That We All May Be One

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in my sermon, we’ve been hearing a series of “thundering” messages from the Book of the Prophet Hosea in recent weeks. And it’s easy sometimes to stereotype the Old Testament as portraying an angry God, or a God of wrath, while seeing the New Testament as being all about a loving and forgiving God.

But that’s much too simplistic as our Readings today make clear. There are plenty of passages about God’s love in the Old Testament, and plenty of passages about God’s judgment in the New! After weeks of confronting Israel about their selfishness and greed, today Hosea speaks this message from God to his people:

“When Israel was a child, I loved him…(but)…the more I called them, the more they went from me…Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.  I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.  I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them…How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?…My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger…I will return them to their homes, says the Lord.” (Hosea  passim)

What a beautiful description of God as a loving parent. A parent who gave birth to the children of Israel, who taught them “to walk” by establishing a Covenant with them, who “bent down to them” in love over and over and over again, even when they rebelled, even when they were faithless – God was faithful. Very much like a loving parent, perhaps disappointed and let down by a child, but always ready to reach out and help…and to forgive!

The Psalmist knows of this loving, Hebrew God: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, and his mercy endures for ever, “ the Psalmist sings, “…let them give thanks to the Lord for his mercy and the wonders he does for his children. For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.” (Psalm 107 passim). Once again, this is not an Old Testament God of wrath, but a redeemer and a protector of his people.

On the other hand, we have some pretty harsh words from the New Testament today, the author of Colossians writes, “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed…On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient…But now you must get rid of all such things – anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.” (Colossians 3 passim)

And Jesus himself has sharp words in his parable of the rich man who could think of nothing but hoarding and hoarding more wealth, and satisfying his selfish desires instead of thinking about anyone else, “You fool!” God says in the parable, “This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” (Luke 12  passim).  So much for “gentle Jesus, meek and mild!”

So how are we to understand all this talk about God’s wrath and anger…and the corresponding descriptions of God’s mercy and compassion? We even have to deal with it in our Liturgy! Every week we say that “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed by thought, word, and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.” Pretty scary words!

And right before coming up for Communion, we often say something called the “Prayer of Humble Access” in which we declare ourselves “not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under (God’s) Table” – presumably because of those “manifold sins and (that) wickedness” we confessed earlier!   How are we to understand all this?

Well, Rebecca Craig, a writer and ELCA pastor in California, puts it this way, “The key to understanding God’s wrath lies in understanding the nature of God’s love.  For anyone who has loved another should recognize the reality that love, while at times wonderful, can also hurt – more deeply than if love were not involved at all. The wrath of God is the puzzling concept that God loves our neighbors so much that God gets angry with us when we do things that cause them to suffer…God gets “angry” with the way human beings treat one another! This “anger” is what might be termed “God’s loving wrath.” After all…who do you get angriest at? The people you love the most!”

Now, I don’t want to “anthropomorphize” God too much, make God seem “too” much like us.  I don’t think God’s anger or wrath is exactly like ours or that it comes out as destructively and thoughtlessly as mine does sometimes. My anger is often a human response to frustration! I get frustrated because I can’t do something or things don’t go my way and, if I’m not careful, I can lash out with angry words or actions. I don’t think God is that petty.

But God did give us free will. We often abuse that free will and, in doing so, hurt others and frustrate God’s longing for us to live in peace and harmony. I can understand God being frustrated at that, perhaps even being tempted to step in and overrule our freedom in order to set things right. But, being faithful to the original design, God doesn’t do that. And so whatever the Divine version of anger or frustration is, God experiences it!

But the Good News today is found back in that First Lesson from Hosea. “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel…My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger…” The Good News is that, while God may experience something like our anger and our wrath when we hurt one another or fail to live up to the best that is within us, for God, compassion and forgiveness ALWAYS trumps that anger and that wrath.

For,  these words too are found in our Liturgy, “Almighty God…who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all those who with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto him, have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver your from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness, and bring you to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

And even though some of us may not feel “worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under (God’s) Table, that same prayer reminds us that this is “the same Lord whose property is always….Always….ALWAYS…to have mercy!”

