That We All May Be One

Today’s First Reading from the Old Testament Book of Exodus is a familiar one to most of us. It’s the story of the Passover in which God frees the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, first by sending a series of plagues and pestilences on their Egyptian masters, and finally by slaying the first-born children of the Egyptians while “passing over” the homes of the Israelites which were marked with the blood of a lamb.
It’s a strange story even though it has become a classic one for so many. It’s a bedrock story for the Jews, marking their Exodus from Egypt which they celebrate each year at the feast of Passover. It’s become a favorite for many freedom and revolutionary movements because of its insistence that God is on the side of the oppressed and will fight for them against their oppressors. And, of course, we Christians read this story every Maundy Thursday as we remember the institution of the Eucharist at the last Passover meal Jesus shared with his friends on the night before he died.
Yet, as I say, it’s a strange story and a bit hard to square with what Christians actually believe and teach about God. No doubt there was an historical recollection about various plagues and pestilences which afflicted the Egyptians in those days. Such natural disasters were common in that part of the world and still are, with the regular flooding of the Nile and the havoc that can wreak – flies, frogs, and all the rest of it! But did God actually cause these disasters to punish the Egyptians? I wonder…
No doubt diseases as fierce as the Ebola scourge sweeping through Africa today killing men, women and children indiscriminately occurred in the 13 century BCE as well. But would God have wiped out those precious little ones just to make the point that he was on the side of the Jews in this Exodus event? I wonder…
Even the rabbis had a hard time getting their minds around such a concept of God. Commenting on the later story of the Exodus in which God drowns all the Egyptians in the Red Sea (or the “Sea of Reeds” as modern scholars believe that it was). A famous Midrash (or commentary) in the Jewish Talmud says this, “As the Egyptians started to drown in the Red Sea, the heavenly hosts began to sing praises, but God silenced the angels, saying, The works of my hands are drowning in the sea, and you wish to sing praises?’!”
Now, there is no doubt historically that the Jews spent time in Egyptian slavery, that they were led out of that condition by a great military leader named Moses, and that they spent decades in the desert, as a nomadic people without a country, trying to figure out what God’s will for them was…and where they were to settle down. But the stories of that Exodus were written centuries after the event, by still primitive people who believed in a kind of tribal god who would take care of them and was quite capable of slaughtering anyone who opposed them – or whose land they wished to occupy!
As Christians though, we have to read these texts in the context of the whole sweep of Scripture. There is an unfolding of our knowledge of God throughout the Bible (even though it’s sometimes a somewhat “uneven” unfolding). The tribal god of the ancient Israelites gives way to the God of the prophets who stands with people in their suffering and whose ultimate aim is the salvation of the whole world! Isaiah puts it best, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)
And, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is remembered as a proponent of non-violence saying things like, “You have heard it said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good…” (Matthew 5:43-45).
St. Paul and even Peter come to believe that God has opened the gates of eternal life to all people – to Gentiles as well as to Jews. And the New Testament ends with the great vision of St. John the Divine in Revelation: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” (Revelation 7:9) Quite a different picture of God than the ancient one of a tribal Deity slaughtering the innocents to win freedom for the Chosen People!
The point is we have to read Scripture in its whole context and understand that the Bible is not just one book. It is a library of books. And in that library are books of history and law, of poetry and song, of myth and fiction. As Christians, we must read the Bible through the lens of Jesus and to weigh any depiction of God against the fuller picture of God we believe Jesus came to paint for us.
As modern people, we also have to understand something called “progressive revelation” and that means that, just as we get a clearer and clearer picture of the nature of God as the Scriptures unfold over time, so the Holy Spirit continues to lead us further and further “into all truth” as Jesus promised that the Spirit would.
So, if you’re going to read the Bible (and I devoutly hope that you do!) please do not do it without the help of a good, modern translation of the text, with footnotes and introductions of each book which can help you understand what kind of literature it is, how it came to be written, and just how it fits into the overall biblical record. In my opinion, the best translation we have of the Bible today is the New Revised Standard Version and it comes with such notes and explanations right there alongside the text. It will really help in understanding and sorting out some of the tough passages in the Bible…such as our First Reading today.
And, while Christians will no doubt continue to have debates about how literally to take certain passages of Scripture, there need not be such doubt about what they mean! And the point of the Exodus story is clear: God is always on the side of the oppressed and the marginalized. God’s people have been able to look back, time after time and through the centuries, to discover God’s saving hand at work in their lives. And we have been able to praise God for that in the words of the Psalmist: “Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, (God’s) praise in the assembly of the faithful!”
And, when all is said and done, what remains for us is to live lives of thanksgiving and gratitude to that one God. And to do so, guided by the wise counsel of St. Paul in today’s Epistle:
“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law…The commandments…are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:8-10 passim)
And it is by the law of love…that we shall all be judged.
Thanks be to God!

