THE INTERSECTION OF TWO HEAVENLY BODIES IS NOT RARE!

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We were so happily enthralled and overshadowed by the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017! What awe! What mystery! What fun! Some of us had made plans for months to travel to some spot within the seventy mile “path of totality.” Others of us took off work to watch with special glasses or homemade pinhole viewers. Those who experienced the total eclipse, when the world became dark for up to two minutes or so, were spectacularly moved. Others of us shared their thrill vicariously.

Wherever we were, it was wonderful for us to pause, and to let it be. Recognizing, and imagining, the paths of two huge celestial bodies – heavenly bodies! – crossing each other was a truly awe-inspiring event. I would say that those several hours on August 21, of waiting and watching, touched people with transcendence, a sense of majesty and power that was so much bigger than us. Moreover, we shared those transcendent moments with other people: some of them friends, but others in campgrounds and parks, and some of them strangers we happened to park beside along the road. We shared both transcendence and intimacy.

For some of us, the more we studied the event, the more profound particular details became. We were aware that the moon’s shadow was racing across the continent at between one thousand and three thousand miles per hour. We were aware of slight angles in the earth’s and moon’s orbits that make an eclipse possible. We were aware that the precise size of the moon, at this particular time in its gradual withdrawal from the earth, is what makes a total eclipse possible – and not an annular eclipse (which does not completely cover the disc of sun).

Finally, some of us became aware of something else. Solar eclipses are not exactly rare. They are certainly rare if you stay in one place on the earth. However, they occur somewhere on earth about once every eighteen months – about 2 every 3 years. Indeed, many people claim to be “eclipse chasers,” making plans even now to be at the next solar eclipse on July 2, 2019 (though most of it will occur over water, in the South Pacific Ocean). I read where Joseph Pasachoff, astronomer from Williams College, has experience 65 solar eclipses.

I reckon, then, that if we include space and time outside earth, then celestial bodies –let’s call them heavenly bodies!—are intersecting their paths somewhere, almost all the time. Stars are crossing in front of other stars. Moons are coming between suns and planets. (These events are called “occultations,” which means “hidings”).

In the tremendous universe of God, then, there is always an intersection happening somewhere. What if we, we ourselves, are also such heavenly bodies? Sometimes, we are depending upon one light source, and another body moves between us and the source. Sometimes that movement occurs with amazing speed. We can see the shadow moving quickly along the floor, and it overtakes us. Sometimes the shadow is not a negative phenomenon at all, and the darkness can be helpful to us. Darkness can also show us that we have other sources of energy to depend upon, other sources of growth. In short, the darkness can both excite and calm us, showing us again our particular place in the tremendous order and creation of God

Yes, we human beings are heavenly bodies, too. We make paths and trails and orbits and intersections. When we meet another heavenly body –let’s call that heavenly body a spirit, shall we?—when we meet another spirit, when our paths cross, we have the opportunity for a fruitful intersection, we have the opportunity to say hello, to wink, to pause and to rejoice. (Or we have the opportunity to resent the shadow, to resent the interruption.)

The glory of this week’s total solar eclipse, then, can teach us about our own eclipses and intersections, and overshadowings. It is restorative simply to pause, and to marvel, at the glorious constellation of heavenly bodies among whom we live, and move, and have our being. We salute the complicated wonder of this universe of heavenly bodies. All of us travel in beautiful orbits. When our paths cross, a fruitful intersection will be that same combination of transcendence and intimacy that so many of us experienced August 21, 2017.

It is worth remembering one of the most mysterious and transcendent of all intersections: the one between divine and human. That intersection will always be impossible to fully describe, but here is how the gospel writer, Luke, described it: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). Right. It’s a miracle. And it can happen in us. And it can happen all the time.

(This article also appeared in Episcopal Cafe, and in The Cathedral Times. Thank you!)

MARY MAGDALENE AND THE RISEN CHRIST

My Easter continues whenever I discover new expressions of the encounter of Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb of Jesus. Most of you know the story of how she visited the empty tomb and wept, because the body of Jesus was not there. Standing there, however, was a man who looked like the gardener; and she asked him whether or not he had taken away the body of Jesus. When the man said, simply, “Mary,” she knew immediately that the unknown man was Jesus. She had mistaken him for the gardener (John 20:11-18).

I have enjoyed, over the years in previous classes and sermons, using so many artistic representations of that beautiful event. But, this past Sunday, I discovered still another way to interpret that famous Bible story! Below is a reproduction of “Saint Mary Magdalene at the Sepulchre,” by the 16^th century artist, Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo.

