Other sermons available on line: SERMONS February 13, 2005 - April 5, 2005 SERMONS November 7, 2004 - February 6, 2005 SERMONS September 12, 2004 - November 21, 2004 SERMONS April. 25, 2004 - June 13, 2004 SERMONS Jan. 25, 2004 - March 7, 2004

 

The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
Richard E. Malmberg
June 12, 2005

I have found that great people do have in common … an immense belief in themselves and in their mission. They also have great determination as well as an ability to work hard. At the crucial moment of decision, they draw on their accumulated wisdom. Above all, they have integrity.

―Yousuf Karsh

Scripture Lessons
Exodus 19:2-8a
Matthew 10:9-20

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It…

I remember watching Mission:  Impossible when I was in grade school in the early 70s.  The show starred Peter Graves as Jim Phelps.  Each episode would begin with Phelps arriving at a seemingly innocuous location, where he would make conversation with someone who seemed to be a random stranger.  Of course, the conversation was all code, and it would end by Phelps receiving a key, a box, or some sort of satchel.  This would inevitably contain a small reel-to-reel tape recorder, which would click on to: “Hello Mr. Phelps…” and would proceed to outline how spies, international criminals or terrorists were plotting big trouble for the good guys.  The tape would explain how Phelps and his team would have to rescue, intercept, and otherwise thwart the bad guys in a way that would go unnoticed by the general public.  The plot summary would be preceded with the phrase, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it...”  Then the taped voice would warn, “This tape recorder will self-destruct in ten seconds.”  Smoke would start seeping out of the tape recorder as the show’s theme music began.

Each of this morning’s scripture lessons is a mission briefing of sorts.  Reading Jesus’ commission to his disciples seems like Mission:  Impossible.  “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food.  Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave.”  (Matthew 10:9-11)  When I read those instructions, it makes me think that Jesus was making his disciples into worst-case scenario houseguests.  Can you imagine answering your door to find a barefoot, empty-handed religious fanatic who informs you that you are worthy, and he wants to live with you indefinitely?  It’s a wonder this ever got to be a major world religion.

I don’t think many of us can imagine being on either side of that awkward threshold.  From our modern perspective, the situation does not seem realistic or practical.  Never mind the staff, the gold, sliver or copper.  I think most of us feel naked if we leave the house without a cell phone and an ATM card.  That basically means that there is something wrong with us.  I could stand here and say that we all need to denounce our possessions, hit the road and preach the Gospel, but I know none of you would do it.  I think most of you know me well enough to know I’m not going to do it either.  So what’s the point of reading this passage at all?  We read it, because it presents a challenge to our comfortable ways of doing things.  We read it, because beneath the outlandish particulars are some baseline values we all need to take seriously.

There are two fundamental ethical virtues expressed in Jesus’ commission to his disciples.  Continuous with the ethics of Hebrew Bible, there is a radical reliance on the ethic of hospitality.  Jesus envisioned a world where hospitality is the norm, and called his disciples to be catalysts for the redemption of the world by setting out on a mission empty-handed, vulnerable, and utterly dependent on the hospitality of others. 

Say what you will about the television advertising campaign our denomination produced last year, but the intention to issue an extravagant invitation is wholly consistent with the biblical ethic of hospitality.  Many of us were disconcerted by a self-righteousness tone in the so-called “bouncer ad,” however the rationale behind it was theologically sound.  The United Church of Christ 2004 Annual Report describes hospitality as “Sacred Calling,” citing the oldest biblical traditions: “Showing hospitality toward a stranger was a sacred duty throughout the early Mediterranean world.  The Hebrew scriptures, though not specifically using the word, provide frequent instances of strangers (aliens) being received as guests and treated with honor and respect…The Levitical code clearly states, ‘You shall love the alien as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:34).”  (UCC 2004 Annual Report, p.6)

When Jesus directed his disciples to set out on their mission reliant on the hospitality of the righteous, he did not simply unleash an army of moochers on the Judean countryside.  He made this clear by reminding them that “…laborers deserve their food.”   It is fascinating to me how this commission contains both a critique of wealth balanced by a clear work ethic.  Jesus warned his disciples against any sense of entitlement, whether they felt entitled to security inherent in wealth, or entitled to sustenance by their mere existence.  Rather, there is underlying insistence that everything belongs to God.  Entitlement is replaced with gratitude.  Gratitude to a generous God is expressed by generosity to neighbor and faithful service.  Our renewed relationship with God reorders our relationship to the rest of humanity and the material world.  We all have work to do. From Jesus’ perspective, wealth can only be seen as a trust and a responsibility, not a privilege or an entitlement.

Jesus’ commission challenges us to completely reorder our relationships, and it is a daunting challenge.  But we cannot simply dismiss it as impractical.  Jesus took into consideration the idea of work as well as witness.  Our ministry needs to have concrete value in the real world.   I keep coming back to GK Chesterton’s little nugget:  “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult and left untried.”  Christianity is difficult.  The world is full of people claiming to be Christians, who show little evidence of the characteristics Jesus expected of his disciples.  I once heard Maya Angelou say in an interview that when someone tells her that they are a Christian, she congratulates them because she’s still trying to be one.

There is a great paradox at work here.  Nobody is perfect, but we can all strive for perfection.  Our faith sets a vision before us, and we can enrich our lives, serve our community and heal our world by striving to live out that vision.  And while we strive for perfection, we must at the same time forgive the imperfections in ourselves and others.  Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer is a reliable guide:

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

This mission I am talking about is a sacred calling.  It is a challenge to be holy, treat others as if they are holy (because they too are created in the image and likeness of God).  We are called to treat all of God’s creation as if it were holy.  Nature is not a resource but a sacred trust to be honored.  In this mission prayer is indispensable.  By prayer I don’t so much mean asking God to do what we want.  I think too often we treat prayer like magic.  Too often we pray for things and outcomes.  I have known people who seriously pray for parking spaces.  While praying for outcomes is not harmful, as an acknowledgement of God’s wisdom and power beyond our own, I find that the best kind of prayer is formative and reflective.  Rather than pray for what we want, we should pray for God to help us to be what we were created to be.  It is fine to pray for peace, but we must also pray for the strength to be instruments of peace.  Prayer, in its best sense, is a meditation on placing our lives and our will in harmony with God’s will and intention.  Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “Pray as if everything depended on God.  Act as if everything depended on you.”

