The sharp compassion of the healer’s art

Stained-glass composition by J. Le Breton (glass studio of Gaudin, Paris), 1933. Cathédrale d'Amiens.

Demons? We’re talking about casting out…demons? We’re Episcopalians; we’re not comfortable with demon talk in Church.

That’s why in the film The Exorcist, the family seeking an exorcism didn’t call for an Episcopal priest to drive out the devil. We’re Anglican’s: we don’t do demons.

Yet here they are in the first Chapter of Mark: And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Believing in demons and devils is one of those “parts of the Bible” that makes many Episcopalians uncomfortable. As it should.

Reading the Bible in a literal sense, reading scripture as if this Gospel is historically accurate, backs you into a corner where you must believe in demons and miracles like the one recounted in today’s Gospel.

That’s why some Christians feel belief in demons is an important part of being a “real” Christian. Their theology suggests this bumper sticker: “Real Christians Believe In Demons.”

That’s not a bumper sticker we would find on many cars in our parking lot. Why? Because as Episcopalians, we tend not read the Bible literally, we tend not to see scripture as history that is historically accurate.

We need to remember the today as we read this teaching from Mark’s Gospel. If we forget, we will wander off into a dense thicket of conflicting theological claims and miss the lesson Jesus was teaching us.

If, for example, you employ Google in a quest to understand demons in Mark, you will soon see that some well intentioned souls have spent time trying to locate where this “events” actually “happened.” They argue about the location of the “deserted place” where Jesus prayed. That’s not the point. It doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant. The Gospel of Mark is not history. It is a story of salvation: yours, mine, ours.

Jesus isn’t playing the first century exorcist here to emphasize the importance of demons in Christian theology. He is teaching us something much subversive: so subversive his lesson must be told in terms of demons miracle cures to survive in the Roman Empire; subversive enough that some misdirect our attention to avoid the point.

One popular misdirection of our attention is the claim this lesson reinforces the role of women as cooks and housekeepers. But in real life, Jesus doesn’t support the patriarchal hierarchy in the first century. Why would we think he supports the patriarchal hierarchy in the 21^st century?

Another way to read this lesson is to focus out attention on the contrast between how Simon’s mother-in-law responds to Jesus and the way the Simon reacts. Simon’s mother in law gets what Jesus is up to: when she is healed she gets up and begins serving others. She shows us – and Simeon – how following Jesus centers on serving others. Simon, and the other disciples, often does not get what Jesus is saying – at least not in the Gospel of Mark.

Still, it is hard for us in the 21^st century to understand how radical Jesus is being in Mark. He is a nobody – he is not the first born son of a priestly family, he is not even a native of Jerusalem – yet Jesus is going “throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” Mark tells us Jesus is teaching with authority and healing people. Teaching and healing: healing and teaching: in those words stand the core of Jesus’ ministry, the example of how we live as disciples of Jesus the Christ.

In his book Who is Jesus: Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan writes: “Jesus not only discussed the Kingdom of God, [he] enacted it, and that enacting meant healing people in a context that posed a challenge to both social authorities and imperial power.”

“Jesus not only discussed the Kingdom of God, [Jesus] enacted it.” That is still a radical idea.

Perhaps that is the lesson of this Gospel story, a tale written in a time of great persecution of the Christian community in Rome. Perhaps here Mark shows Jesus calling us to follow him in both discussing and enacting the Kingdom of God, right here in Alameda, right here in Christ Church, right here in our lives.

How do we discuss and enact the Kingdom of God?

By healing people, by bringing healing to our part of the world, by being a healing presence for those we encounter, those we love, and perhaps even those with whom we disagree.

What would this world look like if the world’s Christians focused on healing the community where they live?

What would our church look like if we offered healing to our neighborhood and our community? What would our lives look like we oriented our spiritual life around healing others and ourselves? These questions point us toward a new way thinking and talking and being Christian, a way of welcome instead of judgment, of healing instead of hurting.

This vision is a radical for our time as Jesus was in the first century. Far too many of our brothers and sisters have been injured by self-proclaimed Christians. Too many are still being pained by the pronouncements of pontiffs and preachers, pontiffs and preachers who miss this central teaching: the Kingdom of God centers on healing – not hurting – people.

