(with thanks to Grace Cathedral, San Francisco)
EASTER: THE MAGDALENE SPEAKS TO THE BELOVED DISCIPLE
A BRUSH WITH (LITERARY) MAGIC
By sheer chance, three recent novels I’ve read over the last couple of months have shared a certain element of what one might call the supernatural or magical. All were by writers I had not read before and all were books picked up in my usual scattershot way: this one had an interesting review, that one had interesting blurbs, this other one had an interesting dust jacket. And I had quite different responses to them.
The first, in order of reading, was The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel, which I think could be described as an example of magic realism. (My prior acquaintance with that genre is limited to a single book, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My opinion on this topic is, accordingly, of little or no value.) In both books, the shifts between realism and magic realism were abrupt, and I found myself wondering what the authors were trying to accomplish. Garcia Marquez conveyed an enhanced sense of the identity of a place, compounded by letting mythic elements into the body of the work. But I’m perplexed as to what Martel was after. Over all, the book seems to be about people seeking to escape from their losses. They are real losses, grave losses, to be sure. But is flight, by itself, enough to hold a novel together? In the end, I felt not. Perhaps I would have felt differently if I were receptive to the kind of nature-mysticism that offers some closure at the end of the book; but my mystical promptings are of a more traditional sort.
The second book was This House Is Mine by Dörte Hansen, translated by Anne Stokes. I wouldn’t call it a work of magic realism; but, like that genre, it hints at a human reality less securely limited to brute fact than the purely realistic novel would tolerate. A reader who resists the idea that there is anything to our world beyond the physical (including the strange psychological carryings on of the brain) could read the occasional hints of other realities as coincidences. A reader comfortable with the occult would have a different take. The somewhat agnostic reader might be content simply to see the boundaries fogged a bit. None of this, however, has much to do with why I found this novel so much more satisfying or why I would be happy to read more by Ms. Hansen. Her characters, too, are severely damaged by their losses, but are not content merely to flee. In depicting the ways we struggle with past troubles and how our varying degrees of success and failure shape our domestic surroundings (and perhaps even communicate through them), she has written a deeply humane novel. And if it ends on a note of hope, I don’t share the widespread modern prejudice against that.
The third book was Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant. Since it’s set in a kind of fantasy world of post-Roman Britain (there is a dragon and Sir Gawain plays a part in the action), it isn’t magic realism. It’s just the sort of world where one expects everyday life and magic to commingle. Indeed, the whole course of action seems driven by a strong but inexplicable sense that the two elderly protagonists, Axl and Beatrice, have that they must leave their village and search for their son. Here, too, are people who seem to have experienced a great loss, yet cannot quite admit it and hope only n the vaguest way for some positive resolution. In the end, they don’t appear to succeed, but this reader, at least, found himself reflecting in a new way on the mixture of blessing and curse found in our mysterious human powers of forgetting and remembering. This was a book that I suspect I will still be thinking about for some time to come.
In a way it’s meaningless to group these three books together. They formed only a casual assortment. But the differences among them were of more than passing interest. One of them opens onto a humane future of some kind. Another seems to want only to be absorbed into the “natural” world and wound up seeming, to me, entirely about retreat. Yet another left me pondering about how the “retreat” of historical amnesia can, when dissipated, actually open onto a world of renewed violence. In fiction as in life, ongoing human engagement with our lives and our world and the hope that makes that possible are the interesting things.
WATER—SCARCE AND PLENTIFUL
Sermon preached at St. Bede’s Mar Vista, Los Angeles, California
Third Sunday in Lent, March 19, 2017
Year A: Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42
We heard two stories this morning that focus on water. Now there’s a timely topic for us. I suspect that with our recent experience of drought—and our ongoing anxieties about it—we’re particularly well attuned for them this year.
The first took place in the Sinai desert, at a location originally called “Rephidim.” But Moses renamed it “Massah and Meribah,” which means “Testing and Quarreling.” Yes, water occasions a lot of that, doesn’t it?
Usually, we hear the story as just one more example of how people don’t like change. Here the Israelites were, dragging themselves through the desert, complaining all the way. Yes, it was nice being freed from slavery, but it was no picnic. And the food had definitely been better in Egypt.
But after these years of drought here in California, I find myself hearing it a little differently, more sympathetically in fact. We’ve had a vivid reminder of how necessary water is to life—for plants, for animals, for people. All that complaining at Massah and Meribah was fully justified. Lose the flocks and the people will have nothing to eat. Go too long without adequate water, and the people, too, will die.
And poor Moses is stuck in a kind of middle-management position here. It wasn’t his idea to make this trek through the Wilderness of Sinai. True, he’s lived in the desert before as a shepherd, but he never had to find water for a crowd like this. What is he supposed to do? Well, like most of us perhaps, he gets cranky himself: “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”
The answer to that was simple: either we get water or we start dying off. Moses has to do something, but there’s nothing Moses can do. Between them, Moses and God do sort it out; but the whole episode leaves behind an ongoing legacy of anger and distrust. Maybe that’s why Moses named the place “Testing and Quarreling”—in the hope of leaving what happened there behind.
There’s no way to overstate the importance of fresh, clean water to the future of the world we live in. And we’re all becoming aware that human carelessness has depleted and polluted the the world’s water supplies. We have a lot of work ahead of us to set past mistakes right and make the planet—or even the state of California—habitable for future generations.
The fact that we’ve been bailed out here in California this winter by powers greater than our own doesn’t resolve the problem. We undoubtedly have a long prospect of testing and quarreling ahead of us in the process of doing that. But we are reminded that it has to be done. And we are aware, too, that there are people in the world in much greater danger than we. As Christians, people who are at least learning to love our neighbor as ourselves, we have to keep doing what we can for others as well.
Fresh, clean water is a finite resource. It’s pretty easy to relate to the story of Massah and Meribah because we know that we’re ultimately in the same spot.
Our other story today—the story of Jesus and the woman at the well—is also about water. And, at first sight, it seems quite different.
