Tag Archives: Realm of God

The Realm of God is coming.

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Proper 14C, 10 August 2025.  The Rev. Dr. John D. Golenski.

Luke 12:32.  Jesus said to his disciples, “Do not be afraid, little flock.”

The very first time I consciously witnessed a death was the day my dog Jet was fatally injured while chasing a car.  We called him Jet because he was jet black, a fiercely loyal Cocker Spaniel, whom I had cared for since my parents brought him home in a basket.   He was protective of our family in general, but he was truly my dog, patrolling our large yard and garden whenever I went out.  Once in a while,  when I opened the gate, he would fool me and zip through into the street.  For some reason he was convinced that moving car tires posed an existential threat, so he had to chase them away. One summer day when I was eleven, Jet snuck out.  I ran after him trying to distract him from the street traffic, but he must have slipped; somehow he was pulled under the moving tire.  I watched in horror as the car rolled over him.  The driver, a local mother with her infant in the car, ran up to me as Jet limped back to me, collapsed at my feet, and expired. Continue reading →

The Peace of God’s Realm

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Proper 13 C, 3 August 2025.  The Rev. Dr. John D. Golenski.

Luke 12:13.  “Teacher, tell my sibling to divide the family inheritance with me.”

Whenever I hear this portion of Luke’s Gospel, I am carried back to an eerie parallel in my extended family’s history. One of my maternal uncles, Zephyr (everyone called him “Fee”), one of my mother’s younger brothers, returned from the Second World War in one piece. He had served in the Allied Persian Corridor Logistics Corps, which had built and maintained the route for almost half the lend-lease materiel sent from the US to the Soviet Union. They had helped the Russians to repulse the German invasion of 1941-44. Fee’s parents proudly displayed a photo of the “Big Three” meeting at Yalta. In the background, Fee is standing at attention as one of the honor guards. Continue reading →

Fullness of Joy

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Proper 9C, July 6, 2025.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • 2 Kings 5:1-14.  Had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel and she served Naaman’s wife.
  • Galatians 6:1-16.  If anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a Spirit of gentleness….Bear one another’s burdens.
  • Luke 10:1-11, 16-20.  Do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

O God of the plentiful harvest, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Our Gospel lesson for this morning picks up right after Jesus has told four people who wanted to follow him that they couldn’t. Then Jesus has appointed 70 others to be sent out – meaning Jesus has appointed apostles. Apostle means one sent – as in an agent or ambassador. (According to Luke there were 70 apostles, not 12). The number 70 in the Bible symbolizes comprehensive universality. Jesus appointed the number of all the nations, according to the Torah. In the 10th chapter of Genesis, the ancient “verbal map” of the whole world describes a network of human relatedness, of cousins, if you will, and belonging, an ecumenical vision of belonging that is remarkably, radically inclusive. [1]  The number 70 is also reminiscent of the number of elders appointed by God to help Moses when Moses told God “I alone am not able to bear all this people because it is too heavy for me.”

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Come home!

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Easter 6C, May 25, 2025.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 16:9-15. Come and stay at my home.
  • Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5. I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God.
  • John 14:23-29. We will come to them and make our home with them.

O God of love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Many of you know that early on Tuesday mornings, every other month, a group gathers on Zoom to ponder together the Gospel passage coming up on the following Sunday; and when the vestry meets, we do the same thing. This past Tuesday, we discussed our Gospel lesson for today.  If you’re anything like these early-morning or evening skeptics, and if they are representative of the parish (my guess is that they are), some of you just heard that Gospel reading as comforting: loving words about a deeper peace than the world can ever give. Even though Jesus was leaving (in fact, about to be arrested and crucified), he promised that the spirit of his words (The Word) would be with them; his peace would be with them.  They did not need to be afraid; they were going to be cared for and defended by the spirit of God, Who is Love.  Continue reading →

Wake up! Rise up!

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Easter 4C, May 11, 2025.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 9:36-43. He gave her his hand and helped her up.
Revelation 7:9-17. He will guide them to springs of the water of life.
John 10:22-30. It was winter.

O God of life, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

During Eastertide, our lectionary offers no lessons from the First Testament. The effect, I think, is to overemphasize a break between Jesus’ followers and Jesus’ religious heritage. Instead, we have passages from the Acts of the Apostles’ romantic accounts of the beginnings of Christianity, written toward the end of the first century about “the good old days.” Today it’s Peter raising Dorcas from the dead with a line that is almost exactly the same as what Jesus said to raise Jairus’ daughter from the dead: arise or wake up, come alive! In other words, Peter was ministering just like Jesus. I love line, “he gave her his hand and helped her up.” Continue reading →

Feast of Love

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Lent 4C, March 30, 2025.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Joshua 5:9-12. The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.”
2 Corinthians 5:16-21. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his [sic] appeal through us.
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32. Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling.

