Seventy Times Seven

Matthew 18: 21-35

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost/ 11^th September 2011

I’ll be perfectly honest.  I didn’t want to preach today.  Not today.  Not on this Sunday— the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  I remember what it was like ten years ago standing in this pulpit trying to offer a message of hope in a time of national crisis, standing so close to the event without really understanding what happened or having any sense of what the response might be. 

Ten years later here we are, a weekend of remembrance and reflection.  Osama bin Ladin (1957-2011) might be dead and al Qaeda disorganized, yet the risk of terror here and abroad remains.  Ten years later—and so much has transpired in these last ten years—and we still struggle to come to grips with what happened that day and why and whether the response to the events of that day have made the world safer—for everyone—or not.  And here’s the rub, the resistance within me.  Although I have my own views and perspectives, I’m not here to offer my views, but to preach, to offer a word of grace, to reframe our views of reality with the gospel, to extend a Word of hope. 

The theological, biblical, Christian response to 9/11 is still being formed; we are still struggling to “make sense” of what occurred.  Ten years later and we’re searching for words and ways to articulate what we’ve learned and are learning from 9/11, not as Americans alone, not as a nation (this, too, is happening in many places this weekend), but as Christians—citizens, to be sure, of the United States, and gratefully so, but also as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  We have dual citizenship. 

            Yesterday morning in my study, trying to write, feeling the weight of resistance, I was drawn to a book that came out several years ago by Serene Jones.  Serene is president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City and professor of theology there. In her book Trauma and Grace:  Theology in a Ruptured World, she masterfully engages the theological aspects of trauma and its aftermath.  She helpfully and correctly (I think) characterizes our individual and collective experience of 9/11 as trauma.  At some level, whether directly or indirectly, we have been and continue to be traumatized by what happened that day.  The Greek word for trauma means a “wound” or “an injury inflicted upon the body by an act of violence.”  “To be traumatized is to be slashed or struck down by a hostile external force that threatens to destroy you.  This visual image highlights the assaultlike character of a trauma; it involves an attack,” she writes, “by an external agent upon a vulnerable human body in such a way that a wounding occurs.”[1]  Trauma is violence against one’s body, but it is also violence against one’s psyche, against one’s spirit.  There is a direct correlation between trauma and violence and, as psychologists and sociologists have long known, violence can be experienced both physically and visually.  To see violence, to witness violence can be just as wounding as physically enduring it. 

            Trauma can be experienced individually, but it can also be experienced collectively, nationally.  The nation experienced a collective wounding that day.  We cannot underestimate the impact of watching all those images of violence repeated over and over again, whether on television or in our mind’s eyes or again this anniversary and any anniversary.  We are pulled into the violence and the national reaction to the violence of that day (some might say over-reaction) has only lulled us deeper and deeper into the violence.  To be traumatized is to be threatened, whether real or perceived.  To live anticipating such a threat has profound implications upon one’s psyche, it leads to increased fear, suspicion, isolation, and even acts of violence done in defense of an anticipated attack.  Serene writes, “We saw the real—not merely threatened or feared—annihilation of people who were or could have been our family, friends, neighbors or parishioners.  …There are few people in the history of the world who have witnessed, in the moment of its occurrence, such massive death, a witnessing now made possible by our current telecommunications technology.”[2]

            Serene’s book is about more than trauma, it’s also about grace.  It was written to address this question:  “How do people, whose hearts and minds have been wounded by violence, come to feel and know the redeeming power of God’s grace?”  That’s the point, the theological question and response to 9/11.   How do we enter into the wound caused by that day without being defined by the wound?  How do we acknowledge the violence and the amount of destructive violence we have witnessed in the world since then without being further defined by that violence?  What is the distinctive voice, perspective, word that we in the church have to offer?  This is her answer:  “The church is called, as it exists in this space of trauma, to engage in the crucial task of reordering the collective imagination of its people and to be wise and passionate in this task.”[3]  “…reordering the collective imagination….”

            How does the church do this?  Actually, the Holy Spirit does this—the Holy Spirit is the Great Re-Orderer —in us, because that’s exactly what Jesus does, he reorders our imagination, reframes how we look at ourselves, our neighbors, and the world, in order that we see everything in a new light, from a different perspective, from God’s perspective.  This is exactly what Jesus is getting at in his conversation with Peter on forgiveness—not seven times, but seventy times seven.   This requires a reordered imagination. In telling this disturbing parable Jesus drives the point home—forgiveness is serious business, especially for those who have been on the receiving end of forgiveness.  Forgiveness stands at the core of the Christian experience; it’s is also at the core of the Judaism and Islam.  All three Abrahamic faiths urge mercy, forgiveness, grace—why?  Because as children of God, we know that God is merciful, forgiving, rich in grace.  This is who God is.  However, those who have received mercy from God, but then withhold it from a neighbor (and even an enemy) cheapen the mercy received from God.

            These are demanding and difficult words to hear on a day like today.  In God’s providence, this is the lectionary text for today—I didn’t choose it.  Every three years this is the lectionary reading for the thirteenth week after Pentecost.  This year it happens to fall on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. We are called to privilege the text over the circumstances of the day, to allow the text to speak to us, so that our imaginations might be reordered.  When we do so we just might hear what the Spirit is trying to say to the church, of the way grace is seeking to enter into our trauma, our wound, our pain, and offer a different narrative, a new horizon of hope, not confined and defined by narratives of violence and destruction.

