the Sadducees.  Elijah represented the tradition found in the other Hebrew writings and the Pharisees accepted the Prophetic writings and the other writings in the Hebrew Scriptures.

  This great visionary meeting on the Mount of Transfiguration is story about why Jesus had become valued by so many people.  He was a great person; he was a genius; he was in the company of Moses and Elijah and even in the company of Moses and Elijah, the heavenly voice of God the Father said about Jesus, “This is my Son, the beloved; listen to him.”

  This story of the Transfiguration event is a legitimization story for explaining why Jesus had become so important to the lives of so many.  If Peter, James and John were to actually meet Elijah the Prophet and Moses the Law giver, would they not be expected to listen to them?  But here they are with Jesus, Moses and Elijah and the voice of God the Father is telling them to listen to Jesus.

  The transfiguration event is a story to indicate that Jesus is definitely within the traditions of Moses and Elijah but Jesus is given a higher affirmation than Moses or Elijah by the heavenly voice of God the Father.

  One can understand this story of the Transfiguration vision to be like so much of the Gospels as the early Christians establishing Jesus as the person of supreme value in their lives.  Was Jesus great because of the story of the transfiguration or did the story of the transfiguration happen because people were experiencing Jesus as a truly great person?  We can understand how the transfiguration story functions in the Judaic tradition of proclaiming and establishing the surpassing greatness of Jesus.

  On another level the story of the transfiguration is the figurative story of all of us who embrace our lives as a journey with metaphorical events of going up and down mountains, travelling on flat ground and crossing rivers and seas.  Like Peter on the mount of the transfiguration, we would prefer to build dwellings and do impossible of living only in the times of mountain top experiences.  

  The word transfigure refers to transformation and metamorphosis.  The goal of all of salvation history within the Bible is personal metamorphosis, personal transformation.  We are given creative original life force energy of our lives and we are to work this energy to the surfaces of our lives so that we shine with glory.

   The goal of life is to let the eternal Spirit of life rise in us and re-create and reorganize and reconstitute our lives with an art of living to bring us into progressive excellence.

  One of the misuses of the Bible and the Gospel stories is to make them so legendary and fantastic to the point of irrelevance for our lives.  We make ancient times special and legendary and in this special religious literary genre we allow that the laws of science did not prevail back in ancient times like they do now.  People embrace the stories of the Bible today almost as a category of what we would call entertainment.  If we do not understand the connection of the Bible stories for the transformation of our lives, we can limit the Bible to being simply fantastic entertainment, not unlike the fantastic entertainment of science fiction or mytho-poetic discourse. 

  If we miss the Gospels as literature which invites us to the continual transformation of our lives, we have missed the purpose of the Gospel and the Bible.

  Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, John and Jesus did not have life experience for us; we have to embrace and accept our own experience.  We have to be writing in our own lives personal Gospels of transformation.  We have to discover how the values which constitute our lives have occurred to make us who we are.

  Today, I would invite us to open our eyes to see how transfiguring events have occurred in our lives to lure us to excellence.  They are happening everywhere at all times because we live our lives in a completely worded environment so there is significant communication opportunities impinging our existence at all time.

  Today, let us read the transforming and transfiguring events of our lives because the Spirit of God is the life force within us who will arise within us to the surface of our lives to shine in our words and deeds.  May God help us to find ways for the arising of God Spirit to make our lives shine with creative advance towards excellence.  Amen.

Daily Quiz-February 2014

Daily Quiz, February 28, 2014

Which of the following is not true of Philemon?

a. He was a friend of St. Paul
b. He had a run away slave named Onesimus
c. He was the brother of Timothy
d. He convened a church in his house

Daily Quiz, February 27, 2014

Who was the rector of Fugglestone St. Peter with Bemerton near Salisbury who was a poet, devotional writer, lived in the time of King James I,  and has been the model for the quintessential parish priest?

a. John Donne
b. George Herbert
c. Nicholas Ferrar
d. Thomas Bray

Daily Quiz, February 26, 2014

The account of the Transfiguration of Jesus does not occur in which canonical Gospel?

a. Matthew
b. Mark
c. Luke
d. John

Daily Quiz, February 25, 2014

The book of Proverbs treats what quality of life as an incarnation of the divine?

a. Love
b. Fear of the God
c. Wisdom
d. Angelic beings

Daily Quiz, February 24, 2014 

In elections the "losers" rarely get remembered; when Matthias won the apostolic casting of lots to replace Judas Iscariot as the twelfth apostle, who was the man who did not win the "lottery?"

