Something more

The departing homily of The Rev. Rowena MacGregor, Rector of St. James Episcopal Church, Mansfield, PA, September 4, 2005 - January 17, 2021.

Some years ago I spoke to a woman from the Philippines who told me she was always amazed to see the news stories about her country that focused on violent uprisings when her lifelong experience of the Philippines was radically different. She said that her friends in the US believed that the whole of the Philippines was rife with continuous violence all the time because of the news reports of sporadic uprisings, corrupt government and civil unrest. She reported a different viewpoint, that the violence was limited to localized areas and that in most areas of the Philippines people lived their lives and went about their business and peace prevailed in most places. Nonetheless, the people she spoke to in the US held to their strong opinion that the Philippines was a dangerous and unstable country.

It is easy to develop a very skewed view of reality when the only source of information about the state of the world is coming through news channels who trend to negative headlines. Social media amplifies the stories of the day with a barrage of open source op-eds, self-professed experts, and armchair pundits. Even short exposures to news and social media can leave us feeling dazed, disheartened and anxious about the future. We mustn't wait for the news to get better - not because good things aren't happening - but because the nature of news outlets is to report problems: disasters, political strife and corruption, war, famine and pestilence, murder and all manner of wrong-doing, pandemics and death. That is their job. But that is not all that is happening in the world. Whatever we are watching on our TV's or computers, iPads, or phones is only part of the story of what is going on in the world and it is far from the whole story. 

Be clear that I am in no way denying anything being reported in the news or minimizing it in any way. We have real and serious problems we must together work through in our nation, and in our local communities. But that isn't all there is, there is something more.... there is always something more.... The cameras of the world are not directed there, they are focused on something else, and likewise our attention is directed on something else. But God is calling us to look in the direction of the something more. 

The whole canon of Holy Scripture is the archived but ever-relevant news footage of the something more. The Torah with its tremendous stories of faithful guidance and faithfulness, the age-old history of human resistance to the divine and its occasional heroes in Kings and Chronicles, the prophets and sages who call to us still to turn around and return, the wisdom of the mystics, of Sophia, Solomon and Proverbs, the worship hymnody of the Psalter, the Gospels, beginning with Mark, whose words rose up out of the ruins of Jerusalem after four years of devastating war, followed by the accounts of Matthew, Luke and John, the book of Acts and the letters of Paul and his fledgling Christian communities as well as all the other accounts of Jesus, his life, his ministry to the people, his influence, his clear and resolute proclamation of the something more. 

The church throughout its long history, at its best, has been and remains the vessel for this something more. It is the voice that cries out in the wilderness - make the path straight, turn around, return to God - return to the kingdom which is your spiritual home your only true home. It too must be resolute in its proclamation that in the face of all evidence to the contrary there is something more, something that cannot be broken or even slightly influenced; its purity uncompromised by any human intent or design. It is the sole work of the church to proclaim the rest of the story, the never-ending story of the love of God and God's provisions of care for the people within the vast abundance of the created world. It is the church's work to promote a reasoned faith as well as blind faith; to point to the cloud of witnesses and to call upon the wisdom of the ancestors. It is the sole work of the church to provide comfort and succor to its communities, to be a balm of healing wherever it is planted. It is the sole work of the church to sing of God's love and at all times to be a model of unconditional love of neighbor; to offer the world a vision of another kingdom, the promise of the restoration of peace, the assurance of shalom... something more.

Today I complete my work with you in this place, in this community. But I am not leaving the work of the church and neither are you. The future of St. James is not dependent on who comes next to serve with you, but rather lies in the bigger questions you ask about your common life and purpose. The biggest, most important questions are not framed in terms of sustainability or even survival, but rather, How shall we be a witness to the love of God and neighbor in a nation divided? How shall we provide comfort and succor to those who suffer in this community? How shall we tell the stories of our tradition and offer a vision of something more to a world that cannot see anything else but the bad news of the day?

That is the work of the church and its only reason for being. So let us not, in this moment, wring our hands in worry and trepidation about anything. Let us turn our hearts and our minds over to the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Let us rest in shalom; not the far off promise of the ceasing of hostilities, but the peace that passes all understanding that is present with us here and now. Let us give thanks for our lives, for our families and our friends, for the strength and endurance of this nation, for this community and our neighbors, for the great cloud of witnesses - our ancestors. Let us tell our stories of liberation and grace and give thanks for our freedom. Let us share in the sacrament together, united as one body in Christ. 

