All hail the power of Jesus' Name!

Feast of the Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ

(formerly Feast of the Circumcision)

January 1, 2012

What’s in a name? Shakespeare tells us, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” [Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene 2, paraphrased] In spite of this, Romeo and Juliet died because their last names were wrong. Names must be important: we don’t like it when people forget our names or don’t bother to learn them, and no one likes to be called “hey, you!” 

Today, we celebrate the Holy Name of Jesus. This is the only celebration on our church calendar that isn’t about a person or an event (although it used to be about the event of Jesus’ circumcision on the eight day of his life). 

Genesis chapter 4, verse 26 describes the first use of God’s Name: “To Seth also a son was born, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to invoke the name of the Lord.”

Throughout the early history of the Hebrew people, their God didn’t have a name. He was just referred to as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” It wasn’t until the time of Moses that God revealed a specific name. When God spoke to Moses through the burning bush, Moses asked, “if I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?" And God answered, “tell them that YAHWEH sent you.” [Exodus 313-14] YAHWEH (יְהוָה֙) is the Hebrew name of God, and it means “I AM” or “I AM WHO I AM.”¹

In Egypt, where the Hebrews were slaves, all the gods had names – Isis, Osiris, and so on. So, it’s natural that the people expected that their God would have a name like that. “I AM” may have been God’s way of saying, “I’m not like the other gods—I am real, I am your God, and I am going to take care of you.”

The Third Commandment tells us not to take the Name of the Lord in vain. [Exodus 20:7 & Deuteronomy 5:11] Many people mistakenly interpret this as a law against using the word “God” in profanity, but it is much more. It is a commandment that says, “do not swear to anything in the Lord’s name unless you are telling the truth.” It is about saying “so help me God” in oaths and solemn vows, not about cursing.  Nevertheless, using God’s Name or Jesus’ Name in profanity is universally considered wrong by Christians, whether it is forbidden in the Ten Commandments or not.

When the Hebrew people came to live in the land of Israel, they honored God’s Name in their worship: “O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples. Sing to him, sing praises to him, tell of all his wonderful works. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.” [I Chronicles 16:8-10]

We honor the Name of Jesus in the same way. But what is Jesus’ “real name?”

The English name, “Jesus,” is based on a word that is the same in both Latin and Greek:  IESUS (Ἰησοῦς). Did Jesus speak Latin or Greek? He lived in Galilee, a Roman province, so he may have understood at least some of the Latin spoken by the army officers and government officials there. Most of the merchants and traders throughout the Roman world used Greek as their common language. As a carpenter, Jesus may have needed to use Greek in his business. But the Gospels offer no proof that Jesus ever spoke Latin or Greek, so there is no confirmation that anyone ever called him IESUS, either.

At home and with his friends, Jesus spoke the language called Aramaic, and the name that people called him in Aramaic was “Yeshua.” Following the custom of Jews at that time, his full name was Yeshua bar Yosef (“son of Joseph” in Aramaic).

Yeshua is the Aramaic version of the Hebrew name, Yehoshua, the name that we translate into English as “Joshua.” Thus, on the day of his circumcision, which we remember today, the son of Mary and Joseph was actually named after the great hero who led the Hebrew people across the River Jordan and into the Promised Land after they had spent 40 years wandering in the desert. [Joshua 1:1-2 & chapter 3] It was an impressive name, and one full of meaning:  Jesus, Joshua, IESUS, Yeshua, and Yehoshua all mean the same thing:  “savior” or “deliverer.”

What about “Christ?” It is not Jesus’ last name; it is a title. The Greek word christos (Χριστός) is the same as the Hebrew word mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ), or Messiah. Both words mean “the anointed One.” Fully translated, Jesus’ Name is “the Savior, the Anointed One.”

All this brings us closer to an understanding of what Jesus’ Name is, but why do we say it is “holy?” In Philippians, chapter 2, Paul quoted an early Christian hymn of honor to Jesus: 

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who,

“though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself and became

obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth

and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.”

[Philippians 2:5-11]

You may have noticed that some Christians bow their heads whenever the Name of Jesus is mentioned in worship. This custom is a direct response to this verse from Philippians. Why such honor for the Name of Jesus?

