The Way to See: Sermon on Mark 10:46-52

Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Sometimes I think I don’t give Mark enough credit. Don’t misunderstand me. I love the gospel of Mark… at times, I think it’s my favorite gospel (that’s usually when I am reading it…). I love its leanness. I love its political edge. I love its lack of a resurrection appearance, only the strange instruction that Jesus is already in Galilee, so we had better get ourselves there. I love the fragments of Aramaic, Jesus’ native tongue. Talitha cum. Eloi, eloi, lema sabachtani. I love its earliness: the gospel feels so close to the earthly life of Jesus, it's almost like being a detective on the trail before it's gone cold, as if the vague scent of nard is still in the room.

I love the so-called messianic secret, how Jesus keeps saying, “Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone who I really am.” There is a Leonardo da Vinci painting of John the Baptist, an unusual one, in that he is neither portrayed as already decapitated, nor looking like a wild man in animal skins. In this portrait he looks well, robust, and—really odd for John—he looks cheerful. He is shown pointing his right finger over his left shoulder as if to say, Not me, him. And to me, that's Jesus in the gospel of Mark. People keep wanting to label him, pin him down, box him up, and he keeps pointing his finger over his shoulder at God, and insisting, Not me, Him.

Now, having said all that, still, sometimes I think I don’t give Mark enough credit. I don’t tend to think he’s being subtly or slyly theological. But he is. I don’t think he has an overarching agenda, except for clean, clear reporting of Jesus’ comings and goings. But he has. Take today’s gospel story, the healing of blind Bartimaeus. Now, any one of us who has heard a certain hymn knows, right out front, that any time someone in the gospel goes from being blind to seeing, in a sense, they also go from being lost to being found. They are coming to faith. The gospels have numerous stories about those who are “blind” to the truth presented in the person of Jesus, and these are usually people who should know perfectly well that Jesus speaks God’s truth… people such as the scribes and Pharisees, who spend every waking moment studying or debating the Torah, or even the disciples, who spend every waking moment at Jesus’ side. These are people who should know. But, typically, they are blind to what is right there in front of them. They cannot see Jesus for who he really is. They don’t get it.

Then, along come unlikely people… really unlikely people… but after a while we realize they are the usual suspects. Sinners. Tax collectors. Women from whom seven demons have been cast out. Heck, women generally! And children. Let’s not forget them. Non-Jews. Syrophoenicians. Samaritans. These folks come along, and despite their lack of the right lineage, or the right education, or the right social status… they can see. They do not suffer from the kind of blindness that afflicts those who should know better. Blind beggars, sitting by the side of the road can see perfectly well who and what Jesus is. These unlikely characters see. They know. They get it.

So, it’s tempting to right away assign symbolic relevance to the story of the healing of Bartimaeus. The blind beggar sitting by the side of the road represents those who are most likely to be able to see the truth about Jesus: the marginalized, the nobodies. We’ve spoken of them before. Beautiful. A perfect story.

Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

But lets not be too hasty. Let’s give the story its due. Let’s look at it in context, and not simply as a wonderful little story about coming to faith (though it is still that). This story comes at the end of a section of the gospel known as the “discipleship” section. Beginning with chapter 8, verse 22, we have story after story of Jesus trying to explain to anyone who will listen exactly what it means to follow him on his way. In fact, the section begins with the healing of another blind man… a healing that is unusual in that it takes Jesus two tries to accomplish it. Between the two blind men, we have story after story of the “blindness” of the religious leaders, or the “blindness” of the disciples, who, no matter how many times Jesus spells it out for them, continue to confuse following Jesus with opportunities for power, and status, and getting some kind of prize.

Following Jesus is not about power or status or getting some kind of prize.

If we look at the whole discipleship section of the gospel of Mark, there are several things we can say following Jesus is about. First of all, it is about the business of healing and being healed, and there is a correct order to those. Following Jesus is about recognizing in ourselves the wounds and emptiness and deep need that cannot be filled by ordinary measures, that will not respond to our usual ways of making ourselves feel better, from the cookie to the drink to the impulse buy to the wrong relationship. Following Jesus is about both recognizing our deep need, and identifying the one who can offer real healing. It is about not being too proud to ask for that healing, not being too stubborn to accept it, not being so foolish as to think some other matter takes precedence over it. And then it is about turning around and being in the business of offering that same healing to others, daring to imagine that we, even we can participate in spreading it around. It is daunting.

Second of all, following Jesus is about recognizing the deficits in our own faith systems. This is where nearly everyone in the gospel—all those folks who should know better—this is where everyone stumbles, where we all stumble. Everyone thinks they have it figured out. Everyone thinks they have nothing to learn. Everyone except one man—remember him?—his child is possessed with some terrible demon, and he desperately wants the child healed, and he knows it is all riding on his ability to trust Jesus. He cries out this cry of agony, “I believe! Help my unbelief!” And that terrible admission turns out to be precisely the credo Jesus wants from him, wants from all of us. I believe! Help my unbelief! It is humbling.

Third of all, following Jesus means understanding his intentions and the direction he is taking, his way of doing things. It means not blanching when we hear him say something like, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” It means a complete reversal of all we thought we understood about power and glory. Power is in weakness. Glory is in humiliation. It is confusing.

And so the discipleship section of the gospel of Mark comes to a dramatic culmination with this healing of yet another blind man. So much blindness, metaphorically speaking. And please understand, I do not want to minimize the real effects of literal, physical blindness on someone in Jesus’ time. We say “Bartimaeus the blind beggar,” as if there were any other option for a blind man in the ancient near east. To be blind was to reside on that last rung on the bottom of the social ladder, to be unable to work, to be utterly dependent on others for your very life. Nor do I want to presume such devastating consequences for those who are visually impaired in our day and age. Blindness today is not the same as blindness in Jesus’ day. Thank God, and science, and modern educational theory, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And yet, for Jesus’ day, the image of blindness was a powerful one with a specific meaning and set of consequences. Blindness equaled destitution. And so we find Bartimaeus, whose name can be translated, “son of Timaeus,” sitting by the side of the road…which can also be translated “the Way.” The Way is also what the very earliest Christians called their faith. We call it Christianity. They called it “the Way.” We find the son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, at the side of the Way. When he is made aware that the very large crowd passing before him is made up of Jesus and his entourage, he begins to cry out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” And the people around him attempt to hush him up, to shut him down, but that only makes the son of Timaeus call out to the son of David with all the more fervor. “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Who was this son of Timaeus? He must be significant, because of all the healings in the gospel of Mark, this is the only one in which the person is named. “Timaeus” is the title of a dialogue written by Plato. It happens to be one of the most famous plays to be performed in the ancient, Greek-speaking world—the world Jesus inhabited.

