θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν (1 Jn. 4:8 - Part 2) B6E

(Read Part 1 here)

Maybe you feel that all these words about agape, about divine love, are a boring, repetitive drone of platitudes that everyone already knows? You may be right. I certainly confess that, for many years of my adult life, probably into my forties even,  I did not look forward to lectionary year B, when, like this year, the gospel of John in passages from the Last Supper discourse was matched to a second reading from 1 John, creating what seemed to me to be an indistinguishable one-trick pony of a goulash, a bland “all you need is love” for four or fives weeks of preaching. It has only been in recent years, as I have come to appreciate the startling gravity of agape and kenosis, as they reveal themselves in the incarnation as the pulsating heart of the paschal mystery, that I have come to love and joyfully anticipate celebrating these Sundays in an adult way.



Consider in the light of what I was talking about last time, the kosher-breaking vision of Peter as he prepared to visit the house of the centurion Cornelius, the meaning of John’s amazing statement that everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. The words do not say, as we might expect, that “everyone begotten by God (in the sense of ‘all who are baptized’) loves God and knows God,” but rather, the text says that everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. That is, those who act for the good of others come to share in the life of those who are the children of God, and live in a state of intimacy with the Holy One. To me, this is as wondrously liberating a credal statement as the parable of Matthew 25, in which the surprising criterion on the last day is not orthodoxy, membership, the correct sexual orientation, ordination, or even confession of the name of Christ. In Matthew 25 as in I John 4, it is agape, that is, disinterested service on behalf of others, not related to ideology, that brings one, startled for even being recognized and unaccustomed to and unprepared for reward, into intimacy with the servant-emperor of life. 



Bear with me a few minutes more as I ask you to read with me again the words of the gospel from Sunday in this pure radiance of God’s love.




"As the Father loves me, so I also love you.

Remain in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,

just as I have kept my Father's commandments

and remain in his love.


I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.

No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one's life for one's friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you.

I no longer call you slaves,
 because a slave does not know what his master is doing.

I have called you friends, 
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.

It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you

and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,

so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.

This I command you: love one another."

This word “remain” - in Greek, the verb μένω (menō), has the sense of “staying in the same place.” It has often been translated as “abide,” a word which is beautiful but possibly suffers from being a kind of religious archaism. But the unmistakeable sense of the word is intimacy; of lodging in another person’s home, and all of the openness and hospitality that that implies. Jesus says in this gospel passage that the intimacy that he shares with Abba, an intimacy that can be described as in-dwelling, living together in one house, is the same intimacy that the disciple can expect from him, and the same intimacy that his commandment compels us to live in with one another. The “commandment” of the “friend” Jesus thus is not a burden laid upon the believer, but the blessing of a lover who only wants the very best for the beloved, as if to say, “I can’t say anything better than this, there’s no other life in the universe, there’s nothing that will ever satisfy any of you, ever, more than being like God, and that is to serve one another’s needs no matter what.” The “commandment”, then, is rather like telling the disciple not to “fall up” or not to stop breathing. Surrender to agape. Float in this divine current, and finally be yourself. Finally, find complete joy by forgetting to pursue it.




Why is it so hard then? Why do we get stuck so often in eros, love that pays us back with good feelings, and philia, the mutual love that’s altruistic enough but shared among the related and like-minded? I reject the possibility that we’re fundamentally oriented toward sin, because the revealed truth is that all of God’s creation is fundamentally good, and breathes with God’s own breath. It must then, be some issue of mistaken identity, substituting other loves (eros and philia), which are also good, for agape, which is divine. Can God possibly be patient enough to wait us out on this, individually and as a race? 



Here, I just want to diverge to another passage in John, chapter 21, verses 15-17. This is the famous dialogue between Jesus and Peter on shore of the lake after the resurrection, one which looks backward to the threefold denial by Peter of Jesus in the courtyard of the High Priest the night before Jesus’ execution by the Romans. In this passage, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Simon bar-Jona, do you love me more than these?” Each time, Peter answers affirmatively, and Jesus charges him to love his flock by nurturing them. But what we miss in every English translation of this passage is the subtle shift in the question of the Lord. The first time, Jesus asks, “Simon bar-Jona, do you agapas me more than these?” He is asking Peter if he has thrown himself completely into the ring of holy fire, the love that gives itself completely for others. And Peter responds in an equivocal way: “Lord, philo you.” I love you like my own family. The second time, it is the same, "Simon, agapas?" "Lord, philo." But the third time, when we might expect Peter to respond to Jesus’ question in kind, John shows us the kenosis of the logos again, as at creation, as at the incarnation, as at the washing of the feet, as at the last breath on Calvary. It is Jesus who changes the question to Peter: "Peter, philos?" Peter responds, "Lord, you know it. Philo!” Jesus then makes what might be thought of as a prophecy “about the sort of death Peter would die,” that is, as a young man he goes where he wants, but as an older man, he’ll be led where he’d rather not go. But you know what? That sounds to me an awful lot like Jesus is saying to him, “Today, you can only offer philia. But things are going to change. Agape is going to grab you around the heart and take you where you can’t go today. I can wait for that.”



