That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Scripture (Page 29 of 43)

There’s always an “only” – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 26, 2015 / / 0 Comments

There’s always an “only” . . . .

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Wednesday in the week of Proper 16, Year 1 (Pentecost 13, 2015)

1 Kings 3:3 ~ Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places.

Yessireebob! The Deuteronomic historians responsible for the Books of Kings loved Solomon . . . except for that one little thing: he didn’t restrict his worship to the Jerusalem Temple (which he built) and he married all those foreign wives with their foreign gods (and maybe – hint, hint, nudge, nudge – participated in their religious activities).

Those historians are a lot like . . . well . . . everyone. There always seems to be an “only” or an “except” or a “but” – often unspoken – annexed to every human word of praise or expression of love. As a parish priest, I preside at weddings from time to time (really pretty frequently) and, under the rules of the Episcopal Church, I cannot do so unless the couple has undertaken a course of premarital counseling with me. I use a testing instrument (“It’s NOT a test!” I tell every couple, but it really is – it doesn’t test their compatibility or likelihood of success; it tests their communication) which each partner completes separately; it allows each, through indications of his or her level of agreement with several statements, to express any “excepts,” any “onlies,” and any “buts” in ways which are non-threatening to his or her partner. They don’t even realize that that is what they are doing, but I do. I see it in the scoring of the instrument. We deal with it, to some extent, in the course of the counseling.

To love unconditionally, with no “onlies” and no “excepts,” with “no ifs, ands, or buts” as my late mother liked to say, is not a human capacity. The Deuteronomic historians were incapable of it. The couples I counsel in advance of their nuptials are incapable of it. You are incapable of it. I am incapable of it.

God, on the other hand . . .

I have a bumper sticker on my car which reads “God Loves You. No Exceptions.” Yesterday, I took my car to the local dealer for service. As I pulled into the garage, another customer, a woman whom I would guess to be in her late 40s or early 50s, greeted me and said, “I love your bumper sticker.” I thanked her and chatted about the PR campaign of my diocese which produced the stickers and about my church. I gave her my card and invited her to join us on Sunday. It was one of those great, unplanned encounters when one can do that. We had a great conversation.

I love the opportunity to talk with people like that woman, only . . . I don’t really expect her to show up on Sunday. See? There’s always an “only”.

Learning, Ignorance, Insanity – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 25, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Learning, Ignorance, Insanity

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Tuesday in the week of Proper 16, Year 1 (Pentecost 13, 2015)

Acts 26:24 ~ While [Paul] was making this defense, Festus exclaimed, “You are out of your mind, Paul! Too much learning is driving you insane!”

I confess to a fondness for this verse and often wonder can too much learning drive a person insane? I don’t think so, but it’s certainly worth contemplating. It may just be a matter of perspective; perhaps in some circumstances the actions of a learned person can appear irrational to those lacking knowledge which the educated person possesses. In any event, with two masters degrees and two doctorates, I’m hardly the person to scoff at education.

In fact, I believe in life-long education and continue to take classes when I can and to read and study new things. Each year I find a subject about which I knew only a little and strive to learn more. Last year, I read several texts on quantum mechanics, string theory, and the nature of the universe (or the multiverse, according to some). Did I understand it all? Of course not! There times when what I was reading seemed absolutely crazy, but I continued my course and I think I’m a better person for having done so. This year, I am reading the history of Palestine and Israel from a variety of perspectives.

I don’t believe that too much learning leads to insanity. But I do believe that ignorance can produce irrational conduct. Consider, for example: the anti-vaccination craze, denial of human causation of climate change, so-called “creation science,” congressional refusal to fund federal research into gunshot injuries as a medical issue, a state legislature’s refusal to allow its state agencies to properly measure changes in sea level along its coasts, laws requiring doctors to give their patients misinformation about birth control and abortion, etc. We now live with governmental policies affecting nearly every facet of our lives adopted by people who say, “I am not a scientist, but . . . . ” and then enact laws regarding the very scientific issue about which they have confessed ignorance. That’s crazy!

I don’t believe that too much learning leads to insanity, but I do believe that too little does. You are out of your mind, America! Too little learning is driving you insane.

