Trusting Jesus

         Imagine that a nice cross-section of present-day Christian disciples were sharing a meal with Jesus on the night before his crucifixion. Jesus, of course, knows that he is going to die, but imagine that the liberal and conservative and moderate Baptists, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Methodists, and so on who are gathered around the table do not have a clue what is going to happen. First, Jesus shocks everyone by washing their feet like a slave would have done. When he reports that one of them is going to betray him and that another will deny him three times, they begin to eye one another, and themselves, with suspicion. Then Jesus adds fuel to the fire by telling everyone that he is going away, and that he is going somewhere that they cannot come. Can you imagine the fear, and mistrust, and confusion that reigns in this group? Jesus’ heart is breaking as he watches their pain and grief. He tries to comfort them, to tell them that he isn’t leaving them alone, that he loves them and will be back for them, and that they will still be together. But we don’t understand.

          As murmurs rumble around the table, one of the really devout and more concrete-minded disciples cries, “Now, Jesus, you had me worried there for a minute, but I have an idea. Since you are going to be leaving us, we need to keep order here on earth, so we just need to know exactly when you are coming back for us--I mean for the ones of us, that is, who are your true followers, not for the betraying and denying ones.” He then pauses to give a meaningful glare around the table before he continues to explain, with great hopefulness in his voice, “Look, I’ve been doing some math here on my napkin, and I figure that if we take the date of Noah’s flood and add 7000 years and then divide it all by 10 and multiply by 500, and then add some more numbers, then we can be looking for you to come back for us on … say, May 21, 2011 ….”

Before Jesus can answer, one of the more liberal of his disciples interrupts, “What silliness! Just calm down and pass the potatoes over this way. We know that Jesus loves us—all of us—and that’s all that matters. Let’s just enjoy our meal and then we can go outside and leave what we don’t want for the beggars. We can sing some songs and set up some non-profits while we wait for Jesus to come back. That’s all you expect us to do, right, Jesus?” The liberal disciple looks at the worried faces of his friends gathered around him and whispers to them: “Relax. It doesn’t matter what you really think about Jesus, guys; when he’s gone, we just need to live the compassionate lives that he taught us about.”

Jesus stands up and replies, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. You think that you can do it all on your own, but none of you comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. In the way that I lived and in the way that I will die, you will know who God is and what God wants from you.”

“Ha, just as I thought!” cries the conservative one. If people don’t agree with what we believe about God, then they are going to burn in hell for all eternity! It says right here in scripture that God is an Almighty Judge, and he is going to roast all of the evil-doers! We are Jesus’ disciples, right, so we are the ones who know God. We just need to write down and preach with conviction what we know, and the people who are saved will sign off on it. That way we’ll know exactly who is with us while we are waiting for Jesus to come back.”

Jesus sighs and shakes his head sadly. “Have I been with you all this time, and still you do not know me?” he asks. “Have you not seen me eat with sinners, welcome tax collectors and prostitutes, touch the unclean, and call the little children to me? Have you not heard me when I tell you that the single new commandment that I have for you is that you love one another? Trust me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then trust me because of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, the one who trusts in me will also do the loving, healing works that I do and, in fact will do greater works than these.”

Yes, when faced with the question of how to live together as Christians in this world, how to follow a Lord who now loves us, unseen, from the right hand of God, we modern disciples don’t “get it” any better than the twelve did as they ate their last meal with Jesus. The words of our Gospel that we read today are Jesus’ words of comfort to us.[1] They are loving words that are meant to console us in his absence, to invite us to trust him, to encourage us to follow him in his dying and rising just as we followed him in his living and teaching. He wants to reassure us that we have seen God’s love for us in his life and works and that we can therefore trust God to bring us safely into the future, no matter how difficult or frightening our world may seem.

