EPIPHANY 5: Salt and Light – Incarnation as Fulfillment

There was a meme floating around FB a few days back that included this poem by Ganga White:

What if our religion was each other? 

If our practice was our life and prayer was our words?

What if the Temple was the Earth? If forests were our church?

If holy water—the rivers, lakes, and oceans? 

What if meditation was our relationships?

If the Teacher was reality? If wisdom was self-knowledge?

And if love was the center of our being?

I’d seen it before and was mildly taken by it then, but last week – for some reason beyond me – it spoke to my heart. Like the mystics tell us: When the student is READY, the BUDDHA will appear. Clearly, I was ready for this tenderhearted and stripped-down summary of what sounds to me like the heart of the Sermon on the Mount. It is, of course, a deconstructed summary – and while that may be a challenge for some traditionalists, using broadly ordinary words to describe our spiritual practices and impulses is one of the charisms of this age. As we learn how to reclaim awe in each day, renew our trust in the unforced rhythms of grace revealed to us in nature, and practice once again nurturing generous and sacramental eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel the holy right now: a new/old spirituality of compassion begins to be reborn within and among us. The artist and spiritual universalist, Iryna Dalton, restated an insight I first heard from Pope Francis:

Nothing in nature lives for itself: the rivers do not drink their own water, the trees do not eat their own fruit, the sun does not shing on itself, and flowers do not spread their fragrance just for their own enjoyment. Living for others is the rule of nature. We are all born to help each other. No matter how difficult it is: life is good when you are happy, but much better when others are happy because of you.

During the three weeks leading up to Lent, those of us living into the sacramental wisdom of this season mark two of our oldest traditions: One is Candlemas – or St. Brigid’s Feast Day or even Celtic Imbolc – that marks the final festival in this cycle of light. Church historian, Diana Butler Bass, tells us that: “Two months ago, Advent began with lighting candles in anticipation of the birth of Jesus. The Nativity is accompanied by angelic beams shining upon the Holy family in a manger. Epiphany celebrates the star directing seekers to Christ’s birthplace. As Epiphany unfolds in January, God’s light expands, inviting the first disciples to “come and see” what the light has revealed. The final movement in the arc of light is Candlemas, one of our oldest festivals, that commemorates Mary’s purification 40 days after the birth of Jesus and the presentation of the Christ Child to the elders in the Temple.” Dr. Bass adds:

Christian feast days are, of course, theological. But they are laden with cultural meanings as well. In the Roman world, and throughout Europe where Christianity would flourish, early February was an important time in the cycle of seasons. The Presentation of Jesus falls half-way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox – the time when many of Europe’s ancient tribal people believed the earth woke up to new life. It marked the lengthening of each days — and was asso-ciated with fertility, the lambing season, and the returning of light. Linking Mary’s ritual cleans-ing and Jesus as the Light of the World with the primal seasonal celebrations of Mother Earth’s brighter days created the celebration of Candlemas. Where, on February 2, it became the practice to bring candles to the church to be blessed — and then walk home through towns or villages in candlelit processions. (The Cottage: Candlit Faith)

I don’t know what it’s like where you live but in my neck of the woods the shift towards the light is already becoming clear. It MAY be cold as a brass toilet seat in the Yukon, God knows it is here, but each day is becoming a little longer and lighter. That’s one part of our preparation for Lent.

The other is revisiting the Sermon on the Mount in the appointed gospel readings. I grounded last week’s reflection in the Beatitudes – the blessings that open this sermon – paying special attention to: You are blessed when you’re at the end of your rope; because with less of you, there’s more room for God and God’s grace. Today, in the second installment, Jesus tells us that our deepest ful-fillment – and the heart of true religion – means living as salt and light for the world. Let each day bring nourishment to creation, not by jumping through the hoops of conformity, but by turning our ordinary words into prayers, treating one another with intentional care, and trusting that self-giv-ing love is at the core of existence. Let your lives be a celebration of the sacrament of incarnation, Jesus tells us. So, listen carefully for something sacred in St. Matthew’s text as he links humor and humility to the heart of God’s unforced rhythms of grace.

Jesus told his disciples and the crowds: let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage. Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven. Now, please get this right: don’t suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures—either God’s Law or the Prophets. I’m not here to demolish but to com-plete. To fulfill. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama. God’s Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground at your feet. Long after stars burn out and earth wears out, God’s Law will be alive and working. So trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law and you will only have trivialized yourself.  But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom.

You may recognize this reading as part of the late Eugene Peterson’s rendering of Scripture he called The Message: there are times when I think Peterson misses the mark a bit in this work but when it comes to the Gospels, the letters of St. Paul, and some of the Psalms? Man, it’s pure gold. My all-time, most beloved and cherished passages of Scripture comes from Peterson’s reworking of St. Matthew, chapter 11 that reads:

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.

The assurance is that we shall live freely and lightly as we consciously become one with the un-forced rhythms of grace. What a promise, yes? You shall live freely and lightly… surrounded and saturated with pain. In a world just as broken as it is beautiful. During an era that will test your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And still, you shall live freely and lightly as seasoned light bearers! Today’s text tells us how Jesus believes this accomplished. You see, St. Matthew is painting Jesus to be the NEW Moses – God’s human/holy liberator who leads us AWAY from oppression and INTO blessings – in both our spiritual and material concerns.

Remember that initially St. Matthew’s community was a part of first century Judaism who exper-ienced Jesus as the Anointed fulfillment of Torah. Tradition was vital for these Jewish-Christians who began their journey of faith grounded in the rituals of the Temple, but by the time our text was written in about 90 CE, were living in exile in Antioch, Syria. The closing words of this lesson are intended to evoke continuity between the OLD Moses and the NEW: “Please get this right: don’t suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures – neither Torah nor the Prophets.”

I’m not here to demolish but to complete. To fulfill. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama. God’s Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground at your feet. Long after stars burn out and earth wears out, God’s Law will be alive and working. So, trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law and you will only have trivialized your-self. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom.

It’s easy for 21st century people to miss the clues St. Matthew shares with us concerning Jesus as the NEW Moses, but his original audience would have picked up on this right away. St. Matthew’s text starts with a genealogy of Jesus so that we know he hails from the seed of Father Abraham: a TRUE son of Israel. The birth narratives of Moses and Jesus both occur in the context of persecution, tumult, fear, and danger. Both stories go on to say that following each birth, a paranoid despot slaughters all the male Hebrew children under two to safeguard his power. Both babies experienced exile in Egypt, regularly retreated into wilderness as adults to seek clarity from the Lord, and chose to ascend sacred mountains first to receive Torah and later to articulate the blessings at the heart of the living God. Jesus is even transfigured by the radiant light of God on a mountain much like Moses was after he communed with YHWH in prayer. It is vital for St. Matthew’s community to trust God’s continuity between the old Moses and the new one named Jesus.

