Birth Cry

Acts 2:1-21

            Something is wrong with this picture.  People don’t start spouting off languages that they have never learned.  What languages?  This stuff is nonsense.  These people must be drunk.   So runs the first anti-Spirit argument in the Church’s history.  Or at least the first argument that we know of.

            The Day of Pentecost.  Not one of those twelve disciples of Jesus got up that morning thinking that anything very amazing was going to happen. It was the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Weeks so-called, that took place seven weeks after Passover. It commemorated the Giving of the Law at Mount Sinai.  Whatever else Pentecost was about, it certainly was never on anyone’s mind that the festival of Jewish national and religious identity was going to be a time when the doors were blown open, the breath of God palpably breathing life into a community, and the outbreak of Divine Fire of the kind not much seen since Moses’ famous burning bush.  The very experience of Pentecost turned out to be international, multi-cultural, and pan-ethnic, not a national holiday celebrating that chief of all Jewish sacredness, the Torah.  Jesus had promised that the Comforter, the Advocate would come. He had promised that power from on high would clothe his community.  But no one expected anything of this sort to happen.

            It is ironic that this mind-blowing experience would take place in the middle of a festival celebrating the Law.  Religion specializes in law, in regulating human conduct, in policing morality.   People frequently suppose that religion, of whatever sort, is actually about making people good, with some believing that if we get to be good enough we will qualify for everlasting life.  It is quite a shock to find out that God is not tamable, quantifiable, willing to be sequestered under the confines of human categories and schedules.  No, by God!  If God wants to rush in like a mighty wind, unleashing dreams and sparking visions, then God does just like that.  God is not only lamb, but tiger; not only dove, but eagle; not only fragrant incense smoldering in a smallish pot, but a great big bonfire so hot it will roast your skin if you stand too close to it for very long.

            Isn’t it rich?  No one believes prophecies very much until something happens and people run scurrying to the books and charts of antiquity to find out whether there was ever anything like it, or any prediction of it.  So that is what they did, I think, on the morning of Pentecost sometime around the year 29 CE, best we can calculate.  They said, “Aha! Here is it in the Book of Joel, which of course we read every day.  ‘The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.  (All flesh!) And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.  Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.”  If you keep reading you will find yourself in the thick of language describing events that signal the end of one world and the beginning of another, things that clearly fall outside history or even future history.  What Joel says and what happens on Pentecost is that God can never again be said to be apart from people.  God has filled them with good things, and they will never be the same.

            Now it happens that the Holy Spirit did not just appear out of nowhere, but in fact had been around forever.  The Holy Spirit had brooded over the darkness of the primeval waters of creation.  The Holy Spirit had been that Wisdom that emanated from the Creator as stars were bursting into flame and planets spun out of the cosmic breath.  The Holy Spirit had spoken by the prophets.  Jesus himself had been driven by the Spirit into the wilderness after his baptism.  He had returned, filled with that same Spirit.  His whole life had been a spirit-filled life par excellence.  And all of those things are bits and pieces of the story that we tell about how God is not only the Source of all things, but God is somehow present in everything, in everyone, and everywhere.  The Holy Spirit is the code word for talking about God being in the here-and-now.  There was never a time that God was not, just as there is no place where God is not.  The Eternal is now.

            Pentecost is not only a day and event that happened once upon a time.  Nor is it an annual chance for the church to act wacky as if somehow that is what the Spirit of God is up to.  Pentecost is the experience of being filled if you are empty, of being brought back to life if you are a huge pile of dry bones, of finding yourself if you are wandering about aimlessly, of being empowered to live a life of service if you are in the hole of selfishness, of finding your flesh tingling with exquisite sensations if you have been dead to bodily joy, of being electrified and vivified if you have been hopeless.  And it is more.

