End Timers' Dead End

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent  29 November 2015

Jesus said, “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.”   Luke 21:26a

“Wh-e-e-e-e-re will it enduh?” Pastor Lovejoy’s lament.

Pastor Timothy Lovejoy, The Simpsons’ American Reformed Presbylutheran minister of The First Church of Springfield. Rueful he is about many things, not the least of which is the “tall Episcopal church across the street.” Where will it end?

Where will it end? Or how ─ with a bang or a whimper? Or when: today, tomorrow … when you least expect it … when Michele Bachmann pronounces “any moment now” or the next fundie Svengali to come along purports to pinpoint the year, the day, the hour of The End ─ just in time to cash your tax-free gift?

Where? How? When? They’re pretty much all the same question. And, in the run-up to Christmas, it’s the question the Season of Advent poses and struggles to answer, or, at the very least, brings to our attention. Just where, when, how will it end?

And what is “it” anyway? The planet? The universe? The lives and cultures, the parties and politics, the religious systems (or lack of them) of people we don’t happen to agree with?

If you follow the whipped-up hysteria of fundamentalists of any stripe, The End of everything-as we-know-it is the point when God sees everything and everyone going to hell in a handbasket, and God says, “Enough is enough! It’s payback time!”

Or, if you prefer a more purely secular approach: Galaxies and stars, solar systems, planets and moons come and go. When is The End for our speck in a sea of stars?

Or, as some suggest, is The End merely our own, personal end? Length of days depleted. Mortality, when we must yield ─ freely or kicking and screaming ─ to the regrettable inevitable: death by dying.

But whatever we think is the focus and scope of finitude, we most likely can settle on one issue: In a cause-and-effect universe, The End surely can’t just come out of the blue. There are data and phenomena ─ what edgy religious folk call “signs” ─ leading up to The End. Even Jesus seems to advance the idea of signposts along the way, pointing to a “time appointed.” And it doesn’t look pretty.

But most of the doom-and-gloom soundbites these days are sucked up by “The sky is falling! Jesus is coming soon! Look busy!” apocalypticism. It reads as “We are living in the End Times.” This is just clock-ticking talk. But there’s a lot of it.

For example ─ to be really immediate (and, to a certain extent, trivial) ─ never mind Friday’s mass shooting at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. Never mind the carnage in Paris, Beirut, Egypt, and Mali. The problem, some imaginatively suggest, is Black Friday. They charge that Black Friday is proof we’re in the End Times. If you fall for this, don’t count on being around to return anything after Christmas, or even paying off your shop-till-you-drop credit card.

That’s the opinion of ‘The End Times Prophecy Report.’ A graphic on their website gloomily trumpets, “Black Friday: Tis the Season of Greed. “It’s a recipe,” they scowl,“for the brawls, fistfights, and other displays of extreme greed featured on Black Friday, the most appropriately-named day of the year.”

I never thought the day would come, but I’m with them on the “extreme greed” critique, although I can’t fault folks for bargain-hunting. But when bargain-hunting turns into body-slamming and fisticuffs and literally-crushing fatalities, I mean, if you’re at all sensitive to Jesus’ assertion that heading toward The End, “neighbor will turn against neighbor,” you might be inclined to stay home and opt for online shopping. Or opt not to shop at all on Black Friday, as a protest against mercantile manipulation.

So, on the greed-as-greed front, I’m with ‘The End Times Prophecy Report.’ But then, as you can imagine, they go off the rails and we part company. “Black Friday,” they agitate, “is just another spectator sport for apostate church-goers who prefer to keep alive the lie that they are Christians.”

Okay … I had never thought of looking at it that way. I thought Black Friday was a way for retailers to get a head-of-steam going into the cash-cow holiday season.

But for the apocalyptical crowd, shopping apostasy is prelude. Prelude to The End. Duly noted.

And yet, earlier this weekend, I, too was thinking, “Where will it end?” … not in an End Times sense, but in a “how low can we go,” face-palm take when I was hit with the headline: “Cards Against Humanity Makes $71K on Black Friday by Selling Absolutely Nothing.”

Cards Against Humanity. It markets itself as a “party game for horrible people.” This billing is, of course, all part of the fun … because it is wildly popular, attaining cult status … perhaps because its fill-in-the-blank format lampoons circumspect speech by making the players say truly outlandish things ─ things they would never dream of saying in polite ─ and educated ─ company to get points.

The tone starts with their FAQ sheet. Asked a perfectly reasonable question, they’re dismissive. Basically, “If that’s your question, you’re too stupid to play this game.”

The point is to make the game humiliating, embarrassing, and self-revealing. Because it’s such don’t-take-yourself-too-seriously fun, I doubt Cards Against Humanity has been much of a hit among the End Times crowd … except when it comes to knocking the legs right out from under Black Friday. That’s because for all-day Black Friday, Cards Against Humanity offered a holiday deal unlike any other. Shell out $5 … and get nothing in return ─ absolutely nothing (zero, zip, nada).

How much money did they make in Black Friday sales? Over $71K from roughly 11,200 “buyers.” Modest in comparison to the take of big-box stores. But that $71K: that’s where it gets interesting. And gives a bit of insight into a different reading of The End than the End Timers try to pawn off, or any of the other options we’ve listed so far.

In other words, that $71K could help us understand how God might answer “Where will it end?”

Now, Cards Against Humanity is known for their charitable fundraising. Over $4 million so far, including full-ride scholarships to women getting degrees in science.

But this year, who got the money, the $71K-plus? From their website: “We're happy to announce that this time … we kept it all.”

Greed to the End Timers’ tune of apostasy? Not quite.

Sure, there’s team member Amy. She used some of the money to pay off 1.5 percent of her $100K-plus student debt. And she bought a PlayStation or two. But she earmarked most of her take for charity: the Wilderness Society and the Greater Chicago Book Depository.

And Henry. Among other gifts for himself, Henry set aside a big bundle for dinner-for-two at an obscenely swanky Chicago restaurant with the plea, “Oh God, please, someone eat fancy food with me!” By his own admission, Henry would be pathetic, except he also gave most of his share to DonorsChoose.org (they purchase essential supplies and computers for students and schools). He also gave generously to Planned Parenthood.

