Category: Lectionary Project

These posts form a weekly companion to the Sunday gospel reading of the Revised Common Lectionary.

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Expecting the Divine

Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness (painting)

First Sunday after Epiphany | Luke 3:15-22

Expecting the Divine

Luke claims that the people were filled with expectation. What a remarkable condition — an entire people looking forward, looking beyond themselves, expecting something, expecting the divine.

We don’t have to believe it, of course. Surely, not everyone was expecting a savior. It is hard to imagine everyone expecting anything — Christmas, an election, the sun rising. It is even harder to imagine everyone expecting the same thing, and so unlikely a thing as a messiah.

Adoration of the Magi by Albrecht Dürer
Adoration of the Magi by Albrecht Dürer

Perhaps in some different way it was true. Luke could have meant that his sort of people, the ones inclined to think about religious things, that all of these people were excited and thinking of a coming messiah, wondering about John the Baptist, thinking that John could be the one, though he denied it. He was certainly unusual enough, and he talked a lot about God and faith and repentance. He almost fit the bill.

Maybe it was true another way. Most of us are looking for something, expecting something or someone, hoping for something. Could the thing we are hoping for be some sort of messiah? Whether we define it in theological terms or not, are we hoping for something to save us, someone to save us, whether literally or figuratively?

Carl Jung wrote of archetypes, those powerful ideas, symbols, living deep in the unconscious regions of our minds—shadow, mother, trickster, hero, god. Surely a messiah qualifies? Someone to save us, god and hero and wise man in one, though the thing we are saved from varies?

Some of us want to be saved from despair, or grief, or regret. Others long to be rescued from the tedium of day to day life. Psychologists speak of needs and drives and behaviors, supplying language for our traps, cages, deficiencies, determination, desires. Just today I heard an economist talking about envy, envy of all things, as an economic force. To my mind, envy is something addressed by theology, not economists, but it makes sense as a economic principle as well.

What the ancients called sin and hubris, we call behavioral faults, to be expected in the natural order of the universe. Never mind that the natural order of the universe is violent, dangerous, ruthless, and unforgiving. Our modern comprehension of our place in the cosmos has been massively enriched, but at the same time our insight is shattered into kaleidoscopic and often bewildering bits.

Perhaps there is too much division, too much breaking up of knowledge into categories, separate rooms, disintegration. Not so long ago human lives were defined and molded by tribe or king or religion. Now we listen to voices of economists, politicians, doctors, scientists, fast food, gourmet food, all natural food, social media, real estate agents, bankers, automobile commercials, and the two hour window when a cable technician can hook up our televisions. With so many voices in our heads, it is hard to know which ones are important, which ones should get our attention. We are driving ourselves toward insanity.

The Adoration of the Magi by Leonaert Bramer
The Adoration of the Magi by Leonaert Bramer

We need something to save us from all of that, but our expectations are low.

The Christian celebration known as Epiphany is named for the showing, the revealing, of the Christ child. Some wise men found a child, caught sight of a symbol from the deepest parts of their minds, a savior figure, the messiah. They came, in the stories, with the expectation of finding him, and they did. So do we understand that the magi found the messiah because that is what they were sent to do, or did they find him because they expected him?

We call into being the things we expect. Expectations are powerful, connecting us to the divine in our hopes and dreams and aspirations. To live in expectation of redemption is an experience of faith, the practical application of hope.

What a remarkable way to live — expecting to experience the divine in our everyday lives.

 

Part of the Lectionary Project—Third year of weekly posts based on the Sunday Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary

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A Thought in the Mind of God

NASA image - emerging universe

Second Sunday in Christmas | John 1:1-18

A Thought in the Mind of God

In the very beginning there was a word, an idea, a thought, the first thing that ever was, and the thought was hanging out with God. In fact, the thought, this thinking idea word-thing, was God.

P52_recto
Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the St. John’s fragment, recto

That is how the Gospel of John starts. In the beginning was the logos…the thought, the idea, the word.

We say that words are not powerful. Words can’t hurt you, we hear from our elders when other children taunt us, but it is a lie—words can hurt us, more deeply and longer than any wound to the body.

They are powerful, words are. Just like God. Nothing more than an idea, really, a concept, a thought, but like God words are something that cannot be touched and cannot be destroyed, something capable of immense and unmeasurable power.