Well, it does start off, like Massah and Meribah, with the issue of thirst—Jesus’ thirst after a long day’s walk. But the district of Samaria was no desert. And the city of Sychar boasted a well that had been providing ample water for a thousand years. The city was proud of its well, as it had every right to be. The problem was just getting the water from the bottom of the well to Jesus’ lips.
Along comes a Samaritan woman. I think I understand why John doesn’t tell us her name. He wants to emphasize that she and Jesus were on opposite sides of a long history of estrangement, hostility, even hatred. And yet, she’s a real person—and a very interesting one. I’m going to call her “Hannah” to remind us of that—the same as the mother of Samuel; the same as Jesus’ grandmother, according to tradition.
Jesus starts the conversation by asking for a drink. And, at once, we are back in the world of Massah and Meribah, Testing and Quarreling:
“Why are you asking me for water? You’re part of the Jewish majority. I’m one of these Samaritan people your forebears have rejected and persecuted. You Jews think you’re better than we are. You don’t want to be drinking out of a Samaritan cup, do you?”
Jesus doesn’t match her hostile tone. Instead, he shifts the ground of the conversation and talks about another kind of water that he can give in abundance. Hanna takes this as mere banter and responds in kind, “Where are you going to get that? You don’t even have a bucket, much less a rope.”
“This won’t be well water,” replies Jesus. “It’ll be spring water, ‘gushing up to eternal life.'” Hannah says, “Well, that sounds like a great bargain—no more schlepping out here and hauling water back to the house!”
It’s an entertaining exchange, actually, and Hannah is holding her own nicely. After all, that’s what so much of our testing and quarreling is about: who’s responsible for this mess? Who’s going to have to do something about it? You’re the source of the problem, Moses! No, you people are the problem with all your complaining.
Hannah is keeping Jesus at arm’s length: “You’re one of those Jews, Jesus! Why would I take you seriously?” To which Jesus responds, “No, I’m actually here to overcome that past and offer you a gift.”
All this started with a simple request for a drink of water, a request complicated by centuries of ethnic animosity—with the usual minefield of testing and quarreling. But Jesus is looking for a way through it. “Really, I’m serious,” he says, “we’ll make a legal agreement. We need your husband for that.”
That’s how things worked in Jesus’ time—husbands were legal entities, wives were not. If all this were happening in our own time, maybe he would say, “Call your lawyer and we’ll draw up the contract.”
But then there’s that strange bit where Jesus tells Hannah her entire marital history. What is that about? Readers often assume that he was shaming her. Hers was definitely not the ideal story of marital achievement in first-century Palestine. But she certainly doesn’t act as if she’s been shamed. She goes right off and tells everybody in town about the conversation she’s just had.
No. Strange to say, there’s no animosity here, no shame, no embarrassment. Jesus has simply shown that he knows her quite well—and that there are no barriers between them. There’s no business of us vs.them now. It’s not about Jew vs. Samaritan. It’s not about testing and quarreling. It’s a conversation between two people sitting at a well.
Hannah tries once more to hang onto the familiar way of looking at life—Jew vs. Samaritan—this time by raising theological questions. But the conversation has already shifted radically. And she isn’t entirely surprised when Jesus says, “We’re on the brink of a new era now. Henceforth ‘Jew’ and ‘Samaritan’ worship together in spirit and in truth.”
Two thousand years later, the world is still teetering on the edge of this new era. Indeed, over the last five or six months, the world seems to have taken several steps back from it and worked at resurrecting old animosities instead. But God is still holding the door open—open to a flood of life-giving spirit that can wash away our us vs. them and replace it with cups of water exchanged freely across old boundary lines.
Unlike the physical water of earth, this water of mutual recognition, this water of the spirit, is not limited. It is a gift that can be exchanged over and over without getting frayed or tarnished or out of date. It has the capacity to liberate us from the old world of testing and quarreling and blaming.
We enter it when we begin to see the future as a gift from God, the possibility of becoming genuinely human together. We may look at ourselves, our lives, our communities, and say, “It’ll never happen.” But we can look at Jesus and the saints who have caught his vision—our Samaritan Hannah among them—and then we say, “It can happen. It has happened. It will happen again.”
And it needs to happen. The recognition of our shared humanity is as critical to the future of life on earth as caring for our waters. In fact, the one won’t happen without the other. The question, then, is how to follow in the footsteps of the Samaritan woman and the Jewish stranger who turned out to be the Messiah, meeting at the ancient well and introduced there to a new humanity made possible by the overflowing of God’s love for all of us alike. Every step, however tentative, we can make in that direction will prove to be a contribution to the future of the world.
ON BEING PERFECT—JUST LIKE GOD
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
As we have listened to the readings from the Sermon on the Mount over the last few Sundays, we’ve kind of gotten used to hearing Jesus make one extraordinary demand on us after another. It’s not enough any more to we refrain from murder; you have to refrain from anger and insult, too. It’s not enough just to refrain from adultery; you have to refrain from feeling sexual desire. And in today’s gospel reading, Jesus tells us to treat people who harm us kindly, to give without stint, and to love our enemies.
Then comes something even worse: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Oh sure! No problem!
Of all the difficult demands Jesus makes on us, this has to be the worst. We sometimes try to soften it a bit. We note that the Greek word teleios doesn’t mean “perfect” in the sense of “every hair in place.” It means “perfect” in the sense of “complete, fully grown, mature.”
It doesn’t help all that much, does it? No, this is just really difficult. We so much want the Scriptures to give us simple straightforward directives that we might actually have some hope of fulfilling. And then Jesus comes up with this. What’s going on?
Maybe the first thing to say about the deep mysteries of human life—which are also the deep truths about human life—is that they’re never entirely simple. Even talking about them means getting involved in what sound like contradictions. Things like: “You have to stand on your own two feet” vs. “You never outgrow your need of others.” Either one of those maxims, if carried too far, can get you into deep trouble; but they’re both necessary. We live in the midst of these contradictions, one foot on each side of the fault line, and this always feels like an uneasy spot to be in. Jesus does a very good job in the Sermon on the Mount of trying to prevent us from stepping exclusively to one side of the fault line or the other. And he doesn’t do it by making things easy.
