Proper 17
Exodus 3
5"Do not come any closer," God told him. "Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground." 6Then he said, "I am the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." When Moses heard this, he hid his face in his hands because he was afraid to look at God.
7Then the Lord told him, "You can be sure I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries for deliverance from their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. 8So I have come to rescue them from the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own good and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites live. 9The cries of the people of Israel have reached me, and I have seen how the Egyptians have oppressed them with heavy tasks. 10Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."
Matthew 16
24Then Jesus said to the disciples, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. 25If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life. 26And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul£ in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul? 27For I, the Son of Man, will come in the glory of my Father with his angels and will judge all people according to their deeds. 28And I assure you that some of you standing here right now will not die before you see me, the Son of Man, coming in my Kingdom."
He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.
Who does the quote describe? Does the phrase "Crawford, Texas" come to mind? Surrounded, as I am, by pews filled with dangerous radicals, I wonder if the incumbent president is too easy a target for us. And then, of course, there is the whole issue of overtly political preaching, and it's appropriateness. Perhaps if I told you that both Exodus 3 and Matthew 16 are overtly political passages, this would set your mind at ease. Also bear in mind that this August, the sleepy month where preachers sneak in the odd bit of controversy in the hope that few will notice.
The above quote is not from the Utne Reader or Harper's. It wasn't from Michael Enright or Rex Murphy, these days only heard from the sidewalk on Front Street. The author was Thomas Merton, the most famous monk of the twentieth century, regarded in his lifetime as the foremost authority on the contemplative life, and later in his life an active voice for peace. Let me share the rest of the quote:
There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action to which men are driven by their own Faustian misunderstandings and misapprehensions. We have more power at our disposal today than we have ever had, and yet we are more estranged from the inner ground of meaning and of love than we ever have been.
Preparing for my sermon I came across two references to Doctor Faustus. I took it as a sign. The second reference came from Pierre Teihard de Chardin. Writing at about the same time as Merton, he spoke of the Faustian spirit of his age: "the spirit of autonomy and solitude. Man with his own strength and for his own sake opposing a blind and hostile universe." (Resources, p. 231)
In the spirit of interaction, who can tell me about Doctor Faustus?
Faustus is literary shorthand for the classic pact with the devil. He sold his soul to gain all knowledge, and in the end was only interested in practical jokes and silly tricks. Near the end of his life he begins to understand the gravity of what he has done, but it is too late. In the final scene his soul is carried off to hell.
Much of this, of course, was inspired by Matthew 16:
"If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. 25If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life. 26And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul£ in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul?
It is important the bear in mind that these words were not spoken to a Renaissance scholar or the elite of Elizabethan society, but rather to a group of fishermen from Galilee. It wasn't a message directed to the powerful (yet), but rather a message to the most common folk that Jesus could find. It is only in this context that the words speak through time to us today. We hear the words "gain the whole world" and quickly image that Jesus is talking to someone else, someone more powerful. In fact, because the message first when out to peasants and labourers, it falls more heavily on us.
***
If you asked someone in the thirteenth century B.C.E. who has power, they would have only one answer: Pharaoh. Egypt was a solitary superpower, convinced of its greatness, determined to spread (by whatever means) the Egyptian "way of life." The "rightness" of their cause, and their great success led them to believe that they were blessed by a unique providence.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Did I say "pews filled with dangerous radicals"? Superpowers of every era tend to look the same after a while, to the extent that even Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament scholar pauses in his study of Exodus to add these words: "A pondering of Pharaoh by citizens of the United States, the last remaining superpower, might cause us to pause in a moment of self-recognition."
***
Then the Lord told him, "You can be sure I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries for deliverance from their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. 8So I have come to rescue them from the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own good and spacious land. 9The cries of the people of Israel have reached me, and I have seen how the Egyptians have oppressed them with heavy tasks. 10Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."
What a odd choice, that Moses. Formerly a Prince of Egypt, albeit with a rather unique beginning; a coward, who flees before the wrath of Pharaoh rather that defend himself as a member of the royal court; a man who hides among the shepherds; and man who responds to the invitation of Most High with the protest "I'm just not a good speaker; I'm clumsy with words."
Odd choice, or inspired choice? Moses understood the enemy of the Israelites, as no other Israelite could. He sat in the seats of power and knew that the very thing that the Egyptians understood as strength was in fact their greatest weakness: divinity. To everyone in Egyptian society, Pharaoh was god. His divinity was his supposed strength, and the very thing that made a challenge to his power foolish. But Moses knew Pharaoh and his court in a more intimate way: they were family. He understood that the myth of divinity was a pillar on which to build empire, and not a fact to consider.
