Sobering Work

Catholic theologian, John Shea, begins his commentary on the Great Commission by saying:

“So much begins when the heart cries, “This shouldn’t be!”

He is referring to our cries against hypocrisy and oppression, injustice and moral dysfunction. Times when we look around and see what is, and say, it shouldn’t be like this. Most everywhere we look today, we could say, This shouldn’t be!

Shea continues, saying: “It took me a long time to value prophetic grievers, the people who felt the underlying pain of situations and give it a voice. I always felt: ‘Enough already: let’s get on with it.’ Prophetic grieving was the first step, and I was always leery it would be the last step. We would complain and do nothing.”

Shea’s wariness is historically accurate. The prophets cry in the wilderness; most often in a great sea of silent apathy. It doesn’t mean they are wrong, it just means that no one is listening. The challenge to every prophetic voice is the numbness of the masses who have been anesthetized to the pain of the world. It has been the role of the prophets, preachers and sages for eons to awaken our hearts, to move us to compassion, to cry out, “This shouldn’t be!" and propel us into action.

Shea sees Jesus role here as not only prophet, but as one modeling the action necessary in response to that which should not be. As a prophetic witness Jesus sees all possible futures and sets about working toward the one in which justice and mercy reigns, the future bound up in the proclamation of Good News. So close is this possible future he tells the disciples, “the Kingdom of God has come near.” Now is the time to be sent out, now the harvest is plentiful he tells the disciples. He gives them authority over the demons and the ability to cure any illness and then commands them to go and take what has been freely given to them and freely “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” This is the work of everyone who follows Christ. And in our baptisms we have been given all that is needed to accomplish it. We have been given a great responsibility and we are not helpless, nor are we powerless.

So the work of the gospel is twofold: First we are to listen to the prophets in our midst, to see what they see; to see injustice, to see suffering, to see oppression, to see inequity, and to join their cries against every infraction against humanity and mother earth.  The second task is to do curative work. And the kind of work Jesus gives his followers to do is not the first thing that usually comes to mind when we think of the role of Christians in the world today. 

We are to cure the sick. Every person who has been baptized has been given the ability to lay hands on another for the purpose of healing. We do not appreciate the power that is in us and give that power away most of the time. We look to modern medicine to bring us to health and have forgotten or no longer take seriously the ability to assist one another with prayer and anointing and the laying on of hands. We are to cure the sick.

We are to raise the dead. This one might seems a bit of a stretch, but it isn’t. When we are distracted and our senses are suppressed by the many things in our culture that easily lull us into a kind of apathetic sleep, we are dead. We are, in fact, not living as full human beings; we cannot see fully what is going on all around us, we are desensitized to violence, corruption, environmental plundering, abject racism, and the outrageous ineffectiveness of every sector of governance to a stunning degree; we are lulled into complicity by hours of mindless television viewing, video gaming, engagement in social media and endless consumerism. Our worth is measured by materialistic standards and we have been formed and shaped by a capitalistic ethos which has no spiritual foundation. Happiness is contingent on having things and people acting as they ought too. When we eat junk, watch junk, talk junk, and our minds are cluttered with junk, this is what it means to be dead. Jesus commands us to raise the dead; and we must begin with ourselves. 

We are to cleanse the lepers. Lepers are people who are believed to be unclean due to a physical affliction. Leprosy has been eradicated in places of affluence, but not in places of profound poverty; there people cannot afford to buy the antibiotics that would save them from a life condemned to suffering and isolation.  The withholding of lifesaving medicines to those in need, whoever they are, wherever they are, on the basis of greed is a symptom of the unhealth of the human condition. Greed is spiritual sickness. But if we are seeking a cure from outside ourselves we are misguided. Remember that it is we who have called to heal the sick. 

