The Road to Emmaus

Luke 24: 13-35

May God be with you.
And also with you.
Let us pray.

Holy God. Holy and loving. Holy and eternal. We invite your Spirit to ignite our hearts that we may be as Christ to those we meet and that we might find within them your Christ, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and forever.
Amen.

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the main office at Marsh Chapel pursuing the never-ending quest to get the printer to do what I wanted when my friends Courtney and Steph came in. Others in the office were saying hello so I looked up and noted the two of them present. I had needed to speak with Courtney about a project we were both involved in and so launched directly into a conversation with her. As we wrapped up the conversation I became aware that something was not quite right. Suddenly, I realized that Steph had transferred back to her native California at the start of last fall and was only here in town to visit. I had not seen her since her visit six months prior, but her presence in the chapel felt so natural that the strangeness of her presence did not even register. When it finally did, I launched myself across the room shouting, “Steph!” and embraced her warmly. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, I was unable to recognize the strangeness of my friend’s presence.

If the disciples’ vision of their friend Jesus can be so obscured, and my vision of my friend Steph can be so obscured, how much more must my vision of Jesus be obscured? This question is often posed theologically as the scandal of particularity: how can a particular man in a particular time in a particular place be the savior of all the world in all times and in all places? Jesus was a particular man living at the particular time of 20 centuries ago in the particular place of Roman ruled Palestine and within the particular cultural milieu of oppressed and Hellenized Judaism. I am a white Anglo-Saxon Anglican religious living in 21st century Boston. Is it not more likely that I will ask the question posed of Jesus by the demon Legion, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” (Luke 8: 28).

Furthermore, we do not know Jesus directly. We only know Jesus in his particularity through a variety of authors who wrote out of their own particularity. These authors wrote at a somewhat later date away from the places these events actually occurred and with their own particular worldviews that led to their own particular ways of understanding the impact of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Luke was trying to help the early church understand her own experience by linking the law and the prophets through the proclamation of Jesus to that experience. For Luke, the tension between God’s purpose for the world and human rejection of that purpose is resolved in the person and work of Jesus through whom God’s purpose is achieved precisely by Jesus’ rejection. Luke expects that when his hearers understand this, their lives will be reshaped and oriented properly toward God and each other. Luke has a particular role in mind for Jesus and so tells the story with Jesus playing the prescribed part. Hear me saying here with Paul, “Now we see in a mirror, dimly.” (1 Corinthians 13: 12).

The life and meaning of Jesus ring down twenty centuries and across continents and oceans, passing through numerous theological, philosophical, cultural, social, psychological and political interpretations. Is it any wonder that Jesus, for many living in the 21st century, is little more than a faint echo amidst noisy gongs and clanging cymbals? (1 Corinthians 13: 1). We may know something of what the Gospel authors, Paul and other New Testament writers thought about Jesus, but how can we possibly be expected to answer Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” (Luke 9: 20).

Perhaps our problem in answering this question is that we have made Jesus too historical. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we are so concerned about the Jesus of the past that we overlook the Jesus of the present. In the Lindisfarne Community, our prayer is to be as Christ to those we meet and to find Christ within them. Our practice of mindfulness is meant to keep us attuned to the presence of Christ in our midst so as not to miss Christ in the people and the world around us. The stranger becomes the one who bears Christ to us as we bear Christ to the stranger in hospitality.

Fr. Henri Nouwen, or Saint Henri as we in the Lindisfarne Community call him, says this about the stranger:

And the stranger? Hasn’t he become a friend? He makes our hearts burn, he opens our eyes and ears. He is our companion on the journey! Home has become a good place for the friend to come. So they say, “It’s nearly evening, and the day is almost over … come and stay with us.” He doesn’t ask for an invitation. He doesn’t beg for a place to stay. In fact, he acts as if he wants to go on. But they insist that he come in; they even press him to stay with them…
“Be our guest,” they say. They want to be his hosts. They invite the stranger to lay aside his strangeness and become a friend to them. That’s what true hospitality is all about, to offer a safe place, where the stranger can become fried. There were two friends and a stranger. But now there are three friends, sharing the same table…
Jesus accepts the invitation to come into the home of his traveling companions, and he sits down at table with them. They offer him the place of honor. He is in the center. They are alongside him. They look at him. He looks at them. There is intimacy, friendship, community.

-Henri Nouwen. With Burning Hearts. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994). 66-7, 74, 77.

For Saint Henri, the invitation of the stranger is the means by which Jesus is made known.

This is all well and good for those who knew the resurrected Jesus. The question remains, however, how can we know Jesus now in a post-ascension world? Answering this question requires a more radical theology. It is true that we know Jesus in the stranger. However, that is not to say that every stranger is Jesus in a historical sense. Furthermore, we are called to be Christ to one another so that Jesus may be known in our communities and contexts. However, this is not to say that we should all embrace Christ complexes. On the one hand, it is almost impossible to read the Emmaus Road story without thinking of Matthew 25: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” On the other hand, it still seems inadequate to have something like Christ, but not Jesus Christ himself.

My friend Danielle wrote a book about her experience working with street children in Lima, Peru called Nothing but a Thief. In it she tells her stories of being Christ to those rejected by the world.

The first words out of Manzanita’s mouth told me that he had to go right now with the other boys to steal.
‘Wait for me,’ he told me.
‘Where? For how long?’ I asked, hurt.
He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘At the stadium?’ It was a Monday, and the kinds always met us on Monday afternoons at the stadium.
‘Fine. At the stadium, I’ll wait for you.’ As soon as I spoke, the boys were on their way, disappearing into another crowd. I watched Manzanita walk away until I could no longer see him. Tears burned my eyes. It hurt worse than if he had never come at all – to see him and then not to have him stay…
In the end I never met up with Manzanita…
As I waited for Manzanita, I wanted so much to show him love, to tell him that he was important to me, to provide a meal for him, and to allow him to escape life on the street for just a few hours. I would have continued to wait for him, over and over, because I love him. Manzanita was one of the reasons I returned to Peru after having left, and he was one of the kids I loved the most.

-Danielle Speakman. Nothing But a Thief: The Street and Her Children. (Kent, TN: Sovereign World, 2002), 58-9.

Being Christ to the stranger means becoming vulnerable like Christ to rejection by the very ones we are called to love. Danielle also tells stories of the children as Christ to her and to others. She tells the story of Mudo, a deaf-mute who was killed in a street fight.

In the paper, Mudo’s death gained the attention of the public in the heading: ‘The deaf-mute doesn’t even have a dog to bark for him.’ To the general public, Mudo was just another pirañita, lost in the throes of the violence that is sure to swallow those who live on the streets. But to the other street children, and to those of us who worked with Mudo, we’re proving wrong the headline. Mudo’s silent voice has persistently remained inside of those who knew him; many of whom have made it their purpose to give a voice to him and to other children like him.

-Danielle Speakman. Nothing But a Thief: The Street and Her Children. (Kent, TN: Sovereign World, 2002), 101-2.

Like Christ, Mudo was killed and the world hoped he would be forgotten, but instead he has inspired and eternally changed those he encountered in his short life.