And when we are filled with the food of the Spirit and refreshed by the Word, let us turn our attention to world, and bring to it something more.

The Greater Holy Whole

There is no one living on planet earth at this moment in history who remains insulated, and therefore unaffected, from one or more of the crises presently occurring simultaneously. Every time I think we have reached the breaking point and nothing could surely worsen one or more of the crises deepen and widen, or simply erupt sideways. Still, I await the quieting of the storm and look for signs of a return to life before.

 

There are certain events that happen in our lives not just on a personal level but collectively that change the trajectory of the path we have been on. Today there is not just one such event but a watershed of seminal moments. 

 

Readers of Mark’s Gospel would certainly have pointed to the War of 66 to 70 as the event that altered their lives. For them, there was life before the war, life during the war, and life after the war. Mark simply cannot be read without understanding the influence of the war on the entire region, in the same way that one cannot read Isaiah without understanding that it covers the before, during and after of the Babylonian captivity. Mark’s Gospel proclaimed a new age of spiritual awakening from the ground zero of a desolate Jerusalem. 

One good resource for exploring the connection between Mark and the War of 66 is Stephen Simon Kimondo’s recently released book: The Gospel of Mark and the Roman-Jewish War of 66–70 CE. One reviewer of the text writes:

“Kimondo’s thesis is that Mark’s hearers, living in rural Galilee, southern Syria, or both, received the Gospel shortly after the end of the Roman-Jewish War not only as a proclamation of Jesus but also as a commentary on the war…. Mark’s gospel contrasts the onset of God’s empire and the Roman Empire under Vespasian. According to Mark 1:1-14, instead of employing military forces, the onset of God’s empire is nonviolent, and is based on the proclamation, teachings, and redemptive deeds of Jesus.” 

 

At the very outset of Mark's gospel appears John the Baptizer who called the people to confess their abandonment of divine governance in lieu of the seduction of a worldly empire and return to God. John prophesied the coming of the Christ, who would usher in a new reign, a new kingdom far more powerful than the Roman Empire. The Kingdom of God is marked by peace and the insistence of love of God and love of neighbor in sharp contrast to unimaginable violence and persecution of the day: the thousands of crucifixions that daily filled the streets year upon year; the temple destroyed, Jerusalem left in burning ruins, the people displaced, far-flung and in desperate search for a place to live without persecution. This is what the hearers of the Mark’s Gospel had survived; this was their reality. The dove that descends on Jesus at the time of his baptism announces a reign of peace; an end to war and strife; open access to the Kingdom of God. Mark being the first gospel, is the bridge between life before and new life. 

We too live in a time marked by events previously unimagined. Standing on the back side of the events of last Tuesday in our nation there exists a clear line between life before the breach of the capital and life after the breach. There is a shift occurring, a great chasm opening and engulfing the nation that now goes far beyond the body politic and we do not know where this fault line will settle as events continue to unfold. 

The same is true of the pandemic. It is still very much in play and we do not know where things will stand, in terms of our health and well-being, or in terms of the world-wide economy. We only know that life was different before Covid than it is today. A shift has occurred but it may be some time before we can define it.

Today I speak to you on the other side on an unimaginable event in my life - a fire that destroyed a home and all the worldly possessions within it. The clarifying moment, the understanding that life before was coming to end came while I was calling 911 in a kitchen filled with smoke and flames no longer confined to the fireplace visible across the room. It came with the realization that something far out of my control was occurring and that it was bringing with it significant change. One week having passed, I see the fire with my in the here and now eyes as a single seminal event within a sea of cataclysmic events occurring all over the world - and not in any way an isolated event. In this way, I too am woven into the fabric of all that is now burning away to make straight a path for the coming of a new age - an age marked not with the acquisition of worldly goods and the welding of power over others through the possession of wealth or political capital but rather the putting away of those things; an age of higher consciousness, the realization of higher ideals; the coming of the Kingdom. 

