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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
December 16, 2007

The best of prophets of the future is the past.

                                     ―George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord Byron

Scripture Lessons
Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12

A Ripe Time

Do you ever think about what John the Baptist might have smelled like?  The Bible doesn’t say anything about his fragrance, but does go into a good bit of detail about his extreme asceticism.  A steady diet of grasshoppers did not likely produce the sweetest breath even if certain varieties of locusts conform to Jewish dietary laws.  Leviticus 11:22 permits the eating of grasshoppers, crickets and some locusts.  John ate locusts because they were kosher.    Living out in the Judean wilderness must have been a fairly sweaty existence, though we can deduce that he bathed regularly.  John was, after all, “The Baptist.  He lived on the banks of the Jordan.  Purification baths were central to his ministry and his spiritual discipline.  Josephus, the first century historian wrote of John’s practice, “…John, that was called the Baptist… who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as a righteousness to one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins[only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness.”  (Antiquities 18: 116-117) 

Scripture tells us John wore a camel hair garment, and I think it is safe to assume that he only had one and wore it all the time.  This was not the camel hair we think of as a luxurious tan overcoat or jacket, but rather a coarse cloak woven from camel hair that is still worn by some Bedouin today.  It would signify John’s prophetic vocation.  The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible sites references to “hairy” garments in both Zechariah and II Kings.  In his book Rabbi Jesus, New Testament Scholar Bruce Chilton imagines John as “…wild looking, with a straggly beard and long hair matted into dreads.  He was dressed in a camel hair tunic –a wooly garment caked with dirt– rough as a doormat against his skin.”

I don’t raise the question of what John the Baptist may or may not have smelled like for a cheap laugh.  Rather, I want to make vivid the idea of how far outside the norm John truly was.  He lived a meager existence in the wilderness with little concern for the niceties of society, much more concerned with how God judged his life than what people around him thought.  To John’s mind, the ripeness of his body paled in comparison to the ripeness of time, on the verge of social, religious and political crisis.  The danger of the time is born out by the fact that John literally lost his head when it suited the whims of a petty despot.  And yet, this confrontational, unkempt and probably scary looking prophet drew crowds from the cities to hear his preaching and receive his baptism.

Our Gospel Lesson this morning shows that even learned men of the religious community came to hear what he had to say.  John was not all that impressed, and in fact openly hostile, hurling insults at the:

…Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee the wrath to come?  Bear fruit worthy of repentance.  Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham.”                                          

                                                                       (Matthew 3:7-9)

As always, we must remember that John was speaking within his community as a Jew among Jews.  For our purposes, it is as if a street preacher picked me out of a crowd and called into question my sincerity and righteousness in spite of my theological training and ordination.  John was making the point that religious identity and formal religion are meaningless without the actions that bear the fruits of faith.  That is what he meant when he said to the Pharisees and Sadducees: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

In our Hebrew Bible Lesson, the prophet Isaiah is similarly provocative and confrontational.  If you were the King of Judah, current occupant of the throne of David, direct descendant of the line of Jesse (David’s father), how do you suppose you would have taken references to the “stump of Jesse” (Isaiah 11:1)?  Might you have guessed that the prophet was predicting your government was about to fall? Given the fact that your nation was living under threat of a belligerent regional power in Babylon, would not such a prophesy be seen as tantamount to treason?  Make no mistake about it.  Isaiah was preaching an intensely political and inflammatory sermon. 

And yet, long after the crisis had passed, we still read Isaiah’s words and take inspiration from them.  As Christians we read Isaiah’s vision of restored and righteous Davidic monarchy as predicting the birth of Jesus Christ.  The phrase “…and a child shall lead them…” is a familiar refrain during Advent and Christmas, as we look to that vulnerable infant in Bethlehem attended by angels, shepherds and sages, homeless and taking shelter in a stable in an occupied nation with an insecure king out to kill him.  And yet, the vulnerability of the Christ Child dovetails beautifully with Isaiah’s vision.  Isaiah spoke not simply of a restored political order but also a renewed creation reconciled with itself. 

In the New Interpreter’s Bible, scholar Gene M. Tucker writes: “The unifying theme of this proclamation or announcement of salvation is the coming reign of God, understood and presented in two ways.  The first part (vv. 1-5) concerns God in the sociopolitical order by means of the birth or ascension of a new and ideal king from the line of David.  The second element (vv. 9-9) promises the reign of God in the order of creation with the establishment of peace and tranquility among all creatures, including predator and prey…Here, as throughout the Hebrew Bible, the world is understood a God’s creation.”

It is amazing to me how, twenty-five centuries later, Isaiah’s vision continues to be relevant to us.  In religious terms, Advent is the season when we await the arrival of the Prince of Peace (a title that comes from Isaiah).  This is not a king in the normal earthly political terms.  At the same time, we are in the middle an overheated presidential season trying to decide who will be our next president.  In a democracy we have the same moral responsibility as the king as we choose who will govern.  It is we who should ponder with, “…the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.” (Isaiah 11:2)  It is we the people who must try to find a leader who will “… not judge by what his [or her] eyes see, or decide by what his [or her] ears hear, but with righteousness he [or she] shall judge…”  (Isaiah 11:3)

There is something quite pointed about this.  Not judging by what one sees and hears seems suspect.  But it is all in the contrast the prophet is drawing with righteousness.  The righteous leader will do what is right, not go by subjective and relative perceptions.  The righteous leader will know that torture is always wrong and not hide behind fear-mongering and call a technique invented by the Spanish Inquisition and outlawed by the Geneva Conventions a name that makes it sound like surfing.  A righteous leader knows that torture goes against all the ideals our nation was founded on and places us in shameful company.  Like John and Isaiah we are at a moment of crisis and the time is ripe to turn in any number of directions.