For Danielle, it is clearly not the case that Mudo was something like Christ to her or that she desired to be something like Christ to Manzanita. Her theology is much more radical than that. She says, “We, to the world, must be the body of Christ. In the hope that hurting children will be able to start again, we must act as His body. In the hope for the children of these children – for Menudo’s children, we must be His body. We may be the only Jesus Christ the world will ever see” (Speakman, 180). We may be the only Jesus Christ the world will ever see. We must step out and become Christ for others because they may never know Jesus otherwise. We must risk letting others be Christ for us because knowing Jesus in this stranger may be our only chance.

Come, let us walk together on this road to Emmaus. Let us be Christ to those we meet, and let us find Christ within them. Amen.

Following the Lamb of God

First sermon prepared for the Rev. Dr. Dale P. Andrews, Introduction to Preaching

John 21: 15-19

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

Jesus is the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. When our sins are taken away, we are reconciled to Jesus. In being reconciled to Jesus, we are reconciled to God. Fr. Henri Nouwen, or St. Henri as we in the Lindisfarne Community call him, says the following about our reconciliation with God:

God desires communion: a unity that is vital and alive, an intimacy that comes from both sides, a bond that is truly mutual. Nothing forced or “willed,” but a communion freely offered and received. God goes all the way to make this communion possible. God becomes a child dependent on human care, a boy in need of guidance, a teacher searching for students, a prophet crying for followers, and, finally, a dead man pierced by a soldier’s lance and laid in a tomb. At the very end of the story, he stands there looking at us, asking with eyes full of tender expectation: ‘Do you love me?’ and again, ‘Do you love me?’ and a third time, ‘Do you love me?’
[Henri J.M. Nouwen. With Burning Hearts. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994). 87-8.]

It is a bit odd, is it not, to think of Jesus as waiting expectantly? It is especially odd in the Gospel According to John in which Jesus is most often depicted as the one who knows everything. It is odd to think of Jesus waiting in rapt anticipation, vulnerable to whatever answer may come to his open question.

It is as if Jesus has taken on the role of the stereotyped insecure woman from whom the stereotyped white male flees on Thursday night sitcoms when, in her insecurity, she says, “Lets talk about our relationship.” Like the stereotyped insecure woman, Jesus wants Peter to affirm their relationship. He begins by asking, “do you love me more than these,” indicating the nearby disciples, the boats and the fish? Do you love me more than other people? Do you love me more than your job? Do you love me more than your wealth? Do you love me more than the NCAA Basketball tournament you have been watching virtually non-stop for the past month?

There is a popular style of parenting, one aspect of which is that the parents consistently offer the child pairs of options. Do you prefer the red sweater or the green sweater? Do you want milk or juice? Do you want to read a story or listen to music? I was at the grocery store recently, browsing the tea shelves, when I observed a mother employing this parenting method with her young son. As they walked down the isle, she asked, “do you want spaghetti or ziti?” The child eagerly grasped the bag of ziti while the mother put the spaghetti back on the shelf. “Do you want plain sauce or spicy sauce?” The child reached for the jar with the bright red pepper on the front, but this time the mother wisely put the jar in the cart before replacing the plain sauce on the shelf. “Do you want ginger snaps or chocolate chip cookies?” The child started for a moment with wide eyes and an open mouth. Then, with a wide grin he reached out and pronounced, “Both!” His mother was visibly shocked; I’m not sure he had ever done that before. She said, “I think we’ll just get the ginger snaps,” as she replaced the chocolate chip cookies on the shelf.

When Jesus asks the question, “do you love me more than these?” he asks, “do you αγαπας me more than these?” When Peter answers, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you,” he says, “I φιλω you.” While αγαπη is often known as the particularly Christian form of love, here it seems to be the lesser. Here, αγαπη asks for a preference or estimation while φιλω responds with a deeper kind of passionate love. It is as if Jesus asked Peter to make a determination, them or me, but Peter is unwilling to submit to the binary distinction of preference. This is no longer the Peter who is unwilling to let Jesus wash his feet. This Peter has a deep and passionate love for Jesus, a friendship with Jesus, so much so that he is willing to have his feet washed and then join Jesus in washing the others’ feet. It is as if Peter startles Jesus by answering, “Both!”

But after Peter answers the first question, Jesus is still insecure. He is still not sure that Peter really means what he is saying. Jesus is not convinced that Peter really loves him and may even suspect that Peter is just saying that he loves Jesus so that he can get back to watching the game. It is as if Jesus asked Peter, “does this dress make me look fat?” and Peter answered, “yes, dear; oh! no, dear. No, certainly not.”

And so he asks again, do you love me? Notice that Jesus is no longer asking a comparative question. Peter had better take notice, because Jesus is looking for a deeper answer. Jesus does not want to know whether the dress makes him look fat or thin, he wants to know if he is beautiful. Jesus wants to know if Peter loves him. The distinction here is neither qualitative nor quantitative. Jesus wants to know if Peter loves him absolutely, fundamentally, and ultimately. Peter, are you oriented toward me from the first to the last, and not merely in the epilogue? Is your will stretched out to its utmost in search of me?

Of course, even this is not enough for Jesus. Peter answers again, but Jesus is still not satisfied so he asks for a third time. Jesus’ insecurity is starting to make Peter uncomfortable. “Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’” Nevertheless, Peter plays a very good stereotyped white male sitcom star and breaks out the flowery Victorian rhetoric to set Jesus at ease. “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” The first knowing in Peter’s unequivocal and final response is the same cognitive and subjective knowing of his previous answers. But the second knowing, “you know that I love you,” changes verbs and now seems to indicate a much deeper and profound knowing. Peter affirms that Jesus not only knows that Peter loves him superficially but that he knows that Peter loves him at the very ground of his being.

Is it possible that even here, even after the resurrection, Jesus the Christ is in need of confirmation? How can it be that God becomes this insecure and in need of such confirmation? How is it that God can be so vulnerable in asking an open question to which our response might be terribly wounding? Who is this God? And what happened to our sure, omniscient, dependable Jesus?

This is the Jesus who wants to be reconciled with us, but it would not be reconciliation if Jesus already knew the outcome. Jesus poses the question and then must stand there, waiting, arms open, terribly vulnerable, for us to walk into them and affirm the bond of love. Peter had betrayed Jesus, terribly, three times. Is it any wonder, then, that Jesus must ask repeatedly if Peter really loves him? And each time, Peter rises to the occasion, throwing off his unstable character and affirming that he does indeed love Jesus and is now ready to pursue the consequences of that love. Peter must affirm his love repeatedly following repeated offences. How many times must we affirm our love of Jesus? How many times have we betrayed him? Is it any wonder that Paul advises the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing? Rest assured that God always leaves the question open, is always waiting with open arms outstretched, for us to confirm that our love is yet deeper and yet wider and yet more profound. Be reconciled with Christ.

Of course, entering into a relationship of reconciled love with Christ is no time to rest on our laurels. Out of our continually renewed reconciliation with Christ comes a continually renewed charge to care for Jesus’ flock. Every time that Jesus asks us to confirm our loving relationship and we offer an abundant affirmation, Jesus goes on to command us: “Feed my lambs.” “Tend my sheep.” “Feed my sheep.”

This feeding, this tending, this caring for Jesus flock requires a twofold motion on our part. First it requires that we lay down our lives. If we are to pick up this new task, this new mission of caring for Jesus’ flock, we must lay down that which already preoccupies us. We must lay down our lives.

Jesus tells Peter, “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” Peter, apparently, was destined to lay down his life quite physically, quite carnally, quite fleshly. Peter was, in fact, to die. Peter’s manner of laying down his life was death.

