Gospel Test for Sunday 21 August 2022

 

Mark 12.28-34          Now, one of the biblical scholars came near and heard them [the other biblical scholars, the chief priests, and the elders] discussing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, the scholar asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is: Hear, O Israel: the Holy One our God, the Holy is one; you shall love the Holy One your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the biblical scholar said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘God is one, and besides God there is no other; and to love God with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. This is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that the scholar answered wisely, he said “You are not far from the reign of God. After that no one dared to ask Jesus any question.

Reflection        Driving the Turquoise Trail, a fifty four mile National Scenic Byway that winds through miles of grazing land and polka dot hills pierced with abandoned turquoise, gold and coal mines, a mine shaft remade into a Tavern, crumbling shacks revived by artistic squatters and General Robert’s property with its one hundred foot long specimens of petrified bamboo laced with tiny beadlike fossils from the Cretaceous period, I gained a bit of perspective. Between 70 and 135 million years ago the Turquoise trail that connects Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico as well as half of the North American continent were under water. And this is but a splinter of history in our 13.8 billion year journey to be here, now. 

Here, today, we receive an invitation. An invitation to love bigly. Not blind or naive love. Not Hallmark card sentimental love and certainly not self serving love. But love that begins with an emerging Mystery as big and unfathomable as our 13.8 billion year journey to be here, now. Today we receive an invitation given to our Israelite ancestors  six hundred years before Jesus was born, an invitation to love bigly by participating in the Oceanic Mystery we call God.

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut 6.4-5) This great commandment to love God bigly is part of a series of sermons telling the people of Israel that Yahweh, God,  is bringing the people to the promise land not because they deserve or have earned it but because God loves bigly. What is required of God’s people in response to this love is just one thing. Love God and God alone. No idols. No other gods. No thing and no one may come before God. Just love God bigly.

This was the Great Love Commandment that Jesus learned sitting on the lap of his mother Mary, sitting at the feet of rabbis, sitting in the synagogue, unrolling the Torah and reading, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” But when the Biblical scholars question Jesus asking, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesusgoes off script.

“The first is: Hear, O Israel: the Holy One our God, the Holy is one; you shall love the Holy One your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” Did you hear it? Jesus adds  our minds to the first commandment and with a second commandment he advances the scope of love to include our neighbors and our selves. Truly, we are meant to love bigly.

Much like Jesus, we learn about love sitting on the laps of our parents or caregivers, we learn in Sunday School, listening to teachers and preachers and reading books. We also learn about love from the media and mass marketing. Does this sound familiar? “You must first learn to love yourself because if you do not love yourself you cannot love anyone else.“ So get into therapy or buy a fistful of the one billion nine hundred million self help books you can find with Google in eight tenths of a second. The resounding message is unquestionable.  Love number one and number one is me. Next in line for love are my neighbors because as a good person it is my duty to love my neighbors. And when the eleventh hour inevitably quakes and my life becomes wild and unruly, then I get on my knees and remember God. It seems, most of us most of the time turn the Great Commandment to love bigly upside down. 

Consider the order in which Jesus gives the scribes and us the First commandment. Love God with everything you have; your heart, soul, strength and your mind. Mind is the thing that Jesus adds to the equation. By bringing our minds to love One God everything else falls into its right place. We realize we are not number one. Our little lives and piddling opinions do not determine the plot. We are not the protagonists of the story that spans from star dust to space station. We are a drop in the ocean of all that is and majestic in our ability to bring our minds to the Mystery of the Eternally Becoming Ocean that we call God. 

All that to say, most of the time our stories are far too small. Swept away in our personal melodramas, seized by what we love and hate in local, national and global politics, the stories we tell are too small because we fail to love bigly.

What if we turned our upside down love right side up? What if we decided to follow Jesus’ commandment to love God and God alone. No idols. No other gods. No thing and no one loved before God? What if we made God the main character in our story? Would that not be an epic tale, beginning in an infinitesimally small singularity and stretching across 13.8 billion years of heat and energy, sub-particles and black holes, stars, planets, bamboo forests, polka dot hills, turquoise mines and a mere human being driving an improbable machine across what used to be an ocean after it was a bamboo forest as the universe expands faster than the speed of light?

I believe If this was how we told our story we would fall to our knees in wonder, love and awe. We would be compelled to admit our infinitesimal smallness and, at the same time grab the handles of our magnificent minds and bring them to the edge of what we know in the ocean of Mystery in which as a single drop of water we float. 

If only we accepted the invitation to love bigly, to tune our minds and hang our hearts on the First and Great Commandment; Love God and God alone. No idols. No other gods. No thing and no one loved before God,; if we truly loved bigly I believe Jesus’ Second Commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves would wholly and habitually be fulfilled. 

