Jesus said:
You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 5:14-16 – May 1, 2012)
When I joined the Episcopal Church in high school, the last verse of this quotation was the favorite offertory sentence of the parish priest – in the King James Version, of course: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” If he didn’t say that one, he said, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 7:21 KJV) I memorized those verses not by reading them, but by hearing one or the other at every service as the invitation to make a gift to God. I learned the lesson of an active faith, of being public and “out there” with my beliefs, of doing the will of the Father, from hearing those simple but profound verses at every service. ~ I love the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and its many options for worship, but I wonder whether in our quest for variety in worship we have left behind the wisdom of simple, repetitive teaching. In our current worship practice we are directed by a rubric to offer prayers for the Universal Church, its members, and its mission; for the Nation and all in authority; for the welfare of the world; for the concerns of the local community; for those who suffer and those in any trouble; and for the departed . That’s well and good, but the way in which these prayers are offered is left up to the designers of each service or to the presiding ministers and, in fact, variety seems to be encouraged. On the other hand, in our previous prayer book (and all those that preceded it) there was one prayer “for the whole state of Christ’s church.” Every Sunday, the same prayer was offered; the same lesson of the need for prayer was taught. ~ That standard prayer included the every Sunday petition that God “inspire continually the Universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord: And grant that all those who do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity and godly love.” Is it possible, just the least bit possible, that some of our current discord in the church is because we’ve stopped hearing these words, stopped teaching and learning the lesson of “truth, unity, and concord”, stopped trusting God to support us in agreement, unity, and “godly love”? Have we extinguished our light, have we stopped shining that light before others because we’ve stopped offering and hearing these simple, repetitive lessons? ~ I don’t know. And I love variety in worship. But remembering those every Sunday offertory sentences, those every Sunday petitions for unity, I’m beginning to wonder.
My father died in an automobile accident when I was five years old. Two things important to my religious life resulted from that. First, my mother and I stopped attending the Baptist church which she and my brother and I had gone to up to that point. Second, I started spending every summer with my paternal grandparents, Charles Edgar and Edna Earle Funston, in the town of Winfield, Kansas, and thus began attending the Methodist church during those summer vacations.
Another reading of that proclamation is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” To my hearing, this alternative version is a bit more imperative; the kingdom seems a bit more imminent when it is “at hand” rather than simply has “come near.” We used to live in that part of northeastern Kansas known as “tornado alley”. If we said a tornado had “come near” that was as good as saying “It missed us! It didn’t hit us.” On the other had, if someone had said a twister was “at hand”, I would have thought it was coming right at our front door! So . . . theologically I prefer the latter reading, but must confess that personally I breathe a sigh of relief if the kingdom merely has come near. A miss, after all, is as good as a mile, and it gives me time to do this repenting and reforming that Jesus calls for. ~ So what is this “kingdom of heaven”? Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat – it is not something different from the “kingdom of God”. Some try to make a distinction (like the notes in the Scofield Reference Bible towards which I acknowledge great antipathy), but a comparison of the gospels demonstrates that they are the same thing (compare these verses: Matthew 4:17 with Mark 1:14-15; Matthew 5:3 with Luke 6:20; Matthew 13:31 with Mark 4:30-31). ~ This kingdom also is not a place far away or near by. The Greek here is basileia ; the Hebrew for the same concept in the Old Testament (e.g., Ps. 103:19) is malkuwth. While both can refer to a physical place, an actual nation state, they are better understood to refer to a condition or fact or authority of sovereignty or dominion; they might better be translated is “rule” or “reign”. This kingdom also is not a time – past or present or future. It isn’t some place or state or condition at which we arrive after death; it isn’t some place or state or condition which will arrive on earth at some future time. So what is it? ~ Well . . . in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is asked by the Pharisees about the signs of the kingdom’s arrival, to which he replies, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:20-21) The Greek here is entos which means (and in other versions is translated literally as) “within you”. Other things the Christian scriptures tell us are found within human beings are the “word of Christ” richly dwelling (Col. 3:16), spiritual gifts (1 Tim. 4:14), and sincere faith (2 Tim. 1:5). The Hebrew scriptures mention