Isaiah’s vision of a renewed and reconciled creation hits us right where we live in this anxious moment at the verge of catastrophic climate change, living as we do in the country that produces the greatest amount of carbon emissions in the world.  At the The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali yesterday, our nation was confronted by a prophetic voice from Papua New Guinea insisting that the United States “lead or get out of the way” of efforts to decrease worldwide emissions of carbon and greenhouse gasses.  To my surprise and great relief, our delegate to the conference announced that the United States would join the emerging consensus of the conference.  Hallelujah!

That consensus needs to be followed by a lot of hard work and substantive change in the way each of us lives if we are going to heal this battered planet.  But it is a start and a reason to hope.  This is a season of hope when we depend on light in a time of darkness.  The time is ripe.  We can change.  The world can change.  We can all be agents of change.  There is good news to proclaim and good works to set about doing, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
December 23, 2007

Christmas in Bethlehem.  The ancient dream: a cold, clear night made brilliant by a glorious star, the smell of incense, shepherds and wise men falling to their knees in adoration of the sweet baby, the incarnation of perfect love.

―Lucinda Franks

Scripture Lessons
Isaiah 7:10-16
Matthew 1:18-25

                                Inside the Story

One enduring childhood memory of Christmastime is my family’s crèche.  It was unique.  My mother was an artist and she hand-painted the figures that had been cut with a jigsaw.  Though flat, they were vividly painted.  Like any other crèche, it included Jesus, Mary and Joseph, shepherds, sheep, three Magi, an angel and various other animals.  What made it exceptional was that there were five additional figures for the five Malmberg children.  As the youngest, mine was the smallest, in a red hoodie sweatshirt with rosy cheeks.  My mother would set them out on the hearth in the living room and I would play with them as if they were little biblical action figures.  Because there were Malmberg children in that little wooden Bethlehem, we became part of the narrative.  We were inside the story.

There comes a certain clarity of religious practice in both Advent and in Holy Week as well, by the way we put ourselves into the narrative of our sacred story.  After church, some of our Sunday School children will rehearse the Christmas Pageant for the 5 o’clock worship service tomorrow night on Christmas Eve.  Instead of receiving the offering in plates passed by the ushers, each of us will have the opportunity to visit the Bethlehem stable here in our sanctuary and offer our gifts, just like the shepherds and Magi did over two thousand years ago.   By putting ourselves into the narrative, we allow the sacred story of our faith to work on us.  It is one of the ways we allow scripture to read us.  Who are we?  Are we the simple shepherd?  The wise foreigner?  The weary mother?  The dutiful yet puzzled husband?  In putting ourselves into the story, we draw close to the sacred mystery, but perhaps more importantly, we are more likely to notice the human realism.

When we look at scripture, we should bring reasoned analysis and scholarship to bear to understand what the text is actually saying and how it says it.  But with such serious analysis, we should never replace an element of playful imagination.  Both are important.  Bruce Chilton is an important contemporary New Testament scholar who was a fellow in the Jesus Seminar.  Chilton wrote a wonderful book I quote from regularly called Rabbi Jesus: The Jewish Life and Teaching that inspired Christianity.  What I love about his book is that he takes the scriptural text seriously, knows it well, taking into account all relevant historical context and archeology.  And yet, in his writing he fearlessly colors in the outlines that serious scholarship sets in place.  The result is a lively presentation of Jesus’ life that reads, at times, like a modern novel.  While I was reading it, I found Chilton’s email address and wrote him that I thought his book read like Christian Midrash.  To my delight, he wrote me back and said that that was a fair description.

Midrash is a Jewish interpretive tradition that is wonderful in its potential for playfulness.  The best definition I have ever heard of Midrash was this: when you spend an infinite period of time going over a finite number of words, the spaces between the words take on more and more importance.  Midrash operates in spaces between the words.  Peter Pitzele gave that definition to a room full of ministers, priests and rabbis at a Rothman Clergy Institute at Temple Shalom shortly after I arrived in Newton. Inspired by the tradition of Midrash, Pitzele invented a kind of Biblical psychodrama, which he calls “bibliodrama.”  At that Clergy Institute, he led the assembled Jewish and Christian clergy through the Book of Ruth.  After reading the mere four chapters that comprise the entire Book of Ruth, he questioned us as if we were the characters in the story.  I admit, it felt goofy at times.  But remarkable insights came through such a lively engagement with sacred text. 

Christians are beginning to take some cues from this ancient Jewish interpretive practice.  On one website I saw called it dancing with the text.  Though they cited Midrash as their inspiration, they were careful not to appropriate something that belongs to another faith tradition.  But there is nothing wrong with gratefully receiving inspiration from another religion, especially when it helps us deepen our engagement and insight into our own faith.  It is a matter of sensitizing ourselves to grab a hold of the nuggets of true human experience that are in the tiniest bits of scripture.  I am not sure whether the method is more tool or toy.  But play is how we move into complex reality before we really understand it.  Children play at doctor, cowboy, soldier and other vocations.  Courtship is a kind of play that works us into the deeper realities of trust and intimacy.

Let’s look at the first two verses of this morning’s Gospel Lesson:  “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.  Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”  (Matthew 1:18-19)  True, it starts with a broad and pivotal theological theme of the arrival of the Messiah, but it quickly gets very human with all the messiness of human relationships.  We get a little snapshot of the man Joseph, who is at the center of the nativity story, but does not get a lot of attention.  But in just one sentence, we are given enough to guess at what kind of man he must have been. 

Joseph was engaged to be married.  Given the practices of the time, the fact that he had a craft and had established a home, he was probably a grown man.  Mary was probably little more than a girl.  A carpenter in that time was a day laborer, not a skilled tradesman.  Socially, it was below the subsistence farming of many of his neighbors, who at least owned land.  By her intimate encounter with God, we can only assume that Mary was an extraordinary young woman.  Joseph must have considered himself fortunate to be engaged to her.  How he must have looked forward to marrying her, the bright hope in a constant struggle to make a living in a rugged land under Roman occupation.  Then imagine the agony he must have felt to discover she was pregnant.