But what do we do? We turn this passage into what one scholar describes as “proof positive that Christians have the corner on God and that people of any and all other faiths are condemned.” Or else we just turn away from John’s Gospel all together, taking it upon ourselves to cut out a part of Holy Scripture just because we decide that it sounds too “exclusionary and narrow-minded”[2] for our sensibilities. Poor Rob Bell, the pastor of a rather evangelical megachurch in Michigan, has most recently made the news for writing a book entitled Love Wins, in which he takes issue with an interpretation of our Gospel that might lead us to condemn someone like Mahatma Gandhi to hell. While I have not yet read Bell’s book, and do not yet know whether I agree with his theology, I can say that his challenge to us to leave the judging to our generous, loving, and mysterious God is one that we should consider. I was waiting in line in the ladies’ room of a Mississippi rest-stop earlier this spring, during our Youth Mission Trip, when a large group of teens came in. I heard them talking about being on a mission trip to the Gulf Coast, too, and I asked them where they were from. A couple of girls looked at each other with hesitation. “Um, we’re, um, from a church called Mars Hill, in Michigan.  You, um, might, um, know about our pastor, Rob Bell? He’s the one who’s in trouble….” she stammered. I had indeed heard of Bell, both for some excellent youth videos that he has made and for the controversial book. “Oh, I’m OK with your pastor,” I said, as a look of relief and disbelief spread over the girls’ faces. “Really?” they asked, “so many people don’t like us now.”

When a group of teenagers from a dynamic church, traveling to spend their spring break building houses for the poor in Mississippi, are afraid of condemnation from an Episcopal priest in a ladies’ bathroom, something is wrong. What happened to the love and promise in Jesus’ voice? What happened to our trust in him, to our trust in God, to our trust that God—not us—is in control?

Here’s another story to shake our heads over on this weekend in which some Christians say that the world will end: There is a house in Tennessee called, “Armageddon House” or “Millenium Manor.” Seriously. In 1939, the builder of the house was convinced that judgment day, the end of the world, would be a certain date in 1969. So he started building a house out of stone, believing that it could withstand the earthquakes and volcanoes and other disasters that some believe will befall us in the End Times. The sturdy house has few windows, and a basement dungeon, and it is rumored that the man’s wife’s body is entombed within the walls. The news report states that the present owner is feeling quite secure this weekend, even if the world is supposed to end.

While we are building literal--and metaphorical--sturdy stone houses in which to hide ourselves, Jesus says, “in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places,” many places to abide in God, to be in deep relationship with God. If only, says Jesus, just a little bit later on, if only you could trust me, and be in deep relationship with each other, as well.

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[1] Nanette Sawyer, http://christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2008-04/how-do-i-love-thee.

[2] Kate Huey, http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/may-22-0``-fifth-sunday-1.html.

Through the Gate

         In Israel, if you climb up on a high place and look out over the Judean Hills, that biblical home of sheep and shepherds, you see waves of brown, arid hills rising and falling for miles, like sand dunes on a windswept beach. Farms and villages lie far apart, scattered across these rugged, flowing hills as if they had once been dropped there accidentally by armies of angels on the run. While Israeli settlements tend to be wrapped in fearsome barbed wire, and Palestinian villages are encased in ancient stone walls, shepherds and their sheep still pick their way over the hills and valleys. Shepherds must lead their flocks around the obstacles of rocks, walls, and disputed property lines, as the sheep somehow feed on the microscopic bits of green vegetation scattered in dry, rocky soil. One can imagine the ease with which a sheep could get lost or hungry in such a landscape. We identify with these sheep, I believe--with these little lambs wandering along barriers and through a wide sea of scarcity. When our political leaders disappoint us or our social networks fail us or our loved ones let us down, don’t we long for someone strong to step in and bind up our wounds and feed us? When we obstinately wander off down paths that lead to dead ends, when we find ourselves stalked by wolves or caught with a lame leg in a briar patch, don’t we wish for a good shepherd to swoop down and scoop us up in saving arms? Don’t we want to be led by someone who knows what they’re doing, by someone who can take us directly to those green pastures and still waters? We may not know much about sheep, but we know what it means to be cared for, to be fed and carried and rescued when we go astray. When we hear, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” we feel peace descending upon our souls, even in times of pain and grief. When we hear, “The King of Love my shepherd is,” we curl up contentedly within the words of the well-known hymn, secure in the knowledge that, “I nothing lack if I am his and he is mine forever.”  The image of God as our shepherd brings with it a feeling of security, tender-loving care, and the close community of a well-tended flock.