In the passage from Exodus, we see the people of Israel accept a mission from God to be “…a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:6)  They affirm their willingness to live according to God’s commandments and say, “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.”  (Exodus 19:8)  Does that mean that the Israelites did all that God commanded all the time?  Well, the golden calf is still a dozen or so chapters down the road.  The biblical story of Israel’s relationship to God is one of striving, failure, reaffirmation of the covenant, and striving again.  In post-biblical Judaism, continued striving is informed by ongoing study of scripture and prayer.

Such striving is our heritage and mission as well.  Hear the apostle’s words to the Thessalonians: “… encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.  But we beseech you… to respect those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord and admonish you; and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.  And we exhort you… admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.  See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.  Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”  (1 Thessalonians 5:11-18)  Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to embrace a vision of perfection, pray that our lives may be informed and  our actions formed by that vision so that we may be a blessing in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
Richard E. Malmberg
June 5, 2005

 

It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.

―Queen Elizabeth II

Scripture Lessons
Genesis 12:1-9
Matthew 9:9-13

Fluent in the Language of Faith

In a photo album I began keeping in the last century, I have a snapshot that was taken back in college.  It was taken in nineteen eighty-two.  By looking at it, you probably would not be able to tell that the picture was taken at a Thanksgiving dinner, or that this particular Thanksgiving dinner took place in the basement dining room of a student hotel in London.  You would not have known that it had become a tradition of the Guilford College London Semester for the students to join forces to prepare Thanksgiving dinner and invite the British faculty to share in our American holiday.  In a way, it was like the first Thanksgiving:  the newly arrived foreigners sharing a feast with the natives.

What the picture does show is four people sitting at a table.  In the background are a middle-aged woman laughing uproariously, and a somewhat older, dapper gentleman, slightly red-faced, with a wry smirk turning the corners of his mouth.  On the table is a small lit candle, and two wine bottles, both empty.  In the foreground there is the twenty-one year old version of me, in a jacket and tie, with a fuzzy jaw-line beard and the wispiest of mustaches.  I am sitting across the table from a man in his forties.  We both have our hands to our chins.  I am speaking with a focused, intense expression.  The man across the table from me is listening attentively with a bland and tolerant expression.  Looking at the picture you might sense my admiration for this professor and my desire to impress him.  And while he was encouraging with his attention, you might also sense that he would have preferred to be at the other end of the table having a few laughs with his wife and the political science professor.

I thought of that old photograph when I first looked at this morning’s Gospel Lesson, because this morning’s passage offers us a glimpse of some intense and lively table talk.  In just four verses of the Gospel According to Matthew, we are provided with a vivid snapshot of the Jewish community of which Jesus and his disciples were a part.  In four verses we glimpse tax collectors, Pharisees, Jesus and his disciples, a busy marketplace and a meal.  What is in evidence in this passage is, though the people depicted in it represent various positions within the community, they are all undeniably members of the same community.  That is not to say that there is no tension among these people, because there apparently is.

The interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees is pretty interesting.  We are accustomed to seeing Jesus engaged in some sort of disagreement with them.  Usually it is over a religious matter of piety or interpretation of Hebrew scripture.  That is what they did.  That is what Jesus did with his disciples and it is what the Pharisees did among themselves and with their own disciples. That’s why there are so many accounts of these debates enshrined in the New Testament.  If we read a few more verses of Matthew 9, we would see the disciples of John the Baptist similarly challenging Jesus on an issue of religious practice.  It was the mode of discourse among learned religious Jews.  If you look at Talmud, you will find the variant opinions of leading rabbis preserved, evidence that there was more than one way to interpret the tradition. 

Because of this lively discourse, and because they were often represented in the New Testament as disagreeing with Jesus, there is a common Christian tendency to view the Pharisees as villains.  But today’s Gospel Lesson challenges that assumption.  What I see when I read this snippet of first century conversation is a sense of mutual respect between Jesus and the Pharisees, perhaps comparable to professional courtesy.  Why would the Pharisees be scandalized by the idea that Jesus ate with sinners, if they did not recognize and respect him as a righteous teacher?  If we are to disparage the Pharisees for denouncing the crowd around Jesus as “sinners,” we should take note that Jesus did not rebuke the Pharisees for that characterization.  Instead, his response implies that he shared that perception of the people gathered around him.  He did disagree with what his responsibility and his relationship was to the sinners with whom he was eating.  Jesus remarked, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”  (Matthew 9:12)  Obviously there is some consensus between Jesus and the Pharisees as to their view of these people.  They have problems.  It is just that these particular Pharisees, and we have to be careful to avoid seeing the Pharisees in monolithic terms, were more concerned with a sense of their own ritual purity than the well-being of their errant neighbors.  Jesus appealed to their common heritage to argue for a higher purpose and a broader sense of community.  “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” (Matthew 9:13/Hosea 6:6)

The full verse which Jesus quoted was from the prophet Hosea.  It was an oracle denouncing a common human tendency to choose formal religion over compassion for neighbors.  Hosea announced God’s preference: “…I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”  Though Matthew quoted Jesus as saying “mercy” the same Hebrew word chesed (חסד) is often translated as “steadfast love” or even “goodness.”  By quoting Hosea to the Pharisees, he was responding directly to their questions, in the way they were accustomed to discuss such matters.  Jesus appealed to the authority of their shared tradition by quoting Hosea. 

Apparently Jesus came at that tradition and related to the world in a manner that was different from the Pharisees with whom he spoke as he ate with the tax collectors.  But what is worth noting and remembering is that they were talking to each other in civil discourse.  I think it is worth noting because I wish we could have conversations like that one with members of our own faith who have very different approaches to Christianity. 

I have observed an interesting phenomenon of modern religious dialogue.  I find that it is easier to engage in candid discussion of theological and moral issues with people of other faiths who approach their faith with similar interpretive principals, than it is to talk to other Christians who approach our shared scriptures and faith differently.  For example, I find it is generally easier as a mainline Protestant to talk about religion with a Reform Jew than with a Fundamentalist Christian.  And while I take great delight in interfaith dialogue and think it is vitally important, I also think we need to be in dialogue with other Christians with other interpretations of our faith.  We need to do this because we have something to offer to the discussion.