We have a tendency to think of growth in virtue—growth in our humanity, to put it another way—in quantitative terms: This week I have done a large handful of good things and a small handful of bad things. My score is probably about 60 percent. I hope. But next week I’ll try to do better. I’ll aim for 62 or 63 percent. I’ll do two good deeds a day instead of just one—or five a week any way. For starters, I won’t express the anger I feel toward my colleague at work and will try to remember his good qualities as well as his bad.
Okay, I’m making fun of this. But it’s almost inevitable, isn’t it? How can I take stock of what sort of human being I’ve been turning into lately without summoning the details into my consciousness? We’re concrete beings, living in space and time. What we do is important. If we could do more good and less harm, that would be a net gain for the world.
But then, along comes Jesus and says to us, “Sorry, 60% isn’t a passing grade any more. Everyone needs to be doing A+ work—plus a little something extra.”
Or not. What Jesus sys about God in this passage today—the God whose perfection we’re supposed to imitate—basically breaks the whole method of accounting. The God he talks about isn’t a meticulous being who does everything exactly right; this God’s perfectionism definitely isn’t of the every-hair-in-place variety. This God is a kind of wild prodigal, scattering gifts everywhere, on the deserving and on the undeserving. What kind of model is that?
And just to make things still more perplexing and uncomfortable, let me throw in another saying from the Sermon on the Mount—one we heard two weeks ago: “I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). Now, the scribes and the Pharisees have gotten a bad press among Christians for the last two thousand years. So you might think, at first, “Well, that should be easy.” No. In Jesus’ time, they were the very people who put the most thought, attention, and energy into leading good disciplined lives. And here’s Jesus telling us that we have to do better than them or we’re not even in the running, as it were.
So what’s going on here? Jesus was trying to get something across to us that can’t be neatly summed up in a few words. There are two sides to it and we have to grasp both of them, even if they don’t seem to agree. One side is that we need the rules that allow us to do our moral accounting and prompt us to acknowledge our failings (and our occasional successes, too, of course). The other side is that it won’t really work. And we know that from experience.
We know that the most seriously, determinedly righteous people can develop strange blindspots and do things that may be deeply harmful. It’s a truism in church life that faithful people can become narrow, exclusive, and punishing. There are whole categories of Christians who have that reputation, even when it’s not in fact always deserved. Think of all those horror stories about harsh nuns wielding their rulers on students in parochial schools in the 1950s. But we also hear stories of gratitude for nuns who taught well and nurtured their students, and you recognize that something significant is going on. Nuns are very good people, but that isn’t always enough. But serious righteousness has an uncanny capacity to slide over into its own opposite. We can easily assemble a good list of examples: the New England Puritans, the Iranian ayatollahs, the Religious Right in the US in our own time. . . .
It’s the same thing with these scribes and Pharisees. They were good people. They had the respect of the public. They were serious about doing the right thing. Yet, they wound up playing a part in the quasi-judicial murder of an innocent man. Yes, the Romans killed Jesus. But it was serious, religious people who set it up.
So what about being perfect as God is perfect? What does Jesus want us to grasp here? It’s much the same as what he says a few lines earlier: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”
The righteousness Jesus is pushing us toward isn’t just the quantitative, additive kind. It’s a righteousness that changes our whole perspective on life. It’s a righteousness that has caught a glimpse of God’s love and wants, more than anything else, to start sharing in that love and offering it to others. This isn’t additive righteousness. This is a righteousness that takes hold of us and transforms us.
Is it any easier? No, it’s probably more difficult. No wonder Jesus told us our righteousness has to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees—not by exceeding it in quantity, in the number of things done according to rule, but by looking beyond my current moral excellence quotient toward the goal of it all, toward a world in which God’s love is shared freely among human beings.
Loving our enemies is never easy. Even praying for those who persecute us doesn’t work very well if we try doing it as a duty. But there are centuries of women and men who have loved and prayed for those least worthy of that love and been transformed by it into beacons of light for the world around them. They are the true saints, the true Christians, the ones who caught what Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount.
There are some at Mother Emmanuel Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC. They know that forgiving the young man who killed so many of their families and fellow congregants is an awkward, messy, uncomfortable process that may not even do him any good. But they have caught a vision of God’s prodigal, messy righteousness and they’re trying to share in it.
Maybe we can make a start—give it a try in our own, somewhat less daunting situation. We might start with Mr. Trump, so much disliked and feared by people in our congregation—and not without reason. I’m not saying that we should turn all “sweetness and light” and lie about his wrong doings and his falsehoods. And I’m not saying that we quit resisting or trying to make the world a better place. That’s not what those people in Charleston are doing. They’re not surrendering to the evil. In fact, it’s more like they’re refusing to be co-opted by it. They’re refusing to let someone else’s hatred take over their own heart and minds.
Now, you know, forgiveness really starts as an act of prayer. And you don’t want to lie to God in prayer. It just creates a bad connection: God can still hear you (and knows you’re putting on a performance), but you can’t hear God very well.
But I think we could get a helpful start—some guidance in how to do this, from the Book of Common Prayer. I’m thinking of two prayers from the Great Litany.
One runs like this:
That it may please thee so to rule the hearts of thy servants, the President of the United Stats and all others in authority, that they may do justice, and love mercy, and walk in the ways of truth,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.
And the other, perhaps even more to the point just now, is this:
That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers, and to turn their hearts,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.
Amen, we say. And Amen.
Sermon preached by Bill Countryman at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Berkeley
February 19, 2017
Seventh Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; Psalm 119:33-40; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23; Matthew 5:38-48
THE REFUGEE’S MORNING PRAYER
Give ear to my words, O Lord;
consider my meditation.
Hearken to my cry for help, my King and my God,
for I make my prayer to you.
In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice;
early in the morning I make my appeal and watch for you.
For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness,
and evil cannot dwell with you.
Braggarts cannot stand in your sight;
you hate all those who work wickedness.
You destroy those who speak lies;
the bloodthirsty and deceitful, O Lord, you abhor.