This is what the Celtic saints called the red martyrdom, death on behalf of the faith, with its rather obvious allusion in the color of blood. Indeed, some today are still called to the red martyrdom. We need only think of some of the genocidal movements in these last decades: of the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, of the Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians in Yugoslavia. We need only think of the Latin American priests who were executed, often enough at their own altars, for standing up to tyrannical powers. We need only think of our own alumnus, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I will not tell his story because if you do not know it then the Boston University School of Theology is in a sad state indeed.

Most, hopefully all, of us are not called to the red martyrdom. Neither were many of the Celtic saints. And yet we, like they, are called to lay down our lives. The Celts described this laying down as the green and white martyrdoms. The green martyrs were those who rejected societal life and removed themselves to seclusion in order to study and contemplate. This was the Celtic monastic tradition. The white martyrs, on the other hand, accepted a voluntary exile, setting out in small boats with no means of navigation, wicker coracles, to be blown where the Spirit willed. These martyrs were the Celtic missionaries who laid down their lives for the sake of the realm of God.

We, too, are called to lay down our lives. We are sometimes called to reject life as our society and culture would have us live it. We are called to come apart for a time of study and contemplation; we call it seminary. We are called to leave our homes and our families and our friends to go somewhere we may not wish to go, (Boston is not home for everyone), on behalf of those we do not know and may not even like.

The belt has been fastened around out waists. For Peter, the person at the other end, taking him where he does not wish to go, by tradition is Rome. Like Jesus, by tradition Peter was crucified, although perhaps upside down. But I wonder if that is what Jesus meant. I wonder if instead it is not Jesus at the other end, fastening the belt around our waists, all the while saying “be reconciled. Trust me. Love me. Follow me.”

Yes, it is this final command that indicates that the care of Jesus’ flock is not simply about laying down our lives but also about taking up. We take up the command, or maybe it is more an offer, to follow Jesus. “Follow me.” Just as Jesus first called the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee so too we are called. “Follow me.”

This is not the “Follow me” that the church has often made it. It is not a “Follow me” that gives primacy to Peter. It does not give Peter the flock nor does it give Peter charge over the flock but instead it makes Peter the servant of the flock, tending and feeding the sheep and the lambs, and it even tells Peter how to do it, “follow me and I will show you how it is done.” This “Follow me” reserves the flock to Jesus and makes Peter sovereign over none and servant of all. Even as he takes up the invitation, “Follow me,” still yet he must lay down his life.

Neither is this a “Follow me” a once and for all time. On a cold December evening, the 4th of December 2003, I found myself kneeling on the floor of the Lindisfarne Community motherhouse in Ithaca, New York. A cold, silver chain was placed around my neck with the community cross dangling from it that had blessed at Eucharist the previous day. With the community laying hands upon me, +Andy, my abbot, read the following, “When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’” At the end of the reading, I was a novice in the Lindisfarne Community. It would be easy to think that joining a monastic order would be the end learning what Jesus’ means in saying, “Feed my lambs” and “Follow me.” It would be easy to think that being noviced, or even ordained, is a sign of achievement. They are not. They are merely signs of new life begun. They are present signs upon which to look back in seeking a direction for our constant conversion.

This “Follow me” is not what we expect. It is not the “follow me” the stereotypical white male sitcom star expects from his stereotypical insecure girlfriend after having the “lets talk about our relationship” discussion. Neither is it the “follow” me that the child in the grocery store ignores while staring transfixed at the candy in the checkout aisle. It is certainly not the “follow me” that Peter expects after reconciling with Jesus, having the manner of his death prophesied to his face.

Instead, this “follow me” defies all expectations. This is a “follow me” that will resound across continents and down twenty centuries. This is a “follow me” that is indicative of a faith that can move mountains. This “follow me” asks all that we have and promises more than we could ever imagine. This “follow me” is an invitation not only into the realm of God but to have a hand in growing the realm together with God. This “follow me” is offered by an insecure and vulnerable Jesus whose very insecurity and vulnerability are signs of the deep love and compassion that reconcile heaven with earth.

Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus is also the shepherd who entrusts the flock to our care. As the lamb, we are the shepherd who accompanies Jesus through insecurity and vulnerability to reconciliation. As the shepherd, Jesus accompanies us in our insecurity and vulnerability to reconciliation, and calls us to “feed my sheep,” laying down our lives, and “follow me,” learning to be shepherds and servants, one of another.

Ash Wednesday Message

1 Timothy 6: 6-19
Daniel 9: 3-6, 17-19

Today is the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. We receive ashes on our foreheads in the sign of the cross as a symbol of our penitence for our sins and of our frailty and vulnerability. It is a common practice in Lent for Christians to give up a favorite food or entertainment or other self-gratifying practice as a symbol of our identity with the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. Nevertheless, it is merely a symbol. I do not take symbolism lightly, as I understand symbols to be the primary means that we orient ourselves in proper relationship to God and creation, and so for me to say that lenten sacrifice is "merely a symbol" points to a reality yet more profound.

Indeed, I invite you today to another lenten discipline. I began this practice after M.P. Joseph informed those of us taking his "Contextual Theologies of the Third World" course that 33,000 people die every day of hunger. I had heard such statistics before, but for some reason it never stuck until M.P. said it. 33,000 people die each day of a predicament that is imminently curable. 33,000 people. And so every morning during morning prayer I pray for the 33,000 people who will die during the course of the coming day of hunger. And every evening during evening prayer I pray for the 33,000 people who have died over the course of the closing day of hunger. I invite you to join me in praying for these people. By the time we gather together on Sunday morning for worship 132,000 people will have died. By the time Easter rolls around and we celebrate the resurrection of Christ 1,320,000 people will have died. I should mention, while the church traditionally takes Sundays off from fasting, hunger is not so considerate.

We confess that we have no righteousness to present before God in supplication. Nevertheless, God's mercy is great. May this practice be for us an aid in the pursuit of righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. We who have food and clothing should be content with these in abundance but not in surplus. Perhaps this practice will bear fruit in us in the cultivation of a spirituality of "enoughness."

Sexual Identity

Some thoughts in response to the argument that homosexuality is bad if it results from nurture but may be all right if rooted in nature:

I'm not sure the nature/nurture distinction is really quite so distinct. Postmodern theorists would argue that all of reality is socially constructed, including sexual identity. While this seems to lead to a nurture viewpoint, it really is an ontological claim about all of reality. Our nature is that we are socially constructed. There is no tabula raza that constitutes our identity prior to whatever social, "nurturing," forces exert themselves upon it.

Now, I'm not entirely a postmodernist, but I don't need to be to escape the nature/nurture distinction. I just have to say that human sexuality is more complex than the binary between homosexual and heterosexual. Queer theology looks at Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and other queer identities. It's not even a linear spectrum; it's more like a color wheel, or better yet a sphere, with some people locating themselves in varying relations to all of the different factors. Research suggests that most "heterosexual" people have homoerotic thoughts at various points in their lives about people of the same sex. Similarly, "homosexual" people have heteroerotic thoughts about people of the opposite sex.

