Monday, December 27, 2010

Commentary on Lectionary for January 2, 2011

Second Sunday after Christmas

Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 147:12-20; Ephesians 1:3-14; John 1:1-18


My wife and I, our grown son and daughter, our son-in-law and our two-week old granddaughter celebrated Christmas Eve in Buffalo, New York, attending a service at Trinity Episcopal Church on Delaware Avenue.

In an unfamiliar city, I had a difficult time finding a parking place, then turned wrong and headed toward the nearest steeple, thinking it was Trinity. But people were coming OUT of the church, and I asked one of them why she was heading in the wrong direction. She looked at me strangely, and muttered something about leaving the church. But my family was in there, so I resolutely headed toward the entrance out of which more and more people were exiting. I assumed that the service was so crowded they were being denied admittance!

Only when I got to the doorway did I see the sign stating it was St. Louis Catholic Church, NOT Trinity Episcopal. How embarrassing, I thought, as my wife dialed my cell phone to see what was taking me so long!

When I finally got to Trinity, the procession was ready to go down the aisle of a darkened church. Some children in costume were gathered around a furry donkey-looking creature that I assumed was on wheels and they would pull it down the aisle. But then I turned left and saw the Llama, who was rolling its eyes. I quickly turned and looked back at the donkey, and his ears were definitely twitching. They were alive! And the donkey was processing down the center aisle with a crowd of children to dramatize the birth of Jesus. The Llama was a camel-stand-in, because he came later when the youthful narrators talked about the Magi and three youngsters proudly acted their roles as wise men with gifts.

Everyone was invited to communion. If my two-week old granddaughter was on solid food, I think she would have been invited to partake of the bread and wine. At one point in the service many of the children in the congregation brought wrapped presents up to the altar. The pastor made the point these gifts were not for him, but for poor families in the community. Some of them were in big boxes and looked expensive. I saw a skateboard in plastic!

As I approached the altar for communion, an elderly woman was pushing a man about the same age in a wheelchair.

So, you might ask, what does any of this have to do with the readings today? --Just that a number of them make the point that God is calling people together. Jeremiah portrays God as calling his people back from exile, and not only the healthy, but the poor and lame and pregnant are also being called. Psalm 147 says that Yahweh “gathers together the outcasts of Israel” (Ps. 147:2).

And here we all were in Trinity Episcopal—we from Cleveland and others from who knows where. We, the old parents, and their grandchild who was celebrating her two week birthday. We gave each other a sign of peace, we shook hands with strangers and told people about the baby and they smiled and rejoiced with us. We were in the same place as the man in the wheelchair and prayed for him. We heard the nativity story and were admonished to share it with our children and grandchildren again and again.

The pastor told a story about feeling very poor in his first church rectory, but he used to regularly give money to a poor man named Ritchie, and Ritchie showed up with his girlfriend around Christmas time when the pastor was feeling depressed about his church and his personal finances. He always gave the man some money although he had little himself. But this night, he invited the Ritchie into his home for the first time, and the man saw the pastor’s Christmas tree and the presents under the tree for his family, and the poor man marveled at how beautiful it all was, and how beautiful the rectory was and what a joy it must be to have a family, and the pastor’s perspective changed that night as he saw his life through the poor man’s eyes. And that’s what he challenged us, his listeners, to do: to listen to the poor and the stranger and to allow them and this Christmas story to change our perspective by looking at our lives from their perspective.

In Ephesians, Paul talks about our inheritance. This story, of God with us, of the Word made flesh, is that inheritance, isn’t it? We can unpack it and cherish it, no matter how spatially challenged we are and what church we are leaving or trying to get into. And today we read the famous beginning of John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word…” It recalls the book of Genesis. Scholars say that one translation of the Greek word logos (the Word) is “the explanation.”