Even the message we now call the Sermon on the Mount has Jesus obliquely referencing Moses al-beit in a subversion of scriptural literalism. On the mountain, Moses first received and then shared the commandments while Jesus begins with blessings. Moses articulates Torah, the law, while Jesus emphasizes charis, God’s grace. Both have their place – both are simultaneously true and distinct – and both incarnate unique spiritualities that can lead us into the heart of God’s love although in qualitatively different ways. For the first century community of St. Matthew – and perhaps for you and me as well – Jesus teaches that we can live into the fulfillment of Torah by consciously being salty and enlightening. So, let’s be clear about that word fulfillment lest we get off track. Bible scholars insist that in the ancient world of the Gospels, fulfillment was a key spiritual concern:

The Gospel writers often write of scripture being “fulfilled” in and through contemporary events… and Jesus says he has come to “fulfill” the law. In both cases, the underlying notion is that when something is “fulfilled,” it’s truly embodied, incarnated, filled out, brought to life, and made whole or complete. When we “fulfill a responsibility,” for example, we perform it: we give it form like an arm sliding into a perfectly tailored, beautifully embroidered sleeve. To “fulfill the law,” then, is to embody its essential features, to “fill out” and exemplify its meaning, spirit, and sub-stance (in an embodied manner.) (SALT Project notes.)

Do you recall the first miracle story in the chapter two of St. John’s gospel? At a
wedding in Cana of Galilee, Mary asks Jesus to turn water into wine so that the feast might continue. That story is ALL about fulfillment! When the wine runs out halfway through the weeklong festivities, Jesus asks the household servants to take the six stone containers that usually held water for the Jewish rit-uals of purification and fill them full of water. When they are filled full – or ful-filled – Jesus asks the wine steward to taste the contents: “People usually serve the good wine first” proclaims the stew-ard, “then, when the party really gets rolling and the guests have started to feel no pain do we bring out the cheaper stuff – but you have kept the good wine until last!”

See where this is going? Not only can the feast now move to its completion, so too the gospel as it takes what has become empty and fills it full of possibilities and joy. St. John uses this story to say the NEW way of Jesus is just as life-giving as the old way of Moses who cracked a stone open in the desert so that HIS people might continue their journey of faith, too. What we DON’T want to say in the 21st century, however, is that the NEW way of Jesus supplants the OLD – our ancestors did that in spades – and set in motion an anti-Semitism that is STILL vicious, deadly, and destructive. This text, you see, was taking shape and form during a time when one group of Jews was arguing with another. The Jewish Christians of the Johanine community, along with their Samaritan and Gentile friends, were disagreeing with their sisters and brothers in a Temple-based Judaism.

+  Despite their differences, these believers wanted to remain a part of the wider Jewish com-munity even when the more conservative rabbis disagreed. Once the Temple was destroyed, however, the wounded Jewish community became increasingly hostile towards those who questioned their authority.

+ While the Jewish Christians were relatively powerless and beleaguered, these doctrinal argu-ments – while sometimes ugly – were essentially what happens within all large and diverse families disagree. They shout. They challenge. They sometimes play dirty and say things they wish they could take back, too. And for a few generations that’s what happened.

When Christianity rose to become the religion of the Roman Empire, however, the original meaning of these words not only shifted and evoked unintended consequences, they gave birth to the hate we call anti-Semitism. What started as a shouting match between spiritual family members event-ually became an attack designed to denigrate and destroy Judaism. For fifteen hundred years the Church has insisted that the way of Jesus overrules and supplants the path of Torah – a heresy that was only acknowledged as such during the closing days of Vatican II.

The reason I keep sharing this contextual background is because overruling, supplanting, and de-stroying the way of Moses was NEVER a part of the ministry, word, or heart of Jesus. What he tells us now is what he said then: if you want to fulfill the heart of Torah then be salty as you bring illu-mination to those all around you. Please notice that the words of Jesus are NOT theological or creedal words – they simply describe a way of living in the world that incarnates Torah. That makes grace tangible. That points to the presence and love of God in our flesh. These words are the anti-thesis of the anti-Semitism that has killed our Jewish cousins for millennia and tarnished the soul of Christ’s body forever.

So, what IS sacred saltiness and insight all about? Jesus asks us to trust that being created by God means that we are always the Lord’s beloved – women and men who not only experience inward blessings and assurances, but the ability to share those blessings outwardly, too in the simplest and most humble manner: as salt and light. It’s been said that even in small quantities salt and light make a difference. “A pinch of salt brings flavors alive for salt is one of the only spices that en-hance the other flavors in our food. And light — maybe a single candle — can illuminate a room, light up a landscape, and be seen from more than a mile away.” (SALT Project)

What’s more, both salt and light have very simple and earthy purposes: salt is meant to be salty and light is meant to dispel the darkness. When the saltiness is diminished, we get rid of it. Same, too, with candles or flashlights or batteries that no longer shine – which is a clue for us about OUR identity as God’s beloved. Salt and light show us:

“who we are and what we’re meant to do. Like salt and light, God made us small in ways that can make a big difference for a larger whole. We were created to spice things up — not to overpower, but to enliven, enhance and even celebrate all the other flavors. Likewise, God made us to shine, as only we can: becoming a flame that can light up an entire room, dispel the fears of darkness, or help guide a lost traveler home.” (SALT Project)

And here’s the kicker: these blessings are proof of grace because nobody has to WORK to become salt or light. As the Lord’s beloved, as Lady Gaga likes to say, we were BORN this way. Salt and light are part of our essence – all we must do is claim them as gifts. One poet said, “All we have to do is actually BE salty and luminous.” Or to put it another way: we must simply BE ourselves. Jesus tells us we’re ALREADY salt and light – living souls made to bless the world. “We may FEEL small and in-significant, but like a pinch of salt or a spark of light, we can make a tremendous difference. So, get out there and be who you are!”

+ Notice that he never tells us that if we DO these good things we will be blessed. Instead, he says you are already blessed – you were made to be a blessing – so go out and live your dest-iny – with vigor! For THIS is how Torah is fulfilled: by being fully your truest and most loving self and sharing that blessing.

+ At first this may sound different from the ways the rabbis put it. But don’t be worried, what I am telling you, Jesus says, is at the core of what Moses taught: it’s a way of being the fills Torah full. I’m not about abolishing or changing the law! I’m about getting to the heart of it and fully living it out!

What Jesus is preaching, you see, is precisely what the prophet Isaiah proclaimed 500 years earlier: the ancient poet is telling those about to leave their exile in Babylon that practicing the feasts and fasts of our tradition in order to manipulate or buy God’s love is a dangerous dead-end. Chapter 58 of Isaiah is clear: Day after day my people seek me, they want to know my ways as if they were a
nation that practiced justice and compassion…they want God on their side when they cry out:

Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why do we humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” So, listen: you serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers. You fast only to quarrel and to fight so understand that THIS fast falls on deaf ears. Is such the fast that I choose a day to humble oneself? Is it just to bow down the head like a bulrush and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? NO! Is not this the fast that I choose: to lose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 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? THIS is how your light shall break forth like the dawn and your healing shall spring up quickly.

+ To fulfill Torah – to live into God’s presence with gratitude and integrity – is to claim our gifts as salt and light for the world. It’s to trust that small IS holy – that our simple gifts of love, humor, tenderness, clarity, kindness, truth-telling, and peace-making enhance the lives of others and bring a bit of light in the darkness, too.

