Love Without Borders

Scriptures:  Jeremiah 1:4-10, I Corinthians 13:1-13  Luke 4:21-30

 

In January, I heard radical evangelical Shane Claiborne speak.  Shane is the founder of The Simple Way, an intentional Christian community located right here in Philadelphia – their first community house is located on Potter Street, near K & A.  The Simple Way community tries to live according to the description of the early church in Acts, sharing all things in common and helping to improve life in the community.   Shane Claiborne had just returned from Afghanistan, where he met a group of Afghan youth who worked to build a peaceful alternative to the decades of war and devastation that have engulfed that country for decades.  Many adults in Afghanistan have become so beaten down by decades of war that they have given up all hope for peace but these youth…well, for them, hope still springs eternal.  They’ve studied advocates of nonviolent resistance such as Gandhi and King.  They are using social media such as Facebook and Skype to try to make 2 million friends from around the world – a number equal to the 2 million Afghans killed over the past 4 decades of war.  One of the mottoes of these youth is “a little bit of love is stronger than all the weapons in the world.”

 

“A little bit of love is stronger than all the weapons in the world.”  It sounds like the voice of youthful naivete – though these words come from kids who have seen more weapons – more death, more carnage, more mayhem in their short lives than most of us experience in an entire lifetime.  And yet our Scripture readings this morning likewise attest to the power of love, the power of love that can catch us off guard, disturb us, at times even upset us – but the power of love that is nonetheless life-giving and life-renewing.

 

Our reading from I Corinthians 13 is familiar to many of us – it’s often read at weddings – but a wedding was the last thing Paul had in mind when he wrote these beautiful words.  The 13^th chapter of 1^st Corinthians is the conclusion of a long discourse on how sisters and brothers in Christ are to treat one another.  He was writing to a conflicted, fractious church in which the leaders were constantly trying to one-up each other, each trying to prove their superiority in comparison to the rest of the crowd.  Some of these leaders had the very flashy, attention-getting gift of speaking to God in unknown prayer languages.  Because of this gift, these leaders considered themselves closer to God than the rest.  Other leaders claimed special knowledge of God’s will, especially with relation to various religious practices.  Of these people, Paul writes, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”  Paul goes on to speak of the church as Christ’s body, with each part working together, rather than the different body parts trying to upstage each other or run away from each other.   And what holds the church, the body of Christ, together?  It’s love.  Love forms the ligaments that keep the various members of the body working together. 

 

It’s notable that these words, which Paul intended for the church, are associated with weddings.  Perhaps this is because Paul’s words – patience, kindness, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things – love that never ends – describe what we hope for in a spouse or life partner, after the wedding is over and day-to-day life together begins.   Don’t we all want to know and to be known fully?   Most people have little hope of experiencing this quality of love outside a marriage or committed partnership - especially in our society, in which love is hard to find, in which nearly everything can be turned into a commodity to be bought and sold, in which our society’s materialism attempts to convince us, instead of loving people and using things, to love things and use people.

 

And yet Paul’s intent was for these words to describe, not married life, but how we in the church are to treat one another – and how we are to treat our neighbors outside the church.  Jesus went further – as his followers we are to love, not only our family, not only our sisters and brothers in Christ, not only our neighbors, but even our enemies.

 

And that’s what got Jesus into trouble at his hometown synagogue.  Last week we listened to Jesus begin his sermon.  He spoke of proclaiming good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight for the blind, freedom from oppression, and the year of the Lord’s favor.  And he told his listeners that “today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”  But then, as far as the congregation was concerned, he went way off message:  he spoke of God’s loving care, not only for Israel, but for the widow of Zaraphath – foreigner – and Naaman the Syrian – foreigner.  For speaking of the wideness of God’s mercy, Jesus nearly got himself thrown off a cliff.

