Evangelizing in God’s First Language

Readings for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Psalm 62:6-14

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

Mark 1:14-20

This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Churchin Berkeley CA on January 22, 2012

“For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him.”

The great evangelist, Rev. Billy Graham tells of a time early in his career when he arrived in a small town to preach a sermon.  Wanting to mail a letter, he asked a young boy where the post office was. When the boy told him, Rev. Graham thanked him and said, “If you’ll come to the Baptist church this evening, you can hear me telling everyone how to get to Heaven.” The boy said, “I don’t think I’ll be there. You don’t even know your way to the post office.”

The story reminds me of times when I was a Youth Minister, speaking of lofty and spiritual things to the youth while almost getting us all lost on the way to mini-golf. Whenever we attempt to answer the call to evangelize (to share the Gospel), we are often brought face to face with our humanity and limitations. We need all the help we can get and the readings this morning actually offer some help by presenting us with a colorful variety of ways to evangelize or, as the Collect says, to answer readily the call of our Saviour and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation.[1]

Jonah, fresh out of the belly of a big fish, uses a very terse, fire-and-brimstone method, saying simply to the Ninevites, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be no more” (In Hebrew, its only five words: “Od arbaim yom, ynineveh nehpachet”).[2] In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, there is an urgent exhortation to let go of what is familiar in order to embrace what is to come, even if that means sexual abstinence within marriage. And in the Gospel, Jesus proclaims good news, saying “The time is now. The kingdom is near”; and then, with concise imperatives: “Repent. Believe. Follow me,” he incites immediate responses from his listeners, who leave even familial attachments to follow him. All these methods may have their place in evangelism: fire-and brimstone preaching, urgent exhortations and the proclamation of news so good that it demands leaving even our family. But the evangelistic method that I want to explore and advocate this morning is one described in the Psalm, which reads, “For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him.” Evangelizing through patient silence. Using patient silence before, after and during our proclamation of the good news.

All major world religions uphold the sacred power of silence and its necessity for spiritual growth and our Christian tradition is certainly no exception. The great theologian Meister Eckhart said, “Nothing in creation is so like God as silence” and Saint John of the Cross said, “Silence is God’s first language.”

The Bible suggests practicing patient silence before proclaiming God’s message. We cannot speak words of truth, much less proclaim the Gospel, unless we first listen. And it is in intentional silence that we can truly listen to ourselves, to others and to God.  By practicing patient silence as a regular spiritual discipline, we grow more attuned to the message that God has for us and the message that God wants to speak through us to others. Silence and solitude are absolutely integral to Christian spirituality as well as essential to effective evangelism. Although this can be seen clearly in the lives of saints throughout church history, we only have to look again at today’s readings to see the necessity for patient silence prior to evangelism. Jonah preached only after three days and three nights of silence and dark solitude in the belly of a great fish.[3] And although Paul started preaching and evangelizing immediately after his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus, his initial evangelism was not successful. Paul’s evangelism and missionary activity did not really take off until 14 years later, after his conversion and baptism and after a decade and a half of preparation. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright argues that Paul actually travelled to Mt. Sinai during this preparation period and remained there for a substantial amount of time, meditating in silence and solitude.[4] And of course, even Jesus did not proclaim the good news until after spending 40 days in the silence and solitude of the Palestinian deserts. The verse immediately preceding our Gospel passage today reads, “[Jesus] was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts.” (Mark 1:13). Jonah, Paul, and Jesus proclaimed a message that was forged out of silence and solitude, and that silence and solitude clearly held enormous challenges for all of them: the belly of a fish, wild beasts, desert aridity, satanic temptations.

Clearly, intentional silence and solitude are very difficult for us to practice because it is in silence that we often face our own wild beasts and dark shadows. French philosopher Blaise Pascal said, “All of man’s troubles stem from his inability to sit alone, quietly, in a room.” Silence is hard, but in order to evangelize without pushing our own agendas or projecting our own problems onto others, we need to practice intentional silence. Otherwise, our evangelism can easily cause more damage than good and desecrate the name of Christ rather than boldly proclaim his good news. By practicing patient silence, we can learn to say the right thing at the right time to the right person.[5]

When we make attempts to evangelize, forged in silence or not, the invitation to patient silence remains, even after we proclaim the good news. The Bible suggests practicing patient silence after proclaiming God’s message. The first sermon I preached at my home parish was on the parable of the mustard seed. At the time, I was a Youth Minister and the parable really encouraged me as I was “planting seeds” in the souls of young people. Although I tried to speak a message to the youth, forged out of my own discipline of silence, I still found it very hard to see fruits of my labor. The youth were not always very responsive or even present. And when they were, they mostly just wanted to play dodge ball or video games, which fortunately I also loved to do. Sometimes I would try to experiment with what is called “contemplative youth ministry” and invite us to practice brief moments of silence together. It worked some times with the older kids, but trying to keep silence with junior highers for more than 10 seconds was like trying to fit Jonah’s big fish into a ziplock bag. It was not very possible, especially with this particular group of junior highers.

A few months ago, however, I visited my home parish and had the chance to see some of the youth that I once ministered to. I saw that one of those “mustard seeds” that I had planted years ago had turned into a tree, and I mean that in more ways than one because he is almost a foot taller than me now. This particular kid, named Christian, was always the most rowdy and out-of-control during youth group. We had kept in touch through facebook and I could see by his updates that he continued to remain pretty rowdy and out-of-control. But after catching up, we walked over to a nearby meditation hall with another friend and there we decided to sit in prayerful silence for 10 minutes, followed by the Lord’s Prayer. And 10 minutes is a long time for anyone to sit in intentional silence. So you can imagine how encouraged I was to see Christian, who two years ago couldn’t be silent for more than 10 seconds, remain present to the silence for 10 minutes!

I had been holding him and the other youth of the church in my own prayerful silences throughout the years and by doing so, I was giving God the space to grow the seeds that I had planted. And I had the great opportunity to see God’s fruit in him. By waiting patiently in silence for God to work and grow in Christian, I was able to sit in that same patient silence with him, where both of us could listen to God’s message to us as well as to the message that God wanted to speak through us.

So we evangelize through silence, by practicing silence and solitude before we proclaim the good news so that our message is inspired by God and not by our own agendas. And we practice silence after we proclaim the good news in order to give God the space to grow the seeds we planted. Finally, we use patient silence during evangelism to the point that our patient silence is our evangelism. We evangelize through silence by simply listening to others, listening empathetically to their stories, their joys and sorrows and thus embody Christ by emptying ourselves and simply offering a listening ear and a silent mouth. St. Francis understood the power of evangelism through silence when he said, “Preach the Gospel always, use words only when necessary.” By practicing silence before, after and during evangelism, we give God the space to speak through us to say the right thing at the right time to the right person, even if what we say involves no words.[6]

And so I encourage us all to continue to respond to the call to evangelize, not necessarily through fire-and-brimstone preaching, but by practicing intentional silence, and remaining open in that silence to God’s message for us and to the message that God wants to speak through us. I invite us all (certainly including myself) to practice just 10 minutes of intentional silence each day this week. Although ten minutes might not sound like a lot of time, it is really not easy; it is actually a very challenging invitation. And in that silence, I invite us to remain open to God’s message for us and to the message that God wants to speak through us. Pascal, who said, “All of man’s troubles stem from his inability to sit alone, quietly, in a room,” implies the difficulty of silence as do today’s readings: “[Jesus] was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” Although we may face our own wild beasts and dark shadows and temptations in our silence, the angels will attend to us and God will speak to us, maybe not in words, but in his first language, which accordin g to St. John of the Cross, is silence. “For God alone my soul in silence waits.” Amen.

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[1] The word evangelism comes from the Greek euaggellion which means “good news” or the “Gospel.” To “evangelize” means to “proclaim the Gospel,” so in a sense, we Episcopalians “evangelize” every Sunday when we read and proclaim the Gospel, as which we just did. I’m using the word “evangelize” here more as what we are doing when we respond to the Great Commission to “Go 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.” (Matt 28:19-20)

[2] Although Jonah predates the Gospel of Jesus Christ (euaggellion) and therefore cannot be “evangelizing,” he is still proclaiming God’s message to a people.

