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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
June 17, 2007

    Behold! the angels said: “O Mary! Allah has chosen you and purified you - chosen you above the women of all nations.

    “O Mary! worship your Lord devoutly:  prostrate yourself, and bow down (in prayer) with those who bow down.”

    Behold! the angels said:  “O Mary! Allah gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him: his name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and of (the company of) those nearest to Allah;

    “He shall speak to the people in childhood and in maturity.  And he shall be (of the company) of the righteous.”

    She said: “O my Lord!  How shall I have a son when no man has touched me?  He said; “Even so: Allah creates what He wills: when He has decreed a Plan, He but says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is!

    “And Allah will teach him the Book of Wisdom, the Law and the Gospel…”

The Qur'an, Surah 3:42-43, 45-48; trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali

Scripture Lessons:
1 Kings 21:1-10, 16-19
Luke 7:40-50

The Challenge and Promise of Coexistence

Yehezkel Landau is a self-described religious Zionist who spent twenty-four years living in Israel.  He is also a peace activist dedicated to reconciliation between Israeli Jews and Palestinians.  His former wife Dalia founded Open House, an Arab-Jewish Community Center in Ramle, Israel.  Open House was founded after Dalia and her family met the Palestinian Christian family who had made their home in the house Dalia’s family bought from the Israeli government.  They fled the house in 1948, during the Israeli War of Independence; an event is called al Nakba by Palestinians, Arabic for “The Catastrophe.”   

The Friends of Open House website states that, “OPEN HOUSE was founded to create community among Israeli Arabs and Jews in this mixed city of 65,000 residents. The full human story behind its founding has inspired people throughout the world.”  I am pleased to say that Friends of Open House receives support from the Second Church Board of Mission and Advocacy.  The story of Open House is always worth repeating for its redemptive character and the hope it inspires.  Efforts like Open House stand in marked contrast to the story of Ahab and Jezebel’s murderous scheme to take the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite that we read this morning from 1 Kings.

I also mention it because Yehezkel Landau was my teacher in one of the most extraordinary continuing education courses I have taken in a long time.  That is where I was last Sunday.  Now on the faculty of Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, Yehezkel teaches a course twice a year called Building Abrahamic Partnerships.  Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers and students come together to learn about each other’s beliefs and traditions and to explore strategies of reconciliation and collaboration.  We studied together and ate together.  We prayed together in a mosque, synagogues and in churches.  We probed one another’s assumptions and challenged one another’s views.  We laughed together and we wept together.  We reached startling heights and depths of honesty.  As Abdullah Antepli, a Hartford Seminary Doctoral student and an Imam from Turkey said in our opening session, we were there to get beyond holding hands and singing Kumbayah.

On a day devoted to studying the basics of Christianity, Ian Markham, Dean of the Seminary, led an interesting exercise based on the Nicene Creed.  As he went through some of the basic points of doctrine outlined in the creed, he asked the Christians, and only the Christians, to raise their hands if they accepted each particular point of doctrine.  When he asked who believed in God, The Resurrection, the Trinity, pretty much all of us raised our hands.  When he asked who believed in the Virgin Birth, of the gathered Liberal Protestants, progressive Roman Catholics, and one Quaker, only about half of us raised our hands.    Then he addressed the same question regarding the Virgin Birth to the Muslims in the room.  They all raised their hands.  The Virgin Birth, after all, is in the Qur’an.  It was a stunning moment.  It would not be the last.

To be perfectly honest, I had a lot of room to stretch.  Despite the fact that I have been involved in interfaith dialogue and study for years, I have had, to varying degrees, something of a blind spot where Islam is concerned.  You may recall that, in the months following the attacks of September 11, I gave a sermon here in which I asked the question: is there something about Islam that breeds militants?  After raising the question, I sent the sermon, as an earnest inquiry to the most learned Imam I knew at the time.  The ensuing dialogue led me to invite him to preach here at Second Church.  That year Khaleel Mohammed joined Rabbi Gurvis and me in leading our interfaith Bible Study. 

I continue to have questions about Islam, some of which are still troubling: the violence of Islamic radicals, the position of Muslim women in Islamic culture, the relationship of Islam to modernity.  These are not simple or easily dispelled concerns.  Since 2001, I have had opportunities to travel in a couple of predominantly Muslim countries and to study and interact with devout and learned Muslims.  I cannot say that all my questions have yet been answered satisfactorily in my mind.  But I do have a growing understanding of the complexity of the issues involved.  I cannot tell you how important it is to have personal contact with believers to even begin to appreciate another faith.  I also know it is difficult to appreciate another faith, without being grounded in one’s own religious tradition.  That was the strength of the class at Hartford Seminary.  It was a gathering of religious people, practitioners of all three faiths that trace their origins to the monotheism of Abraham. 

The great paradox of good interfaith dialogue and fellowship is how it gives one greater appreciation of one’s own faith and traditions.  I think that happens because one is so frequently called on to describe and explain one’s own faith on various levels.  I was asked to explain how Christians pray over a meal and to explain why the Trinity is not polytheism.  Often I found it necessary to point out that my own theology was not necessarily shared by every Christian on the planet, or throughout history. 

On the other hand, to understand another faith, it will never make sense to you if you evaluate it on the basis of your own.  We will never understand Islam on the basis of Christianity or even (to some extent) Western culture.  For example, Judaism and Christianity experience modernity as religions that developed along side modern rationalism, science and democracy in Europe and the New World.  Judaism and Christianity adapted to and accommodated modernity over time, while some sects of both faiths still resist modernity today.  Islam, in the parts of the world where it has historically flourished, experienced modernity as part of colonialism.  As my friend Adullah put it, “Modernity hit us like a truck.”  It is not that Muslims do not want to live modern lives in democratic societies; it is just that they want the opportunity to develop the necessary institutions in ways that are culturally appropriate and relevant to their values. 

It was with this understanding that I began to reevaluate my perceptions of the role of women in Islamic society.  Of the Muslim women with whom I had contact over my week in Hartford, all were intelligent, articulate and highly educated.  All of them wore the hijab, or headscarf.  When asked why, when living in America where there was no overt social pressure to wear the hijab, the most common answer I heard was that it forced people to deal with them as people and not as an object.  Their reasoning and example caused me to view the widespread immodesty in our culture in a new way.

By far, the most difficult issue we dealt with the entire week was the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  This was a time when we wept.  As a strong supporter of Israel, I recognize that there are people with rights and grievances on both sides of the conflict.  Both sides have suffered.  To paraphrase a wise Israeli leader, the biggest problem in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not that it is a struggle of right versus wrong, but a struggle of right versus right.  It is a conflict so complicated and volatile that I will not even dare to address it now, when I should be wrapping up a sermon.

And so, what kind of Father’s Day sermon is this anyway?  First of all, Father’s Day is not a religious holiday.  That is not to say that I am going to turn down any gifts or cards from Jane and the boys.  Are you kidding? I love presents. But there may be some religious relevance to Fathers Day in light of our need to build understanding among people of the three Abrahamic faiths.  Judaism, Christianity and Islam all look to one patriarch, one father as the founder of our monotheistic religions.  We see the origins of our three religions in the faith of a man who abandoned the idolatry and everything else he had known to live in relationship with the one living God.  Our three faiths are the children of Abraham.  As such, we honor the father of our own faith tradition by getting along with our siblings.

Reconciliation is at the heart of this morning’s Gospel Lesson, framed in terms of forgiveness.  What is forgiveness but a means of reconciliation?  The scene takes place at the table of a Pharisee who invited Jesus to dinner.  Other uninvited guests followed Jesus there.  Just by being who he was, Jesus brought unlikely people together.  I think that is what is most exciting about the life of the church.  I am so grateful to God for the friendships I have made with people I would not likely have the opportunity to know, were it not for the life and work of the church.  As I so often boil it down, it is all about relationships.  And yet, this crowded, contentious and beautiful world demands that we move beyond just talking among ourselves.  Yes, we must ground ourselves in our own faith and strengthen the church as best we can.  But we must also engage partners of other faiths in dialogue and friendship.  God calls us to be healers and to love others as Christ loves us, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
May 27, 2007

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult; and left untried.