This morning in church I was struck by the thought that, if we confessed our sins to one another as often as we confess them to God, more actual healing and reconciliation might take place.

For example, what if we said to our loved ones (instead of to God…who in any case knows our needs before we ask and our ignorance in asking, and is perfect love and forgiveness anyway)…what if we said something like:

“Sweetheart, I confess that I have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed; by what I’ve done, and by what I’ve left undone. I have not loved you with my whole heart…I’m truly sorry and I humbly repent… (please) forgive me…”

After all,doesn’t St. James say, “…confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” ? (James 5:16)

I note that George Carey, one-time Archbishop of Canterbury, has come out in favor of “assisting dying” under certain circumstances. Surely, this is about the only thing he and John Shelby Spong have ever agreed on! Archbishop Desmond Tutu has also expressed his support of this over the last several days.

In recent years, I have found myself moving toward that position as well, not because of any personal or family need at the moment but because, like Lord Carey, I believe that modern technology has brought us to a place where this option may need to be available to some whose lives have been extended to the point where there is little to do except suffer endless torment day after miserable day. Pain management has not kept up with life-lengthening measures.

I am aware of the arguments against assisted dying: the “slippery slope” which could lead to a devaluing of the aged; the economic factors which could result in families “hastening” the dying process for material gain in inheritances, for example; societal cooperation with a psychologically disturbed person simply wishing to end it all prematurely.

Those arguments need to be taken seriously and discussed rationally and compassionately. Enormous ethical problems are presented by all kinds of medical procedures and end of life issues anyway today – from organ transplantation to appropriate levels of medication to be administered to assist in pain management – and yet these challenges do not prevent us from making decisions in these circumstances and living with the consequences.

I have thought about this issue for many, many years since, as a 17 year old hospital orderly working the night shift, I cared for a 43 year old woman with advanced, irreversible Parkinson’s disease, completely paralyzed, unable to eat solid food, lying immobilized in her hospital bed save for a steady tremor which racked her entire body and had created a bed sore at the base of her spine large enough to put one’s fist in, who whispered tortuously one night as I replenished her water pitcher, “Please, kill me.”

Of course, I was not tempted to do so, nor do I believe that this is a case which would likely be considered for assistance in dying. Nonetheless, I understood her request.

I also have rarely felt so “right” in taking an action as I did gazing lovingly through my tears deep into the soft brown eyes of a chocolate Lab as he closed them for the last time ending long hours of pain and fear, euthanized in the office of a compassionate veterinarian who joined me in my grief. This was not sentimentality, but compassion.

If we can thoughtfully and prayerfully take such merciful action in the lives of our beloved pets, why can we not at least discuss – practically and theologically – when and under what circumstances such compassion might not also be shown to our other loved ones.

One of my responsibilities these days is representing the Diocese of Chicago on the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago. This is an interfaith organization that has been around for decades and works to see how faith communities can stand together around issues in our city like gun violence and poverty and education. One of the founding members, who still attends meetings regularly, is a 96 year old rabbi named Herman Schaalman.

Herman is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emmanuel (same name as your church!) on the north side of Chicago. He served there for decades and worked with Cardinal Joseph Bernadin and our own Bishop Montgomery and many other religious leaders who were early pioneers in interfaith relations.

One of the things Herman never tires of reminding us is that Jesus was a Jew! In fact, Jesus was not only a practicing Jew, but he was a Pharisee. Maybe not a card carrying member of the Pharisaic party, but he was actually closer to them than to the other parties in 1^st century Judaism.

We get the idea that Pharisees were the bad guys, but the reason Jesus gets so angry at them and the reason they are mentioned so often is that they were actually the more progressive, “reformist” party in town to whom Jesus probably felt closer than he did to the Sadduccees or the Zealots or even the Essenes. The reason he got so frustrated with them was because he thought they ought to know better!

We perhaps need no further reminder that Jesus considered himself an observant Jew than the conclusion of our Gospel reading this morning from Matthew. This gospel writer emphasizes even more than Mark or Luke or John the “Jewishness” of Jesus and, in today’s reading quotes Jesus as saying:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until it is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)

So, Jesus was a supporter of keeping the Law of Moses. But, like any good rabbi, he was not above re-interpreting the common understanding of a particular law. Later on in this same 5^th chapter of Matthew, he enters into a long discourse in which the recurrent phrase is “You have heard it said (in the Law)….but I say to you…” In these statements, he seeks to go the core of a Law’s meaning. And to see what it’s really all about.

