Bible – Peculiar Faith

Sighted and Woke

“Here is an astonishing thing!”

The man born blind says that in the iconic story from John’s account of the Gospel, which many Christians heard in church this week (John 9:1-41). Jesus grants that man sight and the man then exclaims his astonishment to a bunch of religious leaders who care more about the rules of their religion than the amazing gift he had just received.

The whole story is rather astonishing, actually: it addresses the connection between sin and health (there isn’t any); it raises the perennial puzzle about human suffering; and it prompts all sorts of questions about God’s action in the world. It’s an ancient story but it captures perfectly the impatience so many people today have with religion: why in the world would religious leaders refuse to see a miracle just because it violates their religious customs?

But we need to pause right there and name directly that this story has been used over the centuries as one of the tools for Christian anti-Semitism. There is a long and ugly history of that in the Church, and the deeper we travel into Lent and toward Holy Week, the more frequent these problematic texts surface in our lectionary.

As Good Friday approaches, Christians must never forget our own shameful history of calling Jews “Christ killers.” We must remain vigilant about this; it is far too easy to causally or inadvertently repeat violence in our worship. (A former colleague of mine, a priest and church historian, has done extensive work on this; this short piece of his is a good place to start thinking on these matters.)

The “religious leaders” I just noted above, for example, are of course Jewish leaders. And the story from John has been interpreted by some in the past, and still today, as a story about how these religious leaders were blinded to the very presence of God standing among them.

Now, it is likely true, as some biblical scholars have suggested, that John’s account of the Gospel emerged from an early Jewish-Christian community that had been expelled from its local synagogue. In many of these gospel stories we can see traces of that ancient conflict, of a religious sibling rivalry. The story of the man born blind and granted sight is a prime example of this—an early follower of Jesus is expelled from his synagogue!

Thankfully, there is more to be said about these texts. John himself and some later interpreters took these stories of religious conflict as occasions to reflect much more broadly on the human condition itself, and who God is among us, and what God is calling us to do for the sake of healing and to help our communities flourish.

We might wonder about blindness, for example, and what prevents us from seeing the presence of God at work in the world. How have we prioritized institutional structures at the expense of divine grace and creaturely flourishing?

As many interpreters of this story have noted over the centuries, those with physical sight often cannot see what truly matters; and those who are physically blind sometimes have the clearest vision. How might we distinguish between outward sight and interior illumination?

As John Chrysostom noted back in the fourth century, this story from John features Pharisees, the most prominent leaders of that first-century religious community. He does this, Chrysostom supposed, to underscore an uncomfortable truth about religion itself in every century: it provides no guaranteed access to spiritual awakening.

Surely this is a cautionary tale for every religious institution, and about human institutions of any kind, especially when their primary goal becomes merely survival rather than mission. When power and influence are threatened, institutions become defensive, isolated, even blind; and sometimes, willfully and intentionally blind.

A prime example of this is almost daily in the news: in the state of Florida today, textbook publishers are scrambling to comply with so-called “anti-woke legislation.” The writers of these textbooks are struggling, for example, to figure out how to write about Rosa Parks without mentioning race, or that she was Black, or why she was told to stand up on that bus when all she wanted to do was sit down.

This is ludicrous. Let’s remind ourselves and our neighbors that the term “woke” first appeared way back in the 1960s as street slang for being fully aware, for seeing the world as it actually is—to be aware of the need for racial healing and reconciliation; aware of the need for social and economic justice; and today, aware of the peril our planet faces from global climate chaos. (Not surprisingly, there are complexities attached to this word and it’s worth noting its more recent evolutions and convolutions.)

To “be woke” is “to see” as clearly as we can, and the lectionary for this fourth Sunday in Lent even paired John’s story with a first-century version of being “woke” from the letter to the Ephesians: “Live as children of light,” that letter-writer says, and expose unfruitful, shameful works. “Sleeper, awake, and rise from the dead!”

To see the world as it really is, in all its irreducible complexity—broken and beautiful, lively and wounded—to see this is like waking up from a very long dream, as if coming back to life.

I’m particularly intrigued by how often ancient interpreters of John’s story invite an earthy Christian faith—an item to add to the “woke” list for a planet in peril.

Consider the fourth-century deacon Ephrem of Edessa. The blind man’s eyes were opened with dust, he noted, the very stuff from which he was made at the beginning of creation. Remember that you are dust, we said at the beginning of this Lenten season; and perhaps we should add this: “with the dust of earth you will be healed.”

Caesarius of Arles in the sixth century proposed that the ground is law and saliva is grace. The law without grace is parched and arid land from which no life can come. “So,” Caesarius says, “let the saliva of Christ go down to the ground and gather together earth. Let the one who made earth remake it, and the one who created it recreate it.”

Ambrose of Milan, going back to the fourth century, urged us to notice that Jesus tells this blind man, whose face is now covered in mud, to go and wash in a pool of water; this is the font of Holy Baptism, where we are cleansed from the stains of sin, like washing mud from our face to see!

John seems to love earthy symbols to portray the mystery of God’s presence among us, and in us, and around us. In this story of the man born blind and sighted, the symbol is earth itself, the soil, and it becomes the symbol of God’s healing presence when mixed with water—and with our own human saliva!

(Fun fact to share at your next cocktail party: some centuries ago the Church decided that if emergency baptism were required, you could use your own spit.)

There are some things that once we see them, we can never “un-see” them; they change our lives and how we live. The whole season of Lent is supposed to be like that, every single year—ongoing, lifelong conversion to the Gospel, a process of seeing everything altered, new and fresh.