Jesus’ Name is HOLY. It is like God’s sacred Name, except that Christians are allowed to speak it. In fact, we want to shout it from the mountain-tops!

Jesus’ Name is POWERFUL. If we turn from our wicked ways and proclaim that Jesus is Lord, God will forgive us our sins and save us from the punishment that we deserve [II Chronicles 7:14]. We can proclaim with the well-known hymn, “all hail the power of Jesus’ Name!” [words by Edward Perronet (1726-1792)]

Jesus’ name is COMFORTING. As a hymn written by John Newton reminds us,

How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear; it soothes our sorrows, heals our wounds, and drives away our fear.

And so, we celebrate the HOLY NAME OF JESUS today. We do this because his name is sacred, because it is our source of comfort and strength, and because it possesses the power to conquer sin and death.

Let us remember to keep this Name holy, to call upon it whenever we need it, and to respect the way it has been cherished and honored by all the generations before us.

In his Holy Name, let us say, Amen!

---

¹NOTE: The little dots that you see under the Hebrew letters have created a major confusion. Because the word YAHWEH was too sacred to pronounce out loud, Jews developed the habit of saying “Adonai” (“the Lord”) whenever the text said “YAHWEH.” To remind them to do this, the vowel sounds of Adonai were written under the consonants of YAHWEH (Hebrew does not have letters in its alphabet for most vowel sounds, so they were added later as reminders below and sometimes above the consonants.) During the Reformation, some German Protestant translators mistakenly added the vowels of Adonai (E-O-A in Hebrew) to the consonants of YAHWEH (J-H-V-H—because in German, the sound of Y in English is made by the letter J, and W is pronounced like the English V) and coined a
brand-new word that was never actually used as God’s Name: Jehovah. [For a more detailed explanation see here.]

Whatever you did...

Feast of Christ the King (Last Sunday after Pentecost)
Matthew 25:31-46
 
Today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew is the only place in the entire Bible where the Jesus talks about the Last Judgment. It may seem strange that Jesus never mentioned such a momentous event anywhere else, but that is the fact – only Matthew’s Gospel talks about it, and only in these 16 verses.

And what happens at the Last Judgment, as Jesus portrays it? Are people punished for every kind of sin? Is there a distinction between red states and blue states, between rich and poor, between those who believe in gay marriage and those who oppose it? No!

 

The only basis on which Jesus says we are to be judged is in this simple statement that Jesus gives us: whatever you did or did not do to “one of the least of these who are members of my family” you did or did not do to Jesus. [Matthew 25:40 & 45]

 

Let’s say that again: we will be judged on what we did or did not do to the least among us. Nothing else. There is no reward for holding the right set of religious beliefs, the proper morality, the correct theology, for being on the traditional, conservative, radical, or liberal sides of any question.

 

Now, I would never attempt to “boil down” the entire Gospel of Jesus to this one statement, and I don’t think that this is the only thing that Christians should do. But I do recognize that it was important enough for Jesus and Matthew to specifically describe what is expected of Christians. I also think that we are wasting a lot of time and squandering our salvation by fussing and fighting over things that do not matter in the end. The only thing that really counts is what we who call ourselves followers of Jesus do to one another, and for one another – especially for those who are “least” among us.

 
Two weeks ago, we heard the Beatitudes, also from the Gospel of Matthew. In them, Jesus said a lot of folks were blessed, but he didn’t list any of the people who are mired in conflicts of one kind or another today. Instead, he only talked about the poor, the meek, the hungry, the thirsty, and so on. Jesus was telling us what to do – in order to do for him – by doing for the least.
 

I don’t know about you, but this is both reassuring and frightening for me. I don’t go through life worrying about what will happen to me in the Last Judgment, but perhaps I should – and so should we all.

 

Christianity has become extremely complicated over the centuries. What started out as a few simple principles – Jesus is the Son of God, he came to save us, he died and rose from the dead, we are saved by believing in him – has gotten very complex. Almost from the very beginning, Christians got deeply involved in fighting with one another about the “details.” The first big division was over the question of whether a person had to be a Jew first, before they could become a Christian, meaning that those who weren’t Jews had to be circumcised and only eat kosher food, and so forth.