―G. K. Chesterton

Scripture Lessons:
Acts 2:1-8, 11-21
John 14:25-28

The Hard Way

Memorial Day is not a religious holiday.  Memorial Day is a civil holiday that arises from the great tragedy of human experience.  War and its effects have been the bane of human existence since the dawn of civilization, possibly before.  At this moment, our nation is engaged in a war in that same region where civilization itself was born.  References to war and its human toll run throughout scripture.  Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for war and a time for peace, (Ecclesiastes 3:8) and as Christians with a biblical faith, it is for us to discern which time is which.  Every generation must grapple with the multitude of ethical questions raised by war.

Memorial Day, originally Decoration Day, has its origins in the aftermath of the American Civil War.   I doubt there was a family in the nation who did not suffer in some way from that bloody four year conflict.  It was a defining event in our nation’s history.  The punitive nature of the so-called Reconstruction intensified racism in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery.  Rather than healing, war was replaced by regional resentments that still exist today.  Slavery gave way to Jim Crow, and we still struggle to realize the high hopes of the Civil Rights Movement, over 140 years after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.

As people living in a nation at war, it would be irresponsible to pass this Sunday without acknowledging the death of so many who gave their lives in military service on our behalf.  In the current war in Iraq, as of Friday 3,433 American military personnel have lost their lives, over 24,000 have been wounded, and over 64,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed.  No matter how any of us feel abut the justification for, or the conduct of this war, we must agree that war is failure.  War is a failure of human compassion, communication and community.  War is the most obscene fragmentation of a world God created for goodness and wholeness.  War may at times be unavoidable.  War may at times be necessary.  But war is always a failure.

The ones we fail most tragically are the men and women who put their lives on the line in service to their country.  Their dedication, discipline and loyalty are a treasure and a sacred trust we must never betray.  No matter how we feel about the current war in which our nation is engaged, we have an obligation to honor the sacrifice of the fallen, to welcome home all who have served honorably, and provide to all the wounded and disabled all the quality care they require. 

Last Sunday Chris Rosser, a member of my first Confirmation Class here at Second Church, was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army.  He will report for duty in the fall.  And while I worry about his safety at this time of war, as his pastor I am proud of him.  When he chose to go into ROTC at Boston College, I told his mother that he is exactly the kind of young man we need in the military: intelligent, ethical, and dedicated to service.  You may remember that, as a teenager, he helped build homes in Costa Rica as a part of the Second Church youth group.  Cassandra Benes, a graduate of our Second Church Nursery School and daughter of one of the Nursery School teachers is a trained medic and will deploy to Iraq next month.  I met her with her Mom in the church kitchen one day, a beautiful fresh-faced young woman in camouflage fatigues.  She was headed for specialized training in Texas.  I thanked her for her service.  My nephew Tom Duncan is an ROTC cadet at Virginia Military Institute, and looks forward to being commissioned in two more years.  Smart, athletic and friendly, he is the kind of young man kids are drawn to like a magnet.  Max and Oscar adore their cousin Tom.  I know he will be a fine officer one day.  I am proud of all of these young people.  I honor and admire their commitment and their service.  They make me want to be a better citizen and elect leaders who will be worthy stewards of their patriotism, dedication and ability.

As I said, Memorial Day is not a religious holiday, though it is relevant to our scripture lessons on this Pentecost Sunday.  To ponder the ageless tragedy of war, in the midst of our current predicament is indeed apropos of the Pentecost narrative.  The miracle at the center of the story is international in character.  Pentecost is the Greek name for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, also known as the Festival of Weeks.  It was celebrated by our Jewish neighbors last week.  It takes place fifty days, or seven weeks after Passover.  In Jewish tradition it has dual significance.  In Torah, it is designated as the time to make a thanksgiving offering from the first fruits of the land.  Biblically, Shavuot is an agricultural celebration.  But in tradition, coming as it does on the heels of the Passover, it also commemorates the giving of Torah at Sinai.  As it is portrayed in the Acts of the Apostles, we see that it was observed as a pilgrim festival.  Jews from around the world gathered in Jerusalem to observe Pentecost.

In Christian terms, we see it as the birth of the Church, when God’s Holy Spirit inspired the apostles to proclaim the Gospel to all nations.  When they went out to preach to the crowd, there was a miracle of understanding.  As Peter spoke, everyone present heard and understood his words in their native language.  To me this says that our God reaches out to us and draws us together despite our differences.  God does not want us all to be the same, and yet our differences pale in comparison to our common humanity before the one God.  The Pentecost miracle is a sign of God’s urging humanity from fragmentation to wholeness.

In the Gospel lesson, we heard Jesus tell his disciples of the coming of the Holy Spirit and he blessed them with peace.  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27)  We have to believe that, as a devout Jew, the word Jesus used was “shalom.” (שלום)  But shalom, generally translated as peace, also means wholeness and much more.  One translation note I read defines the Hebrew shalom as a term “…encompassing the blessings of prosperity, good health, friendship and well-being.” (Etz Hayim, p.804)  The traditional Jewish prayer for healing, invokes a form of the word shalom in calling for a rafuah shlemah, (רפוה שלמה) usually translated as “spirit of wholeness.”  The peace of shalom is the deepest kind of peace.  As Jesus blessed his disciples with peace, he acknowledged their fear.  He knew that he was leaving them in a world that was far from wholeness and peace.  But Jesus called his disciples to be healers and servants and builders of peace and wholeness.

And here we are, in a broken and beautiful world that is not yet what God wants us to make of it.  It is a hard place to be.  On this Pentecost we celebrate our mission as people of God called to bring wholeness, healing and reconciliation to the world.  On this Memorial Day weekend, we recognize how tragically broken the world is.  I find some consolation in the fact that, as a society, we have become somewhat more discerning in our attitude toward those who serve in the military during an increasingly unpopular conflict.  We’ve grown up, in some ways, since the Viet Nam War.  We have come to recognize that the policies that place our young men and women in harms way reflect on the citizens and the leaders they elect, not those who answer the call to duty. 

Pentecost reminds us that we can rely on God’s Holy Spirit to nudge us on to wholeness and peace.  On Memorial Day weekend, we best honor the fallen by recommitting ourselves to becoming a better nation.  If we want a world of wholeness and peace, we should start by making this a nation of wholeness and peace.  You often hear, since the 2006 elections, that because one party controls the White House and the other controls the legislative branch, we have a divided government.  I prefer to think of it as a “National Unity” government.  I’m not kidding.  I would love nothing better than to see an end to division and demagoguery and a return to a sense of community and common purpose characterized by earnest and civil discourse.  As a vast majority of Americans (roughly two-thirds) now see the war as a mistake, we need all our efforts, our good will and good faith to move ahead from where we are.  We may not agree on what course that may be, but perhaps we can move ahead in a spirit of reconciliation and healing that is sorely needed, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
May 20, 2007

Religion differs from magic in that it is not concerned with control or manipulation of the powers confronted. Rather it means submission to, trust in, and adoration of, what is apprehended as the divine nature of ultimate reality.

―Joachim Wach (1898–1955), German-born U.S. religious historian

Scripture Lessons:
Acts 16:16-34
John 17:20-26

                                       Knowing the Difference 

We’re all big Harry Potter fans at our house.  We’ve been reading them together out loud, since the very first book was published.  Before Oscar was old enough to follow along, Jane, Max and I would huddle in his bedroom and read aloud every night until the latest installment was finished, even after the books started getting progressively longer.  For Christmas one year, I gave Jane an over-sized Hagrid action figure.  He now stands on her desk in the children’s room of the Westwood Public Library, with a cracked dragon egg in one hand, young Norbert peering out of the shell, and his magical pink umbrella in the other hand. 

I love the movies, too.  If I am channel surfing and any of them are running on cable, I get sucked right in, no matter how many times I’ve seen it.  The visual effects are stunning.  Robes flapping in the wind as broom-mounted young wizards whip around the quiddich field, talking paintings, moving staircases, self lighting torches and scurrying house elves in the gothic splendor of Hogwarts Castle, JK Rowling and the directors who adapted her vision to screen have done a masterful job of creating an utterly plausible alternate magical universe.  The Harry Potter books and films tap into a common human yearning that is easily and willingly seduced.  All of us, at some level, love magic.  Who among us would not like to be able to wave a wand or wiggle our nose and conjure up our hearts desire or satisfy the slightest whim?

