Taking Lent Seriously

        Here we are again at the beginning of the great season of Lent, the yearly preparation for the magnificent feast of Easter, which this year comes on April 8.  This is the time of our year when we remember our sins, look for forgiveness and think for a while about what it means to live as Christians.

I have always been sensitive to the profound criticism of Christianity that it has created more carnage than it has prevented.  This is certainly true if you look at the trail that the faith blazed through the world after Constantine legitimized it in 325.  The cross went before the armies after that.  Papal sponsored crusades littered Jerusalem with Muslim bodies and many, many Christian martyrs were burned or beheaded because of their beliefs that somehow conflicted with the ruling monarch under whom they lived.   I think of William Tyndale who only wanted to translate the bible into a language that the people could understand, who was burned for his efforts. I don’t know what to do with all of the instances of chaos caused by religion, not the faith, except to acknowledge them and realize that keeping the peace on this earth is up to each of us, even in the face of rejection by the community in which we live.

Our political discussion about faith these days it seems to me is more about morals and accusations than it is about faith itself.   This latest brouhaha about contraception is an excellent example.   The bishops of the Roman Catholic church claim that the national health care program requiring contraception to be provided by the insurance companies representing faith organizations is evidence that the President is not operating as a faithful person.   I am generally appalled at the statements of these bishops and our political leaders who claim to be faithful people, but show in their politics and in their lives that they are anything but.   The Rev. Franklin Graham stated recently that he “isn’t sure” whether or not President Obama is or is not a Muslim.  That  has been refuted numbers of times, but it still comes up in this strange way in our political conversation.   Our presidents for quite some time now have always ended their addresses to the country with a strong “God bless the United States of America.”  Certainly that is a confession of faith, but it isn’t one that rings true to those who oppose our presidents politically.

I would love to see more faith oriented discussion in our political concourse.  If we had it, we would have more dialogue about our responsibility for the poor and the outcast among us.  We would spend much more time talking about those in terrible need and much less time worrying about how the rich get richer.  It really wouldn’t be hard to do this.  It would, of course, mean disappointing the “K” street lobbyists, and leaving behind some massive political contributions, but it would certainly be better for the country and for all of those who have been left behind in our economic woes of recent times.

It isn’t all misery either in our religion.  Christianity has been remarkably instrumental in creating many charities that take Jesus’ words seriously about taking care of the poor and the outcast.  Across denominational lines, wonderful things are being done to help people in dire need cope with the distress that has been produced in their lives.  I am in awe of the reading programs, the food distribution sites, the housing that has been created to care for the homeless.  All of this is generally done without requiring professions of faith as a cost to it.  It is done only because of the deep need that is evident in our communities.  More of this is what we all need, and more involvement by each of us in the work that so urgently needs to be done.

  This is what I am thinking of at the beginning of this season of Lent.  How do we let our faith set our agenda as people in our communities?  How do we help those in need rather than spend our time being critical of those in office who are trying as hard as they can to create an atmosphere where our help can be more useful.  May we come to our Easter this year more aware of how our faith impacts our surroundings so that we can find the risen Christ in our lives and see our Savior in the faces of the people whom we encounter every day.

What is the Transfiguration All About?

        When Rosie and I were in Galilee in 1981, we visited Mt. Tabor, which is supposedly the site of Jesus’ transfiguration.  The bus parked in the lot at the foot of the mountain and a team of five or six taxicabs driven by extremely manic Palestinians took us to the mountain top along a very windy road that looked to me like it was only one lane, except that we passed a couple of speeding taxis that were also coming down the mountain.  We were all terrified.  When we got to the top, we saw a beautiful basilica and a mountaintop that was shrouded in cloud.  I took a picture of this that hung in my office for many years.  There was a tour of German people in the basilica singing and their hymns added to the profoundly religious atmosphere that we found in that place.

I’ve always been struck by the story of the Transfiguration.  It seems to be such a wonder.  Jesus in prayer with Peter, James and John with the cloud coming down to cover them, Moses and Elijah showing themselves.   Peter (as always) speaking his mind:  Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah! and the Gospel of Mark goes on to say that he “didn’t know what to say, for they were terrified.”  Of course they were, and so would all of us have been, and they didn’t have Palestinian taxi drivers getting them to the top.  It is then that God’s voice speaks out of the cloud:  This is my Son, the Beloved.  Listen to him!  I’ve always wanted to preface that statement by God with a “shut up, Peter!”, but that seems to me to be a bit too obvious.

What do we make of this story.  Some scholars want to call it a misplaced resurrection appearance, but I think it has an authenticity much beyond that.  It appears in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, in pretty much the same form.  I suspect that Mark’s is the earliest and the others took it from Mark, but that isn’t important.  What I think is important is that all of these writers chose to include the story because is is an elegant prefiguring of the resurrection, somehow making wonderful sense out of the ministry of Jesus that to his disciples who were living in it, was an incredible mystery.  Jesus tells the three of his followers to “tell no one of this until after the resurrection”.  Did that sink in to them?  I suspect not at the time, but after Jesus rose from the dead, the three of them remembered that experience and talked about it openly.  That is how the story got into the Gospel and was handed down to all of us.  It is, I think, a valuable insight into the mind of our Lord and the way that his followers came to understand what he was about.