God can wait. That’s the way of agape: it is the faithful “remaining,” or “abiding” that empowers love in others by loving, that gives and gives and gives no matter what, if anything, is flowing in the other direction. It is the very first thing on Paul’s list of the qualities of agape in 1 Cor. 13: Agape is patient! The word in Greek means something like, “can endure the injuries of others for a really long time.” Thank God for that. 



...Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.

Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.

Purchase "God Is Love" by Rory Cooney, sung by Theresa Donohoo, on iTunes.

θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν (1 John 4:8, part 1) B6E

Peter's vision, by Doug Jacques.

One of my absolutely favorite stories in the entire Christian scripture, including the parables of Jesus themselves, is the account of the sojourn of Peter in the house of the Roman centurion Cornelius, and the story of his vision of the divine picnic. This vision, by any account, opens Peter’s mind permanently to the possibility that the apostolic mission to proclaim the love of God and the covenant in Christ was not to be just a mission to the Jews, but a mission to the entire world. James Alison calls it the institution of "universal Judaism," the catholic Church! While Peter does backslide occasionally as he seems to be wont to do, the vision sets up a reconciliation (for Luke, anyway) between the two great moving forces of the early church, the charismatically anointed authority of Paul’s preaching, and the dominically “ordained” authority of Peter. Here, in the infancy of the Christian movement already, there is both conflict and reconciliation between charism and office, and the reconciliation is achieved through truth-speaking, prayer, and dialogue, albeit sometimes apparently begrudging and suspicious.



Cornelius, it is very important to note, is a Roman citizen and an officer in the occupying army. He would be required to have been part of the cult of the emperor. But Acts identifies him as a God-fearer, that is, a Jewish sympathizer, one who listens to the Torah, sympathizes with Jewish belief, and actually contributes to the upkeep of the Temple and the priesthood. Unfortunately, all of this information, as well as the story of Peter’s dream during an afternoon nap, happens in the 25 or so verses of chapter 10 of Acts before the reading we hear Sunday. It’s just one of those things: the lectionary imagines that we already know the whole story, and only need to be reminded of it by a little reading. Needless to say, some remedial reading needs to be done by a lot of us, and it would certainly help if homilists took the time to frame their comments with some brief allusion to “the rest of the story.” Cornelius, as one born a pagan and yet attracted to Jewish monotheism and ethical life, is thus a symbol of both that great arena of first century proselytization, the God-fearers of the entire Mediterranean diaspora in Greece, Asia Minor, Rome, Spain, and Africa, but of the wider net yet to be cast among the pagans of those lands.



I say that Cornelius’s identity is important to note because of the unlikelihood of his coming to faith, and the same can be said of his whole family. The man is in the literal employ of another god, Caesar. And yet, as Luke tells it, he is a God-fearer, and is blessed with the vision that tells him to summon Peter to his house. Peter’s vision, in turn, of the divine smorgasbord, allows him to speak those Easter words that have rung down through the ages: “I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.” This new awareness does not require explicit incorporation into Christ to validate it: Peter’s awareness is about God’s very nature, that God shows no partiality to any nation or people or type of person. His experience in the house of Cornelius, however, of a household which knows Christ and which is alive with the presence of the Holy Spirit leads him to invite these non-Jews to the waters of baptism. He is so overwhelmed by the experience, in fact, that he can barely restrain his language. It is as though the baptismal waters themselves were bursting their boundaries to swallow up these Gentiles.



The love of God, limitless, life-giving, non-judgmental, is poured out on the household of a man whose nation took the life of the innocent Jesus, and many other lives as well. It might be said, I think, that in this story, God is “loving enemies,” as Jesus taught in his life and work, if God can be said to have enemies. But the issue here isn’t even God’s enemies, it’s whom we consider or pre-judge to be God’s enemies upon whom God’s love is poured. The essence here is that love surprises even the insider, the beloved, with its fierce loyalty. Peter, the beloved right-hand man of Jesus, is himself overwhelmed to come to this new insight about God’s love. Barnabas and the community around Antioch and Tarsus are overwhelmed by the unthinkable turnaround that divine love has wrought in Saul/Paul, who is changed from a fire-breathing jihadist against the Way to its most persuasive and peaceful apologist and witness. The best that the “insider” can do inside the storm-center of divine agape is to keep the heart open, because there seems to be no limit to the way God’s love can surprise us.