This iconic story from John really gives us far too many things to see, all at once: the Creator of light giving sight to the blind; the creature of dirt being healed with mud; the waters of baptism pooling in our own mouths.

Here’s what I hope to see better, and what we all need to see together: earth as healing and also the healing of Earth—with all her peoples and all her many creatures. This is the great work to which God is always calling us, now more than ever.

To see this truly, the world would look different, and we would live differently; it would be like waking up; it would feel like rising from the dead.

The Well is Deep

Jesus came to the well of Jacob, his ancient ancestor. It was high noon, the heat of the day; he was tired and thirsty. There he would have a conversation with a Samaritan woman about living water (John 4:5-24).

John introduces this story in his account of the Gospel with a reference to baptism, another image of water. In the story that came before this one, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born of both water and Spirit. And in the story before that, John’s Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding banquet.

Toward the end of this gospel, John’s Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, and while he hangs from a cross, both blood and water pour from his pierced side. At the very end of this gospel, the risen Jesus stands on a beach, cooking breakfast next to a lake, where his disciples are fishing.

Clearly, these are not just random or accidental references to water. For John, water functions as a symbol in his account of the Gospel. For John, water might even be as symbolically significant as bread: water and blood, bread and body.

That word, symbol, has fallen into disrepair. Most people seem to think of symbols as merely pointing toward something else. “It’s just a symbol,” they will sometimes say, as if our focus belongs elsewhere.

To the contrary, genuine symbols always focus our attention on the symbolic moment itself; they always involve meaningful encounter and also depth, that thick engagement with what lies beneath the surface of things.

Notice how John constructs the story we heard this morning: Jesus approaches a well of water at high noon, when he’s likely to be alone; a woman approaches, and we can surmise later in this story why she would be there alone, to avoid scandalous chatter about her so-called “lifestyle” among other villagers. The stage is set, in other words, for encounter.

Barely half a dozen sentences into their conversation, this woman notes that “the well is deep.”

John gives us that little detail as a signal: this is no random meeting between strangers; these two figures are engaged in a timeless quest for insight, for meaning, and rather simply and profoundly for love.

The well is deep.

For some, John’s symbolic storytelling places him firmly in the long and rich tradition of both Jewish and Christian mysticism—traditions that invite not mere meeting but the depth of encounter. Some biblical scholars have also suggested that every story in John’s gospel—every single one—is in some way about the Eucharist because each of these stories is about loving encounter and the mystical union between Christ and his Church.

The well is deep.

That word “mystical” needs some attention, too. It’s not reserved for spiritual heroes. It shouldn’t feel exotic, elitist, or roped off from our ordinary, daily lives.

The word comes from the same root as the word mystery—not the kind of mystery Sherlock Holmes tries to solve with his sidekick Watson, but rather the kind of mystery so many of us know in our intimate friendships, our marriages, and our communities of care; it’s the inexplicable and inexhaustible mystery of love.

That’s the heart of mysticism: love, and intimacy, and union.

Concerning this morning’s story, some early Christian commentators suggested that this woman at the well is the Church, the “Bride of Christ.” Reading the story in that frame, Jesus asks about her husband not for moral reasons but for spiritual ones—to invite her into intimate union with God.

Consider the story just before this one, about Jesus and Nicodemus. That encounter was under the cover of night, when no one else would be there. Urgent matters of the soul are usually the most intimate; you don’t discuss them in crowded restaurants or public squares but in a place where you can be alone.

Recall the story that comes before both of these: the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding banquet—John says that was the “first sign” Jesus offered. It sets the tone for his whole account of the Gospel, the Good News of God’s love for us—not tolerance, or forbearance, or mere patience, but that love which yearns for intimacy and union.

The well is deep.

Here’s how deep: John’s mysticism is not for the sake of escape, of somehow leaving Earth for Heaven; John’s mysticism instead plants us more firmly in Earth.

John draws us into this earthy mysticism by using earthy symbols: a dove, grapes, wine, wheat, bread, trees, vines, sheep, shepherds, gardens, spices, beaches, and fish! Earth, in other words, is where we encounter God, and that makes our work today of ecological healing and renewal a spiritual discipline.

I’m guessing this is why John put water at the center of his mystical vision of the world. Water, after all, is fluid—it seeps, leaks, overflows, runs, and can’t be contained, not for long, and certainly not forever.

This is why John refers to living water in this story, something this woman already knew quite a lot about. For every society on earth, water is “living” when it is connected to its source, like a spring, and when it moves—in creeks, streams, and rivers.

That woman, that Samaritan woman, that foreign woman knew all of this. And she was tired of living with the water that stands still; the water that is fenced off, segregated, and isolated from every other community of life—like the Samaritans from the Judeans.

That can’t be what God is like, she says to Jesus. Say it isn’t so!

Pause for a moment and consider the courage and the tenacity of this woman. She was apparently shunned and shamed by her own community; that’s why she was at that well at high noon. And still, she pushes Jesus on their behalf; she asks of him, demands from him, why her people should be excluded from proper worship—that’s not fair!

She asked from Jesus what her community needed: living water—the water that cannot be contained, roped off, or restricted.

Living water is like love: it wants to flow, and spread, and carve channels of life into the arid landscapes of hate and violence.

This streaming presence is what Christian traditions have called the Spirit of God—living water.

Pause again and consider that this ostracized and nameless woman knew exactly what all of this means—much better than Nicodemus, actually, whose name we know.

So let’s live like mystics this Lenten season: opening ourselves to the flowing presence of God’s Spirit; reaching out to help others tap into the deep well of God’s love; recommitting ourselves to clean, fresh, living water for all—from the faucets in our homes and from the pulpits in our sanctuaries.

