Mary and Martha – Peculiar Faith

Legacy Language and Redeeming the Flesh

My allergy to “binary thinking” in a world of “either/or” choices began in early childhood, and then took root in adolescence when I was trying to grapple with the dawning awareness of being a gay man.

Looking back on those years, the whole world seemed organized with absolute distinctions, but I remember especially how the logic of Christian faith itself seemed to run on binary categories: Heaven and Earth; the saved and the lost; faith and doubt; and perhaps the quintessential instance of such distinctions, St. Paul’s rigid contrast between “flesh and spirit,” which shows up directly in his letters to the Galatians and the Romans.

Maybe no one back then liked bodies very much, or maybe they were told not to like them: It’s difficult to say which came first in my suburban religious subculture, bodily disdain or biblical blindness. Regardless of its origins, the deep suspicion of the “flesh” lurked everywhere. Quite apart from trying to deal with emergent gay desires in adolescence, everyone living through puberty—gay, straight, trans, or just generally unsure—likely struggled to figure out how in the world to live with a body that was apparently just “bad.”

When I finally did come out as a gay man in my senior year at Wheaton College (an adventure worthy of a book), I was presented with yet another binary choice: either embrace my sexual identity or my Christian faith, but not both. For reasons I cannot fully fathom (likely an effervescent mix of my mother’s German stubbornness and a healthy dose of divine grace), I refused to choose. I insisted instead on following a path of integration, of discerning how to live as fully human and gratefully Christian.

“The Valley of Dry Bones,” Gordon Miller

Part of that journey was finding alternative ways to read St. Paul, who almost certainly did not intend to denigrate human skin, bones, and organs—the very bodies God makes—when he cautioned his first-century Christians about the “flesh.” These Greek terms we translate as “flesh” and “spirit” instead stood as markers for ways of being in the world, realms of being or social structures that shape the decisions we make and the kind of character we cultivate. “Flesh” stands for a world marked by greed, hatred, envy, and sexual exploitation, among other things. “Spirit” marks the sphere of love, joy, peace, and self-control.

This coming weekend, on the fifth Sunday in Lent, we will hear that distinction from Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:6-11), a powerful example of what I would call “legacy language,” or ways of speaking that are so resilient in our collective consciousness that we can’t just talk ourselves free of them. I could, for example, devote my entire sermon on Sunday morning to a more lifegiving way to read Paul, but that wouldn’t matter one little bit for those who grew up hearing Paul declare (and their parents confirm) that “the flesh is death” and the “Spirit is life.”

That’s not the only bit of legacy language many of us live with, but that one certainly functions like a flashback portal to a world we had hoped to leave behind, or like a password that opens once again that chamber of revulsion in our brains toward our own bodies. Having spent time not only with my own ghosts of bodily shame but also with seminary classrooms of LGBT people, this is clear: that kind of painful flashback with legacy language is sadly common, even today.

In my wonderful little parish, we often use the First Nations Version (FNV) of the New Testament in the Lenten season. It’s a wonderful indigenous translation that helps many of us, myself included, read familiar biblical texts with fresh vision. This week was another reason to be grateful for that version as I was dreading having to deal with Paul’s Letter to the Romans. But then I read the FNV translation: “If we set our minds on the broken desires of our bodies, we will see only death. But if we look to the power of the Spirit, we will have life and walk the road of peace. … If the same Spirit that brought Creator Sets Free (Jesus) the Chosen One back from the dead lives in you, then that same Spirit will also bring your death-doomed bodies back to life again.”

I nearly wept when I read that translation, which felt like the next chapter of an ongoing story of liberation. To be sure, the language of “deadly desires of our bodies” carries the same potential risk of triggering shame as the more traditional language. But the emphasis has clearly shifted: it’s not my flesh that is the problem, but the desires that attach to it, which can come from a wide range of sources, including the social and political realities in which we live.

The dangerous desires themselves are not named in this passage, but we can quite easily think of some deadly ones today: the desire that fuels a consumerism sufficient to wreck Earth’s ecosystems; the desire to treat enemies with vengeance to the point of bombing children; the desire to dominate women that leads to trafficking girls; the desire to associate only with people exactly like us and exclude everyone else, with violence if necessary; and the list goes on. Again, the FNV translation makes clear that the flesh itself is not the problem but rather the shaping and forming of that flesh with the kind of desires that “doom our bodies to death.” As Paul then declares, the very same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead will likewise bring our “death-doomed bodies back to life again.”

The Lenten lectionary this week takes me still further along this path of rehabilitating the flesh with the story of raising the flesh of Lazarus from the dead. I love that story from John’s account of the Gospel for many reasons, not least is the family of friends—Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus—who apparently meant so much to Jesus. He loved that circle of intimates, not just the idea of them, or their enduring qualities, or the fuzzy feelings they inspired, but their actual bodies, and their physical house, and the village where he found relaxation and respite.