But as for me, through the greatness of your mercy I will go into your house;
I will bow down toward your holy temple in awe of you.
Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness,
because those who lie in wait for me;
make your way straight before me.
For there is no truth in their mouth;
there is destruction in their heart;
Their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongue.
Declare them guilty, O God;
let them fall, because of their schemes.
Because of their many transgressions cast them out,
for they have rebelled against you.
But all who take refuge in you will be glad;
they will sing out their joy for ever.
You will shelter them,
so that those who love your Name may exult in you.
For you, O Lord, will bless the righteous;
you will defend them with your favor as with a shield.
Psalm 5, as translated in Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer 1979.
THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY
Thus far, the principal thing we know about the new president is that he is a very gifted performer. He has successfully kept everyone’s attention on himself, while leaving his opponents off balance. Since he is only just now at the point where he has to do more than hold the center of attention, we are just beginning to have something more concrete to hold hold him accountable for. Much of it appears to be personal vengeance, particularly against his immediate predecessor and any government agency, such as the EPA, which may have offended him in the past.
Mr. Trump’s great goal is still, I think, to keep public attention focused on himself. Even hostile attention is still attention. In fact, it generates renewed enthusiasm on the part of his supporters. After all, the last thing an ardent partisan of either side wants is to have to admit that your critics were right after all and that you have been played for a fool.
Meanwhile, the sound and fury emanating from the liberal side may serve to renew our own sense of solidarity and commitment—a worthwhile beginning to the coming years out of power. But this hardly troubles him at all. In fact, It just enhances his status as the most talked about person on the face of the Earth. Not even the Kardashian family can elbow him out of the spotlight.
Mr. Trump is clearly a genius at manipulating his public. He can evoke adulation where he wishes. He can evoke apoplexy where he likes. Neither is a very sound state of soul, mind, or spirit for people who want to see the US well governed. And apoplexy may even be the less productive of the two. It’s difficult for many of us to do more than utter shrill cries of disbelief that such a person could ever have been elected to a position so critical to the future not only of the US but of the world at large. (See? I’m falling into it myself even as I warn you against it.)
But there’s another aspect to all this that is worthy of reflection and more promising as a guide to further action. Liberals need to rediscover the importance of emotion. It isn’t foreign to our history. President Obama won election largely through evoking hope—the quality of positive expectation in difficult times, a quality compounded of reason and emotion. Reason by itself can’t provide it. It may be good at identifying problems or even thinking up solutions. But, to get us past an impasse we have to find a new source of energy and will that can enable us to bring something good out of the mess we find ourselves in. Hope provides the positive stimulus to let us reach out to one another and work together And hope is never rationally vindicated in advance. It produces its own justification by its deeds.
I have great respect for Hilary Clinton. I voted for her. I believe she would have been an excellent president. For many people, she herself stood as a symbol of hope—the hope that the US was ready to surrender its sexist presuppositions. But she did not manage to become a voice of hope for people facing a different set of challenges in economically distressed and increasingly hopeless parts of the country. I am convinced that she felt compassion for these people, too, but it was not very visible.
Liberals who want to push back against the Trump presidency will have to learn that sound policy is not enough, no matter how rationally convincing. What is necessary is to show people, even those you may not much like, that you have compassion for their troubles, too. And, beyond that, that you have a hope that will enable people to join together to find a way to a better future.
Liberals, please don’t waste too much energy playing Mr. Trump’s game. He is better at it than you are. Play a different game that is not a game at all. Be open about the things that have gone wrong with our world. The globalization of recent years has brought great wealth and prosperity to some people and places, but it has also produced the kind of economic inequality that has pushed many people out onto the streets because they have no place to live or out onto the sea in decrepit boats because they have no way to survive in their own country. Acknowledge it and offer plans to cure it. But also be open and persuasive about your hope that people can join together to make things better. Ideas are likely to remain lifeless until they stir our spirits as well as our minds.
IT WAS A DARK TIME, AN UNCERTAIN TIME. . . .
CHRISTMAS EVE 2016
Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)
It was a dark time, an uncertain time. The rich were getting richer, the poor poorer. The people were deeply divided about public issues, some favoring the government of Rome because it had brought peace, others calling for revolution. The religious were at odds with the less pious. Everybody resented the taxes except the people who were collecting them.
And one Galilean couple was dislodged from their familiar surroundings to make the long trek to Bethlehem so that they could sign a government register and pay a government duty. There was no place in town to stay but the stable behind one of the inns. And there Mary realized that she was going into labor.
Joseph ran quickly to find the local midwife. He had already built a fire to keep her warm. Now he was heating water on it and doing all the midwife’s bidding. Poor Mary! None of her more experienced female relatives there to help and reassure her—just the midwife and Joseph.
But the child got born and the mother was doing fine. The midwife bathed and swaddled the infant. Joseph could breathe again. And the midwife left with a promise to return in the morning.
They had barely settled in for the night when they heard a rustling and some hushed voices outside and then a quiet knock on the stable door. Joseph got up and, not inclined to take strangers in the middle of the night lightly, he picked up his staff before he went to the door and raised the latch. He opened the door a crack to see a small huddle of rather dirty and nervous looking shepherds with a lantern.
After a bit of shoving and jostling, they pushed an old man forward to be their representative. “Sir,” he said—and fell into an embarrassed silence. This was more than a little odd. Joseph wasn’t used to being addressed as “sir.”
After a moment, the old man tried again: “Your excellency,” he said this time. Joseph’s brow furrowed and his eyes crossed a bit at this compounding of excess. But after clearing his throat rather noisily, the old man went on.
“Your excellency, we was directed here by a certain personage—a knowledgeable personage, I think—what told us that we should come straight here and pay our respects to the new baby what he went so far as to say is the Savior, the Messiah. We be most sorry to disturb you so late in the night, but the, uh, personage was most insistent and specific and said to come right here and no place else.”
This was all very odd, but then odd things had been happening to Mary and to Joseph, too. And, since the little huddle of shepherds really didn’t look threatening, he invited them in.