            This is tough.  We have to be very careful here.  Talking about forgiveness requires nuance and theological, biblical maturity.  We have to proceed with caution so as not to cheapen the meaning of forgiveness.  In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) makes it crystal clear that apologies that don’t cost you anything don’t change anything.  Cheap grace is the idea that forgiveness just wipes the past away. Some then equate forgiveness with forgetting.[4]  Those with really good memories, who feel obliged to never forget, are often the same ones reluctant to forgive. 

            There are plenty of Christians, however, who forgive too soon, who never really honor themselves by denying the magnitude of their hurt.  Because they think forgiveness is the Christian thing to do, some move right to forgiveness immediately after a wrong without acknowledging the pain that has been caused, without respecting one’s feelings, which only causes further psychological wounding.  This often occurs in domestic violence situations in which battered women are pressured to “forgive, forgive” without real repentance and change on the part of their batterers.  “This pressure to forgive on the part of victims without repentance and change on the part of victimizers is sometimes given a religious interpretation.”  In a soon to be released book, theologian Susan Thistlewaite shares that, “Countless women have told me that their priest or minister had advised them, as ‘good Christian women’ to accept beatings by their husbands as ‘Christ accepted the cross.’”  I heard similar stories just last week in the Democratic Republic of Congo, stories of Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy who told women they had to forgive their husbands for abusing them because it was the Christian thing to do.  Thistlewaite makes an important observation, “The ‘forgive, forgive’ dynamic in domestic violence fails at the crucial step of recognizing that unequal power relations are at the root of violent relationships, whether personal, national, or international.  The ‘spiral of violence’ will not be interrupted unless the power inequalities that helped to give rise to violence are changed.”[5]

            Jesus’ words of forgiveness need to be part of the church’s narrative regarding 9/11.  What this actually looks like is difficult to say, but it cannot be ignored.  Again, on the one hand, forgiveness is not simply about forgetting what took place, “moving on.”  On the other hand, we also have to admit that remembering, never forgetting, holding on to the pain of that moment prevents one from being present and facing the future.  “Never Forget” translated as “Never Forgive” yields paralysis, where we are, to quote U2, “stuck in a moment and now [we] can’t get out of it.”[6]  The moment holds us in its grip and although we think we’re honoring what occurred, the trauma is actually defining us, shaping us. 

In his book, The End of Memory—Rightly Remembering in a Violent World, theologian Miroslav Volf makes a provocative claim.  Writing from his own experience living through the ethnic cleansing in Serbo-Croatia, he wonders whether if forgetting may be a gift bestowed by a merciful God and remembering may be evidence of a failure to receive that gift.  How long should we remember?  Are we not told in scripture that God is good at forgetting?  “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:32). “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 10:17).[7]

            In both of these verses, as well as in Matthew 18, we discover that forgiveness is not an end in itself.  Forgiveness is the means to an end and the end, the goal, the objective of forgiveness, the goal of the kingdom is reconciliation.  In Judaism, forgiveness is embodied in shalom, peace, a return (teshuvah) to relationship, a re-integration, on both the cosmic and the personal level.[8]  Similar claims are made in Islam. In Christianity, forgiveness is fulfilled in reconciliation, forgiveness if offered and won so that humanity might be reconciled to God and humanity to humanity.  In order to get to the point of reconciliation something has to occur, something has to change, people need to change, admit responsibility, acknowledge sin, enter the trauma and reframe it.

            More than eighty years ago, theologian H. R. Mackintosh (1870-1936) wrote that forgiveness is a “shattering experience” for the one who forgives as well as for the one who is forgiven.[9] “This is because forgiveness, unlike a mere pardon, seeks to win the offender back into relationship.  And reconciliation is costly because there are resistances to it in the attitude of the person who has offended; the one who sets out to forgive must aim to remove those blockages and restore the relationship.”[10]  This is costly, requiring time and effort, mental and physical strength. Unless we suffer through this, we will be caught in the spiral of violence, forever bound by trauma, defined by violence, and we run the risk of becoming the very thing that we fear.

            These are some of the alternate narratives that the church can offer on this 9/11.  Alternate narratives, stories, interpretations are needed, lest we be defined by the suffering and violence of that day.  You might have seen the story on the front page of Friday’s Washington Post about the 9/11 cross.  The image of the two iron beams forming a cross that seemed to rise up out of the ashes at Ground Zero.  The “World Trade Cross” became the focus of worship, of hope, of praying, and blessing in the aftermath of 9/11.  Father Brian Jordan saw the cross as a sign that “God had not abandoned Ground Zero.”[11]  It will be placed as part of the 9/11 Memorial in New York, but not without some controversy, especially from atheists who object to a Christian icon being placed on the site.  As the article indicates, the cross became a symbol of hope for Christians and Jews and people of other faiths.  Perhaps the symbol has power because it speaks of our hope to frame the destruction of 9/11 within a different narrative, a different story, a different way to “making sense” of the trauma, reordering our imaginations: that a symbol of torture and pain and suffering like the cross can become a symbol of suffering love and be associated with grace, with mercy. This requires a reordered imagination. This is an entirely different kind of narrative.