          In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.” Jesus understands that a good shepherd knows his sheep, that he has a deep bond with them, loving them as individuals, rather than counting them as commodities. But the good shepherd that Jesus portrays in our Gospel is not just a good leader and a bearer of security and comfortable community. Jesus is a shepherd so closely bound to his flock in love that he lays down his own life for them on the Cross. Moreover, before Jesus calls himself “the good shepherd” in v. 11, he says in our passage, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.” A gate?! A gate doesn’t gather us up into loving arms and carry us to safety!  A gate doesn’t feed us or search for us when we are lost! A gate does not die in order to save us. Even worse, a gate can close and be locked against us.

          A gate, however, is a doorway into and out of community. It is the threshold between the safety of home and the beckoning world. In Jesus, we have a home and a mission. Jesus says, “whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in, and go out and find pasture.” We will come in and we will go out. Jesus leads us out into the world to do the difficult things that we are called to do, and Jesus leads us back into the worshipping community, into the security of our cozy flock. Life within the limits of the sheepfold, no matter how comfortable, is not “abundant life.” Life in fear and exile, cut off from any home, is not “abundant life,” either. In order to have the rich, deep kind of life that God wants for us, we need a way out of the bleating huddle, and we need someone to lead us down those paths of righteousness that we cannot find on our own. In the Gospels, Jesus is the gate not just to green pastures and still waters. Jesus is the gate to righteousness and to self-giving love. Jesus is the gate that opens toward the valley of the shadow of death and toward the Cross.

          The trouble with the gate imagery is that, rather than seeing the gate as a necessary passage, we tend to see it as a door that excludes some of us from the presence of God. “See,” we shout at each other from across fences, “I am in here with the shepherd, and you are stuck outside.” I’m not sure that the image is so clear-cut, however. It is not the gate itself that keeps the sheep from following their shepherd; their ability to follow depends on whether or not they recognize their shepherd’s voice as he calls to them. In our Easter Gospel, also from John, Mary Magdalene first recognizes the risen Christ when he calls her by name. “Mary,” says the strange gardener to the frightened, grieving disciple. And suddenly Mary knows her Lord, and despair gives way to joy.

          One of my favorite stories about the power of names and calling is the story of the famous Rabbi Yahuda ben Bezalel.[1] Rabbi Yahuda, a famous scholar and inventor, had a dream. He dreamed that he died, and as he approached the throne of God in heaven, he wondered if his name was written in the book of those who would share in God’s eternal kingdom. He introduced himself to the angel of the Lord as Rabbi Yehuda ben Bezalel, famous inventor, and asked the angel holding the great book of life to search for his name. The angel began reading out from the great book all the names of those who had died that day, and the rabbi watched soul after soul get up and be admitted before God’s throne in response. When the angel had finished reading, the rabbi began to weep, for he had not heard his own name. Filled with the injustice of it all, he cried out, “Why didn’t you call my name? What have I done wrong? Why did all of these people get in, while I am excluded?” The angel calmly replied, however, that the rabbi’s name had most definitely already been called, for everyone’s names are inscribed in God’s book. The problem is that many people never hear their true names during their lifetimes. They think that they know their names, but since they have never heard their real names, they do not recognize them when they are called. These people must stand before the throne until they hear their names and know them. After hearing this truth, the rabbi awoke from his dream and prayed that he might be granted just once to hear his true name from the lips of his brothers and sisters before he died.

          Like the angel in the story, Jesus calls out to each of his sheep. Like the rabbi, however, we have to respond to the name that we hear. We have to be prepared that we are going to hear a name that marks us as a child of God. As Rowan Williams says, it is going to be a name that is “our particular way of playing back to God his self-sharing, self-losing care and compassion.”[2] God not only cares for the sheep, God expects God’s sheep to care for each other in the same way. We know that wherever we go, our shepherd can see beneath meaningless titles and protective masks, and that he leads us in and out, in and out, calling out to us a name shimmering with love and so valuable to him that he shed his own blood that we might hear it. Like newborn babies who automatically turn their heads toward their parents’ voices, we know the voice of our Creator. Our prayer must be that we will know our true selves well enough to answer his call. As we recite at Morning Prayer, “He is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Oh, that today we might hearken to his voice.”