+ And our unique charism is being our own special salt and light for the world in our sacred and salty way. We are to BE who we truly are – not fake being another – or jumping through someone else’s hoops – or trying to pass in any way, shape ,or form. Conformity, St. Paul tells us in Romans 12, is deadening to our imaginations, flesh, and souls.

Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Do not be conformed nor squeezed into the mold of this brokenness. Instead, fix your attention on the blessings God’s has created within you and you’ll be changed from the inside out. Recognize what God asks of you and respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity and the lowest common denominator, God brings the best out of you, de-velops well-formed maturity in you as salt and light. So, take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering – for this is the heart of it all.

Every day I see places where salt and light could make a huge difference. In his most recent New York Times column, David Brooks writes that with the growing presence of AI – artificial intelligence – we MUST commit to sharing our uniquely human insights and experiences with verve and grace:

A.I. churns out the kind of impersonal bureaucratic prose that is found in corporate communica-tions or academic journals. You’ll want to develop a voice as distinct as those of George Orwell, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe and James Baldwin, so take classes in which you are reading distinctive and flamboyant voices so you can craft your own… Machine thinking is great for understanding the behavioral patterns across populations. It is not great for understanding the unique individ-ual right in front of you. If you want to be able to do this, good humanities classes are really use-ful. By studying literature, drama, biography and history, you learn about what goes on in the minds of other people. If you can understand another person’s perspective, you have a more valuable skill than the skill possessed by some machine vacuuming up vast masses of data about no one in particular. (NYTimes)

This morning, Tish Harrison Warren wrote in the Times about the staggering witness for racial just-ice and revolutionary nonviolence embodied by the late Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. A fierce and fiery ally of Dr. King’s, Shuttlesworth was MLK’s perfect foil: Blunt where King was soothing, driven where King was leisurely, and most important, confrontational where King was conciliatory. When a white mob met him with baseball bats, chains, and brass knuckles and beat him senseless while he tried to enroll his black children into Birmingham’s regional high school, the good Reverend recalls hearing something that said: “You can’t die here. Get up. I have a job for you to do.” In the hosp-ital later that day, a reporter asked Shuttlesworth what he was working for in Birmingham. He responded: “For the day when the man who beat me and my family with chains at Phillips High School can sit down with us as a friend.” (NYTimes) He was a living testimony to being salt and light as he lived freely and lightly beyond the oppression of American apartheid.

My friends in Montreal called my attention to the work of Deanna Smith, Black slam poet and spoken-word artist, who brings poetry to everyday working adults and children as a way to build bridges. She recalls “performing a poem about her grandmother called Generations. It touched on themes of Black history and identity. After the sharing, a “self-described "old Irish white guy" came forward saying: "We haven't had the same kind of experiences, but what you said really touched me and I'm so glad that I came. That, she says, is the power of poetry. I was like, wow: that's what it’s all about. It's about storytelling and reminding each other that we have all these different lives and all these different experiences, but we're not so different. It's such a powerful exchange when people who don’t know each other find common ground.” (CBC Montreal) Talk about sharing our salt and light! I hear the contemporary poet, mystic, and Christian theologian, Maren Tirabassi, celebrating the gift of salt and light – and the dangers of cynicism, too – in her re-statement of today’s Scripture.

How often we are the salt in the wounds of the earth, flaunting our prosperity, hoarding it, and destroying the tastes of the wind, the ground, the sea, by the trampling of those great boots we call our needs. Or, with halogen beams on our out-of-control trucks, we careen up the highest hills searching the biggest city, and singing, "this big light of mine I'm going to make it shine so no one sees anything else for miles and miles around." We have missed the lamp-lighting in the valley places where kindness dwells, not so everyone looks at our light, but that by our little light a child reads a book, an elder feels safe from rustling outside the window, or sirens in the streets, and partners in love cook potatoes, slice apples, bake bread with a dash of salt, so all those who are hungry may come in and eat. (Tirabassi, Facebook)

Following the law and filling it full in the mind and life of Jesus means staying true to our inner essence – staying open-minded about how this is realized – and trusting grace to trump karma every time. As we ready out hearts for Eucharist, let me close as I started:

random reflections in january...

My, my, it seems that I haven't posted HERE in nearly a month. That's what happens when family holiday plans change because of wacky weather, a partner with respiratory problems gets really sick, a trip to the ER become essential, AND band practices take place, too! There have been a few FB postings - including some tributes to David Crosby - but life has clearly interupted my writing groove and will continue to do so until probably July. So, allow me the chance to share a few random reflections:

+ David Crosby: The genius doctor of vocal harmonies and clean guitar work. I was an early fan of both Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds - two 60's bands that specialized in Americana with searing guitars and close 3 part harmonies. Both bands could duplicate the precision of the Beatles but with a clearly country/folk vibe. And as much as I came to cherish the edginess of the Airplane and Dead, they were both awesome in concert, almost every night I returned to either The Byrds or Buffalo Springfield to carry me into la la land. (Ok, there was some Tim Buckley added to that mix, too.) The killer opening riff The Byrds created for Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" - and their close harmonies on the chorus - set the standard for my generation - and they kept getting better and better. One of my favorites is this reworking of Dylan's "Lay Down Your Weary Tune Lay Down."

When Cros was fired from The Byrds - a reality that would happen again and again because he had a wicked, opinionated tongue - the whole Laurel Canyon groove was taking shape. With Buffalo Springfield imploding, both Steve Stills and Neil Young were searching for new options. At Joni Mitchell's house they started making uniquely beautiful and poignant songs and when Willy (Graham Nash of The Hollies fame) made the scene, he rounded out their harmonies. I still listen to that first CS&N album and marvel at what their voices, souls, and fingers created. From time to time Neil Young would enter - and then leave - the picture adding his eclectic songs and super-charged lead guitar. 

Cros produced Joni's first album, Songs for a Seagull, put out one of the all-time most beautiful solo recordings, If I Could Only Remember My Name, and kept on rocking through all the ups and downs his wounded soul and broken heart had to experience on their way towards equanimity. His departure for the grand band in the great beyond leaves a hole in my life and I'm going keep playing his songs til I join him (which, I pray, won't be for another 15+ years!)

+ Harmonicas:  I sometimes play the blues harp with my acoustic songs. Now that Dave and I are working as a duet - in addition to our big band The Remnants - I've wanted to use them more. Especially on a few early Beatles' tunes. Sadly, for months they've been AWOL. I recall bringing them home in a small bag after we played Andy and Laurie's barn part last October but after that... who knows? I've been searching for them in earnest these past two weeks and have looked everywhere. After going through the basement, my gig bags, our bedroom, and car vigorously yesterday I had concluded they were gone forever. As I was walking back to my study I picked up a brown paper bag that's been sitting by my bed stand for months and was about to toss it out when I noticed a battery powered light inside. And when I pulled it out, what else was there, but my five missing blues harps! They've been two feet away from me for nearly three months and I never once moved that freakin' bag. I'm grateful to find them and chagrined at my distraction.