As we think of all the myths and stories humans have constructed to explain our scary universe, it is so comforting this season to read John, substituting the word “explanation” for the “Word.” “In the beginning was the explanation…and the explanation was with God and the explanation was God… and the explanation become flesh and made his dwelling with us.” What a Christmas gift: the explanation! No wonder the Psalm ends with Praise: Praise Yahweh!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Commentary on Lectionary for December 26, 2010

First Sunday after Christmas

Isaiah 63:7-9; Psalm 148; Hebrews 2:10-18; Matthew 2:13-23


When Christmas is on a Saturday, many people will miss these readings for the first Sunday after Christmas. And they’ll be glad they did, because the one from Matthew tells a gruesome tale of a king murdering children two years old and under. It seems almost unfair for God to send an angel to warn Joseph to take the child to Egypt, but then no one warns the Mothers in and around Bethlehem and their children are slaughtered.

What a savage time, we think! But Matthew writes that not only Herod was afraid when the wise men came looking for a King, but “all Jerusalem with him” (Mt. 2:3). Their neighbors to the east had already proven themselves aggressive enemies, so Herod may have been taking no chances in ordering this pre-emptive strike against a possible threat in the distant future. And the irony is that Herod died before anyone could tell whether his action was necessary to preserve the powers that be. History would not vindicate him. The destruction of the Temple would come from Rome.

Anyhow, Matthew’s main purpose seems NOT to have been to tell horrible stories, but to link Jesus to the Old Testament prophecies, to Micah and Jeremiah and Isaiah. He wants to make it perfectly clear: this is the one who was foretold.

And the creators of the lectionary readings did the same thing: the Isaiah reading comes from a chapter that pictures God as dressed in crimson because he has killed so many of Israel’s enemies. But the chosen verses are those that make the point that God didn’t send an angel to save his people: it was “his presence that saved them; his love and pity redeemed them” (Is. 63:9).

The letter to the Hebrews quotes Psalm 22, which also contains so many violent images, as directly applying to Jesus. And the point of that passage is that this God who created everything came to us in human form, sharing all of our sufferings, a victim of our violence, so that He could help us get beyond our pain and relax in his presence.

As the New Testament writers look back on the first Christmas and the life of Jesus, they seem to be saying, “Yes, yes, we know that life is full of powerful men who will do anything to preserve their status; we know there are nations who want our land and our resources and will kill to get them; we know even children have a high mortality rate and sometimes die horrible deaths, but the thing we want to tell you is not that—that’s old news. The thing we want to tell you is that something new has happened; someone has entered our nasty realities to help us, to save us from all of this. We have VERY good news for you! Go pray Psalm 148 and call upon all of creation to praise the God who has come to join us!”

Now here’s the thing, and it will bear repeating throughout this new church year: the nasty things are not going to stop. The reading from Matthew is proof of that. Prayers will still go unanswered. Disaster and heartache and tears are all around. But with his presence, his grace and his help, we can align ourselves with the reality that is underneath all temporary forms, find our peace in it, and start our eternal life now. We won’t always be successful in this “alignment,” but some day we may swim through our tears and find joy.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Commentary on Lectionary for December 19, 2010

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; Romans 1:1-17; Matthew 1:18-2
4

You can imagine one of the prophets or the person who wrote Psalm 80 getting out of bed (whatever ‘bed’ meant in those days) and looking around perhaps at a whirling sandstorm, then remembering that the Assyrians were already killing people and kidnapping others, and you can imagine that person looking up at the sky and saying: “God, where are you? You promised! You planted this strong and wonderful vine called Israel and now you are NOT taking care of it! Where are you?”

All of us can imagine ourselves doing and saying the same thing in our own version of sandstorms and threatening attacks. Maybe accusing God of being a bad gardener is healthier than giving in to severe depression and giving up, as if there WERE no God.