Matt used his haul to purchase a MacBook Pro with Retina Display, but most ($2.5K) he gave to Planned Parenthood.

You get the idea. Obviously, many of the spending decisions were made in the aftermath of the mass shooting at the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs on Friday.

But the trend here is: They made their giving decisions with an eye toward changing the future ─ positively ─ for their neighbor … revealing the truth that Cards Against Humanity isn’t anti-humanity … but pro-people, pro-planet, pro-aware, pro-facts, pro-science … pro-sanity! Giving us pause to wonder, when we look at the raw and soaring hope that underpins their giving patterns, “What if The End isn’t all fire and smoke, earthquakes and hail, plague and pestilence?”

What if The End Jesus is talking about ─ once you get past all the astrophysics and seismic predictions designed to get our attention ─ what if Jesus’ point isn’t fear and trembling, but longing and action: a New Advent of charity … sparked with urgency? In other words, taking ─ on a dare ─ Jesus’ challenge to love, and embracing his urgency to make an end to all the stuff that diminishes our lives and the lives of our neighbors.

Meaning, an end ─ The End ─ achieved not by the impatient and violence-laced intervention of a “launch-the-auto-destruct-sequence” God, but by the persuasive movement of God’s Spirit in the hearts, heads, and hands of men and women everywhere … outstretched toward our elbows-rubbing neighbors, as well as our lumbering neighbor, the planet.

What if The End, then, is a realization ─ our own realization ─ long past realized by God ─ that “enough is enough!” As the Italians would say, “Basta!” Enough!

Read: Women and men mowed down in the everyday course of seeking basic ─ and legal ─ healthcare. Enough is enough!

Guns ─ military-grade assault rifles ─ everywhere. Enough is enough!

Children ─ all over the planet and in this, the most resource-rich country on earth ─ going to bed hungry … getting up in the morning, hungry … enduring the mid-day … hungry. Enough is enough!

Black people and other minorities targeted by cops for harassment, unwarranted arrest, choked, gunned-down to the point that they’re forced to conclude their lives don’t matter. Enough is enough!

Immigrant neighbors labeled by fact-deficient and morally-bankrupt demagogues as rapists, drug dealers, and criminals. Enough is enough!

Theatregoers enjoying the pleasures of the City of Light ─ any city or place ─ cut down and blown to smithereens by abyss-visioned extremists. Enough is enough!

Where, then, will it end — the “fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world”?

It ends the moment we believe that an end in fire and smoke isn’t inevitable.

It ends the moment we let sanity, critical thinking, cool heads, charity, action, God’s New-Advent Spirit prevail.

It ends the moment we realize the Apocalypse isn’t near … but the need to say with finality, “Enough is enough!” is now.

Amen.

"Massacre"

Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.”

Mark 4:35b

3,446. That number resides now uneasily with the number 9: the number of innocent black men and women ─ ranging in age from 26 to 87 ─ murdered in cold blood last Wednesday evening in Charleston, South Carolina.

3,446. As the New Yorker’s David Remnick points out, “Between 1882 and 1968 ─ the year Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated ─ 3,446 black men, women, and children were lynched in this country.”

It cannot be argued otherwise. Each of those lynchings was a political statement ─ a statement about race, in particular. And a statement about ─ each perpetrator believed ─ the supremacy of the white race. That means, too, that each of those lynchings was a hate crime. Each of those lynchings was a terrorist attack designed to intimidate black men, women, and children as a class, as an entire race.

As we are still reeling amid grief, incomprehension, and soul-searching in the wake of nine sisters and brothers shot dead Wednesday evening at Emanuel AME Church ─ “Mother Emanuel” ─ in Charleston, it’s impossible for us not to conclude, as Remnick suggests, that we have witnessed a mass lynching … only by different means: a .45-calibre handgun.

But the vocabulary of the murderer is the same: “You [black people] rape our women,” 21 year-old Dylan Roof charged his victims, after he had finished the shooting. “And you’re taking over our country.”

“Our country.” Shades of the white supremacist epithets hurled at town meetings during the Obamacare debates. “We want our country back!” Read: Our country, as opposed to theirs: the country of blacks, Latinos, LGBT persons ─ all those other people not like us.

That is, if you’re not like the white-supremacist us, you don’t belong here. “You have to go,” as assassin Dylan Roof said, justifying ─ in his twisted mind ─ the Charleston slaughter.

And another armed and angry, hate-spewing citizen dispatches nine victims to join the ranks of those 3,446 lynched Americans and the gunned-down body count of Columbine, Aurora, Newtown, Baltimore, Ferguson, and Sanford.

How much longer can we go on like this?

How much longer can we go on like this as citizens of this country?

How much longer can we go on like this as followers of Jesus Christ? Certainly Jesus himself wouldn’t tolerate this status quo of carnage ─ carnage perpetuated by all-too-easy access to guns and triggered by hate.

In other words, as journalist Amy Davidson suggests, “Hate can serve as an accelerant of violence. So can a gun in the hands of a man like Dylan Roof.”

And for those who “want our country back” … for those who demand of people different from them, “You have to go” … or “You can’t vote” … or “You’re not entitled to a quality education, good jobs, and safe communities,” there is one question we have every right to demand they answer: “What will you say to Jesus Christ?”

What will you say to the Jesus of today’s Gospel: Jesus, the restless, the curious, the seeker, the explorer, the risk-taker who commandeers a boat on the Sea of Galilee and tells his disciples, “Let’s go across to the other side”? Put another way, “Let’s look at the world through the eyes of people not our kind, dear.”

Picture this: So far in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has been healing, teaching, and preaching to the people he knows best, to the people who best know him ─ people who think God made them best.

