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

That God’s Works Might be Revealed

 I return today from a pilgrimage to Haiti.  A group of American Episcopalians has been visiting the church in Haiti since last Tuesday.  The Presiding Bishop was with us for part of the trip including a memorial service on the occasion of the third anniversary of the earthquake last Saturday.  Much progress has been made here.  The country is recovering.  The people remain resilient in the face of the unimaginable suffering that descended upon them three years ago.  There are many bright energetic young people here, some Haitians who have returned home following the earthquake to help rebuild their country.  As always, Haiti is filled with inspiring people living out inspiring stories.  Hope is amazingly pervasive.  As I have told many people, it is impossible to come to Haiti without meeting Jesus in the people here. 

The January 12, 2010 earthquake is one of those events that, like the Kennedy assassination and 9/11, I can remember vividly where I was and what I was doing when I heard what had happened.  I have been remembering those days while I have been in Haiti.  In particular I have found myself remembering some of the religious commentary immediately after the earthquake, in light of what has happened in Haiti since. 

I have found myself thinking about what Pat Robertson of all people said.  His interpretation was that the death toll of over 300,000 in Haiti, the devastation of the earthquake, and the intractable poverty of this hemisphere’s poorest country were the result of a pact with the devil.  This is what Pat Robertson, former presidential candidate, evangelical minister, and host of the “700 Club” said:  “They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’  True story.  And so the devil said, ‘Ok it’s a deal.’  And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free.  But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another.” 

Now, frankly, it would be laughable if it were not for the facts that (1) so many people suffered so horribly and still do, (2) so many people believe this kind of ignorance masquerading as biblical and invest millions of dollars every year in it, and (3) it is such a distortion, blasphemy really, of God, who is love, and the Gospel of Christ, who is love incarnate.

Once Jesus was walking along and “he saw a man blind from birth.”  His disciples asked a question, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  The disciples, you see, had been watching the “700 Club.”  It is a very old tendency, seeing human suffering as God’s punishment for human transgressions.  It is a coward’s way of looking at the world, an utter denial of the response God would hope for, the sort of response so evident in the Haitian people themselves.

Jesus did not think this way.  He replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  It isn’t about sin at all.  It isn’t about the devil at all.  It is about the opportunity to love.  It is about the opportunity to reveal God’s works in the world.  It is about the opportunity presented by human suffering to show forth the compassion of God.  Jesus went on.  “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.”  (See John 9:1-4.) 

I don’t think for a minute that God inflicts suffering for any purpose.  I think God may allow suffering, either as the consequence of our choices or because for some mysterious reason that is how things work with nature.  I do not put much stock in pacts with the devil either.  For one thing, I don’t think the devil can ever, ever defeat God, God’s love, God’s purposes, God’s people, or God’s church. 

What I do think is that “who sinned” is simply the wrong question to ask.  Pacts with the devil are simply not terribly interesting from God’s point of view.  What does matter is what we do about suffering and need when we find it. 

That is ultimately why we have been in Haiti this week.  We have been here to see God’s works revealed.  And we have been here to see how we might fit into the continuing revelation of God’s unfolding dream for humanity, not least in Haiti.  What suffering and need present is not a question of fault; it is a question of opportunity to do something about it. 

The opportunity before us is the very same one Jesus placed before the disciples, “that God’s works might be revealed.”  What has happened in Haiti doesn’t really say anything at all about God.  But what we do about it does.  God’s work is now in our hands.  Whether the works of God will be revealed is up to us.

Peace,
+Stacy

Who We Are

With the end of the Christmas season and the passing of Epiphany, we move from the birth of Jesus to the first appearance of Jesus as an adult in the Gospel narrative (Lk. 3:15-17, 21-22) for next Sunday, the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord.  It is a story about identity, about who John is, about who Jesus is, and ultimately about who we are.