This brave and nameless Samaritan woman can be our guide.

True Religion

All four Gospel writers seem to agree on at least two things. First, whenever Jesus wanted to emphasize something important about his ministry, he almost always turned to table fellowship to do so. And second, when he wanted to underscore the importance of table fellowship, he usually talked about weddings.

He did both of those things in what many church-goers heard yesterday from Luke’s account of the Gospel (14:1, 7-14). So why did this matter so much to Jesus and to the gospel writers?

Let’s start with food: first-century rules and expectations for sharing food at a common table were rather complex, not just for Israelites but for the whole ancient Mediterranean world. Family, ethnicity, economic class, religious observance—those are just a few of the components that well-behaved members of respectable society would take into account very carefully when gathering for table fellowship.

This is why the Gospel writers tell us frequently that Jesus was constantly getting into trouble for eating with the wrong people. The commonly used collective label for them was “prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners.”

I know this sounds odd and probably far removed from our own day. But consider the arc from “Downton Abbey” on television to the White House in the news and whatever the fanciest restaurant might be where you live: it matters who sits at all those tables and how they are arranged; that’s how the very structure of a society is made visible; it’s how we know where power and influence reside; the table reflects in microcosm a well-ordered world.

This is why Luke introduces yesterday’s passage about a dinner party by noting that the religious leaders who had gathered at the party were “watching Jesus closely.” They were monitoring how well Jesus would conform, if at all, to the expectations of table fellowship. Luke confirms this when he tells us that Jesus noticed, right away, that some of the other guests at this party chose to sit in places of honor.

Jesus himself is quick to acknowledge the complex social game unfolding at the party. “You know,” he says, “everyone invites friends, family, and rich neighbors to dinner parties.”

And why exactly is that the case? Because they can return the favor. This was one of the primary criteria for good table fellowship—reciprocity. The ones you invite to dinner are the ones who can pay you back.

Good dinner parties, in other words, happen around tables where everyone is just like you. That’s just good manners in a well-structured society; it’s also precisely not how Jesus would have us behave.

The Kingdom of God, he says, happens around dinner tables with “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”

Those aren’t just random categories. Those were the standard first-century ways to describe people on the margins, the ones left out, the forgotten and displaced, those who had no social or political capital whatsoever and therefore could never repay any favor or act of kindness—and those are the ones, Jesus says, that you should invite to dinner.

“Invitation to the Feast,” Eugene Burnand (17th century)

It’s not just any kind of dinner party that Jesus usually has in mind; here and in so many other places in the Gospels, he means especially wedding feasts.

Now, to talk about weddings in these Gospel passages, we need to talk about sex, and that’s surprisingly easy to do. There’s really just one thing, and it’s the most important thing, to understand about sex in the ancient Mediterranean world, namely, power.

In those ancient societies socially appropriate sex always involved inequality: one partner had more power than the other, and that’s what made the relationship acceptable. Curiously enough from our modern vantage point, gender didn’t actually matter much in those ancient assessments of what makes sex good and proper, except insofar as gender itself was about power—who had it and who didn’t.

Here again, this can sound like I’m describing some exotic culture from long ago and far away—until we recall the “#MeToo” cultural moment from just a few years ago. Let us not sweep that moment under the rug; remember, a wave of brave women spoke their truth about sexual harassment and ended the careers of more than 200 socially and economically prominent men.

Along with many other men—and I’m embarrassed to admit this—I was truly shocked to watch the flood of “MeToo” stories on social media. I suddenly realized what I should have known back then but didn’t: nearly every woman I know, just about every woman I ever meet, has experienced sexual harassment, abuse, or violence—all manifestations of male power.

First-century readers of the gospel accounts would have known all this whenever Jesus talked about “table fellowship” and “weddings.” We modern Western folks, by contrast, need explicit reminders: the issue of power sits right at the heart of the Gospel.

I could stop right there and create a “to-do” list about how to unmask and dismantle the corrosive forms of patriarchal power in our world today—and we should do that! But I worry that in doing so we will miss the life-changing invitation of the Gospel.

In addition to the passage from Luke, Episcopalians also heard a Collect yesterday from the Prayer Book, right at the beginning of the liturgy. We prayed that God would “increase in us true religion.”

Whatever else “true religion” may be, I am convinced it inspired Jesus to engage frequently in table fellowship and to talk often about weddings. The essence of Christianity blossoms around the Eucharistic Table, where everyone is just as precious as everyone else. And this is so because we encounter the God who made us at that Table and who longs for us, as a Lover longs for the Beloved.

I want to urge and beg everyone to reflect for a long time on that last phrase: the God who made us longs for us as a Lover longs for the Beloved.

That’s why Jesus talked so often about weddings, and that kind of love will change your life. It keeps on changing mine as I realize in ever deeper ways that “true religion” makes me vulnerable to love; helps me be grasped by it; to be undone because of it; to give myself over to it; and to be remade in it.

True religion will usher in that day when we yearn to see those on the margins joining us at the table; that day when we are so happy to welcome the forgotten and displaced among us; that day when we realize to our shock and unending joy that we have been embraced by those who are most different from us.

We will yearn and we will be happy and we will sing with joy about all these things on that day because of love. (I urge you to watch the short video about the making of the mural below, “The Banquet,” by Hyatt Moore; the link is provided beneath the image.)

That’s what makes religion “true” and what creates the only kind of community I can imagine for healing our violent and divided world.

So let’s get on with it.

“The Banquet,” Hyatt Moore
(see this mural being made)

Jesus Our Mother

What a crowded day on the calendar! Tomorrow is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, which is always “Good Shepherd” Sunday. It just happens to be Mother’s Day and also the commemoration of Julian of Norwich. Let the religious synthesizing begin!