So, what then are we to make of this theologically? I would say that for most people, their human nature is to have some sort of place in the sexual identity sphere that is a mean value but that throughout their lives they will move around a bit within the sphere. This is how God created us and it is indeed good. This is our nature. Our nurture, our social construction, on the other hand, functions to sector off certain sectors of the sexual identity sphere as bad. Evolutionary psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt see this practice as part of human adaptive sensibilities to survive in a sometimes hostile world. Theologically, I would say that the human fall, sectoring off parts of the sexual identity sphere, is a result of and deeply interconnected with the fall of creation that makes creation sometimes hostile to human thriving. Salvation really is with Christ who reestablishes the full sexual identity sphere and overcomes the hostility between creation and human thriving, at least potentially. We are sinful, therefore, insofar as we continue to reject the careful balance inherent to the created world and reestablished by Christ and therefore also continue to reject the fullness of the sexual identity sphere.

This is not a judgment. It is a theological position. I've found it helpful. Perhaps others will too.

God calls us to unity through love for the sake of the world

A homily delivered at Morning Prayer, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Wednesday 7 February 2007.

Given the specialized track I have developed for my MDiv studies, ecumenical systematic theology, it should not be surprising that I chose today to be one of the three days I preach this semester when I saw the given readings from the daily lectionary for today. In the text from the Gospel according to John, we find Jesus at the end of a prayer that spans the whole chapter. The first five verses speak of glorification in eternal life. In verses 6-19, Jesus prays that the disciples will be united in the word shared among them and that God will protect them from the evil one who sets the world against them because of the word. In the pericope just heard, Jesus prays that those who will believe in the word shared among the disciples will be united. Notice, however, that the form of prayer Jesus is engaged in here is petition. Jesus is requesting that God ensure the unity. Jesus has shared the glory given to him with the disciples for this purpose and is now asking God to fulfill it.

What is the means by which God fulfills the unity of those gathered in the word? It is love. Love is a complicated word, often misused and abused. I do not want to try to sort all of that out here. But do realize that it is a special word. Notice here how it functions. In the 2 Chronicles text, when the temple of God is finished and all of the people of God have been gathered together into one body, praise is given “for God’s steadfast love endures forever.” The praise of God, the God of enduring love, is the glory of God which has filled the temple “so that the priests could not stand to minister.” Love is what brought the people together in unity. Back in the Gospel text, the love of God indwelling the disciples is the result of the name of God becoming known, a symbol of deep spiritual wisdom. It is not just any love, but the love with which God loved Jesus, and this love is itself Jesus in the disciples. This completes the cycle of indwelling started in verse 21: the Father is in Jesus, Jesus is in the Father, the disciples are in them and now they, Jesus and through Jesus the Father, are in the disciples. God fulfills the unity of the disciples, then and now, by drawing all together in the love of divine life.

Sadly, the Gospel text stops short of the inclusive message we have come to expect. The ecumenical movement loves this text because it binds together ecumenism and mission, or at least seems to. Really it does not. It only works if we read the “believing” of the world through the lens of the Reformation so that engendering belief that Jesus was sent by God is the missiological task with a salvific goal. Here, what is desired is not so much belief as we would think of it, but recognition. This is clearer in verse 23 where “know” is substituted for “believe.” The love that signals salvation in the Gospel of John is reserved to the disciples while recognition of that love in the disciples is the scrap left to the world without an invitation to participation. This great ecumenical text is not a call for mission but a perplexing and disheartening Christian triumphalism. It is a rejection of the world.

Surely this cannot be all? Surely it is not. In verse 20 Jesus prays “on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word.” Belief is not some cognitive assent with salvific effect, it is participation in the word shared by the disciples. Remembering the prologue to the Gospel of John, the word is the very participation in divine life, “the word was God.” The disciples, in whom God dwells and who dwell in God in love, extend the arms to those who recognize the divine love working in them. The word of the disciples is analogous to the Jesus the word of God, a dynamic principle working to bring the world into divine life. This is seen again in verse 26, and now the unity of the disciples in God and Jesus Christ is made manifest because Jesus will make the name of God known through the word of the disciples in verse 20. The prayer really is an ecumenical vision, but not one of reaching out to impose some cognitive uniformity. Instead, it is an ecumenism that gathers ever more diverse elements together in the temple in the presence of the glory of the loving God, and then, when the priests can no longer stand to minister, it opens the arms to more.

Intentionality After Life

We found out today that an undergraduate student committed suicide. Working here at Marsh Chapel, I am involved to a certain extent in the pastoral care of the campus following events such as these. Even as we go about the business of consoling bereft and grieving friends, relatives, classmates, professors and even those who never knew him but still feel the loss deeply, it is a reminder that we have failed to share the life-giving love of Christ as we ought.

My first move upon hearing the news was to look him up on Facebook. What a wonderful tool for ministry! There are two people who share this name here at Boston University. I should not be surprised; there are some thirty thousand students here. It is relatively easy to discern who it is because one is a graduate student. I hesitate, hovering over the appropriate link before clicking it. What would the profile of someone who commits suicide look like? I would expect it to have few friends, few pictures, few groups, few recent posts on the wall, few if any recent entries on the mini-feed. I would expect that the depression that leads to suicide would be reflected in a spare and bare profile. I click the link. I am surprised to find that, in fact, he had many friends, many photos, many groups, many recent posts on his wall, many recent entries on his mini-feed. The two most recent entries are new friends added. My heart pangs, wondering what it will feel like for that friend, also a BU student to learn of his death and to discover that she was the last friend added to his list. I scroll down and discover that he worked locally part-time. What will it be like for his coworkers to learn that he took his own life? I look at this list of "friends in other networks" and discover that he had two friends at my own alma mater. I click on the links to their profiles. They both arrived after I had already left. I can imagine them seeking out solace in the chapel where I used to worship. I realize that I am relating to this poor soul, and that I am relating to him because he is dead; I feel guilty for having failed to relate to him in life.

Tomorrow will be January 22, two years to the day that my friend Linda died. She did not commit suicide; she was murdered in her Baltimore apartment. I knew Linda through middle and high school, sharing in classes together, lunch, rides home. She was in charge of the flag squad that performed with the marching band at football games during her first two years and I was in the band. We were in the National and Math Honor Societies together. She had gone to Johns Hopkins University to study biomedical engineering and was a semester away from graduating. Her death was the advent of my experience with Facebook; I created an account so that I could see her face after she had died. We had lost touch somewhat after high school and I needed to reconnect, to re-relate. Two years later, I still mourn her death.

Last week I learned that the man who killed Linda plead guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. I am sure that for many this brings some sense of closure, but not for me. Closure is when the violence stops, when the death stops. Life in prison is not the death penalty, but in our society it is still a death. We lock away people who threaten the existence of our society and all too often we throw away the key. There is little attempt, if any, to bring healing to such people. There is certainly an intent to break off relationship. This is not courage, it is cowardice. Facing the villainy in others would mean facing the villainy in ourselves, something none of us is wont to do. It is easier, we think, to lock the problem away in a little drawer, along with all of the other things we would rather not face, and forget about them. We never stop to think that we are locking away a part of ourselves as well. We are all complicit in Linda's death. What would cause someone to do such a thing? What are the social, cultural, political, economic, and yes theological conditions that would drive a person to such a drastic point as killing someone in an attempt to steal from them? These are questions we do not like to ask. Instead, we are merely human and allow our fight or flight instincts to take over. Nevertheless, just as we are complicit in the death of this student at BU by suicide because we failed to reach out and relate until it was too late, we are complicit in Linda's death because we failed to relate to the man who killed her, and we are complicit in the killer's death because we fail, day in and day out, to relate to ourselves.

