Merely Anthropomorphizing in the Best Possible Way

5 Easter   C       April 28, 2013

Acts 11:1-18     Psalm 148

Revelation 21:1-6 John 13:31-35

 Lectionary Link

  Do you ever talk to your plants?  Do you talk to your pets?  Why do you do it?  Do you understand your pet’s language?  Do you understand your plants?  Do you believe in animal whispering?  Plant whispering?  Can you do this without your sanity being called into question?

  We do lots of things in this life that are meaningful to us and yet we do not have the full scientific justification for doing them.

  We are but prisoners of human experience?  I am but a prisoner of Phil’s human experience?  How can I know non-human experience as a non-human? A dog’s life as a dog?   How can I know non-Phil human experience as non-Phil persons?  Your life and as you know it?  Even if I have “whispering” gifts, I end up translating the assumed experience of others into my own language of understanding.

  What is the nature of inter-species relationship?  What is the nature of inter-personal relationship?  What is the relationship between differences?

  From our prison of human experience and from my particular prison of Phil’s personal human prison, we confront the world with some questions.  Should the world feel what I feel or should I feel what the world feels?  Are both impossible?   The impossible assumption is that I can know what you experience and how you experience or that I can know how a dog feels or how my plants feel.  Yet the experience of faith is to live by the impossible; by believing and acting as though we can know how another being actually lives and feels.

   I love the expression of this assumption in the 148^th Psalm.  This Psalm is an expression anthropomorphism gone wild.  The Psalm is conducting the orchestra of all Nature and imploring everything in heaven and earth to “Praise the Lord.”  Sun, moon, stars, wild beasts, wind, rain, fruit-trees, hills, mountains, young, old, men and women, kings and people of all kinds, Praise the Lord.  Can there ever be any more presumptuous anthropomorphism than this?

  But we live by this meaningful presumption all of the time.  And when we really do the impossible we live the very best.   Compassion and love represent the extreme faith event of empathy, presuming to walk a mile in the shoes of another person in such a way as to be able to honor their life with the high sense of adoration, veneration and care.  And all of this is based upon this impossible presumption, of being able to live beyond the limitation of Phil’s human experience.  Projecting myself as being in the skin of another.

  In the Gospel lesson, there is a reference to glory.  Glory is the kind of intensified fame, adoration, regard, or veneration that is given and received between different beings.  We give glory when we confront excellence and greatness.  When we can say, “Wow, this is so wonderful that I must confess its greatness.”  In the experience of praise or adoration, checking the ego at the door is not difficult.  These experiences happen to us when we have a brush with what we call the sublime; it happens in artistic performance, it happens in the experience of love, it happens at the oceans, in the mountains, in the forms of beauty in this world, in extraordinary performance, in heroism and in myriads of moments of the ego being caught off guard.  When we encounter the sublime, our egos are checked, we can offer voluntary praise and worship and adoration.

  Sometimes we are forced to check our egos through oppression, through suppression or through humiliation; but the best way for our egos to get checked is through an encounter where we can naturally confess excellence as it casts a spell over us wins us and whispers our ego to forget itself.  And in that moment we make room truly for another person and other beings in our life.

  Jesus gave an eleventh commandment, a new commandment, the commandment to love one another as a new standard of living.  The standard of love is the invitation to the impossible.  It is the invitation to live as though we can actually walk in the shoes of someone else and feels as they feel, even though we know the sheer impossibility of complete coincidence with the consciousness of another being.  What is the mystical event of passing over into the experience of another such that we can treat them with a different sense of care than we would if we did not experience this sense of empathy?

  I believe that what makes the biblical wisdom tradition an impossible scientific tradition is this impossibility of empathy; this sense of going out of ourselves into others and being with them in such a way that lets them know the experience of care.

  We certainly agree with science about the validity of empirical experience but in our mystical tradition we marvel that there is any ability at all for beings to have mutual experiences conducted between us.  And not only conducted between us but done so in a way that has generated words from experience such as sharing, caring, empathy and love.

  There is something about the ego and sense of self that often would like to make the epidermis an impenetrable barrier of separation, but there is something about the experience of greatness that can massage the ego to admit connection among all orders of being.  In this great order of being from the sub-atomic and molecule to all the unseen orders of the imagination we are able to experience the belonging of togetherness.  We assume that we are enough like each order of being enough to speak on behalf of all orders of being, and so as human, and in being human we speak on behalf of other orders of being.  We speak on behalf of animals and plants and angels and demons and God, and we do so as human beings, because we believe that connection is basic to our lives.  And we extend this relatedness to all orders of being; why indeed do we go to Mars and to the moon and send our eyes into outer space as far as we can reach..  We are curious about the full reach of how we might relate to all things.

  That is how we are made; we are made for the impossible to believe that we can speak for all things because in some way we are like all things and all beings. We believe that all things and beings are like us in some way.