But Joseph was not the sort of man to humiliate the woman he had hoped to marry, to inflict on her the humiliation that he might well have felt himself.  Rather, he was compassionate.  He did not make showy tirades, demand his honor be satisfied.  Perhaps he did not, at first, have the stomach to go through with the wedding, neither did he want to inflict pain on the woman he wanted for a wife.  Though he is a pivotal figure in the New Testament there is little written about who Joseph was.  Yet, one sentence in the first Chapter of Matthew speaks volumes about what kind of man he was.  Growing up in a house with such a sensitive and compassionate man seems utterly consistent with the man Jesus, about whom the New Testament says much more.  The glimpse we see of Joseph, in one sentence foreshadows the man whose teaching was characterized by forgiveness and compassion.

This Jewish interpretive tradition of Midrash moves us into the spaces between the words and moves us into greater intimacy with our sacred story.  And while I want to be mindful of the origins of this tradition, coming from a distinct and different tradition, the method of moving into the sacred narrative is utterly apropos of the Christmas story. 

Think of that line from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah that is quoted in Matthew’s Gospel: “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”  There is quibbling about the translation into the Greek, whether the prophet Isaiah meant a young woman or a virgin.  But what is striking is the Hebrew word that remains un-translated in both the Greek and in English: Immanuel.  God with us.  The challenge of our faith is to move prayerfully into the sacred story because at the heart of our faith is a God who moved into our story to be with us.  A child would lead us in the course of human events.

There is a reason we love Christmas as children, and I don’t think it is just because of Santa Claus and presents, though that is certainly part of it.  I think it has a great deal to do with the baby Jesus.  As children, that is when we first discover that we have a friend in Jesus.  In the Christ Child, we have a friend who needs us as much as we need God with us, Immanuel.  We see a little vulnerable baby born in a stable because the rest of the world was too preoccupied by bureaucracy to pay attention to a young woman in labor.  Jesus was born into a broken and beautiful world that needed a God that needed to draw near.  We await that birth every year.

Birth is a miracle, of life and hope and promise.  That is what we are waiting for every Advent.  The birth of the Christ Child every Christmas is a way to prepare room in our hearts for a God that is vulnerable, new and perfect.  We cannot reverse the events of our lives or un-know the experiences that have made us guarded and perhaps a little hard, even cynical.  Those experiences are part of who we are.  In fact, without them we cannot be disciples Jesus called us to be:  wise as serpents and innocent as doves. (Matthew 10:16)  Still, we cannot let the darkness overtake us.  We must embrace the seemingly impossible ideals that our faith is built upon: love, justice, compassion, forgiveness and peace.  We must remember that the vision we are called to is reconciliation, not compromise.  There is a difference.

My prayer for each of us, in these waning hours of Advent, is that faith, hope and love will find new life in each of us such that they thrive in and drive our church.  I pray that we will have the strength and conviction to nurture our sacred ideals so that they mature into the fullness of Jesus’ teaching and make us faithful disciples.  I pray that the people of Second Church will find such joy in fellowship and unity of purpose that we cannot help, by the grace of God, to become a community that is an instrument of peace, a bulwark of justice and a beacon of hope, in a world without end.  Amen.

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

Scripture Lessons
Isaiah 65:17-25
Luke 21:5-19

New Things and Old Stories

Studying Hebrew in Israel on my sabbatical a little over three years ago, I was enrolled in a month-long course designed to teach new immigrants to speak modern Hebrew.  Most of them had come from the former Soviet Union and several from France.  A good number of them lived in the Mediterranean coastal city of Netanya and commuted to classes.  Because modern Hebrew was created from biblical Hebrew, studying the living language is a good way to get a handle on the biblical language.  Most of the students who lived on campus were American Jews.  A few were rabbinical students; others had come for learning vacations.  Almost all of them were from progressive Jewish traditions.  I was the only Christian. 

There was one couple in their late twenties from Florida who were what is often referred to as “ultra-Orthodox,” which was immediately apparent from the usual black, modest dress they wore.  One evening I was with Steven after he and his wife had traveled to Jerusalem for an all night study session among the Orthodox community, in observance of Shavuot (which Christians observe as Pentecost).  This all-night study ended with going to the Western Wall at sunrise.  I asked Steven, given his profound religious commitment, what it felt like for him to go to the Western Wall, the fragmentary remnant of the Second Temple.  He responded in a traditional Jewish manner.  He told me a joke:

Back in the days of John Paul II, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem was deeply gratified when the pope confronted the tragic history of Christian anti-Semitism, rejected supersessionism and affirmed the ongoing legitimacy of God’s covenant with the Jews.  As soon as he could, the Chief Rabbi traveled to Rome to meet the pope.  The pope was thrilled.  He hired the best kosher chef in Rome and hosted the rabbi to a special dinner in the papal apartment at the Vatican. 

The two men hit it off immediately, had lively table conversation.  After dinner, neither of them was eager for the evening to end, and retired to a parlor for coffee.  Next to the pope’s chair, the rabbi noticed a carved marble pedestal, on which there sat a golden telephone.  “Your holiness, that’s a nice phone you got there.  What’s the story?” he asked with a knowing smile.  The pope said, somewhat sheepishly, “Well, that’s actually my direct line to God.”  The rabbi was impressed and asked if he could try it, and without hesitation the pope handed the rabbi the receiver.  He tried to listen in, but the pope had mostly forgotten the little bit of Hebrew he had learned in seminary. 