In his daily meditation for 4 April 2016, the modern Franciscan Richard Rohr (a mystic and a hero!) speaks about how each of us seeks reality in Christ; yet, what the true risen Christ really shows us is our true self, a truth that is already deep inside us. Says Rohr, “This is the new self that can say with Paul, "I live no longer, not 'I' but it is Christ now living in me" (Galatians 2:20).” Rohr concludes, “In the truest sense, I am that which I am seeking.”

Here, in this 16^th century painting, the artist Savoldo has expressed that instant, that moment, when Mary Magdalene looks straight at Jesus and realizes who he is. But, in the painting, she is looking at …us! The viewers! You and me! Christ is in us! Christ in us, the hope of glory. May the risen Christ be in you today. May the risen Christ be you!

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, "Saint Mary Magdalene at the Sepulchre," (16th Century) (from The Getty Center)

PURITY INSISTENCE AND EMPIRE ARROGANCE: ALL OR NOTHING?

John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name,

and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

But Jesus said, “Do not stop him;…whoever is not against us is for us. (Mark 9:38–40)

Whoever is not against us is for us!

This morning, and this past week, I am reminded of one of the great stories of our Bible, from the Book of Numbers – a powerful story, which has much to teach us about leadership in any generation. In short, it is a story about Moses, and two of his more obscure followers, Eldad and Medad.

At Numbers, chapter 11, the story occurs in the desert of Sinai, after Moses has led the Hebrews to freedom from the oppression of the ancient Egyptians. It is an unfortunate feature of life, in any generation, that the newly freed people soon begin to complain about their leader.

“Why have you brought us out to the desert?” they complain. “We would rather be back where the food was delicious. We remember the fish and the melons and the onions and garlic and leeks of Egypt!” Yes, the Hebrews, in their anxiety and distress, are so upset that they are longing to return to the conditions of slavery. Such is the human condition!

Moses, in turn, great leader that he was, turns to deliver the same sort of complaint to his Lord! Moses asks God, “ Why have you treated me so badly? Why have you laid the burden of all these weeping people on me?” “I am not able to carry the burden of this people alone,” Moses says. He is exasperated.

So, according to the story, Yahweh commands Moses to specify seventy people, seventy elders, and take them to the Tent of Meeting. There, Yahweh will take some of the spirit that Moses has and place it upon the heads of the seventy elders. Thus, the leadership assigned to Moses will be distributed and delegated. Moses’ burden will be mitigated, and the people will actually be cared for in a better way, with distributed leadership. It’s a great story about distributed authority, again a story with much to teach us in our own time, and in any time. Authority that rests in only one individual, even if that person is wonderful, is not as effective and healthy as distributed authority!

But something crazy happens! When these newly ordained seventy elders have received the spirit and they are prophesying healthily, why, they hear about two other people. Apparently, Eldad and Medad, way outside the tent, are not with the seventy properly ordained elders; and, yet, some of the spirit has come upon them, too, and they are prophesying! Joshua comes running up to Moses and says, “Moses! Stop them! They are not with us!”

Moses, in his expansive wisdom, recognizes immediately what has occurred. “Are you jealous for my sake?” he asks, “Would that al the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” That is, the Lord’s spirit is larger than any one set of people, or any one system, or any one authority. There is enough of the Lord’s spirit to rest upon all of God’s people, not just those properly delegated and ordained, not just upon the chosen few, not just upon the ideologically pure.

Ideological purity. In many of our strongest institutions today, there exists a self-destructive illness which has been inside humanity for our entire existence. I call it an illness, but it is really a psychological predilection marked by twin viruses: the virus of purity insistence, and the virus of empire arrogance. In politics, in church, in society, purity insistence and empire arrogance clamor for “all or nothing” strategies: “my way or the highway,” they say. “If you are not exactly for me and like me, then I am against you.”

There is a startling similarity between purity insistence and empire arrogance. The church is at its worst when it is tempted towards empire, when it wants to anoint emperors instead of servants, when its leaders think leadership is simply making sweeping and absolutist pronouncements. Even when those pronouncements seem good, and even when we might agree with them, if the nature of those pronouncements is imperial, then a dangerous disease is imminent.

The church is also at its worst when it insists on purity, when it demands that every member follow every jot and tittle of whatever the contemporary standard of law is. And remember: every party, every religious system, contains some sort of law. Democrats have their liberal markers, and republicans have their conservative ones. So do churches. We have little markers, indicators, litmus tests, of whether someone is with us or against us. Those litmus tests are our purity indicators.