Magical themes have been staples of entertainment throughout history.  Think of the witches, fairies and ghosts in Shakespeare, or the various magical plot devices in Gilbert and Sullivan or any number of plays, ballets or opera.  There is something irresistible about magic.  It is the ultimate escapist entertainment.  Magic invites us to imagine a world where we are not bound by the strictures of responsibility or even the laws of physics.  Christianity has always had a hard time with magic, however playfully or lightheartedly it is portrayed.

You may have heard some evangelicals take on Harry Potter as something that promotes Wicca and devil worship.  One website I saw asked, “Harry Potter, charming stories or demonic plot?”  It is probably worth mentioning that Christmas is celebrated at Hogwarts, but that is not exactly a proof of Christian devotion any more than Christmas decorations make shopping malls into cathedrals from October through December.  But it would indicate that neither JK Rowling nor her books are hostile to Christianity.  The beloved twentieth century Christian writer CS Lewis never shied away from magic in his children’s books.  Not unlike the Chronicles of Narnia, the Harry Potter stories, at their core, are morality tales about good people rising up to confront evil.

In scripture, it is true; magic is portrayed in generally negative terms.  Yet, when Paul and Silas encountered a fortune teller, Paul’s hostility only rose to a level of annoyance at worst.  One might even say the clairvoyant slave girl did the evangelists a favor as she followed them, declaring that they came in the service of God.  As a recognized fortuneteller, she provided Paul and Silas with verification of their supernatural authority.  But Paul was not interested in magic, and got himself into trouble by exorcising the demon that gave the fortuneteller her powers. Paul did this in the name of Christ, demonstrating that faith is more powerful than magic. 

In this missionary adventure, we see a fascinating interplay of various powers at work:  magic, miracle, nature, theological and civil authority, and even economics.  Economics clearly drove the conflict that landed Paul and Silas in jail.  Men owned the fortunetelling slave girl for the purpose of exploiting her demonic possession for profit.  The text describes flatly, “…a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortunetelling.”  (Acts 16:16)  Out of sheer annoyance at being followed by the fortuneteller for days, Paul cast the demon out of her.  For his trouble, Paul and Silas were hauled before a magistrate, flogged, and thrown in jail.

While in jail, Paul and Silas sang hymns and prayed, and at midnight, the forces of nature came into play.  An earthquake threw open the doors of the jail and unfastened the chains on the prisoners.  Spectacular though it is, we must view this earthquake as a natural phenomenon and not a miracle resulting from the prayers of Paul and Silas.  Their prayers had more to do with their serenity in the aftermath of the quake than for the quake itself.  Afraid of the consequences of losing his prisoners, the jailor was ready to kill himself.  Though they had the opportunity, Paul and Silas had not left, and prevented their captor from committing suicide. Moved by their compassion for him, the jailor was then interested in learning about the faith they came to profess.  He tended to the wounds they suffered from their flogging earlier in the day, and brought them into his house.

This story, taken from the harrowing travels of Paul and Silas, beautifully exemplifies the difference between magic and religion.  Magic is about manipulation, exploitation, and getting what we want.  Religion is about the will of God, righteous relationships, and discovering peace by discovering what God wants of us and for us.  Magic, in this story, is represented by the fortuneteller.  Notice that, though she appears to have considerable powers, she is owned by men intent on exploiting her demonic possession for profit.  When the woman was released from her affliction, all her owners could see was the loss of an income stream and then pursued legal action against the ones who healed her. 

The scene in the jail could not be more different.  Though in prison, after brutal beatings and public humiliation, the missionaries sang hymns and prayed to the God in whom they placed ultimate trust.  We can assume they did not pray for release from jail, because they did not flee after the earthquake.  They remained out of concern for the man who jailed them.  Their compassion set them in a relationship that soon blossomed into mutual care and concern.  Their practice of religion put them in touch with God’s will and reconciling love which set them in righteous relationship with their neighbor, even in dire circumstances.  Brought into relationship by God, Paul, Silas, the jailor and his family were all better off for having coming together to affirm God’s saving love.  There is nothing magical about it.

So why do I keep hammering this theme of magic versus religion?  Because they are all too often confused for one another.  I think Christianity is all too often practiced as magic.   I have known theologically trained clergy in our own denomination who admit to seriously praying for parking spaces.  How many times have you seen a batter make the sign of the cross as they step up to the plate, or a basketball player do the same thing at the foul line before a free-throw?  This is magical thinking not depth of faith.   Doesn’t some part of you squirm when you see a locker-room post-game interview and a member of the winning team gives all the credit to Jesus, as if God had some reason to deny victory to the opponents in a game?!   Just once I would like to see a losing player step up to the microphone as say that losing is a part of the game too, and thank God for having good health and the privilege to make a living playing a game.  Lou Gehrig’s “…luckiest man on the face of the earth,” farewell speech was not couched in religious language but stands for all time as an inspirational example of serenity and gratitude with eyes wide open to all of life’s richness, joy, suffering and sorrow.    

I’m not saying that it is wrong to pray for things.  Jesus did say “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”  (Matthew 7:7)  However, when his disciples asked him how they should pray, he taught them to pray for what they needed not what they wanted.  We are taught to pray for our daily bread, not palaces and power.  We are taught to pray for forgiveness and the ability to forgive and to avoid evil and temptation.  But most of all, we pray for the reign of God and the doing of God’s will.

            When it comes to knowing the difference between living out our faith through religious discipleship or magic, it comes down to the difference between common sense and wishful thinking.  Religious life is about prayer and worship and work that is at least a little part of every day.  It’s like exercise or learning an instrument, and both music and athletics can be religious if you let them.  And like anything we dedicate ourselves to, we discover insight and joy and blessings we never expected.  God offers us abundant blessings, if only we would embrace them, day after day, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
May 6, 2007

Universal orthodoxy is enriched by every new discovery of truth: what at first appeared universal, by wishing to stand still, sooner or later becomes a sect. 

―Edgar Quinet (1803–1875), French poet, historian, politician

Scripture Lessons:
Acts 11:1-18
John 13:31-35

Alive to the Challenge 

There are such huge, important themes and tensions at work within our readings this morning, that when I set to work on this sermon on Thursday morning, my fingers flew across the keys.  The tension between the universal and the particular, inclusivity and differentiation, how those tensions play out in the religious life in a crowded and contentious world of religions and ideologies making competing truth claims, at times following up those claims with force, these are too much for one sermon, and it has been difficult to keep it to a single sermon.  These are key issues for our moment in history, globally and in our everyday lives.

Both passages make statements that differentiate the Early Church from the religion from which it sprang.  In Acts, we see a community in which both Jews and gentiles are participating members.  Yet differences in practice and background created friction and divisions within the community.  Peter describes, to his community of “apostles and the believers” (Acts 11:1), a vision that mandates the full inclusion of gentiles who are not circumcised or observe dietary laws.  While the vision speaks to inclusivity, it marks a step in differentiating the church from Judaism.  This takes place at about the same time rabbinic Judaism was clarifying and codifying issues of observing the commandments of the Torah in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple. 

What John says about Jesus makes another clear differentiation from Judaism, and articulates a central element of Christian theology.  John quotes the Risen Christ saying, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.”  For John, this is one of many expressions of the divinity of Christ.  Though our faith springs from the same Hebrew Scriptures and while Jesus and the disciples were all Jews, the assertion that a human, historical figure could be divine steps beyond the boundaries of anything Jewish.  It is a defining moment.  There is also a repetition of what has come to be known as the great commandment, which I trust we all embrace, celebrate and try to live, as Christ calls us to love one another as he loves us.

Throughout the histories of the three Abrahamic faiths, we have seen various moments of differentiation and separation.  After the Romans destroyed the Temple a few decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, Christianity developed from a movement within Judaism into a distinct religion.  This new religion was soon composed predominantly of gentiles.  During roughly the same period, Judaism evolved from a religion centered around a Temple based sacrificial cult based in the Temple, to a faith practiced by observing commandments, prayer and studying Torah.  Six or seven centuries later Islam arose in the Arabian peninsula, inspired by the monotheism and iconoclasm of the Jews and incorporating the teachings of Jesus.  Though the Prophet Muhammad saw himself as following in the footsteps of both faiths, it soon became clear that what he professed was a distinct and new religion. 