When the rabbi finished the call he thanked the pope and asked how much he owed the pope.  The pope was reluctant, but the rabbi insisted.  The pope said that it had been about a thirty minute call, which would come to about €100,000.  The rabbi raised his eyebrows slightly, but wrote the pope a check without hesitating.  At the end of the visit, the Chief Rabbi and the Pope parted like old friends.  The pope promised to visit Jerusalem as soon as he could arrange it, which he did.

Knowing the pope would not likely get to enjoy a good home-cooked Jewish meal very often, the Chief Rabbi’s wife insisted on cooking for the pope herself.  The pope was deeply moved.  They had a wonderful dinner and retired to the Chief Rabbi’s study for coffee.  As the pope settled in, he noticed a blue and white phone set off on a small, ornate table near the desk.  The pope smiled and asked the rabbi, “Is that what I think it is?”  The rabbi laughed and confirmed that it was like the phone he had used in the pope’s parlor in the Vatican.  The pope said that he would very much like to make a call, as the trip had meant so much to him and he did not want to wait until he returned.  The rabbi assured him that it was fine for him to use the phone, to take as long as he liked. 

The rabbi could not help trying to listen in, but his Latin was rather rusty, though he could pick up a word here and there, and he enjoyed watching the pope’s animated conversation.  When, finally, the pope hung up, he thanked the rabbi and asked how much he owed for the call.  The rabbi said it was not necessary, but the pope insisted.  The rabbi had, after all, paid for his call when he had come to Rome, and he wanted to keep their relationship on a good footing.  The rabbi agreed and started figuring aloud, “Let’s see, you were on the phone about forty minutes, that’s about three shekels.”  Now, the last time I checked, three shekels was less that a dollar. 

The pope was stunned.  He asked the rabbi how such a long call could be so cheap.  The rabbi shrugged and told the pope, “In Jerusalem it’s a local call.”

Jerusalem is the focal point for both our scripture lessons this morning, and its destruction figures in both of them.  Isaiah addressed a community of exiles who had lived for a generation in Babylon, among the people who had defeated them, breached their city walls and destroyed the Temple Solomon had built.  The prophet announced the promise of return to a restored Jerusalem and the redemption of all.

In the Gospel Lesson, Jesus sat in the city with his disciples as they marveled at the grandeur of what may have been the tallest structure in the world at the time, made to gleam by the bright sun of a cloudless Middle Eastern sky.  Country boys from Galilee such as they, had probably never seen anything like it.  And Jesus shocked them by telling them that not even one stone of it would be left upon another.  Then he warned of turmoil and persecution that they would and must endure.

Jerusalem is sacred to all three of the Abrahamic faiths.  It was established as the capital by David when he ruled a united Israel, then brought the Ark of the Covenant to the city.  Solomon built the Temple there.  Later returning exiles would rebuild the Temple on the same site, the one in which Jesus sat and taught his disciples.  It was in the city of Jerusalem that Jesus was arrested put on trial, tortured and executed.  Muslims believe that it was from the Temple Mount that Muhammad took a night journey to Heaven. 

It is a sad irony that Jerusalem is sacred to all three of the Abrahamic faiths, and yet has always been the focus of contention, turmoil and bloodshed.  The name of the city is ancient, but it often has been translated as “The City of Peace,” because it contains the root of the Hebrew word “shalom” and the Arabic word “salaam.”  Sad that the city’s long history, from ancient times until today, persists in being a case study for those who assert that religion should be rejected because it is so frequently a source of conflict.  Though I do not agree, it is a reasonable assertion, given some of the evidence.

I think it is worth noticing that Isaiah’s oracle about the new Jerusalem begins with a vision of “…new heavens and a new earth.” (Isaiah 65:17)  In fact, the redemption of Jerusalem is part of a whole creation that is redeemed, restored to wholeness, justice, and at peace.  Peace and reconciliation are woven into the very fabric of a new creation, where even predator and prey are safe in one another’s presence.  Sheep are safe because lions are vegetarian: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”  (Isaiah 65:25)  The redeemed Jerusalem is just a part of an earth that is redeemed, like a heaven that is renewed.  “…On Earth as it is in Heaven.”

One of the challenges of religion is that when we take it seriously, we run the risk of fixating on the particulars, when what we are really after is an understanding of the whole universe and our place in it.  Jesus startled his disciples by predicting the destruction of the Temple in which they sat, but he warned them that it wasn’t their only problem.  Many would suffer.  There would be war and famine and persecution.  Jesus warned them to be strong, and remain faithful.  He told them to look to the bigger picture.

Our faith is not the only faith trying to make sense of a troubled and troubling world.  Other faiths have insights they can teach us, lessons that will enlighten our own faith.  And yet, we gain our deepest insights when we commit to our own faith in all its particularity.   That is the challenge of a healthy faith: to embrace the particular and reach for the big picture, and to find the balance.  William Blake said it is possible to discover “…a world in a grain of sand…eternity in an hour.”

To a certain extent, Jerusalem stands in need of what the whole world needs, peace and reconciliation.  Perhaps if Jerusalem can one day find it, there is hope for the world.  The Psalmist calls us to “…pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”  (Psalm 122:6)  Our mission is to build peace and tolerance in our little corner of the world as we envision a world at peace.  I am deeply gratified that, even as we commit to being a faithful Christian community, we worship under the same roof with a Jewish congregation and we have invited imams to pray and preach the insights of Islam here with us.  As far as I am concerned, that makes this sacred ground.  Even as we seek truth in the beloved and ancient stories of our faith, as we proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we can do new things, in a world without end.  Amen. 

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
November 11, 2007

I believe the religious community has the saving vision.  It is the ancient prophetic vision of human unity, now become an urgent, pragmatic necessity.  According to this vision, we all belong one to another, every one of us five and a half billion people on this planet.  That’s the way God made us, from a Christian point of view, Christ died to keep us that way, which means that our sin is only and always that we put asunder what God has joined together.  Human unity is not something we are called on to create, only to recognize and make manifest.