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Gospel Text for Trinity Sunday 12 June 2022

Matthew 28.16-20         Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus sent them. And when they saw him, they bowed down worshipping him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came and said to them saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. Now look, I am with you always, to the end of the age. “

Reflection        One plus One plus One equals One. You may accuse me of being a terrible mathematician but instead you might ask, “One what? What three ones add up to One?”   

The Ones are names for God, words we use to describe the experience of our “with God” life. Since God is more than a transcendent philosophical concept, more than a teacher, guide and friend,  and more than the generative breath of creation no one word  makes whole the holiness of One God. Which I believe is why in the mid second century the Christian writer Tertulllian offered the first argument for the Trinity of God; the Father, Son and Holy Spirit even though it does not appear anywhere in the Hebrew or Christian Testaments.

Imagine three persons sitting at a table. The figure on the right represents God, known as Father in relationship with the figure in the center, Son. Father and Son are known by their relationship. Theirs is a dance of mutual indwelling. Jesus explains, “The father is in me as I am in the father.”(John 14.11)  “For I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak.” (John 12.49) The Father and the Son are intimately interconnected; the Father pouring himself out to the Son, the Son emptying himself to receive the Father. Theirs is a mutual in-dwelling, an interpenetration.

The third person at the table represents the Spirit, meant to arouse relationship among the Father, the Son and Humanity.  The gospel of John explains,  “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14.26)  The Spirit, the Advocate, the Third Person of the Trinity comes to indwell humanity and thereby fulfill Jesus’ inconceivable promise that concludes Matthew’s text, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28.20)

The self, love is poured out and received. This is the dance, the eternal movement or aliveness among the Three Persons of the Trinity. God pours God’s self out to be incarnate in the Son revealing to us that God is both transcendent and immanent, which is to say, God is both beyond all things and within all things.  By this same interpenetrating love, Jesus gives himself away to everyone he encounters. Then, to insure the succession of the dance, the Holy Spirit breathes in each of us so that we too participate in receiving and giving ourselves away for the love of others. Taking our place in the dance of the Trinity we too have a place at the table.

For those of us drawn to the philosophical, transcendent, all powerful image of God as father our desire for safety and security in the care of a protector is satisfied and we may enter the Trinity through the doorway marked Father. For others God as father evokes fear of judgement or misused authority. For us, the doorway into the Trinity marked Father is odious.

For those of us grounded in the visible and persuaded by matter the incarnate image of God as son satisfies our desire for a teacher, guide  or friend and we may enter the Trinity through the doorway marked Son. For others the image of God as Son may be exclusionary and un-relatable and the doorway into the Trinity marked Son is impassable.

For those of us compelled by the unborn, undying breath of creation the mysterious image of God as spirit informs and inspires us and we may enter the Trinity through the doorway marked Spirit. For others the image of God as Spirit is frivolous and frustrating. And for us the doorway marked Spirit is beyond all reason.

Thanks be to the One plus One plus One equals One God, not only are there more than one doorway through which we may enter and dance in our “with God” life but the Community of God, the Trinity, refuses to be limited by the names ascribed to it more than eighteen hundred years ago.

Intending to invite everyone into the Community of the Trinity, The Woman’s Lectionary for the Whole Church  offers even more doorways through which we may enter and dance our “with God” life.

Sovereign, Savior, Shelter

Author, Word, Translator

Parent, Partner, Friend

Majesty, Mercy, Mystery

Creator, Christ, Compassion

Potter, Vessel, Holy Fire

Life, Liberation, Love* 

One plus One plus One equals One with room for us, One more.

How we see and what we say about God matters for how we live our lives.

If we see God as Father, a towering figure judging and demanding sacrifice, we may live in fear. If we see God as the only Son living an idealized life we may justify excluding others and deny accountability whining, “We are only human.” If we see God as fickle Spirit, by turns breathing blessing and demanding death we may withhold our breath and refuse to speak of God.  

If there are words that keep you from dancing with the One plus One plus One equals One God, replace them. If there are words that invite you to dance, keep them because relationship is the essence and substance of God. It is the dance in which we are meant to participate. One plus One plus One equals One God, unbound by names and abundant with doorways through which we may enter. Shall we dance?

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* Gafney, WIlda C.  A Woman’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York: Church Publishing, 2021) 205.

Gospel of Life Sunday 27 March 2022

 

Text this week is the Gospel of Life, living in the present moment.

Reflection        Waiting for the BART yellow line to San Francisco, chill wind whipped hair into my eyes while the screaming thunder of the approaching train signaled my senses, “Be on guard.” Minding my posture as well as the gap, I settled into the welcome warmth of the less than half occupied car. Unwashed train windows were fitting backdrop for the long winded woman who joined us at the first stop.