  And that is where God comes in; we need a confession of a great Totality to exorcise the individual egos of all things and to convince us that we are not separate but all together and that we live best in living together well.

  So the Psalmist anthropomorphizes all Nature as we all do because we believe that we share enough in common with all of creation.  And we as people of faith believe that for all of nature to recognize God through worship and praise is the very best way for all of us to check our tendency towards separation before God’s greatness and believe that we are called to be together in the mutually beneficial ways of love and creativity.

  I believe that we can anthropomorphize, that we can treat everyone in a humanly way, because we share enough in common with all orders of life.  We as Christians, believe that God, theomorphized in the Jesus Christ, that is, God treated humanity as though it could be seen through the divine point of view.  In Jesus, we believed that God walked in human shoes so as to allow us to be merely human, but call us to be merely human in the very best way that we can.

  And we are human in the very best way when we do the impossible, when we have the creative imagination to go out of ourselves and into each other and into our world with empathy, compassion and that great eleventh commandment, Love one another.

  Let us continue to keep at doing the impossible; for me, it means escaping Phil’s world to be in your world, with you and for you.  Escaping our individual worlds to reach the impossible but mystical state of empathy and compassion.

  It begins when we can all encounter the greatness of the sublime and when humility comes easy when our adoration is won by the experience of One who is greater.  The greatness of God gives us reason to do the impossible; to go out of ourselves and into the realm of empathy and love.

  Let us go forth and anthropomorphize…I’ve got news for you.  That all we can do, be merely human, but let us do it the best way, let us do the impossible.  Love one another.  Amen.

  

Jesus, the Peripatetic Wisdom Teacher in the Stoa

4 Easter   C       April 21, 2013           

Acts 9:36-43 Ps.23

Rev 7:9-17  John 10:22-30

  Being among good Christian folks such as yourselves and as people who are well-informed about your faith, I would like to pose some questions seeking short answers of the one word variety, yes or no.   Is Jesus the Good Shepherd?  Yes?  Is Jesus the Lamb of God?  Yes?  Well, now you have me really confused?  Can Jesus be both Shepherd and Lamb?  Is that acknowledging contradictory metaphors?

  It is indeed and it is no problem for language users.  We do amazing things with language.  Such contradictions only show the limits of any metaphor but it shows how versatile we are as metaphor makers and users as we continuously look to receive and create new metaphorical insight about our faith in the art of living.

  We use language to transform geography.  We use language to relocate cities.  By the time the Gospel of John was coming to significant textual form, the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed.  Members of the various religious parties of Judaism had to flee Jerusalem.  Some Jews went to Jamnia and they began a program to purify Judaism of all Hellenistic influences.  Other members who were following the teaching of Rabbi Jesus were forced out of Jerusalem and other parts of Israel as well. 

  Some scholars believe that the chief writing agents of the Gospel of John ended up in Ephesus.  Ephesus was an ancient city that was the largest city in the Roman Asia province.

  How does language recreate geography?  Some say that followers of Jesus in Ephesus referred to that city as a New Jerusalem.  In the migration of people resettling in a new location, we are well aware of people bring the location names of their native countries to their new place of residence.  People love their homelands; even though economic conditions and hostilities drive them from their lands they have enough nostalgia for the homeland to try to remake it in the new place.

   Ephesus as Jerusalem is quite a stretch though.  Unlike the Jewish purists who tried to restore their religion to a purity without Hellenistic influence; the followers of Jesus in Ephesus as we know them from the writing of the Gospel of John did exactly the opposite of the Jewish purists.  They sought to find a way for cultural aspects of the Greco-Roman world to be baptized and used in the presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  One of the ways to resist the world was to take methods of the world and baptize them for the presentation of the Gospel.  This was an engaging method of evangelism and it has accounted for the greater success of the various forms of the Christian faith in comparison to the worldwide success of the spread of the Jewish faith.

  We find in the appointed Gospel lesson a scenario that mixes a cultural presentation with a seeming historical event.  It would seem as though Jesus is walking in the portico of Solomon at the Temple in Jerusalem and he is in dialogue with Jewish interlocutors.

  Does anyone find it strange that Jesus is presented as being questioned by the Jews?  In his own time, it really would be just one Jew, Jesus talking with other Jews.  But how does it happen in the Gospel of John that Jesus is talking now to “Jews?”  Suddenly the Jews were presented as foreign enemies of Jesus.  This presentation should tell us how Gentile the Christian movement had become even while there were some Jewish patriarchs of the Jesus movement who were trying to translate the Judaic context in ways so that it could be grasped by the larger number of Gentile persons who were following Jesus.

  There are specific presentation elements that would give us an indication of a marriage between Athens and Jerusalem.  John is written in the koine or common Greek that was left over from the conquering of the world by Alexander the Great.  Alexander tried to bring the Greek polis to the entire world.  Local residents would speak their own native language but would learn a common Greek for politics and commerce.  This low Greek, lingua franca became the language of choice for writing the New Testament.