                        ―William Sloane Coffin, A Passion for the Possible

Genesis 22:1-2, 6-13
Matthew 6:7-15, 19-21

On Earth as It Is in Heaven

Every now and then I thumb through the journals I kept in college and grad school.  Twenty-five years ago today, as a college junior living in London, I heard newspaper sellers announcing the death of Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev.  In my journal, I recorded hearing a socialist activist in front of the University of London student union portraying Brezhnev as a steel worker who had risen to the presidency of a world power, calling Brezhnev a “man of peace.”  I noted the irony.  You’ll recall Brezhnev presided over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  That same week in 1982, hundreds of Afghans died of asphyxiation in a mountain highway tunnel which Soviet troops had sealed it off for security reasons.

In the same day’s journal entry, I wrote about taking the tube home from class with my friend Herb when an unattended package had been spotted on our train.  We saw a green canvas military-style bag.  We asked our fellow commuters if it belonged to them.  No one claimed it.  We nervously rode to Baker Street Station where we changed trains.  Security boarded the train and inspected the bag.  London, long accustomed to heightened security because of IRA bombings, was particularly jumpy after a bomb had killed a number of civilians, soldiers and horses in Hyde Parke a few months earlier.  Twenty-five years ago today, many Londoners wore red poppies pinned to their coats in observance of Armistice Day, what we call Veterans’ Day.  Armistice Day commemorates the end of First World War, the so-called “war to end all wars.”  Would that it were so. 

The Binding of Isaac has a apecial poignancy on Veterans’ Day.  This is a civil holiday, though we often use religious language to talk about it.  We often talk about service men and women who have died in combat as having made the ultimate sacrifice.  In the story from Genesis, Abraham prepares an altar on which to sacrifice his son, just as it has generally been the older generation who sends the younger off to war.  Free societies owe their survival to the service of young men and women who at times make that ultimate sacrifice.  We must honor their service and sacrifice, whether or not we agree with the decisions of those who send them to war.  To all the men and women in our midst who have served in our country’s armed forces, I know I am not alone when I say thank you for your service and your sacrifice.

Of course, in Genesis, though God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, in the end the patriarch had to learn that it was not what God desired, nor is a child an appropriate sacrifice.  I am not a pacifist, but I can say with firm theological conviction that war is never what God desires for us.  Yet in a broken and tumultuous world, war is sometimes the least horrible among bad options.  That being the case, I believe we best honor the service of our veterans and their fallen comrades by prayerfully agonizing over every possible alternative to war.  We best support our troops by exhaustively scrutinizing the rationale for war before we ever empower our leaders to sacrifice our sons and daughters.  When war is unavoidable, we must hold our leaders accountable for the competent and moral conduct of war. 

When we enter into war we must do so with a vision that looks beyond war, to the peace that follows.  We must commit to the best care and healing for our veterans and for the reestablishment of international community and harmony.  The word shalom is often translated as “peace,” which is accurate.  But shalom also means “wholeness.”  Peace is not just an absence of conflict, but a return to wholeness for the individuals who fought, and a return to wholeness in relationships between neighbors and nations.  That is a vision of wholeness and holiness that God intends for us and all of creation.

Actually, the whole idea of sacrifice is about holiness and wholeness.  Throughout the Hebrew Bible, sacrifice is a means of worshipping God.  It is a means of supporting the priesthood, who came from a tribe without a share of the land.  But many of the sacrifices called for in the Torah meant celebration and feasting for the people offering the sacrifice.  Most people of that time rarely ate meat, and doing so was a special occasion.  In the New Testament accounts of the Last Supper, the Passover meal Jesus shared with his disciples centered around a lamb sacrificed at the Temple.  Sacrifice necessarily meant giving, but it also meant sharing, and the coming together of family and friends to celebrate God’s goodness and generosity.  As the Psalmist said:  “Taste and see that [God] is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

It is no accident that at the center of our faith, one of our two sacraments is a meal.  Holy Communion is a Feast of Friends, a taste of wholeness in the shadow of suffering.  Think about it.  We celebrate a meal that we consecrate with the words, “On the night he was betrayed…”  Our starting place is the sober recognition that we live in a broken and dangerous world that is not yet what God intends.  But that is not the end of the story.  God’s son gives himself to us and God gives us to one another to live in hope and serve a vision of wholeness and healing.

When asked how we should pray, Jesus gave us a spiritual and theological treasure.  In it we are reminded that we are all God’s children, that we must forgive as we hope to be forgiven, and that we may rely on God for our daily bread.  In teaching us to pray in this way, Jesus is not just telling us how to talk to God, but planting the seeds of a sacred vision he wants us to contemplate.  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” 

Heaven and the Kingdom of God have been the subjects of theological reflection and speculation for centuries.  Heaven has been subjected to visual clichés for centuries as well: fluffy clouds, harp playing winged angels in white robes have been used in television commercials to sell everything from cream cheese to lingerie.  It is surprising that these sentimental images have persisted, considering our two thousand year old prayer crams heaven and earth together so insistently in one sentence.  Jesus challenges us to imagine a world that is in substance just like the one we know, yet to live in it in completely different in the way.  If we pray for God’s will to be done as it is in heaven, who is supposed to do God’s will on earth?  We are.  The Lord’s Prayer is an invitation to imagination and a challenge to action.  Praying that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven is precisely the opposite of pie in the sky by and by. 

The mission of the Church, the Body of Christ in the world, is to bridge the gap between Heaven and Earth.  The work of the local congregation, the work of Second Church, is to be the laboratory in which we experiment with making God’s will, as best we can discern it, real in our lives and in our community.  We do it by contemplating the vision of a world of wholeness, peace and justice ruled by love and compassion.  It doesn’t happen with a clap of thunder and a bolt of lightening.  Nor is our mission a joyless or humorless labor.  It is a labor of love, lived out in mundane and unusual ways.  We do God’s will when we worship and when we share a meal at a potluck or progressive supper.  We do God’s will when we cook a meal for homeless people and when we have lively discussions in Bible Studies and in coffee hour.  It is something we pray and play into reality.  Here in New England, our Puritan forbears helped shape North American democracy through their faith-inspired practice of town meeting government.  We continue that practice in our congregational government of this local church.