I will say more on this later in the week, especially in the light of the 2nd reading (quoted in the title of this post) and the gospel. As we approach the feast of Pentecost and the end of the Great Fifty Days, we are immersed ever more deeply in the meaning of the resurrection and the paschal mystery of God, the awesome and creative anti-power that is agape. Week by week, the richness of the Church’s meditation on the Savior, Abba, and their Holy Spirit floods us with hope, and encourages us to follow the Way ever more resolutely and with open, beloved hearts, expecting and savoring the strange interruptions of God’s troublesome, impartial love.



These are the songs we will sing at Mass Sunday, for those of you keeping score.


Gathering: We Have Been Told, by David Haas

Psalm 98: The Lord Has Revealed to the Nations His Saving Power, setting by Rory Cooney (octavo, OCP)

Gifts: God Is Love, by Rory Cooney
Communion: No Greater Love, by Michael Joncas
Recessional: All Shall Be Well, by John Foley

(Read Part two of this Sunday's reflection here.)




I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him. (Acts 10:34, first reading from Easter 6)

Mystagogy for dummies (like me) - B5E - Bold enough to be changed

After Sunday's liturgy, I ask these questions of myself: What did I hear about the paschal mystery of God in today's celebration? What did I hear about what it means to "rise from the dead"?

It may seem obvious, but I keep going back to the question of what life and death mean in the gospels. For my Catholic-school-through-seminary thoughts, the first level of response to these texts with which I've lived my whole life, I default to a personal eschatology—I'm alive, I'm going to die, and life and death are as simple as that. But as I've learned through my life about how we are all connected to one another, how our living now affects the living and dying of others now, I'm no longer satisfied with my original answers, and see that the gospel is calling me to a different way of seeing life and death.

The very heart of the gospel image today, of a vine and branches, is a corporal image, that is, it's an image of a living organism, a body. Jesus suggests that life is interdependent, that we are bound together with him by a single life, and that it is precisely in our being bound together that more life is possible, "bearing fruit," which suggests both nourishment and continuity in the vine. St. Paul's word, in fact, the gospel of St. John's word, for the way that the vine is kept alive with the life of Christ in God is "Spirit." The Holy Spirit of Jesus, the breath of God, the wind of Pentecost, respirated into the Church from the cross and in the revelation of the resurrection, unites us with the life of God and the mission of Christ.

But God is not just another agent in the multiplicity of forces that run the universe. God is not like "one of the gods" to whom we have traditionally ascribed that kind of role, a benevolent or malevolent or insouciant or random force competing with others forces for our allegiance or worship. No, as James Alison says, God is much more "like no god at all" than like that. Infinitely patient, kind, and without any malice or envy, God is the agent in the universe, the I AM whose life is so wildly generous and so utterly shared that, like it or not, there is no other life to be had. Like with the other I AM sayings in the gospel of John, we are to hear the echo of the voice from the burning bush when Jesus speaks, whether of the life of the vine, the flock, living water, living bread, or anything else. The life is the life of God, the life shared in God's given Spirit, deathless, liberating, freedom-for-others, companioned in covenant. It is life that invites participation, and participation which awakens new identity and solidarity among those who relax into it, and that very participation leads us into the life-for-others which is the kenosis and agape of the paschal mystery of God.

St. Paul, whose conversion to Christ was the focus of more than a little skepticism in Luke's Acts narrative Sunday, is a good example to me of someone moving from death to life, all while worshipping, in his own heart, the very same God. Did God change, or did Saul/Paul? After his "conversion" (turning toward) Jesus he did not serve a different God, but he perhaps he saw that he he had projected his own anger, prejudice, and constricted sense of grace and belonging onto God because of a particular way of worship, behavior, and orthodoxy. His catechetical style certainly changed. He left his fire-breathing, sword-wielding, warrant-serving, death-penalty-enforcing self on the desert road, and became a bold persuader, a poet of the body, one who invited participation in Christ and with Christ in the grace made universally available by the Holy Spirit for the equalizing, loving-kindness of every person: man, woman, slave, free, Jew, Greek. No more threats and violence, just the bold invitation to be a part of the body dwells richly in the unifying, liberating grace of the Spirit of God.