+ Lucie: For some unknown reason, our 10 year old buddy, Lucie, has decided that she's a lap dog again. Every night for the past week while Di and I watch one or another European mystery, Lucille comes off the sofa with Di, walks around the room twice, and then stands in front of me until i boost her onto my lap. She is no light weight at 70+ pounds. Once firmly planted on my lap, she snuggles in, licks me a few times, and then promptly goes to sleep until our TV adventures come to a close. Who knows why she's so inspired? Who knows how long this obsession will last? It's fun in a weird way for the old girl to be so close so I guess I'll just enjoy it til she's done.

+ Synchronicity: About three years ago I rediscovered the writing of Christine Valters Paintner at the Abbey of the Arts. In one of her books on Celtic spirituality she mentioned that the way Celtic monks made a pilgrimage was different from the rest of Europe. While most peregrinations are linear, with a defined goal in mind, not so for the Celts who chose to wander without clarity until they felt in their hearts a place of resurrection and renewal. Paintner calls this "following the thin thread of synchronicity" in our lives. That phrase brought clarity to my own spirituality. 

Last Tuesday, my partner in music, Dave, and I went to listen to a few local musicians at club in town. During a break, it was worked out for us to sit in next week and play a few tunes, and that felt like enough. Oddly, however, as I was getting ready to leave one of my favorite local politicians stopped me and asked if I might join a few of his friends at the back of the club for a conversation. It was lively and insightful. During our chat, one man asked, "Why did you decide NOT to move on to Canada? I thought you were already gone!" The short version is that one of our daughters asked us to stay put; all the rest of their extended family is out on the West Coast and she wanted her grandchildren to know their grandparents while we are still reasonably healthy. I concluded, "As clergy, I moved my family all over the country not once or twice but four different times. So when she asked me to stay put, as much as I wanted to hang in Canada with my L'Arche friends, I kept hearing a line of Scripture where John the Baptist says about Jesus, "I must decrease so that he may increase." That kept going through my head and heart so here we remain." As I was saying my goodbyes, one of the men in this conversation said (with tenderness in his eyes): "You are doing the right and beatiful thing, man. My grandparents were life savers for me during a time when life was hell. So, keep trusting your heart because being there for them could be a matter of life and death." 

Wow... who could have imagined? Talk about paying attention to that small thread of synchronicity, yes? Today I give thanks for it all and leave you with another gem from Cros who "found" the middle harmony here and holds it ALL together.

Mary held all these things and pondered them in her heart...

This week, while basking in the joy of being with family after the storms created an unexpected reunion for Christmas, I am thinking about both the 12 days of Christmas and the gospel text for this coming Sunday: January 1, 2023. The essence of the gospel from St. Luke 2 is: "Mary held all these things and pondered them in her heart." So, I am going to share some of my ponderings shaped by her spirit and presence. Reading the reflection from Richard Rohr this morning was a serendipitous affirmation:

The ego loves to use words, but the primary way we communicate “the reign of God is at hand” is by our presence. Jesus clearly modeled this. It seems that Jesus and his disciples took up residence in people’s homes and lived as closely as possible to the people. In their ministry, healing and preaching are so intertwined that we could say that there has been no real proclaiming of the kingdom, no authentic conversion, unless there is healing in some real sense. Understandably, many of us have come to rely on an impersonal medium like the printed word. But the only way words can have any effect on our lives is if a person is coming across through this medium. When I am preaching, teaching, or writing, I have to try to give myself away; I have to let others encounter me in some real way. That’s the only experience that will make any of my words halfway believable. Jesus gave us words, but more significantly, he gave his “flesh” for the life of the world—in the way he lived and the way he died.

To say that my journey in faith began by loving the ideas, concepts, and words of the tradition - the hymns, chants, and liturgies - only to slowly relinquish and replace their "authority" for the messier but more satisfying reality of relationships merely hints at this inner revolution. There were times when I did not know how to celebrate real love because, for a time, these loves seemed beyond the confines of orthodoxy. The heartbreak of these encounters, however, taught me to keep letting go of the words and replace them with simple acts of compassion and solidarity. I can't help but think that Mary faced her own reckoing with the way love overthrows words, abstractions, and even orthodoxies. For now, I'm just going to play with the little ones. When they head home, I'll try to outline my reflection so that we enter the New Year grounded in grace.

this is how you pray: advent 2022

Over the weekend, the soul of Advent 2022 began to emerge for me: I was able to create a new type of Advent "wreath" with handmade candle holders, ornamental corn, and gourds; we found an "affordable" Christmas tree and started to decorate it; I brought out the Advent/Christmas cds including two new ones from Loreena McKinnitt; I led worship and celebrated Eucharist with a sweet congregation in Northern Berkshire County; and reconnected with a small circle of friends on my weekly livestream: Small is Holy (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php). It was also time to lay out the remaining pumpkin debris that the squirrels have been feasting upon for the past two weeks. One time has come to a close as another begins to ripen.

The next two weeks will incrementally take me into more waiting, watching, listening, and discerning as our L'Arche Ottawa community prepares to gather in a week to renew our inward/outward healing work. I'll be on the road at this time next Monday for a quick 48 hour visit. At home again, the band will gather to get in a bit of practicing before the Christmas feast day. We'll also schlep down to Brooklyn to take in grandson Louie's ukelele concert at Jalopy's on the 15th. We will have a chance to worship with the crew for Advent IV, too before starting a few weeks of relative simplicity and quiet for our celebration of Christ's birth at home in solitude. I am trusting that the closing weeks of December will bring time to bake some bread, practice some music, walk in the woods, and take stock of yet another weird, wonderful, and worrisome year. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, crafted this Advent poem that continues to speak to my heart.

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

This Advent is obliquely encouraging me to go deeper into a spirituality of tenderness. After in-person worship yesterday, a number of wise, old souls spoke of the grief and anxiety currently residing in their hearts. That's one of the strange charisms of mixing gentle humor with spiritual vulnerability and compassion in a homily: deep calls to deep as secrets long held in the heart are shared with trust and even a measure of hope. I sense a comparable yearning to confess the consequences of the chaos and loss we've encountered in the cultural, political, and spiritual trauma of the past year. Collectively and personally we know ourselves to be a quiet, fearful people who don't yet feel safe enough to be singing, singing together for our lives. We want to, that is clear, but it doesn't this moment is frought with too many challenges and dangers.

My hunch, therefore, is that 2023 will be a time where leaning into the mysteries of mercy, grace, and trust will br crucial. Clearly, the pandemic is not finished with us yet. Nor the culture wars although there are clues that some among us are figuring out win/win solutions that transcend our political calcification in favor of fortifying the common good. Let me call your attention to two nuanced essays that captured my imagination this weekend:

+ The first is a carefully considered take on the delicate balancing necessary to strengthen both LGBTQ rights and religious freedom. I think that Anglican priest, Tricia Harrison Warren, brings important clarity to this challenge. See her words @ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/opinion/303-creative-supreme-court.html

+ The second, by NY Times columnisht, Ross Douthat, is equally compassionate and complicated in his consideration of euthanasia and social cohesion. Find it @ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/opinion/canada-euthanasia.html

I don't expect to see an easy path into or through the mystery unfold in 2023. My friend, Pam, continues to help me let go of the spiritually sentimentalized word "hope" in favor of the more accuate "possibilities." So, like the late Mary Oliver, I look for places in 2023 where the tension is real but the possibilites promise more of the world that could be. 