“Julian of Norwich,”
Amy Zaleta Martinez

Let’s start with this: referring to Jesus as our “mother” certainly sounds like I’ve never really left my radical Berkeley roots behind, but those roots actually stretch down and back to fourteenth-century England and to Julian of Norwich, a much-beloved saint and mystic. She was far ahead of her own day concerning many things, not least in retrieving what we might call “feminine” aspects of God, including with her phrase “Jesus our Mother,” as she was fond of saying and praying.

After nearly dying from bubonic plague, she received a series of visions, what she called “showings,” or revelations of divine love. She is best known, I suppose, for insisting that “all shall be well,” but she was equally insistent that God is nothing at all except love, and that absolutely everything that exists is because of that love. In ways that are startling and beautiful, she weaves that insistence into her reflections on Jesus:

The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life … The mother can lay her child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side, and show us there a part of the godhead and of the joys of heaven, with inner certainty of endless bliss … This fair lovely word ‘mother’ is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of him and to him who is the true Mother of life and of all things. To the property of motherhood belong nature, love, wisdom, and knowledge, and this is God.

All this past week I’ve been trying to figure out how to connect Mother’s Day with the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd in the Easter season. Julian helped me notice in those efforts that most of the visual images of Jesus as a shepherd don’t actually show him “herding” any sheep. Those images instead show him looking for a lost sheep, or cradling a lamb in his arms, or hoisting one up over his shoulders to carry her home.

There’s something tender, something intimate and affectionate about these images, something we often associate with mothers. But there’s no reason not to associate such characteristics with men, and with our fathers. And there’s no reason at all not to suppose that God, the Source of All Life, is father, mother, brother, sister, friend, and lover, and still so much more.

On this Mother’s Day weekend I am of course remembering with much fondness my own dear mother, and I’m grateful for so many others who have been “mothers” to me, and that includes Jesus—thanks to Julian’s gentle nudges.

Death is Easier

“Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

We can make that joyous declaration because women were the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Women were the very first apostles of an Easter faith, and we must not take this for granted.

The first-century Mediterranean world was a thoroughly patriarchal society: poor women had no legal rights whatsoever; they were never taught to read or write; and they were considered the property of their husbands.

Even wealthy women—who had only just a tad more freedom—even they could not vote, could not stand for political office, had no formal role in public life, and their testimony could not be admitted into a court of law.

Let us, therefore, note this very carefully: in that thoroughly patriarchal society, all four Gospel writers—most assuredly all of them men—make perfectly clear that women were the very first witnesses of Easter!

Luke takes this storyline still further (24:1-12) by noting rather painfully that the men to whom those women delivered the glorious news did not believe the women, and these men were some of the closest friends of Jesus.

This centering of women in what I would certainly consider the core story of Christian faith is not merely remarkable; it’s a miracle.

I think these Gospel writers are making a theological point by putting women on center-stage in the Easter story. And the point is this: the death-dealing world of patriarchal domination is over. There are lingering effects of that long history of domination, to be sure, some of them quite painful and long-lived, even traumatic. But that world of patriarchal violence will never have the final word; and indeed, concerning new life, women have the very first word.

Still, I have to wonder: why did those male disciples refuse to believe the women? This should have been the happiest news they had ever heard. Why, in Luke’s words, did it seem to them merely an “idle tale”?

Luke suggests a reason with the question posed to those apostolic women by angels at the empty tomb: Why are you looking for the living among the dead? That’s an important question all of us should be asking ourselves quite regularly: why do we keep returning to worn-out patterns and toxic relationships and lifeless institutions?

Here’s an answer I’ve been sitting with for a while: because death is easier than new life.

Winter’s reluctance to yield to spring here in western Michigan this year reminded me of those cold wintry mornings over the last few months when the alarm goes off and the wind is howling and the snow is blowing and it’s dark outside.

On mornings like that, my Australian shepherd dog Judah and I both agree that it is far easier to pull up the covers and stay cozy and warm in bed.

Death is easier like that because life requires something of us. Life requires that we actually throw back the covers, get up, get dressed, and go out to engage with the world.

We seek the living among the dead because that’s what we’ve been taught and it feels natural; we already know how to nurse grudges and cultivate resentments and sow hatred and start wars…it’s actually quite easy.

We seek the living among the dead because it’s just easier to live conveniently and for our own comfort and among our own kind…even when we’re fomenting violence and killing the planet in the process.

We seek the living among the dead because death, in all its many forms, is so close at hand and so easy to find—in our communities, in our politics, and in our institutions.

And still, and yet, God is with us even there.

“Mary Magdalene on Easter Morning,” Sieger Koder

We can choose the familiarity of death and God will still be with us. God will never abandon us; not ever.

That’s good news, and there is even better news: The God who made us wants still more life for us, in abundance, the kind of vibrant life that we can scarcely imagine.

God has a dream; and especially in these Great Fifty Days of Easter, God dreams of a richer life for us, for all of us, for the whole of God’s creation. And God has turned this dream into a promise by raising Jesus from the dead, and God seals this promise with the testimony of women in a patriarchal society.

Yesterday morning in my little parish here in (snowy) Saugatuck, Michigan, we baptized a baby as part of our Easter Day jubilations. His name is George Alexander River Burt, and how wonderful that one of his names is “River”! Into that glorious river of new life that flows from an empty tomb, we baptized that dear baby in endless Alleluias and with a gladness that shall never die.

We also made some promises to George. We promised to do all that we can to ensure he never, ever hears anything about God that isn’t loving, graceful, and full of life. We promised to help him know that he is a cherished child of God, that he himself gives God endless delight.