The Armor of God: Sermon for Proper 16B (Pentecost 13, 23 August 2015)

August 23, 2015 / / 0 Comments

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A sermon offered on Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16B, Track 1, RCL), August 23, 2015, to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day are 1 Kings 8:1,6,10-11,22-30,41-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6:10-20; and John 6:56-69. These lessons may be found at The Lectionary Page.)

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Ancient ArmorIn the Education for Ministry program, the first year is spent reading the Old Testament, parts of which can be as dull as dirt! There are those long lists of genealogies, long catalogues of tribes and families, the lengthy and detailed instructions for making and erecting the tabernacle that the Hebrews carried along with them in the desert and, of course, a description of the Temple which Solomon built. In our EfM group, we sort of got into a habit of not reading those parts, of just acknowledging they were there but sort of skipping lightly over them. But it is there, earlier in the First Book of Kings from which our First Lesson is taken, a description of the building in which, in today’s lesson, Solomon places the Ark of the Covenant. Solomon’s Temple (the “First Temple”) was massive; it wasn’t really very big, but it was solid and substantial. It was built of huge blocks of solid stone; it had support beams made of whole cedar trees; it had immense fixtures and columns made of solid bronze and gold. In a word, it was a fortress!

But, as Solomon says in his public prayer in today’s Old Testament lesson, God doesn’t really need a fortress: “Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” Earthly buildings cannot contain God and God certainly has no need of the protection massive stone walls can provide.

No, the Temple was not built for God; the Temple was built for human beings, for the Israelites. It is the place which serves as a focus for their devotion to the Almighty; it is the place where they will offer sacrifices and toward which they will face when they pray. So Solomon beseeches God, “Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive.” And Solomon goes even further and asks that God also hear the prayers of foreigners: “Likewise . . . when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you.”

The Temple was an earthly reminder of God’s Law; it was the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, called the footstool of God by David. In the 28th Chapter of the First Book of Chronicles, David calls his court officers and his designated heir, Solomon, to an assembly and says to them, “I had planned to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, for the footstool of our God; and I made preparations for building.” (v. 2, NRSV) He then gives his plans for the Temple to Solomon. In Psalm 132, the Psalmist (traditionally David) makes a similar reference when he says, “Let us go to God’s dwelling place; let us fall upon our knees before his footstool.” (v. 7, BCP)

The lexicons tell us that uses of this term footstool are metaphorical and symbolic of subjection to God as universal Lord. However, the term always reminds me of my grandmother Edna Funston who was a nurse. She and my grandfather lived only about four blocks from the hospital where she was employed, so she would walk to and from work everyday. After spending her days, like most nurses do, on her feet, she would walk those four blocks and then sit for a while with her feet up, resting them on a footstool that sat in front of her favorite chair. When I hear of God’s footstool, I picture God putting his feet up after a long walk. It reminds me of that passage from the Book of Genesis in which Adam and Eve, having violated God’s instructions by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, “heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze” and hid themselves. (Gen 3:8) It reminds me also of that passage in the Prophet Micah: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic 6:8)

The Temple was an earthly reminder of God’s Law which requires God’s people to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. Several generations after the Temple was built, God’s people were doing anything but . . . and the Prophet Isaiah portrayed God as less than pleased by that. Isaiah prophesied:

Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and whoever turns from evil is despoiled. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, and was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm brought him victory, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in fury as in a mantle. (Isa 59:14-17)

Several centuries after Isaiah, the writer of the Book of Wisdom would offer an apocalyptic vision of the last judgment in similar terms:

The Lord will take his zeal as his whole armor, and will arm all creation to repel his enemies; he will put on righteousness as a breastplate, and wear impartial justice as a helmet; he will take holiness as an invincible shield, and sharpen stern wrath for a sword, and creation will join with him to fight against his frenzied foes. (Wis 5:17-20

The Letter to the Ephesians (which claims to have been written by Paul but is generally believed to have been written by one of his disciples shortly after his death, perhaps from notes drafted or dictated by Paul) makes use of these ancient armor and weapon metaphors in a new and startling way.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the audience to whom this letter was initially addressed, the church at Ephesus, a small body of believers living as a minority in a hostile environment. Their commitment to Christ set them conspicuously at odds with their neighbors, perhaps even with some in their own families. They were regarded with suspicion, even considered troublemakers and atheists, by their neighbors because they refused to join in the municipal cult of the hunter goddess Artemis whose worship was an important commercial enterprise for the city. They were regarded as troublemakers and atheists by the Roman empire because they refused to burn incense and pay tribute at the altars to the emperor. It is likely that they had had more than one encounter with the police, who were not merely the police; they were the Roman army.