            What better day to celebrate New Birth than the day when this whole community called Church was born, wailing its birth-cry in myriad languages, dripping with joy, its timidity melting in the flames that settled on every head?  What is going to happen when, in a moment, David and Theodore are plunged into the waters of baptism (would that we had a font big enough to bathe them both in water deep enough to resemble the burial of Christ in the tomb, which is what it is supposed to look like!)?  What is going to happen to you when you arrange yourselves around the font and ultimately feel drops of water falling on you like showers of grace and blessing?  Will you shudder with excitement that the Spirit of God comes upon you, freeing you, strengthening you, leading you to the Truth of who you are in your deepest Self?  Will you miss the connection between the Spirit and the Water and the Power and Source of your life?  Will it be just another day, when you say the same things in the same tone of voice that you have said as long as you can remember?  Or will it be as if you suddenly find your voice, and a language that comes from somewhere deeper than your brain, stranger than your dreams, in which you simply cut loose and say, “Yes!”? 

            I am not trying to talk you into pretending to be impressed on Pentecost in a way that is not real for you.  But I do believe that the Spirit of the Lord God is running through this place right now, as powerful as if it were high voltage, and stealthy as if it were a silent ghost.  And it is not because today is somehow special and singular.  It is on the loose every day.  You have only to let yourself be open:  open to the power that is already yours.  And in due time, that Spirit will make out of you and out of us all a people that will do amazing things.  Be open.  And just you wait and see.

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2014

Joy

John 20:1-18

            But as yet they did not know the scripture that he must rise from the dead.

            Had he not told them?  How could he not have said what to expect?  But their world had no place within it for a crucified Messiah, and none at all for a Messiah who was raised from the dead.  So they could have heard it from him a dozen times and been no more prepared. 

            For if the resurrection is anything at all, it is a surprise.  Long before it is anything at all about life after death for you and me, it is a surprise.  Before it is ever a subject of debate or a theoretical construct or a stumbling block to those who know nothing outside the provable and verifiable, it is a surprise. 

            They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.  Sometimes the surprise is bad news.  And you know that bad news, because one or more times, perhaps myriads of times, you have heard it or felt it or seen it.  You heard it when some voice said, “Malignant.”  You saw the doctor shaking her head and heard her say, “I’m sorry.  We did everything we could.”  You went to work one Monday morning and found a pink slip you could barely look at.  You opened the envelope that read, “We regret to inform you…”  You heard it when he looked at you and said, “Divorce.”  You answered the door in the middle of the night and there stood two men in military uniform.  Someone had taken away your Lord, your life, and you had no earthly idea of what to do, nor how to do it, because you did not know where they had laid him. 

            And it was all the harder because day was about to break.  It is hard to die when all the birds are singing in the sky.  It is hard to see anything to celebrate when your body is battered or your whole world is shattered.  So all you can do is just cry.  “Why are you crying, ma’am, sir?”  Because they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him.

            If your heart has never been broken, you are in for a surprise.  It assuredly will be.  And all those stories like the binding of Isaac will make sense because you will know that you are living them.  And the Passion of Christ will no longer be a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.  You will see that the betrayal, the denial, the flight from reality, the last somber supper with what is left of your life are the stories that you could write because they are yours. 

            The impulse is to run.  Not necessarily to run away from anything, but to run to see what the siren is screaming about, or what the origin of the blaze is, or what has brought about such pitch-black darkness.  We don’t think twice before we run to see if it is true, this terrible tragedy.  Disciples run. At times like that we do not necessarily recall what the scriptures say, if indeed they say anything at all.  Certainly no stock phrases do us much good.  No pat answers comfort us.  And there is no time to untangle all that stuff that we have not figured out of the meaning of.  All we know is that what we had clung to and loved and wanted to go on forever is suddenly dead.  Unbelievable.  Does no one understand?  Pain is isolating.  Grief more so. 

            The scene befuddles.  There are the grave clothes where the body should be.  And there is the little napkin, all rolled up in a place by itself.  There is the slab on which the corpse had lain. Little mementos that meant nothing two days ago—a pair of shoes he played golf in, her apron hanging on the kitchen door, the little trophy sitting atop a pile of papers on her desk, his toy from two Christmases ago—things so insignificant, grave clothes, napkins, signal loss.  The world is messed up, turned around, out of joint, O cursèd spite! 