It took me awhile to figure out that the wired woman was pontificating to London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco. Words were lost in the river of her emotion as she balanced her bulging backpack on the seat, leaving scarce room for her to sit while reaching into a tattered sack to retrieve a can of beer. I resumed my vigil surveilling fly by cardboard villages buried beneath overpasses and caravans of dilapidated vehicles parked nose to tail along their curbside home. Gazing through dirt stained windows tears caught my throat and blurred my vision.

Screeching to the next jarring halt, like a neglected proscenium the train doors part revealing a mammoth man squeezed and restrained in a wheelchair, a ghoulish red haired doll strapped to his shoulder as a disheveled caretaker bumps, bangs and locks the scene in place. Within a matter of seconds London Breed’s provocateur renews her protestations, the wheelchair man’s head falls forward and we dive to one hundred and thirty five feet below the San Francisco bay. 

Now staring straight into oblivion, the damn in my blurry eyes bursts as a fiery tong pierces my  heart. “Oh my God, such anguish and adversity, such misery and misfortune. And here I sit on my way to sip wine and slurp oysters. I am so blessed, so incredibly blessed. I could be barely surviving entombed beneath train tracks or restrained in a wheelchair with a diabolical doll strapped to my shoulder.” Then something broke open and it occurred to me. I am. 

I am not other than London Breed’s agent provocateur. I am not other than wheelchair man or the dispossessed box dwellers. 

When Moses asks God for God’s name, God answers, I AM. (Exodus 3.13) I AM is that which we all are, made in the image and likeness of the One, Holy and Living I AM.  We are One I AM.  When we allow ourselves to settle into the fullness and messiness, the wounds and the wonder of every stinking real life moment we not only find our selves, we also find God in the faces of every I AM. 

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Gospel text for Sunday 25 April 2021

 

John 10:11-18        Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

Reflection       How are we to respond to Jesus’ willingness to lay down his life so that we all may be one? How are we to respond to a leader who does not run away or toss us under the bus when all hell breaks loose and life erupts out of control? I believe the answer is simple (not easy). We must do everything we possibly can to affirm our unity with all people.

Doing everything we possibly can begins with remembering who and whose we are. We understand that all people “are made in the image of God,”  and that “we are free to make choices: to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God.” (BCP 845)  Like the Good Shepherd we “have the power to lay our lives down… by our own accord.” In other words, we are free to care for one another. 

Doing everything we possibly can means we respond to Jesus’ call “that we all may be one” by respecting the dignity of every human being and loving our neighbor as ourself. It means we erase the redlines and remove the fences that falsely separate us.  It means doing whatever it takes to insure the assumptions and actions that deny the shared humanity of George Floyd and Dereck Chauvin are dismantled. 

Here I must confess I did not celebrate when I heard the news of Mr. Chauvin’s conviction because one man is dead and another man’s life is destroyed, two families are devastated and our country is divided over who is the trespasser and who the trespassed. 

Yes. Holding a man to account for his actions is imperative and it is not enough to allay the fear of fathers giving their black sons ‘the talk’ about how to protect themselves when confronted by white authority. It is not enough to  quiet the fear of mothers teaching their white daughters how to walk through parking lots and certain places and not be seen as vulnerable. Holding a man to account for his behavior is necessary and not sufficient to transform the consciousness of people who experience one another as threats. 

Secular law holds us accountable for wrongful social behavior.  It judges our up close, personal, blow by blow actions and their consequence. Secular law responds with equivalent retaliation, tit for tat, an eye for an eye.  By contrast, God’s law assumes a hundred thousand feet above the ground perspective. It disarms every appearance of division to declare our shared humanity. In the words of the parable of the Good Shepherd, “so there will be one flock, one shepherd.” 

God’s law demands a reckoning for Mr. Floyd’s killing and Mr. Chauvin’s conviction.  This has nothing to do with counting coup or political advantage. God’s law requires nothing less than the transformation of our individual and collective consciousness.

When we set aside our pride, politics and opinions we are free to rise to the God’s eye point of view.  From the hundred thousand feet above the ground perspective we see that we are “one flock, one shepherd.” With our minds risen to the heights of our hearts we naturally choose to use our freedom to love and live in harmony.  This is the transformation of consciousness God’s law demands as a reckoning for Mr. Floyd’s killing and Mr. Chauvin’s conviction. We must do everything we possibly can to affirm our unity with all people.

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Epistle for the 5th Sunday of Easter 10 May 2020

1 Peter 2:2-10

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture:

“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,

a cornerstone chosen and precious;

and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected

has become the very head of the corner”,and

“A stone that makes them stumble,

and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people,

but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy.

Reflection       Acknowledging God as the rock, the foundation of our lives requires a reordering of everything else.