[3] Although it actually might not have been all that silent in the fish’s belly, Jonah was still forced to sit alone and face himself.

[4] Wright, N.T. “Paul, Arabi and Elijah (Galatian 1:17)” in Journal of Biblical Literature vol. 115, 683–692.

[5] At the same time, God will still use our attempts at evangelism for good, even if they are not forged out of habitual silence and solitude. More than a decade ago, I used to engage in sidewalk evangelism in upstate New York, passing out little Christian tracts with my brother, explaining the four spiritual laws to people walking by. Although I don’t do that anymore (and if I did, the Episcopal Church would probably disown me), I’d like to think that God still used those attempts at evangelism for some good.

[6] I have to admit that I’ve actually never heard a sermon on evangelism in any Episcopal Church, except for last Sunday, when Rev. Bruce encouraged us to invite others to “Come and see.” I have noticed a lack of anxiety about evangelizing in the Episcopal Church. And, ironically, that is part of what drew me to the church, probably because I came from a church that made me worried that I wasn’t evangelizing enough. Episcopalians won me over with their general silence on evangelism. Some might say that Episcopalians don’t evangelize, but I believe they do, in more subtle and silent ways.

God’s Resolution to Us

Readings for the First Sunday after Christmas

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

Psalm 147

Galatians 3:23-25. 4:4-7

John 1:1-18

This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley CA on January 1, 2012. (Watch a vlog of this sermon here)

Happy New Year! This morning is the first morning of 2012. And I can’t think of a better way to welcome the new year than to gather together, hear the Word of God, give thanks for His many blessings and pray for His continual guidance and protection.

Many of us try to embrace this opportunity for a new beginning by making new year resolutions. Personally, I think this a great endeavor. It was the power of a new year resolution that helped me quit smoking as I know it has helped many others quit unhealthy habits and replace them with more life-giving practices. At the same time, new year resolutions, as we all know, can be very frustrating as they tend to reveal our lack of resolve come February or March or January 2^nd. The short term of resolutions has become so apparent that we actually wish good fortune for one another by saying, “May all your troubles last as long as your New Year resolutions (!)”

I heard a person share how his resolutions changed from 2008 to 2011 in light of their short term. In 2008, his resolution was: “I will get my weight down below 180 pounds.” After that unsuccessful resolution, in 2009, he said, “I will follow my diet religiously until I get below 200 pounds.” After that didn’t go too well, in 2010, he said, “I will work out 3 days a week.” And finally, in 2011, he said, “I will try to drive past a gym at least once a week.” I don’t know what his resolution is for 2012, but I’d like to think he was successful with that last one and maybe feels ready to raise the bar a little bit this year. Yet his progression or regression sounds a lot like most of my resolutions through the years (especially when it comes to diet and exercise). Oscar Wilde quipped, “Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.” Resolutions often (painfully) reveal our bankruptcy in the area of tenacity and stick-to-it-ive-ness (and for those whose resolution is to learn a new word each day, “Stick-to-it-ive-ness” is actually a real word in the dictionary).

Although resolutions reveal our finitude and tendency to fail, the Gospel for today offers a helpful perspective that I hope will empower and encourage us this New Year. The Gospel today proclaims God’s dogged resolution to us; a resolution with which He will never fail to follow through.

The poetic prologue in John introduces us intimately to the Word of God. However, our appreciation of the Word deepens as we come to understand the literary and philosophical context. Before the Cappadocian understanding of the Trinity in the fourth century and the Chalcedonian understanding of Christ as fully human and fully divine in the fifth century, there was a Jewish understanding of a divine mediator as part of the Godhead. Rabbinic Judaism eventually rejected this idea as heresy probably in reaction to emerging Christianity.[1] But when the Gospel of John was written, the idea of a divine mediator between heaven and earth was well known and was able to fit within Jewish monotheism. We see this in the book of Proverbs, where the Wisdom of God (Sophia), personified as a woman, exists before Creation and is active during creation and continually calls out in the streets, eager to share her many blessings with humanity.[2] Sophia can be understood as a divine entity who is part of the one God. We also see this divine mediator in the works of Philo, a Jewish mystic of the early first century, who explained that the wisdom of God is the logos of God[3] and writes, “This Logos of God pleads with the immortal as suppliant for afflicted mortality and acts as ambassador of the ruler to the subject.”[4] When the author of John wrote his prologue, he brilliantly synthesized the Wisdom of God in Proverbs with the Logos of God in Philo to describe the Word of God in the Gospel, who became flesh and dwelt among us.

When first century Jewish readers heard the Word of God in John, they would have thought of a divine mediator, of one who “pleads with the immortal” on our behalf, and of one who calls out to us, eager to share heavenly blessings. The sad tragedy is that the world, according to the prologue, did not know him and his own people did not accept him. In fact, the world rejected him and murdered him. The same world that the fourth Gospel says God so loved.[5]

But here’s what’s so amazing to me about the Gospel, the good news. The Word of God, the divine mediator, came into the world and even while the world rejected him and murdered him, he still “pleaded” with God on our behalf and offered us grace. Before the name of Jesus is even mentioned in the Gospel, he is already rejected by the world. And furthermore, he has already responded to the world’s rejection with grace. There is a beautiful verse that I often overlook in the prologue, which reads: “From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace” (1:16). And this verse comes after the world has rejected him.

This is God’s resolution to us. He is committed to us. He has committed to love us like a Father loves his children; and to open our eyes, to enlighten us (as the Gospel says, “to enlighten everyone” v.9) to the awesome power that is inherent in being the children of God. No matter how many resolutions we break this year, God’s resolution to love us and to empower us as his children remains firm and unyielding. And that is really good news.

Jewish studies professor Daniel Boyarin at Cal argues that John’s prologue is in fact midrash on the first Creation account in Genesis. Midrash is a Jewish mode of interpreting Scripture which uses creative imagination and other biblical texts in order to plumb the deeper meaning of the Torah.[6] Boyarin sees the author of John employing this method in the prologue, which elaborates on the word that God spoke into the darkness at creation, when He said, “Let there be light.” So the same divine mediator, the same one committed to us no matter what, was present at Creation as the very word of God that brought all things into being.

The same Word permeates all throughout the Scriptures and other Jewish midrash elaborate on its quality as the divine mediator committed to humanity no matter what. One midrash describes the Word that spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. The rabbis share answers as to why the burning bush was a thorn bush. (They think it was a thorn bush because the Hebrew implies it with the word “Seneh” a dis legomenon which means “thorn” elsewhere). One creative answer explains that when a hand goes into a thorn bush it does not get cut because the thorns face down, but when the hand tries to pull out of the thorn bush, it goes against the direction of the thorns and gets cut. So when you put your hand into a thorn bush, you’re making a real commitment to say there, unless you want to get sliced. In the same way, the Word of God made a serious commitment to stay with us when he entered into the thorny bush of our world. This Jewish midrash pulses with meaning in light of the Christian doctrine of Incarnation and the Passion of the Christ who enters into a world that rejects him and crowns him with thorns, thus symbolizing his commitment to us, no matter how painful.[7]  And even when Jesus, the Word of God, is on the cross dying, he continues to play the role of divine mediator, praying for humanity even as humanity crucifies him, saying, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

The Word of God has resolved to commit himself to us no matter what. And this Word of the Lord is present to us, reminding us of God’s resolution to us, every time we hear the Scriptures, which are replete with proof of God’s commitment. That is why we have the Liturgy of the Word and that is why every time we hear the Scriptures read, we acknowledge, “The Word of the Lord” and respond “Thanks be to God.” Thanks be to God that our power and identity as children of God is not dependent on our own tenacity and ability to keep our resolutions. Our power and identity as children of God depends fully on the Word’s resolute commitment to us, on God’s stick-to-it-ive-ness.

Paul says, “You are no longer a slave but a child.” We are no longer slaves to our own finitude and failures. We are children beloved by God who remains committed to us no matter how many times we fail, no matter how many times we complain, no matter how many times we hurt ourselves or others or God. God responds with “grace upon grace” to the darkest parts of our hearts, the violence within each of us, our anger and our hate; because even while humanity crucified Christ, he remained committed to loving us and praying for us. That is a profound resolution.

