Yanking Us Bald Headed into Life

There is a Southern expression I grew up with.  It has to do with being in really big trouble.  I don’t really know where it comes from.  It is something every Southern boy and girl has been told by their mammas as a solemn warning.  It is to yank bald headed, as in, “If you do such and such, I’m gonna yank you bald headed.”  I never saw anyone actually yanked bald headed, but neither did I ever see anyone do anything that would result in them getting yanked bald headed.  It must work.

Eastern Orthodox icons of the resurrection do not show risen Jesus alone.  Instead, they show Jesus reaching down to grasp Adam and Eve and pull them also from their tombs.  Jesus is yanking them bald headed.  Adam and Eve look none too pleased.  As the icons depict the event, it is as if Jesus must remove them forcibly, yank them bald headed, to get them to come out of the tomb.  If that’s what it takes, so be it.  God is not satisfied with leaving them undisturbed in the slumber of death.  They will live without regard to their choice.  They will live because God wills it whether they want to or not.  So it is with us.

It appears on the surface that the choice to live would be so self-evident as not to merit discussion.  Beneath the surface, we tend over and over to choose otherwise. 

Today Episcopalians from across the country, including 22 bishops, are walking the Stations of the Cross at the beginning of Holy Week to pray for sensible gun control.  The National Rifle Association calls such efforts un-American and proposes putting armed guards in all our schools.  Life proves to be harder to choose than it at first appears.  Somebody needs to yank us bald headed.

The wells supplying water to an entire community in Navajoland are poisoned as a result of mining activity nearby.  Life proves to be harder to choose than it at first appears.  Somebody needs to yank us bald headed.

Iran and North Korea threaten nuclear attacks.  Missiles are launched from Gaza into Israel.  Bombers are launched from Israel into Gaza.  Children are kidnapped to fight wars in Africa.  Children are imprisoned in the United States at an alarming rate.  Life proves to be harder to choose than it first appears.  Somebody needs to yank us bald headed. 

In truth, we human beings have an alarming propensity to choose death when left to our own devices.  We observe it up close in this Holy Week we are entering.  By the time Friday comes, we are all shouting, “Crucify him.” 

And still God will not have it, at least ultimately.  God lets us have what we want in the short term.  We have made an idol of gun-owning in America, and God will let us have our way for now and first graders are gunned down with automatic weapons.  Our greed poisons the very water God gives to sustain our life, and God will let us have our way for now.  War.  Death.  Prisons.  Drugs.  God will let us have our way for now.  And we even cry out to send even God to the cross.  God will let us have our way for now. 

Ultimately, though, God will not.  As the icons reveal, God is going to yank us bald headed if God has to in order to get us out of the tomb.  When the free will we have been given has run its course, when we have reaped the fruit of what we have sown, when at last the ability to set anything right is beyond our grasp, when we are confined to the graves we have dug for ourselves, God is not finished.  God’s choice for us is always life.

And we can rest assured that God is going to yank us bald headed if necessary so that we will have it.

So, this Easter, may God yank you bald headed into life, whether you want it or not. Happy Easter.

Peace,
+Stacy

Passion and Magic

The spiritual theme of Holy Week, which we are about to enter, begins and ends on distinctly different notes.  Actually, they are exactly the same notes, just in reverse order.  And the order is important.

Holy Week begins next Sunday, on what we often call “Palm Sunday.”  Strictly speaking, it isn’t Palm Sunday at all.  It is the “Sunday of the Passion.”  It happens to begin with the Liturgy of the Palms, which recalls the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  But the major theme of the day is the Passion Gospel in which we hear the story of the suffering and death of Christ, this year from the Gospel According to Luke. 

What I want to point out, though, is the order of those stories.  First comes the triumphal entry, then the suffering.  Triumph first.  Suffering second.

The end of the week is exactly the opposite.  We will hear the story of the passion again, this time from the Gospel of John, on Good Friday.  Then on Easter Day, of course, the story of the resurrection will be read. 

Note the order.  Suffering first.  Triumph second.  The order is as important as the stories themselves.

From the point of Palm Sunday in the story, things go terribly wrong.  The crowds began by spreading their cloaks along the road, waving branches from the trees, and shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest heaven!”  It is only five days later that the very same crowds are shouting, “Let him be crucified!”  The low on which the day ends is made all the lower by the high on which it begins.

The end of the week is just the opposite.  From the point of Good Friday, when all would seem to be lost, the story takes a remarkable turn and the completely unexpected happens.  Jesus is raised from the dead.  An angel announces the good news to the women who had gone to the tomb.  “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.”  The high on which the story ends is made all the higher by the low that immediately precedes it.

