The Hogan

I spent this past weekend in Navajoland.  I was there as part of what the Bishop there calls the “economic development team” to meet with the council of the Episcopal Church in Navajoland.  Our goal is to secure the very important ministry of the Episcopal Church’s only all-indigenous mission.  We have a lot to do.  Things are in a precarious state and whether or not we are able to continue our ministry among the Navajo has a lot to do with what both the Navajo people and the rest of the Church are willing to do together to make new life possible.  It takes a lot of courage to choose life. 

It is for that reasons that our time in Navajoland began with a rare invitation to participate in a traditional Navajo blessing ceremony at the sheep camp of one of the key Navajo leaders in the family’s hogan, the traditional Navajo dwelling and location of medicine ceremonies.  Our host calls the hogan the universal home. 

The blessing was conducted by a medicine man.  Although the medicine man invoked the name of Jesus with great passion and sincerity, the ceremony itself was certainly not a church ritual. 

Part of the ceremony involved smoking together.  I watched this with great interest.  A pipe of herbs was passed to the primary participants, the medicine man, his assistant, our host, the bishop, and some of the key church leaders, all women considered elders.  I observed how they drew in the smoke and then puffed it out in each of the four directions and then symbolically covered themselves with it, directing it toward all the parts of their bodies and finally over their heads.  Eventually, the pipe was passed around the room.

Eventually it got to me.  Now, confession time.  I had never smoked anything in my life.  Nothing.  Not a cigarette, cigar, or pipe.  And certainly not anything else, inhale or not.  I was not at all sure I knew what to do.  I was afraid I would cough uncontrollably and disrupt the whole event.

Fortunately, I managed.  I took in the smoke and blew it out in imitation of what I had seen my hosts do.  I let the smoke roll over me.  I directed it with my cupped hand over my head. And then I passed the pipe on to the person next to me.

As I did, the Native man next to me who had handed me the pipe in the first place, reached out his hand to me.  He took my hand, and grasped it quietly but firmly.  It was a profoundly important moment to me.  I can’t tell you I know at all what it means.  It has something to do, though, with a very basic shared humanity. 

I read the lesson from Acts (11:1-18) for this Sunday in the context of the hogan, the universal home.  Peter, a devoutly observant Jew, had returned to Jerusalem from a trip to Joppa, where he had been invited into the home of some Gentiles.  There he had eaten with the uncircumcised and received a vision about clean and unclean foods.  He heard the voice of the Lord inviting him, indeed commanding him, to eat of foods previously forbidden.  He protested, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.”

The voice of the Lord answered, “”What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

Animals used for food, described by Acts as “four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air,” find their purity in their common creator so that none is unclean.  Can it possibly be otherwise with human beings, all the children of the same God, known to them or not, that any could be unclean?  And if it is true of all human beings, could it possibly be otherwise with the human response to the innate drive in all of us that draws us to their creator?  Surely whatever that is, as basically human as it must be, is made by God not only clean but beloved.

The Navajo people have brought me to a new understanding of what it is to be human by teaching me something of what it means to be Diné, the name by which they know themselves.  The hogan is the universal home.  Another name for the universal home is the catholic church.  And catholic, in the truest sense, must be defined by what we share in common—our common humanity, our common origin in God, not only that we are made clean, but that we are made in the image of God.  What is catholic, I have learned, is defined by what is universally true and not by what is exclusively true.

Peace,
+Stacy

A Statement of Hope

I have never been a big fan of the Book of Revelation.  Mostly, I think, it’s because of how badly it gets misused a lot of the time, as if it were a collection of predictions, sort of like a biblical version of Nostradamus.  Its imagery is strange to say the least, and the high level of symbolism has always been more off-putting than inviting to me.  I’ve never thought it was the most salutary of scriptures, and indeed, it seems to lend itself to more than a little interpretive mischief, especially by the most unscrupulous preachers. 

The passage for next Sunday (Rev. 7:9-17), to my surprise, speaks to me in an important way.  It exudes hope.  Maybe it’s that I’m finding myself in need of just that.  It is something I share with the church for which it was written.

Revelation is all about context, and its context is disturbing.  It was written at a time of great difficulty for the church, including the persecution of Nero.  It was not a time when things were looking up.  In fact, it is difficult to express how bleak things must have looked for the young church.  Pretty much hopeless, I would think. 

Into that mix, Revelation speaks a word of hope, more like singing it.  And it is more than hope.  It is confidence.

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no   one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.  They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”  (vv. 9-10)

In the midst of horrible circumstances, Revelation sings out a vision of tremendous hope.  I particularly like this part of the vision—from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.