So this year I hope we can keep our resolutions. But more than that, my hope is that we can relax into God’s resolution to us as his beloved children. And by allowing God’s loving commitment to us to transform our hearts, perhaps we can learn the power of what it means to be a child of God and maybe learn to show that same loving commitment to others not because we think we have the drive to really do it this year but because we are loved so tenaciously by God. Amen.

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[1] The heresy is called “Two Powers in Heaven” b. Hag. 15a

[2] For more on Sophia see http://deforestlondon.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/she-who-is-sophia-summary-of-the-mystery-of-god-in-feminist-theological-discourse/

[3] Allegorical Interpretation 1:65

[4] Who is the Heir of Divine Things, 205-206.

[5] Our participation in oppression, marginalization and violence (whether direct in the form of actual violence or indirect by being part of or benefiting from a system that is violent) is our participation in the murder of Christ. It is our rejection of the Word and Wisdom of God. And it is very hard for any of us to claim innocence in this regard. I’m not talking about us as totally depraved sinners as the Calvinists claim. I’m talking about us as beautiful people made in the image of God who live in a violent world and get caught up in this violence (whether we see it or not) and end up desecrating the image of God in others and in ourselves. And in so doing, we wound Christ in each of us.

[6] “One of the most characteristic forms of Midrash is a homily on a scriptural passage from the Pentateuch that invokes… texts from either the Prophets or the [Wisdom literature like the Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, etc.] as the framework of ideas and language that is used to interpret and expand the Pentateuchal text being preached” (Boyarin, 548)

[7] Midrash Yalkut Shimoni 169

Mansions for Emmanuel

Readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26

Romans 16:25-27

Luke 1:26-38

The Collect: Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley CA on December 18, 2011. (Watch a vlog of this sermon here)

May the words of my mouth and the mansions of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

One of the first things I picked up from the Episcopal Church was saying “The Lord be with you,” a call-and-response practice mostly unknown to the evangelical communities within which I grew up. I love this salutation and have come to appreciate all of its variations. Although most Episcopalians respond to the “Lord be with you” by saying “And also with you,” here, of course, we respond by saying “And with thy spirit,” which is also what most Roman Catholics are saying now with their new Roman Missal. At the church where I was confirmed in Pasadena (All Saints Pasadena), we would say “God dwells within you” and then respond “and also within you,” as a kind of Episcopal “Namaste” (which in Sanskrit means “the divinity within me bows to the divinity within you.”). And I have heard that you can identify a Jedi as Episcopalian if they respond to the phrase “May the Force be with You” by saying “And also with you.”

This ancient greeting is known as “Dominus Vobiscum” which is Latin for “The Lord be with you.”  It became an official church salutation in the sixth century, when the Council of Braga decreed that bishops and priests should salute the people with “Dominus Vobiscum” and the people respond, “Et cum spiritu tuo,” as was the custom in the East.[1] Although its ecclesiastical use probably dates back to apostolic times, we will see that its use as a greeting is older still.

Today’s Gospel describes the Annunciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary, an event portrayed by countless artists, including Leonardo Da Vinci[2], Raphael, El Greco as well as the stained glass artist who made the Annunciation Window here at St. Clement’s.

This event is so significant to the Church that it actually has its own feast day, called “Lady Day” by the Church of England, and is appropriately celebrated nine months before Christmas Day, on March 25th. This important event begins when the Angel Gabriel shows up[3] and says to Mary, “The Lord be with you.” Mary’s response to this greeting is fascinating: “She was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” (Luke 1:29). Now if Mary had grown up in the Episcopal Church, she would have been less bewildered by this greeting and would have responded, “And also with you” or “And with thy spirit.” Instead, she pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Now we use this greeting often, in our Eucharist, at the beginning of Vestry meetings, at the beginning of prayers and whenever we need to quiet a room full of Episcopalians. But I wonder how much of us actually consider the meaning of this greeting that we so often use and which has almost come to define us as Episcopalians and Anglicans. So this morning, I invite us to ponder more deeply, along with Mary, what sort of greeting this might be, especially in light of the Annunciation.

Gabriel’s greeting in Greek is ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ (ha kyrios meta soo), which translated literally is “The Lord with you,” The Lord “meta” you. Prepositions in Greek are packed with multiple meanings. “Meta” can mean “beside, with, along with, after, among, or behind.” It would not be too much of a stretch to translate the phrase as “The Lord is within you,” which would be especially appropriate for Mary since tradition understands the time of the Annunciation as the time of conception, which is why Annunciation Day is celebrated nine months before Christmas Day. So we can understand this greeting (The Lord be with you) as a profound proclamation of the Incarnation.

Gabriel continues, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bring forth a son, and will call his name ‘Jesus.’ He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. There will be no end to his kingdom.”

Now it is a challenge for us to make sense of the virgin birth in our post-Enlightenment age, but it helps to remember that the authors here are communicating a theological truth more than any scientific fact.

Karen Armstrong calls theology a “species of poetry.”[4] When the Gospel authors wrote about the virgin birth, they were using this “species of poetry” to proclaim the power of the Incarnation, which held a particular message for Mary and also holds a message for us. That message is that “God is with you. Furthermore, God is within you. And God is doing something inside of you right now. You might not feel it right now. In fact, you might feel empty and confused right now (as Mary most likely did), but I want you to know that God is at work within you. And you will give birth to something beautiful, something that will change the world eternally for the better.”

That message of the Incarnation is inherently proclaimed in the Dominum Vobiscum, in “The Lord be with you.” Every time we say this to one another we are making a bold assertion of the Presence of God here and now, among us and even within us. We are proclaiming the Incarnation in each of us, in the mansions of our hearts.

If you look at the Annunciation window here at St. Clements, you will notice a feature that is included in almost all portrayals of the Annunciation: that is, the Annunciation Lily or the Madonna Lily. Gabriel holds one in his hand while two other Annunciation Lilies decorate the upper frame. The lily symbolizes the purity of the Virgin, especially as the lily among the thorns. And this lily among the thorns also holds a message of the Incarnation for us: Among all of the apparent thorns in our lives, in our families, in the church, in the Anglican communion, and in the world, God is present and God is growing something beautiful. Mary, of course, must have felt surrounded by thorns in a world that would quickly anathematize her for her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Mary had to trust Gabriel’s proclamation that God was present and at work within her in the midst of her fear and confusion.

There is also a message for us within Mary’s perplexity for this promise of God’s Presence. The Greek word for perplexed is related to the word that is translated elsewhere as “terrified”, which is used to describe Zechariah’s response to his angelic visitation, a few verses earlier. The promise of the Incarnation, when taken seriously, can easily arouse fear and certainly awe.

The words of the Advent hymn capture well the fear and awe aroused by the incarnate Presence: “Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand. Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand…At his feet the six-winged seraph; cherubim with sleepless eye, veil their faces to the Presence, as with ceaseless voice they cry, ‘Alleluia, Alleluia! Alleluia, Lord Most High!’”

The divine presence that we recognize and honor in each other whenever we say “The Lord be with you” is the same Presence that makes angels cover their faces, that calls all mortal flesh to silence and that demands our full homage. So it is no surprise that this greeting and promise of God’s Presence aroused fear in Mary. In the same way, it may arouse great awe in us, if we take it seriously.

The 16^th century Christian Mystic Teresa of Avila who was from a family of Jewish converts to Christianity and is one of the three female “Doctors” of the Church (a title given to individuals who have contributed to Church doctrine), wrote a Treatise called The Interior Mansion. In it, Teresa maps out the mansion of the heart, where, she says, God dwells. As we move deeper into the center room of God’s presence within us, we grow in awe and wonder and humility and we also learn how to see that same divine presence in others, especially those who persecute us and make life difficult for us. She says those characteristics are signs of the divine presence within.[5]

By taking the promise of God’s incarnate Presence within us seriously, we allow God to grow something beautiful in us. And in doing so, we echo Mary’s words: “Let it be to me according to your Word.” In this way, we come to see our hearts as homes for the divine. Or as the Mystics claim and as today’s Collect declared, we come to see our hearts as mansions for the One called Emmanuel, who is “God with us”. Amen.