One of the central ways that we redeem this material world is by reorienting our relationship to our material resources.  Because everything we have is a gift of God, we respond with gratitude.  We bear witness to the reality that all we are entitled to is basic human dignity, just like every other human being.  When we reorient our attitudes to our material wealth, in trying to live God’s heavenly will for us, we do the work of redeeming the material world.  That has repercussions for the natural environment and our personal finances as well.  Our world is sadly in need of redemption but not beyond it.  I believe that.  That is what I am in it for.  Redemption, for me and everybody else.

I started by referring to a moment twenty-five years ago.  It was shockingly similar to today.  Terrorism.  War in Afghanistan.  But there are signs of hope.  The terrorism I mentioned was rooted in the centuries-old conflict in Northern Ireland.  Today an illegal paramilitary organization, The Ulster Defense Association, formally denounced violence.  Catholics and Protestants in the North have now entered into a power-sharing government and British troops have been withdrawn.  Twenty-five years ago that was unimaginable.  This is in no small degree because a peace movement of faithful people saw that their faith gave them more in common than in conflict.  Our mission in our time and place is different and the same.  It is the same in that we must create a community dedicated to doing the will of God in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
November 4, 2007

But my hand was made strong                             These songs of freedom

By the hand of the Almighty.                                 ‘Cause all I ever have:

We forward in this generation                                    Redemption songs;

Triumphantly.                                                              Redemption songs.

Won’t you help to sing                                                        ―Bob Marley
 

Scripture Lessons:
Isaiah 1:10-18
Luke 19:1-10

Zacchaeus’ Story

My neighbor Zacchaeus is a small man, in many ways.  The smallest error on a debt tally does not escape his notice.  He has a mind for figures.    He will exact payment from anyone, whether they are one of the other tax collectors he oversees or a grieving widow desperate to keep her dead husband’s property.  His heart must have shriveled to the size of a gnat.  He has not always been that way.  Long ago, we were friends.  Zacchaeus and I have known one another all our lives.  His family was poor, but they educated him well.  Still, he liked to race about the streets of the marketplace with me and the other boys.  Jericho was a wonderful place to be a boy, filled with people from all over the world.  In the time of our fathers, Herod the Great spent his winters in our city and made of it a grand place.  We are but an hour’s walk from the ruined city that Joshua conquered long ago.  Our Jericho is the gateway to Judea for caravans from the East. 

As boys we would dodge the whips of the drivers as we would run among the long trains of camels laden with spices, cloth and untold treasure that had passed through the Nabatean Kingdom.  If the foreign traders were in a foul mood, they would sometimes chase us and try to beat us.  We knew the city and could wind our way through the streets and lose them without even running hard.  Our cousins and neighbors would laugh as the panting camel drivers cursed and stumbled through the narrow streets.  We would watch them from the cool shadows of a dark corner.  Small, quick and wiry, Zacchaeus could climb like a monkey.  I once watched him climb a palm and drop hard, unripe dates onto the heads of the traders below.  They would look around them, irritated, squinting up at the rooftops.

As young men, we were partners in business.  We began trading in spices, perfumed oils and exotic cloth.  We would purchase our stock from caravans in Jericho then take it to the outskirts of Jerusalem.  We would set up a booth on the road that led to the Damascus Gate, at the north of the city.  There we could sell our wares to the pilgrims as they approached.  Often these would be country people, unaccustomed to such luxury.  They would gaze wide-eyed at the merchandise.  If they had money, they could easily be separated from it, especially if they had not yet learned to resist the constant assault from the merchants of Jerusalem.  Selling on the road had its advantages, but not the protection of the city walls or the ever-present Roman legions.

After a successful trip west, Zacchaeus would always insist we go into the city and make an offering at the Temple before the journey home.  He loved to visit the Temple.  He would stare silently at its gleaming stones rising above the city wall as if in a dream, long before we would even pass through the gate.  We would make our way through the teeming streets to where we could purchase an animal for sacrifice and offer it at the Temple.  A priest would kill it, splash the blood against the side of the altar, offer the entrails and fat as burnt offering as a pleasing odor before God.  After the priests took their portion, we would feast on what remained before we departed the city.  I always enjoyed this.  It was good to eat a meal of meat, and it was right to give thanks to God with an offering when we were able to make such a profit on the outskirts of the Holy City. 

Zacchaeus became another man in the Temple.  As soon as we would smell the smoke of the altar, burning fat mingled with incense, hear the sounds of chanted prayers, singing and musical instruments, his face would change.  It was as if he were both someplace far away and yet keenly aware of everything around him.  Once, as he caught his first whiff of the altar’s smoke, he said, “It was with the coals of the altar’s fire that the angels purified the prophet Isaiah’s lips.  God is here.”

It was on the way back to Jericho after a successful journey that we ceased to be partners.  The feast of sacrificial lamb was still heavy in our bellies.  It was late and the sun was beginning to set.  As we talked about making camp for the night and looked for a good place to stop, the thieves were upon us.  They beat us senseless.  When I awoke in the dark, our pack animals, our purses and our cloaks were gone.  I then saw Zacchaeus huddled by the road, dirt on his ripped tunic, holding his knees as he rocked angrily on his haunches.  I asked if he were hurt.  When he did not answer, I reached out to touch his shoulder.  He slapped my hand away and said, “I am done with this.”  I tried to convince him that we could again save the money to buy more merchandise or take it on consignment.  He would hear none of it.

