When I was a seminarian, the
church I worked at listed the staff in its bulletins every week in a way that
made a statement. The first person listed was the sexton (Episcopal speak for
grounds keeper). The last person listed was the rector (or the pastor of the
church). In other words, the name of the person with the least amount of power
within the church structure appeared at the top of the staff list. And the
person with the most amount of power within this structure was the last name
listed. It’s not very often that I see organizational personnel schemas laid
out with way, but when I do stumble upon such a layout it makes me stop…and
usually smile…because this sort of inverted hierarchical thinking signals an
awareness of power dynamics and an embrace of what Jesus teaches us this
morning.
Today we greet Jesus in his home of Capernaum. His disciples are with him and he is trying –in vain—to teach them his countercultural ways. As usual, the disciples aren’t grasping his ideas. This becomes clear in today’s passage when Jesus asks his disciples what they were arguing about on the way to Capernaum. An awkward silence follows this question because we learn that instead of talking about the idea of servant-hood, the disciples had been arguing about their place in the kingdom and who among them will be the “greatest.”
Jesus’ response? He stops. He sits down. And then gives his disciples what has come to be a well- known pearl of wisdom: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he takes a child and says to them “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” So to follow Jesus – to follow this path of Christianity, we learn that we must strive to break out of the hierarchical schemas of success that dominate perhaps every other area of our life. When Jesus takes that child into his harms and says to his disciples – “you must welcome one such child in my name” – he is saying--within his cultural context--you must welcome the lowly, the powerless, the outcasts. Children in Jesus’ culture were considered to be at the bottom rung of society. So, in this statement, the child symbolizes those at this bottom rung – the people who were the hardest for society to welcome and to embrace.
Given the way our world is ordered, it’s not easy to enact what Jesus teaches us this morning. It seems that wherever we look, hierarchical models of success dominate – the church replicates this pattern, the university system is built on it, so many of our work places don’t embrace the kind of counter cultural thinking Jesus lays out this lesson. So how do we begin to internalize this teaching and model our lives on it?
There is an apocryphal story about a man engaging Mother Teresa in conversation on precisely these sorts of challenges.
The story goes like this…
An obviously
well-fed businessman, “dripping with gold and diamonds, came one day to visit
Mother Teresa, fell at her feet, and proclaimed, ‘Oh my God, you are the
holiest of the Holy! You are the super-holy one! You have given up everything!
I cannot even give up one samosa for breakfast! Not one single chapatti for
lunch can I give up!’ (Remember they are in India – maybe we would say we can
not even give up one latte for breakfast or one In-N-Out Burger for lunch).
Well, Mother Teresa started to laugh so hard her attendant nuns were concerned.
She was in her mid-80s and frail from two recent heart attacks.
Eventually, she stopped laughing and, wiping her eyes with one hand, she leaned forward to help her adorer to his feet. ‘So you say I have given up everything?’ she said quietly. The businessman nodded enthusiastically. Mother Teresa smiled. ‘Oh, my dear man,’ she said, ‘you are so wrong. It isn't I who have given up everything; it is you. You have given up the supreme sacred joy of life, the source of all lasting happiness, the joy of giving your life away to other beings, to serve the Divine in them with compassion. It is you – you have given up everything.’”
It is within us, this capacity relate to others, to give our life to others and to “serve the Divine in them with compassion.” But often, we don’t recognize this capacity within ourselves until with meet people whose own way of being in the world inspires us and helps us to uncover our own gifts and sense of servant ministry.
Historically, the church and people within the church have engaged in impressive examples of the kind of servant ministry Jesus tries to get at this morning. We need only look to the history of the church in our own country to see evidence of schools and hospitals and other institutions that engaged in a kind of servant ministry that enabled generations of people to better their lives. Today’s Episcopal Church in the United States does less direct social service work, but the tradition of being on the front line of education and healthcare is a major part of the indigenous Episcopal/Anglican churches’ work developing countries like Haiti, Palestine or South Africa. That said, the Episcopal Church in the United States is still very much involved in the timeless work of the church around serving the needs of people’s souls and the nurture of their spiritual lives. Sometimes students – and others ask me – “what’s the point – why attend church?” That’s when I say – “because when you participate in a church community, you are opening yourself and your soul up to being grounded in challenging countercultural lessons not necessarily taught elsewhere that will shape and mark you in profound ways. Religious tradition provides incredibly rich material and content that takes us a lifetime and more to internalize and enact. The church provides us a community to keep us accountable and help us to wrestle with the big questions of life and the difficult lessons Jesus puts before us.