Part of the problem is that, in the mainline churches, we are not all that conversant in our own scripture.  Notice, it was Jesus’ ability to cite the tradition that enabled him to converse with the Pharisees and challenge their assumptions.  How many of us could do that?  I can, but that’s my job, right?  To allow your minister to tell you what the Bible says and means is to betray one of the central principles of the Protestant Reformation.  Our forebears fought and died for the right to read the Bible for themselves and not simply have clergy tell them what it means.  We believe in the priesthood of all believers and that scripture is the normative theological authority. 

And it is not simply for the sake of debate that we should know our scriptures.  We should deepen our knowledge of scripture because it allows us to be in relationship with those who came before us, and to engage in a sacred conversation with the ages.  In the Bible, we can discover the Word of God.  I know it can seem daunting.  The Bible is a big and complicated book.  But it is a rich, beautiful and challenging book as well.  It chronicles the human/divine encounter and holds a mirror up to human nature.  Consider how much we were able to discover in just four verses of Matthew’s Gospel.  But you don’t have to do it alone.  In fact, you shouldn’t do it alone.  We should join together with our hearts and minds engaged.  We should share our insights and draw a bigger picture.  This way, we will be conversant in the words of our tradition and fluent in the language of our faith.

Our lesson from Hebrew Bible this morning was from Genesis.  It told of the call of Abraham, and how God called him to leave the familiar and try something new.  I guess that is what I am talking about.  I am talking about a faithful journey of discovery, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
Richard E. Malmberg
May 29, 2005

 

Grant us a common faith that [humanity] shall know bread and peace—that [all] shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security, an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do [one’s] best not only in our own lands, but throughout the world. And in that faith let us march toward the clean world our hands can make.

                                                                 ―Stephen Vincent Benét,

Scripture Lessons
Deuteronomy 11:18-21, 26-28
Matthew 7:21-29

Mainline Discipleship 

For the past few years, I have served on the Board of Directors of an organization called The Interreligious Center for Public life.  The ICPL was founded in 1999 as a joint venture of Andover Newton Theological School and Hebrew College.  On the Center’s homepage is the statement, “The Center, through its deliberations, colloquia, workshops, publications and research, conveys shared values and policy positions to those entrusted with the resolution of public policy concerns.  The ICPL dedicates its efforts to the fulfillment of the prophetic vision of justice, mercy, and humility for the sake of the betterment of the human condition.”  (Interreligiouscenter.org)

Every time I go to one of the board meetings on the adjoining campuses of Andover Newton and Hebrew College I am struck by a sense of wonder.  I feel so blessed to live in a time when faithful Jews, Christians and Muslims can sit together around a table in a spirit of good will and common purpose.  It is amazing to me, because we all know that religion is too frequently a source of conflict and violence throughout the world.  Even here in the United States, religion has largely been used as a wedge to divide us rather than a means of embracing common purpose and human dignity.

On Monday, on that hill in Newton Centre, I had the pleasure of working on a day-long conference on Islam, called Inside Islam: Unlocking Texts and Traditions.  The conference grew out of one held last year which sought to train clergy and religious educators to lead interfaith bible studies, like the ones we have with Temple Shalom every year.  In planning that conference, we thought it was important to include Islam, as well as Judaism and Christianity, because all three religions spring from a common Abrahamic root.  However, after that conference was held, many who attended commented that they did not have the background in Islam to really engage the Islamic content.  From that feedback, we decided that we should organize a conference on Islam.

From the Board of Directors, we assembled a planning committee that included our neighbor from Our Lady’s Parish, Father Walter Cuenin; Rabbi Moshe Waldocks, author of the Big Book of Jewish Humor; Rabbi Sandy Seltzer, Chair of the ICPL Board of Directors; Salma Kazmi, from the Islamic Society of Boston; and me.  Early on, we realized that we needed to be careful to avoid setting up what amounted to “Islam for Dummies.”  Because we were following up on a conference for religious professionals, we needed to provide a deeper understanding of Islam for people who probably had some exposure and wanted more. 

Fortunately for us, we had Salma on the committee.  Salma Kazmi was born in Pakistan and came to the United States with her family at the age of four.  She is a graduate of Wellesley College, a regular guest on WRKO’s “Talking Religion,” and serves as Assistant Director of the Islamic Society of Boston.  Salma did all the heavy lifting, and lined up all of the speakers.  She made it possible for us to develop a conference in which Muslims taught Jews and Christians about Islam.  Consider what an extraordinary thing this is.  In the history of the world, there have seldom been times when people of different faiths could do something like this.  Even if individuals may have been inclined to reach across boundaries, hostilities between communities would have made such contact impossible.  In Newton in 2005, it is possible. 

An enterprise like the Interreligious Center for Public Life relates to our two scripture lessons.  In the Gospel According to Matthew, Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”  (Matthew 7:21)  We could easily read that passage as a warning that being a member of the Church does not guarantee us salvation.  I think there is an element of that in Jesus’ words.  One might even conclude that one must be a special kind of member of the Church, some kind of “Super Christian,” to enter the kingdom of heaven.  But I think it is a bit more complicated than that. 

In the passage from Deuteronomy, Moses revealed a similar caution to the Israelites as they prepared to enter the Promised Land.  The people were warned, “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse; the blessing , if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God today; and the curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God…”  (Deuteronomy 11:26-27a)   Both of these readings distinguish between simply being a member of a covenantal community and actually living in accordance with God’s intention for humanity.  Doing the will of God would seem to be more important than religious definitions.

To say that living in accordance with the will of God is more important than religious boundaries is not to say that religion is irrelevant.  It is true that fixation on religious differences and the competing truth claims inherent in those differences has led to tragic results throughout history.  Christians have been responsible for our share of bloodshed.  But that is not the fault of religion itself.  Such violence arises from a basic human propensity to abuse power.  Atheist ideologies, like Communism for example, have not been without bloodshed. 

Paul wrote, “…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23) and that is nowhere more painfully obvious than in the practice of our faith.  Mohandas Gandhi was asked, as a Hindu, what he thought of Jesus.  He said that he found the teachings of Jesus inspiring and he wondered why Christians did not follow them.  British priest and writer G. K. Chesterton put it this way: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult and left untried.”  Our faith has a profound power to transform lives and shape communities.  The practice of religion is how we can transcend the mundane and the material to experience the sacred and the eternal.  Religion is about practice, discipline, prayer, study and service.  Religion is what we do about what we believe.  Religion is demanding and I often think we do not ask enough of ourselves as people of faith. 