So when the writer of the Letter to the Ephesians borrows the armor imagery of Isaiah and the Book of Wisdom, although “the concrete details of the armor are biblical, not Roman, the audience probably envisaged the fully armed Roman soldier when they heard these words.” (NIB, Vol. XI, page 460) It is as if someone today were to write to a congregation in (for example) Ferguson, Missouri, and say: “Put on the bulletproof vest of righteousness and the night-vision goggles of truth. Take up the automatic rifle of the Spirit.” And that is how we need to hear these metaphors, too – as shocking and disturbing and counter-cultural. It violated their, and should violate our, expectations of what a comforting pastoral letter should say, and thus their eyes were opened, and our eyes should be, to the darkness of the present reality.

Of course, whether one uses the ancient weapons of the original or modernizes the imagery, the use is metaphorical. As the Letter reminds its initial readers and us, “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the [world] powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil.” This is not a call to armed revolution; it is not a call to man the barricades and overthrow the government. Although this text has been used shamefully and wrongly to justify violence and oppression, it is not a call for the followers of Jesus to become some sort of Christian ISIS.

No! We are not called to actually take up arms. The armor we are to don is that which these metaphors represent: truth, righteousness, peace, faith, holiness, impartial judgment, and the word of God (which is not the Bible, the Word of God is Jesus!). We so by constantly preparing ourselves. Earlier in the Letter, the writer admonished the Ephesians to utilize their gifts as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to build up the church and equip one another for the work of ministry (4:11-12), to sing psalms and hymns together, to pray and give thanks (5:19-20). The same is true for us; “believers [today] must hear sermons, read scripture, talk with other Christians, engage in regular prayer, sing the praises of God, and so on.” (NIB, pg 403) Our formation as members of the Body of Christ, our preparation to withstand the “powers of this present darkness” and “the spiritual forces of evil” must be continuous.

We may skip over the details of its construction because we know that God didn’t need the Temple, but the truth is that the Israelites did. We may choose not read the full description because we know that God doesn’t need a fortress, but the truth is that we do. The Stoic philosopher Seneca taught that the soul of a wise person is fortified by reason and secure virtue. He wrote, “The walls which guard the wise [person] are safe from both flame and assault, they provide no means of entrance, are lofty, impregnable, godlike.” (De Constantia Sapientis [On the Constancy of the Wise Man], 6.8) We need that spiritual fortress!

In the same way, God really has no need of the metaphorical armor and weapons described in Isaiah, the Book of Wisdom, and the Letter to the Ephesians, but we do. Clothed with “the whole armor of God,” we will “be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,” and fed with “the bread that came down from heaven . . .[we] will live forever.”

Let us pray:

Almighty and merciful God, in your goodness keep us, we pray, [protected by your armor] from all things that may hurt us [and nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son], that we, being ready both in mind and body, may accomplish with free hearts those things which belong to your purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Collect 2 [with addition], BCP 1979, pg. 228)

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Leavening the Lump – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 20, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Leavening the Lump . . . .

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Thursday in the week of Proper 15, Year 1 (Pentecost 12, 2015)

Acts 24:22 ~ But Felix, who was rather well informed about the Way, adjourned the hearing with the comment, “When Lysias the tribune comes down, I will decide your case.”

Paul, a Roman citizen demanding his rights, is brought before Felix the governor after being accused of starting a riot in the Jerusalem Temple. The Jewish authorities lay out their case; Paul makes his defense; the governor postpones judgment. In recording the scene, Luke (the author of Acts) makes this parenthetical remark which is easily overlooked, that Felix “was rather well informed about the Way,” i.e., about the claim of some Jews (and now a few Gentiles) that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, and the way of life lived in consequence of that belief.