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[1] As told by Rowan Williams in A Ray of Darkness, 152.

[2] Ibid., 150.

Discussions on the journey

         And Jesus said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”

Well, the disciples in our reading were discussing the terrible, awful state of things since Jesus’ crucifixion. Even though Jesus had already appeared to the women at the tomb, the disciples were walking along the road, kicking at the dust and wringing their hands over the hopelessness of their situation. “We had hoped that Jesus was the One. We thought that he would send the Romans packing, that he would restore a King to Israel, but we must have been mistaken,” they mumbled. “Instead, they killed him, and we are alone. Now what are we supposed to do?” they sighed.

Christ is risen, death has been defeated, sin counts no more …. and yet Jesus’ followers are trudging along, miserable and overwhelmed. “How could they be so blind?” we wonder from our 21^st century perches. “Don’t they realize that everything has changed? Why don’t they recognize Jesus at first? Why do they still hang on to their old ideas about what the Messiah is supposed to do, about how God is supposed to react?”

But don’t we do the same thing? If Jesus were to come to us as we make our way on our faith journey and to ask us the same innocent-sounding question: “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” … What would we answer? Let’s see, we clergy would surely be fretting over the shrinking number of people in the pews on Sunday. Vestry members might recount the agenda for the Vestry meeting tomorrow: approval of last month’s minutes, reports on leadership group meetings, discussion of new air vents in the roof, some hand- wringing over pledges that haven’t been turned in yet. Away from church, out on the street, we might respond like Friday’s editorial in the Courier Journal, lamenting our “homes with underwater mortgages… cars that require a mortgage to fill with fuel …and an economic recovery that feels more like a lingering flu … ”[1] If Jesus stopped by at coffee hour, he might find us worrying about the lines for Mothers’ Day Brunch? Or lamenting how we almost had a Derby winner? Or we might just be complaining loudly about all this rain. There are any number of reasons why God, or life, or our spouse, or our child, or our friend, don’t live up to the expectations or projections that we have for them. While I’d like to think that our parish conversation with one another would reflect the Good News of Easter better than the disciples’ conversation did, I’m not sure that, on this third Sunday of Easter, we are not shuffling along like the disciples, acting quite unconvinced that the Resurrection has fundamentally changed our world.

The disciples’ conversation changes only when they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Bread, of course, is a comfort food that must be broken or cut in order to be shared. If I tossed a loaf of bread to a couple of dogs, a huge fight would ensue, because they couldn’t all possess the whole loaf at once. The dog who got it first would growl and try to pull the whole thing away from the others, gobbling it as fast as he could so that the others wouldn’t get any. Contrast that image with that of a small child solemnly holding out her soggy piece of slobbered on bread so that we can have a taste. Jesus breaks the bread with the love and generosity of that small child. He takes it into his hands and blesses it before ripping it in pieces, like his body, and pressing it into their open hands.