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[1] Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02729a.htm, December 18, 2011.

[2] For a reflection on Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting at the Uffizi art gallery in Florence, see http://deforestlondon.wordpress.com/2009/03/

[3] The text says, “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God…” (Luke 1:26). This refers to the sixth month after John’s conception, as in 1:36.

[4] Karen Armstrong, Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (NY: Random House, 2004), 248.

[5] For more on Teresa of Avila, see Teresa of Avila: The Interior Castle, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh OCD and Otilio Rodriguez OCD from The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 1979).

Ember Letter: Advent 2011

Dear Right Reverend J. Jon Bruno,

Warm Advent greetings to you at this season of thanksgiving and expectation. I have come to treasure these opportunities to reflect on the last quarter as I write my ember letters to you. On this December Ember, I have been thinking about Thomas Merton, whose feast day was a few days ago.

Thomas Merton said, “It is in the ordinary duties and labors of life that a Christian can and should develop his spiritual union with God.” My ordinary duties and labors of life have involved studying, lecturing and preaching. I have already preached three times at St. Clement’s in Berkeley, most recently at the Thanksgiving service alongside the Rev. Dr. Mark Richardson (President and Dean of CDSP), who presided. Also, I quoted Thomas Merton in one of my recent sermons.[1] This semester, I have given lectures on comparative theology, spirituality, the Jewish Talmud, and the Desert Fathers and Mothers. I also spoke at a Breakfast for Emerging Scholars in the Study of Christian Spirituality at the American Academy of Religion conference in San Francisco. As a student, I have been delving into the ethical and liturgical traditions of Anglicanism, with a particular focus on the Eucharist as a resource for non-violence and reconciliation. After an in-depth conversation about the ethics of William Stringfellow, the Rev. Dr. John Kater asked me to serve as his Teaching Assistant for his “Anglican Tradition and Life” course next fall. And after his speaking tour at five Episcopal churches in the Bay Area (including two stops at Grace Cathedral), theologian James Alison and I discussed the possibility of him serving on my dissertation committee.[2] He said he would be happy to serve on my committee and then urged me to apply to a summer school program in the Netherlands this July, to study the anthropological roots of violence in order to find paths of non-violent reconciliation.

Speaking of reconciliation, another Thomas Merton quote comes to mind: “As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is a resetting of a Body of broken bones.”[3] I heard the Right Rev. G. Porter Taylor reference this quote in describing the tensions throughout the Anglican Communion. The quote echoed through my head and heart this last weekend when I attended my first Diocesan Convention and considered the proposed resolutions on Israel-Palestine. The quote also came to mind when I visited Church of Our Saviour on Sunday, where I sensed both the pain and promise of “a resetting of a Body of broken bones.”

It was an honor and delight to receive communion from you at the Diocesan Convention last Friday just as it was an honor and delight for me to serve communion as a Lay Eucharistic Minister to the parishioners of Church of Our Saviour last Sunday.

Finally, I will confess feelings of doubt, impatience, disconnection and insecurity as I am trying to seek God’s will for my life in academics and ministry. In the midst of these fears, I have found some comfort in the words of what has become known as the Thomas Merton Prayer: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

In Christ the Way,

Daniel DeForest London

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[1] http://deforestlondon.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/856/

[2] James Alison. http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/

[3] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 2007), 72.

God Speaks in the Language of Resurrection

Ten years after 9/11 and on the 70^th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, it is appropriate to reflect with the Archbishop Rowan Williams on war and peace. In Writing in the Dust: After September 11, Williams invites his readers to sit with their emotions and inclinations (no matter how disturbing) in what he calls “breathing spaces” while offering insight on Christian responses to violence and terror.

 

Peering into the Darkness

In reaction to the terrorist attack of 9/11, the Archbishop humbly and soberly asks, “What are we prepared to learn?” (xii).[1] In asking this question and taking it seriously, Williams peers into some of the darkest crevices of the human heart and psyche, where he confronts the existential fear and rage that animates and perpetuates the human cycle of violence. Instead of repressing this fear and replacing it with the jingoistic jargon of vindication and vengeance, Williams looks carefully at the fear, analyzing and articulating it in such a way that readers find themselves peering into their own shadows, whether they want to or not. Within these shadows, we realize that we “might be committed to a God who [seems] useless in a crisis” (8), that we can easily confuse the self-giving love of a martyr with the self-hating violence of a suicidal killer (3,10), that we so often tend to scapegoat and de-humanize the ‘other’ (Jews, Muslims, etc.) in ways that simply fuel the fire of war and, in perhaps the most troubling words of the book, we face the very real possibility that “the distinction between what the US forces are doing and what was done on September 11 will be academic” (34, my emphasis).[2]

Williams does not penetrate this darkness for shock value or in order to speak ill of US foreign policy, rather, he seeks to acknowledge and use “the rage and revengefulness as a way of sensing a little of where the violence comes from” (24). Williams’ invitation can be hard to swallow for those who have lost loved ones in the 9/11 attack, but his approach is nevertheless profound and deeply “Christian” (in the best sense of the word) regarding our response to violence. “The trauma,” he writes, “can offer a breathing space; and in that space there is the possibility of recognizing that we have had an experience that is not just a nightmarish insult to us but a door into the suffering of countless other innocents, a suffering that is more or less routine for them in their less regularly protected environments” (59). Williams elaborates on this empathetic “door into suffering” by helping us to understand more intimately the Palestinian-Israeli deadlock in which both sides have experienced terrorist attacks similar to 9/11. Certainly, if everyone heeded Williams’ call to see our trauma as an opportunity for deeper empathy and forgiveness rather than as a justification for further violence, then the ethical issue of war and peace would become mostly irrelevant.

How to Grieve Humanly

            However, as human history attests, most people do not heed William’s call to see trauma as an opportunity for empathy. This is partly because, as William himself acknowledges, such “seeing” is hard work and it requires peering into our own darkness, which often frightens us. “There is a particularly difficult challenge here,” Williams admits, “to do with making terms with our vulnerability and learning how to live with it in a way that isn’t simply denial, panic, the reinforcement of defenses” (57). Coming to terms with our vulnerability and our own inner violence is what the archbishop calls grieving humanly: “If, as St. Augustine says in his Confessions, we can fail to ‘love humanly,’ then surely we can also fail to grieve humanly, to grieve without the consolation of drama, martyrdom, resentment, and projection” (72).

The call to grieve humanly is clearly a challenge and, for some, maybe an impossibility. The archbishop’s invitation to respond with deep reflection and compassion to the atrocities of 9/11 can easily be construed as naïve and wishful thinking. After such a horrifying trauma, there is a human need to discharge, often violently. Williams acknowledges this: “We weren’t completely sure at first, most of us, but it was, of course, violence we turned to. Not surprisingly, because we felt, most of us, that there really was nothing else we could do. A long programme of diplomatic pressure, the reworking of regional alliances and a severe review of intelligence and security didn’t feel like doing anything. There needed to be a discharge of the tension” (31). He explains that the war on terror and the need to capture bin Laden were born out of this need to discharge. However, he also warns, “the drama of a martyr’s fate for bin Laden would give another turn to the screw” (32). The human need to discharge violently always leads to more violence (the “tightening of the screw”) and, according to Jacques Ellul, “Violence begets violence—nothing else.”[3] Williams looks carefully at this human need to discharge, rightly critiques it and then wants us to (somehow!) simply let go of the human need to discharge in order to “grieve humanly.” Here, the archbishop betrays his naivety. How does one simply let go of the human need to discharge? Can one dismantle the inner violence and darkness simply by looking at it? acknowledging it? writing about it? Williams admits that it is hard work to peer into our darkness, but he does not fully equip his readers to deal with their own inner violence and darkness. He is naïve to assume that his readers will simply dispel the darkness within through the power of empathy and forgiveness. Furthermore, he is irresponsible in leading many to confront their own inner violence without equipping them to handle it. In other words, he is inviting us to “play with fire” when many of us our still “children.” Friedrich Nietzsche, who knew well the destructive power of inner violence, spoke wisely when he said, “When you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”[4] Rowan Williams gazes long into the abyss and compels us to do the same, but what do we do when the abyss stares back at us? What do we do when the “breathing space” becomes a gaping hole of darkness and destructive forces?