Yesterday I attended an all day meeting in LA with the six candidates who will stand for election in December for two suffragan (or assistant bishop) positions in our Diocese. In the interview group I belonged to, a particular man was obsessed with asking the bishop candidates a question about the nature of humility. He felt that there wasn’t enough humility in the world and wanted to know their thoughts on humility, in addition to looking for evidence of humility in each candidate. The candidate about which I turned out to be most excited, spoke, interestingly enough, on this idea that within the church, we need to remember to function in accordance to the inverted hierarchical scheme Jesus talks about today. That’s to say, we are to do ministry – all of us, out of this idea of servant-hood. And the deacons and priests –the people farther up the traditional hierarchical scale--are to be the servants to the servants. The bishops—the people traditionally at the top of this scale—are to be the servants to the servants to the servants. Ironically and sadly, the church often gets far too caught up in its own sense of hierarchy. It too needs to be reminded of its imperfection and a large sense of purpose sometimes. And that’s why we come back to the teachings of Jesus over and over and over again.
It’s my hope that St. Michael’s – as imperfect as it can be at times – is a place where we can nurture in our selves and help to nurture in one another a sense of servant-hood and servant ministry. Here, amidst yet also apart from the hierarchies of the university and the rest of the world, we are called to meet one another as equals and to “serve the Divine in others with compassion.”
As the old hymn goes “Won’t you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you? Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.”
The Rev. Nicole Janelle
After a restful vacation, there’s nothing like getting back into the preaching rotation with a Gospel passage like the one we hear this morning. The story of the Syrophoenician woman, as it is known in the Gospel of Mark. In the Gospel of Mathew this woman is known as the Canaanite woman. Historically, people have found this story profoundly uncomfortable. I admit to it making me squirm a bit – how about you? Let’s unpack the details and see what we can make of this surprising encounter between Jesus and the unnamed Gentile woman and what this dialog might be telling us.
In the opening scene of today’s Gospel, we encounter a Jesus who is hoping for a bit of an escape from his work. He’s just come from feeding a large crowd, performing healings and miracles among Jews and educating people about the importance of the heart when it comes to dealing with purity issues. So we can surmise that Jesus might be feeling a bit tired, a bit cranky and he’s seeking out respite that will allow him some perspective on his own people and an opportunity to recharge. In other words, Jesus is looking for his own Labor Day rest. Unfortunately, things don’t work out as he might have liked. He enters this house in Tyre – a region known for its extreme paganism – and he encounters a woman who does not let him fade into the background. Instead, she corners him, bowing down at his feet. This woman, we learn, is at her wits end. Her daughter is sick --- afflicted with a demon she says. We can assume that this woman has tried to seek help within her own culture and community, but to no avail. And so in her desperation she reaches out to Jesus, a man she might have heard works miracles and might just be able to heal her daughter. What ensues in the dialog between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman is shocking. She begs him to cast the demon out of her daughter and he replies with this statement that suggests he is only willing to heal some and not others. In other words, Jesus flat out REFUSES to heal her child. The woman doesn’t miss a beat. She calls Jesus on his problematic, hypocritical position and offers him another way – a path that invites generosity, abundance, inclusive compassion. “Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs,” she says. In response to her retort – her invitation – Jesus heals her daughter.
Interestingly enough, Jesus goes on in the following pericope (or piece of scripture that we read) to heal a deaf man. And in the process of this healing act, he utters this word “ephphata” – translated as “be opened.” It is perhaps an example of Jesus not only instructing others, but self correcting his own behavior. In this healing story, Jesus puts into practice what the Syrophoenician woman teaches him – that the old categories of clean and unclean need not exist, that one is to trust in God’s abundance, that there is enough for all.