Think of it as a society-wide "Faustian bargain." With Pharaoh, they said, we will gain the whole world. Our souls will rest with a god of limitless power that lives with us by the Nile, another object of worship and considered the source of life. It was for Moses then, an adopted Egyptian, long freed from the official cult and the common beliefs, to return with the help of the Israelite God.
As inarticulate as he was, Moses could speak for God and demand the release of God’s people. He was an "inspired choice" because he allowed God to speak through him and voice God's endless desire to stand with the victims, safeguard the oppressed, and free those in bondage. Hard-hearted Pharaoh couldn’t hear this voice, but God freed them anyway.
***
More Merton:
We are living through the greatest crisis in the history of man; and this crisis is centered precisely in the country that has made a fetish out of action and has lost (or perhaps never had) the sense of contemplation. Far from being irrelevant, prayer, meditation and contemplation are of the utmost importance in America today.
Jesus said "shoulder your cross" and follow me. He urged his disciples to "count the cost" (Luke 14.28) and decide on a life of praising God and serving others. Raymond Brown called it "a carefully considered program of involvement." Shouldering a cross and counting the cost of discipleship means entering God’s presence in a prayerful and intentional way, as a way to fully enter the world.
Merton wrote in the context of the Cold War and Vietnam, but his words have an eerie ring to them. We live in a time when people and nations need to prayerfully reject power and domination, to find salvation in the service of others. We need to remind the world that God stands with the powerless and seeks for them life in its fullest expression. Such is the Kingdom of God. Amen.
Proper 16
Matthew 16
13When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
14They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
15"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
16Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ,[b] the Son of the living God."
17Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you that you are Peter,[c] and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades[d] will not overcome it.[e] 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be[f] bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be[g] loosed in heaven." 20Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.
"I don't know how I knew, I just knew."
"Somehow I was at the right place at the right time."
"It was as if the car knew where it wanted to go."
"I dialed your number by mistake, but I guess it wasn't a mistake."
Have you ever had such an experience? What happened? Do you have any sense of how it happened?
Fate, coincidence, serendipity: there are many ways to express what seems to be a common (yet uncommon) human experience. Sometimes we simply feel led. There is a sense that there are larger forces at work in the world, forces that draw us to each other or place us into situations where we can be of help. Some would call it "the work of the Spirit," but that would be jumping ahead.
***
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.
It has often been said that one of the strengths of the Christian faith is that so much authority was given to so many broken people. Imagine Peter, getting ready to deny any knowledge of Jesus for the first, second or third time, and remembering the words of Jesus: "on you Peter, I will build my church." There was no effort to "clean up" the Gospel narrative, or make the disciples seem better than they were. Jesus needed followers, and he chose the best he could find.
So what are the "keys of the Kingdom"? The answer is, it depends who you ask. The Bishop of Rome claimed the "power of the keys" early in the history of the church. Peter's bones were in Rome (along with Paul's) and this fact seems to have given the Bishop of Rome the abiding sense that he was somehow the successor of Peter. Ignore that fact that Peter was never called a bishop, and that whatever role he had in local leadership was in Antioch and not Rome, but the figure that claimed leadership over all other church leaders still saw unbroken continuity from this scripture passage to them.
The "keys," according to Matthew's account, came with the power to compel the heavenly realm through human action: "whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." The exact meaning remains vague. Does this give Peter the power to condemn some and save others? Is it even limited to the spiritual realm? Again, by the Middle Ages, the Bishop of Rome used the power of the keys to suggest that only he could determine who was fit to be an earthly king. Needless to say, more than a few kings disagreed.
What those who seek "the power of the keys" most often ignore is the modification to his blessing that Jesus made a few verses later. In chapter 18 he uses the same formulation of binding and loosing, giving the power this time to the elders of the church.
"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
It is the church, in this version, that has the power to bind and loose. This seems much more comfortable than giving it to an individual, even if the individual is Peter. Or perhaps it only seems so based on the history of Christian church.
***
When St. Jerome wrote his Latin translation of the Bible in the fourth century, he chose to draw on legal terminology to translate "binding" and "loosing." He understood these to be the same as condemning or acquitting, creating a strong sense that these terms had to do with personal salvation. The fate of an individual's soul became the issue, and not the relationship between church and the world.
But what if we tried to reimagine binding and loosing and put it back in the context of the church. What if our collective action had import in heaven? What if we saw each decision we made as part of the unfolding of the heavenly realm, and not simply the church making decisions. Would we act differently? Would we alter the way in which we make decisions?