Antonius Felix, the procurator of Judaea, a Greek freedman, divorced and remarried to a divorced woman, known for cruelty and licentiousness, more than willing to accept bribes and look the other way, under whose governorship the province experienced a significant increase in criminal activity, “was rather well informed about the Way.” How could that be?

Felix was governor of Judaea for only six or seven year, 52-58 AD, about twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Although the Christian faith had spread (this trial takes place about six years after Paul’s trip to Athens, for example), it was still a small community, so how is it that the Roman governor, a pagan from the imperial city itself, in office and in the province only a few years, is “well informed about the Way”?

I suggest there’s only one way for this to be true: early Christians talked about their faith, shared their story with others, and spread the gospel in their daily lives. I’m not suggesting that any member of the church actually had spoken directly to Felix, but rather that (if I may use one of Jesus’ own metaphors) like yeast in a lump of dough knowledge of the Christian story spread through the community as neighbor talked to neighbor, Jew talked with Gentile, Palestinian native spoke to Roman occupier, and so it goes.

Some 2,000 years later, we live in a society where many claim to be “rather well informed about the way” but few are. There is a lot of talking about Christianity, but precious little of that talk is accurate and few who talk it actually live it. It may be that Antonius Felix was rather better informed about the Way than are many modern Christians and certainly better than the “nones” among us.

There is only one remedy for this: yet again, the yeast must leaven the lump.

This is not how it’s supposed to be! – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments

This is not how it’s supposed to be!

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Wednesday in the week of Proper 15, Year 1 (Pentecost 12, 2015)

2 Samuel 18:33 ~ The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

This verse reports King David’s reaction on learning of the death of his son Absalom. Even though Absalom has rebelled, even though there is “bad blood” between father and son, even though David has every reason to be bitterly disappointed in his offspring and, perhaps, even to rejoice at the end of a threat to his throne, the bond between parent and child, severed by the death of the child, leads to his outpouring of deep sorrow.

“This is not how it’s supposed to be,” is how one parent mourning the loss of her first-born put it. That was my mother speaking about the death of my older brother from brain cancer. She knew well that pain of parental loss; my father also died (in an automobile accident) before his parents and my mother had stood by my grandparents as they mourned their son. (My grandparents experienced that loss again when my uncle, my brother’s only sibling, died of cancer several years later.)

This is not how it’s supposed to be! And, yet, it is again and again and again. I am almost 63 years old; for 59 of my years my country has had troops on battlefields somewhere in the world. (Earlier this year, the Washingtons Blog website detailed the 222 years America has been at war.) Hundreds of thousands of young men and women, and children, uniformed soldiers and civilians, had been killed in those conflicts; numerous children have predeceased their parents. Again and again, fathers and mothers have echoed David’s lament: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

This is not how it’s supposed to be!

Foundations in the Forest – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Foundations in the Forest . . . .

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Tuesday in the week of Proper 15, Year 1 (Pentecost 12, 2015)

Psalm 122:1-2 ~ I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” Now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.

When our choir, acolytes, liturgical assistants, and clergy gather for prayer just before the opening procession of Sunday worship, I will often use a prayer which begins with a paraphrase of these verses. As I do so, in my mind’s eye I see the forest going by the bus window as we drove from Jericho up to Jerusalem in the summer of 2014. My first and so far only trip to the land of the Holy One.

The forest is non-native, mostly European pines and Australian eucalyptus. It is a young forest with only several decades, not centuries, of growth. There is little, if any, undergrowth and peering through the trees when can see unnaturally regular formations of stone. These are the ruins and foundations of Palestinian villages emptied and bull-dozed into nothingness during the ethnic cleansing of Israel during the Jewish State’s “war of independence” in 1948. I am told that there are families in the refugee camps who still possess deeds from the Ottoman Turks testifying to their ownership of homes in these now-nonexistent towns, who still hold on the keys of front doors which can no longer be found let alone opened.