The story of Jesus and Syrophoenician woman can be uncomfortable to us because it takes Jesus out of the boxes we so often put him in. You may know the boxes I am talking about:
- The box that highlights his divinity over his humanity.
- The box that keeps us thinking that Jesus is there solely to comfort and never to challenge us.
- The box that tells us that Jesus is always right, rather than a human being who like us, has limits, prejudices and flaws.
We should rightly wonder as one preacher has: “Who is this Jesus who is scornful of other nationalities and religions? What kind of savior doesn't want to heal a young girl simply because of who her family is? What are we to do with such an indifferent and despising Christ?” (Karen Keeley, The Witness) The encounter between Jesus and this foreign woman exposes Jesus’ humanity in way we are not accustomed to seeing. It’s kind of like those family secrets that can remain buried for decades or even a lifetime before being exposed. Upon learning the truth or in this case, reading about the truth, our response may range from discomfort and disgust to solace and comfort in knowing that we are bound to a God who himself struggles with the bumps in the road on the journey towards wholeness.
In the human tendency to avoid, rather than to wrestle with the troubling aspects of this passage, generations of preachers have encouraged a domesticated or sweetened version of this story. They prefer to point out for example that the dogs in this passage really refer to “small dogs.” The point this out, rather than grapple with the implications of Jesus’ behavior. But to borrow and redirect a great quote of our time, “Jesus came among us to both comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” so too must we apply this destabilizing spirit to our reading of this encounter and our reading of the Bible as a whole.
The exchange between Jesus and this woman most likely destabilizes the usual ways we think about Jesus. While it may not be readily apparent to us living in today’s world, the mere encounter between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman destabilized the customs of that day – that Jews were not to associate with Gentiles, that men were not to associate with women, that women were not to speak to men with the authority this woman does, that one who was clean was not to touch one who was unclean.
The destabilization of our faith or any aspect of our lives for that matter, may not feel particularly comfortable, but it can be an opportunity for new growth to emerge. When we tidily box up God, we risk limiting ourselves to the fullness that relationship has to offer. “Trust in abundance and generosity; trust that there is enough,” the Syrophoenician woman tells us. “Ephphata” – be opened, Jesus implores us.
Each of us knows the places our in ourselves where we need to “be opened.” The parts of ourselves that feel tight – parts of ourselves that might benefit from being less anxious and more generous or compassionate.
The Syrophoenician woman points out to Jesus what we enact every Sunday – and that is, that we all gather around the same table to eat of the same food. The kid, the dog, the adult – we’re all there seeking nourishment, no one being excluded at the table. And as Jesus knows from his feedings of thousands of people, that we all need the same sustenance and that when we share, there is enough to go around.
We can be comforted by the fact that in times of fear, anxiety or simple exhaustion opening ourselves up to others is something Jesus knew the difficulties of all too well. That’s why we need God, the untidy texts of the Bible and one another to jolt us into a different posture when we have grown too comfortable or too closed off. As noted preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “Jesus knows the truth about us and our judgments about one another, especially when we place some of God's children on the other side of a line that we draw…The danger is not out there, with the people who frighten and disturb us. The danger is in here, in the part of us that wants to cut ourselves off from them. There is actual evil in the world, no doubt about it, but until we meet up with the evil in ourselves, we cannot do battle. We cannot fight the shadow we will not own. Will our own hearts and minds, then, be opened up to receive God's abundant, overflowing grace?”
This week as we celebrate the
ending of summer, the anticipation of another school year and the fruit of our
labor, may we strive to “be opened” in new ways by God and the people around
us.
The Rev. Nicole Janelle
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” As I rolled this week’s gospel around in my mind, allowing it to percolate through my synapses toward sermon preparation, the image that kept recurring was that of Howard Beale, as played by actor Peter Finch in the film “Network.” In that 1976 film, writer Paddy Chayevsky skewered the media, but his morality play actually illuminates a much broader theme, dealing with the total dehumanization, commercialization and economization of American life. By “economization” I refer to the trend to express all values in financial terms, the assignment of a dollar value to everything, and a concomitant trend to trivialize as naïve any ethic that seeks to resist this trend.