All of this leads to the conclusion that God trusts us to act on his behalf. In other words, when we wait around for God to do something, we are actually waiting someone or some group of people to do something. In other, other words, we have agency: "the power of one in such a relationship to act on behalf of another." For the lawyers in the crowd: "a consensual fiduciary relationship in which one party acts on behalf of and under the control of another in dealing with third parties." (dictionary.com)
There, you have something to ponder over lunch: I have a consensual fiduciary relationship with God. But wait, there are clauses to this agreement. First, we have this relationship through the church. We don't operate alone. This, of course, is for our own protection, knowing that there must be limits placed on our ability to claim divine sanction for our actions. We decide in community what God wants us to do. Done alone, we end up with situations like Waco and Jonestown.
Second, and most important, the relationship is consensual. We must decide if we are going to undertake this work. We are not compelled. For a rational person, having agency and being entrusted to act on God's behalf is downright scary. What if we screw up? We are deeply flawed people, given to sin and delusion. How can we be trusted to act for God? Jesus has the answer:
"All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14)
***
"I don't know how I knew, I just knew."
"Somehow I was at the right place at the right time."
We have agency, but we are not alone. The Holy Spirit is our companion and guide. We have the power to bind and loose, but this power is informed by the Spirit's work in our midst. When we feel "led" it is precisely because the Spirit is at work: prompting our action, clearing our mind, and opening doors to greater opportunities for service.
John Calvin put this another way. He wrote:
It is a very important consideration that we are dedicated and consecrated to God. It means that we will think, speak, meditate, and do all things with a view to God’s glory. (Foster, p. 167)
The Holy Spirit informs that view, sets it in our hearts, makes it known. It is when we are caught up in a vision of God's glory that we can act on God's behalf. We have a view to glory and then we live that glory in the world.
Take my life, and let it
be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days;
let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move
at the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be
swift and beautiful for Thee.
(Frances Havergal)
Proper 15
Matthew 15
21Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."
23Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."
24He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."
25The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.
26He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
27"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
28Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
Before I begin, I need to say that I am not opposed to rich people. I say this for two reasons: first, taking my inspiration from God, all are loved equally, even the rich. Second, and perhaps more importantly, we in Canada are "rich" in almost every circumstance when we compare ourselves to the poor in other parts of the world. In other words, those in Canada who take issue with the rich, are really taking issue with themselves.
For me, summer is about sailing. And having spent a good deal of time on the racecourse this summer, I am here to report on an exciting new development in Lake Ontario yacht racing. It's called the Beneteau First 36.7. Rather than try to describe the boat myself, perhaps I should let their website speak, sharing the breathless enthusiasm that this boat fosters:
The First 36.7 is a competitive One Design Racer outfitted with the finest available equipment and offered at an unbeatable value. Inspired by the First 40.7, the most successful and prolific performance yacht of her size in the last 20 years, the 36.7 is truly exhilarating on every point of sail. With over 280 boats on order worldwide, racing sailors of every experience level are hailing her as the most exciting new racer on the water.
Now before you leave your pew to get this exciting new One Design Racer, I need to caution you that you will need to scratch together about $200,000 to buy this boat. And if you want the really nice sails, you may need to pay more.
In many ways, there is nothing unusual about a new boat appearing on the lake or the varying degrees of envy this engenders. Humble crew members like me hanging over the rail of an aging racer, filled with a small handful of deadly sins while watching a group of sailboats is nothing new. What is unusual, however, is the number. In just two seasons the number of these boats on the start line has gone from zero to 22.
Suddenly it all starts to make sense. Staring at 22 shiny new boats at $200K a pop creates a bit of a sensation. Unfortunately, one of the sensations I felt was to feel a little uneasy. We are back to a classic dilemma of living in our society. While it is fun to admire a shiny new boat, and to even dream about having one, for most of us, it belongs to another class. And while the church has tried to tone down it's overt critique of wealth at various times, the question remains how do faithful people regard the presence of such wealth in a society that contains glaring examples of poverty. Or, how was this wealth achieved? Does the appearance of exceptional consumption signal good things for our economy or does to indicate a growing gap that worries sociologists and some economists of late?
Poor me, trying to enjoy my holiday on the water and instead I'm forced to ponder the struggle between the working class and the owners of the means of production. Oh well. Perhaps I will call my boat "The Karl Marx."
***
25The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.
26He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
27"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
28Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
Preachers, including this one, most often preach this passage as a story about Jesus' expanding sense of his mission. At the beginning of the passage he makes the rather definite statement that he has come "for the lost sheep of Israel" alone. He has not come to teach and heal among the non-Israelites, but rather insists that his own Jewish community will be the focus of his reforming time and energy.