            There were other articles and images in the The Post on Friday.  But I was stunned by one image in the On Faith section—the wrinkled pages of an open Bible that had been fused with metal.  It was found by a NY firefighter at Ground Zero.[12]  I zoomed in on the photo in order to see what part of the Bible it was open to.  It wasn’t Matthew 18: 21-35 (that would have been too perfect)—but Matthew 5, from the Sermon on the Mount.  You can make out the sub-heading in the chapter:  “Retaliation” followed by Jesus’ teaching against retaliation, and “Love” followed by Jesus’ teaching on the love of one’s enemies. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes the sun rise on the evil and the on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 4:44-45).  To live this way requires an enormous, grace-filled reordering of our imaginations.

            The last words from the people in the towers and on the planes, spoken from phones and cell phones, left on voicemail, over and over again that day were “I love you.”  Over and over again, the message was the same, “I love you.”  “I love you.”  Several days after 9/11, novelist Ian McEwan wrote in The Guardian, “Love was all they had to set against the hatred of their murderers.”[13]  That’s what we have to offer as the church, this is what reorders our imaginations; we can provide an alternative, grace-filled, compassionate, merciful narrative, a different kind of response to 9/11.  That’s what Jesus himself calls us toward, over and over again.

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[1]Serene Jones, Trauma and Grace:  Theology in a Ruptured World (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 12.

[2] Jones, 28.

[3] Jones, 31. Emphasis in the text.

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995).

[5] Susan Thistlewaite is editor of a forthcoming book Interfaith Just Peacemaking:Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on the New Paradigm of Peace and War (Palgrave Macmillan: Fall, 2011) that outlines top practices of peacemaking that have been going on across Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.  This book is out of the Interfaith Just Peacemaking project.  For ten years a group of thirty religious leaders (with equal representation from the three religions) have been meeting and working toward a practical guide to Just Peacemaking and creating a hermeneutic that looks at the actual peacemaking practices shared among the sacred texts, finding common practices, and determining how they are actually being used around the world.  My references come from a chapter of the book shared in advance by Thistlewaite with the members of my pastor-theologian study group.

[6] U2, “Stuck in A Moment,” All That You Can’t Leave Behind, Universal-Island Records, Ltd., 2000.

[7] Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory—Rightly Remembering in a Violent World (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2006), 133-134.  I’m grateful to the Reverend Roy Howard for this reference.

[8] David Gordis’ contribution to the Thistlewaite text.  A classic and instructive formulation of teshuvah is found in the writings of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204).  He suggested that teshuvah requires three steps:  harata (remorse), vidui (confession), and teshuvah (the actual accomplishment of the “return”).

[9] H. R. Mackintosh, Christian Experience of Forgiveness (1927).

[10] Paul S. Fiddes’ summary of Mackintosh in Participating in God:  A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 192-193.

[11]Washington Post, September 8, 2011. 

[12]Washington Post, September 8, 2011. 

[13] Ian McEwan, The Guardian, September 15, 2001.  See also Kenneth E. Kovacs, “Choruses from ‘The Rock,’” David James Randolph, ed., Candles in the Dark:  Flames for the Future:  Preaching and Poetry in Times of Crisis (New Way Media, 2003), 56.

The Gift of Hospitality

Genesis 18:1-15

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost/14^th August 2011/ Sacrament of Baptism

When Abraham saw the arrival of three guests, unannounced, he did what any other self-respecting, other-honoring Middle Eastern man would have done:  he welcomed them.  What we have here in this well-known text is a demonstration of ancient hospitality.  Abraham doesn’t know who they are – he doesn’t care who they are, they are strangers, they are guests.  When he sees them, he bows, bows down to the ground.  “Please, Sir, how may I help you?  Maybe some water to quench your thirst or to wash your dusty feet?  How about a place to rest?  Here, let me get you something to eat, to help regain your strength.  Then I wouldn’t wish to detain you, you may go on your way.” So they said, “Do as you have said,” which translated, could read. “Why thank you, kindly.  That would be great.” 

            So Abraham goes into action.  He runs to Sarah and sends her into action.  She puts the oven on and starts cooking.  Abraham runs out to the herd looking for a calf, slaughters it, and gives it to a servant to prepare it.  Then he took the meal, this feast, set it before them – and then note that Abraham went off to the side, he didn’t sit with them under the tree.  This is the very model of hospitality.

            Then Abraham discovers who they are.  They want something more than food and rest.  They are on the way to some place, pilgrims to be sure, but they’re about to implicate both Abraham and Sarah into their plans.  We discover that these men are divine messengers and they have a word for Abraham.  Sarah, although up in years, will have a son.  Abraham running with excitement and disbelief, tells Sarah. And then she laughs.  Laughs at the thought.  Laughs at Abraham.  Laughs at the messengers.  Laughs at God.  And God is all over and in this story, because then we hear Yahweh speaking and says to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’”  Followed by one of the great questions of the Bible:  “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?”  Sarah denied laughing.  Maybe it happened so fast, in the moment, a thoughtless reaction, that she didn’t realize she laughed.  But God remembers.  “Oh yes, you did laugh.”