O God of mercy, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

I’m not going to ask for a show of hands, but I wonder how many of you ever complained about someone else’s bad behavior? (I have, too.)  I wonder when you complained, did you want an answer? (I have, too.) I think it’s important to know that Jesus tells this story of the man who had two sons in response to the complaint that Jesus welcomes sinners. The story is part of Jesus’ answer to others complaining about his habit (or practice) of hanging out with people who behave badly. The complainers, according to Luke, were some of Jesus’ colleagues. And the complaint was that Jesus welcomed sinners, people who were dangerously out of step with the well-being of the community, people who were unclean, unethical, unlawful, just plain gross.  Not only did Jesus welcome them, he even ate with them. Simply put, the complaint was, that’s foolish, that’s not right, and, for those who were jealous, that’s not fair. Continue reading →

Shehecheyanu Redux

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See also our rector’s 2013 sermon of the same title.

Epiphany, Last Sunday.  2 March 2025.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Exodus 34:29-35. The skin of his face was shining and they were afraid to come near him.
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:12. Since then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness.
Luke 9:28-43a. And all were astounded by the greatness of God.

O God of faithfulness, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

One of the many benefits for me of sharing the pulpit of Emmanuel Church with a rabbi-in-residence and with an Ark of the Covenant in my peripheral view is that it continues to challenge and change the way I encounter Holy Scripture and the prayers and hymns of the Episcopal Church. My sensitivity to the need for corrective lenses in the Church is heightened. My desire to preach against the ways that the Christian Church has promoted supersessionist theology continues to rise. Christian supersessionism is very much like racism as far as I am concerned.   It’s systemic, oppressive, often internalized, hard for many Christians to see, and always wrong. It distorts our vision and damages our souls. 

I especially need to call this out on a day when we welcome a child with dual citizenship in the realm of God, as both a son of Israel and a member of the Body of Christ. Levi and his older sister and brother all have two spiritual passports in the realm of God; they are full citizens of both Judaism and Christianity. How is it possible? I don’t exactly know, but I do know that with God anything born of love is possible. And I know that at Emmanuel Church we have a long history of experiencing glorious impossibilities.

And so on this day on which we mark the end of the Epiphany season with stories of the transfiguration of Jesus, in light of the stories of Moses’ shining countenance, I’m drawn to preach about the Apostle Paul and his words to the Church in Corinth, because our passage today sounds as if Paul was dismissing Moses and the Israelites as old news (and he was). It sounds as if Paul was preaching the newness and better-ness of Christianity (but he wasn’t quite doing that). I have to tell you (or remind you) that Paul was not a Christian. [1] While he recruited Gentiles to follow Jesus, as a Jew through and through, he was arguing with people within his own tradition for openness and inclusivity in the realm of God, . Furthermore, neither Paul nor Jesus was inventing the ideas of openness and inclusivity. To varying degrees both of them were declaring stretched boundaries and widened gates for belonging and beloving as people of God, using the Law and the Prophets as their scriptural foundations. The Apostle Paul and the Evangelist Luke were asserting continuity and expansion of belonging and beloving in encouraging people to follow the Jesus Way.  Looking back on Paul’s arguments with corrective lenses, however, it becomes clear that he was arguing about who was out and who was in as he contended that the glory of Moses was dimming and the glory of Jesus was brightening.

Paul was reacting to rivals, whom he derisively called super-apostles, who were insisting that to be faithful to Jesus required being faithful to Torah. The Rev. Dr. Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, wrote the other day that although this was an intramural argument within Judaism, it was “aimed towards Gentile Jesus believers, [and] it quickly becomes an argument that can and does fuel anti-Jewish perspective.” [2] Dan argues that this reading should not be included in the Lectionary at all. I think he’s right. We should go back to using the Episcopal Church Lectionary assignment for this Sunday, which calls for 1 Corinthians 12:27-13:13, Paul’s treatise on the primacy of love.

I know that there are those who dislike Paul, and they have good reasons. I used to dislike him, but now I like him enough to want to argue with him rather than just discount him. My seminary professor and Jewish New Testament scholar Larry Wills taught me to use a different interpretive framework or lens to know and appreciate Paul. The new framework or lens getting developed over the last several decades takes into account all of what Paul wrote (that we still have in scripture). It’s a much broader approach than the one that excludes the things that don’t fit in a more traditional Protestant Reformation framework. 

I would like to persuade you that Paul was not a phony, ignorant, or a liar, although I admit he was a bit of a jerk. I would like to persuade you that we don’t need to imagine that he was hating and rejecting himself or his tradition even as he challenged his rival apostles within it. He was a great writer, and he had a passion for welcoming folks into the beloved community by proclaiming that the God of Israel’s mercy and grace extended to all nations, i.e. all Gentiles.