We made the journey up to Jerusalem a couple of times on that trip but we never stopped along the way to actually walk into that forest, to step into those village foundations, to experience that history and that obliteration of history. So now I am reading the history of Palestine and Israel from 1880 onward by a number of authors; I am reading classic Zionists, post-Zionists, neo-Zionists, anti-Zionists; I am reading both Muslim and Christian Palestinians, Palestinian refugees, and Palestinian citizens of modern Israel. I will never comprehend the breadth and depth of Middle Eastern and Holy Land history, not even of the short 130 or so years of Zionism and its effect on the Land.

But I am coming to appreciate two things. First, how tragic and sorrowful is this psalm which ought to be a cry of joy: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: ‘May they prosper who love you.'” (v. 6) There are so many of several faiths who love Jerusalem yet none can prosper in the absence of a shared vision of “the peace of Jerusalem” for which we all pray. Second, how woefully inadequate is my own education and, by extension, that of all! This morning I read some newspaper articles, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor apropos of the nuclear arms deal negotiated with Iran; several viewpoints were expressed and as I read each one I thought, “Yes, but do you know?” or “Have you considered the comments of [some other writer]?” or “No! That’s simply not true!”

We each focus our vision on a few facts; we cannot, or perhaps we choose not to, see them all. As a result, we do not see a full and complete picture. As an old saying has it, we cannot see for the forest for the trees. But we must see the forest, for in amongst its trees are the foundations of the future, the solution that must be built. “Peace [will never] be within your walls [nor] quietness within your towers” (v. 7) until we do so.

Figs & Forgiveness – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 17, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Figs and Forgiveness . . . .

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Monday in the week of Proper 15, Year 1 (Pentecost 12, 2015)

Mark 11:12-14 ~ On the following day, when they came from Bethany, [Jesus] was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.

A day or two later (after Jesus has overturned tables in the Temple and driven out the money-changers), he and his band will pass by this tree again. The disciples will notice that it is withered to the root and comment on that fact. Jesus will instruct them about the power of prayer using the famous example of a mountain tossed into the sea. Mark’s use of the withered fig tree story is as a demonstration of power, both Jesus’ power and our own potential, which is all fine and good. Nonetheless, I have always been curious about the story.

It may be that the story is an embodied metaphor, that it happened in another way, that the author of Mark hasn’t really understood it, and that Mark has therefore tried to make sense of it by using it at this point in his narrative. Rabbinic commentary has long used the fig tree as a metaphor for the Torah, noting that the crop of figs do not ripen uniformly so that one most go back to the tree many times to harvest its fruit; the Torah is said to be like that, yielding fruit each time we return to study the scriptures. Perhaps Jesus blasted the fig tree as a way to demonstrate the fruitlessness of Torah as it had come to be used by the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and others. Perhaps there was more conversation apropros of the withering which had been lost to communal memory by the time Mark put pen to parchment, recording the action but not its contemporary explanation, adding words about prayer from another conversation. Perhaps . . . .

However that may be, the story as Mark relates it, wrapping it around the “cleansing of the Temple,” reveals a very human Jesus, one given to anger and frustration – righteous anger in the case of the Temple money-changers and livestock salesmen, petulance in the case of the fig tree. When challenged about the result of his fit of pique, he avoids the question, turning it aside with a “Well, you could do it, too, if you just have enough faith.”

I really don’t think Mark intended to portray an angry, frustrated Jesus, but that’s how I read the text . . . and I’m thankful that the story is here, told in this way. Mark’s Jesus is a human being to whom I can relate. I completely understand and I can fully relate the frustrations, the annoyance, and the pique apparent in this story, and even the larger, more justified anger Jesus expresses in the Temple. What I always have a hard time comprehending is Jesus ability a few days later to forgive those who execute him, but the two episodes are intimately connected and, therefor, give me hope. If Jesus is like me in the former, then maybe I can be like Jesus in the latter.

I can learn a lot about scripture, theology, and religious history if the story is one of an embodied metaphor, the fig tree as Torah. I can learn a lot more about me and about God Incarnate if the story is one about Jesus, human, frustrated, and annoyed, who can later offer the ultimate in forgiveness.