To that end, there is nothing that is happening in our lives, personally or collectively that should be considered apart from the spiritual realm. Let me repeat this: There is nothing that is happening in our lives, personally or collectively that should be considered apart from the spiritual realm. The call of Mark is to rightly interpret significant personal and collective experiences as part of the greater holy whole and to find one’s place within that continuum. There is something more to be realized when the crack in the thin veneer of our lives reveals the light breaking in. Where a shift occurs there develops an opening through which the Kingdom may be perceived - a Kingdom not outside of ourselves but within us, so vast and so encompassing we did not know that we had arrived at the place we had always been, never beginning, never ending, but eternally a part of the greater holy whole. 

A Christmas Reflection: Refried Beans, with Garlic

Recently I’ve been listening to the audiobook, American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummings. My brother and sister-in-law recommended it so strongly that I was compelled to order it right away. I knew it would be a difficult hearing but nothing in my experience could have prepared me for the coming journey.

American Dirt is 12 hours of unrelenting nail-biting. It opens with Lydia and her eight-year-old son Luca hidden in a bathroom while 16 members of their family, including Lydia’s husband, mother, and sister and her children, are gunned down by the cartel during her niece’s fifteenth birthday party. Over the last few weeks I have followed their harrowing journey to el norte to escape promised death by the local hefe; a revenge killing for the article that Lydia’s journalist husband had published about the cartel that controlled Acapulco.

 

Hours after listening to the heavily accented narration of the audiobook all my thoughts have a Spanish accent. Even as I write this the words flow through a tunnel of Spanish that makes the English words sound thick and bulky. After the accent that drapes the words like an elegant coat in my brain falls away, my own dull inner voice emerging, I know that more than just my inner thoughts have been altered. I cannot unhear what I have heard. I cannot unsee the extreme and calculated violence. I cannot un-feel my empathetic sadness for their losses, their rape, their constant need to remind themselves that traveling on the top of a cargo train is not normal. I cannot untie the knot in my stomach.

 

This week I cooked refried beans and ate them with tortillas and avocado to be in solidarity with Lydia and Luca and the children that are their companions; the children who have assisted and saved them and whom they have defended and nurtured. Once Lydia recalls a happier time in her life, before she could have imagined the slaughter of her family, cooking dinner and remembering she was out of garlic. She lamented that dinner would be bland. Now each time I chop and smell garlic cooking in the pan I think of this imagined moment in this imaginary life and I am grateful that my dinner will carry the depth of a moment far beyond the flavor imparted. When the migrants are hungry and are fed by way of the kindness of strangers I imagine I would feed them. But when they are hidden and protected from capture I wonder if I would hide them. I would like to think I would. Lydia reveals through her own actions that no matter who you are or what you think you would do; you don’t actually know what you would do under profound and life-threatening circumstances. I pray to God to help me to be the kind of person who would risk my life to save the life of another. When the women in the story gather together to pray the rosary I imagine the beads between my fingers and I mouth the words of my own prayer on their behalf. I feel the relief of falling into the arms of God, momentarily still, momentarily calm, momentarily safe. I wish they would pray more often so I would feel better. 

 

My brother said that while he was listening to the story he was “so worried about those folks” that he had to stop listening. I too have been relieved when my car comes to the end of its journey and I can take a rest from listening to the heart-stopping story so that I can breathe again. He said he often had to remind himself that they weren’t actual people. But the fact that the story is fictional does not give me any relief because the story is based on a collective truth for countless thousands of people, each with their own stories of fleeing persecution, captivity, rape, slavery, torture, and slaughter. It is a story so deeply woven into the fabric of the Latino experience that I am keenly aware that there is no part of this fiction that is not true. 

 

Stories have this kind of power; to transmit authentic human experience by way of a fabricated tableau of imagined situations; the line between true events and truth is sometimes so very thin that it evaporates entirely leaving behind the realization that the effort to determine truth from fiction was always a false choice. There is no part of Lydia and Luca’s story I would want to live, and yet by hearing their story, the collective story of their people, of their nation, I am living it too. With every passing mile, they and every reader who follows them to and across the dessert experiences something on the other side of empathy: transformation.

 

Early in Lydia and Luca’s escape their lives depend on the assistance of a missionary couple. The couple have devoted their lives to bringing groups of youth from the United States into Mexico to expose them to a kind of religious freedom previously unknown to them. In Mexico the piety of religious life is as much a part of everyday rituals as is wearing clothes. The people speak openly of God and God’s blessings. The people pray and cross themselves for this and that. The people remember and bless the dearly departed each time their names are spoken. The people pray before eating. The acts of daily life are marked by blessing, ritual and ceremony. This kind of open religious expression as a social norm is largely unknown in America. It is a foreign concept to most Americans born into a secular society in which religious affiliation, and even more so religious expression, is becoming more foreign all the time. 