  The Greek world for portico is Stoa.  Stoa or porch was the place where the founder of the Stoic philosophy began to do his public teaching.  Jesus was walking and discussing in the stoa, a colonnade walkway that ran the length of one side of the Temple complex.  The Greek philosophical school of note occurred in the colonnade walk ways called “parapatoi.”  The philosophers eventually were called the Peripatetic school or those who taught by walking about.  This is the very Greek word used for what Jesus was doing in the portico of Solomon; he was walking and in dialogue. (περιπατέω peripateō )  This image would have recognizable symbolic meaning for the Gentiles of Ephesus.

  The Peripatetic School was the classical graduate school of Greek philosophy.  A student or disciple would gather around a known teacher or philosopher who held court on the porch as he walked and taught.  And one can see the conscious blending of teacher from the Greek wisdom perspective with the Hebraic notion of the shepherd.  David was the quintessential shepherd but in the Gospel of John, Shepherd and Sheep is presented as this intimate relationship between master and devotee, teacher and student.  And this notion would find a hearing in the Gentile Greco-Roman world that had this long tradition of graduate school for advanced learners.

  In the Gospel of John, Jesus was presented as the wisdom teacher par excellence.  None of the other Gospels has the long teaching discourses like the Gospel of John does.  The Gospel of John presents to the readers an occasion to identify with the disciples as they progressively learn to follow their teacher and come to understand the inner wisdom of his teaching.  The Gospel of John is founded upon a blend between the Hebraic and Greek wisdom traditions.  The chokmath or Sophia of the book of Proverbs is seen as the eternal word or logos in the Gospel of John.  In the beginning was the Logos, the Word.  There are few words that are more directly from the Greek wisdom perspective than the word logos.  And John’s Gospel is built around the Logos.

  Logos is so pervasive and so versatile it allows the full play of metaphors for evocative purposes; purposes of evoking insights to influence and change our life and help us live better.  So indeed, Jesus can be a wisdom Shepherd of God but also a Lamb whose life expresses the essence of sacrifice, of laying down his life for others as a way of celebrating a relationship with God.

  John the Divine in his vision of the end sees irony; the Lamb in the center will also be the Shepherd.  Being a shepherd comes through sacrifice.   Sacrifice or laying down of our lives for each other is what rises to the top of all value.  Sacrifice or giving of one’s life is what makes the Shepherd worthy of the sheep.  A teacher who shares all is what makes a teacher worthy of the student.

  If Jesus was the Good Shepherd who had sheep who knew and heard his voice; it is also true to say that his sheep went on to be shepherds and wisdom teachers.  They too made disciples; the end and teaching of their lives was to bring salvation or health.  In the story of the rising of Dorcas one finds the essence of the dynamic purpose of shepherd; it is to restore people into the conditions of service.  Dorcas’ life was characterized by service and she lost it but with Peter’s ministry she was restore to being able to serve.  This parable is metaphorical of the function of those who are trained in the wisdom tradition of Jesus.  We are called to enable each other to serve.  We are truly unhealthy when we do not serve.  Health is being able to serve.

  The Gospel of John is a successful wedding of Jerusalem and Athens; it is a blending of Hebraic wisdom tradition within the language forms of the Greek wisdom tradition.  This blending accounts for the long success of the Gospel.

  We are still blending the good news in the wisdom tradition as it can be made relevant to our lives within our post-modern world.  I am committed to this blending of the Gospel of Jesus Christ within our current time and place.  Let us be in the wisdom school of Jesus today and let our lives express the wonderful health of service.  Amen

Puppet Show for Good Shepherd Sunday

Gospel Puppet Show

April 21, 2013

4 Easter

Characters:

David the Shepherd

Sheep, Lion, Crocodile

Fr. Phil

Father Phil:  Boys and girls, today is good Shepherd Sunday.  And a long time ago when the Bible was written, there were lots of sheep to take care of.  When the people of the Bible tried to teach about being a good leader, they said being a good leader was like being a good shepherd.  And Jesus was a good shepherd because he was a good teacher and leader.  But there was also a famous shepherd boy who became the King of Israel.  His name was David.  David, hello, do you have time to talk?

(David is busy rescuing a sheep from a lion)

David, are you there?

David (out of breath after rescuing a sheep):  Sorry, I had work to do.  I had to chase the lion away from my sheep.

Fr. Phil:  David, that is dangerous.  You could get hurt by the lion.  You must be very brave.

David:  Well, I want to take care of my sheep.  I get to know all of my sheep and so I don’t want them to get attacked and hurt.

Fr. Phil:  So, you are good shepherd.

David:  Well, I try to be.  I like to be out in valleys and mountains with the sheep.  It gives me time to pray.  And also I can write some poems too. 