In Timaeus, Plato says that all of us are blind, and only the enlightened philosopher can see. The philosopher is the one who can see [that] this world is fallen, and imperfect… It is what the philosopher truly sees which inspires [her] understanding of the truth.[i]

The son of Timaeus is sitting by the side of the Way, and Jesus and his entourage go by, and he calls out with all his might. And when Jesus says, let him come to me, he not only rises, he not only goes forward, he throws off his cloak. He throws off what is probably his only possession. Remember the wise and wealthy but ultimately sad young man who could not leave it all behind to follow Jesus… and see the contrast. See the joy with which Bartimaeus shrugs off his cloak, and his old life, and his old lack of vision. See how the only thing he asks of Jesus is to be able to see again. See how he knows he is in need of healing. See how he addresses Jesus as “my teacher,” showing us that he knows he does not know everything. See how he is willing to follow Jesus on the Way to the cross.

Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

The way to see is to know that we are wounded, and empty and in deep need of healing in all our brokenness. The way to see is to know that we don’t know, that our pre-conceived systems of faith and belief need to be re-fashioned, reformed, even. The way to see is to see the Way: the path Jesus follows. The hard path that is not about power or status or getting some kind of prize, but about service and giving and giving up the things we long to cling to.

Sometimes I don’t think I give Jesus enough credit, we don’t give him enough credit. We think we must approach him fully formed, and fail to realize it is for us to let him re-form us. We think we must be pretty or perfect or perfectly strong, and we don’t trust him with our brokenness, our need for healing. We think we need to know absolutely everything about him, or have our fully-fleshed out faith in place, intact, and we don’t trust him to teach us what we need to know. We think we can pull him along with us on whatever track we’re going, and don’t trust him to lead us on his path. But he wants us. Just as we are, without one plea. Blind beggars every one of us. Beautiful and broken, as we were created. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] Rev. James Murray, after Tom Long, Midrash lectionary discussion list, October 23, 2003.

God's Hands: A Sermon on Job 38:1-18

A subtly stewardship-ish sermon... perhaps too subtle?