Purity indicators in our time might be such issues as abortion, same-sex marriage, for sure. But they are also such issues as opposition to the death penalty and gun control laws. Our temptation is to simply destroy those who are against us.

Whatever your politics, you had to admire the rather sacrificial act of Congressman John Boehner this past week, who found himself running afoul of the purity insisters. In resigning his office, he simply refused to play the game of fruitless polarization.

John Boehner admitted enormous pride and consolation from his association with Pope Francis. The Roman Catholic pope, of course, might be the one leader in this world who would be most prone to purity insistence and empire pride. Christian churches, of whatever denomination, are continually tempted to those illnesses; and the Roman Catholic Church can sure seem like an empire, a power accustomed to demanding and receiving its own way.

But Francis, of course, has brought a different attitude to his leadership, one that is worth emulating, truly trying to mirror the leadership of Christ. In Washington this past week, Pope Francis told his fellow bishops that “the path ahead, then, is dialogue among yourselves, dialogue in your presbyterates, dialogue with lay persons, dialogue with families, dialogue with society. …Harsh and divisive language does not befit the tongue of a pastor, it has no place in his heart; although it may momentarily seem to win the day, only the enduring allure of goodness and love remains truly convincing.” (Pope Francis to other bishops at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, Washington, DC, September 23, 2015)

And to the United States Congress, Pope Francis urged our country to avoid polarization. He said that “there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps.” (Pope Francis addresses the United States Congress on Thursday, September 24, 2015)

So, this week, I have been reminded that the way of Jesus is not the way of “All or Nothing.” Great governments include strong voices who honor and respect those across the aisle. Great churches recognize that the Spirit of God is larger than any one party or doctrine. While seventy leaders are being ordained in the main tent, let Eldad and Medad prophesy enthusiastically in another place. Our energy and good will need not be diminished because someone else, not with us, is doing something equally good!

The way of Jesus lets other disciples, not only his own, also cast out demons and heal the sick. You don’t have to agree with my politics for me to appreciate the good that you are doing in the world. You don’t have to be a member of my church, or of my religion, or of my group of disciples, for the Spirit of God to be at work in you.

AMEN.

(This was also the sermon preached by the Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler, at the Cathedral of St. Philip, on Sunday, September 27, 2015.)

WHY THE CROSS ?

Good Friday

3 April 2015

Why do we carry these crosses everywhere?

We wear them around our necks and on our arms. Some are made of the most ordinary materials, and some are made of the most expensive. Some are as simple as two plain lines. Others are ornate and complicated, with no end to their beautiful variation. We lift crosses up into the air, and we process in lines behind them. We place them on our walls and doors.

But what do they actually mean? Do they mean simply that we are pious? That we are warm and cozy, soft-hearted people? Do they mean that we harbor some long lost spiritual dimension in our past? Do they mean simply that we are from a religious family?

No, the cross means more, much more, than those things. Sadly, regrettably, tragically, the cross has also been used wrongly. It has been used, for instance, to justify violence. It has been used in acts of racism and anti-semitism and prejudice. It has been used in ways that are directly antagonistic to the way that Jesus used it.

In his book, Constantine’s Sword, James Carroll delivered a scathing critique of the manner in which the cross has especially been used in anti-semitic ways. Today, some well-meaning Christians are reluctant to display the cross, out of sensitivity to its anti-semitic history.

However, that is one of the attitudes towards the cross that I seek to redeem. The cross means something different. The cross means something that is the very opposite of violence, and it means something that is much more profound than mere emotional pietism.

Today, Good Friday, is the day of the cross. I know that Easter is a lovely and delightful day, but I feel closer to God on Good Friday. Let me tell you why: Good Friday is a day of love. Unfortunately, throughout history, many of us have tried to explain the meaning of the cross without love. We have discussed crude blood sacrifice, and we have developed grand “atonement” theories, and we have tried to explain rationally just how the sacrifice of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, has saved us.

Listen to three of these popular theories.     

                                                                                                                         

A first theory has been called “the fish hook theory.” Some say that “Satan was owed something because of the sinful nature of humanity. Someone had to pay Satan a sort of ransom, and that someone was Jesus. Jesus died on the cross and paid the price. But then Jesus tricked Satan by being resurrected.” This view was once described with the image that Christ was a worm on a fish hook that finally caught Satan. So, this view has also been called the fish hook theory. But this theory has a real problem: why should God have to owe Satan anything at all?