As I ponder this moment in history when amazing things are going on in Newton, when Jews, Christians and Muslims can study together in peace for the common good, part of me worries.  Given how rare such an occurrence is in the sweep of world history, part of me has to wonder if this moment is possible because of a general indifference to religion in our culture.  Perhaps the passions of religious conflict have been subdued because the passion simply is not there.  Massachusetts is a blue state after all. 

There was much made of the role of religion in the last presidential election, and I have to admit that the Christian Right makes me really nervous.  Two weeks ago I raised concerns of how their political influence is impacting the ability to teach evolutionary theory in the Kansas public schools.  While I think that the Christian Right is generally devoid of serious biblical scholarship and that their over-simplified theology is blinkered to rationalize a political ideology, I cannot help but respect the religious commitment of evangelical Christians in this country.  It is unfortunate that the Christian Right has defined, in the popular mind, what it means to be a Christian in this country.  But we let them do it.   If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that the Christian Right gained the influence they have because they worked hard, and we in the mainline have been complacent and disorganized.  Few mainline Christians have demonstrated the commitment or the passion that is evident in the Christian Right. 

I want to be clear that what I am talking about is not politics, but discipleship.  I think our strength in the mainline churches is that we have political and theological diversity.  That is why it is difficult to speak with one voice.  However, we do have shared values.  We have a rich intellectual tradition and a history of speaking out with moral authority on pressing social concerns like slavery, civil rights, economic justice and the environment.  For the most part, our theological agility has empowered us to embrace science rather than see it as a threat.  That is particularly interesting these days, when medical science is beginning to examine and demonstrate the relationship between religious faith and healing.

Because we approach our faith with our minds engaged, our intellectual curiosity inevitably leads us to find common ground with other faiths.  We can open our minds to the truth claims of others, while continuing to embrace our own.  To do so cannot help but move our hearts.  This is how we see the image of God in our neighbor, regardless of how our neighbor votes or worships. 

We have good news to share.  I hope and pray that we can rediscover our passion for our sacred work.  I have a vision of Second Church as a place where we can dig deep into Scripture for inspiration and challenge while we still ask hard questions about what we find in the Bible and what it demands of us.  We must allow Scripture to read us as we read it.  Our ministry must be defined by passion, commitment, and service.  As we embrace the richness of our tradition, we cannot help but reach out in friendship to all God’s children in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
Richard E. Malmberg
May 15, 2005 

Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

                                                                               

Scripture Lessons
Numbers 11:24-30
Acts 2:1-6, 14-18

Pentecost:  A Birthday Reflection

Birthdays are a natural time for reflection and self assessment.  They can be times to celebrate accomplishments.  They may be times to map out goals or to recount memories.  At such moments we may be arrested by a moment of clarity by which we recognize an unhealthy trend in life and turn it around.    Pentecost Sunday is the day that we celebrate the birth of the Church in Jerusalem, roughly two thousand years ago.  A lot can happen in two thousand years.

Consider the moment in Jerusalem when Peter and the apostles stood before a huge crowd of Jews from all over the world who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Festival of Weeks.  Overwhelmed by the movements of the Holy Spirit, Peter preached an inspired sermon and a miracle occurred.  Everyone present heard that sermon in their mother tongue.  Peter quoted the prophet Joel’s promise that God’s spirit would be poured out on all flesh.  (Joel 2:28-32)  Sons and daughters, even slaves would speak as prophets.  This is symbolic of a profound diffusion of theological authority, regardless of gender, race or class.  To say that God’s spirit shall be poured out on all flesh is to alert us to the possibility of hearing the Word of God from anyone, anywhere.

At the birth of the Church, there existed the potential for two opposite extremes of ecclesiastical authority.  In one image, we are shown a hierarchical model of apostolic authority.  The apostles appeared with tongues of fire dancing above their heads.  It is from this image that the bishop’s miter takes its shape.  At the same time Saint Peter, whom Roman Catholic tradition recognizes as the first Pope, declared that even people of the lowest stations in society will be prophets.  That promise more than implies an egalitarian and congregational ecclesiology, in which authority rests within the whole community of faith.  In either case, on that day in Jerusalem, the Church was a marginalized minority community.

In the earliest years of the Church, both hierarchy and egalitarianism were practiced.  The New Testament tells us that there was a rigorously communitarian economy at work within the early Church.  There was no private property.  Wealth was held in common and used to support the whole community.  But it was distributed under the direction of the apostles, who were clearly in charge.  One can still see this early Church ideal lived out in monastic orders.  Monks take vows of poverty and obedience.  Material resources and work are shared, and the community operates under the authority of the abbot.  However, as I was once told at Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham, even the abbot takes his turn cleaning the toilets.

At Pentecost, the Church was merely the remnant of a fringe Jewish movement in the process of becoming a new religion.  That is no longer the case.  Christianity is the world’s largest religion.  As such, it is important to remember how the Church functioned in its early marginal and minority life.  The Church began as a fringe movement that sprang from the dominant religious culture.  That dominant culture was also dominated by a foreign imperial power, Rome.  The mainstream Jewish community had the freedom to practice their faith, within restrictions.  The occupying Roman forces co-opted the leadership by collaborating with the high priests.  The Antonia Fortress, the Roman garrison inside the Jerusalem walls, was adjacent to the Temple.  This gave Roman authorities a perfect vantage point to keep an eye on what went on there and intervene quickly if they desired to make a show of force.    The underground cistern that supplied the Temple with water ran first under the Antonia fortress, which allowed the Romans to cut off the Temple’s water supply if they chose.