            The sun keeps rising. 

            Is it really what we thought?  It can’t be true, can it?  Let me look one more time.  She stoops, sticks her lantern through the small opening, sees two angels.  Oddly she is neither frightened nor comforted.  What difference do angels make when they have taken away the Lord of angels?  And, like all the people yet to come around bringing their platters and platitudes, they ask a stupid question, “Why are you weeping?”  Are you not an optimist?  Can you not see that this is just a passing moment, that everything will get better?  Et cetera.  She says what is beginning to sound like a mantra.  “They have taken away my Lord,…”  She wants to spit out the words but they stick in her throat with the sobs.

            Then, a presence.  Crouched down in the little anteroom of the tomb chamber, she can see the feet of a man outside the tiny doorway.  Whose feet they are she does not know, but they look like the feet of —must be the cemetery caretaker, the man that trims the bushes and whitewashes tombs.  She hears him ask like all the others, “Why, why…?”  And she finally thinks that maybe he can help because maybe he knows.

Don’t you understand her flash of hope?  Maybe at last there is something, some doctor, some treatment, some source of money, some something that can fix it, fix him or her or me.  And in a rush of words, not yet looking up or out of the tomb, she says, “If you have taken him away, tell me, and I will…”  I will.  I will. 

            Something like an eternity goes by between her last word and his next one.  Like C. S. Lewis’ bus trip one day in London, we start the journey not believing in anything, and get off the bus fully convinced that everything we thought was backwards.  He called it, “Surprised by Joy.” 

            “Mary.”

            Oh, my God.  My Lord and my God! Rabbouni!  Surprised is too light a word.  The sound of her very own name takes her breath away.  Her hand goes to her mouth and the tears momentarily stop.  She wants to hug him, hold him, touch him, but for some reason he says no.  For now she simply hears his commission, his command.  “Go to my brothers and tell them…”

            So begins the resurrection of Mary, the resurrection of Peter, and of the Beloved disciple.   Thus begins the resurrection of Tim and Barbara and Debbie and Raphael and Joseph and Tina.  Because in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, dozens and hundreds and thousands, and gazillions feel the earth quaking from some stupendous, indescribable Truth that roars when it awakens.  We all hear our names, our very own names, pronounced by the One who made us.  We are not fixed; we are changed.  We are not guaranteed anything, but loved like everything.  And we become not a bunch of isolated individuals, with only our own pain and suffering to attend to, but a community that tells, that teaches, that baptizes, that preaches, that feeds and heals and celebrates.  It is not that nothing will ever go wrong again, but that everything that could ever go wrong has been overwritten with a Power so strong it seems rather pointless to try to describe it.

            Don’t you see?  It is not his story and his resurrection.  It is theirs.  It is yours.  It is mine.  Broken, grieving, wintry hearts we continue to carry.   Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.  Scars we have and will always bear.  But the whole world changes the moment we hear something or someone uniquely calling our names.  And the only thing we know to do is to gasp, “Rabbouni!  I knew it, I knew it!”

© Frank Gasque Dunn 2014

Touch

John 13:1-35

            Jesus was never boring.  He never took his cues from what others expected.  He never feared ringing changes on the safe, the known, the conventional.  His disciples hardly knew what to make of his carrying on a conversation with a strange woman at Jacob’s well in broad, open daylight.  They couldn’t understand why he lingered several days before he responded to the illness of Lazarus.  More than once they were taken aback by something he taught or said.  But nothing shocked them more than when he got up from supper, took a basin and a towel, and began to wash their feet. 

            Jesús no estaba nunca aburrido.  Muchas veces los discípulos estaban sorprendidos por algo que Jesús dijo o hizo.  Pero nada les dejo atónitos que el momento cuándo el se levantó de la mesa, tomó un recipiente por agua y una toalla, y comenzó lavar sus pies.

            Surely it was more than an object lesson, an enacted parable, a dramatization to make a point.  Had it been only to teach them to serve others as he served, he could have taught them in words, or perhaps have bought the groceries, or made the room reservation himself, or set the table or served the food.  But, no.  He went further.  He took the form of a slave and began to do a slave’s work.  And not only menial work, but personal, intimate menial work.