We struggle with knowing which is more important, words or actions. Most of the time, what we do is truer than what we say. What we do ultimately informs us as to who we are, as though each act is a personal sacrament — an outward sign of our own inward truth. If we say we are clean and sober while we pour another drink, our words are just the deception of an addict, the long slow con, a lie we tell ourselves in order better to deceive others.

Don’t tell me, we say. Show me. As revealing as our actions are, they are only true on the outside. It is the idea that drives the action, the thought that is the truth within us, the word that is us.

P52_verso
Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the St. John’s fragment, verso

There is power in our thoughts, power in our words. There is a value to the articulation of our thoughts, and there is a truth in stories that cannot be told any other way. Give me a rule, and I’ll forget it or I’ll break it. Give me a story and I cannot forget it. We are wired to story, our brains evolving over millennia to learn from stories we heard around cooking fires, stories painted on the walls of our caves. All those clay paintings of bison and antelope are more than art: the sharing of these images was an act of communion.

The thought-that-was-God came into this world, to live in this world. That is the gospel message. The idea-that-was-God burned, shining, brilliant in the midst of dark ignorance all around, and the ignorance could not to quench it.

We read the story in the first verses of John’s Gospel, and we are no longer amazed by it. Perhaps it was a page turner two thousand years ago, an opening that caught the imagination of the ancient world: In the beginning was the Word… Imagine, the Word, the idea of God, walking as a human, standing in the wild places, listening to John the Baptist cry out his sermons to crowds by a riverside. It is an astonishing thought, but not to us. We are immured, buried and insulated by the profusion of words that surround us.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
— Shakespeare, Hamlet  III, iii

That is how Shakespeare put it, and maybe he was onto something. Empty words. We have found ways to separate thought and word, to speak without thinking. Our words are everywhere, on signs, menus, T-shirts, screens, phones, emails, broadcasts. The value of our words is diminished by their pervasiveness, diluted by the ease with which we record them.

We no longer know the holy when we see it. We may no longer believe that anything is holy, let alone that words might be.

…I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

Nevertheless, ancient cities fall into the dust, and the pyramids crumble, but their stories remain. In the end, the most ancient relic and the most enduring aspect of humanity is found in our intangible untouchable diaphanous words.

In the stories of scripture, God calls all that there is, all of the cosmos, into being with a word. When speech was added to thought, when the idea was expressed, the universe exploded into being.

What we think may be more real than anything we see. What we say may be more lasting than anything we build. In the end, the words that tell our story are all that we leave behind us. The atoms that make us may spin and fly, returning to the stars that made them, nothing but stardust, but our lives remain, a thought in the mind of God.

Part of the Lectionary Project—Third year of weekly posts based on the Sunday Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary

Here’s a bonus—a short (45 second) video from NASA as part of WMAP, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe project. In NASA’s summary: The structure of the universe evolved from the Big Bang, as represented by WMAP’s “baby picture”, through the clumping and ignition of matter (which caused reionization) up to the present.

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A Child at Christmas

Mary and Joseph

Christmastide — First Sunday after Christmas | Luke 2:41-52

A Child at Christmas

Silver Snowflake on Christmas TreeWe wonder what Jesus was like as a child, but there is nearly nothing in the gospels to tell us. Perhaps there were stories passed around by the early church, lost tales of a young Jesus, stories we do not have. This passage in Luke’s Gospel is as close as we get.

The story, told in a sparse, almost journalistic style, tells of Jesus and his parents and presumably his siblings going to Jerusalem for the passover celebration. We know that Jesus did have brothers and sisters. In the third chapter of Mark, Mary and the brothers and sisters of Jesus hear about him teaching in public and come to do an intervention (an interesting story in itself.) In Matthew 13:55, the evangelist goes so far as to name the brothers of Jesus—James and Joseph and Simon and Judas, if you were wondering. Traditionally the church addresses the theological problem of God incarnate having brothers and sisters either by calling them cousins or by carefully making the claim that these are only half brothers and sisters, sharing a mother but not a father. The gospels themselves are not so particular. Whatever way we choose to understand the theological assertion that Jesus is God become human through the miracle of being born to Mary, the rest of the family still existed. If you are part of a mixed family, you might reflect that you have something in common with Jesus.