a. Justus
b. Joseph
c. Barsabbas 
d. all of the above


Daily Quiz, February 23, 2014

Which of the following was not from the village of Bethany?

a. Lazarus
b. Mary
c. Martha
d. Simon the Leper
e. Thomas the Apostle

Daily Quiz, February 22, 2014

Eric Liddell on the calendar saints made famous in the movie "Chariots of Fire" 

a. was a Scottish missionary to China
b. won two Olympic sprint medals
c. refused to run an Olympic race on a Sunday
d. won the 100-meter dash at the Olympics, his best event
e. all of the above
f.  a,b,c
g. a,b, d

Daily Quiz, February 21, 2014

When did Jacob get his name changed to Israel, the name of the nation of people?

a. when he married Rachel and Leah to bear the sons to be heads of the tribes of Israel
b. he received it before he was born through his grandfather Abraham
c. he received when he wrestled with an angel of God
d. he received it posthumously when Joseph carried his bones back to his home

Daily Quiz, February 20, 2014

What former slave and African American abolitionist, conferred with presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, attended the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, NY and was an ordained minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church?

a. Richard Allen
b. Absalom Jones
c. Frederick Douglass
d. Booker T. Washington

Daily Quiz, February 19, 2014

When Jacob and Rachel fled Rachel's father Laban, what did she steal from her father's household?

a. some of her father's flock of sheep
b. household gods
c. dowry gold
d. some cloth

Daily Quiz, February 18, 2014

Why is Martin Luther's feast day February 18th on the church calendar?

a. it was the day he was born
b. it was day that he nailed the 95 Theses on the Wittenberg Castle Church door
c. it was the day that he died
d. it was the day he took on the Diet of Worms

Daily Quiz, February 17, 2014

Which infamous African dictator was responsible for the martyrdom of Archbishop Janani Luwum?

a. Robert Mugabe
b. Charles Taylor
c. Paul Biya
d. Idi Amin
e. Sekou Toure

Daily Quiz, February 16, 2014

Which of the sons of Jacob were not born from his first wife Leah?

a. Reuben
b. Simeon
c. Joseph
d. Levi
e. Judah

Daily Quiz, February 15, 2014

SPCK and SPG are acronyms for two Anglican societies founded by 

a. George Herbert
b. John Donne
c. Thomas Bray
d. William Wilberforce

Daily Quiz, February 14, 2014

St. Valentine is not a patron saint of

a. engaged couples
b. love
c. against fainting
d. epilepsy 
e. bee keepers 
f.  plague
g. happy marriages
h. chocolate 

Daily Quiz, February 13, 2013

Who was the first African American priest ordained in the United States?

a. Richard Allen
b. Absalom Jones 
c. Booker T. Washington 
d. David Walker
e. James Forten

Daily Quiz, February 12, 2014 

"Be Lord over your brothers, and may your mother's sons bow down to you."  What is the context for this?

a. Jacob's blessing of Joseph
b.  David's blessing of Absalom 
c.  Isaac's blessing of Jacob thinking he was Esau
d.  Abraham's blessing of Isaac

Daily Quiz, February 11, 2014

Fanny Crosby, blind from the age of six weeks, wrote more than 8,000 hymns.  Which of the following is not one of hers?

a. Humbly I Adore Thee
b. Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross
c. Blessed Assurance
d. I Am Thine O Lord
e. Praise Him, Praise Him

 Daily Quiz, February 10, 2014 

Which man in the Hebrew Scriptures was the older of two twins, had the name "Red" because of his hair, and sold his birthright reserved for the eldest son to his "younger" twin brother for a bowl of lentil stew?

a. Isaac
b. Jacob
c. Esau
d. Boaz

Daily Quiz, February 9, 2014

What is something Jesus did not say about children?

a. the kingdom of God belongs to them
b. one had to be like a child to receive the kingdom of God 
c. one had to be a baptized child to receive communion 
d. being born again was necessary to understand God's kingdom

Daily Quiz, February 8, 2014

Which biblical matriarch had a brother named Laban?

a. Sarah
b. Rebekah
c. Leah
d. Rachel

Daily Quiz, February 7, 2014

The Centurion Cornelius is associated with what Apostle who had a dream about God's permission to eat the meat of animals he believed to be unclean and forbidden?

a. Paul 
b. Saul
c. Barnabas
d. Peter 

Daily Quiz, February 6, 2014

Alpha and Omega, a biblical metaphor meaning beginning and end,  are the letters from the alphabet of what language?