I led the gathered faithful in those promises with tears in my eyes because many of us didn’t grow up that way, with all those reassurances and with such fortifying confidence in God’s love for us. That’s exactly why we renew those promises for ourselves whenever we make them for someone else. And on Easter Day in particular, we also ask God to lead all of us out of our various tombs, whatever they may be, and into the shocking brightness of a new day.

Shocking, because God will be with us regardless of the choices we make.

And this is also true: God still longs for us to choose life, abundant life.

So let’s do it.

“Art of the Redemption 3: Resurrection,” Josef Zacek

Harrow My Heart

Every human community has threads of resentment running through it and chunky grudges clogging up its communal arteries. This is certainly true—sometimes it seems especially true—in religious communities and in our churches. This is especially discouraging as well since many of us harbor rather high standards for faith communities, or at least some high hopes.

Since returning to full-time congregational ministry two years ago, I’ve been reminded of the sacred ground we all tread in parish life. Traces of heartbreak and the wounds of grief punctuate so many conversations, just as glimpses of joy and spiritual insight hover over our committees and circulate through our worship. I wake up every single Sunday morning astonished at the privilege of doing this work.

I have also learned in fresh ways some perennial truths about life in community: resentment is far more contagious than joy, and the infection can linger for far longer than our memory of when we were first exposed. Still more: bitterness takes no work at all (though it is exhausting) and gladness requires effort (even though it is thoroughly refreshing).

These are the peculiar landscapes of human relationships, manifesting the often complex contours of the human heart. All of this is on my mind today, on this Holy Saturday. It’s one of my favorite days on the church calendar because it marks one of my favorite religious notions—Jesus harrowing Hell.

A few scant biblical references and a single phrase in the Apostles’ Creed—Jesus “descended to the dead”—eventually blossomed in Christian traditions into a full-blown harrowing of Hell itself, smashing its gates, and releasing its captives. All of this on the day in between crucifixion and resurrection—a busy day for Jesus and not only for altar guild members readying sanctuaries for Easter morning.

I truly love the image of Jesus fetching our ancestors from whatever limbo they’ve been trapped in for however long, but right now I need Jesus to harrow the rocky soil of my heart. “Soil” is the perfect image for this day, and for more than one reason. “Harrowing,” of course, most commonly appears among farmers and gardeners; we “harrow” the soil by plowing it and breaking up the hardened clods. And according to the Johannine account of the Gospel, the dead Jesus was buried in a garden tomb.

Those images occurred to me in the shower this morning as I reflected on how easily my petty grievances can harden my heart, parch my soul, and threaten to desiccate all that fertile soil, that interior field where I would much prefer to plant the seeds of faith, hope, and especially love.

I don’t know that I want the “three-person’d God” to “batter my heart,” as John Donne imagined, but I do think its earthy fields could use some plowing, some gentle rains of grace, and the warm sunlight of compassion.

On that first Easter morning, according to John, Mary Magdalene supposed that the risen Jesus was a gardener. We sometimes say that she “mistook” him for a gardener. But I don’t think that was a mistake at all. New life sometimes—likely often, perhaps always—needs some harrowing.

Follow the Jackass

I never thought much about donkeys growing up. I mean, why would I? It’s not like I saw many—or any—in the western suburbs of Chicago. But I did think a lot about horses; they were in all my storybooks about heroes and adventures. Horses seemed quite obviously more noble than donkeys.

There are some cultural reasons for these biases: Donkeys are usually the butt of jokes, they provide a convenient stand-in for the outsider, or the underachiever, or simply the useful nuisance we keep around to do the stuff we don’t want to do ourselves.

Let’s not forget the MTV Television series called “Jackass” and the ridiculous movie spinoffs it generated (I may have seen one). Those movies were about stupid humans, but the film’s title betrays the deeper human disdain toward the lowly donkey—the jackass.

Today there are roughly 40 million donkeys in the world and the vast majority of them—more than 90%—are found in rural societies and serve as pack animals, for transportation, and in roles of agricultural labor. Working donkeys are most often associated with those living in poverty, rarely ever with the wealthy or the powerful.

Every year on Palm Sunday we celebrate a “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem as if a hero had mounted a white horse to ride into our lives and save the day. But that is not the story that launches us into the Christian Holy Week.

“Entry into the City,” John August Swanson

The donkey, all on his own, makes perfectly clear that Jesus is not a military commander, nor a rival of the Roman Emperor or even the provincial Governor. So why were the crowds cheering his arrival? Let’s be clear: they were not mocking him but cheering him.

It has taken a very long time for me to let go of the “triumph” of Palm Sunday and appreciate what the donkey teaches (I wish so desperately to know that dear creature’s name). Here’s the lesson I need to learn: Jesus on a donkey is an image of God’s deep solidarity—with the laboring classes, with the downtrodden and forgotten, with those oppressed by Empire.

More specifically for our own day, that image signals God’s solidarity with migrant farmworkers; with women of color who are single mothers working two full-time jobs; with the indigenous people of this land who are still unable to find justice with our own government.

Those are the ones lining the streets of Jerusalem and cheering the arrival of Jesus on a donkey. Perhaps, they think, just maybe, God has not forgotten them, maybe (hope beyond hope) God is standing with them.

But there’s still more to say about this story: God is also in solidarity with the donkey. After all, this beast of burden plays a starring role in this opening chapter of what we Christians call the holiest of weeks.

A donkey leads us into Holy Week!

So after we shout our “Hosannas!” it’s time to follow the Jackass into new life.

What might that look like?