FRIDAY MORNING

It was on a Friday morning/ that they took me from the cell,
And I saw they had a carpenter/ to crucify as well.
You can blame it onto Pilate/ You can blame it on the Jews.
You can blame it on the devil/ It’s God that I accuse.
It’s God they ought to crucify/ instead of you and me,
I said to the carpenter/ a-hangin’ on the tree.
To hell with Jehovah/ to the carpenter, I said,
I wish that a carpenter/ had made the world instead.

-Sidney Carter

“Holy God, make us one” is the “breath prayer” (Christian mantra) I have been using for the last year or so. I pray it in time with my breathing when I’m trying to “center,” fight off anxiety, go to sleep, or at other odd times! This personalized form of the Jesus prayer has been taught for years by an old friend, Ron Delbene, and I value it highly.

You simply name before God your deepest need or desire (in my case, that we all be one), then couple that with a favorite “name” for God — Lord, Savior, Jesus, Spirit, Holy God, etc. And then put those together to craft a simple six to eight syllable prayer…mantra.

Regular readers of this web log will surmise that I began praying this with special intention for the ecumenical movement and the search for Christian unity. But I have recently seen it as perfectly applicable in so many areas of our divided and broken society and culture.  We need to “be one:

in our families…in our own Christian communions/denominations…between the churches…one some level, even between our major faith traditions…

but also in our communities, so divided between rich and poor…in our nation, split right down the middle between so-called “red states” or populations and “blue states” or populations (witness the stalemate over health care reform…)

in our world, with “wars and rumors of wars” flaring all around us…Iraq and Afghanistan…Sudan…Nigeria…the Middle East…Iran following us into the absurdity of nuclear arms…so many more…

Our need to stand in solidarity with those in Haiti…Chile…Turkey…and other places devastated by natural disasters. We need to “be one” with them as well.

So join me in praying…and working…toward that unity…

Holy God, Make Us One…

Last week the spiritual leader of our worldwide Anglican Communion – Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams – completed a four-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He preached to hundreds of people at the Jordan River, after dedicating the cornerstone of a new church to be built at the site where tradition says Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.

In reporting on this visit, the Washington Post quoted the Archbishop as being “deeply worried” about the dwindling numbers of Christians in the Middle East, and he stressed that it was the church’s duty to support Christians who face hardship due to regional conflicts. Later, he visited Gaza and the West Bank, after traveling to Jerusalem for meetings with the Chief Rabbi as part of our continuing interfaith dialogue.

Christians make up only about five percent of Jordan’s six million people, and we have really only a minority presence in most other countries in the region. So, Jordanian Anglicans were overjoyed at the Archbishop’s visit. One of them, named Ghazi Musharbash – who cares for orphans in Amman — praised Archbishop Williams for his stance on the Arab – Israeli conflict, saying that he has always pushed for a “just peace” knowing that a resolution to the seemingly endless conflict is crucial for Christians to remain in the Middle East. “We don’t want our fellow Christians from the West coming to see only stones and museums,” he said.

As I read our Gospel for today this week, I was struck by how long the holy city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land itself has undergone such suffering and strife! Jesus himself (like Rowan Williams) was “deeply worried” about the situation there in his time! “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, “ Jesus cried, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!  See, your house is left to you.  And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (Luke 13:34-25)

Indeed, some would say that the current struggles in the Holy Land go back way back beyond the creation of the modern state of Israel…back beyond the Roman occupation…back beyond the Exile…and even the Exodus from Egypt. Maybe all the way back to our story from Genesis today (almost 4,000 years ago) and the first Abrahamic Covenant.  After all it wasn’t an empty land Abraham was promised.  There were already people living there.

Unfortunately, our Old Testament Reading today stopped about two verses short, but there were quite a few people living there if we are to believe the list in Genesis 15:19-21: the Kenites; Kenizzites; Kadmonites; Hittites; Perizzites; Rephaim; the Amorites; the Canaanites; the Girgashites; and the Jebusites. And all those people had to find some place to live!

Well, dear friends, believe me, I have so solution to offer for the intractable problems of the Middle East — except to be clear that endless fighting is not that answer!  But I do know that we are called to care about that part of the world. It is, after all, “where it all happened” for us!  Every Friday afternoon during Lent as we walk the “Way of the Cross” here in this Cathedral, we are reminded that all these events took place just outside the holy city of Jerusalem.

