That We All May Be One

It’s hard to overstate the symbolic significance of events surrounding Pope Francis’ recent trip to a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos last week. First of all, the media-savvy pontiff was well aware that his very visit would shed the light of the world’s press on the faces of these victims of the greatest human tragedy in our current time.

Secondly, of course, he not only  visited the refugee community he “walked his talk” by flying twelve Syrian refugees back to Rome. Even he admitted that this was but “a drop of water in the sea” of Europe’s migration crisis, but if every Christian community in the world would follow his model, there would be no refugee crisis anywhere in the world.

Related items got little attention: He made this visit with the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, representing the Orthodox churches. This great man, often known as the “Green Patriarch” because of his strong environmental stands, was sadly neglected by most press reports and yet is the titular head of the second largest Christian communion in the world just as Francis is the actual leader of the largest. This ecumenical gesture is the latest in a movement toward healing the split between East and West in the Christian world which has existed for more than a thousand years.

Ecumenism extended to inter-religious awareness as the twelve Syrian refugees (members of three families) turned out to be Muslims, not Christians. This sends a clear message to the world about the need better to integrate Muslims into Western society because, Francis said, “Their privilege is that they are children of God.” In other words, human beings.

The Roman Catholic community of Sant’Egidio will actually welcome these refugees into their headquarters in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood. I have worshiped, broken bread, and traveled with this amazing, primarily lay-led charitable community which has quietly led to instances reconciliation around the world and daily feeds and shelters members of the “Roma” (or gypsy) community in the city of Rome. They, like the Bishop of Rome, are examples of Christianity at its finest, putting flesh around the spirit of love demonstrated by the religion’s Founder.

Finally, just before his departure, the Pope met briefly with U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Some have decried this as an openly political move by Sanders even while Pope Francis described it as “good manners and nothing more.” Actually, it was both. Sanders genuinely admires Francis’ “democratic socialism” (otherwise known as Catholic social teaching) and is married to a Roman Catholic.

But he could not have been unaware how this would have played with desired Catholic voters in New York who will be voting in the primary this Tuesday. Nor could Francis — again, extremely politically and socially aware — have failed to know what kind of signal he was sending about his admiration for (and support of?) Senator Sanders.

I just think this brief trip was an amazing and extremely effective gesture which reveals with startling clarity how the twin poles of “the Jesus Movement” (evangelism and reconciliation) so often spoken of by our own Presiding Bishop Michael Curry can come together seamlessly.

In the words of one young Facebook commentator on Pope Francis’ recent trip: “This guy is the real deal!”

Part of the significance of the Feast of the Annunciation is lost this year as it is celebrated today. The usual date of commemoration is, of course, March 25 but that was Good Friday this year. Hardly an appropriate day to remember Luke’s account of the announcement to Mary by the angel Gabriel that she would “conceive and bear a son and call his name Jesus.” (Luke 1:31)!

The March 25 date was originally chosen, of course, because it is exactly nine months before the church’s celebration of Jesus’ birth on December 25 and, even though this feast often falls in the Lenten or Easter Seasons, it begins once again the annual cycle of Jesus’ conception, birth, life and death which will lead to his eventual resurrection.

This year the feast of the Annunciation was delayed even longer than usual because of the early date of Easter and the need to “transfer” the feast not only until after Holy Week, but until after the days of Easter Week which also take precedence.

Be all that as it may, this is an important feast day to remember. It sets Mary on her path toward being the mother of the Messiah. It symbolizes the cosmic nature of this birth and the fact that humanity and divinity would meet in a special way in the womb of this Jewish teenager. It even provides the first line of famous mantra-prayer, “Hail Mary,full of grace, the Lord is with you….” (Luke 1:28)

Whenever I keep this feast, I am reminded of words from one of my mentors, Dean Alan Jones, sometime Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. He highlighted three dominant images of our Christian faith — a woman (and her baby); a ruined man (on a cross); and a community of persons (the Holy Trinity). And then he said something like,

“Confronted with these images — a woman and her baby; a ruined man; and a community of persons — how then shall we live?” 

How then shall we live? How indeed! We must surely work to protect all women and their children. We must stand with the last and the least, the broken and the ruined of this world. And we must be part of that community of love which is an earthly expression of that community of love found in the Godhead itself, that community which Christians call Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is how we at least begin to live.

And it all started with a woman and her baby…

Continuing our daily lectionary readings for Easter Week, we reach today the resurrection story according to Luke’s Gospel. (Luke 24:1-12) In it, we have one of the most powerful lines delivered in all the accounts. Coming to the tomb at dawn to anoint Jesus’ body properly for burial “the women” encounter two men (not simply the one man, as in Mark, or the angel, as in Matthew, but two men “in dazzling clothes!”). Their question to the women is profound, “Why seek the living among the dead?”

Far from being appreciated for the noble “act of corporal mercy” they were about to perform out of love for Jesus and grief at his loss, the women are gently upbraided for not remembering Jesus’ constant teaching that not even death would remove him, or his influence, from among them.

So, Mary Magdalene, Joanna (not Salome, as in Mark, and Mary the mother of James, perhaps “the other Mary” in Matthew) rush to tell the apostles who refuse to believe it until Peter ran to the tomb, found only the linen cloths, and returned to “mansplain” things to his buddies.

The point is, all of them…and all of us…need to stop seeking the living among the dead. That’s what participants in the “emergent church” movement and perhaps even the new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, mean by “the Jesus Movement.” It means that we Christians need to stop defining ourselves primarily by our membership in one of the tens of thousands of denominations which make up the church today, and start defining ourselves as “followers of Jesus” and actually begin doing what he commanded us to do — love God, love our neighbors as ourselves; and actually begin putting that love into action. We will never find the living among the dead!

It means that literalistic readings of the Bible which try to have us wrap our 21st century minds around pre-Copernican, pre-Newtonian, pre-Darwinian, pre-Freudian concepts are doomed to failure. As John Dominic Crossan has said, “The problem is not that the biblical writers wrote literally and we are now smart enough to understand them symbolically, but that they wrote symbolically and we are now stupid enough to try and understand them literally.” We will never find the living among the dead!

One more example: for all you constitutional “originalists” who want to maintain that the Constitution is best understood as a “dead” document the words of which can only be interpreted as the founders would have understood them in their day, rather than seeing it as a living, breathing document which must constantly be interpreted for new challenges, some advice from Luke: Trust me, you will never find the living among the dead!

The point of Easter is that it is much more exciting and challenging it is to serve a risen Lord than a dead hero. Much more exciting and challenging to follow Jesus to Galilee and meet him there than continue to spend all our time taking care of his dead body.

Why seek the living among the dead?