 

Which brings me back to Shane Claiborne’s talk, that I described at the beginning of my sermon.  Considering all the carnage that the Afghan people have suffered over decades of invasion and occupation, it would be entirely understandable if they wanted to shut out the rest of the world and tend to their own wounds.  And yet the Afghan youth seek, not isolation, but connection. That’s the power of love that’s stronger than all the weapons in the world.  The Afghan youth handed to their visitors blue scarves, similar to this one that I have.  The scarves represent a beautiful message from the Afghan youth – that we all share the same blue sky, that one blue sky connects us all.

 

The love of which Paul and Jesus spoke is not the sentimental love of Valentine’s day, in which loved ones exchange chocolate candy and Hallmark greeting cards and whisper sweet nothings to one another.  Rather it’s an action word, an act of will, for, as St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Love means to will the good of another.”   Love conveys this message from ourselves to others, “I want you to be.”  It’s not the love that will lead us to stare soulfully into a loved one’s eyes, but rather the love that commits us to standing by and caring for that loved one no matter what. 

 

The love of which Paul and Jesus spoke transforms lives.  A close friend of mine once told me about his formative years, in a family marked by alcohol abuse and violence, in which he couldn’t feel safe around his own parents, in which members of his extended family had felony criminal records.  To this day he is being treated for post traumatic stress disorder, which generally is an outcome of military service, but in the case of my friend, was the result of having grown up in a home that was like a war zone.  And yet this friend is one of the most gentle people you could ever meet.  I asked him once why that was.  He told me that every summer, he got to spend two weeks with his grandparents at the shore.  Those days with his grandparents gave my friend fleeting experiences of human decency, amid all the indecency and brutality he knew most of the time.  Could his grandparents ever know how much of a difference those days at the shore made in the life of this friend?  And can we ever count the number of people whose acts of kindness over the years have helped form us into the people we have become.  And can we ever know how our own acts of kindness and caring are touching the lives of those around us, without ever knowing it.   Love is what helps us keep on keeping on, even when we see no obvious results.  As, for example, it was Jeremiah’s experience of God’s love that empowered him to speak difficult truth to entrenched, corrupt power, even at risk to his own life.  Despite being rejected over and over, love for God and love for his people compelled Jeremiah to continue to try to speak out.

 

We can never fully understand the impact our actions may have on others.  As the Evangelical and Reformed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr puts it:

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

 

The writer Chris Hedges grew up as the son of a Presbyterian pastor, and himself went to divinity school to study for ordination.  While he did serve a church, he eventually gave up the pastorate and became a journalist, serving as a war correspondent for 20 years, providing news coverage of brutalities in El Salvador, Bosnia, and many other war zones.  His theological training and his having witnessed the worst of man’s inhumanity to man have led him to write movingly on, among other things, the importance of love and religious faith in our world.  Hedges offers these challenging words:

“The point of religion, authentic religion, is that it is not, in the end, about us. It is about the other, about the stranger lying beaten and robbed on the side of the road, about the poor, the outcasts, the marginalized, the sick, the destitute, about those who are being abused and beaten in cells in Guantanamo and a host of other secret locations, about what we do to gays and lesbians in this country, what we do to the 47 million Americans without health insurance, the illegal immigrants who live among us without rights or protection, their suffering as invisible as the suffering of the mentally ill we have relegated to heating grates or prison cells. It is about them.

We have forgotten who we were meant to be, who we were created to be, because we have forgotten that we find God not in ourselves, finally, but in our care for our neighbor, in the stranger, including those outside the nation and the faith. The religious life is not designed to make you happy, or safe or content; it is not designed to make you whole or complete, to free you from anxieties and fear; it is designed to save you from yourself, to make possible human community, to lead you to understand that the greatest force in life is not power or reason but love.”

Paul writes, “And now abide, faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.  May the self-giving love of Christ compel us, in turn, to let Christ’s love be seen in our lives through words of kindness and acts of love.  Amen.