"I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people," was the psalm refrain in the liturgy today, and it reasserts the very same principle—whatever the novelty theology might be that infers that we can experience God on our own, the authentic experience of the God revealed in scripture is that God is experienced and worshiped by participation in community life. But God is not in rivalry with individualistic models of belief! With infinite patience, by the gentle, persuasive participation of those who submit to the experience of the vine and branches, all shall be one, because at a depth perceptible only to the Creator and only barely imaginable by the rest of us, we are already one.

What does it mean to "rise from the dead" then? For today, for me, it means to stop projecting my restrictive brand of grace onto God and to accept that God loves everyone equally. St. Paul said that in Christ there is neither "Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, woman nor man." We might today say there is neither "Anglo nor Arab, poor nor rich, liberal nor conservative, straight nor gay," or any of many false dichotomies around which we rally like idol-worshipers. To "rise from the dead" means to try to shed the envy and rivalry in me against perceived enemies, perceived competitors, and to try to encourage others to reject rivalry as well, and to try to let our "sun shine and rain fall on good and bad alike," the way that God does.

To "rise from the dead" is to remain in Christ, and to "love one another" as Christ loved us, ready to occupy the place of the enemy and the victim, full of faith and hope in the I AM whose life is so abundant and without rivalry that death does not even exist. It is participation in that life, the life of God's Spirit, that is the beginning of God's gentle reign, right here, right now.

And his commandment is this:
we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ,
and love one another just as he commanded us.
Those who keep his commandments remain in him,
and he in them,
and the way we know that he remains in us
is from the Spirit he gave us.

Dream date

Most of you who read my blog probably access it from Facebook, so you will know the main content of today's post. I'm writing it anyway for archival reasons, because it was such a wonderful day on Saturday, and the day ended with the best surprise of all: the performance of my song "Canticle of the Turning" on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion show, live on NPR.

Saturday was sweet enough already. Since the young woman who teaches at the school was handling the music for the first communion masses at the parish, I subbed out the evening mass as well and actually took the entire day off from work. Since it virtually never happens that Terry and I have the same day off of work, we decided to take full advantage of it and get out of the house. By some random act of kindness by the hostile universe that will require a supernova destroying a solar system in another quadrant of another galaxy, it was also a perfect spring day. So after a delicious breakfast of mushroom and Gruyere omelet with fruit, we headed to the Chicago Botanic Gardens.

Mid-afternoon, after a stop at Starbucks for some hydration and protein, we made our way over to the Northbrook mall and the movies. We went to see Woman in Gold, a true story about a woman's struggle to retrieve a Klimt portrait of her aunt, stolen from her by the Nazis from the Austrian government and the national museum in Vienna. A really great performance by both Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds, and we recommend it if you like this kind of movie.

It was after this, around 6:30, we made our way to a restaurant we'd never tried before, Bobby's in Deerfield. We had just sat down and ordered some drinks when my Facebook feed lit up in a way that was extraordinary for a Saturday night. One colleague from central Missouri sent me a private message that said, "Are you listening to Prairie Home Companion?" The messages were pouring in that there was a vocal group performing my song "Canticle of the Turning" live on national radio!

Garrison and PHC were broadcasting from Goshen, Indiana, not far from South Bend, and from Goshen College, a Mennonite institution. Their Chamber Choir were the featured performers on the program, and they did their own music as well as contributing to Keillor's signature spoofs (an "autobiographical" rendition called "I Wish You'd Keep from Singing," and a re-working of Shenandoah.) Terry and I have seen PHC live a couple of times, once at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago on Thanksgiving weekend, another time at Ravinia in the summer, and it's always such a great experience to be part of the entertainment that Keillor & co. provide. Such an unexpected honor to have song of mine performed there! And this one, this Irish folk song with words by a Catholic from (at the time) Arizona, performed by a concert choir from a Mennonite college! An adventure in musical cross-pollination and eclecticism. I still can't believe it. Now if someone would just let GK know what an opportunity he is missing until he has Terry sing on his show. 😊

This is the entire show. If you click on the sixth entry in the list of songs, "Teach me thy truths..." etc, you can listen to all 11 minutes, or scrub ahead to about 7:45 and hear their energetic cover of "Canticle of the Turning," known here by its hymnal title (it appears in the Mennonite hymnal!) "My Soul Cries Out," with fiddle, whistle, and bodhran. You can also try this link, which should take you to that 11-minute clip. Yesterday's South Bend Tribune, by the way, reported that "The Goshen College Chamber Choir was a bouncy group of effervescent young folks, led by equally peppy director Scott Hochstetler. Numerous choir members sang solos, made-up songs and advertisements throughout the show. Their version of hymn “My Soul Cries Out” was powerful and a standout performance."