The rhythm is a very important part of the message.  The spiritually sound one is the latter.  Begin with suffering, end with triumph.  The one we have a tendency to prefer is the former.  Begin with triumph, avoid the suffering, or if you can’t, then ignore it. Suffering for love must come first.  Passion, the root meaning of which is suffering, is required for there to be true spirituality.  Everything else is magical thinking.

Magical thinking infects our life in lots of ways.  When we think “things will work out” without being willing to invest some passion, we fall victim to the magical.  When we are more concerned with triumphant outcomes than with passionate pursuit of outcomes, that’s magical thinking.  When we think that winning is more important than passionate integrity, that’s magical thinking.  When we think we’re better than others for one reason or another or deserve something others don’t for one reason or another or are entitled more than others for one reason or another, and when those things are more important to us than passionately loving others, that’s magical thinking.   

There’s nothing about the Gospel that is magical.  Palm Sunday may have felt like magic to the disciples.  Jesus knew better.  He was no sooner in Jerusalem after the magical, triumphal entry than he was in the temple bringing the magic crashing down by overturning the tables of the money changers.  That led directly to a conflict with the scribes and chief priests.  And things just went downhill from there.  Magic fades quickly. 

On the other hand, there is a lot about the Gospel that is passionate.  The crucifixion leads directly to the resurrection.  It is passion, suffering for love, that opens up what God can do in the world.  And, as Jesus teaches, it is certainly how we share in it.  Passion, which is spiritually true, protects us from magic, which is not.

Peace,
+Stacy

Lent and Judgment

I have a recurring nightmare some variation of which, I believe, is a very common experience.  It involves being in school and showing up for the final exam without having studied for it, or sometimes it takes the form of not showing up at all because I can’t remember where it is supposed to be.  It is a very bad feeling.  As a priest, once or twice, I have had another variation of it, which involves showing up for church and finding out I was scheduled to preach but not having a sermon prepared.  I have spoken to many people who have some variation of the same nightmare.  I suspect many of you do.  The theme of this particular nightmare is judgment.

On the other hand, I also know that I have never actually sat for an exam, or taken a test, or written a paper without some sense of anticipation and even excitement and a longing to get my paper back and see how I’d done. 

So here’s the paradox.  On the one hand, we have a strong aversion to being judged and failing.  It is enough to give us nightmares long after one would hope we’d grown out of such childish things.  On the other hand, we are drawn to being judged like a moth to light because part of us longs to be tried and found worthy, judged and affirmed, tested and passed “with distinction.” 

With that in mind we come to a teaching in the Gospel of Luke, which is assigned for the third Sunday of Lent this year, having to do with a group of Galileans apparently killed by Pilate when they had come to sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem and a group of eighteen people also killed in Jerusalem but this time in an accident when the tower of Siloam fell on them.  It was an event that caused the people of Jesus’ day to wonder—to wonder what it meant, to wonder what God was up to, to wonder about how to make sense of it in any spiritual way.  It is not at all unlike how we are wondering in our own day, our own day in which 26 innocent people, 20 of them first graders, are killed by a gunman in Newtown, Connecticut. 

I don’t think Jesus had nightmares about judgment or encouraged others to have them either.  As to the Galileans killed by Pilate, he asked, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?’”  As to the 18 killed in the collapse of the tower of Siloam, he asked “do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?”  He not only asked.  He answered emphatically.  “No.”  This is not about judgment, Jesus said.

And then there is the paradox.  This is not about judgment and still Jesus calls on those who were listening to him—and us—to repent.  “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”  It is a curious thing.  It is not about judgment.  When it comes to things like this, Jesus says, judgment is entirely beside the point. 

And still, the message is to repent.  How can the message be to repent when the judgment is rendered irrelevant?

It seems to me that there are two ways to approach living, at least as a Christian.  There is the “nightmare that you show up for the exam without having studied” way of approaching life and there is the joy of being affirmed by God way of approaching life.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not at all saying that God approves of anything and everything.  I could give you a whole list of things I don’t believe God approves of and that deserve judgment.  What I am saying is that either we respond to what God wants of us out of fear of judgment, out of fear of showing up at the exam without having studied, which gives us nightmares, or we respond to what God wants to us out of gratitude that in Christ the judgment has been made irrelevant.  It isn’t that judgment is made not real.  Judgment is real enough.  But with God, that doesn’t mean it is eternally relevant either.  Our response is in how we look at it, from the perspective of fear of judgment or from the perspective of grateful for grace.

Peace,
+Stacy

Celebration in Giving

Here’s a question I’ve often wondered about.  Why is it that the only thing Episcopal clergy are fundamentalist about in their preaching is tithing?  I’ve noticed we take an uncharacteristically legalistic approach on this subject.  I have some thoughts as to why that might be.