a. Hebrew 
b. Latin 
c. Aramaic
d. Greek 

Daily Quiz, February 5, 2014

Anne Hutchinson was not 

a. called the most famous English woman of the American colonial history for exercising her freedom and gift of ministry
b. part of the Antinomian Controversy 
c. exiled from Massachusetts by John Winthrop
d. killed by the Siwanoy Indians in The Bronx NY region
e. the wife of Roger Williams

Daily Quiz, February 4, 2014

Who is known as the missionary to Scandinavia?

a. Wilfrid
b. Boniface 
c. Anskar
d. Wulfstan 

Daily Quiz, February 3, 2014

Nunc dimittis, Magnificat, and  Benedictus are 

a. first word Latin titles of canticles used in the Daily Offices 
b. titles of Latin musical setting for the Mass
c. first word Latin titles for Psalms
d. songs attributed to Simeon, Mary and Zecariah
e. a and d


c. Daily Quiz, February 2, 2014

Mary and Joseph offered turtle doves and pigeons for an offering at the Presentation.  Why would they have not given a lamb?

a. the law allowed a substitute for people who could not afford a lamb
b. Mary and Joseph wanted to make the least expensive offering
c. Mary and Joseph were not from Jerusalem and so the logistics for lamb procurement was the issue
d. The Temple priests could only handle a certain amount of lamb offerings

Daily Quiz, February 1, 2014

St. Brigid, a sixth century abbess is associated with what Irish city?

a. Dublin
b. Armagh
c. Kildare
d. Kilbride

Love Your Enemies; Sermon on the Mount as an Oracle of the Early Church

7 Epiphany A, February 23,2014

Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18 Psalm 119:33-40

1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23 Matthew 5:38-48

Lectionary Link 

   “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”  How’s that for setting the standard rather high?  And what is the point of confronting us with an impossible goal of perfection?  We have been reading from the Sermon on the Mount which in a way in how Jesus is revisiting the entire purpose of the Law and how it is fulfilled.

  The religious leaders in the time of Jesus were rather proud of the defining documents of their religious and national identity, namely the Torah or the Law of Moses.   “We are an exceptional people because we have been given the Torah.”  An obvious rejoinder to this would be, “Well, you are so exceptional that your land has been controlled by outsiders for many years.”    But we can understand how an oppressed but proud people would not want to be assimilated to the values of the foreign occupiers.  This resistance to the occupier was a daunting task since the people of Judaism could not help but interact with the Roman authorities.  This would mean that within the areas where freedom was allowed by the Romans, the Jewish religious leaders would want to work overtime for their people to retain their unique and exceptional identity.

   To remain distinct in the face of occupation would be to learn how to live with fear of loss. We've lost the control of the borders of our country; we don’t want to lose the very identity of our nation by assimilating to the values and habits of all of the Roman foreigners who have come to our country.

  We might have some pity upon the Pharisees and Sadducees who were trying to retain exclusive identity under the threat of being assimilated into the culture of the outsiders.

This meant that the religious authority understood the great Mosaic Law more for cultural identity and less for transformation of their lives in loving God  It also meant that they were perhaps intolerant with those who could not maintain the details of the laws in the same way that they did.

  Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.  How could this have an intuitive literal significance?

  Imagine an older sibling in any family who lords his experience over the experience of a younger brother.  Imagine being the younger brother who is ostracized or left out because he cannot perform at the same level as the older and more experienced brother.  Imagine an intervening father in such a dispute and the father might say to the older son, “Okay you are harassing your younger brother for not being up to your level of performance; well, now I’m going to require that you be up to the level of my performance.  Since you are requiring an impossible standard for your younger brother, I will require an impossible standard for you.”  And the older son would say, “That’s not fair because you are older than I am.”  And the father would say, “Exactly so do not wrongly judge your younger brother based on the difference in your life experience.”

  Jesus was saying even if someone is advanced in understanding and practicing of the law, they had no right to judge without mercy, someone who did not have the same understanding or the same practice.  Rather, they should set the moral direction of their vision upon the perfect Father in heaven and know that they always have to accept grace, mercy and forgiveness when they compare themselves with perfection.

  So, the words of Jesus teach a crucial lesson about where we should look for moral direction.  We should always look towards becoming better ourselves rather than being overly proud about how we think that we are better than others.

  I think that there is another level of understanding these Gospel words of Jesus based upon the unavoidable habit of writing history anachronistically.  This means that history writers include their own lives and subsequent events in how they recounts events and words of the past.  How were the seeds of what has already happened found in the original words and events of Jesus

  If the Jews in the time of Jesus were encouraged to love their enemies, who were the real enemies of the Jews and what would it mean to love them?  The real enemies of the Jews were the Samaritans and the various persons who represented the Roman oppression in their country.  How would you truly love these foreigners and enemies? Well, you would give them a message of love so profound that you would convert them and persuade them to begin to transform their lives.