Roman occupation in Judea, like foreign occupation anywhere, was a source of unrest and humiliation among the locals.  No one wants a foreign government using their army to run your country.  That feeling intensifies when the belief is that the land was given to you by God.  There is clear evidence of this tension in the New Testament.  You’ll remember Jesus was asked his opinion on paying taxes to Rome.  It is also worth noting that when Jesus healed a member of a Roman centurion’s household, Jesus was contacted by the centurion through Jewish intermediaries.  This seems to imply tensions between the two groups.  (Luke 7:4)

The early Church was careful not to incite the wrath of the Roman authorities.  Paul, the earliest of the New Testament writers, cautioned the Church to respect the civil government.  Ultimately, that authority was Rome.  In his epistle to the Romans, Paul wrote,

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is not authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.  Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.  For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.  Do you wish to have no fear of authority?  Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for good.  But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain!  It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.  Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience.  For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing.   Pay to all what is due them –taxes to whom taxes are due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.  (Romans 13:1-7)

What is really interesting about this ringing endorsement of the government is that the reigning Emperor was Nero.  Nero brutally persecuted Christians, and Paul was just one of the martyrs who died under his reign.  Even though Paul taught obedience to the governing authorities there was one requirement early Christians would not obey.  They would not make a simple offering of incense to a statue of the Emperor, who was worshipped as a God.  To them that was worth dying for.  That simple refusal to honor the religion of the government meant that Christians were the object of the persecution.  As hard as Romans tried to enforce their official religion, I can’t think of anyone who still offers incense to statues of Caesar. 

The relationship between the Church and government has been complicated from the beginning.  It seems to me that the Church’s moral force has best been exercised outside the government than from within it.  The Abolitionist and Civil Rights movements are two of the best examples.  The Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials are some of the worst examples of Christians enforcing their religious convictions on others through the power of the government.  Certainly, I believe that Christians can and should be in government, as well as people of every faith.  I also believe our faith should inform our choices as citizens.  But I also believe firmly in the separation of Church and State.  It is there to protect religion from the government, not the other way around.  A strong ethic of separation protects religious people from our own arrogance and the temptations of power.  I also think that religious diversity safeguards this separation and challenges our assumptions in healthy ways.

I don’t know if you have been following what has been going on in Kansas, but I find it thoroughly alarming.  The state Board of Education there is trying to enforce a thinly disguised version of Creationism called Intelligent Design in the science classrooms of Kansas.  Science educators are understandably alarmed by this.  I am alarmed by this as well, because it is a shameless attempt to insert religious teaching into public school classrooms where it does not belong.  It does a disservice to the public school students of Kansas because they are not learning science as a disciplined inquiry but as a matter of doctrine. 

As a Christian I find this inappropriate expression of faith in the public arena deeply disturbing.  Such efforts do not exhibit the best side of our faith tradition.  They make Christians appear foolish, arrogant and narrow-minded.  It is reminiscent of when the Vatican silenced Galileo for voicing his scientific discoveries.  Religious people need not feel threatened by science.  Though both disciplines are aimed at understanding, they are different.  I firmly believe that our faith is most beneficial to us when it is used to discover truth.  We tend to get in trouble when we use religion to assert and enforce our own ideas of truth. 

As we celebrate this birthday of the Church, my prayer is that we will continue to draw understanding and truth from our ancient faith.  I pray that, in a complicated and sometimes dangerous world, we can be a people who show forth God’s love by our openness to new and differing ideas (though not so open-minded that our brains fall out).  As in the best moments of our long and mixed history, we must try to live out the injunction of a beloved hymn: “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
Richard E. Malmberg
April 24, 2005

 

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

―Ludwig Wittgenstein

Scripture Lessons
Acts 7:55-60
John 14:1-14

On Earth as It is in Heaven

You probably did not know Peter Gowan.  I didn’t, though I occasionally saw him walking through the exercise room at the Y.  Peter died suddenly a couple of weeks ago.  He was in his fifties.  I am told he was a gentle soul who loved music, had a deep appreciation for nature, and struggled with substance abuse.  He had a hard life, sometimes on the streets and sometimes in shelters.  For the past couple of years, Peter lived at the West Suburban YMCA.  One of the great things about Newton’s YMCA, is that it is one of the few Y’s that still offers housing. 

On Wednesday I led a memorial service for Peter on a playing field outside the Y.  It was attended by maybe twenty people, a mix of staff and residents.  Though unique in my experience, I began with the same opening words I have used in many other memorial services. I said that we represented a web of interwoven and overlapping relationships, varied life experiences a collection of diverse outlooks, as we faced that moment.  We were alike in our individuality, our humanity and our mortality.  We were united in our gratitude for life, even as we grappled with its complexity and occasional messiness, as we faced the ultimate mystery of death. 

Death is the ultimate mystery.   In our mortal context, death is the great equalizer.  The first time I seriously pondered the reality of death was thirty years ago this week.  How can I be so precise?  I was too young when the first three of my grandparents died to ponder mortality in any serious way.   Thirty years ago this week, Steve Sanders died of cancer.  He was a close family friend.  Our fathers worked together.  He played tennis with my brother, and went out with my sister once or twice.  His family and mine had Thanksgiving dinner together every year.  Steve was extraordinarily intelligent and a gifted athlete.  As a thirteen year old, I looked up to Steve as a smart, funny, cool young man I wanted to be like.  He was twenty when he died.

At the time I was a deeply religious kid.  I spent time with a fundamentalist group of early seventies Jesus Freaks in which my brother was active.  I attended an Episcopal day school, where chapel was my favorite part of the day.  I wish I could say that my faith was a comfort to me when Steve died.  My faith crisis was not rooted in the question of how a just and merciful God could have allowed a healthy, intelligent young man who cared about the world, to waste away and die at twenty.  I am embarrassed to say that it had more to do with the thought of what would become of Steve after death.  He was not a Christian.  At thirteen years of age, my theology of salvation was not terribly sophisticated. 

I loved the liturgical richness of the Episcopalian worship services I attended daily.  However, at that time fundamentalism informed my theology. I was certain that if someone died without having accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior, they would be condemned to Hell.  It horrified me to think this was the fate of a decent young man like Steve Sanders.  A big part of me believed it.  Fortunately human relationships have a way of punching holes in dehumanizing doctrines.  Since then, I have come to believe that inheriting eternal life has more to do with righteousness, compassion and justice than theological correctness.  Consider Jesus’ statement in the Gospel According to Mark, “For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward.” (9:41)  

There are indeed strains within scripture that support my thirteen-year-old view of salvation.  There was some of that in today’s Gospel Lesson.  But those are not the only strains.  Talk about the afterlife is for the most part absent from Hebrew Bible.  There are isolated references, mostly in the prophetic literature.  But life after death could never be seen as a major theme in Hebrew Bible (four-fifths of what Christians hold to be sacred and authoritative).  But to say that the afterlife is largely absent from Hebrew Bible is not to say that it is a concept alien to Judaism.  However, those theological developments were, for Jews, post-biblical.  Jewish discourse about the world to come began to develop during the inter-testamental period.  There are bits of the conversation in the New Testament.   Resurrection and life after death were recurring topics of conversation among Jesus and his disciples, the Pharisees, and other Jewish groups of the period.    