This time, however, I decided to take a little detour and determine the significance of the unnamed woman's Canaanite identity. The Canaanites were the population that already occupied the promised land of Israel. In the book of Joshua, the Israelites enter the land God has given to them, and find they have competitors. The book recounts the displacement of these various peoples, which (as we learn from a variety of sources) was incomplete.
So Canaan was a territory and the Canaanites were the remnants of the previous occupants of the land. Scholars agree that the word "Canaanite" refers to a number of tribes and city-states, and not simply one group of people. Scholars also tell us that the Israelites and the Canaanites were identical in almost every way: racial, ethnic, and linguistic. Much of their culture was common. Only their religious practice was distinct from Israel. While they also had a "God most high" named "El," they had a variety of lesser gods and goddesses including the oft-mentioned Baal, described by Walter Brueggemann as a "young and assertive" god. Think of Jude Law among the pantheon of middle-aged Hollywood stars. Clearly Baal was a god on the move.
Perhaps you're wondering when I'm going to link this back to sailing, but you're going to have to be patient.
Despite the foundational narrative that describes the Israelites claiming the land promised to them, the reality on the ground was quite different. Scholars agree that the Israelites more likely carved out a place for themselves inside the existing social order and spend hundreds of years establishing ascendancy. The land was organized into a network of city-states along feudal lines. The Israelites entered at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, subject to the control of a powerful elite (all Canaanites) who exploited the mass of peasants beneath then to create enormous wealth.
The scholarly argument is that the Israelites defined themselves in this context as the opposite of their Canaanite uppers. As peasants, the Israelites spent the long years of adjustment to this situation defining themselves in a new and distinct way: socially, economically and religiously. In fact, they mixed all three. The quest for justice, the desire to care for the most vulnerable, and all the various laws that support these desires came from the experience of being oppressed, first in Egypt, and then in Canaan.
With this new understanding, suddenly the little conversation where Jesus is quite rude makes more sense. This is not a conversation between Jesus and an outsider, this is a conversation between Jesus and a representative of a people he was predisposed to hate. Jesus, who saw the world through the eyes of a peasant (because he was one) would have approached this woman as someone that fell outside "his mandate" and also someone that represented generations of oppression. He called her a dog much in the same way that radicals would call capitalists "dogs" nineteen centuries later.
Our theme, then, should properly be "Jesus, the radical who changes his mind." Or "Jesus, the God who learns." This remarkable, unnamed woman defeats Jesus with his own words, and claims her place as a child of God. Her great faith, and her willingness to challenge the status quo overwhelms Jesus and results in healing. Jesus' mission has been expanded, but more importantly, Jesus has been forced to be consistent. His radical inclusiveness, his desire for justice, and his willingness to challenge the existing structures must include everyone, inside and outside the covenant with Israel.
***
It is easy to dislike others. We seem genetically pre-programmed to define others as "us" or "them." Read the paper on any given day and you will find examples of the way we seek to decide who we are and to whom we belong. Should the new Governor-General give up her duel French citizenship, because having it makes her less "us." Her husband seems too sympathetic to the FLQ, does that make him less "us." Did the new G-G vote for Quebec or Canada in the last referendum? Us or them? And it goes on. And, of course there is the whole Canada/U.S. thing, the ultimate "us and them" question that seems to come pre-formed from our mother's wombs and manifests itself in every waking our of our Canadian identity.
For people on the left, and for a few in the middle, the question of wealth is an "us and them" question. They live among us (or at least they live in nearby neighbourhoods) and they have their houses and cottages and yachts and cars and all the other things that we admire and will likely never have. We admire and then we begin to smolder. Where did the wealth come from? Did they work for it or did they inherit? Did the money arrive in an ethical manner or were people below them exploited? Do they pay their share of taxes, or is most of it sheltered somewhere in the Caribbean? I could go on, but I better stop here.
When I was young, and I received my state-of-the-art left wing education at wonderful York University, it was easy to read and think and nurse some easy conclusions about the rich. When I got to Queen's and began to study for ministry, I got more of the same, but in a wider theological framework. God stands with the oppressed. God weeps when the poor suffer.
But I learned something else. God loves everyone. God forgives with an intensity you and I will never fully comprehend. God ignores our T4 on the way to welcoming us to the heavenly banquet. Of course, we continue to have much to do as brother and sister living side-by-side with a finite amount of resources and the reality of human sin. But ultimately the message is love. God loves those we fear. God loves those we hate. God loves people who voted yes for sovereignty and God loves those who own shiny new boats.
Our task is to overcome ourselves, and form relationships: relationships that will draw us together to help each other, to see each other through new eyes, and to find the Heart of All Compassion together. Amen.