But Jesus is anxious to move on. He’s ready to move on from familiar, safe, home territory and the trap of predictability to step into the “unknown” of non-Jewish towns and villages across the Galilean Sea’s expanse to the east in order to prove that God’s Good News ─ God’s news of political, economic, and spiritual liberation ─ isn’t just for one people, one race … that it’s not just for people who look alike or even think and act alike. As a matter of fact, Jesus’ point in crossing over to the “other side” is that the Good News is designed to pull together people who neither look, think, nor act alike in order to get them to look and think and act more like God.

Bottomline: “Let’s go across to the other side.” That’s Good News.

But forces there be that just can’t take the expansive Good News Jesus broadcasts. That’s what’s going on in our story this morning when ─ once Jesus and the disciples set out ─ it’s all-of-a-sudden, small boat … wide sea … long night … BIG storm.

In other words, the storm-at-sea that threatens to swamp their boat is recorded here as a meteorological event, but it’s also metaphor. That’s because, in Jesus’ day, people think of the sea ─ the uncontrollable, unpredictable, and dangerous sea ─ as pushing back against God’s intention that every man, woman, and child live in safety, free from danger.

Now, if you look at the data ─ and not the NRA’s scandalous suggestion that clergy who don’t tote guns in church endanger their flock ─ most reasonable people would conclude, fewer guns = greater safety.

But some of those stormy forces say that this isn’t a gun-control issue at all. The Charleston gunman was deranged, they say. It’s a mental health issue.

We have absolutely no proof that the young man was out-of-his-mind. Fanatic, yes. But “certifiable”? No. We do have proof that this was a premeditated act. The gunman chose his targets and the location of the massacre fully aware of the iconic status of Emanuel AME Church in the black community and in the civil rights struggle.

And if Dylann Roof could plead insanity successfully, wouldn’t that actually point to legislating tighter gun controls to keep guns out of the hands of unstable people?

Other forces pushing back against tighter gun controls in the wake of Charleston try to say that this wasn’t a racist attack at all … that, in fact, because the gunman targeted a church, the shootings were an attack against Christianity and religious liberty (all of a piece with the ludicrous charge that religious liberty is under systematic attack by the push for same-sex marriage, among other progressive causes, like equal protection under the law).

Look. Dylann Roof appears to be a Lutheran in good standing, according to his pastor. And by the perpetrator’s own admission, it was a racist attack. Like many other gun-toting ideologues of his ilk in the past, he pointedly stated that he wanted to start a racial civil war. He wasn’t out to shut down any religious institution in this country, except maybe black churches as historically safe havens for people of color. But the capital-C “Church” wasn’t his target.

And then, there’s the unconvincingly bespectacled (but affable) presidential candidate who maintains that what happened in Charleston was just an “accident” … that the shooter was high on drugs … that, again, the rampage had nothing to do with racism.

Well, we’ve already proven that it was a racist attack. And we have no indication ─ so far, at least ─ that this was just a drug-driven, random, impulsive attack. No, it was planned far in advance. We know that.

Factoids: Dylann Roof went to Emanuel AME Church Wednesday night, knowing that there would be a Bible study/prayer meeting going on. He asked to see the pastor, the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was also a state senator. Roof was welcomed into the group, as indeed people of all races and colors are at Emanuel. Roof sat next to the pastor. Almost decided against opening fire on them all because, he says, the people at Mother Emanuel were so nice to him.

But, at length, Roof started arguing with the pastor about black people. Then he took out the gun and kept firing until he did, as he said, “what he had to do.”

Premeditated, fatal racism: before … during … after.

So, there are those stormy critics who would prevent us from asking, “How much longer can we go on like this?” It’s easier not to address racism. Easier to let the good times roll for the gun manufacturers. Easier to keep the base riled up with specious threats of religious liberty under attack. Easier to stay on this side of the shore.

But the critics make easy targets for folks like me. They make it easy for us not to address our own racism. Make it easier for us to say that we don’t need to engage in a dialogue about race or even tighter gun controls in this country, because we’re already converted, immune to change.

And yet, Jesus says to us as well, “Let’s go across to the other side.”

Accompanying Jesus, then, to the “other side” means asking ourselves, “To what extent do we believe that the life of every single person in this church, in this community, in this country matters equally? Black, white, Jewish, Muslim, gay, straight, transgender, none-of-the-above. Even Dylann Roof’s life ─ so easily diminished now by his own murderous hands ─ do we believe his life matters equally?

… because we have no choice now. We have to answer these questions ─ each of us ─ for ourselves … all of us together because:

What would this country look like without a trace of racism?

What would this country look like if all Constitutionally-eligible citizens had equal access to the polls?

What would it look like if the citizens of this country had highly-restricted access to guns?

What would it look like on all these issues? In other words, how would it look like accompanying Jesus to the “other side”?

… because how long can we go on like this?

We can begin ─ now ─ to move on with Jesus, going across to the “other side” by first praying:

Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move our own hearts and the hearts of the people of this land, that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace. Then lead us, we pray, at the last, to that heavenly country, where we may be partakers in the inheritance of the saints in light, in the blessed company of the Martyrs of Charleston:

The Rev’d Clementa Pinckney
Ethel Lance
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton
Depayne Doctor
Cynthia Hurd
Susie Jackson
Tywanza Sanders
The Rev’d Daniel Simmons, Sr.
Mira Thompson

All this we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

"To Boldly Go"

Moses looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.

Exodus 3:2b

“A disruption in the space-time continuum.”

The observation that never fails to quicken the pulse of sci-fi aficionados everywhere, gifted ─ or cursed ─ with a Star Trek: Next Generation obsession.

That means ─ caught in a ‘Groundhog Day’ time loop … or frozen in time … or sent back in time ─ the crew of the Federation Starship Enterprise has encountered an anomaly: an astrophysics-defying phenomenon that their minds and the ship's computer say shouldn’t or simply can’t exist, but their data sensors say, “Yes, indeed, it does!”

An anomaly. Something that just doesn’t fit, belong, make sense. A contradiction, like a disruption in the space-time continuum ─ also known to the sci-fi fastidious as a “sub-space anomaly.”