 

On A Mission From God

Scripture:  Isaiah 61:1-7; I Corinthians 12:12-31; Luke 4:14-21

 

 

 

The 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers” starring Dan Akroyd and John Belushi, told the tale of Jake Blues, just released from prison, who learned that the Catholic orphanage where he and his brother Elwood were raised, would be closed and sold unless an overdue tax bill was paid in 11 days.  Perhaps we here at Emanuel can feel some connection to the movie’s plotline, given our church’s role in founding the orphanage that became Bethany Children’s Home.  But I digress…..   Anyway……Jake and Elwood put together their old band to raise money to save their orphanage, explaining in a deadpan voice to anyone who asked, “We’re on a mission from God.”   Braving pursuit by police and a flamethrower-wielding Carrie Fisher, among other obstacles, they manage to get the orphanage’s tax bill paid, just before being sent back to prison.

 

In our reading from Luke’s Gospel, we see Jesus beginning his mission from God, to save, not just an orphanage, but the world.  While Jake Blues just returned home from prison, Jesus has returned home after being baptized by John and after 40 days’ temptation in the wilderness.  And the baptism and temptation in the wilderness were formative, character-developing, life-changing experiences for Jesus – the folks in Jesus’ hometown who had watched Jesus go off to be baptized by John found that Jesus came back to them changed, speaking and acting with a conviction that hadn’t been there before.  He had departed his hometown as the carpenter’s son, and returned as one on a mission from God.  Luke tells us that “Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.”

 

We’re told that Jesus went to his hometown synagogue and stood up to read.  The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and he found the place where these words were written:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

And we’re given the first sentence of Jesus’ sermon:  “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Yet what had changed during the moments in which Jesus read?  Apparently, nothing – except for Jesus’ proclamation.  And yet it is Jesus’ proclamation that changes everything – because Jesus is claiming his own ministry as the fulfillment of this text.  This proclamation sets the tone for what we are to expect from Jesus’ ministry from this point on.

 

Jesus’ choice of this text is intriguing.  Actually, it’s two texts, Isaiah 58:6 and Isaiah 61:1-2.  So this passage did not occur in Isaiah as a single connected text; Jesus himself brought these Scriptures together into one text for his reading in the synagogue.   In reading this passage, Jesus is proclaiming good news – but good news targeted in a particular way.  Let’s listen again:

            He has anointed me to bring good news – to the poor

            He has sent me to proclaim release – to the captives

            Recovery of sight – to the blind

            To let go free – the oppressed

            To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

If you are poor, a captive, blind, or oppressed, Jesus’ words are indeed good news.  If, however, we’re wealthy, if in our privilege we can say that the world is your oyster, if we’re oppressors – the good news Jesus proclaims may pass us by, and Jesus’ words may leave us cold.

 

That last phrase – “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” – had a particular meaning in Jesus’ context that we may miss in our own.  The year of the Lord’s favor is a description of the year of Jubilee, that time that was supposed to take place every fifty years, in which debts were to be forgiven and slaves freed, and lands that had been seized for debts were to go back to the original owners.  In our context it sounds impossible, and we don’t know how faithfully it was observed in Biblical times either.  But the idea is one to which I think we can all relate – that it’s not God’s will for some to become fantastically wealthy while others are forced into destitution.  The Jubilee was an every fifty years attempt to reset the clock, to wipe the slate clean and give people a chance to begin again on a playing field that was, if not level, at least not outrageously stacked against them.  And this is also part of the mission of Jesus – to wipe our slates clean and give us a chance to begin again. 

 

These are the parts of the Isaiah passage that Jesus included in his reading in the synagogue that day.  It’s also notable what he left out.   In the original passage, Isaiah not only writes about “the year of the Lord’s favor” but “the day of the Lord’s vengeance.”  But Jesus left the vengeance part out – vengeance wasn’t on his agenda.  The message Jesus came to proclaim was one of grace, of second chances – and of the importance of caring for our neighbors, especially the poorest and those furthest on society’s margin.