In the film, newscaster Howard Beale, given two weeks’ notice for lousy ratings, experiences a breakdown and threatens to commit suicide on the air. Given an opportunity for a more dignified goodbye after his disturbing outburst, he instead uses the time to rail against society’s ills. His ratings soar, and he becomes the centerpiece of a new show focused on his populist ranting. When this show, too, begins to decline in the ratings, the corporate powers-that-be arrange to have him shot to death, assassinated on the air. The last scene in the movie is a wonderfully cynical montage. As the narrator comments that Beale was the first man ever murdered because of bad ratings, an array of televisions play newscasts reporting the incident matter-of-factly, intermixed with the noise of commercials. The film won a slew of academy awards. It was considered groundbreaking in its time, but it turned out to be shockingly prescient, considering that we didn’t dream that media featuring the likes of Howard Stern, Don Imus, Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh could ever become reality. Those of us raised on the journalism of Eric Severeid and Walter Cronkite find it hard to understand that we would have to rely on Court Jester John Stewart, interviewing CNBC’s Jim Cramer, to provide the defining journalistic moment of the current financial meltdown. The budding ecology movement and problems of economic justice of 1976 seem almost quaint next to the environmental and economic crises facing the world today. The state of the planet today gives Jesus’ anger in the Temple real piquancy.
This week’s gospel gives us a fascinating glimpse of a different facet of Jesus, one that may give us pause, but which may also give us a certain inspiration. The story of Jesus’ rampage in the temple appears in all the gospels. In all but John, it comes at the end of the story, when Jesus enters Jerusalem before being crucified. One can imagine Jesus being a bit edgy at this point in his ministry. John places the event at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Shortly after baptism, and right after the wedding at Cana, he flies into a rage and trashes the forecourt of the Temple. The placement of this event at the end of Jesus’ ministry in proximity to his death in a sense softens the event, while placing it at the beginning places source of the anger in high relief. We are invited to consider the message that Jesus sent with his anger as being part and parcel of his teaching throughout his ministry, not just a dramatic one-off under stress at the end. Sometimes when reading the gospels, it is hard to understand how what Jesus was doing scared the agents of Empire so much that they found his death to be a necessity. Imagining the message exemplified by his acts in the temple as a continuous thread in his teaching makes it clear: his message was an unambiguous challenge to the established order of things. He had to go.
So. Instead of asking WWJD, “what would Jesus do,” our question for today is “What would Jesus be furious about?” which is where it gets interesting.
Today, our Older Testament lesson highlighted the core of the Mosaic law, the ten commandments. Jesus didn’t enter the temple raging about the ten commandments, attacking thieves for stealing, adulterers for their fornicating, soldiers for their violence, or children for dishonoring their parents. No, Jesus storms into the temple, whip in hand, and crashes about denouncing, well, denouncing the religious for the economics of their religiocity.
The temple was the place where people went to worship, to experience their relationship with God. And Jesus enters the temple at the Passover, a time of critical religious observance. The temple functionaries, from the high priest right down to the lowliest cleaner-up of pigeon guano were all really there for the same reason: to meet the needs of the worshipers, to help people with their worship. You couldn’t put Roman coins in the temple offering box, it had to be Jerusalem shekels, so if you came from out of town you needed to deal with the money changers. (and of course, the many who had no coins at all couldn’t even enter.) But, the tables of the moneychangers provided a needed service. If you wanted to offer God an unblemished lamb or a bullock or a turtledove, as scripture required, you had to buy one- it made sense to have the livestock traders handy. All could be justified as necessary, as providing a service, helping people worship God appropriately.