            There’s a lot going on this text, to be sure, but today, at least, I’m drawn to this notion of hospitality, of welcome.  It’s not a new subject or theme for us. For several years now we’ve been talking and doing a lot about hospitality, of welcoming the stranger, of creating a community where everyone feels welcome.  Our capital campaign several years ago was all about hospitality and accessibility, making it easier for people with special needs to get into the building.  And once in the building, we offer an invitation to share a space that is warm or cool – thank God for air-conditioning and a furnace that works – and welcoming, hospitable, clean.  There’s no doubt about it, the physical space is so much more inviting and welcoming.

            But this is only the beginning. Scripture calls us to embody hospitality in every aspect of our ministry.  This story from Genesis 18 is a classic text for this, but there are so many other moments in both testaments in which hospitality plays itself out.  It’s more than just making people feel at home, it’s a matter of going out of one’s way to make one feel at home.  But it’s more than that; it’s about really honoring them, acknowledging another’s presence.  When my friend Michael Koppel was here several weeks ago to preach (he’ll be back again next week), you might have noticed that when he passed the peace of Christ to me, he bowed.  Michael used to live in China and is fluent in Chinese.  He came to value the importance of the bow in friendships and relationships.  His inaugural lecture at Wesley Seminary after becoming full professor was on the theological aspects of the bow.  The bow is often associated with the Buddhist greeting, Namaste.  It’s a Sanskrit word that means to bow or to adore or to worship.  It can be translated:  The Buddha in me bows to the Buddha in you.  Or, my spirit bows to your spirit.  The divinity in me bows to the divinity in you.  Or maybe even from a Christian perspective it would be similar to saying, “The Christ in me bows to the Christ in you.”

            When this is the posture we take toward the stranger and toward one another, when these are the gestures we make toward the pilgrim or traveler among us (and who isn’t a pilgrim or traveler?), then this changes how we respond to them, how we treat them, how we avail ourselves to them, how we open the doors of our tents and churches and homes and welcome them as bearers of a message from God.

            This open-door practice was found in the early Christian monasteries.  Benedict of Nursia (480-547) is generally known as the founder of Christian monasticism.  He wrote a guidebook for the monks in his community, a Rule, The Rule of St. Benedict, one of the most influential texts in Western Christendom.  Think of it as an early Book of Order.  While it is true that the Reformation did away with monasticism in the Protestant church, there are still, obviously plenty of monastic orders within Roman Catholicism, orders that have much to teach the children of Luther and Calvin.  When I was on my sabbatical three years ago, I stayed for a time at Christ in the Desert Abbey, a Benedictine community situated in the Chama River canyon, near Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.  That was my first experience in a monastery.  The brothers sought to embody what they believed in everything they did.  At the center of Benedict’s Rule are guidelines on how best to receive guests to a monastery or abbey – and there were many.  As a result, the Benedictines came to be known for their hospitality.  In the chapter “On the Reception of Guests,” Benedict wrote, “Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for He is going to say, ‘I came as a guest, and you received Me” (Matt. 25:35).  Without even knowing who they were, or what they believed (or didn’t), without knowing their past or their intent, they were to be received like Christ, welcomed as if Christ himself was walking through their doors.

            Benedict continues:  “In the salutation of all guests, whether arriving or departing, let all humility be shown.  Let the head be bowed or the whole body prostrated on the ground in adoration of Christ, who is indeed received in their persons.”[1]

            This is a great way to run a monastery.  It’s also a great practice for a church.  But Benedict didn’t invent this practice; it stands at the center of the Judeo-Christian experience.  Part of it is rooted in desert hospitality (for we need to remember that both Judaism and Christianity are desert religions, they emerge in desert places), but it’s more than this.  It’s this style of hospitality that is displayed in the way Israel related to God and God to Israel.  And it’s directly related to the way Jesus displayed the welcome of God to everyone he met.

            What if we as a church took up hospitality, prayed about it, talked about it, embodied it here at CPC, over the next couple of months, as if it were the essential core expression of the gospel of Jesus Christ?  What if we identified it as an essential spiritual practice?  These are themes that emerged from our Vision Study Task Force and themes that Session talks about regularly.  How do we embody hospitality?

            I’m grateful for the writings and ministry of Nanette Sawyer, a Presbyterian minister serving outside Chicago.  She provides a guide.  I recently came across an interview with her, inspired by her book Hospitality: The Sacred Art.[2]  She has some insightful things to say about the subject.  When asked, how is the kind of hospitality we practice when we invite friends into our home different than hospitality as a spiritual practice?  She says the two kinds aren’t different.  “Spiritual hospitality is about the internal posture we hold towards others, and then how that posture affects our actions and interactions.”  She defines hospitality as a practice of “receptivity, reverence, and generosity – the three deeply shape and inform each other.”  This is helpful.  We can see all three – receptivity, reverence, and generosity – at work in the Genesis text.

            How does she come to this definition?  In Jesus himself, “the epitome of hospitality,” she says.  “Every biblical story of compassion and grace and love inspires me to practice receptivity, reverence and generosity – the core of hospitality.  Jesus was generous and radical because he saw persons, not categories of people.  He looked at them deeply and listened to them truly enough to get to the heart of matters quickly.  With this posture of awareness and acceptance, his actions took on incredible transformative power.  He invited people, and continues to invite us all, out of denial and avoidance, and into authentic relationship.”