God Speaks in the Language of Resurrection

What do we when our inner violence needs to be discharged? Do we direct it towards others in a way that perpetuates war and scapegoating and dehumanization? The archbishop strongly urges against this. But then where else can we direct the violent discharge? Towards ourselves in a way that leads to self-abuse, self-destruction and suicide? The archbishop does not seem to address this, but would certainly condemn it. So then, where can we direct the violent discharge?

One answer can be found in the archbishop’s description of the way in which God speaks. In the chapter titled “Answering Back,” he describes the “miracle” of dispelling darkness and violence, which is “made possible by the way in which God speaks.” God understands that we need to discharge violently and that violence is the language by which we speak: “God speaks one language, and human beings respond in another. God speaks to say, ‘Don’t be afraid, nothing will stop me welcoming you’” (26). In saying this, God invites us to direct our inner violence onto him, the only One who can truly take it and dispel it. God does not respond to our violence with more violence. Williams writes, “The speech of God is silenced by death,” explaining that human violence killed and still kills the incarnate Logos. “But,” according to the archbishop, “God is unable, it seems, to learn any other language, and speaks again in Jesus’ resurrection” (26). When we speak to God in the language of human violence, God answers back by speaking to us in the language of the resurrection. It is only by continually engaging in this conversation with God that we can begin to speak the language of resurrection to our own inner violence and to the violence around us. In doing so, we allow the power of the resurrection (which is divine forgiveness for all human violence) to dispel the power of war and death and darkness. When we learn to speak the language of the resurrection into the abyss, the abyss no longer stares back at us. Instead, we begin to see the abyss as the Empty Tomb, the sign of God’s ultimate forgiveness for our violence, which transforms us, within our world of war and terror, into agents of forgiveness and peace.

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[1] All quotes from Rowan Williams, Writing in the Dust: After September 11 (Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002) unless noted otherwise.

[2] “From the point of view of a villager in Afghanistan whose family has died in a bombing raid, a villager who has probably never heard of the World Trade Center, the distinction…”

[3] Jacques Ellul, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective (Harrisburg PA: Seabury Press, 1969), 100.

[4] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1989), Aphorism 146.

Our Thanksgiving to God and Christ’s Thanksgiving for Us

Readings for Thanksgiving Day

Deuteronomy 8:7-18

Psalm 65

2 Corinthians 9:6-15

Luke 17:11-19

This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley CA on Thanksgiving November 24, 2011.

You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD your God for the good land that he has given you.

As a freshman at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, I used to participate in class-wide games of ‘Capture the Flag’ which always inspired me to crawl through dense bushes and thick shrubs in order to sneak up on the opposing team’s flag. Although I enjoyed feeling like a stealth and sly ninja, I was never actually successful with this strategy. And one time, instead of capturing the flag, I ended up catching a pretty nasty case of poison oak, all over my body. Without going into all the gruesome details of this particular rash, I’ll simply say that, for two weeks, the majority of my skin looked like that of an uncooked turkey. The social isolation that I experienced along with the constant irritation and inflammation made me a very unhappy camper as well as an unpleasant roommate. I actually remember praying for healing and looking forward to the day when the poison oak would be gone. I told myself, “As soon as this goes away, I will appreciate every single day that I don’t have poison oak.” Eventually, of course, the poison oak receded and I emerged happily from my dorm of isolation and aloe vera, no longer looking like an uncooked turkey. However, before I could even give thanks to God and relish the joy of having a poison-oak-free body, my thoughts quickly went towards other things in my life that were not completely perfect. Although God responded to my prayers for healing, my response to God’s healing was to find new things to be frustrated about. This sounds silly, just as silly as the nine lepers in the Gospel who failed to thank the One who healed them. Often this is the case for me: as soon as God answers my prayers, I move onto the next thing to complain about.

Now, as I’ve preached before, there are certainly times to complain and lament and kvetch to God, but every time we refuse or forget to thank God we forfeit an opportunity to experience abundance right now. There is a Sufi saying: “Abundance can be had simply by consciously receiving what already has been given.”[1] Giving thanks to God helps us to receive what has already been given in order to experience abundant life.

One way that today’s readings invite us to experience this abundance is by bidding us to give thanks after we receive a gift from God. This sounds obvious. Most of us say “thank you” after receiving a gift from someone else. However, the Gospel passage and my poison oak experience remind us of the human tendency to forget to thank God after receiving what we want (and what we just asked for). I suspect that many of us will thank God before enjoying our great Thanksgiving feast later today, but I wonder how many of us will thank God after we have had our fill.

“You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD your God for the good land that he has given you.” The Jewish rabbis have read this verse from Deuteronomy as a command to say grace after meals. In Hebrew, these post-meals prayers are called the birkat hamazon (the Blessing after meals). And I just learned that, in Yiddish, praying this way is called “benching” (not belching) but benching from the Yiddish “bentschn” (to bless). In their Prayers after Meals, Jewish people thank God for the food, for the land from which the food came and for God’s goodness, the source of both the food and the land. So although Scripture invites us to kvetch, it also bids us to bench. In the Talmud, the rabbis debate about the details of these prayers and one rabbi asked, “The Torah commands us to give thanks after eating, but how do we you know that we should give thanks before eating?” Rabbi Aqiva answered, “That’s no question. If we are commanded to give thanks when we are satisfied, how much more so when we are hungry! So,” Rabbi Aqiva concludes, “It is common sense – we should not enjoy anything in this world without giving thanks to our Creator.”[2] So the spirit of Birkat Hamazon (benching) is to thank God for everything, all the time.

In the Gospel reading, the one healed leper follows in the spirit of Birkat Hamazon when he returns to Jesus and thanks him: “He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.” In the Greek, the word for “thanked” is euchariston. Eucharist is our thanksgiving to God, which is what we are participating in right now. Although we as a nation commemorate this day as a day of Thanksgiving, we as Christians commemorate each Sunday as a Day of Thanksgiving. We gather together here to give thanks for all of God’s blessings, for the thousand little things that go right every day, for the abundance in our lives that fills us.

Catholic nun Teresa Okure explains that the Eucharist is actually more than us giving thanks to God. “Eucharist,” according to Sister Teresa, “[is] Christ’s own thanksgiving to God for us, his body and blood.”[3] In the Eucharist, Christ gives his body and blood to us in thanksgiving for us.  We get a glimpse of Christ’s thanksgiving for us in the Gospel when Jesus honors the gratitude of the healed leper and affirms his faith. He tells the thankful leper “Your faith has made you well” and in doing so, Jesus makes a connection between our faith and our gratitude. These two go hand in hand. Priest and professor Don Saliers says, “Christian prayer, whether in the gathered assembly or in solitude, is first and last praising and giving thanks to God.”[4] And the German mystic Meister Eckhart understood gratitude and the Christian faith to be so connected that he said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘Thank you,’ it would be enough.”

So in the spirit of Birkat Hamazon, I invite us all to offer thanks after our feast today, to offer thanks for the food, the land and the goodness of God. And in that same spirit, I invite us to practice giving thanks in all things, remembering that “it is very meet, right and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, in all places, give thanks unto the Lord.” And as we partake of the body and blood this morning, let us also remember to enjoy Christ’s own thanksgiving for us. Amen.

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[1] Maggie Oman Shannon, The Way We Pray: Prayer Practices from Around the World (Berkeley: Conari Press, 2001), 40.

[2] I paraphrased the following discussions from the Gemara of Chapter 6 of Tractate Berakhot from the Order Zeraim: “What is the [scriptural] basis for this? It is as the rabbis taught: Holy – Praises to the LORD (Leviticus 19:24) – this teaches that [the fruit] requires blessing both before and after [eating]. On this basis Rabbi Aqiva said that a person should not taste anything before blessing [God].” And then later in the discussion: “[Deuteronomy 8:10] says that you should bless after [eating]; how do you know that you should bless after [eating]; how do you know that you should bless before? That’s no question, since we could argue from minor to major: If you have to bless [God] when you are satisfied, how much more so when you are hungry!…So [, abandon the search for a scriptural basis! We conclude that] it is common sense – a person should not enjoy anything in this world without blessing [his Creator].” The Talmud: A Selection, ed. Norman Solomon (London: Penguin, 2009), 28, 30-31.