"K." was baptized yesterday.

~~~

We’ve walked in to a bit of a lecture here… a scolding, really. We are hearing the voice of God as an ancient writer conceived it, and God is speaking to Job. At the beginning of the book that bears his name, Job is described as “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” And Job has all the accoutrements that go along with faithfulness and uprightness in the thinking of the Ancient Near East: he is happy and he is prosperous. In Job’s world virtue equals success. He has flocks and herds and lots of property. He has ten children who actually love to spend time together, and host one another for wonderful family dinners. But all that is about to change. When a member of God’s heavenly court—a kind of devil’s advocate figure—asks permission to test Job, God says, sure. Go ahead. Test him. Let’s see what Job is really made of.

In the twinkling of an eye, Job has lost everything. By the sudden actions of enemy armies and fire from heaven and violent winds, everything he had is gone. Property, gone. Flocks and herds, gone. Even his ten children, gone. And Job spends the next thirty or so chapters of the book that bears his name trying to figure out what on earth has happened, and defending his moral character to “friends” who are sure he must have done something to deserve all this calamity. Throughout those chapters Job questions God. Job asks that classic question: why do bad things happen to good people? Why did these bad things happen to me? Why did I lose nearly everything I hold dear—property, flocks, herds, even my children? Why? Job asks God to explain.

Job is not the only one who wants answers to these kinds of questions. When the worst happens, it seems a part of our human nature to ask why. We would like to know why bad things happen to good people, why the cancer strikes or the job is lost or the company has to close its doors. We would like to know why homes burn to the ground or are flooded beyond repair, or why someone comes to feel that their only option is to commit an act of violence. We, too, would like God to explain.

The passage we have read this morning is a small part of God’s response, though I don’t think we can call it an explanation in any sense. Rather than explaining the problem of suffering, God directs Job’s attention elsewhere. The works of my hands, God says. Look at all my hands have done. Look around you at the wonders of creation. Who did you think did all this?

…who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?—when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’? ~ Job 38:8-11

God speaks of the earth as if it were a tiny child—a newborn baby—and as God does, divine love and care for that earth become apparent. Despite the occurrence of calamity, God seems to be saying, do not doubt that I love the earth and all its creatures with the tenderness of a parent for its newborn baby.

See what wonders the hands of God have performed! In the ancient language of our faith, God’s hands laid the foundations of the earth while the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy. Or, as we might say in 2009, God tipped over the first cosmic domino that led to the Big Bang, and carefully watched over the debris that was flung from our medium sized star as it whirled itself into planets. Creation. However you look at it, in whatever terms you describe it, God is responsible for it. The mind and heart and will and hands of God fashioned everything that is. God says to Job, Look at the wonders my hands have done!

This response of God—this non-explanation—silences Job’s questioning. But we are still left with the problem of evil—the problem of bad things happening to good people. This problem is not resolved in Job, though some later author gets cold feet and tacks on a happy ending to satisfy those who insist that goodness must equal happiness. The heart of the book of Job points our attention away from suffering and towards evidence of God’s goodness, evil and suffering notwithstanding. Yes, life is hard—but look at the stars. Yes, you have lost much, maybe even everything—but look at the sea. I don’t know that it is a satisfactory answer for most of us.

God’s motives and methods remain a mystery to us, unknowable, unfathomable. But there is something we can know: we can know the works of God’s hands. We can know God as the one who commanded the morning to dawn and who has walked in the recesses of the deep. We can know God as the one who taught the trees to turn themselves into pillars of fire, and who created the infinitely beautiful patterns of snowflakes.

We can know the works of God’s hands. We can warm ourselves on a chilly autumn night with the bounty from the garden and the orchard… the savory winter squash, the glorious crisp apples. We can know the works of God’s hands. We can peer into the face of K., and see the beauty God has created, the miracle that is life, and the gifts that result from human love. We can know the works of God’s hands. We can look around us in this beautiful sanctuary and see people whom God has called together into community, we who have been joined in the body of Christ. We can know the works of God’s hands.

And then perhaps our response to the problem of evil and suffering in the world can be shifted. Perhaps instead of asking, “Why did this happen?” we can respond by asking “How can we help?” or “What can we do?” I heard not too long ago that one unforeseen result of the recession we seem to be emerging from was unprecedented numbers of volunteers, people showing up at non-profit agencies to offer their help. People who had lost their jobs have been reaching out to others who are struggling in record numbers.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.[i]

Some attribute that prayer to the medieval mystic Teresa of Avila, and some attribute it to the 20th century mystic, Teresa of Calcutta. And others tell this story:

There is a church in the UK that was damaged by the Blitzkrieg, and a group of German students went to restore the church [after the war was over]. The hands on the statue of Jesus were blown off, and instead of fixing it, the German students posted "Jesus has no hands but our hands."[ii]

Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Ours are the eyes with which God looks out and sees the suffering of the world, and seeks to alleviate it. Ours are the eyes that see the loneliness of the homebound neighbor, and make a decision to stop in to bring some flowers from the sanctuary. Ours are the feet that will walk to do good, seeking to eradicate hunger in our area by participating in this afternoon’s C.H.O.W. walk. Ours are the hands with which we will dig into hearts and pockets and calendars in order to do the work of God’s church. Ours is the body from which no one is rejected, of which every member is valued for his or her unique contribution. God has no body now on earth but ours. No hands but ours. God depends on our hands to continue the work of creation and nurturing God has begun.

Now. What shall we do with these hands of ours? These miracles of design and creation in their own right? Scripture and our own experience of the world remind us of the ever-creative, ever-caring hands of God at work. Look at what God’s hands have done! What shall we do with our hands? Thanks be to God! Amen.

[i] Teresa of Avila? Or Teresa of Calcutta?
[ii] Evangelical Lutheran Church in America website.

The Welcome Table: Sermon on Mark 8:1-10

We are receiving new members here at St. Sociable Church today, and since this will be their first time as members of a Calvin-descended church, I thought it might be fun to share just a bit of Calvitrivia, a perhaps little known fact about our history.

Many of you know that John Calvin is considered the father of our denomination. He was without a doubt one of the greatest thinkers and theologians of the Reformation. Calvin has gotten a bad rap in the modern era, a reputation as being a kind of harsh, repressive curmudgeon. I am here, first of all, to stand up for the Calvin I know and love. The man was a poet, and his poet’s heart was filled with a fervent love of Christ and the church. Listen to these words, his meditation and teaching on the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which we are going to celebrate today:

We shall benefit very much from the Sacrament if this thought is engraved and impressed upon our minds: that none of the brethren can be injured, despised, rejected, abused, or in any way offended by us, without at the same time, injuring, despising, and abusing Christ by the wrongs we do; that we cannot disagree with our brethren without at the same time disagreeing with Christ; that we cannot love Christ without loving him in the brethren; that we ought to take the same care of our brethren’s bodies as we take of our own; for they are members of our body; and that, as no part of our body is touched by any feeling of pain which is not spread among all the rest, so we ought not to allow a brother to be affected by any evil, without being touched with compassion for him. Accordingly, Augustine with good reason frequently calls this Sacrament “the bond of love.”[i]