A second type of theory has to do with satisfying God’s justice. Some say that “it wasn't Satan who had to be satisfied. Rather it was God's justice that had to be satis­fied. The perfect righteousness of God demanded that someone suffer for sins which had been committed. Therefore (according to this theory), Jesus's death on the cross satisfies the justice, the righteousness, of God.” But this theory has a similar problem: Would God kill Jesus in order to satisfy a harsh and impersonal justice system? That can’t be.

A third theory is the blood theory. This theory maintains that “sin –somehow—can be transferred to another's blood. The Old Testament sacrificial offerings of lambs and such were designed to be a sort of transference. In those ceremonies, the sins of humanity were transferred to the animal and so offered to God and removed from people. Thus, sins can be transferred to Jesus's blood because he was a perfect and sinless offering; he was able to take away the sins of the world.”

Alas, as Rene Girard has shown us, this theory runs the risk of perpetuating scapegoat systems. When we believe that Jesus’s death is just another example of the scapegoat sacrificial system, we perpetuate scapegoating and violence to other innocent people. We run the risk of making the cross a sign of violence towards others again.

Perhaps you recognize the language of these three sorts of theories. Elements of each theory appear in our theology and in our litur­gy. Some of us may believe parts of all of them.

Let me suggest, however, that none of them captures the essence of what is going on today. The cross is not about a legal contract or a heavenly transaction. It is not “blood for sin.”  We betray the cross if we analyze it in quantifiable and crude transactional terms. Good Friday is not an intellectual day, and the cross cannot be fully explained with an intellectual theory.

The cross goes deeper than our brains. 

The cross, indeed, is a starkly violent image; there is no getting around that. But the point is that Jesus transforms that image. Jesus “made an instrument of shameful death to be for us a means of life and peace.” That transformation declares that even the most painful suffering and most gruesome death are not stronger than God. God is greater. God defeats violence at the cross; and God defeats death at the cross.

Well, how does that transformation happen? Why the cross? Today, I have three words with which to answer that question. The cross, the holy cross, means three things: pain, paradox, and passion. And by “passion,” I mean “love.” Pain, paradox, and love.

Let’s start with the human experience of pain, and death. Why do we suffer pain? Where does evil come from? What is death?  These are eternal questions of humanity, whether that humanity lived two thousand years ago or today. The eternal questions of humanity have had to do with suffering, have dealt with evil, have been about facing death. Wherever we have lived, at the beginning of humanity in sub-Saharan Africa, in the ancient kingdoms and dynasties of China, in the crowded streets of Atlanta, in the comfortable homes and apartments of Buckhead, wherever we humans have lived, we have faced similar questions.

There are some people of the world who do not believe in pain. There are some religions of the world which do not believe in pain. Some do not believe in sickness or disease. Some religions believe that evil is an illusion, that evil does not actually exist. Some religions do not acknowledge death.

Let them be, those religions. Christianity is not among them. Christianity's answer to the eternal questions of pain, death, and evil is not simply to claim that they do not exist.

Rather, Christianity’s answer is the cross.

The pain and suffering of the cross is Christianity’s acknowledgement that suffering, and evil, and death, really do exist. This might seem obvious to you. “Of course evil, suffering, and death exist,” you say. But I am not speaking so simplistically. I have known hundreds of situations in which good-willed people have been unable to acknowledge their pain. Our tendency is to hide those embarrassing parts of ourselves, places which have not matched our ideals of perfection and happiness. Suffering is painful, yes, but it is also embarrassing. Pain is also humiliating.

Our tendency is to hide. We would rather not admit those times when we have been betrayed, when we have lost, when we have been defeated.  Husbands and wives live hidden from one another. We show up to work in misery. We collapse in the evening from fatigue and bewilderment, unable to keep up with our dreams. But somehow, we dare not admit those problems. We are scared.

Then, worse, we tend to explain away evil. Such an act was due to a lost childhood, we say. Such an atrocity was a sign of sickness. Such horrific behavior is a symptom of a sick society, we say. No; pain and suffering are inherent parts of being human.

So, first of all, the cross means that we Christians acknowledge the real existence of pain and suffering.  In fact, we share an important tenet with Buddhism in this regard. Life is suffering. Of course, we believe that life is also much more than that; but life does involve suffering. None of us gets around pain and suffering. The way to the other side of pain and suffering is not around it, but through it.

It is Jesus who shows us how to go through, not around, pain and suffering. The holy cross, then, reminds us that Jesus himself encountered pain, and betrayal and false witness and innocent suffering, too – more so than most of us ever will. We follow Jesus and the cross because they show us the way through. Remember: the cross never gives us permission to inflict pain; it gives us the strength to live through it.

