Through the Prophet Ezekiel, God said to Israel:
I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Ezekiel 36:25-26 – May 26, 2012)
It rained here last night – pretty spectacular electrical storm, to be honest. The dog spent the night cowering under a table. This morning when I took her out at 6 a.m. the world was freshly washed. In the trees surrounding our home, birds of all sorts were singing and there was a sweetness in the air. Sprinkles with clean water, the earth had been cleaned of its uncleannesses, if only for a moment. ~ It is only a coincidental convergence of the two lectionaries (Episcopal Daily Office two-year cycle with the Revised Common Lectionary three-year cycle), but tomorrow’s Old Testament lesson is Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones in the next chapter of his prophecy. Dry bones, dessicated, dehydrated – emblematic of spiritual emptiness. Clean water, washing, witnessing, revivifying – emblem of the Spirit herself. ~ Tomorrow we will baptize and welcome into God’s household a young lady of about 10 years of age. I find it difficult to conceive of her having “a heart of stone” but I am convinced that in her baptism God will give her a new heart and write on her heart his law of love. Her life will become like the world after the rain, freshly washed and filled with light and sweetness. This is not to say that there will not be dry patches in her life; there are in every life, even the lives of the saints. However, nurtured by the church and sustained by the Spirit, she will be able to make it through those times with more than enough spiritual “moisture”. The Psalms constantly remind us that “the river of God is full of water” (65:9) and that God changes “deserts into pools of water and dry land into water-springs” (107:35). ~ In another vision, Ezekiel saw a river of water flowing from the temple. It flooded the land, in places ankle-deep, in others knee-deep, and in still others waist-deep. The water flowed everywhere and everywhere it flowed was to be the land of God’s people, not just Israel, but all of God’s people. The dry bones of all nations will be restored in the water of God’s river; God will sprinkle clean water upon us all. We call this baptism.
These three similes – I am like a vulture in the wilderness; I am like an owl in the ruins; I am like a lonely sparrow – intrigue me. They are metaphors of solitude but worse than solitude, of loneliness, of being completely cut off. ~ The word translated as “vulture” in the NRSV is qa’ath; older translations rendered this as “pelican”. According to the lexicon the word signifies “a ceremonially unclean bird”, but the lexicon admits that the exact meaning of the ancient Hebrew is unknown. The root of the word is qow’ which means “to vomit”. From some bit trivia learned long ago, I recall that vultures defend themselves with intentional projectile vomiting. The simile depicts one so distraught , so distressed, so stricken that she keeps others away, spewing her grief onto those who would comfort her. ~ The Hebrew word translated as “owl” is kowc: owls also are ritually unclean birds. The lexicon tells us that it is “from an unused root meaning to hold together.” This simile perhaps suggests the same thing as the English phrase “barely holding it together”; amidst the waste and devastation of his life, the psalmist is barely holding on, hanging from his last thread, unable to handle one more thing even a small expression of sympathy and support without “losing it altogether.” ~ In the third simile, the psalm uses the word tsippowr, here translated as “sparrow” although more generically it simply means “bird”. This simile holds out hope where the others do not. The same word is used by prophet Ezekiel to paint a picture Jesus will later use as an encouragement to faith: “On the mountain height of Israel I will plant [a cedar], in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind.” (Ezek. 17:23) Jesus will change the cedar to a mustard tree and promise that even the smallest amount of faith, faith the size of a mustard seed, can accomplish miracles. (Matt. 13:31-32; Matt. 17:20) For the lonely sparrow on the house-top there is the hope of flocking with others in tree planted by the Lord; for the lonely sparrow there is the hope provided by faith. ~ The rest of the morning psalm expresses that hope. The psalmist acknowledges gratefully that God “will look with favor on the prayer of the homeless; he will not despise their plea” and “their offspring shall stand fast in [God’s] sight.” No matter how cast out, unclean, despairing, or distraught, even the vulture and the owl, together with the sparrow, can come and make nests in the branches of the tree planted by God.