            Jesús no les enseñó solamente por un ejemplo muy dramático.  Él hizo más.  Él tomó la condición de un esclavo y empezó hacer el trabajo de esclavitud.  Ni solo trabajo servil, también trabajo personal, íntimo, y bajo también.

            Long years ago there came to be in New York City a rescue mission.  When people, usually men, landed there they had arrived at their last stop before either salvation or death:  there were few choices in between.  Into the mission once came a young man, a seminarian.  He wanted to do some good for the people there.  He was ill prepared for what he saw, what he heard, what he smelt.  So awful was the stench of stale tobacco, liquored breath, urine, the rags and vapors of poverty that he could barely avoid throwing up.  “Here,” someone said, “take this basin.  Help ’em wash up.”  He tried.  He ordered them to take off their shirts.  He turned aside, averting his eyes, trying not to breathe the disgusting air. 

            Someone walked up beside him, an older man.  “Let me show you,” he whispered.  “You have to touch them.”  He began unbuttoning one man’s foul, ragged shirt.  “That’s how they learn to trust us.”

            Hace muchos años, había una casa en Nuevo York para hombres sin hogar.  Una vez, un seminarista vino allá para hacer buenas cosas para los huéspedes.  No estaba preparado para lo que veo, lo que oyó,  lo que olió.  ¡Que asco!  Él quería vomitar.  Una persona le dijo, “Toma este tazón.  Ayúdales lavarse.”  El joven les ordenó quitarse sus camisas.  Él dio vuelta su cara ausente.  En este momento, un hombre le acercó.  “Déjame mostrarte,” dijo.  “Debes tocarles.”  El hombre empezó desabrochar una camisa.  “Este es como ellos aprenden confiarnos.”

            You become a servant.  You bathe others.  You do the lowest work of all.

            Such is the motion of the incarnation.  Down, down, down comes the Word of God, until it meets the dirt out of which the human body is made.  And the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us, feeding, touching, washing, drying.  It is the way of God, this stooping, this bathing, this union.  God’s strong arm scatters the proud in their conceit, casts down the mighty from their thrones, exalts the lowly, fills the hungry with good things, sends the rich away empty.  The high come down, the low are lifted up.  God submits.  The human body is raised.

            Haces el trabajo más bajo de todos.  Este es el movimiento de la encarnación.  Más y más y más abajo, viene el Verbo de Dios, hasta que encuentra el suelo, el polvo en lo cuál el cuerpo humano fue creado.  El Verbo se hace carne y vive entre nosotros, alimentando, tocando, lavando, secando.  Es la manera de Dios—rebajarse, lavarse, crear unidad.  Su brazo fuerte de Dios dispersa a los soberbios de corazón, derriba del trono a los poderosos, enaltece a los humildes, a los hambrientos los colma de bienes, y a los ricos despide vacíos.  Dios somete a los hombres, y los cuerpos humanos están levantados.

            Let Jesus touch you, bathe you, embrace you.  How else could you learn to trust him?  He has given us an example to follow.  To become like him, follow him.  Follow, follow, follow.  Do unto others as he has done unto you.  It is the way of the cross.  It is the way out of your tomb.  It is nothing less than the Power that embraces death and brings the Body to life.

            Deja a Jesús tocarte, abrazarte, bañarte.   Aprende confiarle. Él nos ha dedo un ejemplo para seguir.  Para convertirte a él, síguele.  Haz a los demás como él ha hacido para ti.  Es la vía de la cruz.  Es la salida de tu tumba.  Es nada menos que el Poder que acepta la muerte y hace el cuerpo vivir.

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2014

Seeing, Believing

 

John 9:1-41

            Nowhere in the gospel record is it more clear that things are not what they seem than here in the ninth chapter of John.  Here is a man who was born blind.   He has never seen a thing in his entire life.  It turns out, however, that he sees a good deal more than those who have been seeing any and everything they have wanted to see all their lives.  The sightless one sees; the seeing ones are blind. 