 

The message Jesus proclaimed in his hometown synagogue is the message the church is called on to proclaim today.    Jesus has called us to be on a mission for God.  We, as church, are called, in Jesus’ name, to proclaim good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, release of the captive and liberation of the oppressed.     And while we probably will not, like Jake Blues, encounter Carrie Fisher and her flamethrower, we’ll surely encounter the flames of opposition in other forms. We are called upon to provide an alternative to the world’s way of doing things, an alternative to empire.

 

Because all of us, poor, rich, or anywhere in between, need release from bondage.   Many, especially here in Philadelphia, are literally dying to be released from bondage to poverty, to unemployment, to debt, to foreclosure, to addiction, to illness and lack of access to medical care.  But those on the other end of the economic spectrum are in bondage as well – to addiction to wealth and privilege and the fear that comes with trying to supply those addictions.   While poverty causes some to end up without a home, wealth leads others to barricade themselves, to imprison themselves,  in gated communities, where they only associate with their own kind – and what an empty existence that must be.  While physical illnesses such as diabetes brings blindness to many in the poor and middle-class, wealth and privilege can bring spiritual blindness, as the wealthy cannot see the realities that lie outside the bubble worlds of their own creation.

 

The messages of empire, of the world’s way of doing things – whether the Roman Empire of Jesus’ day or the corporate empires of our own day – some of which have more wealth and wield more power than individual nations - divide us into opposing factions – rich and poor, urban, suburban, and rural, immigrant and native-born, different races, different languages, and so forth.   It’s a game of divide and conquer, in which the very wealthy set struggling people of different races and languages and neighborhoods in competition and in animosity against one another, so that they cannot unite to challenge what Paul called the powers and principalities, and spiritual wickedness in high places.  But Paul’s message to the church at Corinth reminds us that, in Christ, we are all connected, each of us individual limbs of Christ’s one body.  And this body includes believers around the globe.  So when poverty, war, environmental devastation impact believers – whether our members here at Emanuel, or whether they affect our neighbors elsewhere in Philadelphia, or in the portions of New Jersey and New York City still recovering from Hurricane Sandy, or in another part of the country affected by drought or fire, or in a distant country, as Christians we cannot just turn our heads away – because they are part of the one body of Christ, as we are.   One part of the body of Christ cannot say to another, “I have no need of you.”  If one part suffers, the whole body suffers.  If one part is exalted, the whole body is lifted up.  It’s like that on the small scale of life here at Emanuel – as few as we are, we all need to pitch in, to give and receive help - and it’s like that on a global scale as well.

Recently, I got to see a little glimpse of what it looks like when the different parts of the body of Christ work together.  In late December, after Christmas,  I spent a day in Ocean Beach, NJ – and in January, I spent a day in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay neighborhood.  These communities, with surrounding communities, were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, and are struggling to rebound – in Ocean Beach, nearly all of the businesses were closed, entrance in and out of Ocean Beach was restricted, subject to police permission, and there was a strict curfew to limit looting.  In these 3 months since the hurricane, the news cameras, along with the American Red Cross have long since moved on – and most of the folks I talked to in Ocean Bay said that the Red Cross wasn’t all that helpful after the first three days.  FEMA has continued to do good work in Ocean Bay, but in many cases FEMA simply wants to bulldoze damaged homes, while the owners want to try to repair and preserve what they have.  But volunteers from many organizations – Americorps, church groups, various organizers who had been involved in Occupy Wall Street and various local Occupy movements – are working together, providing mutual aid on a day-by-day basis.   And since I told folks I was from Emanuel United Church of Christ in Philadelphia’s Bridesburg neighborhood, you were all with me in spirit.  In Ocean Beach, I was with a group who shoveled sand dunes off eight properties that were just a few blocks from shore.  And, oh boy, did I feel it the next day – I lunge into those situations thinking I’m still 30 and thin and running 10k races regularly, but then my body rapidly reminds me that in reality I’m 50 years old and 50 pounds overweight and short of breath.  But anyway – in helping my neighbors in New Jersey, I wound up meeting my neighbors in Pennsylvania – among them a Presbyterian church group from Lansdale and a number of young adults from an Amish or Mennonite community in central Pennsylvania.   Had it not been for a disaster in New Jersey, would I have met these Pennsylvania neighbors?  On a day in January, in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, I met neighbors from far away – one of the volunteer coordinators had grown up in the Bronx and later moved to Florida – when she heard about the devastation, she returned to NYC to help.  The young man who served as head of the neighborhood volunteer office, run as part of the Occupy Sandy assistance network, had hitchhiked his way across country from California, and over the past three months has become a major presence in the neighborhood, going door-to-door, knocking on peoples’ doors every day and asking folks how they are – this California kid, probably around 20 years old, skinny as a rail, silver metal rings adorning not only his ears but his nose and his lips as well, is like a block captain for a neighborhood in Brooklyn.  In Sheepshead Bay, as in many hard-hit neighborhoods in New York City, mold is a big problem – as is the sometimes slipshod work from the contractors FEMA has hired to do the home cleanouts.  Sometimes, in addition to their own cleanout work, it’s the volunteers helping to keep the contractors honest and helping to advocate for the homeowners when repairs fall through the cracks – one part of the body helping another.