Jesus also stands directly in the line of Jewish prophets like Isaiah who were not above challenging the religious establishment’s understanding of the Law with powerful preaching like we heard in our First Lesson today. Isaiah was taking on certain pious attitudes toward fasting, and he says:

You say, “Why do we fast, but you do not see (O God) Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”  Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high…”

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly.” (Isaiah 58:3 ff, passim)

I know that you at Emmanuel, Rockford for more than 30 years have taken words like those seriously in ministries like your Soup Kitchens, and the Shelter Care Ministries, and the Jeremiah Development.  And you have done that because you believe that you are following Jesus in doing so. And so you are!

But even Jesus was following in a long line of fighters for justice and peace among his people, Israel.  You and I, as Christians, will claim a lot more for Jesus than our spiritual forebears, the Jews will. But, at the very least, we will claim for him an honored place among the great prophets, teachers, and martyrs of the Hebrew tradition.

That place is at least a starting point for dialogue with our Jewish, and even our Muslim, brothers and sisters. They will honor our conviction that we believe Jesus to be, not only a prophet, but our savior and lord. As long as we honor our common heritage with them as children of Abraham, the ancestor of all who put their trust in the One God.

It’s an honor to be with you today, dear friends. To be with a Christian community that has sought to heed Jesus’ challenge to be salt for the earth and lights for the world. You have put your lamp on a lampstand and, as such, you have let your light so shine before others in this community, that they see your good works, and give glory to your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16). Soon you will begin a new chapter in your life together – with the arrival of your new priest – you just need to know how proud we are of you in this diocese. And we look forward to seeing just what the next steps in your journey will bring. It’s bound to be exciting!

Epiphany, as you probably know, is the missionary and evangelistic season of the Church Year. It’s a time of year when we remind ourselves of what we prayed for in this morning’s Collect: “Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works…”

In other words, just as Jesus called Peter and Andrew, James and John and the other disciples to “fish for people” as we heard in this morning Gospel, so we too are called – by virtue of our Baptisms — to reach out to other people, to share the Good News of God’s love, and to invite them to join us in the communion of Christ’s Church. Christianity, like Islam (and un-like our parent religion Judaism and most Eastern Religions) Christianity… is a missionary religion!

That doesn’t always sound so good to our 21^st century ears. Missionaries, for some, bring up images of high pressure, guilt-producing evangelists whether on TV, in pulpits, or in parking lots. And, because we’re a little more knowledgeable and perhaps more honest, about our history as the Christian Church today, we are aware that terrible atrocities have been committed by Christian missionaries in our past…and all of it in the name of Jesus!

Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “When the missionaries came, we had the land and they had the Bible. They said, ‘Let us pray’ and when we opened our eyes, we had the Bible, and they had the land!” So it’s no wonder that “missionary work” or even “evangelism” have become dirty words for many people today – including many who are faithful members of the Church.

But, even if we can convince ourselves that those bad images are caricatures of true mission and true evangelism, and that real mission and evangelism simply mean sharing the Good News that God is Love, and that all people are invited into a relationship with that good God which also entails loving those other people and working to make this world a better place…even so, the work of evangelism is not so easy!

Seems like it was pretty easy for Jesus. He just said “Follow me” and they did! (Actually, it may have been a little more complicated than that. He may well have had a prior relationship with Peter and Andrew and the others, and our story today may just have been a snapshot of that moment when his faithful mentorship of them finally paid off). But, after all, he WAS Jesus!

Yet for us, evangelism – sharing the Good News and getting other people to accept it – is not so easy. Never has been! For one thing, the Church – which is supposed to be the base camp and launching pad for all effective evangelism sometimes gets in the way. The Church can actually be excess baggage that keeps people away from Christ instead of inviting them in. I know you’ve had some difficult times in the not-so-distant past here at Emmanuel and you’re using this interim period to do some much-need healing. Word has it you’re doing really well and the healing and recovery process is well underway.

Please know that you are not the “Lone Ranger.” Almost every congregation I know has passed through times of struggle and trial, argument and disagreement at some point. And that didn’t start with liturgical revision or the ordination of women or gay folks.  Hear again the words of a missionary bishop to one of his congregations in about the year 55:

“I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no division among you…For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you…!” Duuu-aahhh! Christians quarreling? Imagine that! And good old Chloe – engaging in some of those parking lot vestry meetings and tattling on the mischief-makers to the Bishop!

Yes, the Church is a flawed instrument, dear friends. Because, in addition to her divine calling, the Church is a human institution made up of human beings like us and, as long as that is the case, it will not be perfect. Not perfect…but it is essential. You cannot be a “solo Christian.” You can believe in God, accept that Jesus Christ is who he said he was, say your prayers, and even be a good person on your own.