Just over a week ago, I suggested during a Quiet Day that we sometimes are too narrow in our prayers. We pray for ourselves, and our loved ones; we pray for the sick and suffering – and well we should.  But it’s also possible to pray your way through the daily newspaper (that is, if you have hours enough in your day, to lift up all the pain and the suffering you will find in those pages!). Yet, even stopping short of that, we can – and should – pray for big issues and for global concerns as well as for our personal ones.

Psalm 122 says “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May they prosper who love you/ Peace be within your walls and quietness within your towers/ For my brethren and companions’ sake, I pray for your prosperity” Certainly that’s what Jesus was doing in our Gospel today. And it’s what we should do as well. But we can do more than that.

For almost a century The Episcopal Church has taken a special offering on Good Friday for The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East. That diocese was formed in 1841, twelve years before the Diocese of Iowa, and since 1922 members of The Episcopal Church have given thanks for this extraordinary relationship through their generous giving to the Good Friday Offering. We’ll have special envelopes in the pews this Good Friday to enable us all to join in that effort.

I share some of this today to remind you that, as Episcopalians, we are part of more than just Trinity Cathedral. It’s right and proper that we identify ourselves primarily as part of this worshipping community.  This is where we meet Jesus Christ each week in Word and Prayer and Sacrament.  This is the Christian community that supports us in our journey and encourages us along the way.  This neighborhood and its surrounding community is where we make our primary witness and service.

But we are part of the Diocese of Iowa, part of The Episcopal Church, part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and indeed of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church we confess every Sunday morning in the Creed. I’ve been privileged, as a bishop of this church over the last 22 years, to see much of that Church at work all around the world.  I’m proud to be a part of it…and I hope you are too.

So, as you say your prayers this Lent, pray for Trinity Cathedral – especially during our interim period as we seek to rebuild and focus our efforts to be in a good place for the next stage of our life and ministry here. Pray too for The Episcopal Church throughout the world – in Haiti as they rebuild, in Jerusalem and the Middle East as they seek to remain faithful in the midst of strife and conflict. Pray for the Church in Sudan as they prepare to seat their new bishop, our friend Samuel Peni, in the Diocese of Nzara today.

We’re a part of all that. And your faithfulness here…helps them… over there. Thanks!

While I would never seek to take away any kind of spiritual solace people such as those suffering in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, I am always so astounded when people say things like “there, but for the grace of God go I” or even “God saved me from losing my life in the rubble.”

What kind of God provides grace for some and not for others? Is that what we mean by “grace?” What kind of God saves one and abandons another? Not the God I have come to know and love through Jesus Christ!

I will not even bother to comment on “Christian” comments like Pat Robertson’s that this disaster was somehow God’s punishment on the people of Haiti. Or the young men I sat next to at a bar the other day who were talking about how “those people deserved what they got…all that AIDS down there and all…”

“Natural disasters” are always the hardest for me to understand. One killed by a drunk driver is a tragedy, but we know who was responsible. A smoker dying of lung cancer is so sad…but we know why…and so do they

Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunames and the like are harder. Part of the brokenness of creation, I guess. Or, part of the ongoing creative process and formation of the earth. But people sometimes get in the way. People live (or are forced to live) in the wrong places and under difficult circumstances. And they suffer or lost their lives because of it.

When there is apparently no one at “fault,” I guess we can lay the blame at God’s doorstep (talk about the ultimate “buck stopping here!”). But, when we meditate on the Cross, and hear the Incarnate God crying out in forsakenness, perhaps we are able to hear that God crying along with us and with the innocent victims, even as he provides “real” Grace in the time of their need.

“That We All May Be One” takes on a different tone in times like this. May we indeed Be One with those who suffer in Haiti and around the world. And may we know that we are all in need of God’s grace — all of us…at all times…

The Holy Name of Jesus,

Two themes merge in this evening’s celebration: our commemoration of the eighth day of Jesus’ life when he was formally given his name; and, of course, our celebration of New Year’s eve, the end of one year (and in this case decade) and the beginning of another.

Our Lessons tonight are all about names. The reading from Exodus is the source of the famous Priestly blessing (the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace). But every time we read the word “Lord” in English in this passage it is translating the Hebrew Word “Yahweh,” the very Name of God for the Jewish people. Just knowing that name (being on a first name basis with God) was enough to bring them peace…in the midst of every storm!

