That We All May Be One

A number of years ago, I ran across a little article in the Des Moines Register by a woman named Cynthia Mercati with which I was quite taken. I put it in a computer file and often open it up around this time in the year and take another look. Let me share it with you:

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Mary lately.  I don’t mean the manger/angels sweetly singing on high/Mary.  I don’t mean the blond, blue-eyed Mary I was taught about in Catholic schools…the only woman ever to give birth without mussing her hair!  No, the Mary I’ve been thinking about is the one we know only fragments about – but what fragments they are.  When she is told she will be the mother of God, this gutsy Jewish teen-ager declares that God “has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”

“If anybody was listening, they might think this girl was a social activist!  After her baby’s birth, Luke tells us that Mary ‘kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.’ Some folks think it was the shepherds and the sweet smell of the stable Mary was thinking about…but most mothers know what she was thinking: Why him? Why my son? Why couldn’t this great honor have been bestowed on the kid down the block? Why can’t my child just live a peaceful, uneventful life?  Yet by the time we see Mary at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, she is urging – some would even say nagging – her son to get on with his life’s work…”

“The Mary I have been thinking about was a single mother.  Somewhere along the way from Bethlehem to Golgotha, Joseph drops out of sight…Whatever happened, Mary ended up a woman alone.  No health benefits, no old age pension.  The Mary I’ve been thinking about lately would not fit well or easily into today’s celebrations of her son’s birth…Most likely Mary would put a crimp in all our modern festivities with our relentlessly grim determination to be cheery.”

“How, she might ask, can you possibly ‘keep’ this thing you call Christmas without thinking first and foremost of all the people who will spend this day, and all their others, with holes in their hearts?  The newly bereaved, the newly single, the jobless, the depressed, those the world deems misfits, and those the world views as ‘having it all” and who still can find no peace?  These are the people my son spent his time with, and gave his life for!  Any anniversary of this birth can have no meaning apart from pain – theirs…his…ours.”

Well, as I say, I thought it was a good piece and perhaps sums up for many of us why we find Mary such an attractive figure.  One who, from the brief accounts we have of her in the New Testament, would probably have been considered a saint no matter whose mother she was!  But, of course, as Christians we do know whose mother she was, and so she becomes an example for us in still another way.  Not only was she a strong woman who models for us what sensitivity to the poor and the marginalized looks like, but she also had a unique role in receiving…carrying…birthing…and nurturing…Jesus of Nazareth in this world.

And so do we! Because sadly, in many ways, Jesus Christ is as little known – or at least as little heeded – by people in the world today as he was in Mary’s time.  Our task, as Christian people, is to introduce the person of Jesus to those who know him not.  And the way you do that effectively is the same way Mary did – by receiving him, carrying him, birthing him, and nurturing him in the world today!

First of all, you need to “receive” Jesus yourself!  You can’t give away something you don’t have.  So you need – as our evangelical sisters and brothers are wont to say — to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. Our Confirmation service asks us to do the same thing.  And you need to continue to “receive” him every Sunday in word and prayer and sacrament as part of a Christian community.

Secondly, you need to “carry” Jesus…with you… outside the doors of your church and into your daily life letting every decision you make be impacted and influenced by him. By asking, in every situation with which you are confronted, “What would Jesus do?” Yep, WWJD –what would Jesus do? That may sound a little simplistic, but it’s actually at the core of Christian ethics and moral theology — the imitation of Christ. To ask ourselves, in every situation, what would Jesus do?

Third, you and I need to “give birth” to Jesus in the lives of others by being willing to talk about him openly and without embarrassment.  In other words, to talk to your friends and loved ones, not only about your local church or your denomination or even about “God”, but about the personality and ministry of Jesus. That’s what our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, means by “the Jesus Movement.” To talk about Jesus, rather than only the church.

And finally, we need to “nurture” Christ in this world just as surely as Mary did. How? By taking care of his Body!  In the tradition, Mary cared for the body of Christ from infancy until she cradled that body when it was taken down from the Cross.  We need to take care of his Body today. The Body of Christ – the church!

Jesus needed to be fed and clothed, strengthened and encouraged, in his earthly life. And the church of Jesus Christ in the world today has precisely those same needs!  By your active participation in and support of your congregation and its outreach, you are exercising just such a “nurturing” ministry. Because the church is the Body of Christ just as surely as Jesus was!

So, like our friend, the columnist Cynthia Mercati, let’s all take Mary as our “companion” this Christmas.  Not only as an example of compassion and concern for the poor and marginalized, but as an example of just how it is that we can receive…carry…give birth to…and nurture Christ Jesus in the world today.  For, in the words of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth:

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb…and …blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

Another troubling appointment has been made by President-elect Donald Trump. For U.S. ambassador to Israel, he has selected one David Friedman. Among other things: Friedman is the President of an organization (the American Friends of Beit El) which supports the continued building of Jewish settlements in the disputed, occupied territories most of the world believes belongs to the Palestinians; he opposes the two-state solution which would provide a homeland for the Palestinian people; and he supports moving the capital of Israel from Tev Aviv to Jerusalem (a position Trump himself has advocated).