 

While secularization had already made deep in-roads decades ago, the exception was Christmas. I recall the Christmas Eves of my youth: attending elegant parties in the grand homes of my southern hometown followed by the pilgrimage to the church for the midnight service where hundreds crowded in to hear the Nativity story. For many this annual obligation afforded them the only experience of the Gospel they would receive. I recall my father preaching earnestly and faithfully to the full church though I cannot recall a single word. But the story of Jesus’ birth remains clear and unchanged: the story of Mary’s visitation and she and Joseph’s pilgrimage to safety, from the start and all the while guided, protected, and aided by angels and dreams, the quiet birth taking place in a barn, mother and child surrounded by farm animals, the huge star shining brightly in the sky hailing a new King and the coming of a kingdom, a kingdom in which the lion and the lamb lie down together and swords are beaten into plows, the summoning of those who were awake and alert and watching for the sign – the shepherds in their fields watching over their flocks, the wisdom teachers of the East carrying the spiritual gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. There are many stories in the great canon of sacred text we call the bible, but during this holy week, the beginning of Christmastide, it seems to me that if this is the only story one should ever hear from Christiandom, and for many it is, then it is a sufficient proclamation. It is a story sufficient to lead us to the other side of empathy, into transformation; a changed heart and an open mind. This story of God coming into the world has the power to compel us to pray: Here I am Lord, an agent of change, an agent of good will, an ambassador of the good news. 

 

The coming of.... us

I have been thinking a lot lately about the coming of Christ.  To be more precise, I have been thinking about the phrase the coming of…. I think most everyone is anticipating the coming of something right now. We are looking for what is coming in response to what is now. So for many of us the coming of is something like this…. 

The coming of a vaccine…. The coming of the end the pandemic…. The coming of a new administration… the coming of a new baby… the coming of a new year… the coming of a new friendship…. The coming of a new semester… the coming of a new house… the coming of recovery from illness… the coming of a new day… the coming of night…. the coming of a new job.... the coming of a new pet… the coming of a storm… the coming of the sun… the coming of the holidays… 

All our days are filled with the coming of….

 

The theme of Advent is the anticipatory waiting for, the coming of Christ. We first understand this as the coming of the messiah child born into human experience. But Advent also anticipates the coming again of Christ; the return of Jesus, in our own time and place.

 

In my experience, there are a few basic responses to the promise of the second coming: 

 

1) There are those who think of Jesus’s coming in purely physical terms – pulling from biblical imagery – Jesus seated on a cloud descending to earth, in the same way they imagine the son Jesus, immortally youthful and literally seated at the right hand of the elderly, fatherly image of God. 

 

2) There are those who simply don’t believe it. Many very deeply spiritual people who are quite devoted to the religious life and have an authentic and meaningful sense of piety stop short at the notion of Christ’s return, at least in the way it has been described and taught over the centuries. The imagery of Jesus riding in on a cloud fails them utterly. Not to mention the fact that Mark’s urgent call to prepare anticipates the immediate return of Jesus…. And yet for the last 2000 years Jesus has failed to appear. The hurried expectation has long-since lost its urgency. 

 

3) There are those who possess a vague sense of understanding, even longing, for the coming again of Jesus…. but it is elusive and fleeting, inexplicable, non-specific, ethereal and non-local. 

 

While none of these feels completely satisfying, neither are they failings. Each is a human interpretation and attempt to understand to mentally process a spiritual event; not a temporal event but a cosmic event. The coming of Christ is occurring on the spiritual plane which is both hidden and at the same time accessible to us and may in fact be manifesting on the physical plane in some way that we do not yet fully recognize or appreciate. 

 

Let us again be reminded of the words of Teilhard de Chardin, paraphrased: We are not humans having profound but occasional spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings experiencing human life on the physical plane. This is the key, in my estimation, of understanding the coming of the Christ. 