The context for our passage from 2 Corinthians is this. Having founded the community of Jesus followers in the city of Corinth, Paul moved on to gather similar communities in other cities. After he was gone, some super-apostles came to Corinth and insisted that, in order to truly be people of the God of Israel, the Gentile men had to be circumcised and the Gentile people had to follow halakhah, or Jewish dietary laws and other established faithful practices. The thing is, Paul’s audience in Corinth was made up of Gentiles. He was arguing that the Torah does not apply to Gentiles. In his letter to the church in Rome, he wrote: “Do we then render Torah void? God forbid! On the contrary, we uphold the Torah!”  Torah is so much deeper and wider than our English word law.  Torah is a way of being, created before the world (as in, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”) Torah is the Word, the way of being, given to Jews.

So if all of this is true (and I believe it is), what does any of it have to do with us? Well, according to Paul, God’s mercy and grace extend to people even if they aren’t Jews. This is good news, great news actually! Interest in openness and inclusiveness has its roots in the Hebrew Bible and is continued in the Christian Testament. We bear witness to openness and inclusiveness at Emmanuel Church with scripture, tradition, and reason as our foundation, and with the authority that comes from engaging with the Holy One, Who is always doing a new thing.

New covenant doesn’t nullify any previous covenants from the standpoint of the God of Israel.  God was offering new covenants to God’s people throughout ancient history: the new covenant of Noah, the new covenant of Abraham, the new covenant with Moses and the people in the wilderness, the new covenant with David, the new covenant written on the hearts of the people described by the prophet Jeremiah, the new covenant proclaimed by Jesus. In her book entitled Paul was Not a Christian, Jewish New Testament scholar Pamela Eisenbaum asks the rhetorical question: “Has Jesus’ act of faith rendered the covenant between God and Israel meaningless? God forbid! On the contrary, we who are members of Israel are fulfilling the prophesies of Torah by acknowledging God’s redemption of the whole world.” [3]

Here’s what I notice about the story of Moses veiling his face and about Paul’s interpretation. Moses was radiant, brilliant, dazzling, terrifyingly luminous because of his encounters with the Divine. Since the people were afraid, he he veiled his face to avoid frightening them when he talked to them. The scripture tells us that Moses, plagued by doubt and anxiety, had sought the Divine Presence and positively glowed after his encounter. with God.   According to Paul, Moses had good intentions; but in trying to protect people from their fears, he obscured something essential: the reflection of the glory of God. According to Paul, being shielded from the reflection of the glory of God hardened the people’s minds. That’s an interesting idea. Paul was encouraging his audience to be bold and to shine with the glory of God. The Church has been wrong in making this an anti-Jewish message. The story of the transfiguration in our Gospel today, written decades after Paul’s letters, reveals and upholds that Jesus’ closest companions saw Moses, Elijah, and Jesus in relational community. Sadly, our English translation willfully obscures the word exodus when Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah about his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. Jesus was speaking with them about his forthcoming exodus, i.e. liberation from slavery and journey through the wilderness to a land of well-being, a land of the well cared for.

We are all called to boldly shine with the glory of God when we encounter the power of love in community. Shining can be so much more difficult than lamenting, especially when times are tough. To express beauty and joyfulness in the midst of so much anxiety and sadness in the world is brave and hopeful. It’s not a denial of suffering, but a nevertheless gladness to be alive, gratefulness to have survived to this point. It doesn’t negate any of the sorrows prior to this day or the sorrows felt by other people. It’s bold to say it,  to pray it, to radiate with it, and not to hide it. It seems like a most fitting way to end this sermon: giving thanks to God for the joy of this gathering. If you know the Shehecheyanu, say it with me! Baruch atta Adonai eloheinu melech ha’olam, she-hecheyanu v’ki-yemanu v’higianu lazman hazeh. Blessed are you Holy One, sovereign of the universe, Who has kept us in life and sustained us and brought us to this time.

  1.  Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (HarperCollins, 2009).
  2. Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski.  https://www.facebook.com/dan.joslynsiemiatkoski
  3. Eisenbaum, op. cit., electronic book edition (no page numbers).

Respond in love!

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Epiphany 6C. 16 February 2025. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Jeremiah 17:5-10. Iin the year of the drought it is not anxious and it does not cease to bear fruit.
1 Corinthians 15:12-20. The first fruits of those who have died.
Luke 6:17-26. Blessed…blessed…blessed….blessed…woe….woe…woe…woe.

O God of healing, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Last week we heard the story about what happened when Simon Peter let Jesus use his boat to demonstrate an improbable abundance of fish caught by going deep in broad daylight! Last week Jesus told Peter and his friends that he would show them how to catch people. Somehow that sounded so good, according to Luke, that they left everything and followed Jesus. When Jesus then healed a man of leprosy, crowds started to show up wherever he went in the hope that they, too, could be healed.  Luke writes that Jesus would withdraw to deserted places and pray. One day he healed a paralyzed man whose friends had lowered him through the roof, because that was the only way to get close to him. Luke reports,  “Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe saying, ‘We have seen strange things today!'” Kind of reminds me of church!