Maybe we should ask for a sign…or pray to recognize a sign that has already been given. In the Isaiah reading, Ahaz did not want to ask for a sign because he had already made up his mind and decided what he was going to do—and it did not include God. Ahaz was going to ally himself with the enemy, the Assyrians who were already destroying the northern kingdom and eventually would conquer Samaria in 722 BCE.

God gave him a sign: a young woman would bear a child and call him Immanuel, which means God is with us! In other words, God was saying to Ahaz: You do not NEED the Assyrians. You just need to recognize and have confidence in the presence of God.

Joseph, Mary’s husband, got it. Maybe he needed a message from an angel in a dream, but he ended up trusting enough to take an unmarried pregnant woman as his wife.

It is very difficult for us to crawl out from under the covers each day and watch the morning’s news and find God in any of it. The meeting of God with reality, with day to day ‘stuff,’ is rarely perceived and believed. Those who profess to perceive His presence are often on the edge of sanity themselves and prone to make outlandish statements concerning what God is telling them to do.

We need a sign to discern whether our perception of Immanuel is true or false, real or fanatical. Many “saints” –like Paul--throughout the ages have pointed to peace and a quiet joy as being two of those signs. The surface of life may be chaotic and violent; the depths are still and silent. I think such saints have had their times of yelling at God, accusing Him of desertion, but have come to this desert place, this place of presence which often feels like absence. Perhaps it is best called a space, a space in which He dwells, God with us.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Commentary on Lectionary for December 12, 2010

Third Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146:5-10 or Luke 1:47-55; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11


I can tell, as soon as I sit down to meditate, if I am not at peace. My breathing gives me away; and that feeling in my stomach. No use pretending. The temptation is to make the meditation a wrestling match, like Jacob’s famous match in Genesis 32. --Fight hard to keep the anxious thoughts at bay, to empty my mind of them, to NOT let fear take me over.

And how surprising it is to discover how little the event is that can throw me out of peace, that can dis-ease me! It can be a single word, or a look, or even a silence when I expected a response. Or it can be a doctor’s appointment, an unwelcome task or warning, a traffic ticket, or even a downturn in the stock market.

Today’s readings give hope to the unpeaceful, the overwhelmed, and the suffering: all that will be turned around. Isaiah says it to the exiled: Not only will you come back from Babylon to your beloved Judah, you will do it on a highway—a SAFE highway, and one that belies the fact that it is in the middle of a desert because there will be water and blooms!

My daughter, on her way to India, had to land in Jordan and stay the night. She couldn’t get over what she saw when she looked out of the window of the hotel the next morning: nothing but desert! And yet when we visited my son in Arizona last May we saw cacti in bloom—a beautiful sight. The difference was, of course, WATER.

And so what will make peace bloom once again within us? It is the coming of God into our lives, as subtly as a gentle hand laying a wet cloth on our fevered forehead, or as dramatic as being thrown from our horse. John the Baptizer in Matthew thinks it is happening in his time. He sends his followers to ask Jesus: “Are you the one or should we look for another?” And Jesus answers, in effect, “Go tell John what you have heard and seen: everyone is getting healed; suffering is being alleviated; what is lacking is being reversed!” It’s a new, a different kind of Exodus—from dread and pain to peace and joy.

But, we respond, like a child whose sore finger has just been kissed: “How come it doesn’t feel better NOW?” James has an answer in today’s excerpt: Wait for it! Or as he puts it: “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.” James points back to prophets like Isaiah, who prophesied the return from exile that took years to be realized, and we will soon hear those wonderful words from the book of consolation: “Comfort , comfort my people! (Is. 40:1)”

And so I sit for meditation, in peace or un-peace, and I wait as patiently as I can, sipping confidence from these preachers of the word, these singers of God’s works, like Mary in Luke, suffering the discomforts of her pregnancy yet able to sing to her cousin Elizabeth: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.”

I take the breath into my body and feel its presence there, and wait. The message was clear: Where you are doesn’t matter—in desert or in chaos. Wait for Him. He will find you.