[3] Teresa Okure, SHCJ, “What is Truth?” from The Anglican Theological Review 93:3 Summer 2011, 412.

[4] Don Saliers, “Liturgy Teaching Us to Pray: Christian Liturgy and Grateful Lives of Prayer” from Liturgy and Spirituality in Context: Perspectives on Prayer and Culture, ed. Eleanor Bernstein, C.S.J (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press), 62.

Listening to God Sing My Story

This reflection was shared at the “Emerging Scholars of Christian Spirituality” Breakfast at the American Academy of Religion Conference in San Francisco CA on Sunday, November 20, 2011.

Sandra Schneiders: “I suspect that the reason the self-implicating character of the study of spirituality is problematic for those of us in the discipline is not that we are uncomfortable with our concerns and commitments, but that they place us in an ambiguous relationship to the three periods of western intellectual life, leaving us, in a sense, intellectually homeless . . .To our medieval holism the academy tends to say, “You’re old fashioned.” Our own modern training whispers accusingly, “You’re not sufficiently critical.” And our post modern contemporaries look at what we are saying and say, “If it is exists you can’t study it, and if you could, it would be irrelevant.”[1]

I was thinking about this quote and was initially going to reflect on the nature of self-implication, especially in regards to the class I’m co-teaching on comparative theology. In the class, Dr. Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski and I are teaching comparative theology as a spiritual practice, where the comparative moment occurs when we return to our home tradition, in light of our study of an outside faith tradition.

However, as I’ve been experiencing my first AAR/SBL conference, I’ve been ruminating on this quote and a new meaning has emerged for me that I’d like to share. It may be a slight departure from the author’s intent, but this author (Sandra Schneiders) has taught me enough Ricouerian hermeneutics for me to that that is ok.

In Sandra’s quote on the challenge of the self-implicating nature of the study of spirituality, she sets up potential opponents and then projects voices of sharp critique onto them: “you’re old fashioned,” “you’re not critical enough,” “what you’re studying is irrelevant” (my paraphrase).

I’ll be vulnerable and say that, as I’ve been experiencing my first AAR/SBL and listening to a variety of presentations, I have found myself setting up my own imaginary opponents upon whom I’ve been projecting my own voices of critique, except they’re saying stuff like “You’re too young” or “you’re not smart enough” or “you’re not going to get a job” or “you’re not going to be able to contribute to this field.”

Although nobody is actually saying any of these things to me (except myself), I find myself wrestling with these voices of critique as I navigate my way through the conference and through academia in general. I actually find comfort in knowing that Sandra also appears to wrestle with voices of critique as she navigates her way throughout the self-implicating nature of spirituality.

I also find comfort in the John S. Dunne (not John Donne) quote that Janet K. Ruffing shared in her presidential address yesterday about spiritual identity and narrative. Being attentive to my identity and my narrative involves “listening to God tell my story through time.”

In the midst of all the voices of critique, I’m encouraged to listen to God, who is singing my story. In a sense, that means my story is deeply connected with God’s story and is part of the Sacred Tale. And owning that encourages me to keep wrestling with all those voices of critique (real and imaginary) in the attempt to hear more fully God singing my story and then to share that Sacred Tale with others. And instead of hearing the conference presentations as sources for my anxiety and insecurity, I am encouraged to hear them as other people’s stories and therefore hear God singing to me through them.

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[1] Sandra Schneiders, “The Study of Christian Spirituality: Contours and Dynamics of a Discipline” in Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality. Edited by Elizabeth Dreyer and Mark Burrows (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), 18-19.

Letting Forgiveness Occupy Violence

Social activist and lay theologian William Stringfellow offers hard-hitting insight on war and peace in An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. After insisting on the collective guilt of all humanity in perpetuating violence and the power of death (with a particularly harsh critique of the United States), Stringfellow calls Christians to resist war and violence at all costs. However, the details of such resistance are not clean-cut and can often remain a conundrum. Although Stringfellow seems to stumble in articulating how Christians resist war and violence, he points to the Cross and the power of the Resurrection as a source of renewal and transformation.

The Prophetic Pessimism of William Stringfellow

After lambasting American churches for being “degraded vassals of the power of death” and condemning the American government for perpetuating “the ethos of Nazim,” [1] Stringfellow boldly asserts that “there are no glorious wars—no wars which humanize, no wars of salvation, no just wars.”[2] The only victor in any war, according to Stringfellow, is death.[3] Informed and inspired by the Bible or “biblical politics,”[4] Stringfellow understands violence as “normative” in our fallen world and holds all of humanity responsible: “No violence is private…the violence of the Fall is so political, so penetrating, and so pervasive that even the victims of violence are not innocent and even those who advocate nonviolence are not absolved. No human being is guiltless of any violence.”[5] He sees this universal human guilt asserted in the teachings of Jesus when he equates anger with murder (Matt 5:21-22). Moreover, Stringfellow sees this guilt portrayed in the crucifixion of Christ, when Judas betrays him and the other disciples, who stand “as surrogates for the rest of humanity,” desert him.[6] He combats an ancient source of Christian anti-semitism when he explains that the Jews in the biblical context “always act as emissaries of all mankind…so to declare that the Jews are guilty in the Crucifixion is simply to confess that all humans share in that guilt.”[7] The crucifixion of Christ (“the most notorious political event in all history”[8]) represents the war and violence that permeate all human relationships. Just as Christ’s death was humanity’s fault so is war and violence the fault of all human beings, regardless of the victim or perpetrator: “Human beings remain responsible to one another both as perpetrators of violence and as victims of violence…a person killed is a victim, but the killer is so dehumanized in the action that he is a victim too.”[9] In Stringfellow’s scheme, the categories of perpetrator and victim blur and eventually collapse. All are guilty of violence and all are victims of violence, all at once. Violence is ubiquitous and appears to be dominant. Stringfellow’s sharp prophetic edge holds the US and all of us responsible for war and violence while his pessimistic bent paints the world in large brushstrokes of war and violence, everywhere.

 

An Unclear Call to Resist

             With this ominous worldview, it makes sense that Stringfellow would talk about “resistance” as the “only human way to live.”[10]  For him, resistance is a sign of sanity, humanity, gratitude and commitment to the Bible, while acquiescence means profound ingratitude and the death of sanity.[11] As a conclusion, he writes, “I suggest Christians do not, thereby, engage in violence casually or without aforethought or as a first resort rather than last.”[12] However, he remains unclear and appears to be torn when it comes to effective ways of actually resisting war and violence. He describes what he calls the “Bonhoeffer Dilemma” in which Christians self-confidently assert their knowledge of God’s will by resisting violence in ways they see most fit (which may even involve using violence to prevent violence). Stringfellow sees this traditional pacifism as deficient and sharing the same lethal self-righteousness displayed by Christian advocates of war and violence. He reveals the complexity around Christian resistance, saying,

The issue of Christian participation in violence is inherently misleading and in error because an inappropriate and, indeed, impossible question is being asked. It is a query which seeks assurance beforehand of how God will judge a decision or an act. It is a true conundrum which only betrays an unseemly anxiety for justification quite out of step with a biblical life-style that dares in each and every event to trust the grace of God…Of the specifics of the historicity of God’s judgment, Christians, in common with all other creatures, know nothing.[13]

So if Christians cannot know God’s judgment or will, how can they properly and effectively resist violence? Stringfellow describes a war-torn world inhabited by violent humans and offers no clear way out, even though trying to get out remains the only way to be sane.