It makes little sense to think Joseph would bring his wife and one child to the Passover celebrations but leave the rest of the family at home. In for a penny, in for a pound, most likely, particularly when one considers the apparent close connections of extended family and friends who make up the traveling party—if the younger children were left in Nazareth, who stayed with them? We don’t know enough to be sure either way. Most likely there were at least some elderly relatives or friends who did not want to make the trip, and they would have looked after the younger kids, but how young were these siblings? If Jesus was twelve, surely at least some of the other children were old enough to travel? Don’t forget, this is Mary. She perched on a donkey and rode to Bethlehem when her water was about to break.

Star on Christmas TreeIf Joseph and Mary didn’t realize Jesus was missing for a whole day’s journey, there must have been a good number of other children, friends and family around them. Imagine the panic when they realize that Jesus is lost. Jerusalem was a large city to them, full of more perils than tiny Nazareth. It was full of devout Jews to be sure, but there were plenty of less devout ones, Romans, foreign traders, all kinds of people. Luke tells us that after three days Joseph and Mary found Jesus in the Temple. We can’t quite tell whether this is three days total or three days plus that first day, but three or four days is a long time when you cannot find your child.

By the way, perhaps we are meant to reflect on those three days. It is an intentional detail—Jesus as a child is realizing his calling, and he goes missing for three days. At the end of it all, when Jesus the man follows the path he perceives God has prepared for him, there are those other three days between dying and living.

Luke gives us a hint of the mix of relief and anger expressed at the reunion, with Mary berating her son for treating them in such a fashion but immediately taking him home. There’s an interesting question—did Jesus do wrong by staying behind at the Temple? Did God misbehave?

Let’s leave that one alone. We might not like where it goes.

We do learn something about Jesus and the way he was raised. For one thing, Mary and Joseph clearly did not hover. They gave their children some freedom. The kids were able to move among their network of extended family and friends without being constantly watched.

Jesus also had an early inclination to theology. That should not surprise anyone. God studying theology is introspective but natural.

We might wonder about that scene at the Temple. When his parents found him, Jesus was “…sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.”

Yes, yes, we say, but then he was God incarnate. What else would we expect?

I have to wonder whether Jesus amazed them because he was God among them or simply because he was a child among them. He was young enough not to have been pressed into the mold of ordinary thought. Twelve is just the right age to start wrestling with the ideas we are handed about God and morality: we are emerging from childhood, and yet we retain the simple and frank vision of a child.

They were astonished, we read, but why? Were they astonished because of where they found him? Was it because of his poise or his grasp of theology? Was it because he had left them and, knowing they would be frantic to find him, he had not gone in search of them but instead sat enjoying himself in the Temple?

Did those men sitting and talking with Jesus even realize that his parents were searching for him? Or were they surprised when Mary showed up and began scolding the boy? And why does Mary do all the talking? What is going through Joseph’s mind when the boy says that he must be in his father’s house?

Do his parents really know who he is? Does any parent realize what is really going on in a child’s mind? Of course, if Christianity has it right, Jesus is a special case.

In this Christmastide season, the twelve days of Christmas, it may do us good to follow Jesus’ example—do a runner, get lost for a bit, and start asking some questions, even if there is nobody offering better answers than we already had.

The rest of the year presses us into the mold of expectations. Normality, if that is even a real thing. Let’s not accept what the world tells us about God. Let’s not accept what the world tells us about our place in the universe. The world is old and jaded, set in its ways. Instead, let’s open up more than packages. Let’s open our minds. Open our eyes.

Let’s be a child at Christmas.

Part of the Lectionary Project—Third year of weekly posts based on the Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary

Mary and Joseph

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Leaping Toward Christmas

Fourth Sunday in Advent | Luke 1:39-55

Lectionary Project—Third year of weekly posts based on the Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary

A baby kicks in the womb. That’s all that is happening in this story, really, just an ordinary thing. But it is the kind of small ordinary event to which we attribute meaning, a sign, or some superstitious belief from old wives’ tales. A broom falls. A palm itches. A child kicks in the womb.

That’s all it is.

Painting of the Visitation
Visitation by Domenico Ghirlandaio. Louvre, Paris.

In that simple kick, two women know portents of the future. They hear angels greeting them. They believe that the first Christmas is coming, before there is such a thing as Christmas. And they give praise to a God whom they have never seen, comfort one another in their faith that all will be well, simply because of a child’s restless dream in the warm darkness of his mother’s womb.