 
Not long after that, other divisions arose. By the time that Christianity became the majority religion in the Roman Empire, bishops were excommunicating each other over the mechanics of how Jesus could be both God and man, which books belonged in the Bible and which ones didn’t, the proper title for Mary, and how the Holy Spirit fit into the Trinity – among many other things.
 
It seems that people lost touch with Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel: whatever you do – or don’t do – to these, you do – or don’t do – to me.
 
So when someone rejects another because that other person doesn’t hold the same beliefs about the Trinity, or because that person’s theology doesn’t match the majority, or because that person has a different take on marriage or ordination, that person is actually rejecting Jesus. It’s that simple.
 
Jesus brings this right down to the most basic level: I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, I was naked, I was sick, I was in prison. These situations describe the most helpless among us, those whom we might be tempted to blame for their own fate, or to avoid because they don’t come from “proper society.” And to do that would be to fall right into the trap that our own foolishness sets for us.
 
Now, don’t get me wrong. A lot of the controversies we face today can be drilled down to our relationships with one another. When we take a stand on gay marriage, we could be putting one interpretation of scripture above the needs and feelings of some of the least among us – those rejected by a powerful majority that finds their orientation unsettling. When we decide what we believe about abortion, we could be forgetting to think about those among us who are directly affected: the woman and child involved. These are not moral or theological issues, so much as they are issues of how we treat others – and through them, Jesus.
 
One of the things that I notice in Jesus’ list of people who were helped and rejected is that there is no value judgment applied to any of them. Those who were hungry, thirsty, naked, and so on could all be saints or sinners – and they were probably both at the same time.
 
Imagine, if you will, that we could see the face of Jesus on every gay person who wants to get married, every woman who wants to have an abortion, every unborn baby that dies in an abortion. What, then, would we say? I don’t know if our response would be different or not, but I think it would say a lot about us if we could stop and picture Jesus in others more often.
 
We might come to the same conclusions that we hold today. We might not behave any differently in the long run, but we would be doing so for the “right” reasons, instead of for emotional, intellectual, or political ones. I can’t imagine that we would feel it was pleasing to Jesus for us to say to a hungry person, “go get a job, so you can buy something to eat,” or to a naked person, “you should be ashamed of yourself, go put on some clothes.”
 
This is a brief picture that Matthew gives us of the Last Judgment. I am not surprised that no other Gospel tackled describing it. But I am also amazed at how simple the decision is: either we did to others what Jesus expected, or we didn’t. There is no defense, no extenuating circumstance, no excuse for failing. Thank God, there is mercy and forgiveness, but knowing that our sins will be forgiven is never an excuse for committing them without regard for the consequences.
 
I don’t know about you, but the next time I see a person who is hungry, thirsty, homeless, rejected, I will look at that person differently. I will try my best to do what we all promised in our Baptismal Covenant: to seek and serve Christ in all people. “Seeking” means “looking for and seeing” Christ in everyone, and serving Christ our King means serving our brothers and sisters as best we are able. May God give us the grace to do this. Amen!

What Does God Expect of Us?

The Parable of the Talents
Matthew 25:14-30
 
The first thing that we need to address in this parable is “what is a talent, and how much was it worth?” I went to Wikipedia for answers. The talent, or tálanton, was a Greek measure of mass, like a pound or a kilogram. In various cultures using it, the weight of a talent varied between 57 and 71 pounds. In Judea of Jesus’ time, however, it was quite a bit heavier – it weighed 130 pounds. A talent of something was always valuable, but a talent of gold or silver, which was used as money, was extremely so. In today’s inflated world economy, 130 pounds of gold is worth more than $3.7 million! Even in Jesus’ time, it was a lot of money. It was approximately nine years’ salary for an ordinary workingman, or enough to pay an entire ship’s crew for one month. Finally, because of this parable, the word “talent” came to mean a skill or an ability in our language.

But let’s not allow the use of this word, or the great value of a tálanton, to distract us from the message of Jesus. This parable is, after all, the last that we will hear in this Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary. It is, in a sense, the last word of Jesus for us this church year (because we celebrate the Kingship of Christ next Sunday).

In telling this parable, our Lord was emphasizing the responsibility of every Christian to “be all that you can be” as the U.S. Army used to say. I want to be very clear about one thing: Jesus was not glorifying the making of profits or of doubling your money. This parable is not about being a good investor, except to the extent that we invest ourselves into what we do.