Secondly the cross means paradox. This is more complex. It starts with the very paradox between suffering and joy, and between death and life. The cross means both death and life. Christians are supposed to know how to deal with both. The cross, two simple intersecting lines, represents the truth that life always has two lines going through it, at least two lines, usually many more.

The very shape of the cross, an intersection of two lines, can be seen as paradox, as the meeting of two different worlds. Many people have understood the horizontal axis of the cross to mean reconciliation with each other, and the vertical axis of the cross to mean reconciliation of humanity with God, with the transcendent. Perhaps the cross means the paradox of reconciliation.

Christianity is a deeply spiritual way, not a rational way. People who wear the cross care about the reconciliation of “both/and”, not “either/or.” Paradox means the ability to live with opposites. In Jesus, for instance, we live with both humanity and divinity. Humanity and divinity are concepts that are often seen as opposites; but, to us, paradoxically, they are not.

Finally, passionate love. The cross means love. It was love that brought Jesus into the world, and it was love that led him to the cross. The reason we follow Jesus to the cross is because we want to love like he loved.

In short, wearing the cross around our necks means that we choose to love. In the midst of pain, we choose to love. In the midst of paradox, we choose to love. In the midst of things we cannot hold together, things we cannot understand, we choose to love. In the midst of life, we choose to love, to give ourselves for each other. Love was the choice Jesus made, and he made that choice most powerfully at the cross, the holy cross.

The holy cross means pain, but it means paradox even more; and even more still, the cross means love. Jesus loves us, this we know, for the cross tells us so. The cross is where Jesus sacrifices not just himself, but all of humanity.

But here’s the catch. The word “sacrifice” does not mean to kill something. Sacrifice does not mean violence. The real meaning of sacrifice, the deep meaning that lies behind all the ways the word is used in Scripture, the deep meaning of the word, “sacrifice,” is “to make something holy,” “to bring something close to God,” “to take something near God.”

The sacrifice of Jesus, then, is not simply that he died, or that he shed blood, or that he experienced evil. The sacrifice of Jesus is that he took the human experiences of pain, violence, and death, to God. This is Christianity’s answer to the eternal questions of death, pain, and suffering. Jesus is the evidence that pain and evil really do exist, and even God knows about them. In fact, God has touched pain and evil, and is transforming them.

If Jesus took pain and suffering to the cross, it should be no accident that we today who are in pain should end up in the church, here at the cross with Jesus. Whether we are innocent or guilty with pain, we end up in the same place as Jesus does: before the loving mercy of God.

Again, Christianity is an honest and realistic and incarnate religion. There are places in our lives where we bleed. There are places where we hurt, where we are in pain, where we suffer. Those horrifying, and even gruesome places, are the very places where God –in the person of Jesus Christ—pours out his love for us. God does not love us in theory. God loves us personally, in the person and life of Jesus Christ, in the very blood of Jesus Christ.

Today, we see suffering, but we also see love. It is love that looms so much larger over the landscape of intellectual theories of atonement. It is love that generates the power of Good Friday. It is love that compels Jesus Christ to take the despair and pain and suffering and blood of humanity near to God.

Sacrifice means to make holy. Jesus has made holy the human experiences of torturous pain, or bloody death, by taking them near to the very heart of God.

And Jesus took something else close to the heart of God. He took the human experience of sin. When God was touched so closely with that sin, God was affected. To be passionate means to be moved, to be willing to be moved. God himself suffered when touched by human violence. God was affected.

God’s response, however, was to forgive.

It is at the cross, then, that we discover, the true nature of God. The true nature of God is passionate love. When touched by sin, God forgives – he  does not condemn. When touched by despair, God perseveres. When touched by evil, God instigates the Good. When touched by violence, God turns it into peace. When touched by death, God turns it into life. The true nature of God is passionate love.

This is why we can say with deep conviction that we are saved by this blood of Jesus. This is why we can say with passion that Jesus is the perfect offering for our sins. His offering –his sacrifice—makes holy even the awful aspects of humanity, His offering takes all of human experience to the very heart of God, and in that heart of God we meet ... perfect love.

Jesus on the cross is an offering of love. And there is nothing more perfect than that love, nothing more powerful than that love, nothing more passionate than that love. To be loved by a suffering Jesus, on the cross, is to be loved. To be loved where we suffer is to be loved. That kind of love is deep, and broad, and high; that kind of love is the perfect offering for our sins. That kind of love lifts us close, so very close, to God. That kind of love is why we call this Friday Good.

AMEN.