Two expectant mothers, one of them old, one of them young and as yet unwed, sit at the beginning of a new creation story. God is bringing about a new thing, and it starts in these two women who are not seen by anyone in their world as persons of greatness or importance.

There is a powerful dichotomy at work. The low are raised, and the rich and powerful are rejected. God’s value system is different than ours.

“My soul magnifies the Lord…” So begins the famous praise offered by Mary in Luke’s Gospel. The tension is plain in the text. Far from being a simple expression of faith, Mary’s words distill the message of the prophets. Her prophetic word to her world, and to ours, is that the proud shall be scattered, those who rule shall be torn from their thrones, and the rich shall go hungry. It is the gospel told as prophecy and as challenge—God shall favor the humble, empower the weak, feed the hungry. True power is not in governments or bank vaults or armies, the prophets are saying. True power, Mary tells us, is in the ability to create life, not destroy it. And we can see the face of God in every newborn child.

People speak of Mary’s humility, her willingness to submit to what she perceived as the will of God, and they are right to do so. We should also list her among the prophets, like Elijah and Isaiah. In her grace and her humility, Mary gave us words of power and of warning.

In this Advent season, we would do well to look for the dichotomy of the prophets, this tension Mary proclaims at the coming of the first Christmas. If we think ourselves clever, or powerful, or rich and well fed, then Mary is warning us.

Theotokos, they called her, God-bearer, but that was many years afterward, when enough time and enough words had passed to help the early Church see what had happened. When the Christ child was born and God in that moment began the making of a new creation, Mary was still in a stable, with straw for her bed, animals for her companions. In Bethlehem, she was a stranger who had travelled from far away. She was of low estate, no one of power, no one of wealth. And most blessed was she among us all.

MaryBabySnowCP

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The Gospel of Doing

Third Sunday of Advent  |  Luke 3:7-18

Lectionary Project—Third year of weekly posts based on the Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary

The Gospel of Doing

John the Baptist was the sort of man who would get extra attention at airport security. Wild, bearded, long haired, wearing odd clothes — he showed every sign of being outside mainstream society.

Of course, he was outside the mainstream. While Jesus would later walk the streets of the cities and sit to teach in the synagogues, even venture into the Temple itself, John left the company of society. He went out into the wilderness to the edge of his civilization. John believed, hoped, that someone else was coming, someone who would come from a world away, and maybe out there, away from the cities and the lights, it might be easier to keep watch on the horizon.

In the wild places near the murmur of the river, John began to catch the attention of anyone who passed, and he began to preach. It may have been what he said, or maybe how he said it, or maybe simply the appearance of this man who happened (that is the word the gospel accounts use — John ‘happened’ — a way of describing the acts of a prophet) somehow drew people to him. They left their towns and villages, left their familiar paths and streets, and they made their way into the wild places to see this wild man.

LightOnWater

”What shall we do?” That was the question the crowds put to him when they found him.

His answers were remarkably simple. Share your food with the hungry. Share your clothes with the poor. Do not take what is not yours. John taught a practical theology.

Only his last answer was abstract. Be content, he told them, an injunction not so simple as the others. How should one be content? He didn’t give out instructions.

Perhaps we are content when we choose to be.

That is the implication behind John’s mandate. It is only reasonable to tell us to be content if it is possible for us to comply. We must be able to choose it.

Contentment, then, is not a feeling to be desired—that is a result, not a cause. Contentment must have more to do with how we see the world, what we choose to do in the world or apart from it.

John the Baptist never told anyone to believe certain tenets. The closest thing to dogma he taught was the need to change. The people who came already knowing how to pass a theology exam, those people he called snakes and vipers. It was not an endorsement of mainstream religion.

He didn’t preach what people should believe. He preached what they should do. Rather than admonishing people to be right, he urged them to do right. Perhaps he was confident that faith would follow action, or perhaps he saw no difference between the two.

John preached a gospel of expectation — God is coming into the world, always, perpetually. He preached a gospel of doing — feeding, clothing, sharing — and oddly enough, according to John, these are the things that make smooth the paths on which we might see God approaching. He told people to give. He told them to share. He didn’t tell them to love one another: he told them to act as though they did. He told them to live like Jesus was going to live.

He’s coming, John told them. Make a way.

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