I have just returned from Haiti.  I have never been to Haiti, not one single time, when I did not return inspired by the infectious hope of the Haitian people.  Theirs is not a situation of persecution, like the church to which Revelation was written, but it is extreme by any reckoning.  The people face challenges I find it difficult even to imagine. 

Three years after the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010, the ministries of the Episcopal Church in Haiti are functioning but in makeshift facilities.  The Cathedral operates from a temporary shelter.  So do the primary and secondary schools, the trade school, and the music school.  The same is true for the university and the seminary as well as many of the hospitals and clinics. 

Still, this week the Haitian people gathered with their American partners for a conference known as the Haiti Connection.  A bell choir of blind children played.  A dance troupe of from St. Vincent’s School for Handicapped Children danced.  A choir of deaf children sang.

Partners, Haitian and American, talked about their ministries.  The architect for St. Vincent’s described the rebuilding plans.  One person talked about a ministry to revive the Haitian coffee industry in a way that goes far beyond anything imagined even by “fair trade.”  We heard from the dedicated and extraordinarily talented dean of the nursing school.  A spirit of collaboration prevailed.  Small steps were being taken everywhere.  Lots of small steps add up to giant steps.

It all left it easier for me hear the song of Revelation in a fresh way—from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.  A heavenly chorus of hope.  Having just come home from Haiti, I’m wondering if Revelation might not be a prediction after all.  Maybe it’s even better than a prediction, a statement of confident hope.  And certainly one I happen to need.

Peace,
+Stacy

Resurrection is Not More of the Same

Resurrection is a hard concept to get.  It is not the same thing as resuscitation.  

There is the son of the widow of Nain (Lk. 7:11-15).  There is the daughter of Jairus (Lk. 8:41-42, 49-56).  Most famous of all, probably, is Lazarus (Jn. 11).  Jesus refers to his own action regarding Lazarus as awakening him, not resurrecting him.  In not one instance is the word resurrection used.

There are other instances, including outside the New Testament and including actors other than Jesus.  Elijah restored the life of the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kg. 17:17-24).  He himself prayed, “Let this child’s life come into him again” (v. 21), and the text says that the child was “revived” (v. 22).  Peter restored life to a disciple named Tabitha in Joppa (Acts 9:36-41).  Acts says that “he showed her to be alive” (v. 41).  There is no mention of resurrection.  

Indeed, whatever happened on that first Easter morning, it was not resuscitation or the revival of Jesus’ dead body.  Whatever it was, it was something different with Jesus. It was something different than what had been before with him.  Mary Magdalene, the first of his disciples to see him, did not recognize him (Jn. 20:15).  The life of Jesus was not the same as it had been before.  Two of his closest disciples walked all the way from Jerusalem to Emmaus with him and did not know who he was (Lk. 24:13 ff.).  The life of Jesus was not the same as it had been before.  As instructed, the eleven, Jesus’ most intimate friends, gathered to meet him on a mountain in Galilee to which they had been directed.  Even then, not all recognized him (Mt. 28:17).  The life of Jesus was not the same as it had been before.  

The life of the resurrection as made known in Jesus is not the same as a continuation of life as it has been.  Resurrection is not the same as resuscitation or even revival.  Those, miraculous as they may be, are just a continuation of what has been.  Resurrection is not.  It is something entirely new.  It has no biblical parallel.  And it has no parallel, at least exactly, in our experience of life this side of the kingdom of God.

The fact that it is so completely new, life so completely changed, is what it makes it so hard to accept.  Human beings, I think, are innately conservative.  Better stated, it is really more that we are innately cautious, indeed fearful.  That could be, I think, because we are the only creatures innately aware of our impending deaths.  But for whatever reason, the life of the resurrection is difficult for us to accept precisely because it is not the same old thing, not a continuation of what we have always known, not more of the same.  That is why it takes courage.  And courage, even for those of us who have it, is more than a little difficult to access.  

Still, our message is that we are being called not into continued being but into new being; not into the same old thing, but into newness of life; not something we already know, but something completely without precedent, except in Jesus; not into resuscitated life, but into resurrected life.

The adventure we set out on after Easter is to find out if we’re up to it.  Courage, friends!  And remember.  Jesus has gone on before.

Peace,
+Stacy

Overcoming Religion for Easter

Peter preached a sermon (Acts 10:34-43) in the months immediately after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  For close to 2,000 Easters, and I say this from some personal experience of having tried to preach on 1% of those Easters, preachers have struggled to find something new to explain it.  It is impossible really.  Perhaps Peter put it best in his sermon.  He just announced it—no elaborations, no reflections, no explanations—just announced it.  “God raised him on the third day.”  That was it.  