            A turning point came in her life when she discovered the Communion Table as a specific place of radical hospitality.  Why?  Because it was at the Table where she discovered God’s posture toward her, God’s welcome and nurture of her through Jesus’ Table.  Her posture toward God, God’s posture toward her, changed her inner disposition, which then shaped the way she lives out her life.

            We often think of hospitality as a response toward others.  Sawyer reminds us that we also need to consider hospitality toward self, toward ourselves.  Do we practice “receptivity, reverence, and generosity” toward ourselves? 

            And what about God?  How are we hospitable to God’s presence?  Do we practice “receptivity, reverence, and generosity” toward God?  Are we open to God showing up, unannounced, into our lives?  Or do we keep the flaps of our tents tightly secured?

            Our attitudes, responses, postures are rooted in how we imagine God being hospitable to us.  God welcomes us into God’s life.  A good expression of this is the Russian icon by Andrei Rublev (b.1360s, d. 1427 or 1430), originally called the “Hospitality of Abraham,” later modified and renamed “The Trinity.”  Some see the “three messengers” who appear to Abraham as the three persons of the Trinity.  There’s a lot going on in this icon, but what is so striking is its spaciousness.

            Four sides of the table, but the fourth side is empty, open, free space – for you.  You can imagine yourself sitting at that Table in the presence of God, welcomed at his Table, receptive to God’s reverence and God’s generosity.

            And we need to remember that the font, too, is a place of welcome, an extraordinary expression of God’s hospitality.  Because before we can even begin to welcome God into our lives, God, through Christ, has welcomed us into God’s life, into God’s household, into this family of faith.  Thanks be to God!

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[1] The Rule of St. Benedict maybe be found online at  http://www.osb.org/rb/.  “On the Reception of Guests,” is chapter 53. http://www.osb.org/rb/text/rbeaad1.html#53.

[2] All quotations taken from the interview with Nanette Sawyer at http://www.clayfirecurator.org/2011/07/curating-hospitality-an-interview-with-nanette-sawyer/

See also, Hospitality-The Sacred Art: Discovering the Hidden Spiritual Power of Invitation and Welcome (Skylight Paths Publishing, 2007).

Formed by Forgiveness

Matthew 18:15-22

Eight Sunday after Pentecost/7^th August 2011/ Sacrament of Holy Communion

In this season of Vacation Bible School and thinking back upon my own experience of VBS, I’m reminded of a poem I came across several years ago.  My brother, Craig, and I went to VBS every year; we had to—our mother was VBS director for many years at our home church in North Arlington, NJ—but we also wanted to.  The poem I’m thinking about is by contemporary poet, Stephen Dunn, in which he reflects upon his daughter’s experience attending a summer Vacation Bible Church.  It’s called “At the Smithville Methodist Church.”  Dunn and his wife are basically agnostic, skeptical about religion in general and not sure what to make of their daughter’s emerging faith.  In the end, they are humbled by it.  Here’s how he captures it in verse:

It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home
with the "Jesus Saves" button, we knew what art
was up, what ancient craft.

She liked her little friends. She liked the songs
they sang when they weren't
twisting and folding paper into dolls.
What could be so bad?

Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith
in good men was what
we had to do to stay this side of cynicism,
that other sadness.

OK, we said, One week. But when she came home
singing "Jesus loves me,
the Bible tells me so," it was time to talk.
Could we say Jesus

doesn't love you? Could I tell her the Bible
is a great book certain people use
to make you feel bad? We sent her back
without a word.

It had been so long since we believed, so long
since we needed Jesus
as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was
sufficiently dead,

that our children would think of him like Lincoln
or Thomas Jefferson.
Soon it became clear to us: you can't teach disbelief
to a child,

only wonderful stories, and we hadn't a story
nearly as good.
On parents' night there were the Arts & Crafts
all spread out

like appetizers. Then we took our seats
in the church
and the children sang a song about the Ark,
and Hallelujah

and one in which they had to jump up and down
for Jesus.
I can't remember ever feeling so uncertain
about what's comic, what's serious.

Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.
You can't say to your child
"Evolution loves you." The story stinks
of extinction and nothing

exciting happens for centuries. I didn't have
a wonderful story for my child
and she was beaming. All the way home in the car
she sang the songs,

occasionally standing up for Jesus.
There was nothing to do
but drive, ride it out, sing along
in silence.[1]

          What is this “wonderful story” Dunn is so envious of?  How do you sum up the Christian story?  I’m not exactly sure there’s one story we tell.  The story is Jesus and Jesus is the story of God’s love.  But how do we tell this story?  It’s really more like a multi-faceted-gemstone-kind-of-story.  There are many aspects to it, and we approach it from many perspectives and angles. And we need to respect this.

It seems to me that everything we do in a church is grounded in the belief that we have a story for our children.  Our worship, our fellowship, our community around this table are all because we have a wonderful story for our children.  It’s also our story.  Our ministries of sympathy, service, and witness, our educational and missional aims are all because of this story.  Our $1.8 million capital campaign several years ago, as well as our most recent campaign is all because of this wondrous story.