I’d seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night

under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp
tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.

This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them—I swear it!—

would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like

the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone,

I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,

so this is how you pray. 

don't speak unless you can improve upon the silence...

OMG is it quiet here! One of the many things I miss about living in the desert Southwest is access to silence. Within 10 minutes of our old home in Tucson, you could be walking among the majestic Saguaro cacti - mesquite trees, kerosote and prickly pears, too - and hear nothing save the sound of your own feet on the rocks. There might be a few random animals scurrying for cover and once in awhile a stray planes engines, too. But with the exception of another hiker, it was stone cold silent. Oh what a healing gift - especially given the frenzy of Black Friday in the USA - so I'm rejoicing as I experience that blessing once again in this quiet section of Quebec's Eastern Townships. Mary Oliver once wrote:

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.”

I'm not the first to lament the chaos and clutter that clogs our culture and keeps us from hearing that still speaking voice coming to us from within the stillness - and I won't be the last. The song leader and poet of ancient Israel prayed: "Be still - and know" in the Psalms My mentor and living connection to the holy, Jesus, regularly set aside the demands of his time for a night of silence under the stars. And Parker Palmer, wise elder of the 21st century, wrote that "we shouldn't speak unless it can improve upon the silence." So, I stood for a sacred moment last night in the pitch black night and soaked up the silence. It was yet another feast on Thanksgiving.

Some seven years ago, while struggling with my sense that I was being called out of pastoral ministry, Di and I were walking through another woods in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Being in the woods - or sitting by an unexpected forest stream - always shuts my mouth and lowers my blood pressure. On this day, we happened upon three different carvings of Green Men - the Celtic incarnation of wild nature - on three different tree stumps. It was, I felt, an invitation to let go of what I knew for certain and trust that something even better would be revealed if I kept wandering. Mary Oliver, once again, evokes something of this revelation when she wrote:   

As deep as I ever went into the forest
I came upon an old stone bench, very, very old,
and around it a clearing, and beyond that
trees taller and older than I had ever seen.

Such silence!
It really wasn’t so far from a town, but it seemed
all the clocks in the world had stopped counting.
So it was hard to suppose the usual rules applied.

Sometimes there’s only a hint, a possibility.
What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots
than reason.
I hope everyone knows that.

I sat on the bench, waiting for something.
An angel, perhaps.
Or dancers with the legs of goats.

No, I didn’t see either. But only, I think, because
I didn’t stay long enough.

Thankfully we DID stay long enough to greet the Green Men (but not the dancers with legs of goats) as well as a few surprise forest streams. By the end of that hike it was clear: the holy was silently whispering to me to trust a new way of being. My resignation soon followed. I had no clear understanding of what was to come next except the assurance that the quiet wasn't lying. Be still - and know. Seven years later, a small ministry of presence is taking shape. A small group of musical comrades, too. And an ever-deeping connection with the community of L'Arche Ottawa. 

be still my soul: happy thanksgiving from bonsecours...

As the cold, grey morning quietly matures in our warm chalet in Bonsecours, Quebec, I'm sipping hot tea and looking backwards at my decision to live as a periodically displaced-by-choice American. Most of my adult life has been a conscious quest to make peace with the fact that I share Leonard Cohen's take on the USA: I love the country but can't stand the scene. I am ecstatic over the big sky of the desert Southwest. I celebrate our mountains, lakes, rivers and ocean beaches on both shores. I'm agog with joy over what is now called American roots music. And delight in the multiple delicacies of our regional comfort foods. I used to weep tears of gratitude while singing the national anthem at baseball games even as I found myself out of step with our politics and culture. Indeed, I felt my heart come alive reading this Langston Hughes poem:

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

The USA is a big, bad, bold, messy, inspiring, frustrating, loving, dispicable, and complicated muddle of a country. My disequilibrium over not really fitting in is, you see, part demeanor and part spiritual commitment. By dispostion, I'm an introvert, like 25% of the rest of this land. And despite notable hermits like Thoreau, Merton or Scott and Helen Nearing, we of this realm know that solitude and silence have never been a valued or integral part of the American soul. Same, too for spirituality: I tend towards the left of center wing of the contemplative movement; more Kathleen Norris than Billy Graham, more Dorothy Day than J.D. Jakes or Joel Osteen. I relish the mystical side of the Christian tradition, mistrust most of the advocates of ortho-doxy (right intellectual belief), and consider myself an ally of the ortho-praxis contingent (right practice.) Sung evening prayer with candles means more to me than a festival of preaching and coffee hours!

In this morning's solitude I recalled Sid Skirvin, then Dean of Students at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, who told me during my first fall term that after taking a battery of personality tests he thought "maybe I shouldn't plan on being part of a local church ministry - your score for introversion was off the charts, man - so maybe a career in research and study or something less public might be best?" Other denominational advisors agreed but my conviction was that if the soul of a contemplative could find no place in a local congregation then something was woefully wrong with the community not the contemplative. One of my dearest mentors, the Rev. Dr. Ray Swartzback, often said that if the church couldn't get the justice and compassion thing right in an urban settiing, where the pain was palpable, it would never be able to function as the Body of Christ in suburban America with our distractions, diversions, and duplicitous emotions. I borrowed Ray's insight, substituting advocates of BOTH the inward and outward journeys into the equation. And what was true 40 years ago, is ever more so in 2022.

I understand that left-leaning, non-conformist contemplatives will always be in conflict with the majority in any culture. So this is not a lament. Neither am I making a binary distinction of hierarchy: the pilgrimage of a mystic is simply different - no better or worse - than that of one energized and ingaged by the ways of the marketplace. I am grateful to God that there are those who draw life from the hustle and bustle. I just know that it's not me - so building quiet solitude into each day and week has become essential as I strive to care for self as well as the wider culture. Without safe space to be still, you see, I fall apart. I can do big events - and then I collapse. I revel in doing interactive music and worship - and then must take a nap. I have been blessed to study in some of this nation's great urban areas - but have also needed to retreat into nature from time to time to regroup. 

All of which is to say that this year's Thanksgiving Day feast will be small, quiet, and understated. We'll find a way to wander along the frozen lake for a bit. Then buy a few goodies to help us incarnate our gratitude. After all, feasting is endemic to ALL culture. We'll probably wind up listening to some gentle music by candle-light and then reading, too. I guess what I am trying to say is that there's a healthy ebb and flow rhythm to consciously not fitting in that's a like the hokey pokey: you put your right foot IN, you take your right foot OUT! It's engagement and retreat, speaking and silence, sharing life with family and community as well as resting into the unforced rhythms of grace. Never just one or the other, always both/and. 