How beautiful, and how perfect. These are the tangible effects we can hope for in our sharing of the Lord’s Supper: it is an expression of our deep communion with one another and with Christ, our deepest expression of the love we hold for one another and for God. Calvin has stated it so perfectly. And yet, followers of John Calvin instituted a practice that was, at the very least, startling in light of the paragraph I’ve just read to you. This was the practice of Communion Tokens.

There was a concern, in an earlier day, with “irregularities” in the Lord’s Supper, and by that I do not believe they meant the use of pita bread and tortillas. Rather, they were concerned that no one who was unworthy should receive the sacrament. And so a practice arose, by which the elders of the local church would visit all the members prior to their annual celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The purpose of the visit was to ensure that the members had been accurately instructed in the faith, and that they were leading lives worthy of their calling of the Lord. In this country, the use of communion tokens was common in Cavin-Descent Churches, especially those of Scots heritage, well into the 19^th century. (I don’t know for certain, but I imagine the tokens were used at St. Sociable at some point.)

This practice doesn’t exactly describe what I like to think of as “the Welcome Table.” Jesus told us, again and again, by word and by action, that God invites us to a banquet, and all are welcome. Calvin wrote so eloquently of how the Lord’s Supper should bind the community together, of the ways in which it should remind us so strongly that we are all members of the Body of Christ. It’s odd that his followers should have been such strong proponents of “fencing” the table. And, of course, use of the tokens ended eventually. Churches changed their thinking about who to welcome to the table and how to welcome them. I suspect stories like our passage from Mark’s gospel had something to do with that.

It’s déjà vu all over again! Yes, this is the same basic story we treated at length during the summer, as the lectionary served it up to us no fewer than six times. The story of the feeding of the multitudes is retold no fewer than six times in the New Testament… twice in Mark’s gospel alone. It is an event that is surely at the heart of Jesus’ ministry. It tells us volumes about how Jesus looked at and listened to and responded to people.

Jesus had compassion for the people. That means, Jesus looked at people and saw their need. Jesus listened to people and heard their pain. Jesus taught people and noticed their hunger. Jesus put his hands on people and responded to their injuries and illness. All these things are happening right here, as Jesus is in the presence of a large crowd of people who are in need, in pain. Jesus is seeking to feed people who are hungry, and heal people who are ill. Nowhere in this story—or in any gospel story—does Jesus look for a token, or check someone’s credentials before deciding to feed them. The only “credential” anyone must present is their rumbling stomach, their desire to take in what Jesus is serving. Jesus’ feeding them does not depend on their worthiness; it depends on his compassion.

As the years have gone by our church has relaxed many of its restrictions on who may receive the Lord’s Supper. We no longer require tokens testifying to people’s “worthiness.” We no longer require communicants’ classes, or that people be a certain age. We now regard the Lord’s Supper just as we regard Baptism: it is not our Sacrament, but God’s. God’s grace is more powerful than our understanding or lack of understanding. God’s grace is real and effective. God’s grace works best when we simply get out of the way, and let it flow into the world.

In the end, it is not our table. It is Christ’s. And Christ, by his example, shows us a grace that is all too willing to be spent lavishly on the unworthy, which, of course, includes all of us. Christ, by his example, sets a table that has room at it for you and for me and for all God’s children wherever they might be. Canada. Mexico. Peru. Indonesia. Afghanistan. China. Christ gives us a sacrament that can be beautifully summed up as “a bond of love,” and demonstrates that that bond extends beyond our expectations. Christ reminds us that when our sister in Ethiopia has no bread, we should feel her hunger. Christ reminds us that when our friend in OurTown has no home, we should feel the harshness of the elements on his skin. Christ reminds us that when our brother in Laramie is beaten, we should feel his pain.

It is not our table. It is the table of Jesus Christ, which is here in this place and in every corner of the world. It is not our table. But we are welcomed to it. We are received with open arms. It is not our table, but it is surely our responsibility to extend the welcome. Thanks be to God.

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[i] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960) ed. John T. McNeill, Translated and Indexed by Ford Lewis Battles, [VI, xvii, 38], 1415.

For Such a Time As This: Sermon on the Book of Esther

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It is so simple, yet it can be so difficult: telling the truth. For a long time, I hid the truth about myself. For a long time, I lived in fear that the truth would bring with it only danger, only sorrow. But in the end, the truth brought freedom, for me and for my people.

My Hebrew name is Hadassah, meaning myrtle. But I have a Babylonian name as well: Esther, Ishtar, like the goddess worshipped by those who kidnapped my people and took them into exile, the people who brought us here, long before I was born. I have two names, and I claim them both. I am a woman of two worlds. And that is why I began to keep my secret.

My story begins as another woman’s story ends. It was all the talk of the women at the well: beautiful Queen Vashti had been commanded to appear at a royal banquet by her husband, King Xerxes. The king was merry with wine, they chuckled to one another, and he ordered Vashti to appear before his banquet guests in her royal crown—and everyone knew that the king meant, only in her royal crown. At this, eyebrows were raised, and the women clucked their tongues in disapproval as they hoisted their buckets from the well. Proud Vashti refused, and so Xerxes deposed her and began his search for another Queen. The general consensus was that any woman who agreed to be the queen of Xerxes ought to be prepared for a life of such indignities.

My uncle Mordecai approached me for a dipper of water as I returned from the well, and he listened as I shared the gossip. My dear uncle had raised me from a child, ever since my parents had died. I saw a twinkle in his eye, and I knew him so well, I knew what it meant: despite the warnings of the women, this was an opportunity, not just for me, and not just for my family, but for my people. We were Jews. We were the outsiders, one of the tiniest ethnic minorities of the vast Persian Empire. We were strangers in a strange land, and we were looked upon with suspicion, even hate. Long ago we had been taken into captivity and exile… so long ago that many of us had been reared without the prayers and traditions and history of our people being taught to us. What would happen, we wondered, if a woman who was a Jew could find her way into royal favor? With my uncle’s encouragement I went and joined the throng, one of hundreds of girls to present themselves to the king for his consideration. But heeding my uncle’s warning, I kept the truth about my heritage a secret. No one would know that I was a Jew, not even those who would become my closest friends. No one would know, not even the man who was to be my husband.

What followed was a lengthy time of preparation. I do not know whether it was the legacy of having come after Queen Vashti, but we women of the harem were clearly intended to put our appearance before all else. We were schooled in beauty and deportment, we were treated with oil of myrrh and we were clothed with rich fabrics. At the end of our time of preparation, we were taken, one at a time, before the king. I never dreamed he would actually choose me, but he did. He gave a banquet in my honor and introduced me to the court.