When Jesus invited a tax collector named Levi to follow him, Levi gave a great banquet with a large crowd of tax collectors sitting at the table with them, which caused quite a stir among people with higher standards for dining companions. As controversy grew around Jesus’ healings and teachings, folks got mad enough to want to shut him down. “Now during those days,” Luke writes, “Jesus went out to the mountain to pray” all night, “and when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them whom he also named apostles.” It was a motley crew for sure, and apparently not everyone made the team of apostles because he drew from a great crowd of disciples. (Remember, disciples are learners; apostles are learners who are sent out to teach and heal.) Did he choose the most capable, the most diverse, or only the ones who had nothing left to lose? Did the ones who didn’t get selected feel regret or relief? Dread or excitement? Probably a little of both. We don’t know.

Now you’re up to speed about the context for Jesus’ teaching about blessings and woes. One thing I want you to notice right away in today’s Gospel reading is that Jesus was addressing this teaching to “the great crowd of his disciples;” and he was addressing them directly. “You who are poor, you who are hungry, you who are weeping, you who are excluded, reviled, and defamed for humanity’s sake (which is another way of understanding the term Son of Man). And you who are rich, you who are full, you who are laughing, you who are well-spoken of.” They, too, were in the crowd of disciples or learners that Jesus is teaching. That reminds me of church, too!

I also want you to notice that Luke doesn’t spiritualize poverty; he’s talking about access to tangible resources: money, food, clothing, and shelter. Nor does he glorify poverty, hunger, sorrow, or being reviled and excluded. Rather than writing about life after death, he is writing about life before death. Remember Luke is the one who wrote about the early Jesus-following communities, which shared money and other resources in common so that each gave according to their ability and each received according to their need. That’s how living and leaning into the Realm of God or the Rule of Love works, according to Luke.

Taking a little further the idea that the crowd was a mixture of rich and poor, full and hungry, laughing and weeping, included and excluded, I think maybe every person had aspects of blessing and aspects of woe within themselves. I hear the Luke beatitudes as descriptions of needing the Holy One versus relying on one’s own strength; I hear them as descriptions of needing one another versus relying on one’s own strength.

Jesus looked at his disciples and declared God’s blessing on them for being poor, hungry, bereft, excluded, and defamed for his sake. It’s a peculiar honor. I hear Jesus saying, “God bless you for getting into this with me.” You who are poor, yours is the realm of God. (Not in the future, but right now.) You will be fed, experience joy, and experience the heaven of God, which is another way to say shalom, deep peace, or well-being. God bless you for putting everything on the line. And there’s trouble ahead to you who are rich and full, scoffing at the naïveté or laughing at the foolishness of practicing loving kindness to the point of poverty and hunger, sorrow, and slander. You will not experience the true joy of the realm of God unless or until you engage in extreme generosity and get in touch with your own need for God and one another. Jesus was speaking to everyone who would listen. That’s good news for us because we certainly are among the disciples now who are being challenged by Luke’s critique of wealth that is not used for the benefit of the community, so that each gives according to ability and each receives according to need. 

Theologian Mark Davis describes the Luke beatitudes as describing the difference between is and ought. [1] How there is a yawning gap between over-resourced and under-resourced, even in the same crowd, and how there ought to be no gap at all. Unfortunately, our lectionary cuts the reading off in his mid-thought. Jesus said:

Woe to you when all speak well of you, but I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you….be children of the Most high who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful just as God is merciful.

In other words, even when you are on the receiving end of the bad behavior of others because of your faithfulness to the Love of God, respond with Love. And when others are on the receiving end of bad behavior, be merciful just as God is merciful.

It’s Love that made the early Church a most powerful resistor to the oppression and cruelty of the empire. Indeed, today when the Church is functioning at our best, we serve as a bold alternative to authoritarianism as we live into our strong alternative models of community and governance. When we are functioning at our best, we are providing for those in need in ways that are life-giving and liberating for both the givers and the receivers. We are living our best lives in the kingdom of God (aka realm of Love) when we do not confuse wealth, happiness, joy, or popularity with blessings, but understand that the blessings are in the practice of sharing with generosity, compassion, and integrity.

It occurs to me that while Jesus was addressing his followers, there were others within earshot, those from the multitudes who were seeking healing. It occurs to me that maybe we are really not so different at Emmanuel Church: part apostles, part disciples, part not identifying as Jesus followers but seeking welcome, which is a form of healing. Often we come to church somewhat depleted – emotionally, physically and spiritually. Often we come to church fearful, angry, and betrayed by some circumstance, institution, or person in our lives. Sometimes we aren’t fully conscious of our depletion, our fear, our anger, or our hurt. As a crowd (even a small one) we come with varying degrees of awareness about our own unclean spirits or our own dis-ease. Maybe we come out of habit; maybe we are curious; maybe we hope to hear a good word or spectacular music, receive a warm embrace, have the chance to be quiet, have the chance to be heard, or get something to eat or drink; maybe we hope to make a connection with the Divine, with ourselves, with others. Whatever our hope, we all need healing for our bodies and souls. 