A Theology of Rape – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Saturday in the week of Proper 14, Year 1 (Pentecost 11, 2015)

2 Samuel 16:22 ~ So they pitched a tent for Absalom upon the roof; and Absalom went in to his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.

I’m having a hard time with Scripture today … I have notes for a sermon for tomorrow, so I’ll be able to mumble my way through some sort of ad libbed homily … but tomorrow’s lessons are not cause of the problem. The cause was this lesson in today’s Daily Office Lectionary in which Absalom attempts to wrest the kingdom of Israel from his father David. Absalom takes control of Jerusalem and then, on the advice of Ahithophel, whose counsel is extolled “as if one consulted the oracle of God,” this happens: to demonstrate his control of the city and his contempt for his father, Absalom’s men “pitched a tent for Absalom upon the roof; and Absalom went in to his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.” ~ “Go in to” is a biblical euphemism for sexual intercourse. In other words, Absalom, on the advice of one whose counsel is considered to be like that of God, publicly raped his father’s concubines as part of a military conquest.

This is a week in which many of us have been disgusted by the NY Times report on ISIS’s “theology of rape,” by the Jihadists’ use of women as property, as sex slaves, as rewards for their followers, by their calling rape an act of prayer! So these verses really leapt out at me!

Absalom is not a hero of the Bible. Eventually, his rebellion is put down and he is killed. Nonetheless, this lesson portrays his act with callous nonchalance and praises the man who advised it. I’m disgusted. A theology of rape is not so distant. I’m having a hard time with Scripture today.

Barzillai the Gileadite – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 14, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Friday in the week of Proper 14, Year 1 (Pentecost 11, 2015)

2 Samuel 19:37 ~ [Barzillai the Gileadite said to David,] “Please let your servant return, so that I may die in my own town, near the graves of my father and my mother.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about retirement recently; I suppose that’s something that happens when you hit the mid-60s in age. Where to settle to enjoy what once were called “the golden years”? One doesn’t really hear that term much any more, does one? Are they no longer considered golden, these years of decline when one is supposed to spend time with one’s grandchildren, puttering in a garden or messing about in a workshop or taking classes at an adult learning center? Is it because, as in the days of Barzillai the Gileadite (who was 80 years old, by the way), we no longer have the time or wherewithal to do those things, because we (like Barzillai) must work until we die because pensions have disappeared in financial crises and medical cost increases have outpaced inflation and despite promises to the contrary our homes have not turned out to be the always-increasing-in-value investments they were supposed to be?

Ah, well . . . . whatever. Where to settle in these remaining years, whatever they may hold, is still an issue. As a society we have long ago abandoned any pretense of a hope of dying “in our own towns, near the graves of our fathers and our mothers.” We have become too mobile for that; in fact, our parents became to mobile for that; in the case of my family, my grandparents became to mobile for that. When I look at my options, my choices of place where I might be buried near the graves of grandparents, parents, or siblings . . . I could chose among seven cities and ten cemeteries!

A contemporary commentator on the American scene whose observations make sense to me is John Howard Kunstler. In his book Too Much Magic, Kuntsler writes:

“Yet another problem with suburbia-related to its unworthiness of affection – was its horrifying mutability. Suburbs changed so dramatically from one year to the next that adults came home to find the places where they grew up unrecognizable, and almost always for the worse, often because some beloved patch of woods or other vestige of original landscape had finally yielded to the bulldozers. Life is precarious enough and there are some things in this world which people need to feel a sense of permanence. Familial love and a place called home probably top the list, and we became a whole nation of souls whose home places were lost or mutilated beyond recognition. This sad condition, so common now, has surely worked even to the detriment of family relations, so that we’ve succeeded in undermining the two elements most crucial to healthy functioning personalities: place and family.” (Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation, Atlantic Monthly Press: 2012, pp. 35-36)

A sense of permanence, a spirituality of place, a place called home, “near the graves of my father and my mother” . . . a mobile society constantly changing its location, both by moving and by altering the landscape, does not have these things and cannot really understand Barzillai the Gileadite and his reluctance to accompany David to Jerusalem. As I approach Barzillai’s age, however, I get a glimmer of understanding and an appreciation of what we are missing.