Even within the same faith there is friction and contention as to who is and is not part of the group.   I doubt it would surprise you to know that many evangelical Christians question whether we in the United Church of Christ are actually Christian.  The current Pope, when he was known as Cardinal Ratzinger, issued a document entitled Dominus Jesu which stated that Protestant denominations did not constitute actual churches, but rather what he called “ecclesial communities.”  When Mitt Romney spoke at Pat Robertson’s Regent University in Virginia last week, some parents and students objected to having a Mormon commencement speaker, questioning whether Mormons are actually Christian.  In conversation with Andrus, he assures me that Mormons certainly consider themselves to be Christian, and generally accept the broad mainstream of the Wider Church to be Christian.  Relatively young in the broad sweep of history, Mormonism continues to be the object of suspicion and misunderstanding. 

Too often expressed in hurtful ways, these distinctions are not trivial.  They define who we are and are grounded in our most sacred beliefs.  These distinctions unavoidably create divisions.  Sadly, in the course of human history, these divisions have been the source of violence and political exploitation.  But we must not allow our rejection of violence and exploitation to lead us to pretend we are all the same.  Doing so would be disrespectful of the richness and integrity of every faith, including our own.  And yet, there is much common ground on which all people of faith, indeed all humanity stands.

One great accomplishment of the 20^th century was the advance of meaningful interfaith dialogue.  One of the leading lights of this movement was the brilliant rabbi and philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel.  Born into an important eastern European rabbinical family, he escaped the Holocaust and made his way to America.  He would become a friend and ally of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and something of a mentor to the UCC’s own William Sloan Coffin. In his 1966 address at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Heschel identified both the differences and the common ground:  “The supreme issue is today not the halacha for the Jew or the Church for the Christian –but the premise underlying both religions, namely, whether there is a pathos, a divine reality concerned with the destiny of [humanity] which mysteriously impinges on history; the supreme issue is whether we are alive or dead to the challenge and expectation of the living God.  The crisis engulfs all of us.  The misery and fear of alienation from God make the Jew and Christian cry together.” (Heschel p.236)*

Over forty years later, the great challenges of our age demand the passionate and devoted efforts of people of faith, all faiths.  But that means that we must ground ourselves in the traditions of our own particular faiths that inspire and sustain us.  We most commit ourselves to lives of devotion and service within our particular communities of faith.  Heschel was adamant that, “The first and most important prerequisite of interfaith is faith.  It is only out of the depth in the unending drama that began with Abraham that we can help one another toward an understanding of our situation.  Interfaith must come out of depth, not out of a void absence of faith.”  (Heschel p.241)*

Last Saturday, I went with members of the Confirmation Class to Temple Shalom for the Shabbat Morning Minyan and Torah Study.  After the prayer service, we went with the Minyan down to a room where we had breakfast and studied that week’s Torah portion with Rabbi Gurvis.  As we lined up to get food, a woman from Temple Shalom asked one of the Confirmands what he thought of the service.  The confirmand answered that it was interesting, and found it different from “normal church.”  I know he regretted his choice of words immediately, but I don’t think it gave offence.  In fact, there is much to celebrate in his response.  One of our young people filters his understanding and appreciation of a different religion through an unconscious grounding in his own.  I also found it reassuring that he considers our church “normal.”

It is in the commitment to our faith, and our church that we best discover how God wants us to live out our obligations to our neighbors and our world.  This can be succinctly found in the imperative “to love one another” found in this morning’s Gospel lesson.  I hope that here at Second Church we can deepen that commitment and grow as members of the Body of Christ.  Committing to the life of our congregation, by worshipping together and studying scripture, that is how we can be “…alive to the challenge” (to use Heschel’s words) of a living God in a wounded and beautiful world.  Oddly enough, in deepening our commitment to and presence at church, we can find peace and order in our chaotic lives so desperately in need of spiritual grounding.  In the simple act of being together Sunday after Sunday, calling upon the Spirit of God and grounding our understanding in scripture, worship and fellowship, we begin to navigate a deeper reality that gives meaning to everything we do. 

Such things do not happen over night.  To that end, beginning next fall I will lead a monthly evening Bible study for adults.  That should be fairly easy for people who have requested it to commit to with some regularity.  If there is interest, perhaps we can increase the frequency.  I also hope to avail ourselves of some of the many leading biblical scholars right here in the area.  It will be designed to give historical and scholarly context, but I also want us to have a devotional aspect, so that the inspiration and guidance of scripture will become more accessible to all of us.  I am eager for us to set about this adventure, as we renew the loving bonds of our community by being alive to the challenge and the promise of God’s Word, in a world without end.  Amen.

 *Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity; Abraham Joshua Heschel, ed. Susannah Heschel

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
April 22, 2007

See, I am sending you out like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.

Matthew 10:16

Scripture Lessons:
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

Shepherd and Lamb

We just came through another one of those weeks when we can’t help drawing our kids and loved ones a little closer.  Tragedy has a rare ability to provide brutal perspective on life.  The massacre at Virginia Tech boggles the mind.  How?  Why?  There are, no doubt, lessons to be learned in the aftermath of this carnage.  It appears that good and capable people were paying attention to warning signs.  In some ways the system worked.  In some ways, the system broke down.  Reflection and informed analysis may teach us important lessons, if we can focus on learning more than blaming, even while we do not want to lose sight of accountability. 

Ultimately, evil and suffering are a mystery.  In the aftermath of tragedy, there is a natural tendency to entertain “what if” scenarios.  I recall talking to one of our senior members of this congregation who attended the 1936 Olympics.  She told me she stood mere feet from Hitler when he arrived and departed the stadium in Munich each day of the games.  She said she often wondered at how much suffering she could have prevented if she had had a gun then.  That is a rather spectacular and tantalizing scenario, but no life is untouched by nagging regrets or the ongoing effects of choices made or avoided.  Every combat veteran I know has stories of comrades who died instead of them because of a last-minute swap of duty or when the difference between life and death was a matter of inches or seconds.  The vagaries of happenstance surrounding the events in Blacksburg last week will likely echo in the thoughts of every person on campus last Monday for the rest of their lives.

I have to imagine a somewhat shell-shocked tone to the disciples’ encounter with the Risen Christ in Galilee.  Last weeks Gospel Lesson found the apostles cowering in a locked house when the Risen Christ appeared to them and bestowed the power of the Holy Spirit and the authority to forgive sins.  In that passage we learned the familiar story of doubting Thomas, insisting on physical evidence before he would believe in the resurrection.  Jesus let him have it, the evidence that is.  Tradition has always been hard on Thomas, but Caravaggio wasn’t when he painted the scene.  With his remarkable eye for detail, we may notice that Thomas’ tunic is ripped in a traditional Jewish sign of mourning the dead.  Caravaggio portrayed Christ sadly pulling back his garment as a stunned Thomas plunged his finger, knuckle-deep, into the wound in Jesus’ side.  In Caravaggio’s treatment, we see clearly that Thomas was not the only disciple who wanted proof.  Even after they had met the Risen Christ, they craned their necks over Thomas’ shoulder to see the wound.  Thomas was just the only one who had the nerve to ask. 

For me, the power of John’s resurrection accounts is the insistent physicality of them.  In John, there is no question that the Christ portrayed after the crucifixion was no hallucination.  He is real, flesh and blood, alive again.  The descriptions are concrete and detailed, both in the Doubting Thomas narrative and when the Risen Christ met his disciples by the Sea of Tiberius.  The headiness of being at the center of a meteoric group that electrified the countryside and brought them into the center of their universe, the Temple in Jerusalem during the pilgrim festival of Passover, ended brutally and shamefully on a Roman cross.  Even after meeting the resurrected Christ while cowering in a locked house, they went home in defeat.  How else do you describe it?  Their teacher, raised from the dead, bestowed heavenly authority to loose or bind judgment, and yet they returned to the provinces to their old line of work.