It also occurs to me that when a crowd (even a small crowd) of people with unclean spirits and dis-ease get together, there’s bound to be discomfort caused by competing or conflicting needs and depleted resources. Then I think, “Welcome to the Church!” We are a motley crew maybe not so different from the first ragtag bunches of people who were first drawn to the healing power of Jesus. And if you arrived at church hoping that either you are the only one with needs to be met, or that no-one else has needs that you will be asked to meet, you may be in for a rough morning. 

But if you arrived at church hoping for a chance to give thanks to God for all the many ways that you have been blessed, and looking for opportunities to share those blessings, then you are in luck! This will be a good morning for you! Give thanks to God that you were able to get here at all. If you are able to sit in a pew in this lovely worship space on this snowy day, give thanks to God. If you are able to access this worship service on line in a place that is warm and dry, give thanks to God. If you are able to breathe unassisted, give thanks to God. If you are able to stand and to walk, give thanks to God. If you are able to move and feel your hands and your feet, give thanks to God. If you are able to see, hear, taste, smell, or use any or all of those senses, give thanks to God. Now notice who else is in the room or online. Give thanks to God that you are not the only one here this morning either physically or virtually. If you are able to offer your hand to another in Peace, give thanks to God. If you hunger for the bread and wine of communion, give thanks to God for your hunger and thirst. Or if you desire a blessing, give thanks to God for your desire. 

As far as I can tell, giving thanks to God is the beginning of healing. And giving thanks to God in the midst of a crowd (even a small one and even if you give thanks in silence) begins a healing process in you and in everyone around you. Giving thanks is what replenishes our depleted selves – our emotionally, physically, and spiritually depleted selves. Giving thanks to God calms our fears, assuages our anger, provides forgiveness sufficient for the betrayals. Thanksgiving purifies our unclean spirits and heals our dis-ease. Thanksgiving is a sacrifice, because we have to release our hold on our dis-ease and our self-sufficiency. We will have to let go of our incapacitating anxiety and our playing too big or too small. We will have to open our hands and our hearts for healing and acknowledge the truth of our belovedness, becoming needy for the sake of the realm of God. Giving thanks is a powerful way to move from seeker and learner to teacher and healer. The promise of our scripture and our tradition is that the reward of our sacrifice of thanksgiving will dwarf whatever the cost. Offer to God, today, a sacrifice of thanksgiving and respond in Love, no matter what.

  1. D. Mark Davis, www.leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com.

Would you like to hear it again?

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Advent 1C, 1 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Jeremiah 33:14-16. Justice and righteousness in the land.
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all.
Luke 21:25-36. Then he told them a parable.

O unsettling God: grant us the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.

Whether we are ready or not, it’s time to wake up. Rise and shine! With the advent of a new church year our liturgy changes colors, music, and prayers to mark this season of communal preparation and repentance. Our Gospel readings also mark a change; we’ll hear mostly from Luke in Year C. Last year’s Gospel of Mark was terse and spare prose, covering the most basic facts of the ministry and teaching of Jesus and telling the circumstances of his death. The language of Luke is expansive and poetic, dramatically and outwardly focused, mission-oriented. Ironically, we begin each liturgical year with Jesus teaching about the end of the world as it is known. This is no coincidence. All the Gospels were written through the lens of the crucifixion and the experience of Love more powerful than death, the ending of one world and the longing for a new world, where the compassion, mercy, and peace of God would reign once and for all: all time and all people.

The writer of Luke reminds Jesus’ followers that, along the way to the reign of the glory of God, there will be confusion among the nations because of the roaring of the sea and waves. The powers of the heavens will be shaken, and people will get the wind knocked out of them with fear and foreboding. (This sounds ripped from the headlines.) Jesus says when you see these things happening, don’t hunker down or hide; stand tall and raise your heads because your redemption  (that is, the revaluation of your dignity) is drawing near! This is a pep talk: heads up! Be on your guard that your hearts are not weighed down with the worries of this life, so you have the strength to avoid the turmoil and to stand facing the Son of Man (for us that is Jesus), the one who came to demonstrate the love of God, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

And then Luke’s story goes that Jesus told them a parable. Unlike other parables, this one is so short that, if anyone’s mind wandered for a minute, they missed it entirely. It always reminds me of a scene from one of my family’s favorite movies: Joe versus the Volcano, an early Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy, in which Meg Ryan plays the three female-lead roles. Tom Hanks plays Joe Banks, who is on a spiritual journey away from a colorless, loveless existence. In one scene, one of Meg Ryan’s characters, Angelica Graynamore, has driven Joe to the hills outside of Los Angeles the night before he embarks on a sea voyage to an island where he will offer his life for the good of the islanders. At a scenic overlook, they see millions of twinkling lights of the city. It looks and feels to the earnest Joe Banks, as if the stars have fallen or the world has been turned upside down. After several moments of quiet, Angelica asks, “Would you like to hear one of my poems?” “Sure,” Joe relies.