Let’s start modestly. Let’s remember that this so-called “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem features a city whose holiness is shared by at least three of the world’s great religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The calendar this year all but begs reflection on those religious intersections. Even as Christians enter Holy Week, Muslims have already begun observing the holy month of Ramadan, and Passover begins this Friday—Good Friday.

While religious folks pray for peace in the world—and rightly so, and especially right now for Ukraine—religious folks have our own peace to make with each other. We need to work for peace with other Christians, with our Jewish neighbors, and with Muslims all around the world.

It matters that Jesus entered Jerusalem, that Holy City, not on a warhorse or as a general leading armies or in the garments of victory, but on the back of a donkey.

It’s long past time for us Christians to stop referring to this moment as “The Triumphal Entry”; this story should be called the “Parade of Solidarity.”

Poet Sylvia Sands writes so beautifully about this, about Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. All over the world, she writes, donkeys are beaten, starved, tortured, and worked until they drop.

And Jesus chooses that creature to accompany him on his entry into Jerusalem, to lead the “Parade of Solidarity.”

This is how our Christian holy week begins, not in triumph, not even with a whispered hint of domination or any kind of “victory” but rather with the lowly, humble, usually disdained little donkey plodding his path into an ancient city.

The Church has mostly forgotten this but queerly retains it in our lectionary texts and calendar images: the holiest of weeks marks a path of new life for us, if only we would follow the jackass.

Another poet, Steve Garnaas-Holmes, prays in precisely that direction: “O God, give me courage to follow the Foolish way, / to go the way the world discourages, / the way of love.

“May Jesus,” he writes, “riding into a set-up / on his little donkey, lead me.”

The donkey is leading Jesus where we must follow if we wish to live. It’s where God desires to be in communion with us, where God is always already in solidarity with us and with the whole of God’s creation.

Those are lofty ideas and rather far removed from how most of us live day-to-day—but not so for the donkey.

Sylvia Sands poetically imagines that one, first-century donkey being so grateful for that one man’s gentle touch on his reins; and for that one man’s sweet voice on the road; and for that one man’s improbable invitation to join him in the work of redeeming love.

We are invited to that same work of love, to travel along that same road, and to take our lead from a donkey.

A Lenten Discipline: Don’t Waste Your Time

Imposing ashes on the foreheads of a community slowly emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t seem redundant, exactly, but it certainly felt poignant. Preparing for that moment, I recalled two classic touchstones in Christian faith that seemed suddenly more vibrant and fresh than they had for years.

First, we are sinners. I know that sounds terribly old-fashioned, but it’s also true. We fail regularly to live the kind of abundant life Creator God intends; we too often prevent others from flourishing because of the way we live.

We do not always act justly, we have trouble loving mercy, we forget to walk humbly with God, to quote the prophet Micah’s summary of what God asks of us (Micah 6:8).

A second great theme on Ash Wednesday is of course our mortality. We are finite creatures and we will one day die—each of us, no exceptions, all of us returning to the earth from which we came.

Connecting these two themes seems especially urgent given the state of, well, everything. We could begin with this: as mortal creatures, time is of the essence. We simply don’t have time for small visions, or petty resentments, or the refusals of shared flourishing born from bitterness. In the shortness of time, sin is whatever keeps us from thriving; or more simply, we just don’t have time for bullshit anymore, and likely never did.

The time is now—not next year, not next month, not even tomorrow, but right now is the time to remember or perhaps realize for the very first time that God takes great delight in every single thing God has made.

There is absolutely nothing about God’s creation, not one creature of any kind, not one human being, that God does not love madly and wildly. The opening collect for the Ash Wednesday liturgy makes this clear and it’s one of my favorites in The Book of Common Prayer: “Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made…”

For some people, that claim is life-changing; for far too many, it’s life-saving; and for all of us, it’s mission-critical because time is short.

Lent is a time to clear out the toxic clutter, to remove whatever prevents me from seeing myself as a cherished creature of God.

Lent is a time to stop whatever I might be doing that prevents others from seeing themselves as cherished creatures of God.

Lent is a time to understand more deeply that our way of life as modern Western people is damaging and destroying this cherished creation of God called Earth—and time is short.

In my little parish yesterday we heard Matthew’s Jesus (6:1-6, 16-21) being just as plain about this as he could be: don’t waste your time on empty religious gestures; don’t bother being pious for piety’s sake—it’s worthless and pointless.

Pray instead for a change of heart.

Pray instead for a change of life.

Pray instead—as we heard the prophet Isaiah urge (58:1-12)—pray instead in ways that loosen the bonds of injustice and that let the oppressed go free and that provide bread for the hungry and housing for the poor—that’s true religion.

Pray instead, Isaiah says, so that you yourself become light in another’s darkness, water for another’s desert, a builder of dwellings laid waste and repairers of the breach for many generations—that’s the only religion that really matters.

Yes, we are sinners and time is short. But we can make good from the time we have if we repent of our sins and embrace the Gospel, which is nothing less than the abundant life God intends for all.

Don’t waste your time on anything else.

A Transfigured (Black) Jesus and a Eucharistic Solidarity

As Black History Month draws to a close, Women’s History Month begins this week on March 1. This moment on the calendar invites deeper reflection on the potent intersection of race and gender, and how that kind of reflection might shape the season of Lent, which also begins in this coming week.

To do that work—especially as a white man—I’m particularly grateful for the insights of M. Shawn Copeland, an American womanist and Black Catholic theologian who taught for many years at Boston College. She helped me think differently about a foundational question in Christian theology: what does it mean to be human in relation to God? How one answers that question shapes so much else of Christian faith and practice.