This Sunday’s Old Testament lesson (Dt. 26:1-11) is about the obligation to return to God the first fruits of the harvest.  It is a variation of the theme about the obligation of tithing.  Interestingly, though, the Old Testament, which we Christians sometimes ignorantly characterize as legalistic, even the law itself, Torah, which includes the Book of Deuteronomy, does not approach giving so much as duty or a discharge of legal obligation as an opportunity for the joyful giving of thanks.  In fact, Deuteronomy portrays the act of the giving of the first fruits of the land as a liturgical call and response between God and God’s people, a way in which God shares with the people God’s own joy.  God’s joy is expressed in giving to us; ours in expressed in turn the same way. 

Deuteronomy is a book of rubrics very much like the rubrics or worship instructions of our own Book of Common Prayer.  Rubrics prescribe the right way to worship.  Deuteronomy goes into some detail about the giving of the first fruits because the issue is right worship, by which we mean joyful worship, thankful worship, and not really about legal obligation at all. 

It prescribes that some of the first fruits are to be gathered in a basket and taken to the priest.  The priest, in turn, will take it and set it down before the altar.  It then prescribes the appropriate liturgical formula:  “You shall make this response before the Lord your God.”

What the response turns out to be is a recitation of God’s saving acts toward the people of Israel.  It begins with a reminder of where they came from, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor.”  It recalls the people’s time in Egypt, their oppression and enslavement by the Egyptians, and God’s deliverance.  It concludes with the recognition that, after all this, God ‘brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” 

It is then and only then that the act of giving occurs.  “So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.” 

First comes God’s call to the people in generosity and salvation.  Then comes the people’s response of gratitude and generosity in return. 

Giving is not an obligation.  It is a response to God’s prior generosity—God’s deliverance from oppression and God’s provision of an abundant home.  God calls in generosity.  We respond in generosity.  It is not, I hope, no matter how many stern stewardship sermons I hear, not about what we have to do to make God happy but about what we have the opportunity to do in gratitude. 

It all has only one purpose according to Deuteronomy.  “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.”  It’s not about duty.  It’s about celebration.

Peace,
+Stacy

Highs and Lows

The story of the Transfiguration (Lk. 9:28-36), which is the Gospel for this coming Sunday, the last before Lent, is a juxtaposition of highs and lows. 

On the one hand, the Transfiguration is a high.  Peter, James, and John accompany Jesus up the mountain.  The disciples are present as Jesus prays and is transfigured.  Luke says that “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.”  (v. 29)  Then Moses and Elijah appear and speak with Jesus.  And finally all are overtaken by a mysterious cloud from which the voice of God proclaims, “This is my son, my Chosen; listen to him!”  (v. 35)  Definitely a high.

That story is followed by puzzling story about a boy possessed by a demon (Lk. 9:37-43a), which is unfortunately only an optional part of the reading for Sunday.  The disciples had attempted to cast out the demon unsuccessfully.  The boy’s father appeals directly to Jesus, and he heals the boy.  What is troubling is Jesus’ harsh response to the unsuccessful disciples:  “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?”  (v. 41)  Definitely a low point. 

The exact reason for Jesus’ harsh criticism is left a matter of speculation.  Maybe the disciples had grown arrogant with their earlier successes and lost touch with the reality that the authority they exercised was not actually theirs but God’s.  Or perhaps the teaching Jesus had just been doing with them about his own coming suffering and death had so disturbed them that they were rendered, at least temporarily, helpless.  Maybe they had just gotten lazy.  It is impossible to say for sure. 

What we can say for sure is that life with Jesus, not unlike life with anyone else, or for that matter, life in general, has its ups and downs.  I take some paradoxical comfort in the reality that even Jesus had his moments, moments in which he is harsh, demanding, difficult to get along with, and just plain cranky. 

It’s not that he doesn’t have his reasons.  He is, after all, determinedly heading toward Jerusalem to confront the worst that the world has to offer.  He could certainly be excused for being a bit on edge.

Still, life with Jesus has its shocks, disappointments, and hurts.  And that is good to be reminded of in the startling way the Gospel puts the highs and lows together, especially as we head into Lent.  Lent ought to be a reminder that even the divine life is real life.  In fact, the good news is that the divine life and real life are one and the same.  Real life is not just a series of unmitigated highs.  It is highs and lows together, one shedding light on the other or one keeping the other from being so blinding that all vision is hopelessly obscured.

Just as the story of the Transfiguration moves from high to low, both equally real, so Lent moves in the opposite direction from low to high, again both equally real.  It begins with a reality it is not pleasant to look at—Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.  And it ends with the greatest of all high—He is risen.  And with him, so are we.  It’s all in the high and lows.