But Christianity is, and always has been, a communal affair. Jesus called those twelve disciples as a first order of business. The earliest image of the Church was that of a Body, made up of many members. It was also called the People of God, the New Israel, a holy nation, and a royal priesthood. All of those are corporate images, images of a family (even if it’s sometimes a dysfunctional family!) but living and working together!

So the work you are doing here, during this interim period, is very important. You are doing what bishops and priests, deacons and lay leaders find ourselves doing a lot of the time – you are binding up the wounds in the Body of Christ! You are healing Christ’s Church! And why are you doing that? So that this portion of that Body may be an ever more faithful and effective base camp and launching pad for one of the primary vocations of the Church – mission and evangelism.

For as St. Teresa of Avila once reminded us: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on the world. Yours are the feet with which he walks about doing good.”

That’s real mission and real evangelism, beloved.  And I’m glad that we’re in this…together!

There has been a good bit of buzz in the secular press, and even in the religious press, lately about a new book entitled Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. The thing about the book which has gotten the most attention, unfortunately, is that it is written by a young, extremely attractive Western Muslim named Reza Aslan. One typically uninformed Fox news interviewer wondered aloud why any Muslim would be interested in writing a book about Jesus!

She was apparently blissfully unaware that Muslims have an extremely reverent view of Jesus, and of his mother Mary, and that the Qu’ran has a good bit to say about them both. Actually, this particular Muslim, religious scholar Reza Aslan, once converted to Evangelical Christianity, but – finding that kind of fundamentalism extremely unsatisfying — returned to a moderate expression of Islam and he remains a practicing Muslim today.

His book, as the title might indicate, depicts a very human Jesus who was living in radical political times. Very few of his findings would be news to biblical scholars today or to most clergy who have received a good theological education in the last fifty years. I rather enjoyed the book, which is extremely well-written, even though (like most Christians) I would want to go farther in my claims about Jesus than this Muslim scholar is willing to go.

But I was struck by one very provocative statement Dr. Aslan makes in the early part of the book. He says: if all you knew about Jesus of Nazareth was one phrase from the historic catholic creeds, you would know all you need to know about him. That phrase? “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” Aslan’s point is that the fact that Jesus was put to death by crucifixion at the order of the Roman governor of Judea absolutely cements the fact that he was seen as some kind of revolutionary and as a threat to the occupying power of Rome in first century Jerusalem.

Crucifixion was a favorite form of capital punishment used by the Romans. Jews were not permitted to execute people in that way. In fact, the Jewish exercise of capital punishment (which was usually stoning) was severely limited by the Romans at this time in history. They were a subject people and the Roman government was in charge of keeping the peace and punishing criminals, not the Jews.

You all know that crucifixion was a particularly brutal form of torture and death. It was reserved for political prisoners and part of the drill was to parade them through the streets, put markers above their heads on their crosses, and leave the bodies hanging there for days to send a stern warning to anyone else who might be tempted to challenge the authority of Rome or to preach a message of liberation to her subject people across the Empire.

There are all kinds of hints in today’s Gospel which indicate that Luke was fully aware of all this. First of all, they crucify Jesus between two “criminals,” but the word really means “bandits” and was reserved for Jewish revolutionaries who were not above using violence in their resistance to the Roman occupation of their land. Secondly, Jesus is accused of being some kind of “king” and the inscription on his cross makes that clear. Anyone claiming to be a “king” in the first century Roman Empire was challenging the “kingship” of Caesar and that was a sure invitation to an early demise!

The rebels dying alongside Jesus certainly think Jesus is a king: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” (Luke 23:33 ff.) And they ask to be remembered when he comes into his kingdom. They were not talking about heaven here, dear friends. They were talking about a Jewish kingdom free from their oppressive occupiers, the Romans. It is Jesus who reframes it when he says, “Today you will be with me…in Paradise!”

Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say – with Reza Aslan – that if we know that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate – we know all there is to know about him that we need to know. The author of Colossians today has a whole lot more to say about who Jesus is than that – “image of the invisible God…firstborn of all creation…the head of the body, the church…the firstborn from the dead” …and a lot more.

But, on Christ the King Sunday, on a Sunday when we are likely to sing hymns glorifying the kingly Christ and “crowning him with many crowns,” we need to remember what kind of King he was. He was a king who had no place to lay his head. He was a king who hung around with outcasts and sinners. He was a king who fed hungry people and wept over the fate of Jerusalem. He was a king who overthrew the tables of the money changers and, three days later, washed his friends’ feet. He was a king who refused to buckle under to the Roman government. And, therefore, he was a king who “was crucified under Pontius Pilate.”

Our Collect for Todays says it all: “Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule…”

Oh, Jesus was a king all right. But a king…like…no…other!