The exception proves my point. In an online post  this week, the president of a California-based group called USA Christian Ministries claimed all Christians and their churches should boycott Starbucks because Starbucks Hates God.

“Starbucks can follow Satan if they want to,” he thundered before hoping “Christians will quickly share this boycott with their church.” He also argued that “pastors across the USA should speak up.”

So I am doing my part here today: I am quickly sharing word of this boycott; and I am speaking up. USA Christian Ministries continues: “Don’t expect to hear sermons with ‘grab your Starbucks’ or to see Starbucks served at churches. Starbucks is no longer fashionable.”

All this is in response to Starbuck’s support for a same gender marriage bill under consideration in Washington State.

I am not here to tell you to boycott this coffee company or buy from that coffee company. No: when preaching, I wouldn‘t tell anyone here not to “grab your Starbucks.”

I recognize and respect the diversity of deeply held personal opinions in our congregation. I know better than to take a firm position on sensitive issues and deeply held personal beliefs while preaching.

So let me be clear: there no way I am going to tell anyone in this parish they should “grab your Peets” instead of Starbucks or “grab your Julie’s coffee instead of Starbucks,” or “grab your Blue Dot coffee instead of Starbucks.” I am simply not going to walk into the minefield of personal coffee preferences. Not when I am preaching.

Of course, I’m not really just talking about coffee. I am pointing out how some Christians continue to use scripture to claim that others are just not good enough to be Christians and must therefore be excluded from the Body of Christ. I am pointing to the pain caused by this kind of misreading of the Gospel, to the kind of teaching that enables pastors to play God. And I am contrasting “read scripture my way or you are not a Christian” theology with the theology of this Episcopal Church.

Whether we are talking about same sex marriage or Planned Parenthood or the best coffee in Alameda, people in our congregation hold a wide range of opinions. And that is OK – no it is more than OK: diversity of opinion is a very good thing.

If God wanted us to all agree on everything, then the Yellow Pages would not list an array of Christian churches that ranges from A for Assembly of God and B for Baptist through E for Episcopal and L for Lutheran to O for Orthodox and R for Roman Catholic. Etc, Etc. Etc..

How do we discuss and enact the Kingdom of God? God has helped us fashion our church into one of the few places around where people with wildly differing beliefs can be in community. Our challenge is not to all think alike, but rather to be a safe place where a range of opinions are voiced and respected. This may be one of the most important ways we help people heal: by showing how divergent beliefs in can be safely heard and respected in community.

As for Starbucks, well, Valentine’s Day is coming up later this month. Back on Valentine’s Day in 2009, Alex and I stood with family and friends in St. Bede’s Episcopal Church for the blessing of our civil marriage. I wouldn’t be surprised if this year his anniversary present includes a pound of Starbucks coffee. Nor would I be surprised if my path follows in the footsteps of Simeon’s mother, following the way T. S. Eliot described in this way:

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer’s art.

Let us pray that our lives together reflect the “sharp compassion of the healer’s art” on this and every day. Lets us go forth, rejoicing, to heal the world one day at a time. May the people of God say: Amen.

—————–

Art: Le Breton, Jacques ; Gaudin, Jean. Jesus Heals the Lame, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=51562[retrieved February 5, 2012].

Go Giants!

Preached at Grace Cathedral Auguust 4, 2009.

Today we remember three artists whose paintings “helped the peoples of their age understand the full suffering and glory of your incarnate Son.” They painted a human face on Christ, one their contemporaries could recognize.

All three of these men lived in during the mid 1550s, when the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation swept across Northern Europe. Paintings of Jesus by these three men are a dramatic change from the older styles.

These new works seem to be “paintings that preach Christ.” Lucas Cranach the Elder’s painting that stands over the altar at the St. Peter and Paul Church in Weimar, Germany is marked by radiance and realism.

Get Up Off The Donkey

Entry of Christ into Jerusalem by Wilhelm Morgner

Today we mark a day distinguished by two very different processions that entered Jerusalem many years ago. One, comprised of cavalry with shiny armor and troops with weapons gleaming in the sun, heralded the return of Pontius Pilate to the holy city. His was not a pilgrimage of faith: instead the Roman governor wanted to impress crowds gathering for the high holidays. His message was a show of pomp and power that clearly said anyone disturbing his status quo would be crushed.