When we returned to Jericho, my brother put me to work at his tavern and I saw little of Zacchaeus.  I was working long days, and he stopped going to the synagogue.  The next time I saw him was several years later.  He had shaved his beard and cut his hair in the manner of the Romans.  Soon I knew why.  He had come into the tavern to collect taxes from my brother.  I did not even recognize him until he coolly greeted me by name.  It took me a moment before I knew it was he.  More than the shaven face and cropped hair, the glint of mischief that had always flashed in his eyes was gone.  It had been replaced by a strange coldness.  Even for such a small man, it gave him an imposing air.  “Simon,” he asked, “is this your tavern?” 

“No.” I answered, “It is my brother Joseph’s.  I now work for him.”

“Well you’d better fetch him.  I must settle accounts with him.  His taxes are due.”  He ignored the expression of shock on my face, sat down at a table and unrolled a scroll he had been carrying.  I could not believe that Zacchaeus would become a tax collector.  By the looks of his expensive clothes, he had done quite well.  Yet it was hard to understand how a man who could not leave Jerusalem without making an offering could make himself rich, bleeding his own people for the Romans.  That night on the road, he must have lost more than his purse.  He lost his soul as well.  He had more than replaced the purse, but the Zacchaeus I had known was now dead to me.  I must have been staring.  He looked at me and barked, “Simon!  I need to speak with your brother.  Tell him to bring the ledger.”  By the time Zacchaeus was done with Joseph, there was not a coin left in the tavern.  It would be many days before he could pay me any wages.

The next time I saw Zacchaeus was the day that the teacher from Galilee came to Jericho.  There had been much talk about how he healed the sick and that he was a friend to the poor.  They said that he spoke with great wisdom and often talked about a kingdom that was near.  Some had begun to speak as if he might be the anointed one that Isaiah foretold: a descendent of King David who would restore the fortunes of Israel.  Many went out on the road to welcome him.  I was curious to see him, so I went out as well.  I had not been walking long before I could see the excited crowd around the Galilean.  He spoke with his disciples as he walked.  The crowd pushed in around them.  They were drawing near, so I stayed where I was and leaned against a sycamore by the road.  It was then that I heard a rustling up in the branches.  It was Zacchaeus.

I could not imagine what he was doing in the tree.  A grown man, in fine clothes, he looked ridiculous.  “What are you doing up there?”  I asked.  He ignored me.  “Are you going to pelt the Galilean because he speaks of a kingdom other than your friends the Romans?  You won’t find any dates up there.  That’s a sycamore.”  I laughed at him, but he never looked at me.    “You’ll never get any taxes out of that one.”  “Zacchaeus, do you hear me?!”  Eventually he looked in my direction, but not really at me.  Then I heard a voice just behind me.

“Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”  It was the Galilean teacher.  He looked up at Zacchaeus with an expression of bemused intensity.  Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree as the crowd grumbled that this teacher would even speak to a tax collector, let alone ask for his hospitality.  “This is a friend of the poor?” someone near me asked.  Another joked ruefully, “Perhaps because Zacchaeus makes so many friends for him.”  I joined the crowd as they followed Jesus and Zacchaeus home.  A servant met them at the door.  Some of the disciples went into the house with them.  The rest of the crowd huddled at the door and peered into windows while they ate and spoke.  I tried to make out what they were saying, but could hear nothing.  Zacchaeus mostly listened.  His expression had softened.  It was not the old mischievous Zacchaeus, either.  It was more like the expression he would get when we would go to the Temple: distant and attentive at the same time.  When at last he spoke, I thought I saw a tear in his eye.  But Jesus smiled, spoke, and the crowd inside hummed with amazement.

When Jesus departed, much of the crowd followed along.  I turned to walk back to the tavern.  I was afraid Joseph would be angry at my long absence.  “Simon.”  I turned and saw Zacchaeus standing in his doorway, holding a small purse of coins.  “Simon, are you going to the tavern?”  I told him I was and that I needed to be quick about returning.  He tossed the purse to me, and I was surprised by the heft of it.  “This is your brother’s.  He paid too much tax.  This is all of it, plus interest.”  I looked at him, trying to read something in his face, in his eyes.  There was something I had never seen before.  “Simon I know you have to go, but I hope you will come again.  Go in peace.”

“Peace be upon your house, Zacchaeus.”  He bowed slightly.  We both knew something had happened, but we did not know quite what it was.  I turned and walked back to the tavern, wondering about the miracles to be found in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
October 28, 2007

Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble. So those on skepticism cause believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of skepticism.

                        ―Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), French scientist, philosopher

Scripture Lessons:
Sirach 35:12-17
Luke 18:9-14

Who’s Watching

Saint Maybe, a novel by Anne Tyler is the story of Ian Bedloe, a young man with a promising future.  We know he is aware of his own promise, because Tyler describes him coming home from school, imagining his life as a yet-to-be-filmed documentary tracing these early foundational years of his inevitable success and fame.  Before this glory could materialize, his brother died tragically following an argument with Ian.  Out of a sense of culpability, Ian abandons all thoughts of attending college and commits to raising his brother’s children who would have been his step-nieces and nephews. 

In the process of rearranging his life to this end, Ian becomes part of a small quirky storefront church.  Faith becomes an anchor and a focus of his life as he changes from flighty suburban golden boy to devoted single parent.  At the end of the book, and I am not giving anything away, but Tyler creates of stunning description of how Ian prays.  Rather than asking for things from God, Ian would practice a kind of meditative visualization.  He would imagine himself, his family and the people he loved as specks on a revolving globe in the sight of God.  The knowledge that they all lived in God’s sight filled Ian with peace and gratitude. 