This is such a great verse! Matthew could have made some christological or soteriological comment about “the Son of Man” – in fact, he has done so earlier in this story and will do so again in the next chapter. But here the power and authority to heal is specifically described as being given not just to Jesus but “to human beings” . . . to you and to me! That’s great! ~ A couple of years ago the American Psychological Association reported that the first decade of the 21st Century saw a dramatic increase in the number of American adults praying about health issues. Even though attendance at formal religious services has fallen in the same period, informal and private spiritual practices such as prayer seem to be on the increase. One of the interesting results of a study by the Centers for Disease Control was that those who exercise are 25% less likely to pray than those who don’t…. One wonders if those who pray are less likely to exercise. ~ I’m not an exerciser myself. I admit that I should be; I’m just a lazy procrastinator who can’t get around to it. But I am a person who prays, and I often pray for health and healing for myself and for others. ~ The teacher of prayer who looms largest in my life is my late paternal grandfather. One of the things he taught me about prayer is “never pray for something you aren’t willing to work for.” His point was that God’s answer to your prayer just might be that God would send you into the midst of whatever the situation is to work toward a solution. I’m beginning to think that there’s a lesson here about exercise and health, too. I really shouldn’t be praying for my own physical health if I’m not willing to get off my duff and work for it. God has given me the authority to live a healthy life. I guess I’d better claim it and start doing it. ~ Tomorrow . . . maybe.
This is the beginning of familiar story. The demons challenge Jesus, “What have you to do with us?” and he, in turn, banishes them into a herd of swine, which then rush into the Sea of Galilee and drown. The swineherds run into the nearby town and tell what happened. The townspeople come out and, being afraid, beg Jesus to leave. Of course, the demoniacs are cured but we don’t know anything further about them. Matthew’s version of the story puzzles me. Mark and Luke also tell the tale and, if scholars are correct, it’s likely that Luke and Matthew got it from Mark who wrote his gospel first. (Compare Mark 5 and Luke 8.) ~ Here’s the first thing that puzzles me – Matthew slightly changes the location. Mark and Luke say this happened in the country of Gerasenes; Matthew, in the country of the Gadarenes. Now I know from my bible studies that these towns, Gadara and Gerasa, are close to one another and neither is actually on the Galilean lake. Both are Gentile towns near the eastern shore of the lake. The town in that area on the lake was Hippos. Why did Matthew choose to put this event in this slightly different location? I don’t know. And, so far, as I know there is no scholarship to answer that question. It’s just, as Yul Brynners king of Siam would say, a puzzlement. ~ The second puzzlement is why Matthew doubles the number of demoniacs. In Marks original tale and Luke’s repetition of it, there is a single possessed man. Matthew says there were two. In all other respects than these two details, the stories are the same. Why does Matthew say there were two possessed persons? Does that make the healing twice the miracle as it is in Mark’s version? I don’t think so. It’s just as frightening to the townspeople – whether Jesus cures one man or two, they still beg him to leave. ~ I have no answers to these puzzlements. I don’t even know if these minor changes of detail have any significance. Probably they don’t. But these little details are among the things about scripture study and contemplation that sometimes grab my attention and make me lay awake at night wondering, “Why two? Why two?” ~ It’s a puzzlement!
Although this is not the end of the the Letter to the Church in Ephesus, it sure sounds like it ought to be! Maybe that’s why the Book of Common Prayer uses it as one of the possible endings to the Daily Offices of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. The others are 2 Corinthians 13:14 and Romans 15:13; the first reminds us of God’s grace, love, and fellowship; the second, of hope, joy, and peace. This one reminds us of God’s abundance. God can do “abundantly far more” than we can conceive. The Prayer Book version is practically hyperbolic: “Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more that we can ask or imagine.” (BCP 1979, p. 126) ~ This is a profoundly countercultural message! In a world controlled by bankers, insurers, and oil companies, we have been sold a story of scarcity that competes with and, in the popular secular imagination, has prevailed over the gospel of abundance. Yes, some resources (such as fossil fuels) are limited, so they have to properly used and preserved. But alternatives are not – science and agriculture have proven that there are many sources of fuel which are renewable. Because human culture has taken the irreplaceable resources (coal, oil, metals) as the paradigm for all economies, rather than sustainable and renewable resources (crops, herds, rapid-growth woods) we buy into the scarcity model even though these alternatives demonstrating God’s provident abundance are all around us. ~ What can we do to change this? How can the church of Christ, which has the gospel of plenty to preach, foster a paradigm shift from a distrustful economy of scarcity to generous economy of abundance? It seems to me that we don’t even try. Once a year, most church congregations beg their members for annual pledges and then budget on the scarcity model, denying even our most fundamental teaching of reliance on God. I wonder what would happen if we truly believed and truly lived the abundance Scripture assures us is there. I really do wonder . . . because abundance is wonderful!