That’s another interesting word: “invest.” Just what does it mean?

Invest comes from Latin investire, which means “to clothe” – to put on clothing, raiment, fine array. Similar words include “vestibule” – a place where clothing is put on and taken off, and “vesture” – a word for fine clothing. Another meaning comes to us from French investir, which describes surrounding an enemy with ships or troops to prevent escape. I am reminded of St Paul’s words in today’s Epistle: let us put on “the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” [I Thessalonians 5:8] Paul admonishes us to clothe ourselves properly in order to do God’s work in the world and to surround people with God’s love.

Let’s tie these ideas together. Jesus speaks of a king who entrusted his servants/slaves with talents and then left them on their own. Upon the king’s return, he rewarded the servants who had invested and produced something with their talents, and he punished the servant who did nothing except keep the talent “safe.” What is the context for this parable?

In the Gospel of Matthew, which we often refer to as being written for (and by) the Jewish Christian community in and around Jerusalem, the theme is often something that is particular to that culture. Without suggesting any kind of stereotype or prejudice, let us just say that the idea of making money by investing it was familiar to Matthew’s audience, whether they were Jewish, Roman, Egyptian, or Greek. It is not a novel idea – many of our most troubling issues today are related to people desiring to make a lot of money.

This parable contains characters and concepts that were undoubtedly important in Matthew’s time, but it also provides a message and meaning that only those “on the inside” would fully understand. We have a rich king who entrusts his wealth to servants. We have two servants who fully understand what the king expects of them – namely, to increase his wealth. One servant apparently is more trustworthy or has a longer history of success, because the king gives him five talents ($17 million or thereabouts). The second gets two talents, and the last only one. Right away, we might suspect that the king does not have a lot of confidence in this last servant, because he is not given much to work with. The “insiders” – the Jewish-Christian community to whom Matthew wrote – saw themselves as entrusted with a great treasure (the Gospel) and expected to be held to account for how they invested/planted/spread it when the King returned.

What about you and me? How much has God given us to work with? Does that in any way reflect the amount of love that God has for each of us, or the degree to which God believes that we will work for the kingdom? I don’t think so.

When I think about myself, if I am honest, I recognize that there are a few things that I do well and many more that I do poorly or not at all. In this parable, I first get the impression that it’s not important how many talents God has given me, but rather how I use them. Even if I have only one talent, that’s not an indication that God doesn’t have high expectations of me. On the contrary, I think that it means that I am expected to do just as much with my one little talent as a person with many, many more.

Setting aside the “editorial comment” about the servant with only one talent being lazy, or that he should have entrusted it to “the bankers” (not a popular idea today), we can still see one clear point: what we have comes from God, and for a reason. That reason is not so that we can enjoy ourselves and live wealthy lives. Rather, God gives each of us gifts that are meant to be shared with everyone around us.

I often find it helpful to think about God in the same terms that I think about human parents, who love all of their children but also see realistically what they should expect from each unique child. God gives us challenges. Sometimes these come in the form of unpleasant situations, but other times they come in the form of unexpected joy or success. In these latter cases, it is most important to keep a certain perspective. It is fine to rejoice and be happy that God has given us something wonderful. It is also fine to use it, to enjoy it, and to give thanks to God for giving it to us. However, we must not stop there. We must ask ourselves a few questions: why did God give me this? what am I expected to do with it? how can I use this in ways that God intended? It is these kinds of questions that would have led the last servant to be more thoughtful about how he used the talent that the king left him.

The many layers of meaning in this parable are easily fuel for many hours of thought and reflection, but focusing our attention on the word “talent” and the use that it came to have in English should help us drive down deeply into the message that God wants us to learn.

We have a responsibility to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to strive for justice and peace among all people, to respect the dignity of every human being. [Baptismal Vows, The Book of Common Prayer 1979, pp 291-292]  We may not have a lot of resources (or we may have many), but the point is that it is our duty to use them as God intends, for God’s purposes. This is a good and important message for us to hear, now that we are near the end of another church year. May we take it to heart, and may our King give us the grace to invest wisely and multiply our talents, all in the service of the kingdom and our fellow creatures. Amen!