Now, just as I took my place as the king’s bride my uncle performed an extraordinary service to him. Two of the king’s servants were talking carelessly at the gate to the palace, and my uncle was able to overhear that a plot was underway to kill the king. They spoke openly… perhaps the sight of an elderly Jew didn’t concern them… my people are often made invisible by the contempt of others. But my uncle’s ears were sharp, and before long King Xerxes was made to know that a good subject named Mordecai had interfered with a plot to kill him, and saved his life.

What shall I say about the king? He is devoted to me… that I can tell you with certainty. And I like to hope there is more to that than the blush of my cheek. I like to hope it is as much the conversation we make as my more, shall we say, decorative aspects. Is the king a good man? The Vashti incident notwithstanding, there is a kind of goodness about him, I suppose. But it is like the seeds that cling around the blossom of the dandelion. A strong wind can carry his goodness away, never to be seen again. In the case of the king, his continuing goodness depends very much on the company he keeps. And for a time, this king kept the company of Haman.

There are those, like the servants at the gate, who see my people and simply look right through us: we do not count, we are almost invisible. Then there are those, like Haman, who harbor a hatred for us that chills the blood. Haman was the king’s prime minister. He was trusted. He was respected. But he also had that dangerous kind of ego one finds in the world of politics. Haman wished, above all else, to be feared.

My dear uncle had an encounter with him that changed the fate of every one of us. Mordecai had taken his place at the king’s gate. I do not know why he favored this location, except that, perhaps, he liked to be near me, and to see whether he could hear about my comings and goings. As he came and went to and from the castle, Haman enjoyed seeing the way all the people bowed down to him… all, that is, except one: my uncle Mordecai. I do not know why he refused… our people usually show respect to rulers in this way. Could my uncle see through to Haman’s evil and murderous soul? I do not know. But for some reason my uncle would not bow, and Haman grew to hate him. As his hatred grew, he learned that Mordecai was a Jew… for my uncle did not hide his heritage, and no one in the palace knew he was my uncle. Haman thought it beneath him to vent his rage on one man alone. So he planned to kill all the Jews, throughout Xerxes’ vast kingdom. He proposed his plan to the king, all built upon a lie—that the Jews were not obeying the king’s laws. Upon hearing this, Xerxes did not hesitate to agree with his trusted advisor. The edict went out. All the Jews were to be killed.

I remember where I was when I heard the news. I was in my chamber, with my serving women, embroidering myrtle flowers on a gown of rich fabric for myself. As the women shared the gossip my needle froze just as the tip was about to pierce the fabric, to create the fifth petal of the star-like blossom. Suddenly my hands were cold, and I knew I could sew no more that day. I rushed from the palace to the gate and fell on my knees beside my uncle.

I had never seen him like this. As I have said, I was raised without the rituals and prayers of my people. Mordecai had assumed what I have since learned to be the garments of one who is mourning, and begging God to intercede with rescue. Gone were his fine clothes, and he wore sackcloth in their place. His face and head were covered with soot, with ashes, and he wailed and prayed aloud.

Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry;
give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.
²From you let my vindication come; let your eyes see the right. ~ Psalm 17:1-2

³

Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit… my uncle could pray these words, but I could not. I was the queen. I had been chosen by the king, and he did not know this basic fact about me… he did not know the truth. He did not know that I was a Jew. He did not know that, by agreeing to Haman’s plan to kill every Jew, he had signed his queen’s death warrant.

I looked into my uncle’s eyes and I could see that in his prayers he was not only asking God to intervene: he was also asking me. I explained to him what I had learned from my long months in the palace: that one did not seek an audience with the king. One waited on his royal pleasure. Anyone who approached the king without his express invitation could be killed.

My uncle narrowed his eyes. I could see that he was not convinced by my protests. He spoke to me in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, hoarse from his hours of wailing and lamenting.

“My child, you believe that you can stay in the king’s house and remain silent. But I tell you, you cannot. You believe that your silence will keep you safe, but I tell you, it will not. The Lord Almighty will never forsake his people. But that help may not arise in time to keep your neck from being broken on the gallows. Who knows the ways of the Lord? Perhaps you have been placed in the royal palace for just such a time as this. Perhaps your presence there, a Jew in the king’s own chambers, is part of God’s plan of salvation for us.”

It is so simple, but it can be so difficult. And yet, once I had made the decision, the weight of fear was lifted. I returned to my chambers and once again picked up my needle. I finished the spray of white myrtle flowers on the purple cloth of my royal gown, and I dressed myself in it. Then I went to the king. It was time to speak the truth.

You know the rest of my story—how I invited the king to a banquet, at which Haman was also present. How I told the king that Haman was planning my death, and the deaths of my people. How the king’s rage at Haman led, not to those deaths, but to Haman’s own death. And then, taking his place at the king’s side was a Jew named Mordecai, my uncle, a good man who had saved the king’s life. Now I know that the king will continue as a good man; there is a good man at his side, advising him, counseling him, and seeing that he treats all his subjects well.

Every year after the harvest my people hold a festival in which we celebrate the fruits of all God’s gifts to us. There are four sacred plants we use at that time, to symbolize the four kinds of people who make up our community. One of these plants is Hadassah, the myrtle plant. Because it has a lovely fragrance, but it does not have a pleasing taste, myrtle represents those Jews who have good deeds to their credit, despite the fact that they have never studied Torah, God’s holy law. I am Esther, Hadassah, a woman of two worlds, a woman of the exile, who never learned the holy rites or words of my people. But I learned the hard and simple discipline of telling the truth. For a long time, I hid the truth. For a long time, I lived in fear that the truth would bring with it only danger, only sorrow. But in the end, the truth was all I had to save myself and my people. In the end, it was the truth that set us free. And thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: "Esther" by Minerva Teichert (1888-1976)

One Such Child: Sermon on Mark 9:30-37

A number of years ago, when I was in seminary, my family planned a weekend visit to New York City. We had purchased tickets to “A Little Night Music,” probably my all-time favorite musical, with an all-star cast, and we were very excited. On the afternoon of the performance we went to a restaurant in the neighborhood of the theater. We went nice and early, so that we would be sure to have time to make the curtain. We walked in, and though it was busy, there were only one or two parties ahead of us. We spoke to a staff person, and settled in to wait for a table.

Suddenly, a virtual wall of people came rushing into the restaurant. There were people on top of people. I’d never seen quite so many people converge on a single location at once. And… needless to say, the restaurant staff was overwhelmed, and one thing led to another, and… our little party of four was lost in the shuffle. Almost before we realized what was happening, dozens of tables were being filled with people who had come in after us, and we could not convince anyone who worked there that we had arrived first.

I was furious. We were supposed to be first… well, third, anyway. But we were most definitely NOT supposed to be last. When I think back on my reaction to that experience—really, I find it embarrassing that I even remember it—I am struck by how powerful my emotions were. I was angry, but more than that, I was humiliated. I took it absolutely personally. I was supposed to be first, and instead I was last.