There are plenty of great stories to shape the lives of our children, but what makes this story different is the way it speaks to the “why” question.  Evolution, for example, speaks to the “how” question.  How we got here.  But evolution doesn’t love you.  The Christian story is less about how we came to be, than why—it’s about who we are and why we are.  This is the deeper story of Genesis and why, by the way, we must not read it as a science text.  I believe in evolution, of course, but our job in the church is to speak to the deeper question why.  What is a life?  And why do we live it?[2] Parents can tell them how (in time), how they came to be, but the deeper more profound question of why?  Why do they exist?  Why do we exist? That’s something else.  It’s our story that puts them – and us – into this deeply disturbing and scary, yet wildly wondrous and glorious world – puts them and us into this amazing world with meaning, purpose, love, and grace.  The story tells them why they exist.  It gives them and us a song to sing and sanctifies their lives and ours, and makes them holy.  They can’t discover this on their own; neither can we.  It doesn’t emerge from the depths of our psyche when we’re alone awake at night and fearful.  The story tells us that we are loved more than we could ever possibly imagine, that we’re not alone, that Jesus is present within us and among us.

          For Matthew here, one significant part of the gospel story is forgiveness.  Forgiveness, which, of course, is related to God’s love and grace.  Forgiveness stands at the center of the gospel narrative, the church’s story.

However, neither Jesus nor Matthew had any romantic illusions about the nature of the church.  We might sing our hymns, “Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love,” yet painful breaks can occur in our relationships.  We might sing, “We are one in the Spirit,” yet cruel words and thoughtless actions can separate us from on another.  We might sing, “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,” but there’s plenty to threaten the stability of even the strongest of churches.[3] 

Matthew tells us how to live together.  Work it out.  Seek reconciliation.  Try to make amends.  Reach out.  Why?  Because wherever two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name he’s there too.  When we’re quick to accuse and judge and shun someone from community, remember that Christ is among us, and in the other we want to shun.  By focusing on Jesus in the center of the community we remember it’s not about us; the church doesn’t exist for us, we exist for the church; God doesn’t exist for us, we exist for us.  The focus on Christ draws us out of our isolation and narcissism and self-absorption and allows us to live together.

But Peter, always the practical one says, “Okay, Lord, fine.  Sounds great in theory.  But just tell me the minimum number of times I have to forgive so I know when I don’t have to forgive any more and can then throw that person out of the church.”  Peter wants to put a limit on the generosity of grace.  But if we’re like him, act like him, think like him, then we really don’t understand what it feels like to be forgiven, to know grace.  Seventy-seven times.  In other words, don’t count.  Don’t keep track.  Just keep on doing it.  Why?  There can be no community without forgiveness.

          Now it’s possible to just tell or teach the story of forgiveness without being shaped by it.  We can teach our children how they ought to forgive (because it’s the Christian thing to do), but ignore it ourselves.  And, sometimes we Christians forgive too soon because we are not willing to acknowledge the depth of our hurt and pain.  However, this is not just a story of forgiveness that we teach or tell (and when we do, we’ve missed the point).  It’s a story we have to experience even as we tell it because already we’re in it, we’re within the narrative of God’s grace.  We can tell the influence of the story by the difference it makes in our lives – how followers of Jesus relate to others, especially when the family of Jesus gathers and tries to be faithful together.

          Knowing the undeserved and unearned forgiveness of God becomes the cornerstone of the Christian experience and sits at the center of who we are.  It’s embodied in the Table.  I remember the Sunday I was worshipping at Iona Abbey in Scotland, during my sabbatical, a long Communion Table was set up right down the center of the nave.   Several weeks ago when I was in Savannah for Doris and Craig’s wedding, I had time to visit the Independent Presbyterian Church, originally established by the Church of Scotland.  I couldn’t figure out why the center aisle was so wide.  I later learned it was so that they could practice the Scottish custom of setting up a long table in the center of the church so that everyone can sit at the table for Communion.   I wish we could do the same in our church, but our aisle is too narrow.  It’s a powerful way to express that the Table sits at the center of what we do, and we worship around it.  That’s why Jesus gives it to us, and even why John Calvin (1509-1564) wanted Communion served every Sunday in Geneva (and to go to the Table), because it helps to remind us that Christ is among us and within. 

It makes tangible the story of God’s forgiving love.  And this meal is offered again and again and again in the hope that someday we’ll finally get it – that we and our children will know we’re forgiven in the eyes of God and then, in the words of Paul Tillich (1886-1965), “accept our acceptance.”[4]  People long to know they’re forgiven, whether they believe in God or not.  Such is the depth of guilt and shame and sorrow and regret so many carry around with them.  We know there’s nothing that can separate us from God (Romans 8).  We can live from within this story. 

To know we’ve been forgiven by God, but withhold forgiveness toward others is, in the end, to be ungrateful.  To know we’re forgiven, yet withhold forgiveness toward ourselves is to be ungrateful.  But with grateful hearts, accepting God’s forgiveness at the Table, we can rejoice, we can jump up and down—yes, even Presbyterians—singing hallelujahs, beaming all the way home.

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[1] Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994 (New York:  W. W. Norton & Co., 1994), 183-184.

[2] A question raised by James E. Loder, The Logic of the Spirit:  Human Development in Theological Perspective (San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998).

[3] Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 209.

[4] Paul Tillich, from his sermon, “You Are Accepted,” Shaking the Foundations (New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955).

Life in the Spirit

Romans 8: 26-39

6^th Sunday after Pentecost/ 24^th July 2011

 For the last two Sundays we’ve been making our way through the majestic and theologically profound eighth chapter of Romans, Paul’s letter to the Christians in that city.  The title of this series – Life in the Spirit – was chosen because one of the main threads I see running through this chapter is the core relationship between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit.  Paul makes more references to the Spirit here than in any other chapter in the New Testament.  The Holy Spirit is obviously important to him.