What Happens When We Die?

The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls' Day)

November 2

What happens when we die? It’s a great mystery, but you would think that it had been settled a long time ago. Didn’t Jesus explain everything? Well, yes and no. He made the promise of everlasting life very clear, but he wasn’t so clear about all the details. For that reason, sincere Christians have been wondering about it ever since.

If I may be so bold as to try to summarize a very complex and contentious subject, there are three major categories of questions about the subject of eternal life. They are (1) when does eternal life begin? (2) who receives eternal life? and (3) what happens to everyone who doesn’t believe in God and Christ?

When does eternal life begin? The Scriptures are not clear on this. It appears that Jesus hinted that it would begin very soon, perhaps as soon as he ascended into heaven (see today’s Gospel, John 5:24-25), but this may be the interpretation of the apostles and early Christians, more than anything definite that Jesus actually said.

Saint Paul seems to believe (I Thessalonians 4:13-17 & I Corinthians 15:51-52) that we all fall asleep when we die. Then, no matter how much or how little time passes, when the resurrection of the dead occurs, it will look to us like it’s only been a moment since we went to sleep. In other words, there is no heaven for anyone yet.

Who receives eternal life? A corollary to this is: is the opposite of heaven hell or eternal death? In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” [John 5:24] Thus, it would seem that hearing and believing are all it takes. But what does that mean? How does one hear Jesus’ word? Is reading it in the Bible enough? What about those who never have the opportunity to hear the word? Are they automatically excluded? And what about believing? Does it mean once, at the moment that we hear the word, or forever thereafter? And what happens if we have moments when we aren’t sure we believe? If we happen to die in one of those moments, do we not have eternal life?

Is eternal life the same thing as heaven? Don’t people in hell also live forever, just in torment and misery? Is the opposite of eternal life simply that when those people die, everything is over for them? The New Testament has evidence on both sides of this question. John 3:16, one of the most quoted verses in the Bible, seems to say that there are two options: either you die or you have everlasting life. On the other hand, Revelation 20:15 says “whoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire” along with the devil and the evil prophet (the Antichirst). Thus, eternal life may not be what Jesus was promising, but rather eternal life spent in a pleasant place instead of a lake of fire.

What happens to those who hear the word of Jesus but still don’t believe in God and Christ? We have to begin by acknowledging that God can do anything God wants, all the way from absolutely rejecting anyone who isn’t a Christian, right up to automatically making everyone a Christian the moment they die. In between, we have God’s love and mercy to consider, as well as the many mansions that Jesus says are in his Father’s house [John 14:2].

What does all this say about the God in whom we believe? Do we believe in a judge for whom everything is black and white – either you believe or you don’t, either you’re saved or you’re not, either you live forever or you die forever?

This is by no means an exhaustive or even careful treatment of this difficult subject. In fact, there is an entire branch of theology called eschatology, which deals with the “last things” such as heaven, hell, resurrection, and eternal life.

On this day when we remember the souls of all the faithful departed (or is it all the departed, faithful and otherwise?), does it really matter what happens, when, and to whom? What is the real message of Christianity on this special feast day?

When I read, “the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God” [Wisdom of Solomon 3:1], I think it must be that God’s love is all-powerful and eternal, that God created each of us in order that we might know and love God, and that if we do that, God takes care of the rest, whether we understand how it works or not.

I prefer to focus on the positive things that we believe and to view the less inclusive things as products of a nascent Christianity that was trying to differentiate itself from its ancestors and its competition, as well as to offer its members hope and assurance in troubled times.

Like most people, I do not know for certain what will happen when I close my eyes for the last time. As Paul said, if we know something, it’s not a matter of faith: “we see through a glass, darkly” [I Corinthians 13:12a]. Faith is needed for those things that we cannot know, despite what some of our Christian brothers and sisters might insist is knowable.

Instead of insisting on knowledge and certainty, I turn to faith and trust. I know that God loves me, everything else I believe, because I know that one thing. When I look for specific details, I find very few, but that doesn’t surprise me. I have no right to demand to know now, but one day all will be revealed (“but then I shall know even as I am known” [I Corinthians 13:12b].