The story begins with identity confusion.  I think it is perhaps the greatest of all spiritual dangers.  The people are confused as to who John might be, wondering if he might be the Messiah.  Amidst the confusion, though, John himself is clear:  “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”   

It is easy to let our identities be determined by those around us.  That is the challenge of adolescence in our culture, to find out who one is, and it brings with it many temptations to let others determine that, particularly parents and peers.  Negotiating a path between the two is no small accomplishment.  And the temptation recurs throughout life in one way or another, often seductively.  One of its manifestations comes in the form of avoiding conflict, being who someone else thinks we should be in order to keep the peace. 

John seems to have figured this out.  When those around him projected on him an alluring identity, that he might be the Messiah, he did not fall into the trap.  John, someone Jesus described as the greatest among people, knows who he is.  Those around him may not.  But he does.  That is all that matters.

It is something John has in common with his cousin Jesus.  Luke makes exactly this point in an interesting way.

Luke tells the story of the Baptism just a little bit differently than the way Matthew does.  In both Matthew and Luke there is a voice from heaven proclaiming the identity of Jesus as Jesus comes up from the water.  In Matthew, the voice says, “This is my Son.”  It speaks to the crowd.  In Luke, the voice says, “You are my Son.”  It speaks only to Jesus. 

What matters, at least at this point in the story, is not what anyone else may think about who Jesus is.  That comes later.  What matters here at the point at which Jesus’ public ministry is inaugurated is who Jesus thinks he is.  What matters is not whether or not anyone else at all hears the voice from heaven.  The text does not suggest that anyone did.  What matters is that Jesus hears it.  “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  The most important thing here is that Jesus knows who he is, no one else. And that is what carries him through to the end of the story.

It was the same with John.  And it is the same with us.  The thing that matters most, and maybe the only thing that really matters at all, is that we know who we are.  It is really nobody else’s business.  It is something nobody can take away.  It is, in the end, all there is. 

The point of our baptisms, I think, is precisely the same as the Baptism of Jesus.  That is why, no doubt, this is one of the preferred days for baptisms in the church year.  It is to teach us our fundamental identity, or to remind us of it, that we too are God’s children, God’s beloved.  “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.”  And in that we receive “an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.”  (BCP, p. 308)

Nothing can change that.  Nothing can change who we are.  Nothing can change who we are born to be.  It is possible, of course, to forget it.  But even that does not change it.

Peace,

+Stacy

Christmas Magic

We like to think of Christmas as a magical time of the year.  That is particularly true for those of us in New York, where the season leading up to Christmas takes on a seemingly magical atmosphere.  It feels like winter.  There are ice skaters at Rockefeller Center, Central Park, and Bryant Park.  The store windows along Fifth Avenue tell stories of elves and reindeer.  Lighted trumpeting angels line the streets.  All we need is a little snow.  It is easy to fall into the magic, and who wouldn’t want to?

Among the things stolen from us last week was Christmas magic.  Nothing seems magical in a world where a disturbed young man could enter a school and shoot 26 people including 20 first graders reveling, no doubt, in the magic of the season of anticipation, and erasing visions of sugar plums with brutal permanence.  I have read that residents of Newtown, Connecticut have been taking down the so recently unveiled Christmas decorations.  Christmas has become difficult to bear.  The magic has gone out of the air.

In truth, though, Christmas has never been all that magical, even from the beginning.  We tend to overlook that the holy birth occurred in Bethlehem because of an act of oppression, and the threat of violence, when a man and woman were forced to travel from Nazareth to their ancestral home by the decree of an occupying army in the final days of the young woman’s pregnancy. 

And, although we tend to be only vaguely aware of it, the massacre of innocents, not at all unlike the one we experienced on Friday, is woven inextricably into the story.  Only three days after Christmas Day, on December 28, the Church’s calendar remembers the other children of Bethlehem, the ones left behind when Joseph fled with Mary and Jesus to Egypt for safety following an angelic warning, the ones slaughtered by King Herod in a fearful rage.

There is really nothing at all magical about Christmas or the birth of Christ.  No matter how much we might like to make it so, it has never been.  Though we may rarely come to terms with it as somehow we must this year, the Christmas story begins and ends in violence shockingly similar to that at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

We should not be surprised.  We should not be surprised that the incarnation of good, of which the innocence of all children reminds us, is not received either warmly or passively by the presence of evil.  Sometimes that evil finds its expression in armies of violence, sometimes in greed and fear and power, and sometimes in clouds of darkness that overtake and consume those among us most vulnerable to delusion left to their own devices by a society deaf to the needs of the mentally ill.