I picture Peter in stupor.  On Maundy Thursday he was all bravado and flailing sword, and a few hours later he denied that he even knew Jesus.  And Jesus had nicknamed him “rock.”  That must have felt like the bitterest of ironies to Simon Peter, having been so easily dislodged from Jesus’ side.  With the other scattered disciples in Galilee, I imagine Peter barely voicing his intention to go fishing.  Did he really want the others to come with him?  Was it for need of food, something to occupy themselves, or concern for their comrade that they decided to set out on the lake with Peter?  They probably didn’t know, but sticking together, doing something familiar probably made sense.  It probably felt right.  But the fishing did not go well.  All night on the lake and no fish. 

They saw Jesus standing on the shore in the gray dawn, but they did not recognize him.  He knew their night was unproductive.  Jesus spoke tenderly to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” (John 21:5)  The translation note in The Oxford Study Bible says that the way Jesus addressed them had a colloquial resonance more like “Boys.”  As someone who grew up in Texas, I hear this exchange between these country boys more in terms of, “Boys, you ain’t got no fish,” gentle, sympathetic teasing.  When he suggested where to cast their nets, the weary disciples gave it a try.  They caught more fish than they could bring into the boat.  The scene has echoes of Jesus’ first meeting Peter and Andrew on the lake in the fifth chapter of Luke.

There is another gorgeous parallel in this scene, when Jesus talked with Peter on the shore.  The shore is a meeting place, not just between Peter and Jesus but between sea and land, earth and water.  In meeting the resurrected Christ, Peter is meeting the eternal in the here and now, real life.  What happens in this elemental, eternal/existential meeting?  Jesus brought it all down to the basics of life and relationships.  Jesus asked, “Do you love me?”  Three times, Peter declares his love for Jesus.  The text tells us, “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.’”  (John 21:17)  Just as Peter had denied Jesus three times, Jesus gave Peter three new opportunities to declare his love.  Not only that, Jesus told Peter how to show his love.  “Feed my lambs.”  (John 21:15)  “Tend my sheep.” (John 21:16)  “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:17)

Of course we read this metaphorically.  Jesus is speaking to Peter, and to us in terms of the central Christian symbol of the Good Shepherd.  Though the church is the Body of Christ, Peter is the personification of the institutional church, with all its human foibles.  Jesus speaks to him as both Lamb of God and Good Shepherd, we, the Body of Christ, are both sheep and shepherd.  But I do not think we want to get too metaphorical about the feeding aspect of Jesus’ imperative.  At the center of this resurrection narrative is the indisputable element of real food.  Not only did Jesus help the disciples catch their breakfast, but he cooked it for them as well.  In this encounter at the shore, feeding is both physical and spiritual, and the two are inseparable.

One of the most touching stories I heard come out of Blacksburg last week was how area clergy organized people to provide home-cooked meals for the students who remained on the Virginia Tech campus for the week classes had been cancelled.  Though food service continued uninterrupted, their neighbors sensed that these stunned and grieving students might find some comfort by getting a break from cafeteria food and eating a meal or two provided by concerned neighbors.  It was then that I noticed, for the first time really, the idea that food equals love is biblical: if you love me, feed my sheep.  Of course, in our gluttonous and materialistic society, we fixate on the food when we don’t know how to love and we have the obesity and eating disorders to show for it.  All good things can be abused.  Love and food are no exceptions.  Those side-effects are all the more damning in a world where too many children starve to death every day.  Christ calls us to give them our love and feed them as well.  Food equals love in the close-up and the big picture is well.  In the massive sorrow in Blacksburg last week, the healing process began in part by sharing meals. 

In Peter’s stupor he needed to declare his love for Jesus and he needed someone to tell him how to show it.  He was, after all, a miserable coward and a failure.  I think it is important to remember that our faith, our church, our religion, is born of failure.  Remember how clueless the disciples were throughout all four gospels, even through the resurrection narratives, until the moment at Pentecost when they received the Holy Spirit.  Remember how they abandoned Jesus on Thursday night.  Apart from Judas, Peter was the worst failure of all.  He denied even knowing Jesus.  And yet he was the rock upon whom Christ founded the Church.  What kind of Good News is that?  It is the best kind.  No.  We cannot change the past.  But we can take wisdom from the past and change how we engage the present.  That can bring us to a different future than we can now imagine.

Even on a beautiful spring morning like this one, there are dark clouds looming on the horizon.  On this Earth Day, it is increasingly apparent that we have to live more carefully and consume less if we want to leave a habitable planet to future generations.  We are engaged in a war that looks unlikely to end well.  We are mourning the deaths of 33 dead students and faculty, some victims, some heroes, one twisted individual who brought it about.  We have serious questions to ponder about guns, mental health, and how communities and agencies can communicate better when astute individuals raise warnings. 

We cannot change the past.  But we can comfort one another in our sorrow.  We can love and care for one another and gather courage.  Life is good, even if it is hard at times.  Failure and death may be where we start out, but they are not our destiny.  That is not our calling.  We are called to new life and love.  We cannot do it all ourselves, but we have one another and we have the grace and love of God.  We can each make an effort, and small efforts can become big changes.  If we are faithful, God can move mountains, maybe a pebble at a time, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
April 15, 2007

Religion, or the duty which we owe our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force and violence; and therefore all [people] are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.

―James Madison

Scripture Lessons:
Acts 5:27-32
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31

Faith without Fear, Religion without Polemics

The traces of anti-Jewish polemic found in our readings for this morning, seem all the more pointed, as they fall on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.   There is nothing diabolical on the part of the Lectionary, as these readings are relevant to Eastertide, and the Lectionary predates the Holocaust.  Yom Hashoah is timed to coincide with events of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II.  Yet, when I read a Gospel Lesson that tells me that the apostles were gathered in a locked house for “fear of the Jews” (John 20:19), and a passage from the Acts of the Apostles hurls an accusation of Jewish blood guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus (Acts 5:30), I react with more than a little discomfort and pain.  The discomfort is theological.  The pain is personal. 

Many of you know that I have Jewish family roots.  My mother was Jewish.  Because Jewish identity is passed on matrilineally, that makes me Jewish by certain halachic standards.  I did not know about my heritage until I was fourteen years old.  It was treated as a family secret.  My mother was born in 1923, to Jewish parents.  My grandparents were very much assimilated, and when my maternal great-grandparents died, my grandparents changed the family name from Sussman to Sims, and began attending a Methodist church.  The sudden change of identity was traumatic for my mother.  She found herself ostracized from the community she had known, and unwelcome among Christians. 

In 1920s America, anti-Semitism was completely socially acceptable.  Though owned by a Jewish family, the newspaper of record, The New York Times, ran ads for hotels and resorts that were restricted (that is to say, they explicitly banned Jewish patronage).  The pressure of widespread cultural anti-Semitism formed my mother’s sense of herself.  I believe, she felt she was doing her children a favor by not informing us about our Jewish roots.  Though she did convert to Christianity as a young adult, I have always thought my mother felt ashamed of being Jewish, and ashamed of not being Jewish. 

I and my four siblings may never have known about our Jewish roots if it had not been for experimental family counseling in the 1960s.  Though I was present for these sessions, at four and five years old, I was not a participant.  I generally sat on the floor and played with my toys, while spirited discussion went on around me.  At one of these sessions, the psychiatrist disclosed my mother’s Jewish roots, against her wishes.  Though I do not remember it, I am told my mother rushed out of the room in tears.  Though some might argue that such a disclosure constituted professional misconduct or even malpractice, I am grateful for it.  Had it not occurred, I may never have known my true family history.  Even after that incident, my mother never brought up the topic for the rest of her life.

When I was fourteen, my sister disclosed our family history to me.  I was the product of an unambiguously Christian upbringing.  I went to an Episcopal school, where daily attendance at chapel was mandatory.  I relished opportunities to serve at the altar as an acolyte.  This was where I felt my earliest conscious stirrings to ordained ministry.  But then learning that the dominance of a Christian culture was instrumental in instilling an abiding misery that overshadowed most of my mother’s life, which denied me the knowledge of a rich family history and heritage, I left the church for a number of years.  Obviously, I have found my way back, and I embrace my vocation to ministry as essential to who I am.  I have the Unitarian Universalists and my mentor Kit Howell to thank for providing a place to search and feed a hungry spirit during that period of estrangement.  The unusual circumstances of my life and background have instilled in me a passion for interfaith dialogue and reconciliation.