My worst moment as a priest was the Good Friday that we ran out of bread. We Episcopalians do not bless bread on Good Friday, of course, the day that Jesus hangs on the Cross. If we are to serve communion, we can only use the bread and wine that have been blessed the day before, on Maundy Thursday. On this particular Good Friday, we had an unexpectedly large number of people attend the 6 p.m. service, and there wasn’t enough left-over bread to go around. I watched my parishioners line up at the Altar Rail, palms open, heads tilted up expectantly. I wanted to be able to answer their kneeling vulnerability with the usual strong and comforting words:  “The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.” The familiar words danced silently in the air between us, but there was no bread. At first, I  frantically broke the tiny wafers into halves and then into fourths, but soon I could only pass by the cupped, empty hands—and shrug. It was horrible. I’m sure the parishioners understood what had happened, but it became clear to me at that moment that the bread of the Eucharist is something that should NEVER run out. It represents a love that never dies, a giving that never ceases, an abundance that never dries up. The problem is that we live in a world in which love does die, giving is not always generous, and scarcity is all too frequent. We expect things to run out, and our conversations reflect that expectation. We expect to get hurt. We expect to get passed over in line. Journeying to the table, we don’t dare expect too much from Jesus, either. “That’s OK, Jesus,” we say. “I don’t deserve your bread, anyway. That’s OK if you run out. I don’t really need it. I betrayed you, handed you over to die. It’s OK—you can pass me by.” But Jesus doesn’t seem to hear our protests; Jesus comes to us every time and breaks bread with us, again and again. In the broken and shared bread of the Eucharist, we recognize the depth of Christ’s love for us—love that accepts us as we are, love that feeds us no matter what we have done or left undone, love that never runs out.

There is something about seeing our own lives as a gift from God, isn’t there, that suddenly helps us to see the rest of the world that way, too? When we know that God has accepted us, flaws and all, the flaws of our neighbor seem less important. When we feel God’s eternal love pouring over us, then we are suddenly more able to take Peter’s advice to “love one another deeply from the heart.” In the movie, Babette’s Feast, a stranger arrives in a small Norwegian village where the day to day conversations are full of boring routine, malicious gossip, and small-town quarreling. After 14 years in the village, the stranger wins a lottery prize of 10,000 francs and, before she is to leave the village with her money, she invites all of the townspeople to a magnificent farewell feast, an incredibly rich and abundant feast unlike anything that the penny-pinching villagers have ever seen or tasted. As they eat, their conversation changes. Old enemies lick their fingers and forgive one another of ancient grudges; neighbors begin to speak the truth to one another; others confess love that they have hidden for a lifetime. And then it turns out that Babette, the mysterious stranger, will not be leaving after all, for she has spent all of her money on the conversation- changing, life-transforming feast for her neighbors.

It is in feasting together on God’s love from God’s hand, over and over again, that we learn who we really are. And that knowledge is what transforms us, slowly, from within. There is an invitation to communion that goes, “Come to the table of Christ, not because you are perfect, but because you are loved; not because you have arrived, but because God is with you on the journey.”[2] On that journey, then, in all of our conversations, may we “go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.”

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[1] Michael Gerson, “New Hampshire Tea Leaves,” in The Courier Journal, May 6, 2011, A9.

[2] Transforming Stewardship, 154.

The Inspector

       Right before I sat down to write my sermon for today, I was having my new house inspected. I followed the inspector around as he poked and prodded, his eyes sharp with seeing, his hand quickly recording his findings in a tiny notebook. He shone his flashlight into dark places and measured currants and gases that were invisible to the naked eye. He even took photos of problem areas in order to have a visual record of what he saw. Consulting his checklist, he gathered information on all that lay beneath the surface of my new home. A home inspector needs to be a down-to-earth, practical-minded person—someone who takes careful measurements and who knows the realistic consequences of what is concealed. The apostle Thomas would have made a good home-inspector, I think: practical, questioning, probing the surface of things. In the 14^th chapter of John, when Jesus started talking what must have sounded like nonsense about going on some strange new journey, Thomas was the only disciple to speak up and say, “Wait, Lord, we don’t have the slightest idea what you are talking about.” Then later, in today’s Gospel, while all of the other disciples were holed up in a room together, quaking in fear, lest they be persecuted as the followers of a crucified blasphemer, Thomas was the only one who was out and about, getting on with daily life, putting one foot in front of the other, not letting his imagination run away with him. And then Thomas, of course, was the disciple who refused to take his friends’ word about the presence of the risen Christ in their midst. He was adamant about first receiving evidence that he could touch, and feel, and inspect.

          There is some of the inspector Thomas in all of us, I think. If only we could check out our faith before buying it! If only we could go down a check-list that would lead us to know what is from God and what is from our own imaginations. If only we could understand the workings of the unseen, could shine a giant flashlight into the dark, incomprehensible places. If only we could take clear pictures for ourselves, without having to go through the uncertain steps of interpreting someone else’s revelation. If we don’t buy a house without inspecting it, why must we have to invest our whole lives in the Unknown?