Now, encountering a sub-space anomaly inevitably leads to complications, otherwise the Star Trek producers wouldn’t have a show. Result? The Enterprise crew just has to check it out. Curiosity resides in their DNA and probably somewhere in the Prime Directive. And once drawn in, the crew can’t get free by doing what they’ve always done … because they’ve never encountered anything like this before. Goes with anomaly territory.

The good news is: the anomaly pulls the action forward as it draws us all into the drama by compelling us to ask, “Why?” Meaning: the anomaly presents an opportunity for the Enterprise crew ─ and us ─ anyone caught in the web of “why?” to learn, experiment, and ultimately get sent back to the predictable world ─ only smarter and wiser.

Now, I doubt that Moses ─ having never graduated from Starfleet Academy ─ is even remotely fluent in Trekkie-speak. And yet, a sub-space anomaly is exactly what disrupts an otherwise ho-hum day as he’s working well below his pay grade on smoke-and-cloud-shrouded Mount Horeb (aka Mount Sinai).

Factoid: Morning, noon, and night Mount Horeb is veiled sufficiently in mystery by meteorology and mythology to incubate anomalies far beyond the reach of human imagination.

Cue special effects.

The anomaly Moses encounters? Like a star going supernova, a bush engulfed in gaseous swirls of perpetual flame, but whose integrity ─ branches, leaves, buds, bark, and roots ─ remains utterly intact. A burning-unburned bush. Now, that’s an anomaly! Just ask Neil deGrasse Tyson.

But why Moses? Why now? Why a burning-unburned bush?

Picture this:

To the casual observer, Moses himself is a glaring anomaly. Long before his seemingly time-out-of-time detour on Mount Horeb, back in Egypt he’s a Hebrew (the ethnic designation used in Exodus). He knows he’s a Hebrew ─ and yet a Prince of Egypt, having been adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. Problem is: Even among the Egyptians, he’s “out.” That is, everyone knows he’s a Hebrew, but ─ as will become obvious ─ the Hebrews disown him and the Egyptians are reluctant to embrace him.

That’s because Hebrews ─ not just the lone headliner Hebrew-Moses in the Court of Pharaoh ─ but Hebrews as a class ─ having achieved critical mass ─ make the Egyptians jumpy. They’re prolific. They’re trapped. And ─ seething under the heel of the jackbooted Egyptians ─ they’re one flash mob away from plundering the entire Upper and Lower Nile.

It’s an unsustainable situation for both the Egyptians and the Hebrews. And even more unsustainable for Moses, his two identities ─ Egyptian and Hebrew ─ at war within himself … until he witnesses an Egyptian construction supervisor beating a Hebrew worker to a bloody pulp. But this isn’t just any Hebrew worker. He’s a cousin of Moses. So, the Egyptians’ systemic discrimination against the Hebrews ─ a system Moses has heretofore supported and benefited from ─ finally hits too close to home, prompting Moses to act.

He waits for the moment when ─ he thinks ─ he’s alone with the Egyptian, except for the unconscious victim. Then checking once more to make sure there are no witnesses, he kills the Egyptian on the spot and buries his body in a shallow grave.

That should be the end of it, right? Wrong! Maybe the victim wasn’t as unconscious as Moses thought. Maybe Moses got sloppy. But the very next day, an outbreak of Hebrew-on-Hebrew violence catches Moses’ eye. And, in an effusion of Hebrew pride or just plain common-sense strategy (“How are you people ever going to take on the Egyptians if you continue to fight among yourselves?”), Moses berates the aggressor: “Why are you beating on your Hebrew brother?” The attacker’s retort? “Who appointed you ruler and judge over us? Are you going to silence me the way you silenced the Egyptian?”

To quote Rick Perry, “Oops.”

Read: Even his own people see Moses as an anomaly, an Egyptian exploiter gone-rogue.

And with news of the murder out there, it’s no time at all before Pharaoh marks Moses as a wanted man.

Now, Pharaoh’s lightning-swift condemnation of Moses, as recorded in Exodus, strikes some as unusual, given what would likely be immunity-from-prosecution extended to Moses as a member of Pharaoh’s inner circle. So, imaginative folks concocted an oral tradition that has Pharaoh gunning for Moses for a long, long time. It’s just that now, Moses provides him with a smoking gun.

As the story goes, Moses is three and old enough to be trotted out as a princeling at court. One day, bouncing on his adoptive-mother’s lap ─ next to his adoptive-grandfather Pharaoh ─ boy-Moses reaches for Pharaoh’s crown and ─ to everyone’s shock ─ seizes it and proceeds to balance it somewhat improbably on his own diminutive head. Proof ─ as the virulently anti-Hebrew faction then trumpets ─ that Moses fancies himself, even at that tender age, the Hebrew usurper of Pharaoh’s throne. “Treason!” they howl. “Off with his head!”

But in the uproar, the Angel Gabriel appears, disguised as one of the cadre of advisors to Pharaoh. Gabriel floats an idea: “Okay, people. Everyone take a deep breath. Let’s put the child to a test.”

The test? Place before Moses two objects: a mega-carat, multi-faceted onyx and a white-hot glowing coal. “If Moses reaches for the gem,” Gabriel suggests, “that will be proof positive he knew exactly what he was doing when he made a grab for Pharaoh’s crown. If he reaches for the charcoal, we’ll know he’s not old enough to entertain dreams of insurrection.”

So, the courtiers conduct the test. Of the two temptations, what does Moses go for? The onyx! Or, at least he goes to reach for it, almost certainly sealing his fate. But ─ telepathically ─ wide-eyed Gabriel guides Moses’ rapacious hand to the hot coal. And just as telepathically, the angel-in-disguise induces Moses to pick up the glowing object and thrust it to his mouth, irreparably searing his tongue!

Horrifying, yes. But there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is: Moses’ life is spared. The bad news: he’s left with a speech impediment. And that, of course, comes up later in Exodus when Moses objects to God’s appointing him spokesperson for Hebrew liberation: “Disqualified. I’ve got a speech impediment!”