The Jews of Asia, Watts, & Monoliths — From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Thursday in the week of Proper 14, Year 1 (Pentecost 11, 2015)

Acts 21:27 ~ When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, who had seen [Paul] in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd.

When I was a kid growing up in Las Vegas I knew there were some people called “the Jews.” That is about all I knew about that particular group of people. My family knew a couple of Jewish families; my dad was friends with Sammy Davis, Jr., who was a black Jew and I knew that that was somehow really different. But I didn’t know anything about different sorts of Jews; they were all one group in my childish understanding.

When I went away to boarding school, I met and befriended a young Jewish man who introduced me to the American varieties of Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstruction. His family went to a Reform synagogue and, he told, were Sephardim by ancestry, thus introducing me to the difference between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. In my senior year, my English class read Leon Uris’ recently published novel “Exodus” and these differences took on more meaning, and the concept of the Sabra was introduced to my understanding.

In college, I read Martin Buber and learned of the Hasidim and the ultra-Orthodox; I also took a course about the founding of Israel and learned about the Mizrahim (Jews from eastern Arabic, Persian Gulf countries), the Maghrebim (Jews from North Africa), and the Falasha (black Jews from Ethiopia).

So when I read the words “the Jews from Asia” in today’s Acts reading, I wondered which of these modern divisions of Judaism and ethnic Jewry (if any) they might have represented. That I am currently reading a new text on the history of Israel probably encouraged that.

And then I wondered how many modern American Christian readers of the Acts lesson appreciated the existence of such divisions. We are so prone to monolithic thinking. I know from Bible study conversations over the past 30 years of ministry, that when we read the words “the Jews” in the Christian Scripture we Christians tend to create in our minds a united block of co-religionists who rejected and then opposed the teachings of Jesus and his disciples.

We do the same when someone says, “The early church ….” Again, in our minds we create this mythical monolithic united religion which even a short course in Christian history will demolish.

We do the same when someone says, “The Muslims ….” Monolithic thinking, even in the face of news reports reminding us that there are differences between Sunnis and Shi’ites, between Arab Muslims and Iranian Muslims, between radical Iraqi jidahists and moderate American imams.

We whites do it at the mention of “African Americans” and blacks do it at the mention of whites. We know better but, initially, as if it’s part of some human hard-wired programming that we must constantly over-write, we do it anyway.

“The Jews of Asia” stirred up a riot in the Temple precincts on flimsy and false premise that Paul had taken a Gentile, Trophimus the Ephesian, into the Temple. The police were called; Paul was arrested; the riot was put down. As I listened to the radio news this morning, I was informed that today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Watts riots, a civil disturbance with perhaps more justification, and certainly more damage, than the Biblical riot.

I was not quite a high school freshman living in another part of the Los Angeles metroplex in August of 1965. That was back when I still thought of “the Jews” as a singular, monolithic group; I thought of black Americans the same way. I remember the riots. I remember “our” fear of “them.” God help us, not much seems to have changed in fifty years! In all honesty, not much has changed in two thousand years. That hard-wired pre-programmed initial response of monolithic thinking, both about “us” and about “them,” whoever the “us” is and whoever the “them” is, is still with us, still a part of us, still in control of us.

When I was in seminary, I had a dormitory neighbor named Elizabeth, a doctoral student from Australia. I had the privilege of hearing her preach a children’s sermon one day on the parable of the lost sheep. She gathered the community’s children around her and asked them if they knew how God counts people. They all said “No,” of course, and she proceeded to point directly at each child saying, “One … one … one … one …” Her point for the children was that each one of us can be a lost sheep and that in God’s eyes each one of us is “number one,” the most important, the one God will take all the time necessary to search for and find.

As I think about our reading today and “the Jews from Asia” and the Watts riots, I remember Elizabeth’s children’s sermon and draw another inference: for God there are no monolithic groups, there are only individuals gathered into a flock. It is one of Jesus’ many lessons for us to learn, remember, re-learn, and remember again as we constantly over-write that programming; there is no “us” and there is no “them.” There are no monoliths!

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