Honoring this way of being necessitates getting out of the USA from time to time, too: Black Friday feels like soul murder next to the simple gift of utter silence in a darkened, star-lit woodland. We have often opted for walking through the quiet neighborhoods of Montreal to participating in our 4th of July festivities. Too much hoopla and fireworks for my old heart. And while I miss the merriment of being with our children and grandchildren, it's like John the Baptist said in St. John's gospel: I must decrease so that they may increase. For the past decade, they've been creating their own family celebrations that work for their own needs and charisms. Part of me still misses the bounty of blessings that once flowed during our various Thanksgiving Eve festivals of American music, too. But, to everything there is a season, yes? Joy Davidman once told her spouse C.S. Lewis that the emptiness and sorrow we feel during a loss is intimately connected to the love and blessings we knew earlier. I've been blessed by my loved ones over many years - and trust there will be a more times to bask in their presence. At this stage in time, however, solitude for Thanksgiving works best for me. The late Mary Oliver put it like this:

Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.

le froid dans les Cantons de l'Est...

It makes sense for Di and I to get out of Dodge over the Thanksgiving weekend: too much craziness and the whole Black Friday crap has become overwhelming and depressing. So, we've started to explore the quiet joys of Quebec's Eastern Townships. There are a host of beautiful small communites - almost all are French speaking - so it is a chance to chill, explore another world that is lovely to us, and rest without the BS of contemporary America. For most of my adult life, I was a die-hard citizen of the USA. I felt like Bonhoeffer during the rise of the Nazis: if I want to participate in the healing of my homeland, I have to stick it out during the worst of times. So, I did. But now, maybe because I'm older and weary, I need a break so two things warrant a comment:

+ First, we are Francofonies. We can ad lib French for a bit - and stumble our way through key conversations - but our ability to really communicate is limitted. Still, it gives us a chance to listen carefully and practice speaking French in small doses. More than ever I bellieve this is an essential discipline for those of us who abide in the USA: listening carefully and NOT being in charge is a valuable spiritual and cultural lesson, so we get up here as often as we can.

+ Second, this is a beautiful part of God's creation in any season but especially grand in the early days of winter. I used to despise winter, too damn cold, and my feet always got wet. But I've learned to eat some of my discomfort and get good cold weather gear. Right now, there's about two inches of white powder on the ground with the possibility of more to come while we're here. We don't have any agenda except to be open to whatever comes our way. We'll wander both Sherbrooke and Magog over the next few days - some time in the local woods, too - and maybe tour three or four other little communities. It is an ongoing blessing.

So, yet again this year as our wider family gathers for their traditional gatherings, we'll do so contemplatively. In solitude. Because that just seems to work better for our dispostions. If you don't hear much from us over the weekend, this is why. Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

christ the kingd sunday 2022

One of my all-time favorite songs of faith is: “Seek Ye First.” It came on the scene in the early 70’s when many of us in the old-line or side-line churches found ourselves being touched and confused by the exciting movement of the Holy Spirit. Charismaniacs, some called us – adults speaking in tongues and praising God with abandon like it was Pentecost again – rediscovering that a life of faith could include joy, intimacy, and feasting as well as serious sacrifice, solitude, and ceremony.

Old-timers may recall the ecstasy that washed over some of us upon hearing Norman Greenbaum’s rock’n’roll anthem: Spirit in the Sky. (When I die and they lay me to rest, gonna go to the place that’s the best; when they lay me down to die, gonna go UP to the Spirit in the sky…) Same for the first time I sang, “Father, We Adore You,” with two or three rounds of a capella alleluias chanted during an ecumenical meeting in Saginaw, MI. Like St. Paul in II Corinthians 12: I felt I’d been lifted-up into the mystical third heaven as we sang together in faith and fervor. (Sing the alleluias … I eventually stole the melody last summer for a new song using a Quebecois pandemic affirmation: ca va bien aller – all shall be well with God – a prayer to be sung at any occasion.)

For years I maintained my associate membership in the Community of Celebration – a coed monas-tic community of the Anglican church – that creatively blended the passion and convictions of the charismatic renewal with beautiful liturgy and prayer. It was smells and bells and ritual mixed with tenderness, trust, and rhapsodic musical choruses carefully constructed to be sung by everyone. You see, Celebration did NOT do schlock – thanks be to God – they were poets, artists, scholars, and writers: women, men, and children reinventing the monastic tradition for the late 20th century with playful liturgies and Celtic folk songs linking tradition with incarnational compassion – and there was always room at Eucharist for everyone. For decades, Christ the King Sunday was in-complete for me if I didn’t sing this Celebration hymn: Alleluia, alleluia opening our hearts…

Sometime during that phase of my journey, I heard the words of Jesus, “I have come so that your joy may be full,” and it was as if scales fell away from the eyes of my heart, and I could see creation saturated with God’s presence for the first time – and that blessing has never been extinguished. "I have come so that your joy may be full."  I’ve been full to over-flowing sometimes with tears of gratitude as well as sorrow; made whole by grace as God intended for all of us since before the be-ginning of time; equipped by the Holy Spirit with gifts to live by trust even when the evidence is obscure; and mystically fulfilled – or spiritually filled full – like those urns of water turned to wine at the Lord’s first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. I’m NOT saying there haven’t been down times, not at all; I’ve known agonizing dark nights of the soul. But through the darkness, something of Christ’s joy lingered – and to this day I connect it with the paradoxical charisms of Christ the King Sunday. The wise scholars at the SALT Project put it well:

This feast day, Christ the King Sunday, is one of the rare times in the year when Christianity’s two major feasts — Easter and Christmas, the Cross and Incarnation — come into close connection. The one condemned before the crowds in Jerusalem is the same one born in a forgotten, back-water town. The one hailed by angels, shepherds, and philosophers from afar is the same one eventually betrayed, abandoned, and left to die in shame. “Silent Night” and “What Wondrous Love is This?” overlap and interweave, together creating another kind of song entirely. And this juxtaposition of creative tension is precisely the point. To paraphrase the great womanist theo-logian Delores Williams, the “kingship” of Christ can only be understood through this dissonance and harmony: “King of Kings!” on the one hand, as if sung by a resplendent choir; and “poor little Mary’s boy” on the other, as if whispered by an elderly woman standing alone. The “Reign of Christ” on one hand, and God’s child, exquisitely vulnerable, on the other. These two songs, Williams contends, sung back and forth in call and response, is “how the Black church does theology.” Each song needs the other for the complete truth to shine through our uncertainties.

THIS feast day, this time set aside to embrace the subversive upside-down kingdom of God that empowers society’s winners to humbly join those consigned to the back of the bus by joyfully ex-changing our privilege for solidarity in pursuit of equality is Christ the King Sunday for me. This feast day, where sisters and brothers who have been systematically locked out of life’s abundance are respectfully ushered to the head banquet table as honored guests at the feast of Christ’s love: this is Christ the King Sunday to me as well. And this feast day, where what has long been forgotten is remembered, where the lost find they’ve been found, and mourners rejoice, the broken dance, the blind see, and the deaf sing new songs: this, too is Christ the King Sunday. It’s where the cradle sits not far from the Cross, conventional notions of power are redefined by compassion, and selfish delight is relinquish-ed by carrying one another’s burdens in community: all of this and more is Christ the King Sunday. The Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas, says it well:

It’s a long way off but inside it there are quite different things going on festivals at which the poor man is king and the consumptive is healed; mirrors in which the blind look at themselves and love looks back at them; and industry is for mending the bent bones and the minds fractured by life. It looks like it’s a long way off, but to get there takes no time and admission is free, if you will purge yourself of desire, and present yourself with your need only and the simple offering of your faith, green as a leaf.