He began at once rifling through his saddle bag to find some little refreshment he could offer them. One couldn’t have guests, even uninvited guests, without offering refreshments. But the shepherds would have none of it. They had brought gifts for Mary and Joseph instead: good cheese, some hard bread, a bit of wine (not so good) and some spring water (quite refreshing). And they laid these out on a cloth as an offering to the new parents.
The old man began again. “It’s a strange tale—nothing like it in my time, though I’ve heard stories from long ago. It was like a person made of fire—lit the place up like broad daylight. We all ducked, of course—afraid of getting singed. But he said, the way those, uh, personages do: ” No need to be afraid. I’ve got good news.” And he sent us off here straightaway.
“We’d have been too blinded by it all to find the track down the hill, but then the whole sky lit up and we heard music coming at us from all sides. I never heard such music! And found our way down the mountain and into the town, and here we are. And here you are. And we brung the baby a wool blanket to keep him warm—here, it’s pretty clean; almost new.”
And it was still a dark time, still an uncertain time. Indeed, it seemed to be getting darker. The rich went on getting richer, the poor poorer. The people were still deeply divided about public issues. The religious were still at odds with those who were less pious. Everybody resented the taxes except the people who were collecting them.
But something was unleashed on the world there in Bethlehem that is still making trouble for the oppressors and giving hope to the poor, that’s still offering hope in troubled times, still proclaiming that love is more important than rigorous piety. It is the astonishing news that “Immanuel” is here. God is truly living alongside us—weak as a baby and yet strong enough to change the world in and with and for us.
The greatest of transformations springs from the humblest of beginnings. We are here with the shepherds to witness it again in awe and wonder—and to be filled again with the courage to live faithfully even in dark and uncertain times.
FROM JUDGEMENT TO BETHLEHEM
Bill Countryman
ADVENT SUNDAY, 2016
Sermon for St. James’ Cathedral, Chicago, Illinois
Year A: Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44
This time of year, I always feel as if I’m caught between two different calendars, grinding against each other like two tectonic plates moving in opposite directions. One is the public calendar that’s hustling us from Thanksgiving to Christmas. It’s very goal-oriented. The tension of preparing for the great day builds and builds—until !boom! it’s all over in just a matter of hours. I confess I’ve come to hate that calendar for cramming way too much into one great climax and consigning the remaining 12 days of the feast to weariness and oblivion.
The church calendar version of this season carries us on a very different time scheme. Advent, too, is pointing us toward December 25th. But instead of plunging us into a goal-oriented scramble, it starts with a strange reverse flow of time. Advent begins far, far in the future with the End of All Things before drawing our minds and hearts back to an event now thousands of years to the past, the birth of Jesus. Luckily, Advent takes its time about this maneuver; otherwise, we’d all have whiplash. But why? Understanding this strange calendar of ours can give us some help and guidance for how to pray and live the four weeks ahead of us.
We begin, as I say, at the End of the World, at the Last Judgement. Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, tells us about it. It is unforeseen and unpredictable, he says; “about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father.” It’s unpredictable and it is sudden, he says, like the flood that swept people away in the time of Noah. It’s unpredictable; it’s sudden; and it is seemingly random. “Two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.”
It sounds like a summary of our worst fears. And all Jesus tells us here, in the face of it, is “Keep awake.” That’s where Advent starts—with the unknown, the daunting, the uncertain, and the advice to stay alert.
Some years it’s been hard to take all this too seriously. Life was sailing along on an even keel, and apocalypse seemed no more than a topic for the movies—scary, but potentially entertaining. Not so much this year, following an angry and disturbing electoral campaign and during the first weeks of a transition in government that seems to many dauntingly uncertain. And this is not even to mention Syria, the Brexit, global warming, and all the other upheavals in the world around us.
The Last Judgement suddenly sounds more relevant, doesn’t it?
But what, after all, is it intended to accomplish? Our usual reflex answer would probably be “punishment.” But that’s wrong. Contrary to the libelous claims made by generations of religious zealots, God actually takes no delight in punishing. If the Last Judgement occasions suffering, that is a byproduct of its true goal.
The true goal is a very simple thing, really: the ultimate unveiling of all hearts. What God already knows about us, we, too, shall learn in that opening of souls. We shall know it for ourselves and know it inescapably. And it will be unpredictable. It will be sudden. It may well seem, to our eyes, random. What distinguishes that man taken out of the field from the one who is left? this woman taken while grinding grain from the one who is left?
Still, it all seems quite daunting. What ancient bishop or monk, we might well ask, had the perverse sense of humor to put something like this into the calendar a scant four Sundays before Christmas? But there’s more to it. The Judgement is not an end in itself.
We heard about it from the prophet Isaiah this morning:
In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains. . . ;
all the nations shall stream to it.
It was not in some happy, peaceful, safe era that Isaiah uttered this prophecy of hope. It was in a time of multiple threats, a time of change and uncertainty—a time like ours.
And then Isaiah reveals God’s purpose in this hope filled future:
[God] shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
I
Isaiah and Jesus are not in conflict here. God’s goal, the goal of the New Jerusalem, even in judgement, is to see all nations beating our armaments into tools that will sustain human life and the world around us.
The Last Judgement, whenever and however it comes, comes to show us who we truly are. Parts of that revelation may be painful; parts of it may be occasions of joy and thanksgiving. But whatever the Judgement shows us, it is granted to us precisely so that we can wake up and become part of the cloud of witnesses, the saints of this world, who are building the Holy City for everyone, transforming our thirst for enmity and destruction into love—love for God and God’s world and one another. The Judgement by which we see ourselves as we are frees us to join in God’s great work of creation and restoration.
And, yet, as we know, we live now in the in-between time. The Judgement is not yet. We are still trying to figure out where we can get the strength, the hope, the love to live through the present time. And that is where we turn from the Judgement and the New Jerusalem to another much humbler time and place—Bethlehem. No, it wasn’t mentioned in the readings. Those cranky old bishops and monks were too clever for that. Don’t show your hand all at once. Build up the tension before you get to the heart of the story. But they knew what lies four weeks off. And they knew that we would know, too.