Let Forgiveness Occupy the Violence

“Of the specifics of the historicity of God’s judgment, Christians, in common with all other creatures, know nothing.” The Bible does not lay out an entirely clear roadmap on how God has judged and will continue to judge the complex and nuanced powers and principalities of our violent and political world. However, Stringfellow offers an important reminder of what the Bible does lay out when he says, “But of the character of [God’s] judgment—that is, that his mercy and forgiveness are coincident in judgment—much is known.[14]

Stringfellow points to God’s mercy and forgiveness as an answer to the world’s wars and violence.  He writes,  “On the Cross, as ancient creeds declare, Christ assumes the burden of the sin of the whole world. In just that way, on the Cross, are all men, together with all principalities, guiltily implicated in the Crucifixion of Christ.”[15] Stringfellow reminds us all of our guilt and responsibility in Christ’s death. However, in one of his other writings called Free in Obedience, Stringfellow elaborates on the divine mercy and forgiveness that he mentions in An Ethic. He explains the transforming power of God’s forgiveness by describing the Resurrection:

Christ’s resurrection is for human beings and for the whole of creation, including the principalities of this world. Through the encounters between Christ and the principalities and between Christ and death, the power of death is exhausted. The reign of death and, within that, the pretensions to sovereignty over history of the principalities, is brought to an end in Christ’s resurrection. He bears the fullness of their hostility toward him; he submits to their condemnation; he accepts their committal of himself to death, and in his resurrection he ends their power and the power they represent.[16]

Although we are all responsible for Christ’s death due to our inherent and corporate participation in war and violence, Christ responds by accepting our violence to the point of death and then forgives us in his resurrection.[17] By this forgiveness he ends the power of death and transforms the world of war and violence by transforming us. The difficult complexities and conundrums of effective Christian non-violent resistance lead us to fall back on God’s forgiveness as revealed in Christ’s resurrection. By letting God’s forgiveness occupy our hearts more than our ideologies and agendas, we can gradually learn to act and actively resist from that center, thereby letting God’s forgiveness occupy the violent and war-torn world with His peace.

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[1] William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (Waco TX: Word, 1973), 121.

[2] Ibid, 126.

[3] Ibid.

[4] “The biblical topic,” Stringfellow asserts, “is politics. The Bible is about the politics of fallen creation and the politics of redemption…the politics of Babylon and the politics of Jerusalem; the politics of the Antichrist and the politics of Jesus Christ.” William Stringfellow, A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow, ed. Bill Wyile Kellerman (Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1994), 176.

[5] An Ethic, 127-128.

[6] Ibid,129.

[7] Ibid,130.

[8] Ibid,128.

[9] Ibid,131.

[10] Ibid,120.

[11] Ibid. It is fascinating how often Stringfellow couples and almost equates resistance with the “biblical style of life.” More interaction and interpretation of particular biblical passages in his writings would have shed light on his prophetic and non-violent method of exegesis.

[12] Ibid,133.

[13] Ibid,132.

[14] 133.

[15] 130.

[16] A Keeper of the Word, 203.

[17] Theologian James Alison asserts, “The resurrection is forgiveness” in Knowing Jesus (Springfield IL: Templegate, 1994), 16.

Walking Around Shining Like the Sun

Readings for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Exodus 33:12-23

Psalm 99

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Matthew 22:15-22

This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley CA on Sunday October 16, 2011.

In a few weeks, many of us will greet a variety of familiar and perhaps frightening faces at our door, ranging from Captain America to Charlie Sheen, Baraka Obama to Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson to Frankenstein. I’m talking, of course, about Halloween, when children of all ages dress up and wear masks in order to take all your candy.

Whether you’re 9 years old or 90 years old, wearing masks and taking on new personas can be a fun and liberating experience. Some of us do this everyday in more subtle ways when we hide our true selves behind superficial roles and identities. We might hide our true faces behind our job titles: “I’m a lawyer. I’m an accountant, doctor, student, teacher, priest, etc.” or our social roles: “I’m a mother, a brother, an uncle, a grandfather, etc.” And although those are appropriate ways to present ourselves to the world (and they’re totally true), they’re not really who we are. And if we remove all those titles and facades, then who are we, really?

And the answer can be so powerful that it actually starts to make sense why we continue to wear our masks.

In today’s Exodus reading, God is very aware of the power of his true face: “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” The glory of God’s face is so potent that human life itself is consumed and extinguished by its very presence.  God, in a sense, has to mask himself in order for Moses to see Him and not die.[1]

In the following chapter in Exodus, Moses descends from his mountaintop theophany at Sinai and returns to the children of Israel, who become afraid of him because “the skin of his face sent forth beams.”[2] His face was radiating so much after his encounter with God that the others could not bear it. So Moses, out of compassion for them, put on a mask. Moses’ face shined like the sun and since they didn’t have sunglasses back then Moses had to walk around with a mask in order to keep them from looking away or running away.  Unlike trick-or-treaters, Moses wore a mask in order not to scare others, because his true face was apparently pretty scary. When we take off our masks, who are we, really?

When it comes to today’s Gospel, one might say that the Pharisees and the Herodians were wearing false masks by complimenting Jesus when really they were just buttering him up in order to trap him with their question about paying taxes.[3] They knew if Jesus said yes to paying taxes he would risk losing support from the people, but if he said no he would risk treason against the state. The Pharisees say something to Jesus as they’re buttering him up that is actually profoundly significant (and is very much lost in translation). They tell Jesus, “you do not regard people with partiality.”[4] The Greek, however, when translated literally, reads “You do not look at the masks of people.” Most translators interpret this as a colloquialism, which means, “you are not partial.” But that’s not what it says. It says, “You do not look at the masks of people.”[5]

Jesus responds by saying, “Yes, you are right. I do not look at the masks of people. I look through the masks.” And what does Jesus see when he looks through the masks?

Jesus answers their question about the taxes in such a way that he intrigues the crowd and flummoxes the Pharisees.  He acknowledges the “face” and “image” of the emperor on the denarius coin and says, according to the 400 year-old King James Bible, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” In today’s parlance, the Pharisees “got served” and they now have to retreat and regroup before they can come back for a rematch with Jesus (which will be next Sunday, so stay tuned).

Not only does Jesus answer their question, he also teaches them (and us) a life-changing truth. I’m not talking about a call to separate church and state, or to resist the government or to occupy Wall Street. I don’t think that is necessarily what Jesus is talking about either. One of the earliest interpretations of this teaching is from the African Church Father Tertullian (a contemporary of St. Clement of Alexandria) who interprets Jesus as saying, “[Give] the image of Caesar, which is on the coin, to Caesar, and the image of God, which is on humanity, to God.” Jesus is teaching us what he sees when he looks through our masks: He sees the image of God.

Jesus says, “You are right. I do not look at the masks of people. I look through the masks and I see the image of God. I see the skin of your faces sending forth beams. I see you all radiating with divine life. I see heavenly potential in all you, but I also see you smothering it at times with your attachment to your masks and your false images. Let go of all of that. Let Caesar have it. Then you will start to see what I see: the image of God impressed on your face as your face and on the faces of all those around you.” Just as Caesar put his face on the coin so God put his face on you. Your face is the image of God. It’s a little overwhelming if you think about it. It makes me realize why we tend to wear masks so often.

In Louisville, Kentucky, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, a Trappist monk “stood in the center of a busy shopping district, and was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that [he] loved all [the] people [there].” He said, “they were mine and I theirs…we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness.” The monk named Thomas Merton continued to reflect on this overwhelming experience and said, “There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.[6]

Thomas Merton experienced in Kentucky what the children of Israel experienced when they saw the beaming face of Moses when he came down Mount Sinai and what the three disciples experienced when they saw Jesus transfigured on top of Mount Tabor. It’s an overwhelming experience and perhaps one that we cannot experience too often lest we be overpowered by all the beauty.

In his famous sermon “The Weight of Glory,” C.S. Lewis said, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. It is in [this] light…that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit…Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ…the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”[7]

For the rest of this month, I invite us all to practice seeing the image of God in each other’s faces, even in the faces of strangers. We don’t have to be creepy about it, but we can be intentional. And I invite us also to be aware of the masks that we put on at work, at church, even perhaps on Halloween. Sometimes it might be appropriate to put on masks like Moses did, but when we do, let us remember not to smother the image of God beneath our masks. And let us remember that God sees the “secret beauty of [our] hearts…where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach” and God invites us to see that in ourselves and in each other. Even today. Even now.