In the most basic terms, Christianity has always held that literal physical death is not the end of the story.  One could easily argue that Easter was the defining event that took a splinter movement within Judaism, and set it on a course to becoming a different and distinct religion.  Ours is a faith based on resurrection.  The Apostles’ Creed, one of our oldest formulations of Christian doctrine, affirms both that Christ rose from the dead, as well as the “resurrection of the body.”  We cannot verify that Christ rose from the dead in material terms.  However the witness to the risen Christ is hard to deny.  All you have to do is look at the steadfastness of the apostles as well as the generations of Christian martyrs who stood by their beliefs in the face of death.

The first of these martyrs was Saint Stephen, an elder of the Church in Jerusalem.  We read about his martyrdom in the Acts of the Apostles this morning.  As his death approached, he saw a vision of the risen Christ at God’s right hand.  Something notable about the martyrdom of Saint Stephen is that, after the inflammatory sermon that roused the crowd against him, he prayed that God would forgive the people who stoned him.  This seems quite similar to Jesus’ prayer on the cross, “Father, forgive them.  They know not what they do.”  In Christian terms, just as death leads to resurrection, conflict can lead to forgiveness.  Amidst opposition faced by the early church and the barbaric persecutions by the Romans, we know that the idea of resurrection, the idea that death was not the end of the story, strengthened the convictions and gave hope to the early saints and martyrs.

That was Jesus’ message to his disciples in John’s account of the Last Supper.  From what Jesus said to them, it is clear that everyone at dinner knew what was going to happen to him.  He was going to die.  Soon.  But he reassured them all the same.  He told them that he was going to prepare a place for them.  He was not going to abandon them.  The world would no longer be able to see him, but they would see him.  He said, “…where I am you may be also.”  (John 14:3)  There are a variety of ways to read that promise.  At one level, it sounds like Jesus is going to the next world to prepare what is in store for us.  But perhaps Jesus’ statement was also more immediate:  “where I am, you may be also.”  Perhaps Jesus’ hope was that they would be as faithful to their vision in the face of death as he was at that moment.  Later in his discourse, he commanded them to love one another.

Think of the prayer Jesus taught us.  Think of the euphemism for death that comes from it.  Think of how we isolate the phrase “kingdom come.”  Then put it in the context of the prayer.  “Thy kingdom come thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  What we pray for, every week, many of us every day, is that the eternal vision we embrace will be real, here and now, “…on earth as it is in heaven.”  This is a vision of wholeness, where the existential mirrors the eternal. 

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul echoed this idea as he tried to explain the resurrection.  I think what we have in this letter is an example of Paul thinking out loud.  He wrote:  

For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?”

…Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.  (1 Corinthians 15:53-55, 58)

Paul, like Jesus suffered death at Roman hands.  Paul assured the Church, as Jesus assured his disciples, that there were worse things than death and that faithful ministry gave life meaning.  It is striking that both Jesus and Paul, as they described what is beyond death, both carefully brought the discussion back to what is before death.  Be steadfast in serving God.  Love one another.  In the face of death, that gives life meaning.  Unlike Paul or Steven, I have not been given a vision of the risen Christ.  But I have seen visions of faithful lives and fearless deaths of the saints of this congregation.  In the past few years, I have witnessed lives that were full and faithful and bore witness to the light.  They faced death fearlessly, loving those around them to the very end.   Steadfast and loving service is our means of grasping eternal life, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
Richard E. Malmberg
April 17, 2005

 

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership. ―John Kenneth Galbraith

Scripture Lessons
Acts 2:42-47
John 10:1-10

Shepherd and Flock

Last week, the world, not just the Roman Catholic faithful but the whole world, bade farewell to Pope John Paul II.  He is already being referred to as John Paul the Great.  Last Sunday I was struck by the fact that people in this Protestant congregation rebuked me for not mentioning the Pope during the worship service.  The previous week, I mentioned him in our prayer concerns, but since the funeral had passed, and because the week’s events in Rome had saturated the media during the entire week, I thought it would not be necessary to address the death of the Pope in worship last Sunday.  I was mistaken.  Evidently, the passing of John Paul II was still on many of your minds.  It is worth noting how extraordinary that is.

Little more than a generation ago, tensions between Catholics and Protestants were very real even in this country.  My father grew up in a Swedish farming community in Minnesota, where the Lutheran Church was pretty much the only church.  The nearest Catholics were the Germans in New Ulm.  There was no ecumenical conversation between the two communities.  By the time I came along, there was a Catholic Church in my father’s town of Lafayette.  I remember visiting my grandmother there one summer when the Catholic Church was putting on a carnival.  As a kid with no one to play with in the sleepy, rural farm town, I wanted to go to the church fair.  My very kind, generally tolerant and devout Lutheran grandmother offered me a quarter not to go to the Catholic carnival.  That was in the 1970s.  That is not that long ago.

Though many of us, as well as many Roman Catholics, had significant theological and philosophical differences with the late Pope, it was hard not to admire the man.  The best description that I heard of the widespread affection the Pope enjoyed came from a CNN correspondent.  He pointed out that the Pope is referred to as the Holy Father.  While many of us may have ardent disagreements with our parents, those differences coexist with the affection, respect and admiration we have for our parents.  For many of us who remember the comparatively young and vigorous Pope John Paul II traveling the globe and even skiing, it was hard to watch his physical decline as Parkinson’s disease slowly disabled him.  And yet, he did not hide.  I can recall an extraordinary image of a chair-bound Pope, his chin glistening with drool, enjoying the display of brake-dancing by a group of youth who had come to perform for him at the Vatican last summer.