For many centuries, the European (white) male was considered the “standard issue” human and thus the primary reference point for answering that key theological question. The whiteness of Jesus himself became a question in new ways during the 1960s, which Copeland writes about in relation to the (Black) Jesus of Detroit.

Among the many moments of Black American history that white people (among others!) should not forget, Copeland draws our attention to the “rebellion” of 1967 not far from where I currently live. The following is her synopsis of that moment and the blackness of Jesus that it surfaced (taken from her essay on the Black Jesus in the collection edited by George Yancy, Christology and Whiteness: What Would Jesus Do?):

“In the early morning hours of July 23, 1967, a routine police vice-squad raid on an after-hours drinking club in a predominantly black neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan, escalated into one of the most furious racial rebellions in modern times. Five days later 43 persons were dead, more than 450 injured, more than 7,200 arrested, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed.

“A little-known, yet highly symbolic, incident during those days involved a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the grounds of the major seminary of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese. At the intersection of West Chicago Boulevard and Linwood Avenue, two blocks west of the site of the rebellion, stands a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which looked out on a then increasingly black neighborhood, even as the seminary faculty and students remained predominantly white.

“On the second day of the disturbance, an African American housepainter reportedly applied black paint to the hands, feet, and face of the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. At least twice, the color was removed, but black paint prevailed and, over the past four decades, the seminary has kept it fresh. In an interview during a 40th anniversary commemoration of the rebellion, the Assistant Dean of Sacred Heart Seminary’s Institute for Ministry, John Lajiness, said, ‘the City really has no other positive visible symbol like it. The painted statue speaks less of violence and more of the internal struggle for identity and the human tension which, intentionally or not, bled into making this statue an icon.’”

“Black Jesus” at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit

If a white man cannot represent the sacred heart of Jesus (much less in marble), then the European male certainly cannot stand as the only, or even the primary answer to the question of what it means to be human. The (brown and Middle Eastern) body of Jesus resides at the center of the Gospel, Copeland reminds us, a body that was tortured and killed by the Roman Empire and raised to new life by God. To understand and embrace such a Gospel, especially given the social, economic, and political history of Western society, Copeland argues that women of color belong at the center of our theological work.

I’m not entirely sure what the consequences of that claim are for how I live, but I am convinced of how crucial it is that I keep reflecting on it and shaping my life because of it. Her book—Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being—helped convince me of this, and as Lent begins, I’m especially mindful of her work on the Eucharist.

Copeland recalls the gruesome history of lynching in the United States and how it prompted the same kind of terror as crucifixion did in the first century. Rather than avoiding that painful history, or feeling a vague sense of guilt about it (especially as white people), Copeland urges a practice of “divine solidarity.” To stand with and for those who are poor, outcast, and oppressed is to bear witness to the Gospel hope for a new world, a hope that shapes Eucharistic worship in Christian communities. Copeland expresses this in a powerful way:

“A Christian practice of solidarity denotes the humble and complete orientation of ourselves before the lynched Jesus, whose shadow falls across the table of our sacramental meal. In his raised body, a compassionate God interrupts the structures of death and sin, of violation and oppression. A divine practice of solidarity sets the dynamics of love against the dynamics of domination—recreating and regenerating the world, offering us a new way of being in relation to God, to others, to self” (Enfleshing Freedom, p. 126).

Perhaps one of the ways I can take Copeland’s urgent call for solidarity to heart is to resist how I usually imagine the transfigured Jesus—with a shiny white face. As I prepare to preach tomorrow on the Transfiguration, a story often told on the last Sunday after the Epiphany, I’ll keep that Black Jesus of Detroit in mind instead, and even more as we move into the season of Lent.

Following Jesus on the road toward the Cross can itself be an act of solidarity if, as Copeland would urge, we see in him all the countless women of color strewn through so many forgotten stories of American history. Remembering them, even though we cannot now know their names, could contribute to how a “compassionate God interrupts the structures of death and sin.”

May that be the hope that breaks open an Easter dawn.

Pixelating Christ: A Hopeful Communion in Hybrid Spaces

The Covid-19 pandemic may or may not be winding down, but what’s heating up are the assessments of “online worship” and what we think we have been learning as we enter the third year of this pandemic.

Among the many recent essays in that vein, two have seized a sizable share of social media buzz. Just yesterday, New York Times opinion writer and Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren declared that it’s time to stop online worship services entirely. On the flip side of that coin, Church of England priest and theologian Richard Burridge argues in a new book that Holy Communion via online platforms (like Zoom) is “valid and effective.”

I’ll toss my hat into that ring by referencing an essay of my own that was published last year in Concilium about what I called “Eucharistic cyborgs” and the conundrums Christian congregations face when nearly all of the activities we call “worship” become vectors for a deadly infection. (That issue of Concilium, by the way, is well worth exploring for its theological and spiritual framing of the “post-human” in a digital world.)

We will likely be living for quite some time with a patchwork quilt of ecclesial policies and liturgical postures around these issues, and it’s far too early for definitive conclusions. We are, after all, evaluating innovations we had not planned on making, and using theological principles we are not sure directly apply, while quite a few of us are finding ourselves (surprisingly) grateful for a new set of tools and skills to use in this challenging era of religion’s putative decline.

As a parish priest in the Episcopal Church, I facilitate and lead worship in a hybrid space, with masked, in-person worshippers receiving the Eucharistic bread while offering a prayer for “spiritual communion” for those joining us online. The tension between these two forms of “communion” can, I hope, provoke fresh engagements with what communion itself means and why it matters in a world of pain and for the sake of healing.