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[1] In the Talmud, Rabbi Shimon ben Azzai explains how the people in the Torah were able to have visions of God without dying when he said, “All the prophets looked into an opaque glass (seeing but a reflection of the Divine), but Moses looked through clear glass” (Yevamot 49b). According to the rabbi, the prophets saw God through opaque glass, which suggests that they were seeing reflections of themselves and therefore seeing God within themselves. Moses saw through clear glass, but it was glass nonetheless. The glass was masking God and protecting Moses from God’s raw and all-consuming glory.

[2] In the Vulgate, St. Jerome mistranslated the Hebrew verb karan (“send forth beams”) as a form of the Hebrew noun keren, which means, “horn.” So, according to the Vulgate, Moses grew horns after seeing God. This misunderstanding contributed to the absurd and frankly anti-Semitic idea that Jews had horns. Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of Moses in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome actually depicts the prophet with horns.

[3] I have heard many sermons condemning the Pharisees for their devious ways. Not only do I find that condemnation banal, I actually find it problematic in that it can and has led to Christian anti-Semitism, since the Pharisees are often seen as the predecessors to the rabbis, who have shaped modern Judaism.

[4] The first verse of Mishnah Avot conveys a similar idea: “Be deliberate in your judgment” (Mishnah Avot 1:1)

[5] The Greek word for mask is actually prosopon, which the Church Fathers eventually used to describe the three “persons” of the Trinity.

[6] Thomas Merton, Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, 1968), 53-55.

[7] C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 26.

Grace That Saves a Kvetch Like Me

Readings for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Exodus 16:2-15

Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45

Philippians 1:21-30

Matthew 20:1-16

This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley CA on Sunday September 18, 2011

Over the last few years, I have grown in appreciation of all things Yiddish, especially the language. Not only do I love the popular words like klutz and schlep and mensch, but I also love some of the phrases like the ones that my grandpa used to say to my dad when he was a kid. Whenever my grandpa found himself doing something that he thought was boring or useless he would say he was “shlug zich kop in vaunt,” which means, “banging his head against the wall.” And he was considering stopping. And whenever my dad complained or whined to my grandpa, my grandpa would tell him “don’t hak mir in tchainik” which literally means “don’t bang my tea kettle.” And if my dad would persist in his whining, my grandpa would tell him to stop being such a “nudnik,” which is someone who is so annoying that it is becoming boring. My dad recalls his uncle referring to him and his sister as “nudnik” so often that he’s not sure if his uncle ever really knew their real names (!).

One Yiddish word that I want to offer this morning is the word “kvetch”, which in popular English, means, “to complain, whine or fret” or “someone who tends to complain.” If you ask my housemates, they would probably admit that I can be a bit of a kvetch at times, complaining about various things from our house’s poor cell phone reception to the fact that I have a 25 page paper due in a few days.

In today’s readings, there is a lot of kvetching. The Israelites kvetch about not having enough bread in the wilderness, the day laborers kvetch about not getting paid more than those who worked for only an hour, and even Paul kvetches a bit about his suffering and his struggle. The other optional readings for this Sunday have even more kvetching with the bitter and melodramatic complaints of the self-pitying prophet Jonah. Ironically, the one reading that has the least kvetching is the Psalm, which comes from the book most replete with complaints. But even the Psalmist describes the kvetching of the Israelites (somewhat euphemistically) in saying, “They asked, and quails appeared, and [God] satisfied them with bread from heaven” (105:40).

And here is what is so fascinating to me about all this kvetching: Instead of God sternly demanding everyone to stop whining and start being more grateful for what they already have, God responds to all the complaining with profound grace, bestowing gifts of physical and spiritual nourishment. God does not necessarily encourage the kvetching, but God does seem to create a space for it, to accommodate it and to respond generously to it. God displays an amazing grace that appears to save all of these kvetches. And I’m personally comforted by these lessons because they encourage me to believe that God’s amazing grace could save a kvetch like me.

After all of their complaining, the Israelites receive the divine invitation to “Draw near to the LORD for he has heard your complaining” and then they receive a divine vision: “they looked toward the wilderness and the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud.” And then they receive their fill of meat and bread because, as the text says multiple times, the LORD heard their complaining. (the Lord heard their kvetching)

In the Gospel, the day laborers also grumble. In fact, the Greek word for grumble is rather onomatopoetic: gogguzw (gong-good-zo), which is the same word used in the Septuagint for the “complaining” of the Israelites (gong-good-zo, almost as fun to say as “kvetch”). The day laborers are frustrated and for good reason. They have received the same pay as those who only worked for an hour! (It’s almost as if they’re victims of some twisted social security ponzi scheme á la Rick Perry.) They worked and sweated through the scorching heat and, as a result, do not want to be considered equal to those who worked for a brief hour in the coolness of the evening, so they bring their complaint to the landowner. And the landowner responds to their complaint not with harsh judgment, not by calling them “nudniks,” but by calling them “Friend.” If we see the landowner as God, then already the laborers have received a great honor in being called “Friend.” In this light, the parable reflects the words from the Gospel of John when Jesus tells his disciples, “I do not call you servants any longer…but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). The landowner then assures them, “I am doing you no wrong” and then proceeds to offer them deep spiritual wisdom that will nourish them for a lifetime.

In the readings, humanity complains and God responds with grace and love. As the Psalm says, “They complained and God satisfied them.” Now I am not encouraging us all to think of things to complain about. Giving thanks and praise to the Lord is a right and meet thing for us to do as the Psalms and our Prayer Book attest. However, when we do have justifiable reason to complain (loss of job, apparent injustice in the work place, loss of loved one in tragic accident), God would prefer our kvetching to our cold indifference. Now I am not talking about complaining to one another or to our supervisors or to our rectors. I am talking about complaining to God in our prayer.

Biblical Scholar Walter Brueggemann explains that our failure to bring our complaints to God in prayer leads to “both psychological inauthenticity and social immobility.”[1] By not confronting God with our frustration, we lose our voice and our capacity for what Bruegemann calls “genuine covenant interaction.”[2] We also lose “the ego strength that is necessary for responsible faith”[3] and our prayers become “a practice of denial, cover-up, and pretense.”[4] If we fail to be honest with our frustration and refuse to bring our complaints to God in prayer, we fall into “civility …docility…grim obedience and eventually despair.”[5] But if we are honest with our frustration and bring our complaints to God in prayer, then we will experience the generosity and love of God in response.

Throughout Scripture and throughout the history of Christian spirituality, those who complain to God tend to draw closer to God as a result. Draw near to the LORD for he has heard your complaining. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said, “I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I’ve been closer to him for that reason.” When it comes to major tragedies like the horror that we remembered last week, the word “kvetch” feels wholly inappropriate and inadequate to describe what we want to do and what we want to say to God whom we expect to be ultimately in charge. Literally, the word “kvetch” means “to press or to squeeze,” which is what Jacob was doing to the Angel with whom he was wrestling; he squeezed and refused to let go of the angel until he received a blessing. Eventually, God gave him a blessing as well as a new name: Israel, which means “The one who struggles with God.” When it comes to major suffering in our lives, our kvetching turns into wrestling and serious struggle. St. Paul, who was no stranger to tragedy, (who was hard-pressed), speaks of this struggle as a privilege because he knows that such struggle drew him closer to Christ. God can handle whatever anger or frustration we bring to him, whether it be profound sorrow caused by deep loss or kvetching about some apparent injustice. God can handle it (and will handle it) and then transform us in the process by pouring down nourishment from heaven.

When we complain, God does not say, “Quit banging my tea kettle” or “Stop being such a nudnik.” Instead God calls us “Friend” and holds us in our anger and frustration the way a parent holds a child who is throwing a temper tantrum. Even as the child is kicking and screaming, the parent still holds the child lovingly, knowing that the child does not (and perhaps cannot) understand. Although I can be a real kvetch to God in prayer, I have found that, through all my grumbling, God remains patient and loving. And I actually grow closer to God, maybe even because of my honest complaining.

Draw near to the LORD for he has heard your complaining.

Draw near to the Lord for his amazing grace continually saves a kvetch like me.

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[1] Walter Brueggemann, The Psalms & the Life of Faith (Augsburg Fortress: Minneapolis MN, 1995), 111.

[2] Ibid, 102.

[3] Ibid, 103.

[4] Ibid, 100.

[5] Ibid, 102.