So, as you’ve clearly gathered by now, this liturgical feast day, while still defying any attempt to re-name it with a politically and theologically correct alternative, is hallowed ground for me. And while I wish there was a better metaphor than King to describe the spirituality of this feast…I keep returning to that masculocentric moniker, Christ the King, because even with all its bag-gage, it evokes the mystical paradox of Jesus as Christ better than all the rest. I’ve tried some of the suggested alternatives; inclusivity is important. And while most Americans don’t know much about Kings – or Queens for that matter – and we’re fuzzier still about what the realm of Christ means, the traditional words… what?

Well, they give shape and form to how I mystically experience God’s presence
within and among us: the kingdom seems obscure at first – but if I slow down and wait for eyes to see, I often find God’s blessing hidden in plain sight. The image of Jesus as Universal Christ points to the holy being incarnated in our humanity, the cosmic Alpha and Omega being revealed in a down-to-earth manner, and the marriage of all that is noble and lofty with all that is humble and vulnerable as well. Tricia Gates Brown, a theologian of the ordinary, writes: 

Of all the metaphors in the gospels, this is probably my least favorite. In part because it is confusing. I don’t like what kings, empe-rors, rulers, or presidents have done to the weak and marginalized in history; and the things they have done and are doing are generally opposite of what Jesus did and taught. But Jesus used the metaphor of ‘king’ frequently when he made ‘kingdom of God’ parables and sayings central to his teaching. So, these metaphors are critical to our tradition and we are forced to wrestle with them. So, let’s be clear she adds: Jesus was clearly redefining, subverting, flipping upside down, the whole concept of king and kingdom when he talked about the kingdom of God. God’s realm, or God’s kingdom, is characterized by the upside-down: God honors the weak not the strong; God wants us to give power to others, not to lord power over them; God wants us to abandon the dominant and the strong to seek out the vulner-able. The kingdom of Jesus looks like the opposite of what kings among us usually do.

For the past four months our Small is Holy gatherings have tried to identify some of the ways we might become living and incarnational prayers: allies of God’s upside-down kingdom. Today, our odyssey into embodied rather than abstract or intellectual prayer comes to a close as we complete the cycle of stories shaped by St. Luke’s gospel and anticipate another pilgrimage through the in-sights of St. Matthew’s text with Advent’s arrival next week.

Now we should be clear that the proximity of Christ the King Sunday to Advent is NOT an accident, ok? It’s an intentionally brilliant work of theological juxtaposition connecting the Alpha and the Omega, the struggle and celebration of faith, the mystical marriage of the human with the holy to both the Cross on Golgotha today and the cradle of Bethlehem next week.

Christ the King Sunday, you see, is NOT an ancient feast but a relatively contemporary con-struct. It came about after the world had endured the horrors of the First World War. What was supposed to be the war to end ALL wars, however, only emboldened violent fascists all over Europe. In 1925, Pope Pius 11th was afraid that the destructive influences of totalitarian-ism as seen in the brutality of the Russian Revolution, the ascent of dictators in Spain and Italy, and the threat of Nazi dominance being advance by Hitler in Germany, might unlock the hounds of hell unless held in check by an global spiritual revival. The Pope’s deepest hope – perhaps too naïve, in retrospect, but still heartfelt – was that by reclaiming and reemphasiz-ing God’s love made flesh in Christ, the madness of human hatred and idolatry might be thwarted. Simultaneously, we should note that Pope Pius also wanted to reign-in the influence of the Protest-ant movement in Europe. That’s why the first Christ the King feast was set for October 31st – it was to be a Roman Catholic Counter Reformation Day.

Sadly, it failed to inhibit the carnage being unleashed by the authoritarian juggernaut – and we had to wait another 25 years, in the aftermath of WWII, the Holocaust, the brutalities of the Korean conflict, and the Cold War, for a spirit of ecumenical cooperation to arise in the form of the Second Vatican Council. In this new era of peace and reconciliation, Pope Paul VI was able to change both the date of this new feast to the Sunday before the start of Advent and alter the appointed read-ings, too. Now the feast celebrates the whole arc of Christ’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and as-cension at a time when, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, nature’s darkness teaches us some-thing about the coming light of Christ. It was an extraordinary shift of sacramental spirituality al-igning the liturgy of the Church with the wisdom of Mother Nature that simultaneously created space for non-Catholics to enter the celebration as well.

Now, I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but it’s already getting dark here at this time of day; so, like our earliest ancestors, I find a bit of existential comfort in a liturgy that re-minds me that there is a light shining in the darkness that the darkness has not overcome. When our liturgies move within the flow of the seasons, it’s easier for me to rest into the un-forced rhythms of grace. With this background then, take a listen to the gospel appointed for Christ the King Sunday from St. Luke’s gospel:

When the Roman legions and the tortured Jesus came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. From the Cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” The Roman soldiers cast lots to divide his clothing. (Which, let me add, is where some tradition find a hatred of gambling.) A crowd of people stood by watching; while their religious leaders scoffed at Jesus, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked Jesus, coming up and offering him sour wine, saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” They also hung an inscription over him: “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals crucified there kept deriding Jesus saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Having now lived into this feast day for almost 45 years, I see at least three discrete albeit linked layers in this text that join the subversive wisdom of the Cross with the subdued promise of grace in the cradle at Bethlehem.

· First there’s the contrast between Caesar as king, and more broadly ALL secular leaders, and the way Jesus embodies his calling as spiritual king.

· Second there’s the difference between a culture that deals with its fears and wounds by scape-goating and the counter-cultural trust that Jesus incarnated during his lifetime.

· And third this passage invites us to trust that even in the worst possible suffering Jesus finds a way to bring mercy and love to us personally.

This seemingly grim passage offers a macro, micro, and mini personal picture of

what the love of God made flesh in the Universal Christ looks like – and why it matters. Bible scholars ask us to: “begin with the stark portrait of kingship – the reign of Caesar and every other tyrant before and since – next to the reign of the Universal Christ.” In first-century Palestine, a common method of capital punishment was crucifixion – a punishment designed to execute and humiliate the condemned while intimidating the wider culture – it concretized the Empire’s dominance.

“For a Jew in Jerusalem, there could be no more terrifying, disgraceful death than to be “hung on a tree...under God’s curse” as Deut 21:23 articulates clearly.” At this point in his ministry, Jesus had been forsaken by his male friends and mocked and degraded by his enemies including the of-ficials of the occupying army like Pilate and Herod, the grunt soldiers on the ground, and finally by a common criminal condemned to death on the cross next to him. His torturers hung a sign above him on which they’d scrawled in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin stating: This is the King of the Jews. "Those in power wanted their subjects to know that the agony of the Cross is what happens to all who challenge the authority Caesar. It was a a crude and cruel public service announcement doc-umenting the “domination, terror, and contempt” of the Roman emperor."