            But he lifts up themes here that are, to some extent, unique to Paul.  He has phrases, sentences, insights here that are found no where else in the New Testament.  There’s one theme in particular I’ve been trying to lift up.  The last two weeks have been biblically and theologically demanding; this is a tough text.  The last third of the chapter is just as demanding and maybe more so.  But I want to lighten it up a little – after all, it’s been hot this week and it’s hot outside, – and focus primarily upon one story.  I’ll get to that story in a minute.

            First, I want to set it up, provide a context for it.   The context is the one particular theme that I’ve been stressing the last two weeks:  right now we who are baptized “in Christ” (en Christos) are participating, that is sharing in the very life of God.  For us to be “in Christ” is to be in a relationship with him and, like Christ himself, to be “in him” is to be in God, in a profound, intimate relationship with God – right now. Right now, God is present to us, around us, but also within the depths of our souls.  We belong to God, right now, and nothing can change this. There’s no possibility of separation.  There’s no possibility of God rejecting us, forgetting us, or not loving us.  In fact, God has to love us – it’s God’s job, it’s what God does and it’s who God is. 

            That’s what Paul wants his hearers to know.  He raises these rhetorical questions. “What then are we to say about these things?  If God is for us, who is against?”  And the answer is, No one and no thing.  God has demonstrated to us definitively in Christ that God will hold nothing back from us.  In sending us Christ, in giving us Christ, in Christ living the life of God and breathing the breath of God, we know God gives us Godself.  Therefore, who can give any charge against God’s children – the elect?  The implied answer here is, “No one.”  Certainly not God because God justifies.  Who is to condemn us?  The answer is implied in the question, “Not Christ,” not the one who died and was raised and now intercedes on our behalf, not Christ.  Then, who will separate us from the love of Christ, then?  Again, nothing. 

            Can hardship?  No. 

            Can distress?  No. 

            What about persecution?  No. 

            Hardship, nakedness, peril or sword? 

            No, no, no, and no. 

You see nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.

            And here, then, Paul drives the point home.  Is there anything in the universe that can hinder God’s love?  The last two weeks I made reference to the fact that in Paul’s worldview, sin (in the singular) was viewed more as a force than an act.  It’s because of the power of sin – as a principality, as a force, a power “out there” in the world, that we are bound and hindered from doing God’s will, showing God’s love, offering mercy.  Paul, and others like him, believed that their lives were influenced by larger cosmic forces – like sin or death, the gods, the empire.  As we have seen, Paul believed that God sent the Son to “take on” or “to deal with” theses powers so that we might be liberated, released.  And you can hear this worldview in these closing verses:  “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, now powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

            Stunning.  Perhaps theses verses should be posted on banners at a Ravens game or on billboards just as much as as John 3:16 – or maybe more so.  Romans 8:38-39. What a very different world it would be if it were so.

            These verses, starting at verse 31, are often read at funerals and memorial services.  This isn’t surprising given the hope expressed here, not only for this life but for the life to come.  Not even death can separate us from God.  We belong to God and shall dwell with God forever.

            But I’m also convinced – or hold the conviction – that Paul had in mind here not only comfort for the life to come.  As I said two weeks ago, Paul is a great pastor-theologian, but he’s also a great psychologist, because it is from the depth of his experience, his psyche (or soul), reflecting upon the meaning of his life in the face of considerable suffering that he offers these amazing theological claims.  Yes, there’s theology here, but his theological claims are forged in the midst of considerable suffering and pain.  Paul knows that to be in Christ does not mean we are somehow excused or exempt from pain and suffering and hardship.  Even in these verses, he doesn’t say in Christ we will be prevented from experiencing hardship or peril.  He knows they won’t be able to separate us from God. 

            He’s writing from his experience and lifts up his experience as an expression of what God can do in the experience of everyone —now — who is in Christ.  Paul has had some profound encounters of God’s love and presence in his life.  He knows the presence of Christ is a constant in his life, that he exists in the sphere of God’s love in Christ.  And he shares this with us so that we too might learn how to “read” or understand or make sense out of our experience too.

            You see, for Paul the Holy Spirit is bearing witness with our human spirit.  This is the theme running through the chapter; it’s unique for Paul.  You don’t even find it explicitly mentioned in the gospels.  The Spirit bears witness with our spirit, speaks to our spirit to tell us we are children of God – that we belong to God.  The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ who is a presence within us and around us, tugging us, speaking to us in a variety of ways, bearing witness, proving to us that God is present.