The man who would become John Paul II was a poet, an actor, and had a brilliant theological mind.  His deeply felt piety was evident at an early age.  He endured and resisted Nazi and Soviet domination in his native Poland.  He studied secretly for the priesthood, while the Nazis occupied Poland.  During the war, he participated in an underground theater group that performed Polish poetry, when such a celebration of Polish culture was illegal under German occupation.   Courage seems to have been one of his defining traits.  When he visited Poland after becoming Pope, he repeatedly admonished the people, “Do not be afraid.”  Some credit that first Papal visit to Poland with inspiring the organization of the Solidarity Labor Union, setting in motion events that would bring down Soviet totalitarianism in Europe.  I think the most striking example of the Pope’s moral courage was when he went to an Italian prison to meet and forgive the man who shot him. 

Though John Paul II’s was a strong and uncompromising voice against totalitarianism, his reign was notable for strengthening the centralized hierarchical authority structure of the Roman Catholic Church.  While a champion of human rights, he silenced liberation theologians because their theories took into account Marxist historical and economic critique.  And yet what I find fascinating about this Pope is that, as a Christian leader, he maintained a deeply held suspicion of materialism that was completely consistent with the teachings of Jesus.  Pope John Paul II was as critical of the soul-deadening potential of Capitalism as he was of Communism. 

While social conservatives loved him for his teachings on abortion, sexuality and biotechnology, they seem to have largely ignored his steadfast insistence that wealthy people and nations have a responsibility to the poor.  During one of President Bush’s visits to Rome, the Pope commended the president’s stand on stem-cell research, while admonishing him that a country as wealthy as the United States had a responsibility to make sure poor countries had access to health care.  The Pope was also one of the most outspoken critics of the invasion of Iraq.  To call this Pope conservative or liberal would be the shallowest analysis, because he transcended such labels. 

I said earlier how remarkable it was that the death of John Paul II was so keenly felt by Protestants.  In fact, he was mourned by Christians, Jews, Muslims, and probably a great many agnostics and atheists.  It is fitting tribute to this world-traveling Pope who reached out to other faiths in friendship that at his funeral the Presidents of Israel and Iran shook hands, in spite of themselves.  We in the United Church of Christ have at our center a strong ecumenical conviction that all who confess faith in Christ are one Church, regardless of denominational boundaries.  We take as our motto, Jesus’ prayer for his disciples, “That they may all be one.” (John 17:21)   We mourn the passing of John Paul II because he was our brother.

In the days following his death, John Paul II was affectionately described by numerous catholic dignitaries as “our shepherd.”  The shepherd is a central image of leadership common throughout both Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures.  Perhaps the most familiar reference is the Twenty-third Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd.”  Psalm 95 states, “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.” (Psalm 95:7)  It is an accessible metaphor because it speaks of care, protection and community.  The shepherd, after all, has a relationship with a whole flock.

The UCC Calendar tells me that this Sunday is Good Shepherd Sunday.  Our lectionary readings underscore this theme.  We were called to worship by the 23^rd Psalm declaring, “The Lord is my shepherd….”  In the gospel lesson Jesus referred to himself as a shepherd.  The passage from Acts depicts the Apostles tending the flock that was the early church.  It is perhaps the best Sunday to remember the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, whose authority is symbolized by a shepherd’s staff.  But what is really interesting about the shepherd metaphor in Christian tradition is how fluid it is in reference to Christ.

In the New Testament, Christ is indeed the shepherd, but he is also the Lamb.  At his Baptism, John referred to Jesus as “The Lamb of God.”  Throughout the book of Revelation Christ is depicted and referred to as a Lamb seated on a heavenly throne.  The metaphor is equally fluid in reference to the Church.  Most obviously, we are the flock and Christ is our shepherd.  Quite appropriately, church sanctuaries are often decorated with images of Christ the Good Shepherd.  Ours is no exception.  You will find such an image at the top of the Cole window. 

However, the church is also the Body of Christ in the world.  As such, we are collectively the shepherd.  As a community called together by God, we serve God as a shepherd.  We tend God’s pastures and care for God’s sheep.  We are a community responsible to care for the needs of God’s people and God’s creation.  Just as a good shepherd would be mindful of overgrazing pasture that must sustain flocks year after year, we have a sacred obligation to treat the environment, God’s creation, with respect and reverence.  It does not, after all, belong to us.  And the passage we read from the Acts of the Apostles shows clearly that we have a responsibility to economic justice.  We saw that the early church held all property in common and that the Apostles saw to the needs of all the saints.  The pasture and the flock belong to God.  We serve God by caring for one another.  Whether we are the sheep or whether we are the shepherd, we belong to God, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
Richard E. Malmberg
April 10, 2005

 

Chief among our gains must be reckoned this possibility of choice, the recognition of many possible ways of life, where other civilizations have recognized only one. Where other civilizations give a satisfactory outlet to only one temperamental type, be he mystic or soldier, business man or artist, a civilization in which there are many standards offers a possibility of satisfactory adjustment to individuals of many different temperamental types, of diverse gifts and varying interests.  

―Margaret Mead

Scripture Lessons
Acts 2:36-41
Luke 24:13-31

     

Satanic Verses

It is interesting to read The Gospel According to Luke next to the Acts of the Apostles, as they are both written by the same author.  I would have to say that what we have before us today is the best and the worst of Luke.  I say that because these passages contain some of the most beautiful New Testament literature and some of the most problematic theological content.  I think the story of heartbroken disciples, meeting an enlightened stranger as they staggered away from the traumatic events they had just witnessed in Jerusalem, is the most beautiful and compelling of the resurrection accounts.  We are heartened by the vision yet nagged by the question: could we recognize the risen Christ, when his disciples could not?

The passage from the Acts of the Apostles is deeply troubling.  The portion we read comes from the end of Peter’s sermon on Pentecost.  As we are informed earlier in the Book, Jerusalem was filled with devout Jewish pilgrims who had come from all over the world to observe the Festival of Weeks in the holy city.  What we have come to know as Pentecost has the Hebrew name Shavuot, which simply means “weeks.”   It is a dual purpose holiday that celebrates the offering of first fruits.  It also has come to be a celebration of the giving of Torah at Sinai. 