There are multiple ways to read this astonishing story of raising a dead friend back to life, including all the tricks of navigating literary tropes and sorting through possible metaphorical treasures. But St. Paul has me focused on the odor coming from the grave in that story. Martha voiced that worry: don’t open the tomb! It’s going to stink to high heaven! What Jesus rescues from the grave is not just death but the stench of fleshy life I lived with for far too long.

There are some days when I relish the intricate metaphorical readings of these ancient texts and finding all the religious symbols lurking around the details these ancient writers included for our spiritual enlightenment. And then there are days when I set all that aside, days when I need Jesus to yank his dear friend from that smelly tomb with the sound of his grief-torn voice. Of course John the Evangelist would be the one to give us this moment, the Gospel writer who launches his whole account of the Gospel by declaring that the divine Word became flesh.

If you’re struggling with the legacy language of bad religion, this story is for you, for the redemption of your very own flesh. And this Gospel writer is for you, the one whose inspiration was largely drawn from (of all things) an even older collection of erotic love poetry known as the Song of Songs—poetry that affirms without any hint of hesitation the strength of love itself: it is indeed strong, stronger than even death (8:6-7).

The Holy Week journey begins just a week from this Sunday, a journey for which I, for one, will need the strongest love there is, not only for the annual sojourn toward the cross but to face a crucified world of intolerable pain and anguish with any kind of hope for Easter.

That’s my prayer: that we might find our own raspy, grief-worn voices rising with praise once again for a love that is still, and will always remain, stronger than death.

“Reaching — The Raising of Lazarus,” Michael Cook

A Lenten Lazarus for Holy Week

Holy Week – it’s a rich but difficult week, filled with imperial politics and religious collusion, with betrayal, suffering, abandonment, and death.

I appreciate Holy Week for all sorts of reasons. I’m almost always grateful for its annual appearance. But I can’t say that I look forward to it, exactly. I can’t imagine any of us needing, much less wanting still more reminders about corrupt institutional systems and state-sponsored torture and mob violence. For that, we can just turn on the evening news – or keep up with presidential politics.

Last Sunday, many Christians heard some biblical texts that sounded a note of encouragement, subtle though it may have been.

We heard the ancient prophet Isaiah remind us that God is always about to do a “new thing,” make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

We heard Paul tell the Philippians that just trying harder at religious observance is basically rubbish. Faith is not about our own grasping after God; it is, rather, realizing ever more deeply that God in Christ has grasped us, has made us God’s very own, Paul says.

And as we embark yet again on a river of grief and loss this coming week, John reminded us that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead; a reminder that love is strong, stronger than even the waters of death itself.

It’s interesting to me, though, that in that particular story at the beginning of John’s twelfth chapter, John directs our attention elsewhere; he makes resurrection almost an afterthought, a parenthetical remark.

He shifts the spotlight to a dinner party and a circle of close, intimate friends. Jesus is in Bethany, in the household he loved with the people he loved – Mary and Martha and their brother, Lazarus, “whom he had raised from the dead,” John writes. Oh, and Lazarus was also at the dinner table.

Quite honestly, if I’m sitting down to dinner with someone who had just recently been dead, I think I would have some questions. At the very least, I think I might want to pause and say, “So…how are you feeling?”

But no, John rushes past that part, as if he’s eager for us to see something else. He shows us two things actually, that have puzzled scholars and commentators for a long time.

First, Mary does something rather strange and scandalous. She breaks out that expensive, scented ointment, an aromatic lotion that she has perhaps been saving for a special occasion. And it is expensive – worth nearly a year’s salary! mary_anoints_jesus

Mary then proceeds to anoint the feet of Jesus with this precious lotion and then wipes his feet with her hair.

This is strange? Yes. And scandalous: Feet are not anointed unless you’re dead. Faces are anointed, heads are anointed – but here, Mary tends to the feet, and moreover, lets down her hair in public. Women didn’t do that in the presence of guests, not even in their own home.

Then the second peculiar thing: Judas was there.

Even J judas_jesus ohn seems to think this was odd. Remember, John writes, this is the one who betrayed Jesus! And, he adds, he was a thief!

John, by the way, is the only one of the gospel writers to call Judas that – as if John doesn’t want u
s to miss how terribly strange it is to find Judas included in that circle of intimates, in that household Jesus held so dear.

Yes, all of this is puzzling – and I think John wanted it to be.

I think John wanted the tenderness of this ancient household to be just as unnerving and disorienting as resurrection. Better still: the fruit of resurrection is precisely an unimaginable intimacy.

Love is strong, stronger than even death, stronger, therefore, than all the forces that would divide and fragment us, all the hateful speech that breeds violence, all the categorical classifications that make us view each other with suspicion, as threats, as enemies.

For John, love scandalizes by dismantling the barriers between men and women, and even between the betrayer and the betrayed, and still more – bridging the gap between Creator and creature.

And all this around a dinner table as beloved friends share a meal.

I’m so intrigued that some of the earliest Christian communities and commentators read nearly every story in John’s gospel as a Eucharistic story, a story about the Table.

