That We All May Be One

Shortly after Mark’s account of Jesus riding into Jerusalem, setting up the inevitable conflict with the religious and political authorities of his day, we have the story of him “turning the tables” on the money changers in the temple (Mark 11:12-25). This event has often been interpreted as having something to do with commerce being carried on in this sacred place. But there is something far more important going on than that.

The “money changers” and “those who sold doves” were not the primary targets of Jesus’ anger here. They were actually providing a service to the people because pilgrims to Jerusalem needed someone to exchange currency for them and, because it was impractical to transport animals for the temple sacrifices across the many miles of their journeys, they needed someone to provide what these devout folks needed to perform their religious duties.

Jesus was not exactly a fan of the sacrificial system, but this was not the “ditch he was prepared to die in.” On occasion he even told those whose healing he had facilitated to show themselves to the priests and make the appropriate sacrifice in thanksgiving for their healing.

The key to what Jesus was really on about has to do with the famous line, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers.” Think about it: a den of robbers is not where the primary transgressions are carried out. A den is where robbers might retreat to find safety (a “safe house” if you will) after they had done their dirty deeds elsewhere.

Jesus knew that the religious establishment of his day had been co-opted by the occupying Roman government and, in addition to the exorbitant taxation laid upon the people by the Romans, were taking advantage of their own people by requiring “tithes and offerings” the average peasant (who were Jesus’ primary followers) could hardly afford.

In fact, one reading of the story of the “widow’s mite” was not that she was being commended for “giving her last penny, all she had” but that Jesus was warning people that, while the rich folks could easily afford to give the great sums required by the chief priests, they — like the widow — must beware of the religious authorities’ tendency to take them for all they were worth!

So, Jesus was not really after the bottom-feeding money changers and dove peddlers in the temple, but the chief priests and levites who took advantage of the people six days a week and then retreat into their sanctuaries, their “den” on the high holy days.

Sound familiar?

New Testament scholars John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg have suggested that, on that first “Palm Sunday” there were two processions (parades) entering the holy city of Jerusalem. From the east, the familiar “peasants’ parade” with Jesus sitting atop a donkey and crowds of his supporters cheering him on the way as he brought his message of the reign of God right into the heart of the religious and political establishment.

From the west, this reading goes, a military procession (parade) approaches led by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate at the head of an army regiment complete with leather helmets, spears and swords, and an eagle atop the lead lance. Always conscious that large public celebrations like the Passover festival could erupt into violence and protest against the occupying Roman authority, it made sense to boost the number of available troops just in case, and to make a show of their entrance to discourage any disruptive activity.

Whether this reading of the story is is poetry or history, there is no doubt in my mind that the Palm Sunday entry set up an inevitable clash between the kingship of Caesar and the kingship of God and that Jesus knew precisely what he was doing in every detail. He chose to ride into town on a donkey symbolically identifying himself with the Messiah hoped for by the prophet Zechariah:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Sing aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey…” (Zechariah 9:9)

This was the kind of “enacted parable” made famous by prophets like Jeremiah who regularly provided such “visual aids” to underscore the message they believed they were to deliver from God to the people. If there was ever any doubt that Jesus considered himself as the Messiah, the anointed one of God chosen to bring freedom and peace to his people, this action alone should serve to put that doubt to rest.

He knew what he was doing. And his question to the crowds was, “Which parade do you want to be in — Caesar’s or God’s?”

Two thousand years later, the question remains: “Which parade do you want to be in — Caesar’s or God’s?

Remember that question on election day.

Occasionally, newspaper columnists (even conservative columnists!) write with the voice not only of a journalist, but as a prophet. Not a prophet who predicts the future, but a prophet in the biblical sense. One who speaks “God’s Word” to the people. I heard this Word this morning in David Brooks’ column in the New York Times,”No, Not Trump, Not Ever.”