Long ago
the delicate tangles of his hair
covered the emptiness of my hand.

After a moment of silence, Angelica asks a puzzled Joe, “Would you like to hear it again?” That’s what I think of when I read the part of this Gospel passage from Luke that says, “Then Jesus told them a parable.” “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.”  I imagine Jesus looking at his earnest audience, in a long pause that did not get recorded in the Gospel narrative, and then asking, “Would you like to hear it again?”

What sense can we make of this one-sentence parable? I think an interpretive clue comes from how the parable is placed in the Gospel of Luke, which is extraordinarily symmetrical in the way it is constructed. The writer of Luke is employing the finest rhetorical devices in this composition. The narrative, the sayings, the miracles, and the parables are all told in a writerly version of synchronized swimming! You have to map it out and stand back to see how it works. Fortunately for me, I have a friend who did that once on yards of butcher paper!

This shortest parable, the parable of the fig tree, is the last one in Luke, at the end of Jesus’ life. It is balanced and illuminated by Luke’s first parable, which is the parable of the sower. By contrast, the parable of the sower is long, and its story covers an expanse of time, whole seasons of planting, growing, and reaping. At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, there is plenty of time; at the end, time collapses. In the parable of the fig tree there is no expanse of time. There is only the present moment: right now. There is a way in which Jesus is teaching about not getting so preoccupied with what did or didn’t happen, or what might happen, that one misses the power of what one can know in the present moment. New life is very near right now, within reach.

Advent is all about calling our attention to the power of the present moment. Advent is a season of repentance, but not the Lenten repentance of wallowing in regret for our sins, personal piety, or private salvation. Advent’s sacramental purpose is about effecting corporate accountability and modifying communal behavior. The Advent calls for change and promises of redemption are directed to communities, institutions, societies, and nations. Likewise, our liturgical changes are designed to be unsettling, agitating, and provocative to the whole community. Perhaps more than any other time in the church year, our Advent work is to offer affliction for the most comfortable as we work to change, so that we can better provide comfort for those who are most afflicted.

The power of the present moment can too easily be given up or given away in at least three ways: one is to live in the past, blame the past, or feel guilty about the past. But regretting our past is about as effective as regretting gravity. We can (and should) learn from the past, but wishing that our past were different or that it still existed is a way to give up the power of the present moment, the now. Another way of giving up now is to live in the future. This is not to say that we shouldn’t have visions, goals, hope, or imagination. But spending our now wishing rather than taking action, or spending our present moments worrying, feeling anxious or afraid, will rob us of our powerful now so fast we won’t know where it went. And the last way we give up now is to try. Trying is not doing; if we try to pick up a binder, nothing happens.

This Advent see if you can eliminate your use of the word try when it comes to what you are talking about doing. When you hear yourself say try, stop and listen deeply to yourself, because you probably have just said in a very polite way that you are not doing it yet, or that you probably won’t do it. Know that if you say you’ll try to do something, you have just let yourself know (and now anyone else that is in this room) that you haven’t made a commitment to do it. Telling truth about that will give you back your now.

So whenever we want to engage in transformative action, start. Do a small piece of it. Then be glad when you say, “We are changing X (whatever it is).” Maybe it’s not as much as we’d like, but it’s more than before. Listen to the powerful difference between saying that Emmanuel Church is trying to witness to God’s mercy and justice and Emmanuel Church is witnessing to God’s mercy and justice. We are feeding and housing people who need physical nourishment and shelter, while providing food and a safe haven for all kinds of people who are spiritually hungry and in need of spiritual shelter. We are digging deep for the spiritual and material resources to be the change we want to see in the City of Boston.

Today, we heard Jesus tell his hearers what to do whenever it seems like the world is getting turned upside down. When confusion and fear are colluding to reduce us to passivity and despair, knocking the wind right out of us, we are not to squander our energy, create distance or indulge our anxieties. We are to stand up, raise our heads, and know that redemption, the revaluation of human dignity, is near. We are to look at what is right in front of us right now. Truly I tell you that a generation did not pass away until all things had taken place, and this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place either. As John Crossan and Marcus Borg have written, the Biblical idea of end times: “Is not about some mass immigration from a doomed world to a blessed heaven. Rather, it is about the end of…war and violence, injustice and oppression. It is about the earth’s transformation, not about its devastation. It is about a world of justice and peace.” [2]

What did you read on the front page of the newspaper this morning or see on the news last night about distress among nations? Of people fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world? How are confusion, fear, and foreboding happening in our nation, in our city, on the other side of your desk in your office, in school, at home, in your extended families, or even in this room? Where is the drama of giving up the power of now playing out in our relationships, institutions, or bodies? And what redemption or re-valuation might be near right now? What would it take for us to stand up and raise our heads? [3]  As Lee Pelton of The Boston Foundation said last week, “Where we see a wrong, we seek to right it; where we see a hurt, we seek to soothe it; and where we see a broken heart, we seek to mend it. This is not the time to rest. It is a time to be restless…in this pursuit of what is right and just.”