  By the time this Gospel was read in the churches in the cities throughout the Roman Empires, the enemy Gentiles had become equal heirs and friends in the faith.  How could this great gap between Jew and Gentile be overcome?  By the message of the Gospel or the good news about Jesus Christ and how this good news could transform lives.

  And so now the Sermon on the Mount with its radical fulfillment of the law was actually realized in the churches which read and taught the Gospel.  The message of Jesus brought enemies to love one another because the former enemies had their lives transformed by the message of the love of God in Christ.

  The Father in Heaven who is perfect is Father of both the Jews and the Gentiles.  Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father has broken down the enmity between Jews and Gentiles and enabled them to live in love and fellowship because they had their lives taken over by the Spirit of God who was the evidence that Christ was still alive and with them.

  We might believe that the Sermon on the Mount is a radical teaching;  but it had already been fulfilled in the reality of the union between Jews and Gentiles in this new community of Christ.

  It is impossible to write the narrative of the life of Jesus without knowing exactly what happened because of the life of Jesus.  The Sermon on the Mount is a case in point.  The oracle of Christ within the church where Jews and Gentiles lived as friends and not as enemies proclaimed the reality of how enemies could be made to become friends.

    Our world needs this powerful transforming reality to happen in profound ways in our world today.  Enemies need to be loved into friendship.  This is the result of the Gospel; this is the power of the love of Christ.  Let us always look to the power of this love in our lives.  Amen.

Law as Covenant Transforming Love

6 Epiphany       February 16, 2014          

Deuteronomy 30:15-20  Psalm 119:1-8

1 Corinthians 3:1-9  Matt.5:21-24,27-30,33-37

Lectionary Link

  What is the purpose for the speeding laws of the State of California?  Are they to encourage all of us to transform lives towards health and public safety or are these laws given for me to proclaim my moral superiority over my wife who has received many more speeding tickets than I have? If we understand this distinction, we perhaps can appreciate the issue in the Gospel riddles of the ironic words of Jesus.
  When law is reduced to legalism, then the law is used to build a moral resume for one’s own self-promotion and as a standard to compare oneself with others who do not attain the same moral resume.

  In the ministry of Jesus, he is often portrayed as confronting those who would reduce the great law to legalism.

  The great law was given to humanity as something like a marriage vow with humanity.  It was given to express a covenant relationship between God and humanity.

  The first commandment expresses the primary commandment; love God with all our hearts, soul and mind and strength.  And by the way, if are achieving this, it will affect your entire life.  You will have to spend some time with God so it will show in Sabbath time, prayer time.  And it will help and show in your family relationships with your parents and your spouse.  And it will help in your community relationships as in being truthful, respecting life and respecting the property of others.  And it will help you be contented with your life and not have to live in envy of other or wanting what others have.  If you work on your relationship with God these issues in your community life will improve.

  But  this great love and covenantal relationship with God can be reduced to some rules that the clergy and some of their groupies are able to keep and build their specialized moral resumes to prove to everyone how much better they are than the rest of those who are not a part of the legalistic cabal.

  Jesus came to countryside people who were being told that they were excluded because they did not have the same moral resumes as did the clergy and their groupies.  Jesus came to oppose the clergy who reduced the great covenant of a love relationship with God to very exclusive moral resumes for the religious legal experts.  So these clergy who were promoted as the official representatives of God could in fact misrepresent God and as a result they could make lots of people feel as though God did not care for them or that God was in no way relevant to their lives.  If God does not care for us and is not relevant to our lives, then what’s the use?

  Jesus came to oppose this misrepresentation of God.  If the ancient covenant of God was about a love relationship, then what was the purpose of the love relationship or covenant with God?  The purpose of this ancient love relationship or covenant with God was for the transformation of the lesser being to become more like the greater Being.

  If humanity was in covenant with God then the purpose of the covenant was to make us more God-like.  And what would it be like to be more God-like in the human situation?  The excitement of this ancient covenant with God is discovering what it is like in the human situation to be more like the God with whom we have this covenant of love?