No, there is nothing magic about Christmas at all.  That is good.  Magic too easily lets us off the hook for the role we are called to play in the story, the story of goodness being birthed in the world, the story of light that the darkness would overcome, the story of innocence confronted by evil, the story of Christ.

The world is not magic, and Christmas has no special exemption from that.  Every single day, eight children in America are killed by gun violence.  That’s 56 children every week, almost three times the number of children killed at Sandy Hook.  Every single week, 75 adults in America are killed by gun violence, over 12 times as many as at Sandy Hook.  Half a world away, in Afghanistan, 10 little girls were killed yesterday by an explosion while gathering firewood, possibly the result of a new bomb or a decades-old landmine forgotten and left behind, now just part of the landscape in this troubled part of the world.  It is everywhere.  Why on earth would we ever think there was a Christmas vacation from violence and death?  There is no magic.  There never has been. 

No, there is no magic.  What there is is an age-old struggle with evil that comes in many forms.  Christmas comes into play, not because it represents even a temporary respite from reality, but because the birth of incarnate love lays bare the reality that it is the evil that does not belong here.  The birth of incarnate love lays bare that the slaughter of innocents in whatever form, child or adult, finds no place, no home, no tolerance, no business as usual in the world of which God dreams. 

And, once we are robbed of the magic of Christmas, we begin, maybe, to grasp its reality.  The reality is that the birth of the Christ child does not cast a magical spell rendering the presence of evil ineffectual.  It does not relieve humankind of the reality of the world we have made of the creation.  Rather, it invites us to participate in its redemption.  The birth of the Christ child is not a tool for us to use, like sorcerer’s apprentices, magically relieving us from doing the hard work that needs to be done.  It is a call to action.

The grace of the death of magic this Christmas may be that it has starkly called us to wake up and look around us, and to take part in the work begun when a babe was laid in a manger by its holy mother on a probably not-so-peaceful night many, many years ago.  We can disabuse ourselves of any notion that magic is going to save us, even at Christmas, and this year especially at Christmas.  What is going to save us is entering into the life of that infant, the Holiest of Innocents, the Christ. 

And, as we do, we can find a joy based on what is real surpasses even magic.  Our true joy is the assurance that in this particular child, Jesus, God has entered the world in a profoundly real, not magical, way.  And that in this particular child, light has come into the world and the darkness did not, and will not, overcome it. 

I wish you all a joyous, but not remotely magical, Christmas.  May your joy be as real as the light, as real as the goodness, as real as the Christ.

Peace,

+Stacy

Magic Words

I learned growing up that there were certain “magic words,” by which my mother did not mean hocus pocus.  She meant please and thank you.  To say please and thank you was the foundation of all manners.  And in Southern homes, knowing your manners was valued just about above all else.

And, as every Southerner also knows, they do not necessarily convey anything remotely sincere.  Manners are matters of formality.  They are social conventions that do not necessarily carry a very deep meaning. 

Somewhere along the line I picked up some other magic words, things you say to be polite that do not necessarily carry much meaning.  One of them was “how do you do,” which is the polite thing to say when introduced to someone for the first time.  There is no sincerity involved, of course.  I wouldn’t know what to do if someone actually answered.  It’s just something you say.  Somewhere along the way, I came to understand “I’m sorry” the same way, as just something you say, without really meaning very much at all.

Now, of course, sometimes I really mean I’m sorry when I say it.  At least sort of.  I do not mean to hurt others, and when I say I’m sorry, I’m really saying I regret that someone was damaged by my actions or that someone’s feelings were hurt.  And I actually mean that.  But if that is as far as my “I’m sorry” goes, it really isn’t good for too much.

“I’m sorry” doesn’t really mean very much unless it also means, “and I intend not to do it again.”  That comes closer to what we mean by repentance.  To repent requires a very high degree of sincerity that “I’m sorry” does not necessarily carry with it.