This is really all about Bethlehem.
BETHLEHEM
Here comes to birth
the One who birthed us all.
Here lies the Upholder of all,
too weak to raise his head,
God, choosing helplessness instead,
has left the throne of deep tranquillity
to live in human poverty—
Has come to earth.
We speak today about the Last Judgement and the New Jerusalem in order to say that this is a world God has risked entering into. God has not sat back in the throne room of the universe, looking on while we struggle with fear and hope, blessings and disasters, failure and success. God has chosen to experience all this with us, alongside us.
I suppose God had the same thought that occurred more recently to the songwriter Eric Bazilian: “What if God was one of us?” “Risky,” God must have thought, “but worth the danger and the sacrifice. That’s what I choose to do.”
Our times are difficult. We find ourselves caught in deep national conflict, in a changing world order, in a crisis of ecology, and in a time when religion has again become, as it has sometimes been in the past, a stimulus to violence. We also find ourselves uncertain of our direction. Perhaps that’s why we follow the public calendar of feasts so intently: we find the distraction comforting.
The sacred calendar is trying to help us find our footing. If we start with acknowledging who we are, both our failures and our hopes, our weaknesses and our gifts—in other words, with the Judgement—we shall also begin to see ways, large and small, in which we can contribute to the New Jerusalem and grow into our citizenship there—citizenship in the city of peace.
Yes, there’s much to be done in the next four weeks as we prepare to greet the infant of Bethlehem again. But the great truth we encounter there is that God has already come more than halfway to meet us: “has left the throne of deep tranquillity/to live in human poverty.” And the God who was willing to take that risk that will stand with us in our time of struggle here and now.
A VERY DIFFERENT TAKE ON ELIJAH AND THE MERCY OF GOD
What follows here is a translation of a long poem by a great saint of the Eastern Church who lived in the sixth century. It can be seen as his commentary on the internecine warfare among Christians in his day and on the dangers of a religious zeal that has not understood the true nature of God. The translation is based on the text edited by Paul Maas and my teacher, Constantine A. Trypanis: Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica: Cantica Genuina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).
ST. ROMANOS THE MELODE, KONTAKION ON ELIJAH translated by L. Wm. Countryman revised 12/7/2016 Proem: Foreseer and foreteller of the great deeds of our God, Elijah of great name—you that halted by your mere word the water-filled clouds— intercede for us with the only Lover of humankind. 1: Seeing the great lawlessness of people and God's great love of humankind, the prophet Elijah shook with passion and stirred up words without compassion against the Compassionate One, shouting, "Get angry, Most Righteous Judge, with the people who mock your authority!" But not in the least did he stir the Good God's mercies toward punishing those who ignored him. For God is always waiting for the conversion of all— the only Lover of humankind. 2: When the prophet saw the whole earth in its transgressions and the Most High not altogether angry but remaining patient, he was moved to madness. He calls the Merciful One to witness: "I'll take the authority myself and punish the impiety of these people who are making you angry! For these people have all scorned your prolonged patience. They've not regarded you as a merciful Father. But you, the Lover of children, pity your sons, you the only Lover of humankind. 3: "Now I'll give judgment on behalf of the Creator and wipe out the impious from the earth. I'll cast the vote for punishment. But I fear the divine goodness. For it takes only a few tears to make the Lover of humankind back off. How, then, am I to counteract so much goodness? Aha! I'll put a stop to mercy by confirming my judgment with an oath, so that the Righteous One, shamed by this, will not undo such a decision but confirm my judgment as the Rule, the only Lover of humankind." 4: The oath takes precedence over the judgment—becomes the preamble for the sentence. But, if you like, let's hurry to the book and learn the words. For the prophet says in anger, as it is written, "As the Lord lives, no dew or rain will come down except by my word." But at once the King answered Elijah, "If I see conversion and tears welling up, I cannot refuse to offer compassion to the people—I the only Lover of humankind." 5: At once the prophet speaks up and urges the justice of the oath: "Against you," he says, "the God of all, I have sworn, All-holy Master, against rains being given except by my word. When I see the people transformed, I'll intercede with you. So you see, it's not in your authority, Most Righteous One, to undo the punishment from the oath I've taken. Respect the oath. Put your seal to it. Pull in your compassion, you the only Lover of humankind." 6: So famine laid siege to the land, and the inhabitants were being destroyed, wailing and stretching out their hands to the All-Merciful. But the Master was hemmed in on all sides by these events. God opened his compassion to his supplicants and moved quickly toward mercy, but he is embarrassed for the prophet and the oath he swore—and gives no rain. But he contrived a pretext, constraining and tormenting the prophet's soul— the only Lover of humankind. 7: The Master, seeing the Tishbite puffed up against the people of his own tribe, decided to punish the righteous man with famine alongside the rest, so that, wrung by lack of food, he might think more kindly about his sworn sentence and halt the punishment. Dreadful indeed is the stomach's inexorable demand, and God keeps watch over every living thing, rational and irrational alike, with divine wisdom by providing food— the only Lover of humankind. 8: The stomach defended nature and secretly applied its laws, practicing on the old man to produce change. But he, like a stone, remained unfeeling, possessed of zeal instead of any food—and content with that. When the Judge saw it, he tempered the distress to his starving friend, not thinking it just for the just man to starve with the unjust and lawless— the only Lover of humankind. 9: So the All-Merciful prepares food for him with surpassing wisdom, for he orders the ravens, creatures without compassion, to take him his food. Now the tribes of the raven have not a particle of compassion. They don't bring food even to their nestling children, which are fed from heaven. And since Elijah had taken on the manners and purpose of a hater of children, God used these child-hating ravens to minister to this misanthrope. How wise of the only Lover of humankind! 10: "Let not your great love of the divine" (God spoke with Elijah) "give you a misanthropic disposition. Consider the ravens: they are always hostile even to their own nestlings. Suddenly, as you see, they're quite generous with you; they're transformed now. They've revealed themselves to be servants of my compassion in providing you with food. But as I perceive, I cannot forcibly change your nature toward people, I the only Lover of humankind. 