Ouch! This is Jesus turning over my table. This is not somebody else’s problem, this is us. This is Jesus banging in here, kicking this pulpit over, tipping over the font, and flinging our Book of Common Prayer out the window. Jesus is mad about the way we try to domesticate God, the way confine our faith to church, and turn church activities into another item on our “to do” list between grocery shopping, servicing our car and pilates. He is appalled that the God of love, compassion and power beyond imagining, is diminished to the level of a business transaction. Vending machine faith: put a little money in this slot, and we’ll dispense a little dose of the divine to make you feel good. We come into the faith service-center empty on Sunday, and get topped up with enough energy and inspiration to make it through the week. Are clergy just dispensers of a product, hawking the wares, trying to keep up the market share for a particular brand while offering you something you are looking for? We’re all complicit in the transaction.
I see this so clearly in myself. I hunger for an meaningful encounter with the Holy Awesome God of the Universe, but when the rubber hits the road I find myself disturbingly ready to preach about a “three point plan for spiritual wellness” that offers to help us “touch base with our spirituality.” Not to plunge headlong into it, or abandon myself to the God of the burning bush, or, for that matter, take sides with the one who bursts into the church, whip in hand, overturning tables and driving confused animals up the aisles.
Which brings me to the ten commandments. God’s covenant with humankind was not given to us because the commandments are the most reliable means to help us get what we want to satisfy our own selfish desires. They are intended to expose our weakness, to remake us into God’s people, dedicated to make God’s vision for humanity a reality.
Jesus is not a very satisfying guru for those who are after nice, acceptable, feel-good religion. What we are called to do as Christians is to hand ourselves over, body and soul, to the God of the Universe, to the often frightening and all-consuming God, the one who calls us to ultimate table fellowship through his Son, to turn the mercantile vision of the world of scarcity into one of radical abundance for all people. This is a table to approach with reverence and awe, not with a mere nod of familiarity. When we ask God to pour out God’s holy spirit on the bread and wine we share, and to pour it out on us that we may be the body of Christ, just what do we think we are asking for? Do we just mouth it without seriously considering the implications? Do we really want that Holy Spirit to infect us? If the Spirit does come to us in all-consuming fire and motivate us to be Christ in the world, there is no turning back. All our worries about whether to pursue a master’s degree or a doctorate, whether we can afford a new car, or whether to seek a new boyfriend or girlfriend or a new job pale in comparison. The personal implications of the economic crises on our own 401(k) are minimal in comparison with the havoc being wreaked on all of creation by the forces of empire and shortsighted economics of scarcity and greed.
Looking around the world today, reading the papers, seeing the newscasts, we should be mad as hell, but that righteous anger has been trained out of us. Jesus’ example in the temple is thus an important example. And expressing such righteous anger, speaking truth to power, can be unpleasant, but it is utterly necessary. As Jon Stewart said at the end of his interview of Cramer: “I hope that was as uncomfortable to watch as it was to do.”
We complain about inequality and financial rapaciousness, about global warming and economic meltdown, but we must fact the fact that the forces shaping these problems are selling to us what we ask for. We can’t respond to the enormous problems facing us by saying “Oh dear, how dreadful, but what can I do?” We need to get good and angry, and then use that anger, in a loving way, to effect change. Anger may help us expose and express the wrongs around us, but anger is not how we solve them. Jesus makes our job tougher: we must eschew violence, we must love the opposition, and try to love a new world into being. Ultimate love, not ultimate fighting.
When we pass the Eucharistic bread, it is really like passing a live hand grenade, because if its transforming power really takes we must say goodbye forever to our wan and sensible religion. When you hold the bread in your hands, you are holding the most volatile and mysterious power in the universe. And you can’t take that lightly, because if your hands become the hands of Christ, they could find themselves doing amazing, life-changing things.
Before us is a God who offers everything, who sacrifices everything~ but God will crash the tables over rather than accept less in return. Are we ready? As Christians we are called to be angry about what Jesus would be angry about, and to do something about it. And the way to act lies not in mimicking the violence of the powerful, but through love and sacrifice, shown to us in the ultimate form on the cross.
Amen.
The Rev. Colleen K. Sterne
March 15, 2009 (3 Lent, Year B) St. Michael’s
Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2: 13-22