  The specific rules and laws in the context of the people of the Hebrew Scriptures were simply the effort to try to chronicle what it means in specific situations to become more God-like.  But sometimes we can begin to assume righteousness by association rather than as a matter of practice.  There were those in  Israel who came to believe in their own automatic exceptionalism because they had discovered this great covenant relationship with God and because they had become specific in their rules and laws in how this covenant could make them exceptional and different within the world in which they lived.  We, Amercians, can and have done the same thing with our Declaration of Independence and Constitution; we often are very proud of our exceptionalism because of our association with these great documents but we often have not lived up to the great principles and spirit of these amazing documents.

  Jesus was confronting people who were reducing God to a legal resume.  I feel pretty good about myself.  I’ve never killed anyone.  Good job; I can put that on my resume.  I’ve never committed adultery; so I can put that on my moral resume.  I’ve had a divorce but when I divorced I followed the specific Moses instructions in how I carried it out.  Good job, ole boy, I’ve got that on my moral resume.  I’m a pretty jolly good fellow and look that all of those moral reprobates in the countryside; they’re a bunch of moral barbarians.  I’m certainly glad that I am not them.

  And this is when Jesus came at them with full blazing exaggerated rhetoric to blast them off of their pedestals of moral superiority.   Jesus was saying to them, “Instead of using the great covenant with God for the continuous transformation of your life to be more like God, you have used your definitions of moral attainment as justification for self-congratulation and for reasons to separate yourselves from people whom you will never welcome into your company.  And these are people that you exclude in the name of God.”

  If you are in a covenant love relationship with God, you know that God is so perfect that you will always be called to better living.  Long before Sigmund Freud told us that the unconscious interior life is polymorphously perverse, it was well known by the prophets that the human heart could entertain all sorts of perversity. 

  Jesus was saying to the religious people who were certain of their righteousness, “Yes you may think that with social pressure you can clean up your external behaviors, but what about your insides.  You may not kill anyone, but how many times have you wanted you?  You may not have acted out in adulterous acts, but how many times have you wanted to?  You may not have stolen anything, but how many times have you coveted?”

  Jesus was saying to everyone, “Do not reduce the law to a legalistic moral resume.  The law is to encourage the continuous transformation of one’s life towards being more like God.  And this is a continuous and great task.  And each person is in a different phase of this transformation.  And if we give exemplar behaviors, it is only for us to encourage a moral direction.  We are not to use exemplar behaviors as the final goal of this covenantal relationship with God.”

  Jesus reminded us that yes we can sometimes look like we clean up well for public presentation.  But then there is that interior cauldron that can have more counter tendencies flying around than the heevie jeevies of Pandora’s box.

  If we reduce the great covenantal law of transformation to the appearance of good public performance we make goodness into human work and the fortune of good social upbringing.  The greater work of God involves the engagement of our interior lives, our hearts and this is where we need to experience the work of God’s grace.

  Jesus was inviting everyone to this covenantal and transformational relationship with God.  This transformational relationship was the entire purpose of the Covenant expressed in the Mosaic Law.  It was not meant to be used as the basis to be a moral resume for people to use to establish their moral superiority.

  If you and I are about legalism and about establishing how much better we than others, then Jesus offers us the same convicting words.  “Okay, you can look good on the outside, but what are you going to do about cleaning up the inside, the part that is secret and hidden?”

  So what is the point about the exaggerated words of Jesus?  The point of Jesus is that the Law can only show us what we are like inside in spite of everything that we do on the outside to clean up our behavior for proper presentation to the public for whom we care.

  And if we know the division between the interior thoughts, motivations and desire and the way in which we actually behave, we will understand our need for grace to be tolerated by God and by our honest selves.  And knowing this we will not ever over-estimate our moral resumes to criticize how badly others are failing.

  Jesus was simply telling people to be honest and know their own insides and then to find themselves in the same place as everyone, namely, in desperate need of God’s tolerating and saving grace and in need for a touch with the higher power of God to do things that we know we cannot do if we are left to ourselves alone.

  We often find ourselves in a continuous battle not to act out on interior tendencies and this common battle for each of us is what makes us always equal in the need for God’s grace.  We can receive the Law not as condemnation but as an invitation to a covenantal love relationship with God in a path of transformation.

  This is how Jesus promised that his way would fulfill the entirety of the Law.   How, in honesty about our interior lives, we can be desperate always to know God’s grace and the power of God’s Spirit for transformation of our lives.   Those who are in the path of transformation are too busy looking at the next goal to worry about the goals which others may or may not be achieving.

  Yes, there is juridical law for the governing of society and we need to follow those laws; but the covenantal law of God in Jesus Christ is given to us for the transformation of our lives through the continual awareness of the need for grace.  I’m here today, because I need God’s grace; will you join me in this need today?  Amen.