· That’s the macro context – violence, shame, suffering, fear, and loathing – and it stands in stark contrast to everything St. Luke has consistently shown us about Jesus throughout his gospel; namely, that the mission of Jesus is to “declare the dawn of Jubilee: a new era, rooted in ancient Israelite history and myth where ALL the captives are released from bondage.” Release of the captives is the macro version of the personal proclamation: I have come so that your joy may be full: complete and satisfied.

· You see, Jesus knows that the heart of Jubilee is mercy not strict justice: God’s kingdom is not constructed upon wars, retribution, or acts of intimidation, but servanthood. So, with a staggering consistency, St. Luke shows us that Jesus has come among us as one who serves – as one who incarnates mercy just as God is merciful – as one who kneels to wash our feet and trusts that loving God and neighbor as ourselves is the foundation of Jubilee. Yes, some of the first shall become last, and the good news will always feel like bad news for some others, too; but fundamentally the Jubilee of Christ’s tradition is NOT about punishment. It’s about mercy. Grace. And there’s no more profound contrast between Christ and Caesar than this.

That’s underscored by story’s micro setting as well where Jesus repeatedly asks God to forgive those who are torturing, mocking, and even executing him. If it’s true on the macro level that the kingdom of God is the “perfect reversal of Caesar’s where, instead of domination there is servant-hood; instead of mockery, kindness; and instead of cruelty, mercy,” then it is equally true on the micro level, too. Jesus neither curses nor condemns the Empire’s soldiers who torture, spit upon, and ridicule him. He refuses to give-in to hatred when they mash their crown of thorns into his flesh. Or strip him naked and gamble for his robe. Or push vinegar to his mouth when he aches for water. Nor does Jesus curse those from within his own religious tradition who collaborate with the Empire. Mostly, he holds his suffering within in silence asking only at the end for God to forgive them ALL for they know not what they do. On the micro level the contrast could not be clearer: one kingdom is governed by violence and shame while the other practices patience and grace.

Same, too on the mini, personal level: “in Caesar’s kingdom the gates of imperial privilege swing shut — while in Christ’s, the gates of salvation swing open.” (SALT Project) The exchange that takes place between Jesus and the thieves beside him on the Cross condenses the totality of Christ’s life’s work into seven simple sentences. Remember these thieves were being executed by the state after being captured breaking into a Roman armory and stealing weapons for an emerging Jewish insur-rection, ok? So, with one Jewish revolutionary screaming at Jesus in fear and rage and the other asking to be remembered when Jesus crosses over into eternal life, the Universal revolutionary of love promises both men – and countless others, too – that today they shall be with him in Paradise. Jesus never says: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” only to the good or penitent thief while hanging the “bad” one out to dry, ok? Yet again Jesus incarnates the ironic, upside-down mercy of God’s kingdom for both criminals, subverting and debunking for good the idea that grace is a re-ward for good behavior. “The story’s point should be clear: when it comes to salvation, now and for-ever, God’s mercy falls on the just and unjust alike.” The tender-hearted and clear-thinking scholars at the SALT Project celebrate this truth by sharing a story from the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth who wrote that: 

The church was born in this story, out there in the shadows on that desolate executioner’s hill. There, a meager congregation, not of the righteous, but of criminals, gathered around Jesus, listening for — and receiving — words of forgiveness and radiant good news. Accordingly, the church always finds itself surround-ed and pervaded by Caesar’s reign, and is nevertheless called to be a sacrament, an experience, and above all a proclamation of Christ’s dawning reign of love. It is a “kingdom” not of domina-tion, but servanthood; not of mockery, but kindness; not of cruelty, but mercy. For the fullness of that Great Jubilee in all its beauty, we wait, and pray, and prepare — especially as the season of Advent begins.

Today’s text gives us a clear contrast: the kingdom of Caesar or the kingdom of Christ Jesus. A scene of suffering that looks godforsaken, “that very place is likely to also be the ironic, revolu-tionary presence of the holy where God is not only present but active. God’s reign can be mocked, and Caesar’s reign often looks triumphant — yet there, and precisely there, in our hopelessness, God reigns. And that imperial inscription above Jesus’ head, the one meant to taunt, intimidate, and demean — there, and precisely there, God’s kingship is declared and incarnated.”

The elders of our mystical, contemplative, mercy-driven faith remind us that as we
take-in the wis-dom of the Cross on Christ the King Sunday today, we would do well to recall that this happens smack up against the eve of Advent where God arrives for us in the most humble, hidden, and vul-nerable way: as an infant in a manger with Mary’s milk still on his breath. THIS is the one we trust to become Christ the King: a king who incarnates greatness through humble service. “A king who refuses to use his power to fend off his opponents, much less take vengeance on them – who actually does the opposite calling upon the All-Loving One to forgive and then welcome them for eternity. (SALT Project)When I look around me these days, so much yearns to be made whole – not only the confusion and chaos of a world literally on fire – but also our politics, economics, culture, and religion. So much anger, so much anxiety, so much suffering. At the same time, given the ironic, revolutionary, and transformational blessings carried by the God who comes as an upside-down, compassionate and tender king, I know that there’s more going on than I can fathom and see. A poem by Carrie Newcomer puts it like this:

So much of what we know lives just below the surface.
Half of a tree spreads out beneath our feet. Living simultaneously in two worlds,
Each half informing and nurturing the whole. A tree is either and neither but mostly both. I am drawn to liminal spaces, the half-tamed and unruly patch where the forest gives way and my little garden begins. Where water, air, and light overlap becoming mist on the morning pond. I like to sit on my porch steps, barn jacket and boots In the last long exhale of the day, when bats and birds loop in and then out, one rising to work, one readying for sleep. And although the full moon calls the currents, and the dark moon reminds methat my best language has always emerged out of the silence, it’s in the waxing and waning where I most often live. Neither here nor there, but simply on the way. There are endings and beginnings, one emerging out of the other. But most days I travel in an ever present and curious now. A betwixt and between, that is almost, but not quite, the beautiful, but not yet. I’ve been learning to live with what is, more patient with the process, to love what is becoming, and the questions that keep returning. I am learning to trust the horizon I walk toward is an orientation, not a destination. And that I will keep catching glimpses of something great and luminous from the corner of my eye. I am learning to live where loss holds fast and where grief lets loose and unravels. Where a new kind of knowing can pick up the thread. Where I can slide palms with a paradox and nod at the dawn, as the shadows pull back and spirit meets bone.

So I KEEP singing to myself: Seek ye first the kingdom of God as a prayer. A mantra. An anticipation of the mercy I need – and WE need – to share and spread God’s love in times like these. To ready our hearts for Eucharist, perhaps you’ll join with me to sing:

Seek ye first the kingdom of God – and all its righteousness.
And all these things shall be added unto you: allelu, alleluia.
Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and ye shall find;
Knock and the door will be opened unto you: allelu, alleluia.

check it out here: https://fb.watch/gWuUO8QUyh/