Like most hybrid spaces, this one is not always comfortable and includes awkward moments. Naming that discomfort, pondering why such worship can feel awkward, is important for our ongoing discernment about why Church still matters for exactly such a time as this.

Do note the distinction between the broader category of “online worship” and the more sacramentally peculiar question of the Eucharist in that broad category. Personally, I endorse what the Episcopal Church seems to have adopted: embrace online worship but refrain from what has become known as “remote consecration” of bread and wine.

That distinction blurs when reading the two essays I noted above, and I find compelling arguments in both—on the one hand, I heartily endorse Warren’s reliance on physical proximity as paramount in a religion of incarnation and, on the other hand, I tend to agree with Burridge’s insistence that the cyber-distance between a presiding priest at the Eucharistic Table and an online worshipper should make no difference in the ability of the Holy Spirit to bless and, yes, consecrate bread and wine remotely.

Compelling arguments from both, but I am not fully persuaded by either author. I find Warren’s categorical dismissal of online worship not only hasty (watching someone die from Covid-related causes should quickly disabuse anyone of the notion that we can safely manage Covid infections); but she also seems insufficiently attuned to the pastoral benefits of reaching people unable to attend worship in person (just because the Church has found ways to do so in the past without computer technology does not mean we should eschew such technology today). In my own congregation, we have also appreciated the evangelistic reach of our streamed worship—we have been welcoming new members to our physical sanctuary on Sunday mornings who worshipped with us first online.

Concerning Burridge, I would (ironically) cite Warren’s arguments about embodiment as a rebuttal to his apparent disregard for the significance of being physically distant while only visually and audibly present online. I think Warren rightly worries that online worship makes embodied presence optional for too many people, or akin to a “consumer preference,” rather than essential and vital to sacramental efficacy. She likewise proposes that bodily risk itself is inherent to the story of God’s Word becoming flesh and that our avoidance of all risk (which is never actually possible) amounts to a form of resistance to divine embodiment.

Reading those two writers side-by-side, I realize and I freely admit that my embrace of worship online but not consecration online is probably incoherent. But I still think it matters, theologically, that the Church has always insisted that the priest must touch the bread and wine to consecrate it, and I cannot do that for the bread and wine that people have at home while they watch me on a screen.

I suppose one could argue (and some have, like Burridge) that the Holy Spirit can just as easily bless the bread I touch as the bread people themselves hold at home. Perhaps, but I certainly wonder whether inviting people to treat “cyber touch” the same as we would “physical touch” underestimates just how physically touch-deprived so many have become during these last two years of social distancing in a pandemic; I am so grateful to see my friends on a screen, and yet for months I have longed finally to hug them once again. That longing is the very foundation of the liturgical insistence on touching the bread.

These conundrums seemed utterly novel and to appear quite suddenly in the spring of 2020, but the Church has actually wrestled with the liturgical theology at the root of such questions for centuries, including during times when Eucharist was interrupted or not permitted. Christians have always found ways of “being Church” nonetheless, and we are in one of those moments once again—a “moment,” by the way, that certainly deserves a healthy dose of patience and generosity toward each other as we sort this out.

Like many others, I had to grapple with all these issues in “real time” wrestling simultaneously with how to stream anything online and what it means liturgically to do so. I offered no conclusions about such matters in my essay for Concilium but I did land on some questions that I continue to find theologically stimulating and pastorally compelling; in various ways, I keep inviting the congregation here in Saugatuck to land there with me.

For example, are we human online? That question is not quite as ridiculous as it seems. Having now clocked hundreds of “Zoom hours” in committee meetings and worship gatherings alike, I wonder what physicality and proximity actually mean in relation to bodies. Just how close exactly do we have to be to one another to be “in proximity”? And what does it mean to be “physically present”? Do we suddenly become immaterial when we enter a Zoom room? As a theologian who appreciates the concept of “deep incarnation”—supposing that God’s Word incarnates all the way down to the microscopic, cellular level—I cannot help but wonder why I resist the notion of God’s Word showing up in a pixel.

On the brink of Black History Month, I’m also reminded of womanist theologian M. Shawn Copeland’s concise declaration that the “body provokes theology.” She offers that declaration with the Eucharist clearly in view, insisting that the Table has material significance for how we treat racialized and gendered bodies. This is especially so because of the bodily communion the Eucharistic Table performs and what Copeland insists must be our Eucharistic solidarity with the oppressed, forgotten, tortured, maimed, and lost.

Do virtual bodies provoke theology in the same way that Copeland so persuasively argues that physical bodies do? Or does that question assume that our electronic digitization makes us substantially (note that word!) less human?

Another womanist theologian, Kelly Brown Douglas, has argued why we should even care about such questions. The carnal or fleshy character of Christian faith matters, she argues, for how we address a misogynistic society of white supremacy. Sexism and racism flourish, in other words, in contexts where our bodily lives are not honored with profound respect. So it’s at least worth wondering whether online gatherings can sustain bodily engagements sufficiently to promote social justice.

All of these questions strike at the very heart of our shared distress in a world of runaway climate chaos, unrelenting racialized violence, and gendered oppressions. These are material, bodily concerns for which Eucharistic worship provides vital framing and shaping. For that reason (among others) the parish that I’m privileged to serve as rector will continue to stream our worship services online and we will continue to refrain from “remote consecration” of the Eucharistic bread and wine.

I believe and I hope that such an approach to worship is a coherent balance to strike for the sake of refreshing our shared engagement with what communion itself actually means at a time when we are more desperate for its depths than we likely realize. I mean “communion” in the widest sense—communion with each other as humans; communion with other species; communion with the ecosystems of Earth; and therefore communion with God-in-Christ.