Salt and Light

5 Ephiphany    A   February 9, 2014          

Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12)  Psalm 112:1-9  

1 Corinthians 2:1-11  Matt.5:13-20

Lectionary Link

  Listen God, let me make a deal with you.  How about if I promise to come to church every Sunday and if I say the Morning and Evening Offices of prayer each day; and also if I give some money to the church would you exempt me from having to help the poor?  Would you exempt me from having to love people who disagree with me?  You see, if I could assure myself that I am okay and that I can have eternal life if I have the correct theology and I am fully compliant on religious rituals, perhaps I could be exempt from all of that messy stuff about justice?

  Well, this is the kind of subtle religious contract that sometimes we may actually be living with God.  We adopt a religious practice and a religious community as a way to feel good and clean toward God, but at the same time we avoid issue of human justice and care of our fellow human beings.  We can be faithful and loyal to creeds and doctrinal positions because we may hope that being told by religious authorities that we are “orthodox” in our thinking means that we somehow have a good standing with God.

  The lessons which we have read from the Holy Scriptures are totally in opposition to this kind of subtle religious contract that we may have in our lives.

  The Hebrew Scripture tradition, the Gospel tradition, the tradition of St. Paul is about the transformation of our lives, our entire lives.  For transformation to be valid it has to affect our entire lives.

  The prophet Isaiah noted that lots of religious people had made this phony bargain with God.  They performed religious acts of piety, even fasting,  all they while they let their fellow human being live in deprivation and suffering.  And Isaiah warned them that they could not disconnect the meaning of their religious deeds and beliefs from the overall practice of justice and mercy in their lives.

  The Psalmist wrote that people who keep the commandments will be blessed by God even with wealth; and that sounds rather formulaic except the Psalmist goes on to state what it means to keep the commandments: it means being generous to the poor and lending freely.  You want blessing?  Keep the commandments.  But the commandments are not words inscribed on a tablet for public display as a symbol of our moral superiority; the commandments are in the messy details of living our lives as compassionate people in deeds of kindness.

   Again the Psalmist’s message:  You cannot separate the commandments and the blessing of the commandments from the actual practice of kindness and generosity.  This means our  lives exhibit evidence of  transformation by complying with practice of the commandments.

  St. Paul told the Corinthian Church that the significance of his life was not his wisdom or even having wisdom about the mystery of God; the significance of his life was that his life represented a transformation in how he lived his life.  The death and resurrection of Christ were not just historical events; they were not just wise doctrine of understanding God; they were a spiritual method which transformed his life with the power of change.  Paul had been changed from being a persecuting religious inquisitioner into one who invited everyone into a path of transforming their lives.  He became one who invited Jews and Gentiles to this powerful transformation of their lives that could be known when one experienced and accessed this higher power of God’s Spirit.  It was not a theory of wisdom about God; it was the transforming power in practice.

  The words of Jesus in the portion of the Sermon on the Mount that has been read today is also about showing the evidence of a transformed life.

  Jesus warned about breaking the commandments because breaking the commandments at the most profound level means that one separates the laws of what one professes to believe from the actual practice of one’s life.  It does no good to profess that one loves God and then fail to practice the love of our neighbor as ourselves.

  Breaking of the commandments means to fail to realize the power of transformation which enables to not only to profess our love of God, but also to live our love of God in how we treat our neighbor.

  Jesus used the metaphor of salt and light.  If we understand salt  we understand that it is the nature of salt to so interact with plain food in such a way as to complement and add an enhancement to the taste of plain food.  If salt did not do this for food, then we would not use it.  Jesus said that his friends were to be salt of the earth.  To live in our Christ-like natures is to live transformed lives when we unite both the ideals of our commandments with the actual practice of our lives.  Salt makes a difference with ordinary food.  Salt enhances and accompanies ordinary food.  So too, our transformed lives are to make a complementing difference in this world.  Yes, we are to be spicy people; we are to complement and bring out the exquisite sublime taste in this life.  We are here to help people know, "My life is much better because of way that you live.  Your living makes my taste of life enhanced.”  Living our lives as salty Christians means that we make this world, the ordinary world, a tasty world:  A world to be savored because of our presence.  Jesus said that our lives are to make a seemingly ordinary and bland world, a very wonderful and good world.  As spicy and salty people we are to help people to realize just how good their lives are.

  Jesus also called his followers to be lights in this world.  He said just as we don’t violate the nature of a lighted candle by immediately putting it under a basket to be extinguished, so we are to live our lives as wicks that are ablaze with a light.  We are to live our lives to help others see more clearly things that help give them better orientation to their life situations.