          Those of us who become theologians are often what psychologists call “intuitive introverts.” I, for example, can walk by a huge hole in the church wall for a week and not notice that it is there. After I had been at St. Mark’s for two years, someone asked me something about the towering flag pole in front of the church. “Flag pole? Do we have a flag pole?” I exclaimed! I would make a terrible home inspector, but I can tell when people are hurting inside, and I can love to spend quiet time thinking about things we cannot see. When we draw sharp lines between the “mystery of God” and the more hands-on ways that we explore the rest of the world, however, we tend to sound as though we people of faith are taking the easy way out. To get back to my original metaphor, a home inspector who put on a blindfold before every inspection would not retain many clients. Even those of us who are “intuitive introverts” have something to learn from Thomas the Inspector.

          Our Gospel for today does not condemn Thomas for his questioning, probing spirit. Jesus does not come to him and berate him in front of the others for his bold declaration that he will not believe without empirical proof. Jesus comes to him and offers him exactly what he demands. “Put your finger here and see my hands, Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” The interesting thing for us to note is that Thomas does not do it. As soon as Jesus stands in front of him, instead of touching Jesus’ wounds, Thomas cries out, “My Lord and my God!” And here exactly is the point: Christian faith follows neither from a neatly checked-off inspection list nor from blind acceptance of someone else’s stories. Having faith does not mean turning off one’s brain or sending all rational questioning flying out the window. But knowing God is more like making friends than it is like buying a house. Faith is only born out of an encounter with Jesus. When Jesus stands in front of us, we know it. When we are in the presence of God, our hearts leap. Faith, as one contemporary theologian writes, is “awe and trust in the presence of the holy.” [2] We cannot manufacture it ourselves or berate ourselves for the lack of it. If we are open to it, it wells up in us when we come face to face with the living God.

Since Jesus has now ascended to the Father, however, it is the “face to face” part that causes us 21^st century Christians difficulty. Thomas and his friends could see Jesus in his resurrected body. Our encounters with him are going to be of the Spirit. Christian Wiman writes that an encounter with the risen Christ is often not as difficult to find as we sometimes think. God is actually always present with us—we are often just too dispirited, too “lacking in the Spirit,” to feel God’s presence. He says, “To feel God … does not usually require that we renounce all worldly possessions … or give our lives over to some cause of social justice … or create some sort of sacred art, or begin spontaneously speaking in tongues. All too often the task to which we are called is simply to show a kindness to the irritating person in the cubicle next to us, say, or touch the face of a spouse from whom we ourselves have been long absent, letting grace wake love from our intense, self-enclosed sleep.”[3]

Our encounters also depend on the witness of the Gospel writers, on stories that have been written “so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.” We need to hear those stories not as recollections, not as somebody else’s memories, but as the way in which we are placed in Jesus’ presence. We need to pray for the grace to meet Jesus in the testimony of scripture, just as we pray to meet him in the Bread and Wine, and in one another.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” says Jesus to us here today. We need to hear that blessing pour over us today. We need to hear it, not as a reproach to Thomas, or as a reproach to us, but as Jesus’ benediction upon us, the disciples who must rely on Spirit and Testimony in order to follow him. I believe that Jesus would encourage us descendants of St. Thomas to proceed in all of our inspections following the advice of the poet Rilke, who writes:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Resolve to be always beginning—to be a beginner!”[4]

So: Poke around in the house, rattle the doorknobs, knock on the doors, peer into dark corners, take notes without ceasing—and relish the joy of exploration in the presence of our Loving God.

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[1] Robert Frost, “A Passing Glimpse,” quoted in The Christian Century, October 23, 2002 (10).

[2] Douglas John Hall, “Against Religion,” in The Christian Century, January 11, 2011 (33).

[3] Christian Wiman, “God is Not Beyond,” Christian Century, February 24, 2009 (22).

[4] Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters on Love.