 

Because we are so completely rooted in the physical experience and quite unaware of the spiritual realm we interpret, and define, and limit our imaginings to that of the physical world. In limiting the boundaries of our spiritual experience we in turn limit our human potential. We are spiritual beings here on planet earth for the experience of being human, perhaps to deepen our relationship with the divine, but the physical plane is not our home – it is a temporary state of being. We are however, most of us, a stranger to our true home, our true nature and our minds try to work out how spiritual events can be seen through the narrow lens of human understanding. But we cannot. So we must either understand our limitations and be satisfied with the assurance of the promise of Jesus’ return, or, engage in an effort to expand our awareness of our spiritual natures. 

 

This is the work of religious life, ultimately, to approach an awareness of our two natures co-existing both on the human and spiritual planes simultaneously. On the spiritual plane all physical limitations fall away… water becomes wine, a man born blind receives sight, the mere touch of Jesus’ clothing brings healing, the angels converse, assure, protect and relay information, Jesus calls Peter to walk on water, dreams carry divine instruction, aged and barren women become pregnant, a virgin conceives a child, the dead are raised, and on and on. In the spiritual realm all things are possible. In the spiritual realm there is no suffering. In the spiritual realm those who have gone before are reunited to one another and we can sense their near presence, their eternal wisdom - these are our ancestors, the saints in light. In the spiritual realm the divine essence of Jesus is fully present and accessible – as the Holy Spirit. In the spiritual realm life does not end but is changed, it is eternal. 

 

Jesus spent his life revealing to us our true nature as spiritual beings and the potential goodness of human life upon that realization. Until we catch this wave of awareness, with its expanded - more than panoramic - vision, trying to reconcile spiritual events within the confines of human experience is like trying to move a camel through the eye of a needle. 

 

When Jesus taught us to pray he said, quite plainly, “thy kingdom come.” It is not coming, it has come. We are the ones who insist on the kingdom’s seemingly eternal coming-ness – its off in the distance-ness – its just out of reach-ness. But Jesus made clear its present-ness, its now-ness, its accessibility in this moment-ness. If we can focus, meditate, sit with, contemplate these three words: …thy kingdom come… we might, at some point be able to see the coming of…. in a new light. 

The truth of our situation, the reality of our expansive being-ness, opens the door of understanding that forever alters the way in which we live as humans; the way we live together as humans; the way we live as spiritual beings ever so briefly on this rock fixed to a sun with a single moon; this planet a mere grain of rice in a cosmic soup bowl of divine broth. There are many moons and billions of planets, countless stars and galaxies, and millions of universes; the vastness of the cosmos is beyond our imagination, but it is not beyond our awareness of it. To imagine is to see as humans see; to be aware is to see with the eye of the soul.  Do not then look for Christ using your human senses, nor with your imagination, but rather with your awareness. 

Now is the coming of…. us. It is us breaking free of the bondage of our limitations, us breaking out of the constraints of our limited understanding, us realizing the fullness and completeness and accessibility of divine love, us realizing our boundless potential. It is us coming to God.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I was blind, now I see

This week St. James bible study class dove headlong into the Gospel of Mark. We began with what is also the gospel reading for worship today; the opening lines of the first chapter. 

 

To understand a gospel it is essential to have a firm grasp on its overarching theme. For instance, Luke begins… it seemed good to me… to write you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that [you might have deeper knowledge] of those things in which you were instructed….. Luke seeks to call us into deeper relationship by way of deeper knowledge of the divine made known in Jesus.

 

Matthew’s theme is the radical reorientation of our lives toward the spiritual realm of the kingdom and the gospel spares no effort in leading us to a fuller understanding…. The kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, a mustard seed, treasure hidden in a field, a merchant seeking beautiful pearls…

 

John is complex and mystical, it calls us to see beyond the physical manifestation of signs, that is, the miracles Jesus performed, to focus on the truth to which the signs point… that the revealing of divine nature serves to transform us… In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. 

 

Mark, from the outset calls us to repent and return to God in preparation for what is coming. The Gospel opens with the call of the prophet, John, proclaiming the prophecy of Isaiah: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight…. Prophecy upon prophecy… and the purpose of prophecy is the call to return to the divine.

 

Mark is calling his listeners into action, with urgency, to elicit within them, within us, a change of heart. The evangelist calls us to prepare by way of returning in confident expectation, with the sure and certain knowledge of Jesus’s return. This is the theme of Mark: confess, return, anticipate.