But the metaphor of lepers may also be extended as a call for the full acceptance of all those who are different from ourselves. In Jesus’ day healed lepers were legitimized by religious authorities before they could be accepted back into society. To cleanse means to legitimize, to give authority, to extend freedom, to release from oppression. Who are the lepers today? Who do we see as unclean? Whose nature do we judge as unacceptable? Whose claim to life and liberty is deemed illegitimate? Who among us is less than? Who is foreign; who are the immigrants and the refugees? Who do we fear? What cultural and social myths prevent us from knowing that we are one people of many colors and languages and customs? Today, in our observance of Juneteenth we celebrate one victory. The laws have changed, freedom has been won. But the disease of perceived separation and individualization, the disease of racism that is deep in the tissues of our society remains, often existing in whole communities unchecked and in many places, nurtured and encouraged. Do we not know that being white, with a long history of racial oppression that continues to this day, makes us lepers to much of the world? We are to cleanse the lepers. 

We are to cast out demons. Of all the things on that list this one seems to be the one that seems the most improbable, if not fantastical. In fact, we gloss over it, as if it had not been spoken. But this is the one we really need to be working on. I don’t know when exactly we stopped taking seriously the existence of demons. Thankfully, the indigenous peoples never stopped taking them seriously. They know a demon when they see one. But largely we don’t believe in such things therefore we don’t see them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. The gospels are full of accounts of Jesus casting out demons, or unclean spirits. It must have been important if it made the ‘to do’ list for the disciples. Have you ever seen a demon? I propose to you, that they are all around us, and sometimes in us. And they don’t really belong there. Demons are powerful entities that create havoc in the world and in our lives. And they should never be dismissed or ignored. Jesus took their work very seriously. I’m not sure why we don’t. Perhaps we think that science has somehow debunked demonology as mythology. But science itself tells us that there is far more unknown in the universe then known. Or perhaps the institutional memory of the Salem Witch Trails and the evil it performed still casts a long shadow. The influence of the movie, The Exorcism, has surely influenced us with horrific visons. While it is true that casting out demons is serious work and requires extensive training it is equally true that the goal is always and solely for healing, for both the person afflicted and misplaced spirit. It is never to do harm or inflict suffering in any way. The policy of the Episcopal Church is as follows: “In accordance with established tradition, those who find themselves in need of [exorcism] should make the fact known to the bishop, through their parish priest, in order that the bishop may determine whether exorcism is needed, who is to perform the rite, and prayers or other formularies are to be used.” However, our bishops are no longer trained to do this work. And yet who could possibly observe the world in its present state and not see that we are possessed by forces that work against God’s purposes and are in need of spiritual intervention? We are to cast out demons. 

This is the work of the Great Commission. It is the nitty gritty behind the command to love one’s neighbor as ourselves. It is healing work. We are called to nothing less than to heal the world. We begin with the healing of our own wounds and dispelling our own demons. Our healing creates an internal environment in which love can enter in and the illusion of separation can dissipate. Then, and only then will we see what we are doing to each other and to the earth and to the creatures of the earth and be moved to cry out: This shouldn’t be! 

Compelled by Love

The celebration of the Feast of the Holy Trinity does not occur in a vacuum. It follows immediately after the day of Pentecost; that is, upon the realization of the completeness of the Godhead. The three parts of the Godhead may be expressed in various ways: such as, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or  Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. Borrowing from the indigenous people another way of expressing this mystery is simply, Flesh, Force, Spirit. St. Paul puts it this way: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit; grace, love, communion. Regardless of how it is expressed, it resides firmly in the event of Pentecost, which is not just a day on the calendar in which we all wear red, but is the foundation for all of Christendom. 

And so picking up where I left off on the Feast of Pentecost, I am going to continue with another writing from Benedictine monk, Bede Griffiths, whose 50 year ministry in India and Hindu influence will be clearly visible: 

“At Pentecost the disciples were ‘filled with the Holy Spirit.’ They underwent a radical transformation. Something happened which transformed them from a group of weak and spiritless men into a community of believers who set out to change the world. This something was a mystical experience. It was a breakthrough beyond time and change, beyond the agony of suffering and death which they had experienced in the crucifixion, into the world of absolute reality, which was summed up for the Hebrew in the name of God. They experienced God; they ‘realized Brahman,’ as a Hindu would say, they “Knew the Self, the Spirit, the eternal Truth, dwelling in the heart.” 