As the Governor appointed by the Roman Emperor, Pilate gave little thought to ideas of justice voiced in by Israel’s ancient prophets or men like John the Baptizer. Pilate’s priority was simple: maintain the status quo established in Rome. To do this he worked through the High Priest and Temple system of worship. Thus the Roman Governor appointed the high priest, and the governor could dismiss him and name a replacement at will. Unsurprisingly, the High Priest was more concerned with the words of Pilate rather than Jeremiah or Isaiah.

The second procession was more in tune with, and in fact was designed to fulfill, an ancient prophecy. “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Led by Jesus, this parade was the polar opposite of Pilate’s grand entry. It aimed to remind people of that God’s vision of justice had not yet arrived. This parade echoes the prophetic themes we heard on Ash Wednesday when we began our journey through Lent. Remember Ash Wednesday?

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” Isaiah asked in our Ash Wednesday reading.

“Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” Isaiah said on Ash Wednesday.  That is the kind of change the prophets – and Jesus – sought: a revolution of the spiritual status quo. So the procession into Jerusalem we commemorate today presented Jesus as a king, but not the earthly monarch embodied by the Roman emperor. Instead, Jesus’ claim challenged the religious role of the High Priest and the place of the Temple as the center of Jewish religious life.

This little light of mine

Jesus said: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 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.”(1)

My father and his first born son, Wallace Jr.

My father was a man of finite resources and infinite resourcefulness, a man schooled and shaped in the urban chaos we call New York. You have to understand he was a city boy for the rest of this to make any sense. His memory of New York was so ingrained that, toward the end of the ‘50s, when he took me to revisit his youth in New York City we visited only three places.

First we went to the Statute of Liberty where he said “the boat ride over is better than the Circle Line and you get to see what Great Grandma Martin saw when she first sailed over from the old country.” Then past the neon lights of Times Square to Radio City Music Hall where he said: “the last vestige of the vaudeville shows I used to see when I cut class at Cooper-Union.” Finally we dined at the Automat where he said: “when I couldn’t afford to eat, I came to this condiment table to make a sandwich of bread and butter and then went to that counter to make lemonade from water and the lemons left out for use with ice tea.” To this day I prefer a slice of lemon in my water, a remembrance of that day in New York.

Welcome to ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’

Christ the Good Shepherd, from 5th century, In Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna

Welcome to ‘Good Shepherd Sunday.’

You may have noticed this theme already in our worship. I grew up amidst a plethora of Victorian prints portraying Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Jesus the Good Shepherd was nailed to the Sunday School wall, an aging print showing Jesus with a cute little lamb in one hand and a shepherd’s crook in the other, gazing benevolently at us with his piercing blue eyes, the sun shining on his light brown hair and making his skin look almost glow in its whiteness. Now you can understand why in recent years some have searched to recover the “historical Jesus.”

Coming of age in this setting prevented me from really appreciating the 23^rd Psalm. Even in seminary, our class on the psalms gave short shrift to number 23, for “it has already been done to death.”

I didn’t focus on this psalm until last summer, when Father Hester, the Roman Catholic Chaplain at Stanford Hospital, asked me to help with a patient in the ICU who was terminally ill. Over the course of the week, Fr. Hester and I spent time with the family as they came to grips with the young man’s approaching death. Fr. Hester and I led a short bedside service before the machine stopped breathing for our unconscious patient. We both returned after he passed away to say a few prayers. I walked into the room, now strangely silent, and Fr Hester said: “Here: they want you to read the 23d Psalm.” So I walked to the foot of the bed, paused to at the family members gathered around, and began to read:

1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.

2 He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters.

3 He revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for his Name’s sake.

4 Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Somewhere during the psalm, the patient’s mother-in-law began to weep quietly. And the dead man’s mother, whose grief had fueled vitriolic attacks on almost everyone in the room, walked over and embraced the sobbing woman, holding her in a heartbreaking gesture of sorrow and compassion. I remember them now whenever I think of the 23^rd psalm, or of Jesus as the good shepherd, or how we are each called at times to be a good shepherd of each other.