When will we learn to intentionally relate to the living? And why do we wait to relate until death's sting has already been felt?

What Was, What Is, and What Might Be

January 7, 2007
Feast of the Baptism of Christ
Hughes United Methodist Church
Wheaton, MD

Isaiah 43: 1-7
Luke 3: 15-22

Clip from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings: “The Mirror of Galadriel.”

Raise your hand if you remember your baptism.

I remember nothing from my baptism, which is really not surprising given that I was an infant when it happened. I am told that it happened right here in this sanctuary when Rev. Ed Van Metre was the senior pastor, but I must admit that it can sometimes be hard to recognize its importance when I do not even recall it happening! Perhaps some of you who also cannot remember your baptisms can sympathize. I can remember confirmation, up at the altar rail, surrounded by family and friends, when Carl Rife and Carletta Allen were the pastors. I remember my ordination to the diaconate, with my parents and the Lindisfarne Community surrounding me, but that one is easy because it just happened this past summer. But my baptism I do not remember. It makes the notion of “remembering our baptisms,” which we will do shortly, slightly ironic.

Nevertheless, we know that our baptisms do have meaning. The World Council of Churches has attempted to explain this meaning as it is found in all of the churches in its study document Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. First and foremost, baptism is a sign of new life in Christ and the fellowship of all of the baptized in the body of Christ, the church. For turn-of-the-era Jews and early Christians, water symbolized death, and so baptism is a sign of dying with Christ as we pass under the water, and rising again with Christ as we reemerge. (This symbolism is, of course, clearer in full immersion baptism). Water is used for cleaning and so symbolizes cleansing from sin, conversion from seeking to direct our own lives in spite of God to life in communion with God who pardons and forgives our sins and offenses. As we heard in the Gospel reading, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism, and so baptism is a time when the Holy Spirit descends upon us and remains with us in life thereafter. These shared experiences of meaning in baptism are a sign of our common discipleship and the fact that we are knit together in the one body of Christ. Finally, these shared meanings in common discipleship are a sign of the inbreaking of the realm of God in the present world order.

But how are we to access these meanings if we cannot even remember the event happening? To bridge this gap, I want to briefly explore what the experience of baptism was in the early church, what the tradition of baptism became and is today, and then I will let our reaffirmation or remembrance of baptism serve as a sign of what our baptisms might be, recognizing that the road to sanctification twists and turns and is paved with bumps and dips.

To explore early Christian baptism, I borrow from Aidan Kavanagh, longtime professor of liturgy at Yale Divinity School:

“So they stripped and stood there, probably faint from fasting, shivering from the cold of early Easter morning and with awe at what was about to transpire. Years of formation were about to be consummated; years of having their motives and lives scrutinized; years of hearing the word of God read and expounded at worship; years of being dismissed with prayer before the faithful went on to celebrate the eucharist; years of having the doors to the assembly hall closed to them; years of seeing the tomb-like baptistry building only from without; years of hearing the old folks of the community tell hair-raising tales of what being a Christian had cost their own grandparents when the emperors were still pagan; years of running into a reticent and reverent vagueness concerning what actually was done by the faithful at the breaking of bread and in that closed baptistry. Tonight all this was about to end as they stood there naked on a cold floor in the gloom of this eerie room.

“When all the catechumens have been thoroughly oiled, they and the bishop are suddenly startled by the crash of the baptistry doors being thrown open. Brilliant golden light spills out into the shadowy vestibule, and following the bishop (who has now regained his composure), the catechumens and the assistant presbyters, deacons, deaconesses and sponsors move into the most glorious room that most of them have ever seen. It is a high, arbor-like pavilion of green, gold, purple and white mosaic from marble floor to domed ceiling, sparkling like jewels in the light of innumerable oil lamps that fill the room with heady warmth. The windows are beginning to blaze with the light of Easter dawn. The walls curl with vines and tendrils that thrust up from the floor, and at their tops, apostles gaze down robed in snow-white togas, holding crowns. These apostles stand around a golden chair draped with purple on which rests only an open book. And above all these, in the highest point of the ballooning dome, a naked Jesus (very much in the flesh) stands up to his waist in the Jordan as an unkempt John pours water on him, and God's disembodied hand points the Holy Spirit at Jesus' head in the form of a white bird.

“Suddenly the catechumens realize that they have unconsciously formed themselves into a mirror image of this lofty icon on the floor directly beneath it. They are standing around a pool in the middle of the floor, into which gushes water pouring noisily from the mouth of a stone lion crouching atop a pillar at poolside.

“Then a young male catechumen of about ten, the son of pious parents, is led down into the pool by the deacon. The water is warm (it has been heated in a furnace), and the oil on his body spreads out on the surface in iridescent swirls. The deacon positions the child near the cascade from the lion's mouth. The bishop leans over on his cane and, in a voice that sounds like something out of the Apocalypse, says: "Euphemius! Do you believe in God the Father, who created all of heaven and earth?" After a nudge from the deacon beside him, the boy murmurs that he does. And just in time, for the deacon, who has been doing this for 50 years and is the boy's grandfather, wraps him in his arms, lifts him backward into the rushing waters and forces him under the surface. The old deacon smiles through his beard at the wide brown eyes that look up at him in shock and fear from beneath the water (the boy has purposely not been told what to expect). Then he raises him up coughing and sputtering. The bishop waits until the boy can speak again, and leaning over a second time, tapping the boy on the shoulder with his cane, says: "Euphemius! Do you believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, who was conceived of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, and was crucified, died and was buried? Who rose on the third day and ascended into heaven, from whence he will come again to judge the living and the dead?" This time the boy replies like a shot, "I do," and then holds his nose. "Euphemius! Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the master and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who is to be honored and glorified equally with the Father and the Son, who spoke by the prophets? And in one holy, catholic and apostolic church which is the communion of God's holy ones? And in the life that is coming?" "I do."

“When the boy comes up the third time, his vast grandfather gathers him in his arms and carries him up the steps leading out of the pool.”

This exposition of the baptismal experience of the early church seems quite distant to our late-modern ears, does it not? The greatest disparity is probably that early Christians baptized adults and adolescents, not infants, as is our practice today. The original reason for baptizing infants was the concern that only the baptized could get to heaven. Since the infant mortality rate was high in pre-modern societies, and remains quite high in some societies today, the church was worried about the status of those children who did not make it. The solution was to separate baptism from confirmation, so that baptism is the sacrament of initiation into the church at infancy while confirmation is the sacrament that seals baptism upon reaching maturity. Sadly, as we late-moderns have become accustomed to very low infant mortality rates, although not entirely absent, many of us struggle to find meaning in the theological answer to the mortality problem so many centuries ago. Baptism has become simply what one does upon the birth of a baby: a cultural ritual instead of a sacrament pointing beyond itself. Indeed, there are many Christians who come to church only on Christmas, Easter, and at the birth of a new member of the family; and some who also skip Easter and Christmas, only coming for the baptism.