It’s been said that no tree looks more dead than a fig tree in the Palestine winter. Imagine noticing little leaves sprouting out of buds on the branches, tiny hopeful signs of growth , of change, of new life. Jesus seems to be saying that in the middle of whatever is turning the world upside down, pick your heads up, look for, see, and be the signs of hope that are right in plain sight, right now. Christian hope, according to Jurgen Moltman, is not an “opium of the beyond;” rather it is, “The divine power that makes us alive in this world.” It’s not a hope that things will return to the way that they were, that the past will be different, or even that a bad thing will never happen in the future. It’s hope that right now, Love (another word for God) is redeeming and revaluing what seems dead, shameful, worthless, wasted, or hopeless in us and through us, in here and out there. Advent is a season of change and hope that right now Love can do that. Raise your heads and see that right now Love is making a way where there is no way. Raise your heads and see that right now Love is very near. As we will hear, and then sing together, in the final chorale of today’s cantata: “No eye has ever perceived, no ear has ever heard such joy as our happiness, io, io, eternally in dulci jubilo!” May it be so.

  1. 1 John 3:18.
  2.  Borg and Crossan, The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth (New York: HarperOne, 2007), p. 240.
  3.  Thanks to Bill Dols for this line of questioning in The Bible Workbench 17:1.

Reparations

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Proper 21B. 29 September 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Esther 7:1-6,9-10; 9:20-22. Days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.
James 5:13-20. Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.
Mark 9:38-50. Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.

O God of beauty, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

So I will get to our hell-fire Gospel lesson in a minute, but not before I say something about Queen Esther: beautiful, brave, patient, and smart, who used her position and gifts, and risked her own life on behalf of her people. This mighty woman’s name appears more times than any other woman in the Bible, and she speaks more than any named women except for Judith. She is the ideal against which Herodius was compared  (in the Christian testament of the Bible) and was found to have utterly missed the mark when a king, intoxicated by wine and the beauty of a woman, offered to do anything she wanted. Queen Herodius coached her daughter to ask for the murder of John the Baptist. Queen Esther asked that she and all of her people be saved from a scheduled massacre. Esther’s courage, compassion, and integrity and the quality of her leadership changed her wartorn world and brought peace. 

 Esther is a great leader to have in mind when we hear this reading from the Gospel of Mark. You might recall the disciples have just been arguing amongst themselves about who is greater. Jesus has said, whoever wants to be first must be the servant of all. Now a random person has been casting out demons in Jesus’ name. Someone who isn’t even one of Jesus’ group of followers, is casting out demons in his name; and they think, that’s gotta stop. John tells Jesus, “You can’t let just anybody use your good name as their authority. You’ve got to have some standards Jesus!”

And Jesus’ response? He says, don’t stop him; whoever is not against us is for us. Once again, it’s opposite day with Jesus in Mark. (later, Matthew 12:30 has Jesus say the more familiar, “Whoever is not for me is against me.”) But according to Mark, it’s whoever is not against us is for us! Here it’s not about tests of identification or criteria for membership. The disciples may still not get it, but Jesus has actually learned something from his encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman. He has learned that God’s healing grace is bigger, deeper, and wider than previously thought . Don’t try to place restrictions on it, or on people who are delivering it. If demons are being cast out in Jesus’ name, if people are being healed in his name, if hungry and thirsty people are being offered food and drink in his name, it’s all good. Anyone working for just distribution of resources and liberation from oppression is on the same side. Invariably this raises the question, what about people who really are against us? That question must have come up for the Gospel of Matthew’s community because Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” That’s a hard one.

But back to the Gospel of Mark. Right away, without missing a beat, Jesus reminds his disciples that they need others; they depend on those with whom they minister for the basic necessities of life. Boy, that’s also hard one isn’t it? “Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you carry the name of the Anointed (the Christ), I swear to you, such a person certainly won’t go unrewarded!” Whoever assists you will be honored in God’s name. Here’s a lesson for any of you who’d prefer to not be on the receiving end of help from people whom you are trying to help! I know you’re out there, because I know myself and how uncomfortable I get when someone I am trying to help wants to offer me help. Jesus is teaching here about mutual ministry. Jesus is teaching here about the realm of God.

Then Jesus admonishes them by saying, “Don’t you put stumbling blocks in the way of beginner seekers.” (That’s what little ones means in the Gospels. It could be a reference to the one casting out demons or a reference to the ones offering water; that’s not clear.) In other words, don’t scandalize people who are doing good deeds even if they are not following Jesus the way you are or you think they should. Don’t try to stop someone who is offering to care for you when you think you don’t need their help. One of the things that people who like to give often forget is that giving and receiving are as connected as breathing in and breathing out. It’s quite deadly to do one without the other for very long. 