The Psalm says: O Lord our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world. The Name of Yahweh! The reading from Luke gives us our theme for the day and reminds us that Jesus was circumcised on his eighth day and “was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” (Luke 2:21). That name is Yeshua or Joshua in Hebrew and means “Yahweh saves” or “Yahweh will save.”

And finally Paul reminds the Christians in Philippi that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth…” (2:5-11) It’s all about names! And just as the Jews feel themselves to be on a first name basis with Yahweh, so Christians are on a first Name basis with Jesus. We don’t have to call him “our Lord” or “Christ” or even “Jesus Christ” (as though Christ was his last name!) We can simply call him Jesus, and in that intimacy, be addressing Yahweh, the God of Israel as well!

This has been one heck of year and, even more, one heck of a decade. Beginning with 9/11…proceeding through two wars (still raging) in Iraq and Afghanistan…and concluding with perhaps the greatest economic meltdown since the Great Depression. It’s been a decade of violence, greed and corruption. Yet, through it all, the sacred Name of Yahweh has sustained the Jewish people; and the Holy Name of Jesus has sustained us.

There’s a great Eastern Orthodox prayer which comes to us from the Desert Fathers and Mothers and from the great monks and nuns of the Russian Church. It pieces together two lines from the Gospels and simply reads, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” It is said over and over again, like a calming mantra, often in time with one’s breathing. I often use it to fall off to sleep, or when I’m anxious or worried. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

I commend it to your use in the New Year. It is said that, if you pray it often enough, the prayer actually enters your heart and prays itself whether you are conscious or not. What better way to honor the point of our Collect tonight, “Eternal Father, you gave to your incarnate Son the holy Name of Jesus to the sign of our salvation: Plant in every heart, we pray, the love of him who is the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ…”

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.  Lord have mercy upon us all…in this New Year!

A couple of weeks ago I was part of a Jewish-Christian dialogue sponsored by the National Council of Churches in Washington DC. This is an ongoing group which both Brian Grieves and I have been part of for a number of years. Initially it was set up to see if there was something Jews and Christians could say together to our government about peace in the Middle East.  In other words, to see if we could live up to the kind of cooperative witness Jesus is suggesting in today’s Gospel when he says, “…whoever is not against you is for you!”

 We thought we could at least agree to call for a cessation of violence on all sides, and a commitment to a two-state solution in the Holy Land, and a few general principles like that. And I do think we share those same basic commitments, but it has proven a lot harder than any of us imagined really to speak together, with one voice. Every time we get close, something happens in Lebanon or Gaza or a new election takes place over there, and we seem to get stymied!

 At this last meeting at least part of the reason for that became clear to me. We like to do text studies together when we can and, this time, my friend Rabbi Eric Greenberg did one on “Zion in Hebrew Scripture” and I followed up with a Bible study on “Zion in the New Testament.” It was amazing to me that, of the seven times the word “Zion” is used in the New Testament, it invariably refers (as our First Lesson from Zechariah did today) to “Jerusalem” or to the “people of Jerusalem”or to the Jewish people in general.

 “Thus says the Lord: I will return to Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts shall be called the holy mountain.” (Zechariah 8:3).

 Rabbi Greenberg, however, in his study, never referred to Zion as “Jerusalem” but always to passages from the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) about the promise of the Land to Israel, and about the irrevocable Covenant God made with Israel, an essential part of which is “the Land!” So often, we simply seem to talk past each other in these discussions and it’s because our narratives are so different! And, even though we share parts of the same Bible, we look to different texts as authorities for our various positions!

 Well, I don’t know how we will resolve those issues ultimately. But I do know we have to keep the conversations going, and that we all have to start from a place of humility and penitence for so many things we’ve done and said in the past. Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. They will be in synagogues all day, examining their lives and confessing their sins.

 I think we would do well to join them in that, so I’ll be including a “Confession of Sin” in our own liturgy today. Because it’s only by starting from that same, shared space of penitence that we can ever hope to see the day promised by God in our First Lesson:

 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of their great age.  And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets.  Thus says the Lord of hosts: Even though it seems impossible to the remnant of this people in these days, should it also seem impossible to me?…I will save my people from the east country and from the west country; and I will bring them to live in Jerusalem.  They shall be my people and I will be their God, in faithfulness and in righteousness.” (Zechariah 8:4-8)     

 May it be so…one day! Amen.