            The story is not so much about a healing as it is about a controversy kicked off by a healing.  The controversy is really about Jesus:  who is he, what is he, and what right does he have to be abrogating God’s laws, like healing on the Sabbath?  Well, it is even more than that.  One of my favorite questions is, “What are we talking about that we are not talking about?”  This is a classic instance of people talking about the Sabbath, for example, when the truth is that the Sabbath’s sacredness is only a slice of what is they are talking about.  What really has people all upset is that nothing Jesus does fits into their ready-made grid of possibilities and permissions. 

            Let’s look at that more closely.   Nothing Jesus does fits into people’s—our—ready-made grid of possibilities and permissions.  I suspect that you might not be ready to agree with that.  Of course, you’ll say, Jesus meets our expectations!  Of course he fits right nicely in our view of the world and reality.  And that is just the problem.  Nothing Jesus does is surprising because most of us already have Jesus figured out.  Even many non-believers, indeed atheists, have their minds made up about who and what Jesus was and was not.  We lose the edginess of a story like this because we assume that if Jesus did it, it must be right.  With such thinking we tame the Good News, tamp down objectionable dimensions of things, make sure that nothing God or Jesus is up to is apt to upset us too much, fix it so that if there really is any radical element in something Jesus said or did, we convince ourselves that he couldn’t actually have meant to be uncomfortable or disturbing.

            If all of this sounds a little grim for a Sunday morning, even in Lent, allow me to explain.  There is something quite astonishing, surprising, disarming about this story, and if we are to hear what eventually we will know as very Good News, we need to shed a few preconceptions and clear our minds to think a bit outside the box.  Play around with this question:  who are you in the story?  Are you the man born blind?  Are you one of his parents?  Are you Jesus?  One of the puzzled onlookers?  One of Jesus’ disciples who might not know quite what to make of the whole firestorm?  Or are you one of the religious leaders who is quite adept at making and keeping and playing by the rules?  True, you might be more than one of these characters; but since you are in fact in a church on a Sunday morning, the chances are raised that you might be one of the religious leaders.  Think for a minute what you would do if I were to come in this morning and, instead of celebrating the Eucharist, decided to have a healing service bringing with me a half dozen or so mentally ill or physically incapacitated people, and took up the whole morning with them instead of getting to the business of worship as we know it.   I would be surprised if no one challenged me.  And if no one did, it is a cinch you would go home and hit the telephones and computers and the parish would be all abuzz about this priest who upset the Sunday morning applecart.  And that is a poor analogy to what Jesus was doing.  He was messing with people’s minds.  He was fiddling with their world-views.  He was overturning the applecart, spilling what was sacred on the ground and letting the most prized ideas just roll right down into the gutter.  He was shining light, the very light that came from himself, into the dark places that people didn’t even know were dark.  Are you beginning to get the picture?

            So if we are going to get the full impact of the gospel, we need to imagine ourselves in the place of these religious leaders who are so thoroughly angry at what Jesus did.  Why?  Because about the best thing imaginable to keep us from really hearing and thus following the Truth is for us to say, “We see.  We are not blind.  We see.  We know what’s what.”  Grace has to be something of a surprise, or it isn’t grace.  And if theology—or faith—is worth anything at all, it must be something that takes us beyond the borders of safety.  That is what Jesus does, and more that that, that is what Jesus is.  He cracks open our views of reality like the force that cracks open a planted seed, so that new life can emerge from us.  And that cannot happen if we are busy protecting ourselves, running no risks, or running scared, defensive of whatever life we are comfortable with.

            This story, you see, is a resurrection story.  It is?  Resurrection is not fundamentally about somebody dying and going to heaven.  It is about life cracking open whatever tomb we are in, life shining in whatever darkness we are in, and giving us sight where we are inly (and perhaps outwardly) blind.  That is why Jesus’ whole life was a resurrection—a trampling down of death, ultimately by death itself, and giving life to those in the tomb—the tomb of whatever sort and dimensions. 