peace (e.g., Ps. 12:8), God’s commandments (Prov. 7:1), and “a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezek. 36:26). In other words, the kingdom is an internal, spiritual characteristic of human beings characterized by these things. That’s coming about as “near” as you can get! That’s even more imminent than being “at hand.” If it’s within me, within you, within us, right here in the midst of us . . . that’s a matter of some urgency! We’d best be paying attention to it. ~ It is also characterized by the things revealed in the eight “kingdom parables” of Matthew 13, but that is too much to write about in a short meditation on a sunny day. I’ll leave those to the reader’s own contemplation. ~ Just one final note . . . if the kingdom (in all its characteristics) is truly within a person (or within a community), it will be very apparent by that person’s (or community’s) outer actions, his or her (or their) conduct, his or her (or their) relationships with others and the whole of creation. Here, the words of the Letter of James apply: “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” (James 2:17-18) If the kingdom of heaven is truly within, truly come near, truly at hand in the lives of Christ’s followers, then it will be made clear in works of mercy. I think that’s the repentance and reformation Christ encourages here.
The rest of today’s Daily Office reading from the Hebrew Scriptures sets out the Ten Commandments. My first thoughts were of those and wondering whether the course of world history might have been different if the Lord had laid out those laws in an affirmative rather than a negative style. You know – said something like “You shall hold all life in reverence” rather than “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13) or “You will respect your neighbor’s right of possession” rather than “You shall not steal” (Exod. 20:15). But then the ending verses caught my eye and I immediately thought, “Incense!” ~ OK, not immediately … but I did think of incense and liturgy. Smoke and lightning and loud noises and a leader separated from the people to do special things vis-à-vis God (so the people don’t have to do them for themselves, because – God knows! – those things are downright dangerous!). Skip forward several generations and you have the liturgy of the Temple . . . skip forward several more generations and you have the liturgy of the Church. As I thought about today’s Exodus reading, I realized that the liturgy of temple and church is about recreating Sinai; liturgy is an attempt to experience in the here-and-now what the Hebrews experienced in this encounter with God. And I began to ask, “Is this what has put us on the trajectory of irrelevance and disbelief?” ~ The stagecraft of temple and church became the stagecraft of the theatre, of vaudeville, of burlesque, of the stage magician. There is very little difference between staging a good worship service and staging a good theatrical or musical production. Use of “props”, use of lighting, use of stage technique . . . it all started in the temple and the church, and was borrowed by the entertainment stage (in fact, one might argue that the Western European way of staging dramas and other forms of entertainment in some sense originated in the church with medieval “passion plays” and whatnot). And now, today, the flow is in the opposite direction: the staging techniques of the rock concert have replaced the formal liturgy in many independent congregations and so-called megachurches. This is so well-known that there’s even a very funny parody of the situation on 
“Let it be so for now.” Acceptance of the status quo, even if only for a little while, is a hard thing for a change agent like John, but some times that’s what has to be done. Some time after this event, Jesus would use the metaphor of a mustard seed to describe the kind of faith that can accomplish great things. (Matthew 17:20; Luke 17:6) It’s a great metaphor because it reminds us of the need to follow the advice he gave here to John: “Let it be.” ~ As any gardner knows (and this is the time of year when gardners are reminded if they’ve forgotten), waiting and accepting the status quo is the essence of planting seeds. After all the fun and anticipation of choosing seeds from a catalog or garden-supply store, after the activity of preparing the soil, after making the hole for your seed, after covering the seed and watering . . . there is the waiting. If one is an impatient type of person, growing things from seeds is not the way to experience instant gratification. The worst thing about growing seeds is waiting for them to grow. But that’s what has to be done: “Let it be.” ~ Depending on what one has planted, the wait may be anywhere from five or ten days or to as much as six or eight weeks to germinate. Until then, you continue to water soil that just sits there looking the same. You hope for sunlight, because sunlight warming the soil is important to growth, but there’s not much you can do about that. So you water and you wait. It’s what has to be done: “Let it be.” ~ If a change agent like John can be patient, can make a small change and then accept the status quo for a little while, great changes can be wrought. Jesus used the seed metaphor another time. He said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) ~ Small change . . . patience . . . great change. “Let it be so for now.” And you may just hear the voice of God saying, “I am well pleased.”