The transformation that comes from experiencing God cannot be overstated. It is in knowing God that all right action proceeds. It is not static. That is to say, for instance, when meditation is recommended, it is for the purpose of experiencing God, but it is not the end game - it is only the beginning. Prayer is the starting place. Out of the transformation that comes of knowing God, whether in prayer or in some other transcendent experience, one is moved to action. Jesus makes this clear with his final directive: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The key words here are “go, teach, obey.” However, the experience of the Godhead, who is both transcendent and immanent in nature, comes before the word, “go.” There are countless examples of persons who have been transformed by their experience of God, and we look to them for guidance - ways in which to lead our own lives, how we might fully express the faith that is in us. Here are but a few:

Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Worker movement, which offers hospitality to the poor, and went to jail dozens of times to protest war and economic injustices. She wrote: 

“All through those weary first days in jail when I was in solitary confinement, the only thoughts that brought comfort to my should were those lines in the Psalms that expressed the terror and misery of man suddenly stricken and abandoned. Solitude and hunger and weariness of spirit - these sharpened my perceptions so that I suffered not only my own sorrows but the sorrows of those about me. I was no longer myself. I was a man. I was no longer a young girl, part of a radical movement seeking justice for those oppressed. I was the oppressed. I was that drug addict, screaming and tossing in her cell, beating her head against the wall. I was that shoplifter who for rebellion was sentenced to solitary. I was that woman who had killed her children, who had murdered her lover.” 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who escaped the Gestapo in 1939, opposed Hitler and was arrested and hanged for being part of an underground movement to assassinate him. His profound writings remain a Christian witness in the face of abject evil. He wrote:  “Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its pleas for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjust itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give offense, shock the world far more then they are doing now. Christians should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong.”

Thomas Merton was a contemplative monk in the Trappist order. He came out against the Vietnam War and died mysteriously in Bangkok, Thailand, after giving a lecture to a group of nuns and monks on Karl Marx and monasticism in 1968. He wrote: “Jesus not only teaches us the Christian life, He creates it in our souls by the action of His Spirit. Our life in Him is not a matter of mere ethical goodwill. It is not a mere moral perfection. It is an entirely new spiritual reality, an inner transformation.” 

Oscar Romero was the archbishop of El Salvador during the civil war that ravaged that country in the late 1970’s through the the 1980’s. He was constantly harassed by the Vatican when he took opposition to conservative, wealthy landowners and the military. He spoke out on behalf of social justice and was eventually shot down while celebrating the Mass by the military. He said this, shortly before his death: “You can tell the people that if they proceed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize that they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish. The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being a defender of the rights of the poor, or a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society… that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history. When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.”

As I hope you can see plainly, the Trinity is not a doctrine. It is the fullness of the Godhead. But it means nothing apart from our personal experience of it. The Trinity is love. What we celebrate today is divine, self-giving love, from which we are driven to right action. Any action, not rooted in love, is misguided. 

Mechtild of Magdeburg described it this way: “From the very beginning God loved us. The Holy Trinity gave itself in the creation of all things and made us, body and soul, in infinite love.” It is from the intimate knowing of this infinite love, the experience of the self-emptying Godhead, that we are compelled to do the righteous work of the Gospel: Go, teach, obey.

The Pentecost Question

Today is the Major Feast Day of Pentecost. On this day we recall when we first received the Spirit of God, the essence of the Christ, the Advocate, the third person of the Trinity. In terms of the life of our faith, it is on par with Christmas and Easter. Lacking the consumer marketing status of either of those and coinciding with high school graduations and the beginning of the summer vacation season it has taken, not even backseat, but trunk status, in the increasingly secularized life of the church.  I am particularly grateful for the balloons and festive flowers and to all of you who are wearing read today to mark the occasion.

The day begins with this lesson, that reads like a selection from a science fiction novel: "When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.  Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, 'Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? …. in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 

‘What does this mean?’”

The lesson from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians will spell out the supernatural gifts of the Spirit that each of us has received; gifts which grow in us if we give them attention: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” 

To borrow from Acts: What does this mean?

And finally, from the Gospel of John is reported the ghostly appearance of Jesus whom no locked door can prevent, and whose very breath imparts the Holy Spirit: “…the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked… Jesus came and stood among them and showed them his hands and his side…. he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” 

What does this mean?