One traditional way of celebrating Shavuot is to study Torah long into the night.  Last year I was in Israel for Shavuot.  At the Ulpan, where I was studying Hebrew, an American rabbinical students led us in a study of the Deuteronomic Reforms.  The following afternoon, we went to a kibbutz to see their celebration.  Because this was an agricultural community, the first fruits were the primary focus of their celebration.  There were folk dancers bearing wreathes, a parade of tractors draped with the fruits of their labor and a procession of flags of the nations to whom they exported produce. 

Both symbolic associations of the festival of Shavuot are significant to the Church in the Book of Acts.  At Pentecost the Apostles received the Holy Spirit, and it is seen as the birth of the Curch.  In that sense, the founding of the Church can be seen as the first fruit of the Spirit.  It is also significant that Shavuot celebrates the giving of Torah, as that is a pivotal revelatory event that defined a community.  One of the most beautiful, symbolic aspects of the Apostles’ witness on Pentecost is that those gathered each heard the testimony in their own language.  This speaks to the universal availability of salvation that moves beyond the Sinai covenant with a particular people. 

The healthiest way to look at this event is that it built on the experience of a particular people who have born witness to God’s call to justice and righteousness through the ages.  I would argue that without Israel’s witness to the nations, the Apostles’ witness would be irrelevant.  Without that witness, Pentecost and the ministry of Jesus could not have happened.  Unfortunately, Peter sounded a sour note in the closing words of his sermon: “Therefore let the entire House of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”   (Acts 2:36)

“…this Jesus whom you crucified.”   In the wake of the Holocaust and with the knowledge of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish pogroms, we Christians must never simply read past that phrase.  When our sacred text nakedly and mistakenly levels the charge of Jewish blood-guilt, we are obligated to stop cold and examine it.  First of all, let’s look at the indisputable fact that it was the Romans, not the Jews, who crucified Jesus.  If Caiaphas and other high priests colluded with the Romans in engineering Jesus’ arrest and execution, it is worth noting that the priesthood did not survive the destruction of the Temple.  That was largely because they had lost touch with the life and spirituality of most Jews in the early Common Era.  After the Romans destroyed the Temple, the rabbis (who emerged from the Pharisaic movement we know from the New Testament) became the standard bearers and authorities of Judaism.  After the destruction of the Temple, rabbinic Judaism and the fledgling Church proceeded in a kind of sibling rivalry, both asserting continuity with prior Hebrew religious tradition.

Former Catholic priest, James Carroll charted the troubled history of Jewish-Christian relations in his book, Constantine’s Sword.   In it, he described how competing truth claims between the early Church and early rabbis led to some dangerous rhetorical artifacts in our scriptures.  He wrote: 

Not only did real-time competition with the rabbis lead to an emphasis on conflict, so did the form of the story…  In [Aristotle’s] terms, the structure of dramatic narrative involves conflict, crisis, and resolution.  If the story of Jesus were written as straight history, the conflict would be defined as one between the Jewish Jesus movement and the Roman overlords, with some Jewish characters in supporting roles as Roman collaborators.  But the conflict of the story as set in the year 30 took shape to reflect the conflict of the storytellers between, say, 35 and 90 –an intensifying conflict ever more with fellow Jews than with Rome.  The venality of Rome was given for all concerned.  There was no need to assert it or make it central, in contrast to the struggle with one’s sibling rival.  That’s why the Gospels prefer the centurion to the rabbi

 

            Carroll’s description makes me think of the political posturing of two candidates, who have more in common them in conflict, going to extreme lengths to paint their opponent as the embodiment of evil.  I have to believe that, with all its divine inspiration, the human beings who wrote the New Testament must have been influenced by the passions of their time.  I do not think it negates the authority of scripture to assert that human bias found its way into Bible through the undeniably human process of writing and compiling an inspired document.  That would be completely consistent with the way human beings are portrayed in scripture.  Jacob continued the covenantal relationship with God, despite the fact that he defrauded his father and cheated his brother.  The Israelites worshipped the golden calf as soon as they were alone in the desert after being liberated from Egypt by God’s hand.  Throughout the Gospels, the disciples never seemed to understand what Jesus was talking about.  Throughout scripture, it would appear that God’s purposes are accomplished in spite of God’s people as often as because of them.  Ultimately, when we might be blinded by isolated verses, scripture explains itself, as long as we view its totality.

At Pentecost, the apostles seized upon the celebration of the giving of Torah to preach about the gift of the Holy Spirit.  It occurs to me that our younger sibling within Abrahamic monotheism can teach us about the nature of divine revelation as well.  You have, no doubt, heard of the Satanic Verses.  It may surprise you to know that the Satanic Verses are more than a controversial novel that brought a world of trouble down on Salmon Rushdie.  The Satanic Verses are actually three verses that appear in the Qur’an itself.  They were part of a revelation that came to Mohammed at a time when the nascent Islamic community was being persecuted by the pagan establishment in Mecca.  This revelation implied the legitimacy of pagan goddesses, which allowed for Mohammed to strike a compromise between his followers and the dominant forces of the community.  That revelation, however, contradicted the radical monotheism of the rest of the Qur’an.  The Prophet later denounced the revelation as being from Satan, rather than God.  The Satanic Verses remain within the Qur’an (Sura an-Najm [Star] 53:19-22), even as the tradition rejects them as being influenced by Satan.

The Islamic phenomenon of the Satanic Verses provides us with a helpful means of navigating the complexities and the theological pitfalls of our sacred literature.  In Islam, the Qur’an is the primary source of authority.  And yet, when three verses of it contradict the central and overarching tenets of the faith, they may be discounted.  When there is an insinuation of Jewish bloodguilt for the crucifixion in the New Testament, I have to call them Satanic Verses.  I feel justified in doing so by simply recalling that scripture itself reports that Jesus was crucified under Roman authority by Roman hands.  There is also the fact that Hebrew Bible, roughly four-fifths of the literature we hold to be sacred and authoritative, affirms God’s special and enduring covenant with Israel. 

Any time a verse of scripture takes a polemical tone against any group, whether Jews, women, gays and lesbians, or people of other faiths, we have to stand those verses against scripture’s repeated and overwhelming call to righteousness, justice and compassion.  I keep coming back to Luke’s resurrection account.  If Jesus’ own disciples did not recognize the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus, what chance do we have of recognizing divine truths?  To discover God’s enduring Word for us in scripture is a life’s work.  It demands that we read with open eyes, critical minds, and soft hearts, in a world without end.  Amen.

 

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