11: "Only show some respect, prophet, and imitate the ready obedience of the irrational animals, transformed at once, merciless though they are, out of respect for me, the Compassionate. I honor your friendship, and I am not overruling your decision. But I cannot bear the lamenting and tribulation everywhere among the people I have made. How am I to endure the wailing of infants and their tears, yes, and the speechless bellowing of the beasts as well? For I suffer with them all as their Shaper, the only Lover of humankind." 12: At these words, the prophet went wild—and answered the Master, "Don't send the raven servants to feed me, O Master. I would rather be destroyed by famine, All-Holy One. I will still punish the impious, and it will give me surcease. I don't hesitate to die along with those who reject you. Don't pity me. Don't spare me as I starve. Just wipe the impious out of the land, you the only Lover of humankind." 13: The Creator, honoring these words, transfers the prophet from that place, commanding the birds not to bring him food as before. He sends him to Sarephtha, to the starving widow, saying, "I'll tell a woman to feed you." God was hatching a clever plan. For the woman to whom God sent him was a widow and a Gentile—and she had children to care for. Hearing the gentile woman's name, Elijah would cry out, "Send the rains, you the only Lover of humankind." 14: It was not at all permitted at the time for Jews to eat with people of other nations. This is why God was sending Elijah off to a foreigner, so that, revolted by the food she offered, he would immediately demand rain from the Lover of humankind. But Elijah did not make an issue of his exile among the Gentiles. He runs right up to the woman, asking food of her in a completely rude way: "I'm ordered to collect what you owe, woman, to God the only Lover of humankind." 15: But hearing this, the widow quickly answered the prophet, "I don't have so much as a biscuit—just a handful of flour. I'm going indoors to bake it and eat it with my children. Beyond my handful of flour there lies only death." But Elijah was moved by the woman's voice and felt sympathy with her, thinking, "This widow is more wasted than I and suffering in the famine—unless God does something, the only Lover of humankind. 16: "Now her situation oppresses me. If I am hungry, I'm on my own. But the widow with whom I find myself is starving with her children. Let me not, as guest, become ambassador of this woman's death. Let me not be reckoned a child-murderer in this hospitable house. Let me look toward mercy now. Though I behave hostilely to all people, with this woman I am different. I'll get my soul used to taking pleasure in mercies. After all, the Cause of all things is merciful, the only Lover of humankind." 17: The prophet answered the widow, "You have, as you say, a handful of flour and the jug you keep it in will not run out. And the flask of oil will keep bubbling forth." With such words, Elijah gave a blessing, and the Creator, generous and merciful, at once added to his words the deed itself. The All-Wise spoke, fulfilling the prophet's intent, and, undertaking what is truer than the most beautiful of words, bestowed on the widow great bounty— the only Lover of humankind. 18: God bowed to the prophet's words and provided food for him and the widow. But Elijah was not wholly given to compassion, but remained unbending. And when the Compassionate One saw the people being destroyed and the prophet refusing to obey, God, being just, moved on to another, wholly wise device. God presented the widow's son as dead so that, once he saw the widow's tears and the rest of her situation, Elijah might call out, "Give the rains, only Lover of humankind." 19: When the widow saw her son dead, she rose up against the prophet, saying, "I wish I had died of the famine before I laid eyes on you! For it would have been better for me to have been long dead of starvation and not seen my son laid out in your presence. Are these the wages of the beautiful reception I gave you? I was replete with children before you came, fellow. But you came and left me childless with all your talk of the only Lover of humankind." 20: The man who held power over clouds and rain found himself in a widow's grip; the man who constrained all people with a word was held back by one woman. And an utterly wretched woman, without a shred of power, grasps this man who thought he grasped the heavens by word and power—grasps him like a criminal. With a crazy wrestling hold, she dragged him like a murderer into court, shouting out, "Give me the child you killed! I don't need your flour! Don't feed me and play host, you 'only Lover of humankind.' 21: "You sowed bread in my belly, and my womb's fruit and branch you uprooted. You sold me edible gifts <at the price of my son>. You worked out your little scheme: a life for some flour and oil. But I'm suing you to overturn the contract and give back what you took. Are you not satisfied with the deaths of your own people that you were so eager to get a grip on my household? Release my son's soul! Take mine instead of his! And become a Lover of humankind." 22: Elijah was pierced by these words as if they were thorns. He was ashamed to have the screaming widow browbeating him as if he had himself wrenched away her son's life. Though he wanted to appease her, he could not do it with words. He knew she would not believe him if he defended himself, for she was weeping without pause. But looking into heaven, the blameless witness cried out, "Alas, Lord, for this woman who accepted me as her house mate. It's you that's stirred her up to demand the child of me, you the only Lover of humankind. 23: "I don't believe, all-powerful Savior," the prophet cried to God, "that death has befallen this child in the course of nature, as it comes to all. This is the device of your wisdom, Sinless One; you've engineered against me a merciful necessity so that when I ask you, 'Raise up the widow's dead son,' you can answer me straightway, 'Pity my son Israel, now in torment—and all my people,' for you are the only Lover of humankind." 24: Wanting to save the land, the All-Merciful quickly answered Elijah, "Hearken now quite clearly to my words and hear me as I speak. I lament and am eager for an end of the punishment. My deep wish is to give food to all the starving, for truly I am compassionate. When I see their streams of tears, I am pulled down like a father. I have pity on those drained by want and tribulation. For I want to save sinners through conversion— the only Lover of humankind. 25: "So listen, prophet, with an open heart and mind. I am truly eager for you to know that all humans beings carry with them the signed warrant of my mercy, the document of my covenant—that I don't want to behold the death of those who sing off-key, but rather their life. So don't make them see me as a liar. Instead, accept my prayer. I give you an embassy. Only the widow's tears have touched you. But I am, for all of them, truly Lover of humankind." 26: Mind and will and ears, then, Elijah subjected to the words of the Most High and submitted his soul and decked it with words and said, "Your will be done, Master. Bring both the rains and life for the dead boy. Bring all things to life. God, you are life and resurrection and redemption. Give your grace to humans and to animals. For you alone can save all things, the only Lover of humankind." 