My own experience of anti-Semitism within a predominantly Christian culture pales in the shadow of twenty centuries of painful Jewish/Christian relations.  All the same, when our sacred text fuels the conflict in hurtful ways, I feel it in my gut.  The great irony is that Christianity is utterly dependant on preexisting Hebrew Scripture.  Jesus and his disciples were all Jews.  When John wrote that the apostles were cowering in a locked house for “fear of the Jews,” the fact remains that everyone in the house was a Jew.

The Gospel According to John has a distinct we/they tone dividing Jesus’ followers versus a monolithic Jewish community.  In the incident described in this morning’s Gospel Lesson, anything you could call The Church did not yet exist.  Traditionally, we date the birth of the Church to the gathering of the apostles in the upper room in Jerusalem, when they received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  By the narrative chronology, that happened well after the  resurrection appearance described in John 20.  The tone of John is different from synoptic gospels, which paint a more nuanced portrait of the Jewish community made up of various groups, one of which would have been Jesus and his followers.  The Gospel According to John was written after the distinction was clearer, and the early church had become increasingly populated by gentiles. 

In the locked house described in John 20, the people the apostles had to fear the most were the Romans.  They were the ones who crucified Jesus.  The Romans ruthlessly and determinedly persecuted the early church.  That is not to say that there was no conflict between the movement Jesus started that would eventually become a new religion and the ongoing Jewish community from which it sprang.  In the Acts of the Apostles, we see Peter being called before the High Priests over what they had been teaching about Jesus.  Peter accused the priests of culpability in Jesus’ death.  Though Peter’s accusation is problematic, several verses preceding the incident in Acts reflect a diverse Jewish community in Jerusalem, from whom neither the apostles nor the priests could presume support.  These Jews thought for themselves and entertained a variety of ideas.

My biggest problem with the passage in Acts is the accusation of blood guilt.  Such claims have given rise to the most shameful chapters of Church history, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust.  And though the Holocaust was perpetrated by the Nazis, not the church, a culture of anti-Semitism that led to it, has its roots in historical teachings of the church.  An excellent account of this is Constantine’s Sword, by James Carrol. 

Christianity is not alone in allowing faith commitments to be expressed as political oppression and violence.   The cases I know best are the three Abrahamic religions.  If you read Joshua, you will see what basically amounts to ethnic cleansing, as the Israelites took control of the Promised Land.  Incidentally, white European Christian settlers used those same texts to justify the displacement and slaughter of indigenous peoples from North America to the South African Veld.  In the early years of Islam, Muhammed settled a dispute with a Jewish tribe in Medina by ordering the execution of at least 600 men and selling their wives and children into slavery.  However, our challenge is not to point fingers, but rather to face the dark moments of our history and the problematic venomous passages of our own sacred text.  It is worth noting that history shows that Jews were safer and freer in Jerusalem when Muslims ruled the city than when Christian Crusaders did.

Though terrorist acts of Jihadi Muslim extremists grab headlines every day, thoughtful Christians know that these are not the majority of Muslims.  I was struck, when listening to a tape of the bombing in the Iraqi Parliament on Thursday, that even as twisted hateful religious zeal motivated that attack and others like it in Iraq, the survivors praised God.  In the din of the aftermath, in this extraordinary tape recorded by the Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief, you could hear more than one of the survivors calling out “Alahu Akbar! God is great!”  When the Parliament reconvened on Friday, they read from the Quran.  For the vast majority of Muslims, their faith, like ours, is a source of comfort at difficult times and a motivation to be the best people they can be.

Religious faith is powerful and transformative.  For many it is the primary means of understanding all of life and experience.  As such there can be a tendency to react quite vehemently to other view points that challenge one’s most cherished assumptions and values.  To be uncomfortable with such challenges is understandable.  But to respond with polemic and persecution undermines the credibility of our beliefs.  Because religious people throughout history have reacted to theological and creedal challenge with physical violence, many have been led to conclude that religion itself is the problem. 

I choose to look at the same history and conclude that the body count on all sides would have been much worse if there was no religion to call us to our higher spiritual yearnings.  I see the violence in history as expressions of fear and appetite born of our animal nature.  After all, biologically speaking, we are animals.  But we are more, too.  I believe that our faith draws us beyond mindless animal existence to our highest sense of humanness, which is created in the image of God for goodness and commanded to love.  Reaching back to the Gospel Lesson, the Risen Christ confronted Thomas and challenged us not to believe because of parlor tricks.  We will not have the opportunity to poke our fingers in Jesus’ wounded side.  We believe because our faith makes sense; it makes us better human beings.  Our faith gives us what we need to make it through a sad and beautiful life in a troubled world.  We see enough wounds and we are called to be healers.

Yes, I have felt the wounds of anti-Jewish polemic my own faith has perpetuated.  But that same faith gives me a most excellent Jewish teacher who commended even the scribes with whom he argued (Mark 12:34), taught his disciples that those who are not against us are for us (Mark 9:40), and that our ultimate calling is to love one another. (John 15:12)  There is way too much hurt in the world to waste our energy arguing over the details.  If our faiths make competing claims about who God is and what God’s intensions are, then let us make our point with our actions.  The centuries have produced more than enough words, and we can always use more righteous deeds.  Let us seek to outdo one another in compassion, mercy and love.  If we do this, I believe it will delight God, and draw all Gods children closer together, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
April 8, 2007

Scripture Lessons:
Isaiah 65:17-25
Luke 24:1-12

The Facts of Life and the Truth of Resurrection

It may surprise you, and it kind of surprised me, that no one from Second Church asked me once about the discovery of ossuaries in a tomb near Jerusalem, purported to contain the bones of Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene and Joseph, and a possible son of Jesus.  Nobody asked me what I knew or what I thought, or whether they could be what James Cameron and his hired archeologists and journalists claim.  I can tell you that no serious archeologists or scholars are lining up to verify their theory.  The combination of names on the ossuaries is interesting, even if they were quite common for the period. 

The absence of interest in this new theory at Second Church was a pleasant surprise.  There was more interest in the Gospel of Judas, when it was released last year.  Your indifference to those ossuaries, the bones in them, and the provocative inscriptions on the boxes reflected their meager religious significance for you.  If that is the case, I have yet another reason to be proud to be your pastor.  Clearly, you understand that faith is not a matter of facts and physical evidence. 

The first session of every confirmation class I teach is a conversation about the difference between truth and facts.  Those ancient bone boxes discovered in Jerusalem nearly twenty years ago are facts.  They may or may not have anything to do with people named in the Bible.  Even so, the truth we discover in scripture and the hope it inspires are not dependent on whose bones were in the boxes.

Scripture is filled with truth, insight and inspiration as long as we don’t limit ourselves by the way we look at it.  The most limited way to read scripture is to read it literally.  I find it tragic that so many Christians waste time and energy picking fights with science, just because of differing descriptions of the creation of the universe and how humanity came to be as we are today.  I don’t think I shock anyone here when I say that Darwin and the scientists who have based their subsequent and fruitful inquiries on his theories get a lot more factual details of the origins of humanity correct than does Genesis.  Astrophysics and geology also have a pretty good track record, when it comes to the origins of the cosmos and the planet we call home. 

But that does not mean that the Bible is not true and accurate in the most important ways.  The Bible provides insight and guidance that are relevant to real life every day, even as the facts of life change every day.  Though I do not want my boys wasting time studying it in their public school science classes, as a point of basic theology I do believe that there is divine intelligence behind the creation of all that we know and much more.  The most important debate on creation and evolution that too few Christians are engaging is how to evolve our faith-based ethics and become better stewards and healers of God’s sacred creative handiwork: the planet Earth.  The Garden of Eden story teaches us an essential truth about human nature that is hard to refute.  No matter how good we have it, human beings have a tendency to overreach and ruin a good thing.  That is what sin is.  Melting ice caps and endangered species bear factual witness to that biblical truth.