Fr. Phil: Have you ever written a poem?

David: Yes, I wrote one that begins, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want for anything.”  I wrote that because I am out alone with the sheep and I have come to know God.  And so I feel like God, the Lord is my shepherd; and because I feel like God takes good care of me, then I want to be a good shepherd and take good care of my sheep too.

Fr. Phil:  Well, you were a good shepherd.  And God noticed because God made you to be King of Israel.

David:  Being a good king is like being good shepherd.  You have to care for people.  A good King, a good leader is like a good parent.  A good leader takes care of people who need care.

Fr. Phil: Well, people and sheep often need lots of care.  Babies need care, sick people need care, and hungry people need care.

David:  Yes, since the Lord God is good shepherd, God wants all of us to be good shepherds.

Fr. Phil:  Do you mean that these boys and girls can be good shepherds too.

David:  When they help their moms and dads they are good shepherds.  When they take care of your younger brothers and sisters they are good shepherds.  When they do their chores they are good shepherds.

Fr. Phil: So some times we are sheep and some times we are shepherds?

David:  Yes, that is true.  When we need help, we are like sheep.  And when we help others we can be shepherds.  Oh, Oh, I have to go.  I see that a sheep has wandered near the river and I see a crocodile.  See you later.

(David leaves to rescue the sheep from the crocodile)

Fr. Phil:  Boys and girls, David was a good shepherd because he discovered that he sometimes was like a sheep and God was his good shepherd.  God sent Jesus to be a good shepherd for us.  So when we need help we can ask for help.  And when we are strong, we can be good shepherds too.  Can you remember to be a good shepherd?

Saul Converted; Peter Restored

3 Easter     C      April 14, 2013    

Acts 9:1-20       Ps. 30

Rev. 5:11-14        John 21:1-19    

 Lectionary Link

  Sometimes when we put the Bible on such a pedestal of supernaturalism, we can miss what truly endears it to us with the profound insights that makes the Bible an inspired books.  If one makes the Gospel just about supernatural, scientific law defying events, then the Bible gets put upon a shelf of not actually being relevant to our lives because you and I don’t live scientific law defying events in our lives; we must be content to be all too human.  Frankly I like it better that way and I like the fact that the Bible is all too human as well.  It is brutally honest about the foibles of all of the heroes, two of which we’ve read about today.  The Bible has gone the way of classic literature; it is very popular but increasingly unread.  Looks good in Moroccan bound leather on the shelf.  The efforts of my sermons are about how we can read the Bible and hint at its relevance to potential “original” readers and to us today.

  In Christian tradition,  Peter and Paul were leaders of churches in Rome.   The churches in Rome pre-existed Peter and Paul. The Gospel had already resulted in house churches before Peter and Paul arrived in Rome. Christian writers in the second century write that Peter and Paul probably died in Rome during the Nero persecution in mid 60’s.   Nero was the Caesar who “fiddled” while Rome burned and supposedly blamed it upon Christians.

  Peter was the one who denied Jesus three times at the time of his arrest and interrogation.   His denial was a bit more dramatic since he had so loudly proclaimed his fearless devotion.      Peter  had a significant restoration encounter with Jesus.  He had a reputation to reestablish if he were to be a worthy leader of the church.

  Paul was the once-known Rabbi Saul who persecuted the followers of Jesus.  He was complicit in their stoning deaths.   Saul had a dramatic encounter with the Risen Christ.  The story of Paul was told for reasons of establishing his reputation in Christian communities.

  The Gospels and the writings of the New Testament are literature that were created because the death of Jesus did not end his influence upon the lives of his followers.  In various ways, they continued to experience the presence of Christ.  The New Testament writings are evidence that writing had become the  media of the spirit-words and that through these writings, people could come to belief.  These writing served very pragmatic purposes in the Christ communities.  They served as evidence of the success of the Christian communities even as they helped to extend and consolidate the success.

  In any religious movement the question of succession to the founder is crucial.   No one could really succeed Jesus as his equal.  But who would continue the mission that Jesus started in this world?   What did Jesus stand for?  How could the genius of the message of Jesus continue in this world  he was gone?  Who would best be able to do this?   And how would the legitimacy of their leadership established?

  Since the New Testament writings have been around for a long time and we are recipients of their “taken for granted” status.  It is hard for us to get a sense of their original setting to understand the pragmatic purposes that these writings held for the early communities that read them for the first time.

  The Jesus Movement was successful but  all of the Christian communities did not have easy  contact with each other.  Communication was slow; churches were separated by great distances.  Traditions and practices grew in one community that were not present in another. 

Travelling prophets and preachers were the ones who brought a cross-pollination of ideas and practices but such travelling prophets were also a source of division.  Paul was known to warn his congregations about prophets who were teaching them  Gospel that was different from what he preached.   There were disagreements too.   Paul and Peter had a major dispute about the interactions of Christ Communities that still kept Jewish customs and the Gentiles Christ communities that didn’t.