 

Jesus said, quoting Isaiah,

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

May we at Emanuel Church find the power of the Holy Spirit upon us, liberating us from our bondage to sin and to the powers of empire, and calling us, in Jesus’ name, to proclaim God’s liberation to others.    

"What's It To Me?!"

(Scripture:  Isaiah 62:1-5; I Corinthians 12:1-11;  John 2:1-11)

Today’s Gospel reading tells us, if nothing else, that Jesus was not afraid to have a good time.  It’s a very human story, reminding us that Jesus had family and friends, and got invited to parties.  And in this party, when the wine runs out, Jesus the guest turns out to be Jesus the unseen host.

 

Cana was a small village, far from the bustling city, and so what we have here is a snapshot of a country wedding.  Daily life was difficult,  and “rite of passage” moments such as a wedding would provide the village with a festive change of pace, a relief from the day-to-day routine.   Likely the whole extended families of the bride and groom, along with much of the village would have been invited.  The feasting would have gone on for days, to allow time for distant guests to make the journey out to Cana.   It goes without saying that one’s wedding day would be perhaps the most memorable time of one’s life.  Given that people would have traveled significant distances on foot to get there, I think we can intuitively get some sense of the embarrassment of the host family, that the wine had run out – they couldn’t just run out to the state store to pick up a few bottles.

 

Mary picks up on what’s happening and tells Jesus, “They have no wine.”  And, to our ears, Jesus basically comes across as an obnoxious jerk when he responds, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”  First of all, Jesus addressing his mother as “woman”, to us, sounds just plain rude – apparently in that culture it wouldn’t have been quite as offputting as it is to us, though it’s notable that Jesus doesn’t address Mary as “mother”.   Then Jesus basically says, “Hey, not my problem!”   And then Jesus says those mysterious words “My hour has not yet come.” 

One of the recurring themes in John’s Gospel is Jesus’ hour of glorification – which is a reference to the crucifixion, when Jesus is lifted up, drawing all unto himself, and the resurrection.  Twice in John’s gospel, we’re told that the religious leaders wanted to arrest Jesus, but they didn’t do so, because his hour had not yet come – the same phrase we hear Jesus use today.   For John and his community, it was important to state that Jesus was in control at all times – he would come to the aid of the wedding party, but on his own terms, not because of his mother’s prompting.  And Mary seems to recognize this when she tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 