And you know what? When that day comes I probably won’t care any more, because being with God forever is better than anything we might know or wish to have explained. I have a strong feeling that no one actually goes up to God and asks questions. It simply doesn’t matter to them any more.

So we pray for the dead, and we ask them to pray for us. Our community of faith includes the Church here on earth and the Church that is with God, whether right now or at some time in the future. On this All Souls’ Day, let us remember Jesus’ words in John 5:25 –  “the hour is coming, and is now here” – both – when we will all hear the voice of the Son of God and live. Who needs more than that?

Those who trust in him will understand truth,
and the faithful will abide with him in love,
because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones,
and he watches over his elect. [Wisdom of Solomon 3:9]^*

Where Is Your Mountain?

Feast of All Saints

November 1, 2011

I have a new friend who is a priest in the Anglican Church of New Zealand. He is a member of the Māori, the people who were living in the land of Aotearoa, as they name it, when the first British ships arrived in 1642. When he introduces himself to non-native people, he says, “Hello, my name is ...” But when he introduces himself to a member of his own people, he says something very different:

My mountain is Wharepuhunga.

My river is Mangaorua.

My ancestral canoe is Tanui.

My tribe is the people of Raukawa.

My family are Ngati Huri.

Our ancestral house is Huri.

He recently wrote to me about this special form of introduction, and I’d like to share some of the reasons behind it with you:

For me, this is how I introduce myself. My name is not what is important, nor is anything that I may amount to; for I am only here by the grace of God and the work of my ancestors. By introducing myself in this fashion I tell people who I am without mentioning my name. As I do this, I unfold a theology that is based on geography—on physical facets of the land.

The Māori word for land is whenua. This word has other meanings, namely that of the placenta which feeds and sustains an unborn child. In that light, land is not a commodity. It cannot be sold or treated as a possession. Land is sustenance; both physical and spiritual. My spiritual journey begins with my land. This is the land the sustained my ancestors, and the land that they have left in my temporary care. It is my duty to ensure that this land will sustain my children.

My mountain, Wharepuhunga, is a place of deep spiritual significance to me. From here you can see across that land that has shaped my being. In Matthew chapter five, we read of the Sermon on the Mount—a sermon that declares that among the meek, the merciful, the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, are blessed children of God. This important event happened on a mountain. While many scholars seek to understand the meaning of Jesus’ words, I seek to understand His choice of location. An obvious point is that He went up the mountain to be seen; which may seem a simple thought and gesture. But there are deeper implications of revealing oneself, of being seen. My mountain serves as a revealing symbol of my people, and it also reveals who I am. I think, in Jesus’ simple action of going up a mountain, we can begin to explore why He was concerned with ensuring He could be seen and heard.

As my mountain stands proudly as a symbol of my people, so too does my faith in Jesus Christ. [excerpt from an email received from my new friend]

On this All Saints Day, we hear the reading of Matthew’s version of Jesus’ preaching, which we call the Sermon on the Mount. Every time I have ever preached about this passage, I have concentrated on the words that Jesus spoke, their meaning, and their application to our lives today. I will still do that somewhat, but my new friend's words have drawn me to focus our attention this time, not so much on Jesus’ words, but on his location—on a mountain.

I have lived in the Allegheny or Appalachian Mountains for almost 20 years. I grew up in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. I think I have always been drawn to mountains as a special place—one where I feel most at home. I love the ocean and enjoy every visit, but I cannot see myself ever living there permanently. The mountains call to me; they feel right to me.

A mountain is a special place for me. As my friend says, “you can see across that land that has shaped [your] being.” Jesus “went up the mountain to be seen; which may seem a simple thought and gesture. But there are deeper implications of revealing oneself, of being seen.” Many events in salvation history have taken place on mountain-tops. Abraham took Isaac up a mountain, thinking that God wanted him to sacrifice his son there. Isaiah hid in the cleft of a mountain as God the Omnipotent passed by. Moses met Yahweh in the burning bush on a mountain. He later received the Law from God on Mount Sinai. David and Solomon build God’s Temple on Mount Zion. Satan took Jesus to the top of a “very high mountain” [Matthew 4:8] and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth in order to tempt him. Jesus in turn took Peter, James, and John to a mountaintop where they witnessed his Transfiguration. And Jesus was crucified for us on the mount called Golgotha.