  You and I are tempted to idealize the ancient Christian communities as being really pure and holy since they were so much closer to the dates of Jesus living on this earth.  What we find from reading Church history closely is that there was lots of diversity and that some teaching and writing of influential teacher did not suvive.  Their writing  was destroyed or not preserved by competing groups that came to gather around other influential church leaders.

  One can understand the Gospel of John and the Acts of the Apostles as writings that were intended to establish the profile of leaders who were to be regarded as the rightful heir in the succession of the message of Jesus Christ.

  The 21^st chapter of John is about the leadership of Peter and the beloved disciple whom some believe is John, son of Zebedee. The portion that we read from the Acts of the Apostles recounts the dramatic conversion of St. Paul.  Some scholars believe that the Acts of the Apostles was written as a way to bring credibility to the letters of Paul and to promote their acceptance within the churches.

  The New Testament is a collection of writings written for pragmatic and specific purposes, one of which was to establish the credibility of leadership and doctrinal teaching within the churches.

  John or the beloved disciple is associated with the church that developed in the city of Ephesus.  Peter and Paul are associated with the churches in Rome.  In a subtle way, the Gospel of John is both promoting Peter’s role but at the same time hinting at a special role of the beloved disciple.  In the account of the Gospel of John, Peter denied Jesus three times.  What did the beloved disciple do?  He went into the trial location with Jesus.  He was given the charge of the mother of Jesus at the Cross and while Peter hid in fear, the beloved disciple stayed with Jesus at the Cross.

  The writing of the early church had to show how the leadership of Peter was rehabilitated.  Peter, seemed to be one who after the resurrection was ready to be practical about going back to being a fisherman, or perhaps he thought that his denial of Jesus left him unqualified to be a disciple of Jesus.  In our appointed Gospel we have a scene that is set up to indicate the direct rehabilitation of Peter into the good graces of Jesus.  Peter denied the Lord three times before the rooster crowed; Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved him as a way to get Peter to counter each denial with a confession of his love for Jesus.    Peter was restored in his relationship with Jesus and his reputation was established as a legitimate leader in the church.  This portion was written after the death of Peter because it gives an indication that he would have the strength to go where he was unwilling to go before with Jesus, namely to his own crucifixion.

  In this same post-resurrection encounter, Peter was seen as being nosy about what would happen to the beloved disciple and Jesus said to him, “What is that to you, follow me.”

  The Gospels present the disciples as students of Jesus who learn in ways that we can identity with.  Peter, John and Paul could be like any of us in the church.  We can be petty and we can be profound; we can live sacrificially and egotistically.  We can be heroic in faith and at other times denying the significance of God in our lives.

  And what is the point?  Leadership comes from being rehabilitated, reconciled and received by a loving Christ, who simply says, “ Feed my sheep.”  Get to work and help the vulnerable.  We don’t have time for all this petty competition drama.  Get to work, take care of the lambs.

  The lessons for today invite all of us to be leaders in the church.  Let us lead because we know that we are restored in our relationship with God through Christ and we know that we are called to take care of those who are vulnerable in this world.   Amen.

Orange Emergency Triangles on Amish Buggies to Protect Tradition from Progress

2 Easter Sunday  Cycle C      April 7, 2013  

Acts 5:27-32 Psalm 150
Revelation 1:4-8  John 20:19-31

 Lectionary Link

  There is an interesting dilemma in Amish country.  Should the Amish buggies be required to display an orange emergency triangle when they are on public highways?  The modern triangle on the buggy represents a violation of their tradition; one just cannot mix the modern and the Amish way of separating themselves from the world.  On the other hand, the law requires it for the safety of the buggies and so most Amish comply with the law.

  The orange emergency triangle is a sign of irony.  It says, “If you’re going to try to be present in the post-modern world in Amish ways, then you are going to have to bear our mark of protection so our modern vehicles will not hurt you.  We are going to have to protect traditional people from the Modern World.

  If you are not going to move with the time, we are going have to mark you with emergency triangles so that we do not harm you when we interact.

  How often do we see these signs of clash between traditional religion and their cultures of residence?  How many times has this been replayed in the history of the world?  Traditionalists look out because Progress is dangerous to your safety if you try to interact on the highway of Progress.

  We ourselves could be wearing all sorts of these emergency triangles as religious Luddites of all sorts.  My vestments are older in origin than Amish clothes; my alb is but old Roman underwear and yet I am still wearing them today.  Emergency triangle.  The Bible, the language, the hymns, all need protection if we are going to interact with the post-modern world.  But we are not like the Amish, we have not really tried to promote ourselves as being that much separated from the world, even though this magic little time capsule on Sunday mornings does probably need to have an emergency triangle as we try to integrate everything that we do here with what with try to do in our lives outside of church.