Now, my hunch is that Moses ─ contrary to the story ─ had a stutter. More on that in a moment. But I’m telling you, these stories are just wild! And as disturbing as they are wild. God engineering a child’s painful and lasting disfigurement? Now, that’s an anomaly!

But back to Moses, the fugitive. He goes on the lam. And before you know it, lambs are his business as he goes to work for Jethro (not Clampett), his future father-in-law.

And chasing a lamb, as another apocryphal story goes, is how Moses ─ curiosity tattooed on his DNA ─ ends up face-to-face with the burning-unburned bush followed by an ambitious-and-yet-alarming conversation with God.

Imagine, on the one hand, Moses, an alien thrice-over: a quasi-Egyptian among the Hebrews … a Hebrew among the Egyptians … and now a fugitive from Pharaoh in foreign Midian.  Moses, who finds no home until he finds his home in God on Mount Horeb.

On the other hand, God, who values Moses’ displacement: his inability to feel at home in neither the Hebrew gulag nor the echelons of Egyptian privilege and refuge in Midian. God, who regards Moses’ displacement not as a liability, but as an asset.

Read: God positions Moses as an anomaly above and outside cultures, choosing Moses as the perfect candidate to pry oppressed from oppressor.

But Moses isn’t so sure. He comes up with all sorts of excuses why he shouldn’t be God’s bridge of emancipation. The most outstanding is: “I’m stuck on the name you’ve offered so far. If you’re suggesting I tell my Hebrew people, ‘The God-of-Your-Ancestors has sent me to spring you from my other people, the Egyptians,’ I’ve got to tell you, it isn’t going to fly. Can you come up with something more catchy?”

The name God then provides is in itself the most intriguing of the story’s many anomalies: “I Am Who I Am.” Where do you even begin to unpack that? But that’s the point. Or, as the name can also be rendered, “I Can Be Whatever I Can Be.”

God says, then, “Tell the people ‘I Can Be Whatever I Can Be’ sent you!” It’s a mouthful. And breathtaking.

That name ─ the name God provides to Moses (“I Can Be Whatever I Can Be”) ─ is the name God shares with each of us this very moment as persons made in the image and likeness of God. Not “whatever we want to be,” but the raw, gift-based “whatever we can be.”

As with Moses, that name itself is an invitation to be at home with God, no matter how displaced, alienated, isolated we may feel by impossible situations, the messes we ourselves have made, illness, anxiety, or faced with no way out. It’s an invitation to step into the future we can’t quite see now. An invitation to make the “possible” then out of the impossibilities we only see now.

Add it all up, and God is calling each of us ─ just as God called Moses ─ to be an anomaly: to not make sense when people see us sacrificing our own best interests ─ our own security ─ our own privilege ─ for the interests, the security, the remedial privilege of our disadvantaged neighbors.

Because, as the rest of Moses’ story shows ─ despite his own misgivings, his excuses, his self-messages that sell himself short ─ through the power of the “I Can Be Whatever I Can Be” God, Moses does become whatever he could be: liberator, law-giver, leader, and simple-and-yet complex follower of God, as we all can be.

And the truth of that evolution-revolution is in another story extrapolated from Exodus. Remember Moses’ excuse for not plunging into the work God had given him to do? The speech impediment that I think was a stutter? Well, consider this:

According to tradition, the person chosen by God to lead the Hebrew people out of bondage in Egypt would arrive on the scene announcing, “Pakod pokaditi.” Yes, I know. Sounds like Klingon. But to the Hebrew people, it signals: “You will be free indeed!”

Now, when Moses returns to Egypt to engineer the Hebrews’ liberation, they’re skeptical that he’s the real deal. It’s not just their suspicion of where his true allegiances may lie, but they’re well aware of his reputation as a stutterer: “Let’s watch him botch the magic words. P-p-p-p-p-p-p!”

Undeterred, Moses stands before the people. And what are the first words out of his mouth? Contrary to expectations, an anomaly: “Pakod pokaditi!” No hesitation. No anxiety. No stutter. “You will be free indeed!”

And the rest is history.

Proving that in God’s universe, we are each and all called to be an anomaly. Contrary to expectations, through the power of God’s Spirit within us, we can be whatever we can be.

“Pakod pokaditi!”

Indeed, we can all be free!

Amen.                   

"A Socketful of Miracles"

“My soul magnifies the Lord…. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.”

A young man, a lifetime of promise ahead of him. He has a run-in with the law and is unjustly punished. In the aftermath, he’s targeted as just another petty criminal who got what he deserved.

Headlines from Ferguson, Missouri?

Could be. But actually, you’re off by well over 5,000 miles and more than five centuries.

That’s because the place is Corfu, off the west coast of Greece. The time is 1530. The victim: a teen named Stephen, a native of Corfu, a Greek. The public face of the law? Simon “The Lion” Balbi, Governor of Corfu commanding the Venetian Republic’s forces of occupation.

All factors point to confrontation, but not your average police-blotter, rebel-without-a-cause dust-up. This is life-altering confrontation for Stephen, for Balbi, and for all involved in events scarred by unjustifiable violence.

Picture this: According to legend, en route from the nearby city back to his village, Stephen becomes an innocent party to a crime. Thugs he just happens to be walking beside ─ to his horror ─ rob at knife-point some other folks they accost on the road.

Loot-in-hand, the thieves hightail it. Their victims report the incident to the police. The police initiate a manhunt ─ a manhunt that comes up dry … except for nabbing Stephen, whom the victims ID as one of the perps. Guilt by association.

The police arrest Stephen and book him. In the ensuing interrogation, he vehemently protests his innocence, but to no avail. And he’s no more successful at his court appearance. The verdict? “Guilty as charged.”

Then it’s up to Governor Balbi to impose the sentence. He gives the accused a choice: “We can either gouge out your eyes or cut off your hands. Choose.”

Stephen ─ reluctantly ─ chooses the eye-gouging option. And, as is the custom in that part of the world, the sentence is carried out as a form of public entertainment. Lots and lots of people witness the whole gory business.