            Do not be mistaken.  Not only does dispensing New Life lead Jesus to the cross, it makes for a good bit of difficulty for those whose blindness he heals.  When the story tells us that they “threw him out” meaning the religious authorities cast out the formerly blind man, it means that they turned him out of the synagogue, or the Temple, since this took place in Jerusalem.  They excommunicated him, in other words.  That makes the scene all the more touching when after being expelled the man encounters Jesus, who asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 

            “Who is he, Sir?  Tell me, that I may believe in him.”

            “You have seen him,” says Jesus.

            “I once was blind, but now I see,” wrote John Newton, slave trader, when he awoke to the enormity of the horrors he was party to.  “You have seen him, and the one who is speaking to you is he.”  That is the nubbin of resurrection.  If we are fortunate to have our blindness healed, enlightenment comes to us when we are sent again and again to the water of New Life in which we first bathe in baptism.  Little by little the mud is washed away and we wake up to realize that this mysterious stranger who has encountered us is none other than the Author of Life.  To believe in him is to give our hearts to him, to fall in love with him, to recognize that there is nothing more wonderful than to give our hearts, our love, our loyalty, our worship to the one who delivers us from the darkness of tomb and death. 

            In Ursula Le Guin’s story The Tombs of Atuan, Tenar was taken as a little six-year-old girl and dedicated to serve the Nameless Ones as priestess in the tombs on the island of Atuan.  She grows accustomed to living in the dark, freely roaming the labyrinth beneath the tombs where these nameless ones live.  Gradually she realizes how much of a captive she is, ironically seeing in the darkness more and more truth about the evil that enslaves her.  Into her life comes Ged, a magician who is searching for part of a sacred ring to complete the half of it he already has.  Tenar debates about whether to kill Ged or not, but finally allows herself to put her hand in his.  She leads him out of the tombs with the other half of his ring, and he leads her out of her dark life into freedom.  You do see, don’t you, that that is the same story as the gospel story you heard today?  Christ enters the world of blindness and darkness where he meets the human soul—you—me—the blind man in Jerusalem—and together we walk hand in hand into the clear light of day.  “Who is he, Sir,” that I might give my heart to him?”  He answers, “I am he.  And you have seen me.”

            If you are looking for a very simple, quantifiable gospel that you can box up like a little take-out meal, all ready to be consumed and enjoyed, this will hardly ring your chimes.  If, on the other hand, on some level you realize that there is more to this venture with Christ than meets the eye—a strange, difficult, even dangerous journey beyond the safe boundaries of conventional religion—then perhaps you get it that this story set in Jerusalem long ago is very much about you.  It means claiming and owning your own ignorance, your blindness, your poverty, your need, realizing that to pretend you can see clearly is to miss the biggest thrill of your life, namely being set free to be once more the little child you were before the forces of blindness overtook you and began to shape you till they squeezed all joy out of your body and all light out of your eyes.  It is your choice.  You can say, “We see,” do nothing more, and live the rest of your life in the illusion that you already have everything you need and know everything that you should know.  Or you can embark on a journey with the one who delivers you from the tombs you may be living in.

            Frankly, it sounds to me as if we have reached the stopping place.  But I am dissatisfied to stop here.  If you are like me, you are wondering how this all works, what it looks like, and perhaps why you should allow your somewhat stable and comfortable world to be disturbed by the entrance of Jesus the Great Adventurer who will send you on strange errands like, “Go to the Pool of Siloam and wash.”  The very point of it all is that we don’t really know—can’t know—how it works (religion is quick to tell us exactly what we must do, but that usually is how we become religious, not necessary how we come to true insight or seeing).  But there is one thing of which we may be very sure.  And that is the trustworthiness of the Guide himself, the healer, the Son of Man, and the God that he embodies.  And that is he is the Light of the World.  He did not and does not come to keep us in the dark or to send us to the dark, but precisely to give us light.  And it is in such things as bathing, eating bread, drinking wine, touching, tasting, kissing, holding, that we little by little come to life in these our bodies, until what we claim and pray is indeed true:  we live in him and he in us. 

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2014