You’ve got to hand it to John the Baptizer! He sure knows how to warm up and relate to a crowd. ~ What is John saying by greeting his audience thus? Is John speaking to the Pharisees and the Sadducees at all, or rather to the rest of the crowd? Or, more likely, is Matthew (who here is repeating a line found also in Luke and who later puts these same words into Jesus’ mouth) saying something to us, his later readers? ~ I grew up with snakes. In the desert wilderness of southern Nevada, pit vipers (in the form of rattlesnakes) were common even our backyards. Rattlesnakes can be dangerous, but they are also cowards. A rattler prefers to remain motionless, hoping not to be noticed. If you come too close and corner it, it will rattle a warning and stand its ground. But rattlesnakes never pursue people; they would rather flee than fight. They prefer to “flee the wrath to come”; make them aware that you’re coming and they will slither away as quickly as they can. ~ The image Matthew’s Baptizer puts before us may be that of a fearful group scattering in all directions. On the other hand, when snakes are congregated in a large group where they cannot flee, they are very dangerous. It is noteworthy that John says, “You brood of vipers” not simply “You vipers”. To me, the word brood suggests a bunch of snakes all tangled up together (as in the picture accompanying this text). When rattlers are congregated like this, they can’t and don’t flee – maybe it’s a phenomenon of “safety in numbers” – they stick together in a writhing, deadly mass. ~ Who are the vipers today? Back then, it was the religious leadership and not just those of one “party”. John addressed himself to both Pharisees and Sadducees, both the “right” and the “left” of his day. Could it be that today’s “brood of vipers” are the leaders of the churches? Could it (in my own denominational tradition) be all of the bishops and leaders of the Anglican Communion who have spent too much time tangled up, hissing and rattling at each other about issues which truly are adiaphora to the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Could it be that John’s complaint was not that the Sadducees and the Pharisees were corrupt or evil, but that they were distracted and wasting their time and effort, that his ire was worked up because rather than be about the work of God they were too busy wrangling with one another over that which was extraneous and immaterial to that work? ~ John contrasts the “brood of vipers” to the “brood of Abraham”, reminding his listeners that God could “from these stones . . . raise up children to Abraham.” God was able to raise up in the church of Christ a brood for Abraham who were not of the lineage of the Jews. Has that brood, however, slipped into the same irrelevant behavior?
Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, has to have been one of the wisest men in all of Holy Scripture! What he advises Moses to do is nothing less that to delegate authority and responsibility. Delegation is one of the most important management skills. Good delegation saves time, develops people, grooms successors, and motivates subordinates. Poor delegation will causes frustration,confuses subordinates, discourages others, and leads to failure of purpose. Delegation is vital for effective leadership. Jethro seems to have known this and recommended it to Moses: “Look for able men among all the people, men who fear God, are trustworthy, and hate dishonest gain; set such men over them as officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens.” (Exod. 18:21) ~ Here’s the thing, though, delegation means letting go! Once you have handed over authority, you cannot dictate what is delegated nor how that delegation is to be managed. Delegation means letting go and letting go is hard. Human beings, especially talented and successful ones, are reluctant to let go of the things we do well. It’s simply human nature. But refusal to hand-over jobs to subordinates minimizes our productivity and effectiveness. We need to learn to let go. That, by the way, is the message of Christ. Jethro anticipated Jesus: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matt. 6:34) In other words, let go! ~ When I was in college there was a bumper sticker popular among church-going Christians of a particular sort. It read, “Let go and let God”. And I know it’s also a catch-phrase for twelve-steppers and apparently it works for them…. but I hated it then and I don’t like it any better now! I think it misinterprets and trivializes the Christian message, what it means to be an active and responsible Christian. Jesus, in fact, never tells us to “let go and let God”. “Letting go” in this catch-phrase seems to imply that one do nothing, say nothing, feel nothing, and accept responsibility for nothing. That is neither what Jesus said, nor what Jethro advised Moses! Jethro told Moses to continue to be involved: “Let them sit as judges for the people at all times; let them bring every important case to you, but decide every minor case themselves.” (Exod. 18:22) Every good manager knows that delegation doesn’t mean complete relinquishment of responsibility, and every good Christian ought to know that “letting go” doesn’t mean just shrugging everything off onto God’s plate! Yes, we need to learn to let go, but letting go means letting go of tension, anxiety, worry . . . not of all responsibility. God has high expectations of us! That bumper sticker catch phrase fails to acknowledge that. ~ The fellow who said “Do not worry about tomorrow . . .” is also the man who said “Beware, keep alert . . .”, the man who said “[When] you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Mark 13:33; Matt. 2:40) We are not to abandon our responsibilities; we are to meet them in a non-anxious way in community working with others. That is what “letting go” means. That is what God expects of us; that is what Jethro advised Moses.
I have to admit that I would be hard-pressed to choose one of the many post-resurrection appearances of Christ as my favorite. Each one recorded in Scripture is so full of vivid imagery and meaning that it would be nearly impossible to put one above another … having said that, however, I also have to admit an especial fondness for the one described here by Luke. 
In some ancient manuscripts of this “longer ending” of Mark’s Gospel the text above continues with the following response by the apostles: “And they excused themselves, saying, ‘This age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan, who does not allow the truth and power of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirits. Therefore reveal your righteousness now’ – thus they spoke to Christ.” Jesus says a few nearly incomprehensible words about Satan’s power ending in this age and so forth, and then the text picks up with the received version’s comments about snake-handling and poison-drinking. ~ I absolutely love this first part of that addition: the fact that “they excused themselves” and that they demanded of Jesus “reveal your righteousness now”. I love it! It’s so darned modern . . . or maybe even post-modern. I can almost hear them saying something like, “Well, Jesus, that resurrection stuff may be true for you, but it’s not true for us!” Making excuses, making demands, relativizing the situation . . . these men aren’t just First Century Palestinian Jews; they are 21st Century Americans; they are US! ~ Well, actually, they aren’t. Where they differ is that after this confrontation with the Risen Christ, they got up off their duffs and went to work. “They went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.” (Mark 16:20) Very few excuse-making, demanding, relativizing, modern American church members do anything like that! ~ For nearly forty years, since Authorized Services, 1973 (a precursor to the current American Book of Common Prayer), at every baptism, the Episcopal Church has been asking its members if they will “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” and those members have answered affirmatively, “I will, with God’s help.” However, when we discuss evangelism, inviting people to church, talking with others about one’s faith, and similar topics, it becomes painfully clear that very few of those Episcopalians are actually doing so. And it does no good to confront them with that failure; they excuse themselves, just like the apostles! And just like the apostles, many of them make note of the fact that they don’t see much response when they try, that God doesn’t seem to be helping much. ~ Maybe we need to confront God, just like the apostles . . . maybe we need to say to God, as the apostles said to their risen Lord, “Reveal your righteousness now.” After all, when they went out and spread the gospel “the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message” with “signs” . . . we could use a few signs right now. ~ Yesterday, I made mention here of those times when it’s hard to see Jesus, when we fail to recognize him. I think we must all admit that there are times like that, when we do not see God, when we cannot feel God’s presence, when God seems to be silent. One of the most important books I read while in theological study was Hope in Time of Abandonment (Seabury 1973) by the French Protestant philosopher Jacques Ellul. In it Ellul wrote, “Hope comes alive only in the dreary silence of God, in our loneliness before a closed heaven, in our abandonment . . . Hope is a protest before this God, who is leaving us without miracles and without conversions, that he is not keeping his Word.” Hope, said Ellul, is humanity’s answer to God’s silence and it is through prayer that we demand the fulfillment of God’s promise. ~ If God is not living up to God’s promise to support the work of Jesus’ present-day apostles with confirming signs, then perhaps we Episcopalians who excuse ourselves from fulfilling our promise in the baptismal covenant are not to be faulted. Perhaps, like those first apostles we should be demanding of God in Christ, “Reveal your righteousness now!” ~ On the other hand, if God is living up to God’s promises and we just aren’t seeing that . . . .