27: As soon as the prophet said these things, the Merciful One answered him, "I accept your decision and I praise it—and I am quick to honor you. On their behalf, I accept the grace from you; but be, yourself, the mediator and conduct the chorus of my grace. For I cannot bear to be reconciled without you. But go and announce the gift of the rains so that all may cry aloud, 'The one who used to be merciless has now suddenly proved to be, for all, a Lover of humankind.' 28: "Go quickly, then, prophet! Appear to Ahab and tell the good news while I give orders to the clouds to give drink to the land with their waters. Make known the provision of these things, my friend, and I'll confirm your announcements and honor your cooperation." As soon as he heard this, he bowed low to the Most High and cried to the Merciful One, "I know you as having great mercy. I recognize that you are truly generous, my God, the only Lover of humankind." 29: Reverencing the command, then, the prophet runs to Ahab and declares good news to him as the Compassionate One said. And at once the clouds, at their Maker's behest, big with water, swam through the air, gushing with the rains. And the land rejoiced and glorified the Lord. The woman received her boy, risen from death. With all things, the land delighted and blessed the only Lover of humankind. 30: And still, as time passed, Elijah saw the evil of humanity and took it in mind to issue a sentence of heavier punishment. And when the Compassionate One saw it, he answered the prophet, "The zeal you have for righteousness I understand; and I know your intention. But I feel with sinners when they're punished beyond measure. You get angry, blameless as you are, and you cannot endure it. But me! I cannot endure for any to be destroyed, I the only Lover of humankind." 31: Then, when the Master saw how severe Elijah was toward human beings, he took thought for our race and separated him from the earth: "Come away, my friend, from the dwelling of humanity, and I'll go down to them in compassion, having become human myself. Come up, then, from the earth, since you cannot endure their stumblings, but I, the Heavenly One, will be with sinners and rescue them from those stumblings, I the only Lover of humankind. 32: "If, as I've said, O prophet, you cannot live with people who sound wrong notes, come over here and inhabit the sinless territories of my friends. And I—strong enough to carry the strayed sheep on my shoulders—I'll go down and call to the stumbling, 'All you sinners running at full speed, come to me and rest. For I have come not to punish those whom I have made, but to snatch them back from their irreverence, the only Lover of humankind.'" 33: And so, you see, Elijah, taken up to heaven, was revealed as the pattern of things to come. The Tishbite was taken up on a chariot of fire, as it is written, and Christ was taken up with clouds and powers. And Elijah dropped his sheepskin cloak to Elisha from the heights, and Christ sent down to his own apostles the Comforter, the Holy One, whom we all received when we were baptized and through whom we are being made holy. So teaches the only Lover of humankind.
BACK TO THE STEPPES
All right, I know you’re still glued to the news of political disaster. I agree that the signals Mr. Trump is sending by means of his initial appointments confirm many of the worst features of his campaign. Bigots and obscurantists seem to hold prominent places among them. But it’s not conducive to mental health to think of nothing else. A broad view of history can actually help produce a broader perspective. The long story of the Eurasian steppe has plenty of disasters in it, but contributed some great things to humanity at large. And the book I write about here is guaranteed to fascinate any enthusiast for history, archaeology, and/or geography.
I wrote a few weeks ago about the beautiful and fascinating book Steppes from the Denver Botanic Gardens, which provides a sweeping overview of the terrain and plant life of the world’s diverse semi-arid steppe regions, one of which turned out to be the Great Plains where I grew up. But the first region to be known by that name was the vast plain that stretches from Hungary across Eurasia as far as Mongolia without any decisive interruption to prohibit movement across it. This is a region that has lurked in the shadows in most books on ancient and medieval history—a relatively unknown place from which vast numbers of mounted warriors occasionally erupted to create havoc in the more settled, “civilized” areas of Europe and Asia.
Another recent book sheds an enormous amount of light on this obscure world: Barry Cunliffe’s By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia (Oxford University Press, 2015). It represents an ambitious pulling together of geographical, archeological, and historical knowledge to provide the first reasonably coherent account I have encountered of that world. Before this book, one met its peoples fleetingly at moments when they impinged (often violently) on the Fertile Crescent or the European heartland or China—or else as the idolsyrf inmates of ancient tombs excavated over the last century, who could only be tentatively identified with one or another group known from historical references.
The story has deep roots. The horse was first domesticated in the steppes. It was also the place where wheeled vehicles came into their own, both because of the flat terrain and because its people needed to move with their herds to take advantage of the best pastures. In addition to their horses, they acquired sheep, goats, and cattle from the Fertile Crescent (which bought horses in turn from them). And they became a primary vector for the spread of metallurgy, which arose in the mountains of Turkey and the Balkans. Far from being merely a problem population on the borders of settled farming cultures, they formed a principal link of communication and exchange among the emerging centers of settled life.
The history of what we call the “Silk Road” began much earlier than supposed and those routes transported ideas and people as well as merchandise—first through the steppe, then also through the deserts to the south of them as the Bactrian camel was added to the selection of domesticated animals.
The people of the steppe disturbed surrounding, settled cultures for a variety of reasons, one being periods of drought that forced groups in one or another part of the steppe to seek new pastures, thereby displacing neighbors, who displaced other neighbors and so on. Another factor was the increasing power of China at the eastern end of the steppe. Cunliffe suggests that the Great Wall was not a purely defensive endeavor as usually supposed, but an aggressive move into the steppe itself. It was part of a long seesawing of dominance between China and the neighboring steppe peoples, which could send shock waves all the way to Europe.
Over time, the increasing importance of maritime traffic—linking the Black Sea steppe to the Mediterranean, India to the Near East, and eventually Atlantic Europe to the Far East—was the final step in creating a new global awareness. It had the incidental effect of reducing the role the steppe had held for so long.
This is a fascinating book that will no doubt become the foundation for much further questioning and investigation. It finally begins to give one of the important chapters in our human cultural history its due.