  As we read the Doubting Thomas story, do not think of it as an eyewitness report; think of it as a parable of the Gospel writer who is writing at the end of the first century.  This Gospel writer is aware of changes; the writer is aware that there is a new reality of Christian success that they were not totally prepared for.

  Why is it that there are no Shakers around today?  Today we know Shakers as pieces of furniture and as music?  Why no Shakers?  The Shakers were celibates; they did not believe in procreation.  Unfortunately birth is the most successful means of evangelism for all religious groups and so the Shakers died out.

  Could the Jesus movement have gone the way of the Shakers?  Could the Jesus movement go the way of the Amish?  If you limit Christian baptism to the Jordan River, then the Jesus Movement could not have moved very far away.  If the effectiveness of the witness of Jesus depended upon live witnesses to Jesus of Nazareth, how long would the Christian religion last?  And what if the first generation of witnesses died out; what do you do?  You might say, you have to know somebody who actually walked and talked with Jesus.  But what about the second and third generation and what about people who began to be spread throughout the Roman Empire?

  How could the Jesus Movement survive the absence of Jesus and the absence of his eye-witnesses?  That kind of religious limitation needed to have emergency triangle placed on it by a new understanding.  And that is what the parable of Doubting Thomas is about.

  The Gospel of John is a Gospel about word and about how word use diversifies.  In the beginning was the Word and the Word became flesh.  It became flesh in Jesus Christ.  And Jesus spoke words and what did he say about his words?  He said that his words were spirit and that they were life.

  The speaking Jesus assumes that one is physically present with Jesus to hear him speak.  The apostles, disciples, friends and companions of Jesus were those who were with him and heard him speak.  But they soon were dying, dead and gone and how could there be a contact and transmission of this message about Jesus?  There was a crisis; if one did not hear and speak with Jesus but relied upon the message of another who had heard Jesus and spoken with him, then one was that much further removed from Jesus in both time and space and here is the crisis:  Your experience of Christ was inferior to the experience of those first order Christians who walked and talked with Jesus.  So, Shakerism, here we come.  The intensity of the Christ presence would surely dissipate and thin out in each succeeding generation and the movement would run out of Christ-gas and not be able to go on.

  And this is the point of the parable about doubting Thomas.  Thomas was symbolic of every first generation face to face encounter with Jesus.  He is presented as wanting to have proof that his Christ experience was valid.  The church of the Gospel of John was thriving and it was fueled by something other than first generation testimony.  The intensity of the Christ encounter in the Johannine community was great; it was not inferior to the encounter of Thomas-like first generation eye-witness believers in Jesus.

  And the spoken word was now being put into written words and these written words were spirit and they promoted the continuing presence of the risen Christ and this presence was not an inferior presence, in fact, it was an even more blessed experience because it did not rely on mere physical presence.

  The writer of John’s Gospel is putting an emergency triangle on the old limited way of knowing the presence of the risen Christ; get out of the way because writing is here and “these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. “  The Doubting Thomas parable is set up to show this progression; In the beginning was the Word; the word was made flesh in Jesus;  Jesus spoke words and his words were spirit and life.  And these words animated the lives of people.   And these words about Jesus became written words and these written words were spirit and they were able to accompany people knowing a real and valid presence of the risen Christ even if they were not eye-witnesses.

  And that is how the Jesus Movement has survived for two thousand years.  Words can still make the Risen Christ present today.  Words are still Spirit and they are still life and they can constitute and order our lives in such a way that we come into an interior remaking of our word life such that the sublime presence of the risen Christ is known afresh to us within the particular details of our life.

  So the hymns, detail of culture, the albs, the chasubles and all of the details of our piety that are a part of the aesthetic of our worship, they are but current furniture for the real guest, the risen Christ.  Let’s not get hung up on the style; enjoy what prepares our hearts to experience the risen Christ, but if we know the risen Christ, we will not feel threatened by the high speed of our post modern times.  The risen Christ can always be known within the new details of our culture through words which are spirit and life.  Receive these words of spirit and life today.  Amen.

Delivering Alleluia Back in Time for Easter

Gospel Puppet Show

March 31, 2013

Easter Sunday

Characters:

Hairy the Profit

Fr. Phil

Father Phil:  Boys and girls, I received a phone call from Hairy the Profit and he was very worried and anxious.  He said that he wanted to see me right away.  He said it was important.  Hairy are you around?  Where are you?

Hairy: Hello boys and girl.  Have you seen the Padre?  Is he sleeping again?  Where is the Padre?

Father Phil:  Hairy, I’m right here.  And of course, I’m not sleeping; it’s Easter Sunday.  Though I will be preaching later and that might help some get some sleep.  You look terrible Hairy, what’s wrong?  And by the way is your name Harry, short for Harold?