In his Christmas Eve sermon, Dr. Ennis told the story of a pious grandmother who wanted her granddaughter to be baptized in spite of the fact that the identity of the child’s father was unknown. The pastor did not want to celebrate the baptism without being sure that there was a family to raise the child in the church, but the grandmother was persistent and asked that the issue be taken to the session, the decision making body in the Presbyterian polity. Finally, the question went to the congregation, and the pastor asked who would come and stand with the child and her mother. Eventually, most of the congregation stood with her. My first reaction to the story was, “how could a pastor possibly deny the sacrament of baptism to a child?” Upon further reflection, however, I decided that the pastor was not wrong for being concerned about the spiritual welfare of the child, but he was wrong for assuming that spiritual welfare is dependent upon a Norman Rockwellesque nuclear family. The congregation was right to take up the responsibility their own baptisms placed upon them to stand by the child, the mother, and the grandmother in guiding the child to maturity. In the end, this child’s baptism was given a great deal more gravity than might have been the case if the father had been known, not unlike the story of the birth of another child, albeit many centuries earlier.

The church has a special word for remembering, the Greek word αναμνεσις. This word has been interpreted theologically with regard to the sacraments of the church to mean not simply remembering a past event, but also making it present again. Furthermore, αναμνεσις not only makes the past present but also remembers the future, giving us a foretaste of what might be. It is in this full sense of remembering that I would encourage you to enter into the remembrance of baptism in a few moments. The remembrance of baptism is not a rebaptism, but for those of us who cannot remember our own baptisms, it may mean remembering out baptism as if for the first time since the actual first time is absent to us. Moreover, for all of us the remembrance of baptism is not a dwelling in the past but a movement toward the future accompanied by our family of those baptized into the body of Christ and in the awful or awe-filled presence of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.” Amen.

Of Babies and Bathwater

January 7, 2007
Feast of the Baptism of Christ
Hughes United Methodist Church
Wheaton, MD

Isaiah 43: 1-7
Psalm 89
Acts 8: 14-25
Luke 3: 15-22

Are you familiar with the proverb “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater?” The roots of this pithy saying can be traced back to Germany in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century and it was even picked up by Martin Luther in the polemical context of the Reformation. The practical context is that babies often used to be the last members of the family to wash in the familial bathwater and by then the water was often so dirty that it would have been easy to forget that baby was there, resulting in baby being carried along when the bathwater was discarded. The meaning of the proverb can be further deduced in comparison with the more biblical aphorism contained in the Lucan gospel just heard: “Don’t throw out the wheat with the chaff,” or more blandly but precisely: “Don’t throw out the good with the bad.”

It is quite easy to draw the analogy between this proverb and the Christian sacrament of baptism, but more difficult to draw the analogy with Jesus’ own baptism. Despite the fact that we have stuck the Feast of the Baptism of Christ on the liturgical calendar a mere two weeks after Christmas, a week after the Feast of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus and almost a month before the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Jesus was actually about thirty years old when he was baptized. This is all smoothed over quite nicely by the tradition that has developed of baptizing infants, but this was neither the practice of the early church nor of Jesus. However, this development in the liturgical tradition does point to the depth of meaning Christians find in the sacrament of baptism to the point that it became the guarantor of salvation and so of crucial importance to infants who were at great risk for survival for much of Christian history until the modern period, at least for those of us who live in societies with access to the best of modern medicine; the vast majority of Christians live in the southern hemisphere and go without such niceties.

It is the depth of meaning to be found in the symbol of baptism that makes the proverb of babies and bathwater applicable to Jesus’ own baptism when it is remembered that Christian theology has taken from Paul the metaphor of the church as the body of Christ with Jesus himself the head as one of the primary symbols of Christian life together. We celebrate today not only the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus and the voice of God proclaiming him the beloved two thousand years ago, but we carry that Trinitarian blessing forward into our own historical moment as the body of Christ. We too are beloved of God and hosts of the Holy Spirit and so we are responsible for seeing to it that the precious gift given us in that baby two short weeks ago is not washed downstream in the baptismal waters of the Jordan. In the psalm for this morning we sing of the love God has for us, for
“The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours;
the world and all that is in it—you have founded them.
The north and the south—you created them;
Tabor and Hermon joyously praise your name.”
We are created by God and so loved by God, and thus we must stand in ultimate perspective before God our creator, to borrow a phrase from my teacher Bob Neville. To stand before God ultimately is to stand responsible for the created lives we have been entrusted with living, and this responsibility is taken up in the sacrament of baptism. Baptism is a visible sign of the love God has for us and a reminder of the responsibility that love implies on our part, namely to discern the baby from the bathwater.

Kilian McDonnell finds a similar theology of baptism in the early church, that “the goal of Christian baptism is ‘to become pleasing to the Father.’ The Spirit, therefore, comes down on the Son that he, the Son, might ‘reveal salvation to all,’ to teach us how to attain the Father. The baptism of Jesus sets the pattern for the whole trinitarian economy of salvation.” This sounds rather easy, does it not? If you want to discern the baby from the bathwater, just follow the pointing of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. But this does not really solve the problem; which spirit is the Holy Spirit? There are many spirits blowing about in the world, but not all of them are the Holy Spirit pointing to the baby amidst the bathwater and thus allowing us to stand in ultimate perspective before God our creator.

We can hear these many spirits blowing through our churches quite clearly. How often have you heard it said, “the church really should do x,” or more emphatically, “the church simply must do y”? More often than not it is put negatively: “the church should not do this,” or “the church must not do to that.” How often have you said such things yourselves? I want to suggest that most of these “should” and “must” statements are probably bathwater. Why? Because the whole problem of the baby and the bathwater is that the baby is too small and there is too much bathwater; there are many spirits, but one Holy Spirit.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that all of the things we “should” or “must” do really are from the Holy Spirit of God, they really are the baby. This seems to be a contradiction; how could the same things be either baby or bathwater, both baby and bathwater? The contradiction is resolved when we realize that it is not the things in themselves that are either baby or bathwater, spirit or Holy Spirit, but rather whether and how the things orient us to be able to stand in ultimate perspective, the meaning they convey for us that allow us to stand before God our creator, that makes them one or the other. The discernment of spirits, of babies from bathwater, is finally a human problem. It is true that we must choose the good, we must choose Christ, but the act of choosing is not the end of the story: we choose Christ when we follow in the way that leads to standing in ultimate perspective, when we seek the Holy Spirit anew in every moment of our lives, when we take up our cross daily.

I have the privilege of regularly attending Trinity Church in Copley Square in Boston, an Episcopal church of about four thousand members that is just completing renovations costing about $54 million. What better context for posing our question: baby or bathwater? It would be easy to say that paying $54 million for just about anything must be bathwater, but my experience at the church is contrary to this. I came into the community as the renovations were underway and have stayed as they come to completion. I have been quite impressed by the insistence of the church leadership, both clergy and especially laity, that the renovations are only significant insofar as they point not only the members of the church but also the entire city of Boston beyond themselves and toward God and neighbor. The renovations themselves do so in that the homeless of Boston who gather at night on Copley Square sleep on the steps and under the porticoes of the church, but the people who make up Trinity Church carry forth their worship, or their work to employ the literal meaning of the word “liturgy,” to the ends of the world. Trinity Church has an annual food drive called “Loaves & Fishes” to help stock food pantries around Boston, they host and fund the Trinity Education for Excellence Program to provide leadership development for students in the Boston public schools, they have been involved in an interfaith effort to bring health care to all Massachusetts residents, and they send several teams to Honduras each year to help with structural improvements, various services, and medical treatment, to name just a few ways that Trinity reaches out to its neighbors.