What the resurrection provides for all of us is certainty beyond the grave.  A knowledge that when we die, we will find ourselves in the presence of our God and will be cared for with his undying love.  It is a matter of faith and faith alone.  I can’t prove it in any way at all, except by listening to the words that Jesus gave us and the example that he set.  His resurrection is the conquest of death once and for all.  Hope in a life full of disappointment and ultimately death that gives us a unity with our Creator and an elegant possibility of seeing all of those whom we have loved in our lives again present before us, recreated in wholeness, the way that God intended for them from the beginning.

C. S. Lewis in his book The Great Divorce, talks about how busloads of people travel from the rainy city, which is his metaphor for hell, to heaven, where they meet many people.  Some of the travelers see some folks whom they don’t believe belong in heaven and so they get back on the bus to go back to hell, purely their own choice.  I think that is a wonderful description of our relationship with our God.  We have the choice always to remain with God, in all of our life, in the moments of our sins, even at the moment of our death.  But God never goes away and will always remain with us.  Those people who went back to hell were perfectly free to get back on the bus at another time to come back to heaven.

The prefiguring of the resurrection in the middle of Jesus’ ministry is an important reminder of where this all is going, and how our own lives are tied up in the Gospel.  Who of us hasn’t lost someone?   Our losses are a terrible grief and we live through them always with some kind of hope.  Our funeral services cry resurrection from their beginning to their end.  It is the essence of our faith.  Seeing our loved ones again in the pureness of God’s original creation is what we all long for.  Jesus’ resurrection promises that.  That is what the Transfiguration is all about and what it promises to the twelve and to all of us.

So How Do We Get Paid?

      The super bowl is over and the New York Giants are the champions of the National Football League.  The season is over until late August and we all need to get on to other things.  I thought that it was a wonderful game, a close game that could have gone either way.   There were some great plays and also some terrible mistakes.  I was astounded by the safety on the first play from scrimmage when Tom Brady threw the ball away from the end zone and gave the Giants two points.  It was also thrilling to see Mario Manningham’s miraculous catch of Eli Manning’s pass on the sidelines that brought the Giants to the fifty yard line.  That is the way that all games go, whether normal league games or the ones for the Lombardi Trophy.  There will be endless chatter about who could have done what and didn’t, or what a great play so and so made, but in the long run none of it matters.  The players and the coaches pocket their winnings and we go on with our lives.  I was somewhat amazed at the price of Super bowl tickets this year.  They were somewhat north of two-thousand dollars, without scalpers.  They were certainly out of my price range.

Clergy don’t make a whole lot of money.  Rosie and I have been comfortable in our work.  We have had excellent parishes who took good care of us, but we certainly didn’t get rich in the process.  I have loved working with all sorts and conditions of people and have received considerably more than I have given.  I still love to preach and teach and I am more than thankful when I see that those efforts produce fruit.

I am touched by the story in Mark’s gospel about the leper coming to Jesus and saying to him, If you choose, you can make me clean.  Jesus says back to him, I do choose. Be made clean!  There is no quid pro quo here, Jesus heals the leper because he is sick and needs the touch of God to be made whole.  He doesn’t even do it to make a believer out of the leper.  The whole story is the man’s sickness and Jesus’ ability to make him clean; but when I look closely at the story in Mark, there is indeed a price:  Jesus told the leper to tell no one about his healing, to go to the priest and offer the testimony that Moses commanded.  The Gospel says that the man didn’t do that, that instead he spread the story openly so that Jesus couldn’t go anywhere without people flocking to him, so he stayed out in the countryside.  Jesus got no payment for his work.   I doubt if Jesus could have afforded to go to a Super bowl game.  

I certainly understand the way that the leper felt.  If I had been healed of that heinous disease by Jesus, I think that I would have told everyone also.  What a magnificent gift that healing was.

In Second Kings, there is the story of another healing.  The Syrian General Naaman comes to Elisha to be healed of his leprosy.  Elisha doesn’t even come out to talk to him but simply tells him to wash in the Jordan river and he will be healed.  This makes Naaman angry and he complains loudly.  His servants ask him that if he had been told to do something difficult that he would have done it, so why doesn’t he just do what Elisha tells him?  The great general washes in the Jordan and is healed.  Elisha refused payment for this.  Elisha’s servant Gehazi chased after Naaman and got payment from him and took it back to Elisha.  Elisha rebuked Gehazi and told him that because of what he did, the leprosy of Naaman would cling to him forever.  A rather harsh punishment for charging Naaman for his healing, but for Elisha, like Jesus, healing had no price.  It is interesting that Naaman went away from Elisha praising God and declaring that no God had power but the God of Israel.

Healing without price, preaching without price is what God requires of us.  No wonder clergy are not paid well.  Some of them don’t want to be paid at all, such is their faith.  The reward for what we do in the name of God is the bringing of the Kingdom of God into the world.   That, in reality is not the job of the clergy, but the job of the whole Christian community.  We all are the ones who are to heal and preach without price that God may be made known in all the world.  The way that God is made known is by the work that we all do with those who are without resource, whether it is through illness or poverty.  Those who have lost their homes or their health or food for their table are the ones to whom we are sent,  not to convert them, but to help them.  That is the message that we get from the gospels and from all of scripture.  When we forget that, the whole of the Christian message is lost.

With our work clear, we can get on with reaching into the places in our communities around us where our resources are needed and in that way be the people of God in a world that needs God’s touch very much.   Our God will certainly help us in this work.  It is the reason that we are called together in community to be the Church.