 

Having taken this plunge into Mark I have been intentionally looking for opportunities for self-examination, confession and reorientation; to find an opening to hear and see divine action, not only in my life, but to see it in the world. 

 

It didn't take long before I stumbled upon a six-part podcast entitled, “How can we see?” It features two of my favorite theologians: Richard Rohr and Brian McLauren. Rohr is an author, teacher and priest of the Franciscan order whose name is synonymous with post-modern Christianity. Brian McLauren is a pastor, author and teacher, self-described as a former evangelical fundamentalist; his name is synonymous with the emergent church movement. Also included is a third voice, a feminine voice, and therefore a necessary voice: Jacqui Lewis, pastor of the oldest Presbyterian church in the country, adds depth, care, and a spectrum of colorful images to this probing and challenging conversation.

 

This podcast relates directly to the actions of confession and returning through the identification and acknowledgement of our personal biases. These biases, many completely unknown to us, create enormous blind spots in our understanding of ourselves, our neighbors and our world. Our blind spots are the missing bits within the mythological stories we have created about ourselves. The substantive parts of our personal mythologies are made up of our experiences, memories and the influential people in our lives. Unconsciously and daily we protect the story we label: My life. Our ego is continuously on the defensive ensuring that we move through “our life” undisturbed and unthreatened. This creates a limited and well-protected worldview that does not reflect the totality of the diversity of human life nor the totality of the depth and breathe of human experience. And we are generally unaware of this. We don’t know what we don’t know.

 

In the podcast Richard Rohr recites a Latin phrase which creates the foundation for McLauren’s list of biases. The phrase is this: “Whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver.” What does this mean? Well, it means that what we perceive and understand about our world is completely dependent on how our experiences and individual influences have shaped our worldview. Jacqui Lewis remarked reflectively, “We are not looking for the story that will change our lives, we are looking for the story that confirms our lives.”

 

I have heard that when the white men came to the shores of the indigenous peoples they could not see their boats moored several hundred yards offshore because they did not have a framework of history or understanding to interpret what was actually visible. It was not until the medicine men “read” the strange pattern of waves that were breaking on the shoreline and confirmed that something new and never before seen was breaking into their reality that the ships became visible. 

 

McLauren listed the following as biases common to most all of us. You can listen to the podcast I forwarded to you yesterday to hear McLauren explain each of these in detail. In this moment I just want you to get a sense of them. They include: confirmation bias, complexity bias, community bias, complimentary bias, contact bias, conservative/liberal bias, consciousness bias, competency bias, confidence bais, comfort/complacency/convenience bias, catastrophe bias and cash bias. 

 

It is important for us is to realize it that our personal reality is shaped largely by our biases. These biases determine who we associate with, the church we attend or don’t attend, the God we envision, the work we do, the people we vote for, the family we get along with and the family we avoid, the friends we hang out with and the people who are invisible to us, the causes we support, the ideologies we reject, the music we like and the books we read, and on and on.  Some biases can be helpful and protect us; they can help us make good decisions about our well-being. But many cause great suffering. Consider the story of parents who rejected their queer child when he came out. Unable to bear the judgment and rejection of his family he committed suicide. There are a number of biases at play here. All of them cause suffering. 

Biases call us away from a loving and unbiased God. It is helpful to know our biases, to understand how they work in our lives because to do so helps us to a develop a willful vulnerability and a more open heart.

 

When I heard McLauren’s list of biases I recognized each of them operating in my life, creating a kind of blindness. Jesus said, you have eyes and yet you cannot see. To have our biases revealed to us, to confess to having them – knowingly or unknowingly, and to do so without judgment is to grow into Christ consciousness. The growing is the returning to the divine. Confession, returning and anticipating – this is the hope of Mark’s gospel. This is the deep desire of God – that we might see the kingdom in its fullness, where it exists here and now, our blinders laid aside, and live joyfully within it.  

Hear, O Israel...