Any “I’m sorry” that matters involves more than mere regret and goes beyond intention.  It must also involve behavior.  In the words of the gospel for the Third Sunday of Advent, it must involve repentance. And repentance means bearing fruit worthy of repentance.  Any “I’m sorry” that matters involves behaving as if you really are. 

John the Baptist, who like Jesus preached a lot about repenting, doesn’t spend any time at all on how anyone feels.  He is preoccupied entirely with changing behavior.  “Bear fruits worthy of repentance.”  (Lk. 3:8)  And he has an urgency to his message.  Anyone who doesn’t bear such fruit isn’t worth saving.  “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  (v. 8) 

And he goes on to speak of what it means to be sorry, to repent.  He isn’t much interested in hearing tax collectors say they’re sorry.  Sorry only relates to the past, and no one can do anything about the past.  Being sincerely sorry has to do with behavior in the future.  To the tax collectors he says, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.”  (v. 13)

John isn’t much interested in hearing the soldiers apologize.  Apologies relate to the past, and it is impossible to change the past.  The issue is about behavior moving forward.  “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusations, and be satisfied with your wages.”  (v. 14)  He really doesn’t care whether they feel sorry or not, only that they do something about it.

And, of course, there are the crowds.  They are not tax collectors or soldiers, which were groups with particularly bad reputations.  The crowds are just regular folks, regular folks like us.  What is the fruit we should bear?  It is sharing.  “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”  (v. 11)  John, I daresay, isn’t much interested in hearing confessions about what has been done.  He is interested in behaving differently.  Otherwise, we aren’t much worth saving.

Otherwise, all the “I’m sorries” in the world aren’t worth much at all.  I’m sorry, after all, are not magic words.  They actually mean something.  Or are supposed to.

Peace,
+Stacy

Bulldozers for Jesus

The ministry of John the Baptist, according to Luke, is explained by the prophet Isaiah.  We know the words from the soaring melodies of Handel’s Messiah and the resonance of a beautiful tenor voice.  “Every val-al-ley shall be ex-al-al-ted.”  The majesty of Handel’s music and the grandeur of the poetry of the King James Version obscure the reality that Isaiah is talking about road construction.  Only Handel could make road construction spiritually uplifting.  And Isaiah.

Isaiah foretells the coming of the Lord, the saving intervention of God in the world.  It is a grand idea to be sure.  Isaiah’s metaphor is about building a highway for a king’s journey.  The exalted valleys refer to filling in the low spots on a mountain road to make the passage level.  Likewise, the lowering of the mountains is about taking the tops off of hills to make the road less steep.  The twists and turns are to be straightened out.  The rough parts must be smoothed out.  The potholes must be filled.  The asphalt must be applied. 

More recent translations make this a little easier to see.  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled.”  (Lk. 3:4)  We’re talking about dump trucks and serious earthworks.  Whatever the text says, though, I suspect we tend to hear Handel.  What we should hear is bulldozers. 

Isaiah is calling to mind the effort made for a royal visit in a day when travel was not by airplane but by painstakingly constructed roads.  He’s talking about thousands of people, slaves perhaps, toiling in the hot Middle Eastern sun with ancient tools to move dirt, nothing more.  There isn’t very much grand about it, any more than road crews in orange vests putting down a layer of asphalt on a baking hot summer day.

This, though, is how the kingdom of God comes in.  This is how we prepare for the coming of the Lord.  This is how we get ready for Jesus.  With bulldozers. 

John the Baptist is God’s bulldozer. And God’s bulldozer is encouraging the people who heard him to be bulldozers, too.  We have a role to play in the coming of the Lord.  Hastening the coming of God, of God in Jesus, requires effort, effort like a mighty bulldozer. 

John described that work as repentance.  What he meant was taking a bulldozer to the human heart.  That’s a pretty big effort. 

Why would we want to do that?  What makes us want to hasten the coming of the Lord?  It is this promise Isaiah foretold:  “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” 

Rev up the bulldozers.  Jesus is coming!

Peace,

+Stacy