            The gospel of John calls the Holy Spirit a “Comforter” (see John 14).  Paul is even deeper.  “The Spirit helps us,” Paul says, “in our weakness.”  This is a Spirit who is sharing our lives with us, participating in our experience, providing assistance.  Take prayer for example.  When we’re “weak” in prayer and don’t know how the pray, the Spirit helps us.  Not from a distance, but listen, “that very Spirit intercedes [to God] with sighs too deep for words.”  Can you feel the depth of feeling in such a statement?  Can you perceive the depth of self-awareness on Paul’s part?  Can you feel the grace of God expressed in such an insight?  The Spirit searches the depths of the human heart and even through our sighs intercedes to God, through our sighing, even through our groaning, through experience and circumstance that leave us speechless, which we can’t articulate.  The Spirit intercedes for us.  The Greek word here is perhaps best described this way.  It is a word used to describe a rescue:

Image that you arrive on the scene of a horrific crime or tragedy, you discover a person in serious trouble and on behalf of that person you begin to plead, to cry out, to beg for help.  You know that time is of the essence, there’s a sense of urgency and in your cries you struggle for words, but your words don’t make any sense. Then others come because they hear you, but they don’t understand you because your concern and now your suffering on behalf of this person renders you almost speechless, you don’t make any sense.  This is the sigh too deep for words.[1]  But the Spirit knows, can interpret the sighs and the Babel of panic.  The Spirit gives voice to God that which is underneath and behind our sighs.  That’s what the Holy Spirit does for us and with us – coming to our aid, bringing us to life, demonstrating to us that we are children of God, that we belong to God, and nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.

            I know we can all add our own experiences why we know Paul’s words ring true.  I can share of some mine.  I’m grateful to Anne Lamott for sharing her experience in her book Traveling Mercies, which was released in back in 1999.  Lamott is a contemporary novelist and essayist.  She’s a brilliant and funny writer.  She’s also loves Jesus and seeks to follow him, but that wasn’t always the case.  Anne is wonderfully irreverent and gets away with saying things that others might wish to say, but won’t or can’t.  She can be rude and has the mouth of a sailor at times, but she’s real.  There’s a rough-edge to her and so would you if you lived through what she lived through.  This is part of her story —the G-rated version.  I encourage you to read the original if you haven’t already.

            Anne grew up in a secular, atheist, Communist family of professors in California.  For decades she lived a rough, hard, fast, and self-destructive life – sex, drugs, alcohol, and ready to take her life.  She had no interest in religion or Christianity and viewed most Christians with considerable suspicion.  In time, she found herself going into St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin County, CA – a small, elderly congregation.  She only went for the music.  She went to sing, first.  “Something inside me that was stiff and rotting would feel soft and tender.  Somehow the singing wore down all the boundaries and distinctions that kept me so isolated.  Sitting there, standing with them to sing, sometimes so shaky and sick that I felt like I might tip over, I felt bigger than myself, like I was being taken care of, tricked into coming back to life.  But I had to leave before the sermon.”[2] 

            Around this time she discovered that she was pregnant.  She thought she had no options and didn’t wish to bring it to full-term.  She didn’t want to bring anything or anyone to full-term, to life, including herself.  So she bought a bottle of Bushmills and some codeine and drank until dawn.  She did the same the next night and the next until she finally “dealt” with her pregnancy. Afterward, she got drunk and then there were more complications.  She was at the lowest point in her life she was in her houseboat, in bed, scared.

            “After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years [since his death] when I felt frightened or alone.  The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there –of course, there wasn’t.  But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus.  I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this. And I was appalled,” she writes.  She was worried what all her progressive, atheist friends would think of her.  She turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.” 

            “I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with.  Finally, I fell asleep, and in the morning, he was gone. This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze…”  But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in.  But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever.  So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my houseboat door when I entered or left.

            And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape.  It was as if the people were singing between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling – and it washed over me.

            I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, “[Duck] it:” [— I told you this is the G-rated version —] “[Duck] it: I quit.”  I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in.”  So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.[3]

            Not typical, to be sure; but not out of the question either.  Extreme circumstances sometimes call for extreme manifestations.  The Spirit of Christ pursued her (she didn’t ask for such an experience), searched her spirit, listened to her sighs too deep for words, the Spirit bore witness to her troubled spirit that she was a child of God – no matter what – and that whatever she’s done or tried to do, every manifestation of death and self-destruction cannot separate her from the love of Christ.  So too, I believe, the Spirit pursues me and searches and groans and intercedes for me; a Spirit who, I believe, bears witness to my spirit – in a way that is unique and individual to me – to remind me that I am a child of God.  So too, I believe, the Spirit pursues you and searches your spirit and groans through your sighs too deep for words and intercedes for you, a Spirit who bears witness to the depths of your spirit – in a way that is unique and individual to you, to your circumstance,  to your past, you’re your present,  to your personality, your needs — to remind you and show you that you are a child of God and that nothing in this exquisitely beautiful, yet utterly baffling universe can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.[4]  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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[1] Cleon L. Rogers, Jr. and Cleon L. Rogers III, The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1998), 331.

[2] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York:  Anchor Books, 1999), 48.

[3] Lamott, pp. 49-50.  Used without permission.  Permission pending.

[4] These are themes developed advanced by the practical theologian James E. Loder (1931-2001), which I further develop in Kenneth E. Kovacs, The Relational Theology of James E. Loder:  Encounter and Conviction (New York:  Peter Lang, 2011), 104-111, 181. Cf. the quotation from the worship bulletin:  “But God’s own descent/ Into flesh was meant/ As a demonstration/ That the supreme merit/ Lay in risking spirit/ In substantiation./ Spirit enters flesh/ And for all it’s worth/ Charges into earth/ In birth after birth/ Ever fresh and fresh.”  Robert Frost (1874-1963),  “But God’s Own Descent,” In the Clearing (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962).