First of all, he acknowledges that something is due Trump in that he has “heard” the cries of the dispossessed who are angry because they have suffered lost jobs, lost wages, and lost dreams. Brooks acknowledges that many in the media, including himself, underestimated the Donald’s ability to capitalize on this discontent. But then, this conservative pundit states clearly why no one should support Trump, No…Not Ever:

“Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out….Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetime…He is a childish man running for a job that requires maturity. He is an insecure boasting little boy whose desires were somehow arrested at age 12…In some rare cases, political victors do not deserve our respect…to endorse those…would be a moral failure.”

And here, David Brooks begins to speak prophetically, “History is a long record of men like him temporarily rising, stretching back to biblical times. Psalm 73 describes them:

“Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence…They scoff and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore people turn to them and drink up their waters in abundance. ” And yet their success is fragile: “Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly they are destroyed.”

And the sermon’s conclusion? “Donald Trump is an affront to basic standards of honesty, virtue and citizenship. He pollutes the atmosphere in which our children are raised. He has already shredded the unspoken rules of political civility that make conversation possible…As the founders would have understood, he is a threat to the long and glorious experiment of American self-government. He is precisely the kind of scapegoating, promise-making, fear-driving and deceiving demagogue they feared.”

Precisely that the founders feared! Will Donald Trump’s supporters in this country realize that…before it is too late?

When delegate rich, winner-take-all Ohio cast its votes for favorite son John Kasich, it may have given the Republican Party a chance to save its soul. While there is still a long way to go and Donald Trump has a commanding lead and while Ted Cruz is still ahead of Kasich in delegates, there are at least two paths to a possible upset.

First of all, Republican voters in the remaining states could recover their senses and reject both Trump and Cruz as disastrous, and even dangerous, choices for President of the United States. Or, more likely, these three finalists will roll into Cleveland to a contested Convention where more thoughtful and committed Republicans will give the nod to “the only grown-up in the room” on the second, third, or fourth ballot after a deadlocked first one.

John Kasich may only look like a moderate because of the frightening competition he has had to face in this election cycle. Certainly his record in Ohio is a mixed one from my point of view. But he is a decent human being, does seem genuinely to care about the poor and the marginalized, and has a proven record — especially when he was a Senator in Washington — of being able to reach across the aisle and make compromises for the common good.

A contest between Hillary Clinton and John Kasich would likely feature a real debate on substantive issues, free from the vile and vulgar campaigns we have seen on the GOP side this time around. Certainly, a clear choice would be provided for the American people between Democrat and Republican values and approaches to solving our nation’s problems.

Readers of this blog may be concerned about Kasich’s membership in the breakaway Anglican Church of North America, but my understanding is that he found The Episcopal Church, as a lapsed Roman Catholic, after the tragic death of his parents and simply followed the parish to which he was committed, and which had been such an important part of his healing, into the schismatic group when they decided to join it.

This does not mean that Kasich does not share the conservative values of ACNA. Only that he may not be some rabid fundamentalist but, like perhaps many in these breakaway groups, primarily loyal to the local parish church in which he was formed and not all that interested in our fractious Anglican global politics.

After all, he has enough of that in his own party!

Yesterday, driving through eastern Iowa for a Sunday morning supply gig, I heard a wonderful interview by Krista Tippet with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner on the NPR show, “On Being.”  The topic was Kabbalah and, in general, mysticism, particularly those forms coming out of the Jewish tradition.

Every exchange of the interview was fascinating being conducted as it was by a very knowledgeable Tippet and the gentle, humorous Kushner. I was particularly struck by one of the rabbi’s attempts to describe God and our relationship to God as understood by mystics of all stripes.

He said that Western religion has often seen God as in a picture with two circles. The first, very large, in the upper portion of the page; the second, much smaller, on the lower portion. God is, not surprisingly, represented by the larger circle and humankind by the smaller. So, Kushner said, God is outside of us and we are outside of God and we pray to God by sending our prayers “upward.”

What the mystical tradition of the East (and Western religions which have discovered it) says is that there are two circles alright. But, the smaller circle is found inside the larger so that we are inside of God and some of God is inside of us. Mystical experiences, which do not have to be dramatic flashes but are often simple, everyday occurrences, are those times when the line forming the smaller circle gets erased and we experience ourselves as we really always are — in God and God in us. What an amazing way to describe it!