Hairy:  No, my name is Hairy, H-A-I-R-Y.

Father Phil: Could of guessed that from the amount of hair on your body.  But what’s the matter why are you worried?

Hairy:  I have special delivery that needs to arrive for Easter Day and if it doesn’t come, we won’t be able to start Easter.

Fr. Phil:  That’s terrible; what is so important that would delay Easter.

Hairy: You will soon know; but if it doesn’t show up.  I’ll be leaving town in embarrassment.

Fr. Phil:  Well, Hairy, it must be very serious.

Hairy: It is and I do not want to delay Easter.

Delivery Person:  Excuse me, is there a Hairy Profit here?  I have a package for him from the Postal Service.

Hairy:  I’m Hairy Profit.  Whew! You saved the day.  Please give the package to Father Phil.

Delivery Person:  Let me verify your identity, Do you really spell your name, H-A-I-R-Y  P-R-O-F-I-T?

Hairy: Yes, do you have a problem with that?

Delivery Person:  No, your mom and dad sure got the name right.

Hairy: Father Phil, hurry and open the Package.  What’s in there?

Father Phil: Okay, there is a letter in here and the letter says, “Dear Hairy, please get a haircut.  Love, Mom.  Is that what you were expecting?  How was that letter holding up Easter?  If you get a haircut can we start Easter?

Hairy: No that was not what I was expecting.  I am so disappointed.  That was not what I needed to start Easter.  I am so embarrassed.

Delivery Person:  Hello, there is a special delivery for Hairy Profit from UPS.  Is there a Hairy Profit here.

Hairy:  I’m here.  Hurry up.  Maybe this is what I was expecting.  Please come and give that package to Father Phil.  Father Phil open it up and tell me what it is.

Fr. Phil:  Okay be patient.  And here it is.  It is a special delivery from before the season of Lent.  Do you know what it is?  It is the Word Alleluia.  And it has arrived just in time for the Easter.

Hairy:  Yes, now we can begin Easter because Alleluia has returned just in time for Easter.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Aren’t you happy that we can say Alleluia again?

Fr. Phil:  Yes, we are and thank you Hairy for getting Alleluia to us on time, and as a friend could I say something to you?

Hairy:  I guess so.

Fr. Phil:  Get a haircut.  And Good bye! 

Profound Hope Crammed into Such Small Vessels

Easter Sunday        March 31, 2013     

Isaiah 65:17-25  Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 John 20:1-18

Lectionary Link

FAME

I'm gonna live forever

I'm gonna learn how to fly--high!

I feel it comin' together

People will see me and cry. Fame!

I'm gonna make it to heaven

Light up the sky like a flame. Fame!

I'm gonna live forever

  Fame might be one of the ultimate addictions of life and it may be because of our supreme fear of insignificance in life.  The deep voiced singer and poet Leonard Cohen wrote and sang in his unique basso profundo voice, “And everybody knows that you live forever, Ah when you've done a line or two.”

  The aspiration for fame and glory perhaps is natural even if one doesn’t aspire to embarrass oneself on American Idol.  Fame is that quest for an excessive witness to one’s life as proof that one was actually here.

  If we are not witnessed by someone, do we exist?  This is like the philosophical question, “did a tree fall in the forest if no one was there to see it fall?”

   Fame is a quest for immortality; maybe what is called an objective immortality.  If I make an impression upon people, perhaps I will be remember beyond my death.  But why would that be important to me in my life now?  What would be the importance of me living on by having people think or speak of me after I have died?    

  Probably the most concrete objective immortality happens when one has a child.  One’s child is the most concrete proof of objectivity immortality.  In fact in certain phases of the Hebrew religion and Judaism, the objective immortality of having children was the prominent immortality since many Jews could not find evidence for the afterlife in the Torah.

  Immortality and the afterlife have a long history in humanity.  We probably cannot know for sure but we like to claim what makes us humans different from the other animals is how we reflect upon death.  If one has lived well and loves life, death seems like such a loss of the experience that one has gained from living.  Is there no way that such experience could be passed on? 

  The ancient Greeks wrote about the transmogrification of the soul.  Plato wrote about the simultaneity of the passing of soul at death and its birth into another person.  This was expressed in the Joseph Cooley lyrics, made most popular by “Blood Sweat and Tears, “ And when I die and when I’m dead, dead and gone, There’ll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.”