  In the season of Epiphany which will end on the Mount of the Transfiguration where the face of Jesus is like the filament of a light bulb fully aglow,  Jesus is declared to be the Light of the World. But Jesus did not keep all of the light to himself; he also lit up the lives of his disciples.  He gave them the light of the Spirit as an inner depth to help them unite what they practice with what they believed.  Jesus provided his friends with a path of transformation.

  You and I are invited to be in this path of transformation today.  In this time and place we are to be salt and light.  We are to make this world a more tasty place because of the way in which we live our lives.  We are to make this world a brighter place because we have known an inner light.  This light has given us direction in the transformation of our lives so that we too can be an aid for others to transform their lives towards the love, wisdom and justice of Christ.  Amen.

Nunc Dimittis: Origin Rhetoric for Gentile Christianity

The Presentation    February 2, 2014

Malachi 3:1-4   Ps.84:1-6

Heb. 2:14-18    Luke 2:22-40

Lectionary Link

  Today is a day which has many calendar designations.  In the regular church year, this would be the 4^th Sunday after the Epiphany, but it is also the 40^th day after Christmas on which falls a major feast of our Lord and when a major feast of our Lord falls on a Sunday, it takes precedence over the regular propers for the Sunday.

  On the folk ethnic calendars February 2^nd is known as Groundhog Day.  On this day we believe that an over-grown rodent can become an accidental weather prognosticator for predicting the duration of the cold of winter.  I guess the liturgical counter part of Paxsutawney Phil would be that if Preacher Phil comes into the pulpit and sees his shadow then Lent is going to last 14 weeks instead of 7 weeks this year.  And I do see my shadow since the house lights are on.  Sorry.

  But on the perhaps the most revered calendar of the American culture, the Super Bowl falls on this day this year.  And unfortunately for many, the Super Bowl is the feast of feasts and takes precedents over everything else on this day, which is why a priest once told me that he always prayed that his home team did not make it to the Super Bowl because he desired to have at least some church attendance on Sunday.

  With all of the calendar conflicts of this day, we can return to some reflection upon the feast of the Presentation.  The events of this day have brought about some interesting practices as well as historical adjustments.   But beyond the liturgical minutiae there is perhaps a profound message embedded in the song of Simeon which proves to be a rhetoric of origin for the greatest early paradigm shift in the practice of the Christian church.

  On the fortieth day after Christmas, the birth of Jesus, Mary, the mother of Jesus reached her days of required segregation from the Temple due to the ritual impurity that was believed to be incurred by women during child birth.  This notion of Mary’s ritual impurity was unthinkable for those who later came to hold that Mary was perfect and without sin, that she was immaculately conceived and that she was perpetually a virgin, in that there is a branch of the church who do not believe that Jesus had biological brothers and sisters.  So why would perfect Mary have to re-enter the community in fulfilling a purification rite?  Well, she didn’t have to, but just like Jesus was circumcised and was baptized by John and didn’t need to repent of any sins, so Mary fulfilled the liturgical rites as an expression of her full solidarity with humanity.

  For a long time, churches had their parallel rite for the re-entry of the mothers into the church after child birth.  For those of you old enough to remember the former Books of Common Prayer, you perhaps remember the pastoral rite entitled, The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth commonly called The Churching of Women.  The rubrics actually specified that women were to present offerings for the occasion for the priests and wardens to be used for distressed women.  While the Jewish rite implying the impurity of women during child birth is rather repugnant to us today as well as even the hint that women had to be “churched” again after child birth, we perhaps need to exercise some interpretation charity in appreciating the high infant mortality in the not so distant past as well as the high rate of mortality of women in child birth.  Such a birth event with high negative probability could account for corporate liturgies with non-scientific and liturgical superstitious connections being honored as a way  for communities to deal with this major rite of passage for child and mother.  Modern non-religious folk do far crazier things to guarantee that their favorite team will win.  We could also regard this as a societal recognition of a 40 day maternal leave for mothers to bond with their babies.

  This feast is called the feast of Presentation because of another ancient rite with a history.  The Passover Lamb was the ritual decree that God gave through Moses when there was an indiscriminate killing of all first born sons who lived in Egypt during the time of Moses.  Moses gave the people of Israel inside information; “If you will sacrifice a spotless male lamb in place of your son and sprinkle the blood on the door, then your son will be spared death but you will also know that your first born son will belong to the Lord and so you must ritually present him to the Lord.”  And this of course was the basis for the church at various times in history requiring that first born sons be given to the church for the priesthood.  It also meant that if first born sons belonged to the church, so did their inheritance because all of the “worldly” possession of the priest belonged to the church under the rubric of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

  This day is also called Candlemas and has been a liturgical event for churches to bless candles.  The Song of Simeon, states that the infant Jesus would be a “light to lighten the nations.”  So Christ as the Light of the world makes the feast of the Presentation consistent with the basic theme of the season of the Epiphany.