The words of the centurion are the root of a prayer spoken by many before receiving Holy Communion: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” As an Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian, recitation of this prayer used to be a part of my personal practice. But I have ceased to say it because I became uncomfortable about the change in emphasis from the biblical text to the liturgical text. A statement of faith in Christ’s power to heal another has been turned into a purely personal (and one is tempted to say “selfish”) prayer. ~ Paragraph 1386 of the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church explains the rational of the prayer: “Before so great a sacrament, the faithful can only echo humbly and with ardent faith the words of the Centurion: ‘Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea’ (‘Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul will be healed.’)” That’s great, except the quotation from the Centurion is inaccurate! In the Vulgate, the verse reads, “Tantum dic verbo et sanabitur puer meus.” (“Only say the word and my servant [or ‘child’] shall be healed.”) I am troubled reciting a prayer based on a misquotation of scripture. ~ The centurion in the story is about as far from self-centered as one can be. He seeks Jesus’ help not for himself but for his servant. He is unwilling for Jesus to be inconvenienced. It is in that spirit that he speaks these words, explaining that as a military officer he simply gives orders and things are done, so he has faith that One with the power of healing can simply do the same. It is for his selflessness that Jesus’ praises him and his faith. It seems somehow wrong to recite a prayer which turns that on its head! ~ I recall reading a few years ago about a medical brain-function study which demonstrated that selflessness is psychologically healthy and is the neuropsychological foundation of spiritual experience. Selfishness, on the other hand, is unhealthy: other scientific studies have demonstrated that it is impossible for a completely selfish individual to either survive or have a biological future. So I am unwilling to utter a prayer which turns a selfless intercession on behalf of another into a self-centered (one is tempted to say “selfish”) petition. “Lord, I am unworthy to receive you” … let’s just leave it at that.
I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to quote this bit or the story from Numbers 11 (also in the Lectionary cycle for today) in which Moses chose 70 men to receive a portion of the spirit and to take on some of the burden of the people. Two of the men, Eldad and Medad, did’t make it to the tent of meeting, but nonetheless received the spirit in the camp. Joshua, Moses’ assistant, protested but Moses replied, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” It seems to me that Paul is saying that’s what God accomplishes in Jesus; that all people now are prophets, all have the spirit, all together are becoming a dwelling place for God. ~ Today I’m drawn to Paul’s opening words in this passage, particularly “you are citizens.” We’ve seen a lot of politicking in our country recently and a lot of talk about a citizen’s duty. Partisans on both the Left and the Right correctly assert that a citizen should ask questions, know what’s going on, and be informed. I believe this is true regardless of where one lives, whether one is a citizen of the United States, Canada, Ireland, or Cameroon. Wherever one is a citizen, one should do these things to be an active participant in one’s country. ~ If we are “citizens with the saints,” of what are we citizens. Paul answers this question elsewhere saying “our citizenship is in heaven.” (Philippians 3:20) As citizens of heaven, then, we should be as informed as possible about “that heavenly country where, with all [God’s] saints, we [hope to] enter the everlasting heritage of [God’s] sons and daughters.” (BCP 1979, p. 369) This means that throughout life we have an obligation to engage in bible study, in life-long Christian formation and education, in asking questions of clergy and church leaders and questioning the answers we receive. There should never be “graduation” from Sunday School! ~ There is much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth today about the failure of the church and its state of decline, and much of it is warranted. At root, however, I believe part of the fault for the state of the church lies in the laps of its leadership over the past several decades, leaders who have failed to encourage the church’s members to think of themselves as spirit-filled citizens, and I believe part of the failure in all this lies with ourselves and our fellow citizens to stay truly active and informed. ~ Do I have a solution? No, not really. I offer no panacea, just encouragement to acknowledge the spirit within you, to get involved, and be an informed citizen of heaven. Like the consuls of revolutionary France I cry, “Let our citizens arise for the security of what they hold most dear, for the sacred interests of humanity!”