This post is the written summary of a homily given at St. James Episcopal Church on October 11, 2020. It refers to the parable in Matthew 22:1-14 - the last of a triad of parables - known as The Great Banquet. The parable should not be taken in isolation, as it was not told in isolation. It is a summary of the metanarrative of the entire canon of Christian sacred texts including the whole of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: The story of a distracted and stubborn people being continually called home by a faithful and patient Triune God. Therefore, I recommend that before you move into this reflection you first read Matthew 21:23-22:46 which forms a complete unit. In this way you will have the advantage of understanding for yourself how this parable upon which the Church meditates on this particular Sunday drives home Jesus's indictment of the religious establishment of which he was a part. This indictment was also intended for his own followers upon whom he charged the development of a reformed Judaism (later Christianity) that would be, unchecked and unguarded, just as vulnerable to the temptations of the temporal.

Despite our 21st century obsession with the individual - this parable is not about our personal salvation. Rather, it is an indictment of a failed system - of a failed religious institution. We tend to look at the failure of institutions in practical terms; loss of financial feasibility or a state of failed health in which the cancer of corruption has become so widespread, so pervasive and so profound a system is no longer able to function effectively. There are many examples of failing institutions in our world today - educational systems, governmental bodies, health systems, etc. But the institutional life of the Jewish temple, the Pharisaic Jews of Jesus' day did not fail necessarily in this way, but rather it failed in its fidelity to God. It failed to adhere to the Shema. Let us refresh our Jewish memory. The Shema in Jesus time was this: 

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 4:6-9) 

The resulting corrupt nature of the religious institution Jesus dealt with was but the symptom of a far greater "sin" (missing the mark) - that of losing heart for God. 

When the Church, as an institution, and specifically, the congregations that are within it - fall away from God - fail in their fidelity to adhere to Jesus's carrying forward of the Shema (known to Christians as the Great Commandment) then the church loses its heart and thus its ability to assist the people in the process of awakening. Individuals cannot realize a radical reorientation of their life while remaining concerned with the preservation of anything temporal. There is no greater failing for the Church as a whole or for any individual parish. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matt. 18:6) - Jesus is speaking to the failed religious institution of his day. 

The dire warning intended for religious bodies in this set of three parables holds within it a personal element in that individuals are the fabric out of which all human systems are made and have life. Therefore we are warned, in our own time and place, to hold our religious institutions to the highest standard - so that they continue to call people into a radical reorientation of life. If the people are not awakening to the knowledge of their higher selves they cannot be in the world but not of it - they only know how to be of the world - fully and completely identified with every temporal element of the physical plane - oblivious to a life of freedom and peace. As one of my teachers says: You are so free you can choose bondage... and you often do. But you don't have to.

When we read the Gospel of Matthew, the parables in particular, with this perspective in mind, we understand that as member of the body of Christ we are called daily to attend to the intimate relationship we have with the one Triune God... to write the name of God on our heart a thousand times a day... to hold a space for the Spirit to make itself known to us.... to feel our eternal nature tied to the eternalness of the divine. This we do first. And from this place of connection we are far more open to loving our neighbor, all our relations, not with the conditional love the world has trained into us, but the love of the divine. We cannot offer others what we do not yet know.  "So your first job is to work on yourself. The greatest thing you can do for another human being is to get your own house in order and find your true spiritual heart." (Ram Dass)

When we attend to our own spiritual well-being it enriches the whole Christian community. The things we care about shift. The attachments we hold to things that are passing away, pass away of their own accord. We experience a kind of freedom, at least some of the time. We feel joy, at least some of the time. And our houses of worship become expressions of peace.

Higher hanging fruit

This post is a reflection on one of the vineyard parables in the Gospel of Matthew, 21:33-46. This line in particular: "Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom."  Those for whom this warning is intended take caution: "When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them." Jesus is no longer speaking to the crowds of the Galilean countryside, he is in Jerusalem and his audience is thick with those of the Jewish authority who oppose him. 

In both the accounts of Mark and Matthew, Jesus is direct conflict with the head of the serpent, as it were. In Matthew the conflict is covered in chapters 21 and 22 which form a single unit. To observe it in its entirety in the format of a dramatic reading would be breath-taking.

The corresponding text in Mark is as follows. Note in particular Jesus' response to the "teacher of the law" when he "answered wisely":

 

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”  Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

 

"....you are not far from the kingdom of God...."  The teaching is clear: there is nothing in all of religious life that is more important then these two commandments and they are are directly related to the kingdom. And religious bodies who pursue interests divergent from these commandments, in whom the fruits of the kingdom are absent, will be abandoned. 