  I apologize for all of the secular and ecclesiastical liturgical minutiae; presented for context if not just a chuckle.  However, I think that this feast is significant in reinforcing the main theme of the Epiphany, which is the Manifestation of the light of Christ to the world.

  And so I would like for us to turn to the significance of Simeon and the famous Song of Simeon, which is included in Daily Office of Evening prayer known under it famous Latin designation the  Nunc dimittis.

  The Gospel of Luke is the first half of a larger work sometimes referred to as Luke-Acts.  And while it would seem that the events of the life of Jesus occurred chronologically before the birth of the church, the writing of Luke’s Gospel actually occurs after the church was already an established reality.  Why?  Because history is always written in hindsight.  We only are interested in what came before after something significant has happened.

  Why do we have countless millions of people who have made the pilgrimage to Bethlehem and nobody making a pilgrimage to Swedish Covenant Hospital, in Chicago.  Why, because I was born at Swedish Covenant Hospital, and nobody rightly gives a rip about my birth place.

  The Acts of the Apostles was penned by Luke.  It is a chronicle about the success of the church through mission of the apostles, Peter and mostly St. Paul.

  St. Paul is responsible for presiding over the most significant paradigm shift in the history of the church.  Although, Paul visited the synagogues in the Jewish Diaspora in various cities of the Roman Empire, he found that the success of the message of the Gospel was embraced by more non-Jewish persons.  So there was an incredible dilemma; here these non-Jewish persons wanted the message of the Gospel.  They received it and they changed their lives.  They devoted themselves to these new Christ communities.  Paul had a dilemma; how do you tell someone who has embraced the message of Jesus Christ that he had to become circumcised, he had to quit eating pork, and he had to observe all of the feast days on the Jewish liturgical calendar?  The Jewish ritual practices were impractical and inaccessible to so many who were having their lives transformed by the Gospel and who were forming these early churches.

  St. Paul saw the evidence of the message of Jesus Christ; he also recognized that the Jewish rituals were inaccessible to the people who were receiving the message.  He made a theological decision; he became the theological architect and ecclesiastical Pope for the “seamless” inclusion of the Gentiles into the greater River of Salvation history which had Judaism as a major tributary after the age of Abraham.

  Jesus himself was not the conscious architect of the church or its separation from Judaism.  So Luke had a writing goal which needed to be achieved.  How could the true Jewish roots of Jesus of Nazareth be upheld but be presented with subtle hints toward the reality of what eventually happened within the Pauline churches and in Christianity?

  And so we have the infancy narratives, the Christmas Stories, in Matthew and Luke.  Some scholars believe these narratives were the last to come to textual form in how the Gospels were comprised. 

  How was the Gentile mission of the Gospel foretold in the life of Jesus?  Well, magi, foreigners or Gentiles visited the Christ Child and paid him homage.  And Simeon, this very old man, symbolizing the antiquity of the Jewish tradition sees the baby Jesus at his presentation and what does he say, “ I have waited my whole life to see this.  I have waited to see how our tradition is connected with the lives of the rest of the people in our world.  Because I now see with my own eyes the Savior.  And the whole world is now prepared to see the Savior.  His time is ripe.  This baby will be the light to enlighten the Gentiles or the nations.  But it will not be a diminishing of Israel; it will in fact be Israel’s glory because this baby will universalize Israel to the entire world.”

  And so you see how Luke uses the Song of Simeon as a rhetoric of origin for why the Pauline churches happened; it happened because it grew out of and was predicted by the salvation history which began in creation, flowed in a definitive way through the people of Israel, but now has come to the entire world.

  This is why Paul wrote that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free but a new creation.

  The Song of Simeon was Luke’s literary pilgrimage to the origin of the success of the message of Christ to the entire world.

   You and I can embrace the light of Christ as a light to the world.  Christ can still be light to this world of non-Christian people because his message of love and hope is universal to all.  We do not have to think that the Christian churches of the world exhaust the relevance and the message of Christ as light to this world.  We can be completely committed to this light even as we don’t need to be chauvinistic about our church or Christianity.  We can be humble about the relevance of the Light of Christ to all and know that where people practice love, justice and forgiveness they are in fact, joined with the light of Christ.  Amen.