Living Inside the Trinity

Welcome to ‘Trinity Sunday,” a day of great theological importance in our church. Last year on Trinity Sunday I was serving as a seminarian at San Francisco’s Church of St. John the Evangelist. As the rector discussed when I would preach that spring, a devilish look came over his face. “I could have you preach on Trinity Sunday,” he said, giving extra emphasis to the words “Trinity Sunday.” Then he looked at me and grinned. “No I wouldn’t be that mean” he said with a grin. So last year I was looking forward to see who would preach on Trinity Sunday – and what they would say.

On the day appointed a venerable priest who preached once a month rose to the pulpit on Trinity Sunday. “This is Trinity Sunday, a day of great theological significance in our faith. Much has been written about the Trinity, many sermons have been preached about the Trinity. It is a very important element of our theology.” He paused for effect. “In fact, it is so important that, if you have any questions at all about the Trinity,” he here paused and scanned the congregation, “any questions at all – I encourage you to … talk to the rector. Because my sermon today is not going to be about the Trinity.” And it wasn’t.

I thought briefly of using this approach today, but then our rector sent me an e-mail saying “I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say about the Trinity!” So I am forced today to talk with you about the Trinity. Whole forests have been leveled to make paper for the thousands of papers written about the Trinity. Saints and world famous theologians have preached on it. So where do we begin discussing what the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church describes as “the central dogma of Christian theology,” this formulation of the one God as the unity of three persons: “Father, Son and Holy Spirit?”

Perhaps we should follow Richard Hooker’s approach. Hooker was one of the great Anglican theologians who formed Anglican theology. Living during the Elizabethan era, he suggested we use scripture as our foundation and then apply as vitally important authorities both reason and tradition. Using Hooker’s approach, what can the scripture appointed for today tell us about the Trinity?

We who are many are one

Photos from the 2009 General Convention of the Episcoapl Church. As a reporter for the Pacific Church News, I covered the convention, reporting through web postings, tweets and the pages of Pacific Chruch News.

We who are many are one body
because we all share one bread, one cup.

Until recently, I prided myself on being a “first adopter,” the kind of fellow who quickly found ways to use new technology for my own purposes. Starting with e-mail and moving on through to web sites to blogs, I was always among the first on the block to figure out how to use the “world wide web.” I ran out of inventiveness when the latest wave of “social networking sites” came into vogue. I couldn’t see why anyone would be interested in following my life on Facebook or Twitter.

My life isn’t that interesting, I thought. Who would care if I went to a movie or shopping? I was genuinely stumped. I started to feel old.
When I finally gave in and started using Facebook and Twitter, I wrote about the only interesting part of my public life: dining out. Not that I go to fancy restaurants, but rather that I figure the Lake Merritt Bakery & Restaurant deserves a good word once and awhile. After about a month of my posts and tweets, a friend from Connecticut wrote: “All you ever seem to do is eat! ”

I thought of her observation when reading the lessons for today. For the past two weeks, Jesus has been talking about food. Last Sunday we heard of His feeding the 5,000. Today, in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Jesus also says: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life” and “the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”Tally that up with the other miracles where Jesus feeds crowds of hungry people and the many times we read of Jesus eating with the ritually unclean, and we might say to Jesus: “All you ever seem to do is eat!”

General Convention Daily Euicahrist

In a few minutes, at the altar we call the “Lord’s Table,” we will celebrate another meal, a meal of remembrance. As we do twice each Sunday. And then we are off to coffee hour. Did you ever think: “All we ever seem to do is eat!” Why did Jesus institute the “Lord’s Supper” as our principal way of remembering Him? What’s up with all this talk of bread and manna and food?

Consider what happens when we celebrate the Eucharist: we pray together, speaking as one; we sing together, breathing as one; and we all share the same loaf and cup. After we are done, if someone is taking communion to someone who cannot be with us here, we say together: “We who are many are one body because we all share one bread, one cup.” I think of that each time I share communion with someone in the hospital or in their home.

Queen Elizabeth the First understood this theology well. “I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls,” she once said. Rather than demand theological conformity, she insisted that everyone worship through the same Book of Common Prayer. That is why our church, and the Anglican Communion, has never been a creedal church. That is why becoming an Episcopalian does not entail accepting a long list of detailed theological points.