By choosing God we commit ourselves to turn away from competing loyalties.  In Biblical times these competing loyalties or false gods were named Baal, Molech, Ashtoreth, Chemosh, Artemis, and others. Our ancient ancestors carved these gods in wood and molded them in gold. These were the pagan gods in competition with YHWH, the One God of Israel.

Today our false gods have names like  money, religion, politics, rights and freedom, sex, sports, celebrity, drugs, add your own to the list. I believe the idol in position number one is, self.  How do we know these are false gods? Because false gods are things that occupy an inordinate amount of our attention, action and resources. Please underline the word ‘inordinate.’ 

None of these interests; money, youth, religion, politics, rights and freedom, sex, sports, celebrity, drugs or self are false gods in and of themselves. In fact, they can be worthy assets.  Idolatry comes into play when we devote an unwarranted or wasteful amount of our attention, action or resources to them.  It is when we ascribe a surplus of meaning and value to theses interests that they become false gods or idols.

Here is the glitch. By claiming to revere the One, Holy and Living God at the same time we make great offerings of our attention, action and resources to false gods or idols we are effectively condemning ourselves to life in the middle of a combat zone. At best we are restless, at worst worried sick, as our false idols compete with the One, Holy and Living God for our attention, our action and our resources. No peace will be found on this battleground.

What then shall we do? Let me suggest that in an unforeseeable twist of events, the onslaught of Covid-19 addresses our dilemma.  The insidious intrusion of the grim virion shut down historic institutions, power brokering agencies and brought the world to its knees. Recently someone put it this way, “It is as if God sent us all to our rooms!” That image strikes home for me. Too many times I heard, “Young lady, go to your room and write five hundred times, “I will be kind to my little brother.” But I digress.

Here is the startling paradox. The cost of the pandemic is unfathomable to victims, their families, those who lost their livelihood, their homes and their hope. And at the same time, the shutting down of public institutions has created the spaciousness for us to go to our rooms, examine and reorder our lives while the earth is healing her waters, air and atmosphere.

The question is, will we consent to this challenging moment and devote our attention, actions and resources to fostering right relationship with God, our neighbors and the earth? Or, will we join the chorus complaining, looking for someone to blame, demanding things go back to the way they used to be?

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Gospel text for Mother's Day, 8 May 2016

John 19.25-27       Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

Reflection   Although this text is not cited among today's lections it seems particularly relevant for Mother’s Day. Whether or not we are parents, we are faced with the inevitable experience of standing helplessly nearby and watching people in need; young or old, our child or others, people stumble, fall, end up in the ER, are victims of bullies, lose their soccer match, are not chosen for gymnastics team, cry all night in pain, fail the bar exam, are left by their lover, are diagnosed with a chronic disease, do the utterly unthinkable and dare to die in front of us. 

The thing we learn from Jesus’ mother and the other Mary's is, no matter what, we stay. We stay when we see someone carrying the cross of whatever challenge, disability or hardship life hands them. We stay, whether they are our own children or others, because we are sisters and brothers of Jesus, all one in the family of God. We stay because whether we are female or male, whether we have parented a child or not, we stay because we are all children of One God which makes us all mothers of each other.

It may take a moment for some of us to wrap our minds around the notion of being mothers. Perhaps a few Biblical references to God as mother will help. God is known as a mother eagle, “Like the eagle that stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young, God spreads wings to catch you, and carries you on pinions.” God is compared to a nursing mother, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” (Isaiah 49:15). Lastly, Jesus tells a parable of God as a woman looking for her lost coin, “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ " (Luke 15:8-10)

The role of mother is not exclusive to female persons given to childbearing. Anyone who expresses compassion, kindness, guidance, protection, comfort, and unrelenting loyalty to another is mothering in the best sense of the word. From his cross Jesus called upon Mary to mother his beloved disciple even as he called upon his disciple to care for Mary as mother. That same charge echoes through the years, calling each of us, who are Jesus’ beloved disciples today, to search relentlessly for every lost or hurting child of God and comfort, care for, teach and encourage, protect and dignify them. 

When we look to the massive problems in our world it is easy to feel paralyzed thinking, “What can I possibly do to make this situation better.” But Jesus does not ask his disciple to change the world of violence in which they were steeped. He asked his disciple to take care of the one person standing next to him. That’s all. What if today we decided to do just that. Like the woman searching for her lost coin, search our community or neighborhoods to find the one person who needs our help and then, like the Mary’s standing at the foot of Jesus cross, stay with them no matter what.

A gift for all of us.... Brahms: German Requiem

While the death of his dear friend Robert Schumann provided an initial impetus for Brahms's German Requiem, the composer dedicated it to his mother, who died nine years later. The memory of Johanna Brahms is particularly apparent in the work’s fifth movement which takes Isaiah 66:13 for its text: “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.”  Click on the image in the upper right area of this post to hear the full Requiem. 

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