This reading from Mark suggests just how highly we should regard a relationship with the Holy One. Jesus uses pretty strong language, indeed radical language, to say that if any part of us blocks our right-relationship with the Divine, get rid of it; it’s not worth it. It’s clear to me that the examples Jesus gives about getting rid of a body part that causes someone to trip someone else up are not to be taken literally. Judaism never advocated self harm, and Jesus’ followers did not practice it either. Jesus is using hyperbolic language to assert that whatever gets in the way of a relationship with God, let it go. It would be better to live into the realm of God without some part of ourselves, than to live in the burning trash heap outside of the city walls, a garbage dump place called Gehenna, here translated as hell. By the way, you might think, based on the pop culture notions of Christianity (assisted by our lectionary), that hell is a pretty big issue for Jesus or a pretty big issue in the New Testament. It’s not; there’s really not that much talk about Gehenna. Gehenna was a real valley outside the city of Jerusalem, where rubbish was gathered and burned; it was a metaphor for separation from God. Most of the thought and talk of hell by Christians was developed in the imaginations of later Christians after the New Testament was written. Remember that the Apostle Paul, argues eloquently that nothing whatsoever can separate us from the love of God. 

Then we hear Jesus reminding his followers about salt. Everyone will be salted with fire. (Other ancient manuscript copies of Mark say that everyone will be salted with salt.) Salt is good, and this fire is testing, refining fire. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can it season? Have salt within yourselves (in this tasteless world), and keep peace in one another. That’s one of my favorite lines in the Gospel of Mark. Have salt within yourselves, Jesus said. I can think of at least eight reasons that salt would be a good thing to have within ourselves. I’ve recited these before; maybe you remember them? Here they are:

  • In Jesus’ time salt was used as currency, as a form of money.  Salt and salary come from the same root.
  • Salt has healing qualities.
  • Salt has preservative qualities. 
  • Salt has seasoning qualities; it enhances flavor.
  • Salt has cleansing or purifying qualities.
  • Salt was considered to be a portent against evil forces. People still throw salt over their left shoulder to keep the devil at bay.
  • Salt was a sign of permanence.  Eating salt with someone in Biblical times meant you were bound to them in loyalty, in a covenant of friendship.
  • Salt thrown into a kiln when pots are being fired will change and beautify the surfaces of the vessels in ways that are unpredictable and can’t be completely controlled.

Whether Jesus was thinking of just one, several, or all of these reasons, what he was saying was have value within yourselves and everyone else. Keep peace with one another. 

In the realm of God (or Love) everyone will be salted with fire. In the realm of Love, everyone will be subject to refinement with unpredictable and uncontrolled beauty! Have salt in yourselves, and keep peace with one another. Notice that Jesus is saying to the group, have value in yourselves,  plural. You are all valuable, he is reminding them, those of you in the in group, and those outside the group, all. Remember that; hold on to it; have value in yourselves, have healing and preservative qualities, have the spice of life in yourselves, have cleansing and protective qualities, have distinctive character,, and keep peace with one another. Keeping peace means more than just keeping one’s mouth shut. Take your lead from brave Queen Esther, who bravely spoke out on behalf of herself and her people. 

Keeping peace, shalom, is much deeper, more profound than keeping quiet. Keeping peace is definitely not at the expense of valuing oneself or one’s community. And it’s not valuing oneself or one’s community so much that we cannot work for peace. It’s both/and, as we like to say. It’s carrying the tension of knowing that each one is so beautiful and so valuable, this community is so beautiful and so valuable, that conflicts that arise must be resolved. Being at peace is not about avoiding conflicts, it’s about resolving conflicts that inevitably arise in community and between communities. What I hear Jesus saying is: in the realm of God everyone is beautiful in unpredictable ways. Seek and you will find that beauty hiding in plain sight.

I was thinking about this on Friday when I signed my name to a public statement confessing the sin of racism and calling for atonement, repair, and reconciliation from predominantly white churches in metropolitan Boston. Faith leaders were signing as individuals, not on behalf of our congregations, but it’s easy enough to find out for whom I am working. The lead organizers, The Rev. Kevin Peterson and the Rev. John Gibbons, told us that we were doing something that had never been done:  an interfaith group of white faith leaders signing a confession and call, witnessed by an interfaith group of black faith leaders. Will it stir up conflict? Yes, it already has. Will it make a big difference or a little difference? I don’t know yet, but for me, it was the right thing to do. For me, it was a step forward in building and repairing relationships that will be essential to engaging more deeply in the work of reparations in the City, of holding the salt and passing the peace. I urge you to also take steps forward in the work of building and repairing relationships in the City of Boston and beyond.