“A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.” Say, what? I have to admit that I have the same reaction to what Jesus says here that the disciples seem to have – a sort of scratching of the head and wondering, “What the heck does that mean?” ~ On the other hand, when I read that statement what immediately comes to mind is that traveling carnival arcade game “Whack-a-Mole” – the one where the rodent pops up unexpectedly from holes and you’re supposed to hit it with a mallet! Undoubtedly, someone will tell me that I’m being blasphemous or sacrilegious or something, but the image that comes to my mind is that game with Jesus popping up out of the holes – “Now you see me. Now you don’t. A little while . . . you’ll see me again. Try to get me!” ~ And truly, that is the way Jesus sometimes “pops up” in my life. I see Jesus in the hungry who come to my church’s food pantry on Saturday mornings and in the volunteers who serve them, but then sometimes on Sunday I wonder where he is: “He was here yesterday. Why isn’t he here now?” Or sometimes, I do see him on Sunday morning in the wonder and glory of worship and in the fellowship among parishioners during coffee hour, but then on Monday I see folks I know driving less-than-courteously in what my daughter calls “gas guzzling SUVs” (confession: I drive one, too) and I wonder: “Where’s Jesus?” He pops up, I see him, he disappears, I don’t see him, a little while . . . there he is again. Like that darned rodent popping up in the game! ~ I know full and well that this is not what Jesus was talking about to the disciples. I know he’s talking about his crucifixion and his resurrection and his ascension; I know that . . . but I still see that “Whack-a-Mole” game in my mind’s eye! That’s one of the beauties of Scripture, that we can find applications of the text in situations that may not be exactly what the original story was about, but that are nonetheless related and valid. Jesus may have been talking about his immediate return in the resurrection, but he also returns in his community through the ages. The original disciples didn’t see him and then they did; church members today are still seeing him in many places and contexts. Sometimes we don’t, but then in a little while, we do. ~ I’m terrible at “Whack-a-Mole”, by the way. I have lousy reaction times with such things, always have – it’s why I was terrible at sports like baseball or tennis in elementary, junior high, and high schools. But I was good at shooting guns. I went to a military high school where we were required to pass Army ROTC firearms tests. I qualified as either a “marksman” or an “expert” with every weapon on which we trained. I was also pretty good at archery. Did you know that the New Testament word for “sin” comes from the sport of archery? It’s hamartia, which means “missing the mark”. Aristotle (384-322 BC) borrowed the term and used it in his Poetics to describe the “fatal flaw” in the hero of a dramatic tragedy; the writers of the New Testament then used it to mean “sin”. ~ So, sometimes I don’t see Jesus when I ought to. It’s not that Jesus isn’t there; it’s just that I don’t see him or if I do, like not reacting to the mole fast enough, I don’t recognize him. Like playing “Whack-a-Mole” and failing to hit the rodent, my reaction timing is just not right and I “miss the mark”. I sin by failing to “whack” when Jesus pops up! Therein lies the spiritual discipline to which this text calls me – to look, to recognize, to hone my reaction time, to respond quickly and affirmatively, and (if you’ll pardon some really blatant sacrilege) to Whack-a-Jesus! 