The questions of who will be first and who will be last are very much on the minds of Jesus’ disciples in this morning’s gospel story. We are on the road to Jerusalem with them, and with Jesus, of course. And to be on the road to Jerusalem means something very specific, and Jesus comes right out with it, first thing. He tells his friends, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him…” This is not the first time Jesus’ friends have been confronted with the brutal reality of his impending death, and it won’t be the last. Jesus is pretty consistent with his message. The path he is walking will lead to the cross.

It doesn’t matter how many times Jesus mentions this; the disciples never show any measure of acceptance or understanding. And, really, why should they? It’s not an acceptable, understandable reality. Jesus is their rabbi. He is their beloved, revered teacher, their Messiah, even: he is the one they believe God has anointed to save the people from all that ails them. Jesus is their leader, the alpha male of their pack. He is number one. And he is describing to them the most ignominious, the most shameful, the most humiliating end they can imagine. He is describing a death that is utterly inconsistent with everything they believe they know about him. He is not describing the death of a king, but of a criminal. Even Jesus’ assurance that he will rise again does not seem to matter. They are struck silent. They are afraid to even ask him what it all means.

And, so they walk on, back to their old familiar stomping grounds of Capernaum, where Jesus likes to relax at Simon Peter’s home. Once they are comfortably settled in, Jesus asks a pointed question. ‘“What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.’ [Mark 9:33b-34] On first glance, this feels odd and somewhat disconnected from what has just happened. It’s a non sequitur. It’s almost as if the disciples have played the child’s game of sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting “La la la la!” They don’t want to hear Jesus’ bad news (at least, according to them), and so they take an entirely different tack, a new topic, something that’s fun to talk about! Who among us is the greatest?

At least, that’s how I read this moment in the text until someone pointed out to me what probably should have been obvious: Jesus has predicted his own death. He is the leader. After his death, who will be the leader in his place? A discussion ensues, and then an argument, over who is “the greatest.”[i] No wonder they were struck silent.

Notice what Jesus does next. He sits down. This is a signal to his disciples—and to us—to pay very, very close attention to the word he is about to share with them. To sit down before speaking is, in the ancient world, to take the classic teaching position of the rabbi. Jesus is claiming his authority as he prepares to deliver a teaching—what may in fact be the central teaching of his ministry.

He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” ³⁶Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” ~ Mark 9:35-37

This is a delicate moment in the gospel, because it’s a moment we can very easily misunderstand. There are two parts to the teaching, the part about the last being first and the part about welcoming children. Let’s start with the children.

A few weeks ago I was wishing the lectionary had appointed this text for the 13^th instead of the 20^th. What could be more perfect than this gospel for Rally Day, the day we welcome our children back to Sunday School? But in the end I’m glad it was not the reading for last Sunday, because that would play into a pretty common misunderstanding about what Jesus means when he speaks of welcoming children. The misunderstanding stems from the difference between how we—westerners, in a developed country, in the 21^st century—view children and how people in the ancient world saw them. So let’s talk about what Jesus, most likely, did not mean when he spoke of welcoming children.

When Jesus spoke of welcoming children, he was not praising their innocence, or their sweetness, or their beauty. He was not talking about the way the sight of a newborn baby, swaddled in its mother’s arms, tugs at our heartstrings. He was not talking about the sometimes uncanny wisdom children display—the moments when they can cut to the heart of the matter, speak the truth in all its beauty and simplicity. He was not speaking of their playful spirit—the way they can spend happy hours in imaginary worlds of their own creation. He was not speaking of their trusting natures, or their inborn sense of fair play, or their eager willingness to believe, to have faith. All these things may be true about children, as we experience them. But these modern day notions of childhood were not the reason Jesus commanded his disciples to welcome children into their midst.

Here is how one writer describes childhood in the ancient world:

Here’s the thing about kids in first-century Roman Palestine: Children were nobodies, the bottom of the social food chain. Children had no power whatsoever, they weren’t given choices or negotiated with, they weren’t allowed privileges or given allowances. Children could be and were left on garbage heaps to die of exposure. Some of them were collected from the garbage to be kept as slaves. Depending on the hierarchy of the household, any number of people could decide that it was no longer expedient to keep a child alive. And although Jewish parents did not engage in infant exposure, their children had no more position or social standing.[ii]

Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God. Other understandings of “the kingdom” come later. “This comes first: a kingdom of children is a kingdom of nobodies.” It’s hard for us to understand how shocking this was to Jesus’ friends and disciples. Children were expendable. Children were nobodies.

I’ve tried to think of a modern day parallel to help us understand, and the closest I can come to it are these statistics, from a recent story in the New York Times Magazine on the status of women around the world.

39,000 baby girls die annually in China in the first year of life because parents don’t give them the same medical care and attention that boys receive.

In India, a “bride burning” takes place approximately once every two hours, to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry.

Between 60 million and 107 million women are missing from around the globe because baby boys are considered more desirable offspring than baby girls.

In other words, in many parts of the world, women are the nobodies.

More girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century. The number of victims of this routine “gendercide” far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.[iii]

I know that statistics like these, while they can shock us, can also numb us. The point is this: In Jesus’ day the nobodies, the expendable, those who could as easily die as they could live, were children. In our day, in some parts of the world, the nobodies are still children, and in some parts, they women and girls, while in other parts of the world they may be those who belong to the “wrong” religious or ethnic group. In this country we have a shameful history of the “nobodies” being the African Americans who were forcibly enslaved. And there are other nobodies, of course. Throughout our long history, we human beings have managed to find ways to marginalize one another, to make one another outcast, to point the finger and say, “They are not us. They are not even human. They are nobody.”

And Jesus is saying, No. No. No. The one you think you can’t welcome, or don’t have to welcome? That is the one you must welcome. You must welcome the nobodies, the ones without power, the ones without status. Not only must you welcome them, he says, even with his body language… you must embrace them. Not only must you welcome them, he says, you must be willing to be their servant. You must be willing to let them be first, and you must be willing to be last.

Oh my. Nobody wants to be last. Nobody wants to lose status. I certainly don’t. I don’t mind telling you… I care about whether I am first or last, I care about my status. I care what people think of me. Even my foolish and embarrassing little story about not being seated in order in a restaurant tells you… the ways I care about this run deep, they are visceral, they are instinctive, they are not entirely in my control. And what Jesus is telling his disciples, what he is telling you and me, is that we have to fight this urge to want to be first. We have to fight it with all that is in us, and we have to be willing to yield our status to those we consider the absolutely last and least. Our ability to bear witness to the enormous, overpowering love of God requires it.