It’s up to Stephen’s mother to pick up the pieces. Completely unhinged by this sudden and violent turn of events, she stations Stephen outside the village church. And resorting to begging, they throw themselves upon the mercy of their neighbors. That proves to be a bust. No sympathy whatsoever. “Stephen’s a thief. He got what he deserved!”

Time for Plan B. Capitalizing on the anonymity bestowed by distance, the mother leads Stephen 18 miles away to the Church of the Theotokos in the village of Cassiope. “Theotokos.” Equals “God-Bearer,” or “Mother of God.” I think “The One who brought us God (in the form of Jesus Christ)” may be a mouthful, but is more accurate. Bottomline: Think of “Theotokos” as St. Mary the Virgin.

Now, each year at this time, I do a riff on one of the many icons of the Virgin Mary associated with popular piety: flying icons, talking icons, three-handed icons. So, wouldn’t you know, the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Cassiope boasts an icon of Jesus and his mother that, like the other icons in this yearly series, is rumored to perform miracles.

That means: crowds of pilgrims flock to the miraculous icon in Cassiope now, as then. If you’re forced to rely on the kindness of strangers who are either seeking a favor from God or thankful that they got one, a place like Cassiope known for its wonder-working icon is the place to be.

Topping the upgraded panhandling outlook, a monk at the church takes pity on Stephen and his mother, and, recognizing that they’re essentially homeless, allows them to sleep in the church for a few nights until they can extract some capital from the pilgrims.

Night falls. Before you can say, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” the heavy-lidded mother is in Dreamland. But Stephen, eyeless and restless, the pain shooting from his scabrous sockets, tosses and turns until ─ semi-conscious ─ he senses gentle fingers pressing firmly into the empty spaces only the day before occupied by his eyes.

Coming-to out of his confusion, he bolts upright just in time to see a resplendent Lady-in-Blue ─ gleaming in blinding light ─ before his very eyes. His very eyes! The Lady vanishes in an instant.

Rattled by what he thinks might a waking dream, Stephen begins to scour the church. His eyes dart here, and there, and there. “Who lit all these candles and lamps? They’re hurting my eyes!” he screams, waking his mother. She beats up on him: “First you lose your eyes. Now you’re losing your mind!”

Ignoring her, Stephen rushes over to the miraculous icon of the Mother of God ─ and I’m sure this will come as a complete surprise ─ the Madonna in the icon is the spitting image of the Lady-in-Blue who had just restored his eyes!

But here’s where the story takes a truly eye-popping turn. When Stephen’s mother finally settles down, she’s shocked to discover that his sockets are indeed now filled with new eyes and not just miraculous transplants of the originals.

How does she know? The eyes her son was born with ─ the eyes that were gouged out by the Governor’s executioner ─ were brown. Stephen’s new eyes are eyes befitting the Mother of God: blue eyes, the gift of the Lady-in-Blue.

But there’s an even better reason they’re blue. It has to do with proof.

Meaning: In their ecstasy, Stephen and his mother are making a general racket, shouting and clapping and dancing around the icon in praise of the Mother of God. The commotion rouses the monk, who’s at first quite put out ─ “How’s a guy supposed to get any sleep around here with you two carrying on!” ─ until he gets a gander at Stephen’s eyes. He doesn’t have to ask “Jeepers creepers! Where’d you get those peepers!” because he knows exactly where Stephen got them: the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary.

Then he shifts gears to “monk on a mission.” He heads straight for the Governor’s palace and ─ demanding an immediate audience ─ denounces the Governor to his face. “You, Balbi, have punished the young man Stephen unjustly. But God has vindicated his innocence by giving him new eyes through the intercession of the Virgin Mary!”

The Governor ─ more skeptical than moved ─ makes a beeline with his retinue to the shrine to examine Stephen for himself. When he gets there ─ and seeing that Stephen has a genuine pair of working eyes ─ he charges the executioner with not gouging out Stephen’s eyes in the first place.

“You want proof I yanked his eyes from their sockets?” the executioner retorts. “Here!” Whereupon he produces the eyes ─ Stephen’s brown eyes ─ the originals ─ rolling around in the bucket into which the executioner had tossed them just the day before. (Why hold on to these things? Let’s not even go there.)

Does Balbi drop the matter there and then? No. Full of remorse, he begs the young man’s forgiveness for the injustice he had inflicted upon him. Moreover, the Governor makes good on his regret by showering Stephen with gifts and by becoming a surrogate father to him.

And a short time later, acknowledging the role of the Mother of God in the affair ─ and highlighting her agency as “Mary, Mirror of Justice” ─ Balbi does a make-over of the miracle-working shrine at Cassiope.

What a great story, a great story for a day like today … because justice ─ giving to people what they are owed as persons made in the image and likeness of God ─ is the founding principle of the life, ministry, and intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she who professed, “My soul magnifies the Lord…. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Consequently, as the Governor discovered, central to our observance of the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin is her clarion call to justice and our robust response to that call: for starters, righting imbalances of disadvantage by ─ like God ─ sending “the rich away empty.” For example, by means of nonviolent income- and opportunity-redistribution.

And, I’m thinking here particularly of the demands of justice triggered by events in Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal police shooting of unarmed, 18 year-old Michael Brown … and the light that is now shining on the pervasive and rampant racism in that St. Louis County city … echoes of our own subliminal and overt racism. Fact is, Ferguson’s racism isn’t unique. It’s just more concentrated, but neither more nor less toxic than racism that hits closer to home.

Now, while it’s easy to take sides based on our own knee-jerk biases, I think it’s simplistic to be 100 percent for or against Michael Brown at this point … 100 percent for or against the officer who shot him, Darren Wilson.

And I think it would be inappropriate to litigate this tragedy from the pulpit (or from a blog, for that matter). The case for litigating this tragedy with finality in any venue at this point is inappropriate, because there are too many unanswered questions ─ questions that have absolutely nothing to do with Brown’s potential criminal involvement in stealing cheap cigars from a convenience store and roughing up the store clerk.

For example, questions raised by reporter Nick Wing of the Huffington Post:

How and why did Brown end up dead in the middle of the street?