Which, of course, reminds me of the prayer in our Daily Office based on Paul sermon in Acts at the Areopagus (Acts 17:22-29) “Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life, we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Amen.

And so, there is no place where God is not.

As I have written before, I am increasingly uncomfortable with how much time Christians spend — and not only in Lent — begging God for mercy as if we were (as one writer puts it) “an abused child before her abuser or a criminal standing before a hanging judge.” However, I do believe that we are sinners in need of confession and repentance.

We are sinners because all of us consistently fail to live up to the high calling to love which was woven into our very nature by the Creator. We turn out backs on God, we hurt one another, by our silence we are complicit in things done on our behalf which wound our sisters and brothers every day.

Confession simply means naming those sins. If we do not bring to consciousness the ways in which we have fallen short, it is unlikely that we will ever do any better. One of the ways in which sacramental confession (confessing our sins to God in the presence of a priest) is infinitely superior to private confession (in our own prayers) is that we actually have to say these things out loud, in the presence of another person. It is less likely that we will gloss over things by saying something like “You know what I have done wring. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

That will not likely lead to repentance which means “doing a 180,” actually turning around and going in a new direction. I really think that we are better off confessing our sins, not to God (even in the presence of a priest) but confessing them to the ones against whom we have actually sinned. “Please forgive me for what I said last night. I was wrong and I am sorry” goes a long way toward the reconciliation we all so desperately want. It’s harder than confessing them in the privacy of our prayer closets…but it is infinitely more effective.

So, this Lent, let’s spend less time beating our breasts and pleading for mercy to the One who, in any case, is the Source of all love and showers forgiveness upon us like the spring rains, and more time confessing our sins to one another…and actually doing something about it.

The following is a “response” I got from the Iowa Governor’s office about why Terry Branstad will not allow us to accept Syrian refugees. And…my response to “them.”

March 8, 2016

Dear Christopher,
Thank you for contacting the Governor’s office and expressing your thoughts about Syrian refugees being placed in Iowa. Please accept my apology for the delay in our response.

Iowa has a long history of welcoming refugees to our state. However, in light of the recent acts of terrorism in Paris and San Bernardino, Governor Branstad and Lt. Governor Reynolds have told the federal government that the State of Iowa is halting any work on Syrian refugee resettlements happening in the state. Governor Branstad’s priority is to ensure the safety of Iowans. In the past though, the federal government has failed to be forthcoming and transparent with information on refugee resettlement and immigration issues.

On January 6, 2016, Governor Branstad and Lt. Governor Reynolds sent a letter to Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and John Kerry, the Secretary of State, urging them to improve the vetting and information-sharing processes for Syrian refugees that the federal government proposes to resettle in Iowa. The inability of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State to proactively verify the identity and personal information of refugees or to detect deception adds to the risk that a prospective refugee is not actually a refugee.

As you probably know, Iowa has a long history of admitting refugees and we will continue our commitment to assisting refugees in relocating to the state of Iowa. This year it is expected that Iowa will welcome over 800 refugees from around the world. However, according to the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, the Islamic State has clearly threatened that it will use Syrian refugees to harm the United States. Until these threats are eliminated, or significantly reduced, the Governor has urged the Federal government to change the process of admitting Syrian refugees to our nation and the state of Iowa.

Again, thank you for contacting Governor Branstad’s office. If you have further questions or concerns, please contact us by calling 515-281-5211.

Sincerely,

Office of the Governor
Nic Pottebaum, Policy Advisor

Oh wonderful. An anonymous response from an anonymous Governor. Terry Brandstad is a heartless bureaucrat, so I suspect I should have expected nothing less. Syrian (and other) refugees are properly vetted for security before they enter our country, which is why we have had no terrorist incidents associated with them. I hope Terry doesn’t ever say he wants this to be a “Christian country.” Because he doesn’t.

C. Christopher Epting
VIII Bishop of Iowa (Ret.)

I’ll be taking a week’s vacation from blogging while we visit grandkids in Phoenix. Watch for pix on Facebook though! Back March 7.