Trinity Church is a wonderful example of the fact that choosing Christ, choosing the baby, is an issue of orientation beyond ourselves in the midst of many conflicting symbols and realities, many spirits vying for our attention. We choose the Holy Spirit when we choose according to the fruits of the Spirit, some of which Paul outlines in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These fruits alone, however, are just as prone to perversion as any other norms so long as they are not oriented beyond the people who adopt them. This is why the great commandment, to love God and neighbor, is really one commandment. We are oriented properly to God who is beyond ourselves by also being oriented beyond ourselves toward our neighbor even as we are oriented properly to God who is at the very depths of our being by also being oriented toward our neighbor for whom God is also at the very depths of being.

I would suspect that many of the “should” and “must” directives to be heard in churches are oriented more toward those proclaiming them than they are toward God and neighbor. Many churches are desperate for funds to pay the utility bills, keep up with regular maintenance, and generally keep the doors open. Out of desperation, these churches turn much of their attention to raising money for the sake of the building and to increasing membership in order to raise more money for the sake of the building. Members of these churches are deeply concerned about the facility because it is where their families have worshipped sometimes for generations. Pastors are concerned about losing their pensions and benefits if traditional denominational structures fail. Churches imaginatively construct golden ages from the remembered past, hopelessly and helplessly seeking to establish the foundations to rebuild this ephemeral “Christendom.” Such churches, members and pastors have not just thrown the baby out with the bathwater, they have thrown out the baby and kept the bathwater of fear and illusion!

Glen V. Wiberg elaborates on this by paraphrasing our passage from Luke’s second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, in his Christian Century article “A Costly Baptism:” “A local businessman observing the visitation of the Holy Spirit wants to make a deal. Since everything has its price, he thinks, why not the Holy Spirit? Just name your price! But Peter speaks the terror: To hell with your money! And you along with it! Repent of your arrogant presumptions of striking bargains and offering bribes for God's costly gift.”

The church is guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater not only in its internal concerns but also in how it goes about interacting with the world. Over the centuries, the church has adopted many authorities as trustworthy guides for her members in walking the paths of life. Some of these guides include the scriptures contained in the Bible along with other texts written through the first century of the Common Era, the decisions of councils of bishops especially in the fourth through eighth centuries but continuing into the present for our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, the investigations of theologians shining the light of God through human intellect, and the daily lived experience of each and every Christian in all of its guilt, fear, anger, love, joy, peace, and hope. The problem is that in many churches the guides have become ossified into absolute authorities and so ends in themselves instead of means to the end of standing before God the creator in ultimate perspective. Furthermore, the ability of the church to speak authoritatively into this historical moment is made laughable by reliance upon these ossified authorities, leading many to charge our trustworthy guides with lacking credibility, a charge that holds so long as they remain absolutized. We throw the baby out with the bathwater when we fail to exercise the vocation adopted in baptism to be discerners of spirits in the care of trustworthy guides and instead lazily cling to absolute authorities.

So what is it like to stand in ultimate perspective? I think it is probably a lot like baptism; at least as early Christians experienced it. I quote here from Aidan Kavanagh, longtime professor of liturgy at Yale Divinity School: “So they stripped and stood there, probably faint from fasting, shivering from the cold of early Easter morning and with awe at what was about to transpire. Years of formation were about to be consummated; years of having their motives and lives scrutinized; years of hearing the word of God read and expounded at worship; years of being dismissed with prayer before the faithful went on to celebrate the eucharist; years of having the doors to the assembly hall closed to them; years of seeing the tomb-like baptistry building only from without; years of hearing the old folks of the community tell hair-raising tales of what being a Christian had cost their own grandparents when the emperors were still pagan; years of running into a reticent and reverent vagueness concerning what actually was done by the faithful at the breaking of bread and in that closed baptistry. Tonight all this was about to end as they stood there naked on a cold floor in the gloom of this eerie room.

When all the catechumens have been thoroughly oiled, they and the bishop are suddenly startled by the crash of the baptistry doors being thrown open. Brilliant golden light spills out into the shadowy vestibule, and following the bishop (who has now regained his composure), the catechumens and the assistant presbyters, deacons, deaconesses and sponsors move into the most glorious room that most of them have ever seen. It is a high, arbor-like pavilion of green, gold, purple and white mosaic from marble floor to domed ceiling, sparkling like jewels in the light of innumerable oil lamps that fill the room with heady warmth. The windows are beginning to blaze with the light of Easter dawn. The walls curl with vines and tendrils that thrust up from the floor, and at their tops, apostles gaze down robed in snow-white togas, holding crowns. These apostles stand around a golden chair draped with purple on which rests only an open book.”

To stand in ultimate perspective is to participate in the greatest mysteries of human existence. Thankfully, we have been graced with trustworthy guides and fruits of the spirit at baptism so that we do not walk the path either blind or alone. Let us walk forward together, or better yet take up the dance together with God, renewing our commitment to being a community in love with the baby and unafraid to let the bathwater flow gently away. We are Christians not only as disciples of Christ, but also as discerners of spirits. Amen.

The Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace

Sermon preached at Hughes United Methodist Church, Wheaton, MD on 6 August 2006

As I sat on the balcony of my cousins' house in St. Cergue Switzerland at the end of June, working on my sermon for this morning, I gazed across the wildflower laden fields that surround the house formerly owned by French philosopher Henri Bergson and across Lake Geneva at the grandeour and beauty of Mount Blanc and thought to myself that there could be no better home for the primary institutional representation of the movement toward church unity than in the shadow of such an iconic vista of the glory of God. Last night, at Chicago's O'Hare airport, rewriting the sermon I wrote in Geneva, I was struck by how my change of sermon writing scenery to rushing passengers, cramped waiting lounges and extraordinarily overpriced food is actually a much more accurate metaphor for the ecumenical movement in its present practice. You see, I have spent the last month and a half traveling across three continents visiting and journeying with various expressions of ecumenical community and getting an on-the-ground experience to balance out the idealistic vision of ecumenism that we are sometimes taught in the seminary classroom. This meant that the closely argued, thoroughly researched sermon on the Ephesians 4 text suddenly became inadequate in the face of the deeply personal situations and experiences I encountered.

The passage we read from the Epistle to the Ephesians this morning emphatically exhorts us to "lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called," and then goes on to assign to that life three virtues - humility, gentleness and patience - and one characteristic - unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. It is this latter characteristic that concerns me this morning as it is a perfect definition for the goal of the ecumenical movement. The ecumenical movement is not concerned solely with church unity for its own sake any more than Jesus, in his prayer recorded in the Gospel according to John on the eve of his death, is concerned with unity for its own sake but instead he says that the goal of church unity is "that the world might believe." This is the same thing the writer of Ephesians is concerned with when he speaks of church unity in the bond of peace because belief in Jesus is belief in the Prince of Peace. Thus, the quest for Christian unity can never be a cheap unity, as some would surely have it, but must be a costly unity that will not even be satisfied with peace within the church but will insist upon a peaceful church in a peaceful world, a sure sign of the coming reign of God.