There is a story of a little child who walked up to the preacher, and said, “If God is so big, and God is inside of us, why doesn’t God just… break out?” Why doesn’t God break out, in a glorious kind of contagion of love and mutual forgiveness and kindness and civility? Probably because every one of us—from Joe Wilson to Kanye West to you and to me—really, really has a hard time not being first, not being in charge, and so we keep all the potential of God’s love and goodness locked down, bottle up and hidden away. But it is time. It is time for us to let it loose. It is time for us to let go, and to let God do what God wants to do with our lives and our world. It is time for us to welcome one such child in our midst, whether we mean a child, or today’s nobodies: you know who they are. It is time for us to step back, to be willing to put our status and privilege aside so that the glorious contagion of God’s love can break free and renew the face of the earth. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] Brian P. Stoffregen Exegetical Notes at CrossMarks, Mark 9:30-37, Proper 20- Year B. http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark9x30.htm.

[ii] Rev. Miller Jen Hoffman, after John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), 269.

[iii] Nicholas D. Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn, “The Women’s Crusade,” New York Times Magazine August 23, 2009.

Child of Promise: Sermon on Mark 7:24-37

What won’t a good parent do for her child? It starts even before they’re born. You find out you’re pregnant, and suddenly… you understand that old saying, “The body is a temple.” Yes. Your body is a temple that houses a holy thing: this already-loved baby. So, gone is the glass of wine with dinner, and gone is the beer while you’re watching the game, and gone is the cup of coffee in the morning. And pretty soon, gone is any sense you have that your body is even yours… it’s not yours! Suddenly, unquestionably, it belongs to the baby.

It’s the same for adoptive parents, only different. My mom, who adopted two children, told me of an experience she had a couple of weeks after she and my dad brought my older brother home from the hospital. P. was down for a nap, and my mom had cleaned the kitchen and folded the laundry. Then she thought, I’d better run to the store for some bread. She picked up her purse and walked to the door… and stopped, dead in her tracks. She couldn’t go the store. Even asleep in his crib, all seven pounds of my brother exerted a control over my mother’s life that could only be described in terms normally reserved for forces of nature, like gravity. Her life was not her own any longer. She belonged to the baby.

And a good parent will do anything for that beloved child. He will relinquish sleep for it. She will give up smoking for it. They will move to the neighborhood with the good school, if they can possibly swing it. And if that child becomes ill, they will move heaven and earth to try to obtain them the best possible care.

Jesus encounters a parent who is clearly ready to move heaven and earth in our gospel lesson this morning. A Gentile woman in the city of Tyre… a place Jesus has gone, apparently, for that ever-elusive down-time. He entered a house, and did not want anyone to know he was there, like A-Rod and Madonna. But Jesus is a celebrity, and so once again his leisure is interrupted, this time by a woman whose daughter has an unclean spirit and is in need of healing. The woman engages Jesus and encounters, perhaps unexpectedly, resistance. I don’t know if the woman expected resistance. I have to admit that I did not expect it, not on Jesus’ part. The idea that he would hesitate, even a fraction of a second, is stunning to me, and upsetting. But fear not: Jesus has met, in this woman, a worthy opponent, one of those heaven-and-earth moving moms, and she is not to be dissuaded. She spars with him, (verbally, at least), and she achieves her heart’s desire. Her daughter is healed. After all, what won’t a good parent do for a beloved child?

And like a parent with more than one child, Jesus’ day isn’t over. He travels to another region where there are more people in need of healing… there are always more people in need of healing. There he encounters a deaf man, with a speech impediment. It says, “They brought him to him,” the deaf man to Jesus, but it doesn’t say who brought him. It is vague. Perhaps the deaf man’s parents brought him? In that era, a man with this kind of physical and social challenge would be highly unlikely to be able to live on his own; perhaps his parents are still responsible for him, ready to move heaven and earth for him.

The man is brought to Jesus, who takes him aside privately for some not-for-public-view healing, and no wonder. The work of healing isn’t necessarily pretty; in fact it can be pretty homely. Jesus puts his fingers in the man’s ears, like a toddler playing with his dad, and then he spits and touches his tongue. It’s almost… almost… as if Jesus is winging it this time. Perhaps his startling encounter with the Gentile woman has thrown him off his regular healing game. Jesus speaks a word, an Aramaic word, that’s Jesus’ native tongue. Ephphatha, he says to the man… or, to the man’s ears and tongue, which is to say, “Be opened.” And they obediently open, both ears and tongue, and this man who could not hear or speak can instantly do both. Whoever brought the man to Jesus… parents? Friends? They have brought him to the right place.

What won’t good parents do for their child? Today S. and J. have brought M. here, to this place, to be baptized. So many things happen to us when we are baptized. H., our organist, shared a moving music video with me this week, the Kyle Matthews song “Been Through the Water.” It is a testimony to the power of baptism, that action that washes you clean, gives you a fresh slate, removes sin.

I've been through the water and I've come out clean
Got new clothes to cover me
And you don't wear your old shoes on your brand new feet
When you've been through the water

And all of that is part of what we Christians claim in baptism. But there’s more. Baptism incorporates us into the body of Christ… it makes us a part of another family, or another kind of family, the church. Baptism gives us a place where, like home, we belong. It doesn’t necessarily replace our family of origin, though in the early church, when being a Christian wasn’t a universally popular or obvious choice, that happened a lot. It still happens, sometimes. At the very least, baptism expands our family, significantly.

But there’s still more. Baptism does for us pretty much the same thing it did for that deaf man. In baptism, Jesus speaks to us: Ephphatha, Be opened. He opens our ears so that we can hear the Word of God, and opens our mouths so that we can speak the Word of God. When we are baptized we are relocated to a place where we are more likely to hear the Word of God. I hate to point this out, but, after all, each of us made promises today, didn’t we, promises to look after Madison and to meddle and interfere with her upbringing so that she might have opportunities to hear that Word, and be that much more likely to share it wherever she goes. Like the formerly deaf man and his family and friends. They cannot get over what has happened to him. They cannot stop talking about it. The more Jesus tells them to keep it a private, family matter, the more they flag people down in the streets to share their good news with them. Each time a child is baptized, or an adult for that matter… there is a great opening, a wonderful and new opportunity for the Word of God to be heard and to be spoken. An opening. Each baptized person holds that promise, the promise of someone who has been permanently opened to the Word of God in their lives. They are never the same.

What won’t a good parent do for their children? Our good heavenly parent gives us this good and meddling family, the church, to look after us. Our good and loving Father ensures that P. and M. and you and I have scores of “godparents,” brothers and sisters in Christ who will keep pushing us to hear the Word of God and spread it abroad. Our good divine parent opens us, permanently, to that Word, because God’s life is not his own. He has given it to us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Gift of Love: Sermon on Song of Songs 2:8-13

For a rundown of today's church experience, find me here.

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It is hard to resist a love song. I’m going to do something I’ve done before: share some of my favorites with you. This is a song I first heard when I was not even ten years old. It was the summer of 1970, and my favorite cousin was a teenager, utterly besotted with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young:

I’ll light the fire.

You place the flowers in the vase that you bought today.

Staring at the fire

for hours and hours while I listen to you

play your love songs all night long

for me, only for me

This summer I’ve been listening to another love song, one I learned from my current favorite teenager. It’s called “Our Song.”

Our song is the slamming screen doors,