The truth is that the New Testament really doesn’t say much more than that about the resurrection.  None of the gospels describe the actual event—how, exactly the stone was rolled away, or what happened at the dramatic moment when the body of Jesus arose.  That is a little curious, I think, given how central the resurrection is to Christian faith.  Still, neither the gospels nor the apostle Paul say any more than Peter did—just an announcement.  God raised him on the third day.  He is risen.  That’s about it. 

And could the reason that the Bible says so little about the details of Easter be that the details are not remotely important?  The point of the story of the New Testament, it seems to me, is not nearly so much what you think about the resurrection.  It is what you do about it.  Indeed, repeatedly in the gospels, the disciples are not at all sure what to think.  In John, the disciples who got to the tomb first weren’t sure what to think.  In Luke, even in the presence of the risen Jesus, some of the disciples doubted.  In Matthew, those who were with him on the mountain after the resurrection doubted.  What matters is what they did.  They lived the resurrection.  They lived as if death no longer had power over them.  What matters is that they lived as if all that divides one human being from another no longer existed.

And that brings me back to that early sermon Peter preached about Easter, and to the part of Acts leading up to it.  Because the point is not what Peter said about the resurrection and more about what he did about it, about how Peter was changed by it, changed from old ways to new ways, changed from death to life, changed from being governed by what divides to being an instrument of reconciliation. 

The words of Peter’s sermon are addressed to a man named Cornelius, his family, his friends, and his household.  There were many people there according to Acts, which is not surprising as Cornelius was a man of some importance and means.  He was a Roman centurion, and not one of the mercenary soldiers from other parts of the Empire common in Judea, but an actual Roman.  He was a good man.  A generous man.  A supporter of the synagogue.  But he was not a Jew.  No matter how you cut it, Cornelius was a Gentile, a foreigner, unclean. 

In fact, Peter’s first words to Cornelius were, “You . . . know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile.”  And then Peter went on.  “But God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”  And then Peter begins his sermon with these words:  “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” 

For Peter, that is a matter of the resurrection. That is change inspired by the resurrection.  That is faith in the resurrection showing forth in living a life of witness to the resurrection, a life in the service of reconciliation. 

That gets to the heart of the resurrection for all of us.  To have faith in the resurrection is to give up partiality, things of our own creation that divide us, all things that prevent our reconciliation, that prevent the love of God for our neighbors from being made real, for God knows no partiality at all.  What the resurrection does is destroy all that divides in the name of God’s overpowering reconciliation that will be held back by nothing, not even death itself.

Now things that divide us are not that easy to give up.  After all, they are deeply cherished.  After all, they are all we have ever known.  After all, they are often matters of principle, of conviction.  After all, they are very often full of religious meaning for us, as they were for Peter. 

It is hard for us to associate what is religious with something God is working beyond all imagination to defeat.  But when anything, including religion itself, divides us, that is exactly what we can expect from Easter, that God will defeat it.  “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” 

Forty-five years ago this Thursday, which was a Thursday that year also, the Thursday before Palm Sunday, a man who had incredible faith in the resurrection entered into it fully.  That man’s name was Martin Luther King, Jr. Forty-five years ago this Thursday, he left Atlanta on an airplane to take part in the sanitation workers strike in Memphis for the reason that God knows no partiality.  And on that evening, 45 years ago last night, King preached these final words:

[God has] allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

The next day he was dead.  And that very costly stand against what divides, as religiously essential as many of us thought that division was at the time, was a product, I am sure, of the resurrection and an encounter with the risen Jesus.  “Mine eye have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”  The question is, of course, have ours? 

That is what the resurrection is all about.  It is about living in the light of the glory of the coming of the Lord, that in the coming of the Lord there is no partiality.  None.  It is living in the light of the resurrection.  It is in living in light of the fact that God knows no partiality.  None.

Not that that’s an easy thing to do.  Partiality is a hard thing to give up.  Fear is a hard thing to give up.  Somehow, partiality is a comfort, a defense, an illusion that we are somehow worthy, deserving, entitled to God’s special care.  We would rather that be the case.  It is not.  The reason that is good news to us is that we are the people that, before the resurrection, Peter would have characterized as foreign, unclean, Gentiles.  It is only by the power of what the resurrection meant, and what a group of followers of Jesus decided to do about it, that we are included beyond the very religious barrier that Peter had to overcome. 

Is the resurrection enough for us to overcome the things that divide us in our own day—national origin, language spoken, gender, opinion, political party, class, tax bracket, orientation?  Is it?  Religion notwithstanding?  Might the resurrection even have the power for us to overcome our religion?

So, here’s the basic proclamation.  God raised him on the third day.  He is risen.  That’s it.  What we think about it matters not a bit.  What we believe about it does, but only in the sense of what we do about it, what we overcome because of it, how we live because of it—without division, without partiality, all religion to the contrary notwithstanding.

Peace,
+Stacy

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