 

While the Church now clearly understands supersessionism (Christianity as a replacement for Judaism which is understood in the light of the Gospels as a failed religion) as heresy, it is important to be faithful to the text in Matthew. That is to say, Matthew may well have envisioned that Judaism would indeed fade into the shadow of the growing sect of Christianity. Perhaps he did believe that God would take the kingdom from those he understood as so corrupt and incapable of fidelity to the Law, so undeserving of the privilege of bearing the Law, or that it would collapse from the weight of its own hypocrisy. We don’t actually know what Matthew believed.

 

But we do know the essence of this teaching: Regardless of the religious outer garment, those who create lives and institutional life based solely upon on these two commandments upon which all the rest of the law hangs are those who have access to the kingdom.

 

Let’s unpack that a bit.

 

Below I present some of my understandings of the Kingdom. They may not fit into your understanding or perceptions. I have no need to be right here. I simply offer a way of looking at the Kingdom so that it is accessible at some level and not perpetually out of reach.

 

I perceive that the Kingdom as a direction, not a destination.

I perceive that the Kingdom is a state we enter into, a kind of energetic flow into which we may merge and are carried, not a place we go or end up after we die should we be judged worthy.

I perceive that the Kingdom and the promise of eternal life are one in the same; accessible on the physical plane prior to death as well as continued after death.

I perceive that access to the Kingdom is wholly dependent on one’s openness to the development of higher consciousness or the experience of gradual awakening; to see beyond the forms of the physical plane and to enter into a reality defined by love – the likes of which cannot be fully experienced while tied to the attachments of the physical life.

I perceive the Kingdom as a something to attend to intentionally but not to force; that which one falls into gently that is matched perfectly with a corresponding falling away of worldly concerns folding into an encroaching, enveloping open-heartedness to everyone and everything in the whole of the cosmos.

And I perceive that one who awakens to the kingdom, or said another way, to Christ's consciousness or higher consciousness, begins quite naturally to live a life rich with the fruit of the kingdom: kindness, generosity, gentleness, responding in love in all circumstances and a marked lack of reactivity, antagonism, egotism, greed, fear of scarcity, fear of the future, fear of loss, the need to be right, etc. 

One of the marked signs of a life that is moving in the direction of the kingdom, that is merging into the flow of a higher consciousness, lives in a way that is in the world, but not of it. And it is a constant challenge for Christians to be wary of the trappings of the institution, to not fall into the trap of religious materialism, the fate of the pharisees. The danger is old, it was part of the Church's establishment.

 

In a recent entry in his long-running blog Fr. Richard Rohr (https://cac.org/freedom-in-the-desert-2020-09-29/) begins:

 

When Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire, something remarkable and strange took place. A whole set of people began to flock to the margins of the Empire to pursue God. They went to the deserts of Palestine, Cappadocia, Syria, and Egypt. This is the emergence of the ones we now call in a collective way the Desert Fathers and Mothers. These individuals in the desert sought to reflect more deeply on the Mystery of God and God’s will through work, prayer, and study of the Scriptures.

 

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) describes their movement this way:

 

Society—which meant pagan society, limited by the horizons and prospects of life “in this world”—was regarded by them as a shipwreck from which each single individual had to swim for their life. . . . These were people who believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster. The fact that the Emperor was now Christian and that the “world” was coming to know the Cross as a sign of temporal power only strengthened them in their resolve.* 

 

The faithful adherents of the two commandments upon which all else hangs, regardless of their religious affiliation, have had at their core a keen and healthy sense of suspicion around “passively accepting the tenets and values of … society [culture].”  I would add to that a healthy sense of caution around religious materialism as well. In other words, it is recommendable to hold loosely to the trappings of the church but hold fast to the teachings of Jesus upon which the very existence of the church is based. It is a bit like trying to speak about truth. It is corrupted the minute the first word is uttered.

In "Covid times" the church is grappling with many things. A recent article from the Church of England predicts the survival of the church - but its certain transformation as a result of the present cultural and existential crises. Perhaps, as existing trends quicken toward their destination we will move closer to the kingdom. Perhaps with every perceived loss of the familiar we will move deeper into Christ consciousness. Time will tell, and we will know by the fruit that is produced. 

*Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century (New Directions: 1970, ©1960) 3. Note: Minor edits made to incorporate gender-inclusive language.