Sneakin' out late, tapping on your window
When we're on the phone and you talk real slow
'cause it's late and your mama don't know
Our song is the way you laugh
The first date "man, I didn't kiss her, and I should have"
And when I got home ... before I said amen
Asking God if he could play it again.

It is hard to resist a love song. And so here we are, reading love songs in church on a Sunday morning. It doesn’t seem likely, yet here it is: right smack in the middle of the Hebrew Scriptures, tucked in between the rather dour philosophy of Ecclesiastes on the one hand, and the magnificent, epic prophesy of Isaiah on the other. A love song… actually, a collection of love songs… actually, the most excellent of love songs, the Song of Songs, as it’s called. And, if I may just say, much of this particular book is rather scorching, truly PG-13 scripture. The passage I’ve just read is one of the tamer portions. The Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, is an unabashedly joyous celebration of sensuous, romantic love.

The lectionary dares to offer us a glimpse into this book just once every three years. Maybe there’s some anxiety about such a frank text making its way into our worship any more frequently than that. The Song of Songs has been inspiring controversy for at least two thousand years. Just after the time of Jesus, late in the first century CE, there was evidently a fight among the rabbis as to whether it should be included in the Bible at all. The detractors had a number of concerns. First, there is not a single mention of God in the entire book, rare for books in the Bible, though not unheard of . Second, the subject matter of the book is such that, even as it was being used in worship (on the Sabbath and at the end of Passover), it had also found, shall we say, a more rowdy, secular audience. And third, the Song of Songs contains what one scholar has called “the only unmediated female voice in all of Scripture.” Throughout much of this book, a woman speaks, and she does so in a way that is forthright, and sensuous and assertive. This was, to say the least, a departure from accepted tradition.

And yet, the detractors did not win the day. The Song of Songs has found a home in the Scripture of both Jews and Christians. So we must believe that the rabbis found, in the end, something edifying here, something uplifting. This book has something to teach us about the life of faith. This book, for Jews and Christians, is a part of God’s word, contains God’s word to us. And it is a book made up of love songs.

There is a deep and wide tradition of interpreting the Song of Songs as being, not about human, romantic love at all, but, rather, being about the love between God and people—Yahweh and Israel, or Christ and the Church. And… we’ll get to that. But I don’t want to rush away from what is right there in front of us. This is a book that celebrates human, romantic, physical love. In detail. It is about longing, and passion. Hear the breathless anticipation of the woman as she waits for her love:

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes,

leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.

My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.

Look, there he stands behind our wall,

gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. ~ Song 2:8-9

We can hear it in the lyrics: her heart is racing, she can barely stand the waiting. She is listening with rapt attention for the voice of her beloved… we feel that when she hears it, she will be in ecstasy. And then, finally, she does hear it. And here is what he says:

“Arise, my love, my fair one,

and come away;

for now the winter is past,

the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs,

and the vines are in blossom;

they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. ~ Song 2:10b-13

The voice of her beloved entices her to rise and come away: he woos her with images of spring… the time of birth, of blossoming, of newness and beauty. He appeals to her senses, inviting her to enjoy all that is delicious and fragrant, the veritable season of love. Like my favorite love song from the 70’s there is a sense that the lovers anticipate a deep connection as they focus solely on one another: “…I listen to you play your love songs all night long for me, only for me.” Our passage is like a little duet: first the woman sings, and then the man. She calls and he responds. It is so clearly a song of love, intimate, human, passionate. So… once again, what is it doing in our bibles?

As we heard in our reading from James, “every perfect gift is from above,” and that includes the gift of love. And so, contained in this duet, implicit in it, is an affirmation of God’s blessing upon the couple. The presence of these lyrics as part of our sacred story indicates to us, in no uncertain terms, that God smiles on love… it is a good and beautiful part of God’s creation. And do you have any doubts as to what the woman replies to this invitation? Of course not… Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. We know it in our bones, without even reading the rest of the story… she rises, she goes. There is no other possible ending.

Even God loves a love song. But even more fundamentally than that, God loves us… in all our humanity, in all our physicality. There is no sign in this book that God harbors any negative feelings about human beings, including our bodies. On the contrary: God, who created us, continues to call this creation “good.”

Still, there is more to this text than the straightforward reading of it. Gorgeous, sensuous love lyric though it may be, throughout Jewish and Christian history, people of faith have found other treasures in the Song of Songs. After all, haven’t the stores of God and God’s people always commenced with the kind of invitation we find in love song?

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you…” ~ Genesis 12:1

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁷And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” ~ Mark 1:16-17

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Time and again, God calls us, and we hear God’s call. It seems only natural that people of faith throughout the centuries have read these words and recognized in them the intimacy and the power of God’s claim on us, God’s beloved people. Arise, my love, and come away. God says it to us, again and again.

If this small passage has anything to teach us about our relationship with God, about our life in faith, perhaps it is in the breathless anticipation of the woman as she awaits her beloved. I wonder… how can we prepare ourselves so that we are just as eager, just as breathless to hear God’s invitation to us? How can we learn to be like Abram, who drops everything at the age of 75 to go, he knows not where? How can we learn to be like the disciples, who leave their boats and their nets and their lives to follow Jesus to do they know not what? How can we learn to be like this woman who waits with longing for her beloved’s invitation to rise, to come away, to the mystery that will be their life together? Maybe we can find a clue to this willingness, this readiness, by observing the woman as she waits. She gazes upon her beloved, with rapt attention. “Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.” She sees his attributes, she admires his beauty, his abilities. Will we be more ready to rise and go with God, to dare to follow where we are led, if we spend more time in gazing upon God, with rapt attention… God’s goodness, God’s beauty, God’s amazing acts?

Every perfect gift is from above. Everything that is good and worthwhile comes from God’s hand. Everything that stirs our hearts with joy… God gave to us. Everything that makes us breathless with anticipation… God is behind it. God, who calls us “beloved.” God, who wants nothing more than to know we are ready, willing, eager to come when we are called. God, who loves us so much that even the barriers between being God and being human could not keep that love at bay.

It is hard to resist a love song. So don’t resist. Listen. Hear this love song, right now, as God’s breathless words of love to you.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

for now the winter is past,

the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs,

and the vines are in blossom;

they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] Graham Nash, “Our House,” from Déjà Vu, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, March 11, 1970.

ii] Taylor Swift, “Our Song,” from Fearless, November 11, 2008.

[iii] God is, similarly, not mentioned in the Book of Esther.

[iv] Renita J. Weems, “The Song of Songs: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. V (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997), 364.

[v] Thanks to Rev. David Shearman for inspiring the idea of the “duet.”