 And what he tells the servants to do is to fill up six stone water jars with water.  We’re told that each jar held twenty or thirty gallons – so we’re talking about 120 to 180 gallons of water – a huge amount.  And then Jesus tells the servants to draw some out and take it to the chief steward.  When the chief steward tasted the water that had become wine, he told the bridegroom, “Usually people serve the good wine first and then save the cheaper wine for later, but you’ve saved the best for last.”  Not only the best wine, but the most wine – from a situation of shortage Jesus provides abundance, more wine than they would have known what to do with.  And he does it secretly – while Mary and the servants know what’s going on, the chief steward, the bridal party, and the guests do not – and so Jesus is perfectly fine with letting the bridegroom take the credit for the wonderful wine that had been saved for last.  Jesus, the wedding guest, becomes Jesus, the secret host of the wedding party.

In Roman Catholic theology, this passage is a basis for addressing prayers to Mary.   As she did at the wedding feast, many call upon Mary to intercede with Jesus, to plead with Jesus to help us in our struggles.  As Protestants, while we respect Mary, our prayers are to Jesus.  And yet Mary remains a model for us, not standing by indifferently when there’s trouble, but asking Jesus for help – which is something we are called to do as well.

In some of the prophetic books of the Old Testament, wine is a sign of the coming of the reign of God – near the end of his book, Amos speaks of a time when “the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.”   So Jesus’ provision of wine not only speaks of God’s extravagant abundance, but of the reign of God where there will be enough for all.  And it speaks of a God concerned not only for big matters of life or death, but for something as small as the supply of wine at a wedding feast. 

 

While our lives are much easier than those of the country peasants who would have attended the wedding at Cana, for many of us, and for our neighbors, life is difficult.  For many of us, and many of our neighbors, not only has the wine run about, but along with the wine much else has run out - our groceries, our health insurance, our heat, our lights, our mortgages, our leases.   Many of us wish that running out of wine was the worst of our problems.
 

Jesus said that he came that we may have life, and life abundantly.  We look around at our situations and wonder if we have enough, let alone anything left over.  Prosperity preachers tell us that if we pray the right magic prayer – and especially if we mail in our love offerings – God will open the heavens and shower down blessings on us.  But I believe that the abundance of which Christ is available, not in isolation, but in community.  You may not have enough of one thing and I may not have enough of something else, but together there may be enough of both – enough and to spare for others.   In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus told his followers that there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for his sake and the sake of the kingdom, who will not receive a hundredfold in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields – and in the age to come eternal life.  Our individualistic culture calls us to self-absorption – faced with someone else’s suffering, we’re tempted to say, “what’s it to me?”  But like the servants at the wedding feast, we should listen to the words of Mary, “Do whatever he tells us.”   Do whatever Jesus tells us, even if it’s as seemingly irrational as filling water jars in order to get more wine – to do whatever Jesus tells us, not only with our money, but with our time and talents, to help one another and our neighbors.  Paul’s writing to the church at Corinth reminds us that it is together that we are the body of Christ, each with various talents for building up the whole body.  In the church, no single person is called on to do everything, but we are all called to offer our gifts and talents.  And likewise, we should also be humble enough and teachable enough to receive the benefit of one another’s gifts and talents, allowing others to exercise their God-given gifts.  And in this way, we have gifts in abundance.

 

And on this Martin Luther King day weekend, we are reminded that God’s abundance is for all, not just for some, that the blessings of justice and peace are for all, not just for some.  Dr. King was one who did what Jesus told him to do, even when it meant putting himself in harm’s way, being arrested, eventually being murdered.  We are all guests at the great wedding banquet of God’s son.  To the extent that we try to bar others from the table, we ourselves will be cast into outer darkness – for it is God’s banquet, not our own.

 

And at this banquet, God saves the best for the end.  The turning of water to wine at Cana was Jesus’ first sign, but as significant as it was, it was nothing compared to the signs at the end of Jesus’ life, the raising of Lazarus, and his own resurrection.  In the same way, though God provides for our lives here on earth, when we meet God in the world to come, we will find that the best earth has to offer will not compare to being in God’s presence.  Amen.