I find it interesting that Ian’s prayer practice is so similar to the self-absorbed imaginings of his youth.  But rather than being the center of attention of a documentary film crew, when Ian prayed, he was one among many, living in the sight of God.  When I read through Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, I was immediately reminded of Tyler’s novel.  Though Jesus’ parable contrasts two different individuals praying in very different ways, I suspect most of us have prayed in both of those ways at some point.  I think most of us have had both our Pharisee and tax collector moments.  I know I have.

It is always worth clarifying who these two men were.  They serve as emblematic types.  Because Pharisees are often portrayed in the New Testament in an unflattering light (though not always), we tend to get our hackles up as soon as they show up in the narrative.  They are often seen as self-righteous hypocrites, as the one in this parable certainly is.  But consider how Christian clergy have been portrayed in popular culture throughout the vast sweep of Church history.  Priests, ministers and preachers have been targets of satire and broadly lampooned at least since the middle ages.  In English, examples go back to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Henry Fielding.  The self-important pompous televangelist and the stern Catholic school nun have become staples of television and film comedy.  We clergy always have been easy targets, and with good reason.  We live highly visible lives in front of a congregation, regularly telling large groups of people how they are supposed to live, all the while living our own flawed human existence. Rather than go into the specific historical realities of Pharisees within first century Judaism, for our purposes, it is probably just as useful to consider the ambivalent relationship between religious people and their clergy, and the clergy’s temptation to self righteousness.

In the case of the tax collector, historical understanding is more necessary.  The man in Jesus’ parable is not really comparable to an IRS agent.  They were more like profiteering government contractors.  The tax collectors, or publicans (as they are called in the King James translation) were often Romans, but could also be Jews.  I think we can assume that the tax collector in Luke’s account of this parable is Jewish because he is praying in the Temple, standing within sight of the Pharisee.  A gentile could not have entered the same area of the Temple that a Pharisee would have gone to pray.  The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible describes how a Judean Jew might have become a tax collector: “The collection of tolls from those transporting property (including slaves) by land or sea was… farmed out to private contractors.  The latter paid a stipulated sum in advance for the right to collect tolls in a certain locality, and then tried to make a profit from the transaction.”

I think it is safe to assume that in any case, taxes were about as popular in the first century of the Common Era as they are in the United States today.  But add to the aversion to paying taxes the fact that a member of your community and your religion is profiting by helping a foreign and idolatrous occupying power to exploit you and your neighbors.  Given that the land itself is explicitly identified with divine/human covenant would only add to the sense such a tax collector was a sinner.  By colluding with the pagan occupiers, this tax collector was defiling the Promised Land and betraying his people. 

All this background tells us how the tax collector and the Pharisee may have seen each other and how references to them would have struck those listening to Jesus tell this parable.  The narrative of the parable itself gives us an idea of how each of them saw themselves.  The Pharisee is portrayed as haughty, if not arrogant, definitely self righteous.  The tax collector is humble, near the point of self loathing.  Humility may at times be a virtue, self-loathing is not.  We are, each of us, created in the image of God.  That makes self-loathing a kind of blasphemy.  And, if we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must love ourselves if our love is to benefit our neighbor in any way.

Humility is a tricky thing.  We often talk about humility as a virtue.  I would suggest that it is not.  Humility is a discipline that is required of the privileged, not a virtue.  Those of us who enjoy the advantages of education, sufficient food, shelter and relative safety and freedom should not feel entitled to those blessings.  We should be grateful for them, and mindful that too many in the world are not so blessed and they are just as deserving as we are.  We should never speak of humility as a virtue to those who are humiliated, either by their social status, economic realties, or oppressive conditions.  To these we must consider the imperatives of basic dignity for all God’s children, and strive to serve them.

The two men in Jesus’ parable are men of status, one due to religious learning, the other by wealth.  They are both in a trap.  The Pharisee, while living an ostensibly pious life, stands before God comparing himself with someone he deems less worthy.  The Pharisee suffers from a deficit of compassion that has separated him from a member of his community.  The tax collector, beating his breast, prays “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”  (Luke 18:13)  He is humble before God, but Jesus does not dispute that the man is a sinner.  He says that of the two men, the tax collector “went down to his home justified.” (Luke 18:14)  But is he still justified when he goes back to work exploiting his neighbors and perpetuating injustice?

What we have to understand about this parable is that Jesus is only talking about the way these two men are praying.  The attitude in which the Pharisee prayed separated him from his neighbor.  The tax collector prayed with deep emotion and humility, but his work separated him from his neighbor.  What was missing in both cases was an attempt to see themselves as God saw them.  God didn’t need to be informed by the Pharisee about his righteousness.  God knew.  God did not need the tax collector to beat his chest.  I think God wanted him to get into a line of work that would reconcile him with his neighbors.  What God desired for both men was the ability to reconcile themselves with each other.  God wanted both men to see themselves as both being in the same frame.

I just played an enlightening game on the internet yesterday.  And while I know the internet is not God, this game helped me to step back and look at how I live in relationship to God’s creation and everyone else on the planet.  If you go to consumerconsequences.org, you can play a game that will calculate how sustainable your lifestyle is on a global scale.  After answering a series of questions about recycling, shopping and energy use habits, the game calculates how many earths it would take to sustain your lifestyle if everyone on the planet consumed as you do.  We need a couple more planets if everyone lived like me, and I thought I was pretty good.  The fact is that, when I stepped back and really thought about myself in the midst of others, answerable to God and responsible to and for my neighbor, it really made me want to change.

Jesus’ parable describes our ability for self-deception in prayer, and Sirach reminds us that God sees us exactly as we are. (Sirach 35:15)  In prayer we should strive to see ourselves as God sees us.  We should pray with all the honesty we can summon, with the knowledge that God loves us, warts and all.  We should pray with the knowledge that God created us for goodness and has given us to one another.  We can pray with the knowledge that we can all do a little better, that we can rely on one another and the Grace of God, in a world without end.&nont-family:"Century Gothic""> 

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