Was Officer Wilson justified in shooting down Brown?

Did Brown really assault the officer in his vehicle and reach for his gun, as police claim?

Did Wilson fire the fatal shot while Brown had his hands up, as other eyewitnesses claim?

How does this incident play into the broader trend of police using excessive force on unarmed black males?

Now, I’ve drawn some parallels between the Stephen of legend and the reality of Michael Brown:

Stephen was unjustly accused. Stephen was unjustly punished. Stephen suffered unjustly. And yet, thanks to the Blessed Virgin Mary’s reversing a gross miscarriage of justice, not just Stephen’s eyesight but his eyes ─ or a pair of eyes not his own ─ designer eyes built according to the Virgin’s specs ─ were better than restored.

Michael Brown was ─ according to most witnesses ─ unjustly accused. Michael Brown was unjustly punished. Michael Brown, after once shot and pleading, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” suffered unjustly, gunned down by Darren Wilson.

But unlike Stephen’s eyes, Michael Brown has not had his life restored. Michael Brown is dead.

And we need answers. Michael Brown, Darren Wilson, the Ferguson community, all. All are owed answers. All are owed justice, the justice that is the Virgin Mary’s passion. Justice for persons accused, punished, and suffering unjustly. Justice: what, in God’s book, we are all owed.

Today, then, we ask the Mother of God to join her prayers with ours as we pray for justice in Ferguson … in Gaza … justice for Christians and Yazidis and all minorities in Iraq … justice for victims of Ebola in western Africa. We pray ─ with our Mother Mary ─ for justice that will bring an end to racism in our own communities and in our own hearts.

And may the Holy Mother of God ─ the Mirror of Justice ─ direct our prayers to the throne of God ─ God, who brings down the powerful from their thrones and lifts up the lowly.

Amen.

“This Is Not Who You Are!”

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “I have seen God face to face.”

Genesis 32:30a

The mirror doesn’t lie.

Or does it?

“Mirrors reveal truths you may not want to see,” writes journalist Natalie Angier. On the other hand, she suggests, “Give mirrors a little smoke and a house to call their own” ─ a carnival’s House of Mirrors ─ “and mirrors will tell you nothing but lies.”

Mirrors’ ability ─ under certain conditions ─ to trigger truth-telling or lying: It’s what makes them fascinating to researchers.

For example, subjects tested in a room with a mirror have been found to work harder, be more helpful, and less inclined to lie, cheat, and scheme compared with control groups performing the same exercises in a room without a mirror.

All you ‘Downton Abbey’ fans, think here Sarah O’Brien, Lady Grantham’s perennially-plotting maid. Spoiler alert! … Oh, wait a minute. This goes back to the finale of the First Season. If you haven’t caught it by now, what are the chances? Cancel spoiler alert.

In perhaps the most eye-rolling of the series’ stockpile of you’ve-got-to-be-kidding plot twists, a full 18 years after the birth of the last of her three daughters, Lady Grantham is pregnant … just after we’ve spent the entire season trying to marry off heir-apparent Lady Mary to keep the estate in the hands of the family. If the child turns out to be a male ─ meaning: male heir ─ fickle Lady Mary can rot in spinsterhood for all anyone cares.

But there’s a complication: Guaranteeing there will always be a tomorrow at Downton, O’Brien ─ bitter, bitter O’Brien ─ believing (erroneously, it turns out) she’s about to be given the pink slip, ensures that Lady Grantham will slip on a brick-of-a-bar of soap as she steps out of her bath. Intended result? Miscarriage.

But at the last minute, O’Brien passes a mirror. In it, she catches her own eye and weighs what she sees: “Sarah O’Brien, this is not who you are!” She rushes to avert the tragedy she herself has set in motion. There’s a scream, a thud. Too late.

But her eye-ball-to-eyeball interaction with her mirrored self? “Sarah O’Brien, this is not who you are!” In other words, “mirrors reveal truths you may not want to see.”

Proving that not only do everyday mirrors not lie, cheat, or scheme … they help us not to lie, cheat, or scheme.

That means, mirrors matter.

And in the story of Jacob wrestling with a shifty stranger, there’s a mirror hiding in plain sight. And it matters.

To see why, let’s recap: Jacob ─ on-the-lam, tricky Jacob ─ is tricked himself into marrying Leah, a woman not at the top of his dance card. Chalk this trickery up to Laban, Jacob’s uncle and Leah’s slippery father ─ every bit Jacob’s equal in the no-good-scoundrel department.

But after some heavy-handed negotiating, Jacob also gets to marry his heart-throb ― Rachel ― Leah’s younger and infinitely more attractive sister.

Now, here’s new data: Over the next few years, Jacob fathers 11 children with his two wives … and their maids. (It’s a complex family by our standards.) And in one episode after another, Laban’s already tenuous relationship with ethical behavior gets so shaky he’s beginning to give indicted former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife a run for their money. Well, actually the money in question isn’t theirs … and that’s the problem!

At any rate, Jacob decides it’s time to uproot his family and return to his roots. He sends advance word back home: "I'm on my way!"

But there’s a problem brewing at the old homestead: Esau, Jacob’s older twin. And the twins aren’t only yin and yang ― Jacob got the brains, Esau got the brawn ― but 20 years before, Jacob cheated Esau out of his mega-bucks inheritance. And Esau ─ who took a contract out on Jacob back then … has an impeccable memory now.

And yet, to his credit, Jacob attempts to hit the reset button by softening up his brother with extravagant gifts of livestock. Picture the outer perimeter of Esau’s territory: Breaking the distant horizon, one herd after another advances. Esau’s outer guard to the first oncoming herdsman: “Whose herd is this?” “Why it’s Esau’s, courtesy of his brother Jacob.” It passes by. A little while later, another herd approaches. “Whose herd is this?”  “Why it’s Esau’s, courtesy of his brother Jacob.”  It passes by. And another appears. Over and over again this happens. Very Lawrence of Arabia.

Problem: As Jacob takes the bribery route, the beefy brother with a beef plans a family reunion ― a reunion that involves 400 of his crackerjack, jack-booted “security advisors.”