The first community I visited was the Iona Community. The Iona Abbey was rebuilt by the founder of the Iona Community, George MacLeoud, in replica of the 12th century Benedictine abbey that inhabited the site previously. The Iona Community is a disperced ecumenical order made up of men and women, mostly in Scotland and England but also elsewhere around the world, who have dedicated themselves to a life of prayer, bible study, and service rooted in a deep concern for social justice. As my own abbot jokingly pointed out, everything in the Iona community is about social justice, which gets tacked onto the end of every program theme so that the program I attended was subtitled "Gaelic spirituality and social justice" while other programs look at liturgy and social justice, public action for social justice, free trade and social justice, peanut butter and jelly and social justice; oh, wait, maybe not the last one, but they probably could do! The program was entitled "Where Three Streams Meet," which refers to the Gaelic tradition of going to pray for justice at the place where three streams meet. Throughout the week, we cosmopolitan pilgrims in attendance were introduced to Gaelic culture and language, the struggle to keep both alive under the forces of globalization seeking to supplant the Gaelic language, which is so integral to Gaelic culture, with English, and the violence exerted against Gaelic speakers by English speakers in an attempt to assimilate them. This cultural oppression is of concern to God because Christian spirituality is inherent to Gaelic culture and its oppression is a type of structural violence that does not always leave visible scars but deeply wounds the social psyche of these people of God.

My second visit was with the Taize Community in the south of France, a globally recognized ecumenical order that plays host to between three and six thousand people, mostly under the age of 25, each week of the summer every year, and slightly fewer each week the rest of the year. These droves are drawn from all over the world, bringing their various languages, cultures and lives together to share for a week in the daily round of prayer, study, work and rest of the brothers. Unfortunately, violence has broken through the Taize bubble. Some of you may be aware of the death of brother Roger, founder of the Taize Community, just about a year ago. During evening prayer, a woman sick with mental illness entered the church, passed through the thousands of people surrounding the brothers, cleared the verdant wall of shrubbery separating the brothers from the people, negotiated a crowd of small children surrounding brother Roger, and slit his throat. Immediately after it happened questions arose as to whether the brothers would increase security, installing metal detectors at the doors of the church, searching bags when people arrived. After much prayer and discernment, the brothers decided that they would make no changes in how the community operates. There are no metal detectors or searches. The only protection is the same shrubbery separating the visitors from the brothers that was unable at last to protect brother Roger. To some extent this response comes from one of the 45 thousand letters sent to the community, this one from the prior of the Grande Chartreuse monastery, which said, "The dramatic circumstances of Brother Roger's death are merely an external coating that serve to make yet clearer his vulnerability that he cultivated as a doorway by which, by preference, God gains access to us." Being vulnerable means being open, taking risks that we may be hurt or even killed. And yet it is by this very means that we have access to God. Thus the relationship between unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace beccomes clear as it is only when we are living in peace that the vulnerability necessary to spiritual life and thus Christian unity can exist unmaligned by fear and violence.

Last Monday afternoon I arrived back in the US from a two-week Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation to Colombia. While there we met with people, church leaders, and human rights organizations who suffer under constant and violent oppression by the Colombian government and military, supposedly demobilized paramilitaries, and guerillas. We met one family, out of 3 million in Colombia, who have been displaced from their homes due to being caught in the middle of paramilitary and guerilla violence. We met with a women's organization that runs a series of lunch houses to provide inexpensive meals to women, specifically single mothers, and children. They closed up one of their lunch houses one afternoon and when they returned the next morning discovered that the house had been torn down and both the structure and all of its contents had been removed from the site. They arrived to find an empty lot. Their house had been disappeared by paramilitaries! With met with families of victims of a massacre carried out by paramilitaries on the 16th of May, 1998 when they interrupted a community assembly on a soccer field and insisted that 32 men get on the back of a truck. Twenty-seven complied and have never been heard from again. The rest were shot on the spot. We met with union organizers and human rights activists who are unable to spend consecutive nights in the same place for fear of being assassinated. We met with peasant farmer activists who live in their office in the city because it would be too great a risk to go home at night. We met some of the farmers they advocate for who have been driven from their land with equipment provided by the 700 million dollars the US spends on military aid to Colombia each year, third only to Israel and Egypt, and the land is then taken over by president Urribe and the fourteen other major land owners in Colombia who already own 65% of the land. We heard about the Colombian Law of Justice and Peace, referred to by the people as the Law of Impunity, which was supposedly intended to demobilize the paramilitary but has instead had the effect of legitimizing their violence because they have simply reorganized themselves into private security forces and continue to carry out the same violent acts and oppression of the people that they have been engaged in for years, although now the government can deny complicity because they are "demobilized." We observed a demonstration by workers from the Coca-Cola plant who were protesting the assassination, arranged by the Coca-Cola corporation, of workers who sought to organize unions. We visited a community of displaced on the borders of the industrial city of Barrancabermeja and listened as our bus driver recounted how he lived in that ramshackle and destitute villiage thirteen years ago when paramilitaries came looking for him because he was a leading organizer of the workers at Ecopetrol, the nationalized oil company, and not finding him they assassinated his 20 year old son right there in the street where we were standing. We met with farmers who grow coca, used to make cocaine, who grow it not because they want to but because it is the only way they can subsist. Furthermore, US funded fumigations are being targeted by the Urribe administration against agricultural crops instead of coca crops, as evidenced both by the personal stories of farmers as well as the increase in coca production since fumigations began. Plan Colombia is a failed piece of US foreign policy proped up by multinational corporations who have a special interest in the instability of Colombia because it maximizes their profits. It is one of the winds of doctrine we are warned to resist being blown about by as it is trickery and craftiness in deceitful scheming.

So where is the church in the midst of this corruption and violence? To a large extent the churches are complicit in the violence, either turning a blind eye or even supporting and legitimating the structures that perpetrate it. But there are some churches, and sectors of other churches, who have taken a stand on the side of the poor and the oppressed. They have taken the side of peace because they know that it is the will of God, God's dream for the world, that they do so. We heard that 75 pastors have been assassinated in the past 2 years in northern Colombia. We also observed a popular assembly in Micoahumado, a small peasant villiage in the mountains of northern Colombia, which is a grassroots political organization for the surrounding area. At the assembly we watched as its facilitators welcomed the cooperation of Roman Catholic and pentecostal church leaders in guiding, shaping, and providing space for the assembly to occur. Many of the human rights organizations we met with were birthed in the Roman Catholic church and one of the most effective is still led by a Jesuit priest. We heard from a Mennonite pastor about an ecumenical proposal that has been put forward to try to reform the Law of Justice and Peace so that it effectively mitigates continued violence and oppression.

The movement toward Christian unity is an inherently missiological enterprise. Ecumenism has mission at its heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who take up the exhortation to "live a life worthy of the call to which you have been called" which takes as its primary characteristic "unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." At its 9th General Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil this past February, the World Council of Churches united missions and peacemaking under the banner of reconciliation. They did this in two ways. First, the missions agenda for the next eight years has been set to focus on reconciliation and healing. Second, the assembly approved the faith and order document entitled "The Nature and Mission of the Church" and commended it to the churches for study and reflection. The good news is that the church has not entirely lost sight of the dream God has for the world in which the wolf lies down with the lamb, swords are turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. A spirituality of justice and peacemaking is possible only on the foundation of a spirituality of prayer through which God imparts this vision and graces us the courage, strength, and perseverance to attain it. The writer of Ephesians exhorts us to such a life, a "life worthy of the calling to which you have been called," a life characterized by unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Computer Down

Hello all,

My computer is down and won't be up for a while so I won't be posting for a while. Everything is going great and I will post everything once my computer is back up.

Peace!