When I maintain that science and scripture do harmoniously compliment each other, I do so with reverence and respect for both.  I believe God’s Word, as discovered in scripture, is reliable.  I also believe God’s genius can be glimpsed by observing creation scientifically.  Both scripture and creation are instructive, revelatory and holy, in differing and mutually enlightening ways.  My stubborn faith in resurrection is not dependent on or threatened by what archeologists say about a box of bones with “Jesus” written on it.  I see evidence of resurrection everywhere I look this time year.  The days are getting longer.  The birds are singing.  The soil is soft and fragrant.  Soon the trees will bud and the perfume of spring blossoms and their radiant color will surround us.  The reality of resurrection will fill every one of our senses.

Easter is a turning point.  Easter is the triumph of life in the midst of death, a stunning reminder of God’s amazing grace.  Luke’s Easter narrative begins at a tomb.  John’s account adds that the tomb was in a garden.  This location is not mentioned nor contradicted by the synoptic gospels.  The garden location makes for interesting symmetry, death and new life, recalling the original garden in Genesis.  In the beginning of the Easter story, we stare into the face of death.  Women who loved Jesus brought spices prepared for his body, intended as a final act of devotion to their teacher who inspired them to hope in the midst of a hard life.  As Jews, they lived under foreign occupation.  As women, they were, as Rosemary Radford Reuther would say, “the oppressed of the oppressed.”  Yet Jesus welcomed and encouraged their discipleship. 

As the women approached the tomb, I imagine they may have regretted letting their guard down, for daring to hope.  When they saw an open and empty tomb they were “perplexed.”  (Luke 24:4)  They encountered “two men in dazzling clothes.”  (Luke 24:4)  The text is not specific, but we might guess they were angels.  Delivering a divine message fits the biblical job description for angels.  The news the women heard was that life had triumphed over death, just as it always has since the beginning of creation.

I don’t mean to reduce the wonder of the resurrection to a nature metaphor.  Something extraordinary happened after that visit to the garden tomb in Jerusalem that defies any simple explanation.  It is a mystery.  An inner circle of friends and disciples shamefully deserted and fled when Jesus was arrested.  One betrayed him, another denied knowing him.  Soon, the same deserters stepped up to continue Jesus’ ministry and proclaim the gospel fearlessly, even in the face of persecution and martyrdom.  Ethereal spiritualized resurrection does not interest me nearly as much as the gritty, earthy resurrection we read about in the gospels.  The grit and dirt are right there.  Why else would Luke so carefully note, in terms that rival a detergent commercial, that the messengers at the tomb were dressed in such clean clothes?  Our biblical narrative is firmly rooted in the flesh and blood, dirt and mud, plants and animals of existence.  That has been the case throughout the biblical narrative.  Transcendent and eternal truth like Christ’s resurrection is firmly rooted to the earth, proclaimed by the reliable turning of the seasons and rebirth of the earth. 

The Lectionary underscores the earthiness of this moment by coupling Luke’s account of the empty tomb with Second Isaiah’s vision of creation redeemed.  After describing a secure city and social order restored to justice, God’s prophet describes a redeemed natural order.  “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 65:25)  The ones that devour and destroy are reconciled with the most vulnerable, who no longer dread the strong. 

Today, as I watch the resurrection in the natural order, I do so with a mixture of hope and dread.  As I talk about the reliable turning of the seasons, I imagine some of you have been thinking about how the cycle of the seasons has changed on a global scale.  Last week, a United Nations panel on global climate change issued its report unequivocally linking global climate change to human-generated carbon emissions from cars, power plants and factories.  All of these have direct relevance to our personal patterns of consumption.  Evidence has been gathered on every continent and in nearly every ocean.  I don’t want to go into the scary details because the children are with us.  But the presence of our children should underscore the importance of making every effort and sacrifice to heal the bruised and battered planet.

And I don’t want to end on a pessimistic note.  This is a day for hope.  We have the ability to make changes that can make a difference.  Hope is not necessarily easy or simple, but it is better than the alternative.  Think of the disciples after they met the Risen Christ.  Their lives were not any simpler or easier, but they had hope and they had purpose.  That is the gift we are offered this morning, hope.  We can turn our backs on aimlessness and sin.  We are invited to be disciples, and healers, living courageous lives of reverence and love.  We are invited to live in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
March 25, 2007

...we all struggle perennially with the same old painful issues that are true for all people:  how to deal with unexplained suffering, how to survive a sorrowful universe, how to heal yourself, how to restore yourself when that seems difficult and impossible (given what life deals out to people). That’s not a very revolutionary approach to take—to speak of sorrow and suffering as inevitable and as part of the human condition.   And yet all serious writers have always spoken that way.

―Sue Miller, U.S. novelist and story writer

Scripture Lessons:
Isaiah 43:16-21
John 12:1-8

Trying a New Thing

Today, we find ourselves only a few days from Passover, as we learn of corruption and abused trust within hallowed inner circles.  A once-belligerent regional power on the Tigris and Euphrates has been defeated in war, its former tyrant dead.  Disarray reigns as its Persian neighbors flex their muscles and exert influence throughout an ever-unsettled region.  Of course I am talking about our scripture lessons.  You may have heard an old axiom that ministers should prepare a sermon with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.  Some days it is hard to tell which is which.

When I made reference to the Passover and corruption in the inner circle, I was speaking of the gospel lesson, set six days before the beginning of the Passover.  There is a controversy over whether the expensive ointment Mary used on Jesus’ feet was an appropriate use of resources.  Judas made the point that the ointment could have been used to raise money to distribute among the poor. This argument is undermined by the disclosure that Judas was not so much interested in helping the poor as helping himself to the purse he held for the disciples.  Judas’ motivations aside, the question is a legitimate one with which the Church has always and must always struggle: how do we balance what we spend on our ministry and its trappings and how much should we give in service to others in need?  I have always been proud of the fact that after our capital campaign to restore our building, we tithed 10% of those funds for building projects of other charitable organizations around Newton.

Greg Mobley preached on this text when he was here one time.  He characterized Jesus’ acceptance of the small luxury offered him in terms of Jesus’ full and weary humanity.  He described Jesus waving off the controversy, touched by Mary’s gesture, saying, “Fellas, I need this.”  This is what I find so fascinating about John’s gospel.  Of the four canonical gospels, John’s has the most exalted Christology operating in it.  And yet, Jesus is intensely human.  And John puts these things right next to each other in extraordinary tension.  We have the sense, in John’s vision of Christ, of one who inhaled God’s Spirit, in all its possibility and audacity and exhaled humanity in all its glory and vulnerability.

In the previous chapter John depicted Jesus calling his beloved friend Lazarus from the tomb. (John 11:43)  Yet, the moment before, he wept bitterly at the news that his friend was dead.  In John’s portrait of Jesus, we have both the Son of God, the Word made flesh with power over life and death, and one who still felt the sting of loss and faced death with full human emotion.  In today’s reading, even having already performed the miracle of raising Lazarus from death, Jesus spoke of his impending crucifixion less than two weeks ahead with grim, weary resignation. 

This reminder could be an expression of clairvoyance or it could be the clarity of an intelligent man who knew the full range of outcomes that lay ahead in Jerusalem.  The fate of John the Baptist must have weighed heavily on Jesus.  He knew the Romans would be out in force as the holy city swelled with pilgrims.  The High Priests would be hypersensitive to any one who questioned their legitimacy, as various Jewish groups of the period did.  Jesus knew he would be entering a dangerous and volatile situation.  We know he was not resigned to death, at least not entirely.  Remember the way he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane a few days later: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”  (Luke 22:42) 

The passage from Isaiah is from a portion of the book that is often referred to as Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah.  There is a broad consensus among biblical scholars that the latter two-fifths of the book was not written by the same author as the first part.  It was written, possibly by a disciple of Isaiah, after Judah was defeated by Babylon, Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple destroyed, and the community exiled.  Deutero-Isaiah speaks to a situation and events in Babylon, after Nebuchadnezzar had been defeated by the Persians, under the leadership Cyrus.  Saddam Hussein, it might interest you to know, took Nebuchadnezzar as something of a role model.  He even had himself photographed in a replica of Nebuchadnezzar’s bronze chariot, and boasted that one day he would defeat Israel and march the Jews into captivity wearing copper chains, in imitation of his Babylonian forebear. 