  Fame, immortality and afterlife are universal human issues for the human psyche in the quest for meaning.  The topic of the afterlife appeared in the sections after the Torah in the Hebrew Scriptures to deal with the issue of theodicy.  Theodicy, how do we make sense of God who is worshipful when there is injustice and innocent suffering in the world?  The people in covenant with God, the people of Israel wondered often if they wouldn’t be better off if they weren’t God’s so-called chosen ones with a Promise Land.  Lots of bad things happened to them in their Promised Land and when bad things happen how do people still maintain a sense of justice?  The logical solution was that everyone needs more time, time beyond the grave so that scores can be evened and justice can fulfilled.  If there is enough time, fortunes can be reverse so the persecuted can walk in the persecutor’s shoes and vice versa.  The problem with this type of eternal and everlasting life is that we “petty minded” people often hold on to heaven and hell as two grand categories for our own prejudices and biases.   Everyone who is certain about the details of heaven and hell usually is equally certain about who will inhabit both places and conveniently one’s friends and those in agreement with me are in the good place and those other people are obviously in the bad place.  Recently a Baptist preacher got excommunicated in the minds of some Baptist faithful by writing a book, “Love Wins.”  Rob Bell writes his belief that the entire afterlife is just further training to become ultimately convinced by God’s love.  If one is reliant upon eternal hellfire to scare people into getting saved then you can understand why Pastor Bell offended those who need to frighten people into salvation.

  Another way in which we hope to attain secret information about the afterlife is through the so-called “near-death” experiences.  People who have died and then are resuscitated often recount events in the language that one associates with dream imagery.  Walking to the light and meeting friends and loved ones who are already there.  Even as much as we don’t understand this kind of near death testimony, we cannot help but be intrigued by this kind of information and how it comes to us.  None of us could ever want or try to make this sort of serendipitous experience happen to us and so the sheer serendipity of this experience fascinates us.

  One of the things that makes us vulnerable about death and dying is the fact that our lives and this world seem so unfinished and incomplete.  Our relationships are perpetually unfinished and incomplete.  We did not, could not say everything we wanted to say to someone before they left this world.  The popular necromancer John Edward functions for people who have this need to know that their faithful departed loved ones are “okay.”  He purports to communicate with the departed spirits on behalf of the living to bring assurance of their well-being.  It is not uncommon for people to have dreams or experiences of audible contact with departed loved ones. 

  Another intimation of the afterlife occurs because you and I have hopes and dreams that will not be realized.  Hope is such a profound desire; it is too big for the limitations of one body located in space and time.  One wonders why we are made to have such profound eternity crammed into such small containers, except for always showing us that we have plenty of growing room and not much reason to judge other people.  Profound eternity crammed into such small vessels is a continuous invitation to creativity as this endless realm of Possibilities continuously flirts with us to find new actual combinations of application for our lives.

  My purpose is not to cast value judgments upon the various ways in which people deal with the afterlife; their own and that of others.  My purpose is simply to note that as humans we do it in various ways and so it must be a universal condition to think about not being in life the way in which we are.  The notion of the afterlife functions in some way for us whether theist or atheist or agnostic.  One’s adamant denial of the afterlife is even more proof of it actually functioning in a person’s life.

  So get to Easter, preacher, surely you digress.  The Easter event:  I imagine a situation of some people who were so in love with a charismatic friend, guru, healer, shaman, wisdom teacher, counselor and young man Jesus, they could not conceive of his actual life ending nor could they conceive that their accessible relationship with him would ever end.  They could not conceive of this rich friendship ever coming to an end.

  The resurrection of Jesus is when the power of God worked with the power of friendship in the hearts of his friends who experienced such grief. The power of God working with the power of human grief  brought Christ to appear to them again in ways that were recognizable by them such that the stories were written.  The profundity of this reappearance has created a ripple effect in the history of humanity and the waves of these resurrection appearances arrive to us today bringing us hope.  If we know that one person has made it, then everyone makes it.  If we know that Christ lives on, we know that the eternal hope in us that makes us always feel unfinished is not a cruel hoax.  Rather that eternal hope is the endless deliciousness of affirmation, saying continuously, “you go girl, you go boy…and do it on and on and on.”  Not ever being finished is the gift of eternal life because it means always having a future.

  There is an insightful rebuke by Jesus of Mary Magdalene in the sepulcher garden, “Mary don’t hold onto me.”  Life with Jesus or anyone cannot be put in a freeze frame suspension.   Yes, it is so nice and wonderful, but let it go for some future forms of nice and wonderful.

  Mary, do not hold on to the physical Jesus, but let the risen Christ be the new interior guide of your life that lives in and through you.  

  If we understand this, we understand the spiritual methodology of the early Christians.  Do not   hold on to the physical Jesus; let him go and receive his Spirit as one’s very interior life of peace and comfort and divine comfort.  Let not eternal life be just an unknown future but be the qualitative presence of God’s Spirit in our lives now..

  Yes, we can have many different kinds of intimations, imaginations and entertainments about the afterlife; they all have a function for our psyches now.  But know this:  these imaginations are born from creative word and spirit who is eternal resurrection life in us now, not delayed until our physical bodies die, but present even now.  This reality of profound Hope crammed into our little bodily vessels now is the reality of our Easter shout:  Alleluia, Christ is Risen.  The Lord is Risen indeed.  Alleluia.  Amen.