Two things happened yesterday. First, I had a conversation with my son (who is also a priest) about the future of parish ministry. Suffice it to say that we both have misgivings and considerable trepidation about that; I, for one, don’t see much future for parish ministry unless the church makes some radical changes – too many are needed to discuss in detail in a short morning meditation like this one. ~ Second, as a member of a committee charged with approving assistance grants to local congregations, I was asked yet again to approve a grant to fix a roof. The roof in question is for a parish which is not supporting itself through the giving of its membership. It seems to survive on grants and the largesse of a single, now-dead member who established a trust for its benefit; without those funding sources, it could not sustain its budget. I commented to my fellow committee members: “I wonder why we keep pumping money into maintaining buildings for marginal congregations. We ought to be investing in health and this doesn’t feel like we’re doing that.” ~ Both of those conversations came to mind when I read this gospel lesson today . . . as did an on-line (Facebook) tête-à-tête with a priest in England about car insurance rates, capitalism, and the plight of the poor in which we both suggested that force might be the only way to change the world economic system. I suggested to my colleague that our agreement on that point “means that we are acknowledging the church’s failure to accomplish its mission.” ~ And then another colleague, a younger preacher active in the “emergent church” movement reminded me of this observation from Episcopal priest and author Robert Farrar Capon: “The church can’t rise because it refuses to drop dead. The fact that it’s dying is of no use whatsoever: dying is simply the world’s most uncomfortable way of remaining alive. If you are to be raised from the dead, the only thing that can make you a candidate is to go all the way into death. Death, not life, is God’s recipe for fixing up the world.” (The Astonished Heart: Reclaiming the Good News from the Lost-and-Found of Church History, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996) ~ The rains, floods, and winds are beating against the house that is the church, especially against the houses that are the parishes of the mainstream denominations. We have got to change in radical ways. We have got to stop listening to the world and start, again, listening to Jesus! Radical, by the way, is derived from the Latin radix meaning “root”; the change we need to make is a return to our roots, to Jesus and the apostles, to early Christian understandings of what means to be church. We have to change or the church will, indeed, fall. I think Capon is right – the church as it has become has to drop dead in order to rise again, or it will fall – and if it simply falls, its fall will be great and it will not get up. 
Today is the Feast of the Ascension. Today we remember that, forty days after his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven, disappearing from his disciples’ sight into the clouds. Luke tells us in the Book of Acts that the disciples stood there gazing up towards heaven, and that two men, presumably angels, appeared and asked “Why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11) So we have two biblical promises: “I’m still with you” and “He’s not with you but he’ll be back.” The Christian paradox illustrated in the readings for a single day. ~ For me the meaning of the Ascension is summarized in the petition of one of the collects for the day in the American Book of Common Prayer (1979): that “we may also in heart and mind there ascend, and with him continually dwell” – or as Jesus put it in John’s gospel “that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:3) I don’t understand that as a future conditional promise but rather as a present permissive reality. Christ’s ascension allows us to be in God’s presence, now . . . no matter what our circumstance may be. It’s a matter of us recognizing that presence in the present, which we so often fail to do because we think of it as a future reward for some good behavior or something on our part when, in reality, it has nothing to do with our behavior or our goodness at all. The apparent paradox of the two biblical promises accurately reflects our confusion. 
This conversation troubles me. It falls at the end of a lengthy debate between Jesus and a group of biblical scholars composed of both Sadducees and Pharisees (two groups which seldom, if ever, agreed). They have challenged Jesus with three questions: the legality of paying taxes to Caesar; the status of a many-times married woman after the resurrection of the dead (whose wife will she be?); and the greatest of the commandments. Jesus has answered those questions and now asks them one of his own. It’s a trick question. It silences his critics and none of them ever again asks him a question. ~ That’s what troubles me. I don’t follow Jesus because he has the gift of witty repartee or because he has cut-and-dried answers to life’s questions or because he is a viciously effective debater who subdues his opponents. In fact, I follow Jesus for quite opposite reasons. I follow Jesus because in his footsteps I find pathways to contemplate and explore the questions of life to which there are often no solid answers. I follow Jesus because I find responses to my questions which invite and encourage further exploration, not answers which end and cut off discussion. ~ Was Jesus satisfied with the Pharisees response? Was he pleased that they sat mute and did not dare to ask a follow-up question? Matthew doesn’t tell us (nor does Mark, who tells the same story in a different fashion). But after this exchange, Jesus turns to the crowd and says to them about “the scribes and the Pharisees”, “Do not do what they do.” According to Matthew, Jesus apparently is referring to a lot of picky and burdensome ritual practices which the Pharisees heap onto others’ shoulders without lifting a finger to assist. But I wonder if he might not also be saying, “Don’t stop asking questions. Don’t stop exploring life’s issues. Don’t stop talking about God and the Messiah. Even if you don’t understand, maybe especially if you don’t understand, don’t sit there mute!” ~ On the Second Sunday of Easter the Eucharistic lectionary had us consider the story of “Doubting Thomas” (as it does every year). In my parish that was also “Children’s Sunday” when, instead of a formal recitation of the gospel and a learned sermon, the gospel is told to our children in story-book fashion with a discussion at their level of what it means. I suggested to them that it is very important to note that Jesus did not criticize Thomas for asking questions and that we should understand that to be an encouragement to ask questions of our own, and never stop doing so. So, yeah … I think Jesus may have been doing the same thing here. I think he may have been very disappointed in the Pharisees and Sadducees who did not “dare to ask him any more questions.” Don’t stop asking questions!