So this coming week I will be taking John’s story with me, something like a talisman of hope. I’ll take and cling to what John wanted us to see: Jesus sits at table, the bestower of life from the dead who is about to die, welcoming the intimate touch of a woman who should not have touched him and the companionship of the one who would betray him.

Resurrection is shocking, not least for the kind of intimacy it creates.

Perhaps a mashup of all three biblical texts we heard last week would help, too. Perhaps mushing Isaiah, Paul, and John together we can find some buoyancy for the week ahead.

The mashup might sound something like this:

I am about to do a new thing, God says. I will take hold of you, and make you my very own; you shall be my own beloved friends.

May this holiest of weeks bring all of us closer to the Friend… last_supper_judas

Pay Attention: Everyday Mysticism in Lent

Resurrection in the throes of Lent? Many Christians had a big dose of exactly that this morning as we heard about the valley of the dry bones in Ezekiel and the story in John’s gospel about Jesus raising Lazarus from death.

So, that’s a bit odd. Isn’t this season for journeying toward suffering, torture, pain, and death? What’s all this resurrection business doing lurking around in such a somber season?

My answer: the invitation to practice everyday mysticism.

Bible stories sometimes make this difficult to see. Those highly stylized stories can sound as if they were unfolding in a mythological space far removed from the gritty particulars of ordinary, daily life. Those stories actually happen in real places with real people, people with particular histories and sensibilities, people with particular races and cultures and politics, people with joys, sorrows, triumphs, tragedies, and families.

I’m struck by the way John frames the story about Lazarus with touching details drawn from ordinary, household life. Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, were apparently close friends of Jesus. He spent time with them, perhaps even quite a bit of time, in their Bethany household.

I imagine Jesus going to Bethany to get out of the spotlight, a place to relax and to take some time off from a hectic public life, put his feet up, and unwind – just as many of us do in intimate households of good friends.

This makes the illness and death of Lazarus all the more poignant. This wasn’t a stranger that Jesus just happened to encounter; it was Lazarus, a friend, a companion, a confidant, someone like family. Upon seeing Mary and Martha grieving near the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus himself weeps.

John’s gospel presents what many theologians refer to as a “high Christology.” The very Word of God, present with God from the beginning of all things, through whom all things were made, this Word, John declares, becomes human flesh (John 1:14).

My own thinking and study on that stunning declaration is often enhanced by engaging with the great work done at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union. I’m thinking particularly of the recent public forum they hosted on “deep incarnation.”

Rather than seeing Jesus as only a significant historical figure of the past, on the one hand, or on the other as a unique and thus isolated moment of divine revelation, incarnation is instead the story of God’s reach into the very tissues of material and biological existence.

Ponder that for a moment: the infusion and penetration of the divine deep into matter itself, down to the very cellular even quantum level. Ponder if you can that uncanny, unfathomable, and mysterious bond between God and God’s creation.

John, I think, would heartily concur with that view, and then quickly remind us that this very Word of God made flesh actually wept over the death of a friend, a friend known in the ordinary, everyday intimacies of household life.

John charts what Bill Countryman (among others) has called a “mystical path” into God’s own life. I used to think that meant that I needed to find a different path. “Mysticism,” after all, is for spiritual Olympians – monks and nuns, desert hermits, anchorites, abbots, and abbesses – or at the very least, for those who are better than I am at the daily discipline of prayer and meditation.

But no, John’s mystical path can also be traced by crashing at a friend’s house after a long day, or by trying to comfort dear friends in the midst of grief, or by tidying up a dirty kitchen after a household meal.

Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth century monastic and mystic in Paris, spent most of his working hours in the monastery’s kitchen, cooking and cleaning. He once said, “I felt Jesus Christ as close to me in the kitchen as I ever did in the Blessed Sacrament.”

He could say that, it seems to me, because he paid attention.

There are many different ways to observe this Lenten season, whether getting away for a silent retreat, giving up chocolate, or volunteering at a food bank. What we do matters far less than paying attention while we do it. I’ve come to appreciate Lent for precisely that, the simple but profound invitation to pay attention and to notice the deep incarnation of God in the most ordinary rhythms of daily life.

Whatever it is you need to do to pay attention and to notice, that is your Lenten discipline. And it’s never too late to start.

It’s never too late to pay attention and encounter the mystery of God in the embrace of a friend, in the convivial chatter over a shared meal, in the random exchange with a grocery clerk, in workplace politics, in the backyard bloom of a rose, in the wag of a happy dog’s tail, in a hike through the nearby regional park.

John insists on this: the mystic lives an ordinary life in ordinary rhythms every day. That’s where God is. And it’s never too late to notice.

It’s never too late to notice the mystery of divine love that draws people together in households of intimates, a love that sometimes, perhaps inevitably, breaks our hearts.

It’s never too late, as Martha and Mary discovered, to notice that mystery of divine love stirring deep within us, even in our grieving.

It stirs there with the promise of new life.