It is no surprise then, that Jesus would go up a mountain in order to teach this important lesson to his followers. From the mountainside, all could see farther and better than when they were down below. One of the things that I most love to do at my home in the mountains is to stand on my deck in the morning and watch the light arrive in the valley below. It starts at the top of the mountains on the opposite side, revealing the trees and rocks. It creeps slowly but surely down the slope, shining God’s light on everything. Finally, it fills the valley and begins to warm and nourish all living things.

God’s light and love work a lot like that, too. That’s why I like to be on the mountaintop to experience it. Then I can carry it down as I go, deeper into a world of woe and sorrow.

Jesus’ words took a similar path. Looking out at the crowd that had followed him up that mountain, he saw their suffering and felt their pain—and he told them, “Blessed are you poor in spirit; and you who mourn. Blessed are you who are meek, who hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness. All who are merciful, peacemakers, and pure in heart—you, too, are blessed. And blessed will you all be when people persecute you and revile you for your faith in Jesus.” [Matthew 5:3-10, paraphrased]

How could Jesus promise such things? Was it because, from his vantage-point on the mountaintop, he could see more clearly than we who are stuck in the mire at the bottom? Could he rise above the things that distract us, the pettiness, the jealousy, the fear, the discrimination—and teach us to do likewise?

The Māori people have always had a close association with mountains; as my friend's words show, each has his own “family mountain.” It grounds and roots him in his personal history and the history of his people. In the same way, we all have the mountain on which Jesus preached. It roots us in the truth of our faith, whenever we face opposition and even death. It grounds us in the long history of our brothers and sisters in Christ, going all the way back to Jesus’ very words. It raises us up so that we can see above the things that seem to separate us from the love of Christ – which Paul assures us can never really happen.

But we can’t stay up on the mountain and hide. We go there as much to be seen as to be refreshed. A lamp on a stand shines brightly; one hidden under a bushel basket is wasted. [see Matthew 5:15-16] Jesus didn’t preach there on that mountain and then never leave. He used his time on the mountain to fortify himself and his followers, and then he led them back down into the “real world” where there was much work to do.

With all the saints, you and I can enjoy our time alone with Jesus, our breaks from the challenges and struggles of this world, including poverty, mourning, feelings of powerlessness, the hunger and thirst for righteousness that seems to never be fulfilled, and the persecution and rejection of ourselves, our faith, and our values by a secular, selfish world. But that is not where Jesus stayed, nor can we. Saints and sinners, we must live in the world and bring the light of Christ to it. Until we “from our labors rest,” [The Hymnal 1982, #287, vs. 1] we must do the work that God has given us to do. And we know that we are not alone. We are knit together “in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of [God’s] Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” [The Book of Common Prayer, Collect for All Saints Day]

May God continue to give us mountains of our own – places where we feel inspired and connected to God and one another, places that we call home, and places from which we can be seen and go forth to love and serve the Lord, and God’s people.

Amen!

The Rule of Christ

Year A + Proper 18 (RCL)

Matthew 18:15-20

Radio and television preachers are a lot like politicians – they think they have to say what their audience wants to hear, or they will lose their ratings (and their jobs). That makes it easy for them to stake out a position and dig in their heels. They hope that, in so doing, a majority of their listeners will support them (and keep sending money).

Jesus was the opposite of this. He never hesitated to tell people things that they did not want to hear. Today’s gospel is a good example. The Jewish laws of justice, retribution, and compensation were very elaborate and clear. If you offended someone or harmed them in some way, you had to pay a specific price in order to make amends.

In some denominations, such as the Old Order Amish and Mennonites, a person who violates the sense of the community, and refuses to repent, is shunned – not only denied membership in the community, but actually considered dead. Roman Catholic canon law required a similar punishment as the most extreme form of excommunication until 1983.

Today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew has sometimes been used to justify this practice, or others less severe but just as one-sided.

The fundamental question for us is this: was Jesus telling us that some members of the church could or should be kicked out? If so, what are the criteria for deciding when to do this, and for determining which party to a dispute is in the wrong?

The Rule of Christ, as this passage is often called, is actually focused on setting things right, not triumphing over an adversary.