Why are these bad ideas? Israeli settlements provide “facts on the ground” which makes is ever more difficult to negotiate land for peace in any eventual  peace agreement between Israel and Palestine. Giving up on the two-state solution which has been the constant position of the United States (and, additionally, by virtually all Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith communities) for nearly half a century. It is the only way forward for a just and secure peace in the region. Finally, moving Israel’s capital to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv risks further politicizing the Holy City of Jerusalem which many of us believe should always remain an international holy place, a city which the three Abrahamic faiths call sacred.

It is hard to fathom what kind of international outcry would result from these actions should they be taken or the depth of anguish sown in the hearts of Palestinians, Christian and Muslim alike. If frustration at the slow pace of justice and peace in the Land of the Holy One has led to violent outbreaks and multiple “intifadas” in the recent past, one can only view with apprehension the future under a President Trump and Ambassador Friedman.

As if these matters were not serious enough, like so many of Trump’s appointees thus far, Friedman is completely unqualified. A bankruptcy lawyer, he has absolutely no diplomatic experience and has long been identified with Israel’s far right and openly critical of pro peace, pro Israel organizations like J Street who he has likened to Jews who aided the Nazis in the Shoah (Holocaust)! This is an “ambassador?” I cannot imagine what Donald Trump was thinking when, out of an incredibly rich store of qualified candidates, he appointed this naive and deeply biased individual to represent the United States in this most volatile part of the world.

My fear is that he was not thinking. No one questions the fact that the President-elect is smart. But, if you refuse to receive adequate foreign policy briefings and to take advantage of the collective wisdom of Republican and Democratic administrations which go back at least to the Second World War, you cannot possibly make good decisions.

The appointment of David Friedman as ambassador to Israel will hardly make the headlines or catch the attention of most Americans. But it will speak volumes around the world to the dangerous path this country is about to take. Dear friends, never have we needed to pray together these words from Psalm 122, and to pray them with fervency:

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.

You tyrant, why do you boast of wickedness/ against the godly all day long?

You plot ruin, your tongue is like a sharpened razor/O worker of deception.

You love evil more than good/ and lying more than speaking the truth.

You love all words that hurt/ O you deceitful tongue.

Oh, that God would demolish you utterly/ topple you, and snatch you away from your dwelling, and root you out of the land of the living!

The righteous shall see and tremble/ and they shall laugh at him, saying,

“This is the one who did not take God for a refuge/ but trusted in great wealth and relied upon wickedness.”

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God/ I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.

I will give thanks for what you have done/ and declare the goodness of your Name in the presence of the godly.

Psalm 52 (Monday in the 3^rd Week of Advent)

Most Christians would have no difficulty identifying Jesus’ central message as being about the kingdom of God. Most of his parables have that as their theme, his sermons proclaim the nearness of that kingdom, and his famous prayer includes the phrase “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Unfortunately most Christians also probably believe that the kingdom of God is the same thing as heaven and that Jesus’ parables, sermons, and prayers have to do with us leaving this earth when we die and joining him in heaven for all eternity. Actually, the kingdom of God has very little to do with that.

The kingdom of God describes the Jewish hope that, one day, God would judge the world, set things right, and reign over this world in justice and peace. The entire Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament), particularly the second half of it, looks forward to that day when God’s kingdom would indeed come, and that God’s will would (finally) be done, on this earth, as it is presumably right now, in heaven.

The Jews had always been conflicted about the wisdom of having a king in charge of their common life lest that blur the fact that God was their king, not anyone else. In fact, they had decidedly mixed results with kings at least after the golden days of King David. They had every reason to believe that only the king-ship of God would usher in that state of being which they all longed for. God was king. Not anyone else.

By Jesus’ time, oppressor had followed oppressor of the Jewish people until the most recent manifestation of such oppression – the Roman Empire. While Jesus was likely not a political revolutionary after the fashion of the Zealots, he was very clear that – in his mind – God was king…and Caesar was not! His proclamation of that state of affairs, including the suggestion that he represented the coming kingdom of God, that he was himself a “king” but a very different kind of “king,” is probably what got him crucified. Jewish heretics got stoned by their own people. Crucifixion at the hands of the Romans was reserved for political dissidents.

Christians today must also stand up for the truth that God is king and that Caesar (or any other kind of Empire) is not. As we enter this new phase of a Trump Administration in the U.S. and other expressions of nativist, xenophobic regimes around the world, perhaps it will be easier for us to see the need for such clarity. When political regimes which appear to be advancing kingdom values like justice, peace, equality, and compassion are “on the throne,” it is easy for us to become complacent.

However, today, with a blustering, bullying billionaire about to assume the mantle of the Presidency and with his appointments so far of more billionaires and generals to his innermost circle of advisors, the Cabinet, it may actually be easier for us to heed the Advent warning: “Keep awake!”

Be awake to the fact that God is king…and Caesar (by whatever name) is not!

“If we put put bits in the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies.  Or look at ships: though they are so large that it take strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.  So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.”

“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!  And the tongue is a fire.  The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body…no one can tame the tongue — a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the image of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.”

“My brothers, this ought not to be so.” (James 3:3-6a, 8-10 from the today’s Daily Lectionary Reading)

Let those with ears to hear, listen!