When I read these accounts and take into view the supernatural specter of the whole of the biblical account - from creation to the great flood and plagues of frogs and locusts and rivers that run with blood, and horns that take down great walls, and the burning bush and the parting of the sea and dreams that changed lives, not to mention the course of history on many occasions, and the hundreds of visitations of angels - I could write an entire book just on the supernatural occurrences of our canon. Today, this part of the life of our faith is in our face in a big way - it is inescapable. 

But what does it mean?

This insight from English Benedictine monk and author, Bede Griffins, who served India for over 50 years is helpful:  “In all these religious systems the danger is that the logical structure and rational doctrine will obscure the mystical vision, so inherent is the tendency of the rational mind to seek to dominate the truth which it should serve. This is the danger of all religion. It begins with a mystical experience, the experience of the seers of the Upanishads, of the Buddha under the bo tree, of the Hebrew prophets and the apostles at Pentecost, of Mahomet receiving the message of the Koran. But this experience has to be put into words; it has to descend into the outer world and take the forms of human speech. Already at this stage it is open to misinterpretation; the conflict between the letter and the spirit begins. Then the logical and rational mind comes and creates systems of thought: heresies and sects spring up, and the Truth is divided. This is due to the defect of the rational mind, imposing its narrow concepts and categories on the universal truth yet it cannot be avoided because the Truth must be proclaimed.”

Firmly girded in the written word, Christians have managed to largely domesticate the events of Pentecost. Let us be clear, they are astounding. To say that they are ‘supernatural,’ to set apart them from normal, human experience, is a way of capturing them and imprisoning them in cages of suspended belief. Jesus spent his entire ministry exposing a world that is perhaps more real than the world we claim as reality. But the truth is that the Cosmic Christ is not at all of another world - is not super-natural - but is very much the fabric of what makes up the world we inhabit in this very moment. The giving and receiving of the Spirit - invites us to share the in-habitations of the unseen, invisible, indisputable sacred world of the divine.  But how do we cross the divide?

Last Friday at the coffee group, David Stinebeck told us about a great veterans graveyard in Bath where there are some 13,000 laid to rest. It is so large that most can simply drive through it, which is a gratifying experience in itself. But David said something that really struck me. He said that if you really want to experience the place you need to park your car and walk the grounds of the cemetery and read the gravestones and immerse yourself in it allowing yourself to be moved by the experience of being surrounded by so many people who gave their lives in military service; that there was no comparison between driving through it and walking through it. 

I submit to you, that the same is true of religious life. Most just drive through - and we do so with great devotion. We are heroically busy with the work of ministry, with the physical labor of mission, and participation in the worship life of the church. It is entirely possible to fill our entire lives with the works of religious life and still be just driving through.

The church year is filled with invitations to park the car and walk instead. Today however, reaches past invitation - it is a portal - a door of sorts. A portal through which we may enter a passageway of otherworldly events and find our way into an alternate reality that coexists with this one; the world of the Cosmic Christ who cannot be held back by locked doors, that death does not destroy but sets free. It is no less than the kingdom of God. To walk means to see the created world as sacred and human constructs for what they are. To walk is to know that each of us is far more powerful then we could have ever imagined. To walk is to know that time is cyclical and not linear. To walk is to know that our dreams are windows and that the divine resides in everything that is. To walk is to know that we are simply stardust and temporary but our souls are eternal. To walk is to know that we are bound to the Holy Spirit; one body, many parts, but one and only one body.  To walk means becoming aware of the other world, the spirit world, the habitation of the godhead that is all around us – to know that there is but only a thin veil between this and that. Do not believe because you see, but see because you believe. 

Bede Griffins went on to say: “The divine essence, the Holy Trinity, is totally present in every particle of matter, every atom, and every electron. However you would like to divine the universe, the whole creation is totally pervaded by God. The cosmic religion has this awareness of God pervading the whole creation which we, as a whole, have lost.” Another great mystic once said, "If you can't see God in all, you can't see God at all."

I, therefore, invite you to ask yourself one question: What does this mean?