It rests on a foundation of reconciliation and caring about the welfare of the person who has offended. In addition, Jesus is more interested in the health of the community, the ecclesia (Greek for “assembly” or “church”) than that of any one person – and that includes both the offender and the offended.

Discipleship entails sacrifice. Jesus told his followers to give up almost everything, to go out without money or food, to take only enough clothing to get by. Their mission was not to live comfortably, but to bring the Good News of the Kingdom to one and all.

But Jesus was also a realist. When he sent the disciples out two by two, he gave them permission to accept that, sometimes, their message would not be received. In those cases – and he must have expected the disciples to try everything possible before using this recourse – they were to simply walk away. Shaking the dust off their sandals was not meant to be an expression of disgust or rejection of those who would not receive the word. Rather, it was a way of saying, “get rid of everything that you are feeling about this situation; just put it behind you and learn from it.”

In the same way, the last recourse in Jesus’ Rule is that the person who has offended and utterly resisted change should be treated in a particular way: “as an outsider (Gentile, non-Jew) and a person you don’t want to associate with (tax collector).” [Matthew 18:17 ] That may seem harsher than all the rest of what Jesus has been saying, so let’s look at it closely.

How did Jesus himself treat Gentiles and tax collectors? Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, we find one example. A Canaanite woman asked Jesus to heal her daughter. At first, Jesus said “it is not right to give the food for the children to the dogs.” [Matthew 15:21-28] It seems that he was calling her a dog and reflecting the commonly-held view of Jews of his day – that they were superior to the Gentiles. However, that did not last more than a few seconds. Jesus ended up by praising the mother (“Woman, great is your faith.” [Matthew 15:28]) and healing her daughter.

If we look closely, we see that Jesus’ relationship with Gentiles and tax collectors consisted of three things. First, he reached out to them. He went to where they were; he associated with them (though doing so sometimes violated Kosher laws); he even dined with them. In no way can we find a single example where Jesus kicked them out of his company, sent them away, or otherwise rejected them. What about tax collectors? Jesus not only associated with them, he called at least one to be a member of his inner circle.

It sometimes seems that those who say “what would Jesus do?” are people who are not really asking a question at all – they have already made up their minds, and guess what? – according to them, Jesus would do exactly what they have decided to do! If we want to know what Jesus would do in cases where a person just won’t change his opinion or make amends, we have only to look at the gospels. The only people whom Jesus rejected were the “church people” of his day – the scribes and Pharisees, the people that society assumed were the “correct” ones.

So, let’s summarize the theology of this passage from Matthew. First, the emphasis is on working out a difference for the good of the whole community. Rather than publicly disputing or accusing, the two parties are expected to meet privately and try to work things out.

If that doesn’t work, a small number of others, presumably people who are respected by both parties or who are particularly objective or good at resolving disputes, are brought in.

If that, too, fails, then the matter is brought before the whole ecclesia. Once again, the emphasis is on healing the entire community, not purging it of bad influences. The crux of Jesus’ teaching is that, if despite all this, the parties to the dispute will not agree, then they are to be treated like the very people to whom Jesus reached out the most often – Gentiles and tax collectors. The ecclesia’s response must be to eat with them, to be involved in their lives, to continue to offer them the promise of the Kingdom, and to offer them the opportunity to repent and change, seventy times seven times and more.

The clearest indication of the true meaning of this isolated passage comes when we look at what came immediately before it, and what follows it.

Matthew 18:10-14 is the parable of the Lost Sheep, in which Jesus says “If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?” [Matthew 18:12] Can there be any way to read this and conclude that a community is permitted to abandon a lost sheep?

Matthew 18:21-22, which immediately follows our passage today is the brief scene in which Peter asks Jesus how many times he has to forgive his neighbor. We all know what Jesus’ answer to that was!

Taken in context, and looking closely at the fate of the offender as described by Jesus, we can see that, rather than shunning or rejecting those with whom we disagree, we are actually called to forgive without limit, to work to bring back the lost sheep, and to treat that person as a very special member of God’s Kingdom.

And why in the world should we do this?

Because we realize how easy it would be for one of us to be that lost sheep, and because we have already been taught that we will be forgiven only as much as we ourselves are willing to forgive. Amen!