Peace,
+Stacy

Recognizing Christ

There is a Muslim legend about the psalm appointed for this week (24:7-10).  According to it, during the days is in which Jesus lay in the tomb, just prior to the resurrection, Satan devised a plan to enter the gates of heaven and overwhelm its angel guardians by pretending to be Christ returning in triumph.

As he approached on a white steed, Satan called to the angels on the ramparts in the words of the psalm.  “Lift up your heads, O gates; lift them high, O everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.”

The angels were confused.  Following the psalm the angels asked the rider, “Who is the King of glory?”

Satan continued the antiphonal recitation.  “The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle.”  Still the angels were confused and the gates did not open.

Satan went on with the next verse.  “Lift up your heads, O gates; lift them high, O everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.”

Again, the angels asked, “Who is he, this King of glory?”

And Satan answered.  “The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.”  The angels remained unsure and still the doors did not open.  Satan was perplexed.

One more he called to the angels.  “Lift up your heads, O gates; lift them high, O everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.”

And once more the angels responded to Satan masquerading as Christ with their question, “Who is he, this King of glory?”

This time, having run out of the words of the psalm, Satan replaced them with his own.  “It is I.  I am the King of glory,” he proclaimed.  And as he did, he threw open his arms.  And when he threw open his arms, the angels could see plainly that the horse’s rider was unwounded from the cross, his hands free of the print of the nails.  And they knew it was a trick, and the rider, not the Christ but the deceiver. 

The Feast of the Presentation, which is Saturday, is about recognizing Christ among us (Lk. 2:22-40).  Simeon was an old man who had waited many years for God to fulfill the promise that he would not die before he was able to see God’s Messiah.  He recognized Jesus as the Messiah when the child’s parents brought him to the Temple to sacrifice and dedicate him to the Lord, as the law required.  The old man’s heart must have leapt with joy at the completion of his expectation, saying, “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

There was also an old woman named Anna within the Temple precincts that day, as she was every day, praying and fasting.  She, too, recognized the child for who he was and likewise gave thanks to God. 

It is a difficult thing to know the Messiah among us, even for the angels.  The Gospel of Luke tells us that Simeon and Anna were aided directly by the Holy Spirit.  It no doubt helped that their hearts were prepared to see by years of longing and waiting and watching.  It may also have helped that Mary and Joseph had brought the child to the Temple in an act of humility, dedicating him, as the law required of first born sons, to the Lord. 

Other times the pretenders reveal themselves in the opposite way, in an act of pride.  It is woundedness, though, or the willingness to be wounded, that is the guarantor of authenticity of the Messiah’s presence among us and within us.  The glory of God is in vulnerability and not in any sort of triumph in the normal sense of the word.

Peace,
+Stacy

I Have No Need of You

The epistle for next Sunday (1 Cor. 12:12-31a) is a beautiful passage about our importance to one another.  It is fundamentally about loving one another and comes immediately before Paul’s famous passage about what love is.  Paul wrote:

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.  Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. . . .  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.  If all were a single member, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many members, yet one body.  The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”  On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.

So who am I to question with St. Paul?  Alas, it is not the first time.

Jesus used the same metaphor of the body to quite a different end.  He said: 
If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.  (Mt. 5:29-30; see also 18:8-9) 

So what’s that about?  Well, of course, there is the issue of context.  Paul is addressing a different problem, which is the Corinthian church’s tendency to distinguish between its members based on irrelevant details of social status.  He makes the point at the very beginning noting that all are baptized into the same body—Jews or Greeks, slave or free.  He reinforces the point close to the end of the passage:  “But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another.”  (vv. 24b-25)  Paul’s point has to do with radical equality within the Christian community.  That’s not the part I disagree with.

The part that causes me concern is the metaphor, which taken out of context, appears to say that the individual members of the body are dependent on one another.  One cannot say to another, “I have no need of you.”  Dependence, though, is not conducive to the body’s health. 

Jesus knew that.  Jesus was saying that the body cannot be dependent on any single member, that any individual member is expendable for the health of the whole.  He used the metaphor in a different, though certainly also radical, way.  Dependency poses such a danger, he said, that one must be prepared even to pluck out an eye or cut off a hand to avoid it.  And his words become an important corrective in understanding Paul.

One of the great dangers to a community’s wellbeing, now as always, is dependency.  Dependency is no healthier when it comes to one another than it is when it comes to chemicals.  It just looks sweeter when it does and somehow it seems vaguely Christian.  It isn’t.  It is admittedly a hard lesson to learn and even harder to practice.  So it is with a great many of the teachings of Jesus.  That is why being his disciple is a lifetime’s endeavor. 

We are made to love one another.  How to do that radically is what Paul was talking about.  But needing one another gets us into some very real and great danger.  That’s what Jesus was talking about.  Together they make a lot of sense.

Peace,
+Stacy