The words of our passage from Second Isaiah echo with allusions to the Exodus: “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.”  (Isaiah 43:16-17)  There are striking similarities to Miriam’s song at the sea, when Israel stepped to the far shore of the Red Sea, as it closed over Pharaoh’s pursuing army, “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” (Exodus 15:21)  Though similar to what is found in Exodus, Isaiah is talking about being released from bondage in a different land, the defeat of a different foe.  Though the motifs are similar, this is a different prophesy for a different time.  The prophet insists God is doing a new thing. “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.  I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19)

It is hard to read promises of new things in our ancient text.  For me it is all the more frustrating when scripture resembles so much of what is in the news.  I am ready for a new thing.  The Psalmist reminds us that a thousand days are like the blink of an eye in God’s time. (Psalm 90:4)   But how long do we have to wait for a new thing?  At the threshold of the Passover we remember Israel’s liberation from bondage in Egypt.  Today, Britain observes the bicentennial of the abolition of slavery, more than fifty years before it was abolished here in the U.S.  And still, though officially abolished all over the world, it still exists, from dark sweat shops in our own country, to the obscene byproduct of the genocide in Darfur, Chad and Central African Republic.

A new thing?  Israel was set free from bondage in Egypt, returned from exile in Babylon.  When survivors rose from the ashes of the holocaust, the oft repeated refrain was “never again.”  And yet, how often have we witnessed genocide since 1945?  Cambodia.  Bosnia.  Rwanda.  Kosovo.  Now Darfur.  Rabbi Immanuel Iakobovits observed, “Silence, indifference and inaction were Hitler’s principal allies.”  Genocide happens when otherwise good people stand by and allow it to happen.

Actually, something new did happen when Israel came out of Babylon to return to the land and rebuilt the Temple.  A defeated people kept their faith.  They did not surrender it to their captors or assume their God had been defeated by a greater one.  That was unprecedented in history.  It is now time for us to make history by keeping faith with the people of Darfur, Chad, and Central African Republic.  We do not have to accept that genocide is inevitable or unstoppable.  We know too much to pretend or ignore.

The Janjaweed militias have murdered over four hundred thousand people since 2003.  Over two million have been driven from their homes and five hundred people are killed every day.  Rape is being used systematically as a weapon of terror and psychological warfare.  Captured women and children are being routinely sold into slavery.  This is all done with the support of the Khartoum government of President al-Bashir.  Thursday, the Sudanese government suspended 52 non-governmental organizations from providing humanitarian aid.  John Holmes, the United Nations under-secretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief was denied entry to a refugee camp in Sudan, and a videotape his team was recording was confiscated. 

Friday, through the Save Darfur Coalition, I received an email signed by Senator Bill Frist, calling us to pressure the White House and State Department to intensify efforts and strengthen United Nations and African Union intervention to stop the genocide.  This comes from one of the administration’s staunchest Republican allies in the Senate.  When we hung the green Save Darfur banners in front of the church, one member said that he hoped we would do more than just hang signs.  There is more we can do.

If you go to SaveDarfur.org, you will find a number of links that make it easy to contact the White House, State Department and elected representatives.  If you have investments with Fidelity, let them know that it is unacceptable that they have over $2 billion in combined investments in Petro China and Sinopec.  These Chinese oil companies provide the funding the Khartoum government needs to wage its genocide, and Fidelity has refused to divest.  Numerous states and universities (including Harvard University and the State of California) have divested, and there are four bills before the Massachusetts Legislature to divest the State Employee pension fund from any of the offending Chinese oil companies or Fidelity funds that benefit the Sudanese government. Make your voice heard.  Use your dollars on behalf of the poor and the vulnerable.

I know it sounds like I am talking politics, and indeed, the political process is an important part of this effort.  However, first and last, we are talking about a moral crisis on which there is broad bipartisan consensus.  The humanitarian crisis is dire, criminal and we are faced with a zealous foe.  This is an emergency and our neighbors, God’s children in Africa, desperately need us to stand with them.  This is a call to your conscience, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
March 18, 2007

‘Tis good to give a stranger a meal or a night’s lodging. ‘Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.

―Ralph Waldo Emerson

Scripture Lessons:
Joshua 5:9-12
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

                                          The Bounteous Table

The table is a central metaphor of the biblical narrative, Hebrew Bible and New Testament.  “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…  My cup overflows.” (Psalm 23:5)  The central worship rite of ancient Israel, sacrifice, could be seen as offering a meal to God in the form of burnt animal flesh, grains and even cakes.  In our most common prayer, we ask for our daily bread, and our most often repeated sacrament is a meal.  The disciples first recognized the risen Christ when he broke bread. (Luke 24:30, 31)  It makes perfect sense, because eating is how we sustain life.  At its best, a meal is one of the great pleasures of life, not simply by what is on our plates, but by the relationships we nurture at the table.  A meal is the essential ritual of family life and by sharing meals we nurture friendships and extend hospitality.  By the foods we place on the table, we perpetuate our culture and we transmit family traditions.

Rabbi Rothman, when teaching about the Passover Seder in a class I took at Andover Newton, said that before a child could understand the concepts of slavery or freedom, they tasted them at the Seder table.  Our passage from Joshua portrays the first observance of Passover in the Promised Land, as commanded repeatedly in the Torah.  Here we see the commandment fulfilled as soon as Israel entered the land.  At a heady moment they paused to remember where they had been, how far God had brought them, and to taste the bread of affliction once again.  They enjoyed the fruits of the land, a land they would now have to work for themselves.  The text informs us that after that day, God no longer provided manna.  (Joshua 5:12)

In the gospels, we return to the table again and again.  In the Gospel According to John, Jesus performed his first miracle at a wedding feast by turning water into wine.  (John 2:1-9)  He turned scarcity into abundance so the joy of a celebration would not be diminished.  The only miracle that is contained in all four of the canonical gospels is the feeding of the multitudes.  (Mark 8:1-8; Matthew 14:13-21; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-13)  Many of Jesus’ parables revolve around a meal or a banquet and many of them are told over a meal.  That is the case with today’s Gospel Lesson.

Our Gospel Lesson begins with Jesus being criticized for those whom he shared a meal.  But if we find our way to the passage from the beginning of the previous chapter, we see Jesus accept the invitation of a Pharisee to come to his home for the Sabbath meal.  For the next few chapters, he never leaves the table, and the teaching he imparts repeatedly uses the meal as object lesson.  He gives lessons on seating etiquette and tells of a man whose friends begged off a banquet invitation before he invites the least desirable of the community in their place.  And still, Jesus was criticized for eating with sinners, for tolerating the riff-raff.  Again, he is off and telling a parable.

The story of the Prodigal Son is so familiar to us that it has become emblematic cultural shorthand referenced by far more people than may even know the story it comes from.  Too often familiarity obscures the rich complexity of things and shorthand is by nature reductionist.  The story revolves around a father, his two sons, their relationship to him and his money.  The central conflict of the story comes into focus at the end, when the father throws a feast for the son who had audaciously asked for his inheritance while his father was still alive.  This was the son who had squandered his premature inheritance in high living.

The Prodigal Son is a parable about God’s grace and teaches us that God is always ready to welcome us when we earnestly repent, no matter how low we’ve fallen.  But it would be a mistake to spiritualize this parable entirely.  We should take seriously the literal elements of the story, which are wealth and relationships.  As is often the case in the parables of Jesus, the wealthy head of the household represents God.  The prodigal’s father is the generous and hospitable source of all things and locus of ultimate power.  This is similar to the parables of the Great Dinner (Luke 14:15-24; Matthew 22:1-14), the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16), and the Talents (Matthew 25:16-30).  An exception to this motif would be the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus. (Luke 16:19-31)  When both die, the rich man faces the consequences of a life of lavish excess and insensitivity to the poor, while Lazarus is comforted by Abraham. 

In the two brothers, we see a variety of human relationships and attitudes toward wealth played out.  They begin on equal footing, beloved sons of a wealthy father.  One of them, has the impudence to demand his inheritance as an advance, then runs off to a foreign country and blows it all in what is delicately described as “dissolute living.” (Luke 15:14)  A famine comes to the land where the prodigal son lives, and with his wealth gone, he is reduced to taking a job feeding pigs.  While guarding agains