And that’s why, on the eve of his meeting with Esau, Jacob sends his family just ahead of him over the border (the River Jabbok), deploying them as human shields: a cease-fire buffer between him and Esau’s armed militia.

That brings us to an episode that leaves just about everyone in head-scratching mode: Night falls. Jacob is alone. But not for long.

À la Harry Potter, a mysterious stranger apparates out of the darkness. Not an angel ─ at least in the Genesis telling of the story. And for reasons that aren’t entirely clear ─ for reasons that aren’t clear at all ─ Jacob and the stranger begin to wrestle. And they wrestle. And they wrestle. All night they wrestle.

Just as the match appears to be tilting in sweaty Jacob’s favor, the stranger ― with a mere touch! ― dislocates Jacob’s hip. Foul!

It’s only then that Jacob begins to suspect there’s more to this stranger than meets the eye. So he keeps him in a head-lock, employing his legendary grip.

The dawn’s rays pierce the sky. Beads of sweat course through the stranger’s grimace. Jacob refuses to let go until his adversary gives him a blessing.

But instead of a blessing, the stranger barely manages a question: “What’s your name?”

Answer? ‘Jacob.’ In some quarters: ‘Cheat.’

The stranger changes the subject. And in the spirit of “what kind of a name is Cheat?” he gives Jacob new name: ‘Israel’ (read: ‘Struggled with God’) “because,” the stranger says ― and here’s what they call in theater the “recognition scene” ─ “you have striven with God (God!) and with humans and have prevailed.”

OMG! The cheating stranger is none other than … God!

What a story ― a story Old Testament scholar Hermann Gunkel said was “worthy of a Rembrandt” ― and Rembrandt did indeed paint a picture of Jacob wrestling … with an angel ― but as “enigmatic as Mona Lisa.”

“Enigmatic” because the story raises more questions than it answers, the principal one being: Who won? That’s unclear.

But even more important: How seriously can you take the story?

As history, you can take it with a grain of salt. Because it’s not history. It’s a folk tale. It has all the trappings of folk tales about tricksters and cheats: all the way from Ulysses tricking the Cyclops to any number of scallywags trapping a leprechaun ― with a little bit of Dracula thrown in. I mean, God afraid of the dawn? What is this? A Bela Lugosi restrospective?

Well, yes, sort of. That’s because the story is reverse-engineering. It attempts to explain the time-honored name of a place: Peniel (meaning ‘God! Face-to-Face’). It’s like Scratchy Bottom in the UK. Why? Why ─ of all possible names and combinations of letters and words ─ why Scratchy Bottom? There’s got to be a story.

Same here. That is, pre-dating Jacob’s nocturnal adventure, the more ancient story-behind-the-story of Peniel likely involved a god ─ or dawn-dreading demon ─ guarding the river and challenging anyone who wished to cross (a hero!) to a grunting, face-to-face wrestling match. And it’s recycled here to fit into a story about a hero-founder of the people who would take his name: Israel. Only now, the seams between the lost-in-the-mists-of-time myth and the legend of Jacob are beginning to show.

But that doesn’t matter. The sheer illogic of it confirms that it’s a legend. And if you go to a legend like ‘Jacob’s Wrestling Match with God’ looking for theology, well, you've come to the wrong place. Because not everything in the Bible ― and not much in this story! ― is about theology.

For example:

Here, God appears as a human-in-the-flesh. Why, then, do we need Jesus, as in “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail th’ incarnate Deity”? Kiss ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ ─ kiss Christmas ─ good-bye!

Here, God can’t quite seem to break free of a run-of-the-mill wrestler’s headlock. Whatever happened to the ‘Lord God Almighty’? Sure, the Lord-God-Almighty meme raises all sorts of questions about human freedom, but God caught in a headlock?

Here God is so weak ─ and so weaselly ─ God resorts to cheating. Really, why on earth would you believe in a God who cheats?

So, it’s not great theology. It’s not theology at all!

But it is a great folk tale … because it showcases how the budding hero Jacob  learns something about himself: sleaze.

It’s a whack up the side of his head: “Wake up! Look in the mirror!”

And that mirror appears the moment Jacob and his opponent (God!) are gridlocked: face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, heaving breath colliding with heaving breath. And God does exactly what Jacob has always done when he can only get by stealth what he can’t come by honestly, and that is: cheat!

At that moment ― when, with the lightest touch, God dislocates Jacob’s hip ― at that very moment ─ in his shock and pain, Jacob sees not the face of God as we have come to know it in the face of Jesus Christ … but Jacob’s own cheating face ― the face that has prevented others (especially his brother) from receiving what by right is theirs, otherwise known as ‘justice.’

That is the most shocking “recognition scene” of all. A mirror of mistakes. Mistakes: what James Joyce called “portals of discovery.”

But that’s good news. Because it gives Jacob a portal of discovery, a mirror that doesn’t lie.

And there’s more good news. Jacob survives to live what he’s learned. “I have seen God face to face,” he says, “and yet my life is preserved!”

This most improbable folk tale, then, is our invitation to wrestle with God. Truth-in-advertising: it’s a dicey match. Just at the point you expect to encounter the face of God, you’re likely to confront your own face in a mirror.

And what you see may not be pretty: what you’ve done to prevent neighbors different from you from receiving what by right is theirs … those neighbors, like you, made in the very image of God.

It may be quite a whack up the side of the head! “This is not who you are!”

That’s good news, too, because it’s not the end of our story.

And it’s not the end of Jacob’s story either. What happens next?

The wrestling match ends. The dawn breaks. The tension mounts. The brothers meet. And Jacob presents himself to Esau not as ‘Cheat’, but as ‘Struggled with God’ ─ Israel.

And in an instant, 20 long years of estrangement give way to love, a love so strong that Jacob sees a new face in the mirror now before him. For he says to his twin Esau ― and the way Genesis puts it is as moving as you’re ever likely to see ― “Truly, to see your face is like seeing the face of God!”

Amen.