As for Saturdays, they don't get much better than that one. I'm bracing for the karmic backlash from having such a great day, but until that happens, I'll just be grateful the gift and thank God that, more than a quarter century after it was first published, this piece of music can speak to the hearts of young people on paths I never would have imagined.

There's something mystagogical about that, one Vine, all of us, wherever we are and however we worship, the branches. I'll think about that some more. Have a great day.

Paschal Spirit: Identity, Life, and Mission (B5E)

The centrality of the Spirit of God to the paschal mystery is evident from John’s narrative of the Passion. From the cross, Christ “handed over the Spirit” to the disciples in the world as he breathed his last, and on Easter morning, his first words after the greeting Shalom were, “Receive the Holy Spirit; as the Father sent me, so I send you.” 


In Sunday’s gospel, Jesus uses the image of a vine and branches to express the intimacy of our lives with the divine life. “Remain in me as I remain in you.” This passage about the vine and branches is followed, expanded, and explained in the rest of John 15: “As the Father loves me, so I love you. Remain in my love.” Agape is the life of the vine and branches, the divine love between the Father and the Son, and between the Son and the Church; it is the Holy Spirit of love. The way that we stay attached to the vine and to one another is agape, by keeping the commandment to love one another. But we’re not left to our own initiative, obviously: agape is God’s life. It is within us, it empowers our love. That’s why we can’t genuinely love when we’re not attached to the vine. There is an element of surrender here, then. It’s not that we invent love, but that we surrender to acts of selflessness, not because they make sense in a self-interested world, but because they are, in themselves, divine.


The author of the first letter of John knows this, with a vocabulary that seems to come right out of the gospel, when he writes, “...(H)is commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.” Separation from Christ, not living in love, is its own punishment. The world of unloving is sere and brittle; what was meant to be green and thriving is without value and burns to ashes. 




Because this divine call to love is always paschal, that is, it requires by its very essence self-emptying as the mode of fullest life, it is always surprising us, shaking us awake, exposing our prejudices, disruptive of our habits of accumulation and territoriality. The Spirit’s life-giving inspiration utterly changes Saul from his violent orthodoxy to a new life of non-violent persuasion and dialogue. This alarming transformation takes all those who knew him by surprise; they cannot imagine that his new life is anything but some kind of trickery. Others recognize in the new Saul/Paul what they saw in themselves, and what they remember from the Lord: the transfigured, the resurrected life often renders the person and the world one previously knew unrecognizable. They come to his aid, shield him, and reintroduce the new man to the community. In Paul as in Christ, the rejected stone became a key stone of the structure that is the body of Christ, the Church.



More and more these last weeks of Easter, it is revealed to us that the Holy Spirit gives us, through our incorporation into Christ, a share in the agape life of God, gives us a new identity as the children of God, and sends us on mission as Christ himself was sent to wash the feet of the world as an example of the kind of love that has been been poured into our hearts. As we give thanks for this great God whose very nature is self-giving, let us continue to pray for the courage to surrender to that Spirit, that in that Spirit we might renew the face of the earth.



Here’s the music we’re singing Sunday at St. Anne. We also have first communion the next couple of weeks. I've written about that before, but in case you missed it, here's a link. At least it gives you the opportunity to re-read Frank McCourt's great memoir about his first communion in Limerick.


Gathering: All Things New, by Rory Cooney
Psalm 66: Let All the Earth Cry Out by Rory Cooney 
Preparation Rite: God Is Love, by Rory Cooney.
Communion: I Will Be the Vine, by Liam Lawton

Recessional: Abide, O Spirit of Life by Tom Kendzia 

The church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria was at peace.

It was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord,
and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit it grew in numbers (Acts 9:31)

Mystagogy for dummies (like me) (B4E)

Once again, the question:


How did Sunday’s liturgy speak to me about the meaning of life in the light of the paschal mystery? What did the readings teach me about what it means to “rise from the dead”?



It was a line from the responsorial psalm that caught my ear yesterday. It was quoted by Peter, somewhat polemically in the context of a quasi-legal hearing, in the speech from Acts in the first reading.

“The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.”


What got my heart working during the hearing of these scriptures was trying to associate that phrase with the overarching metaphor from today’s gospel of the Good Shepherd. Of course, there’s the obvious connection with “laying down my life for my sheep.” But how to take this out of the purely theological context, and apply it to my faith in daily life? That is the mystagogy question.


Another question that arose as I listened to the gospel comes up for me every time I hear this scripture and similar ones. There is the condemnation, or at least repudiation, of the “hired man”:


A hired man, who is not a shepherd

and whose sheep are not his own,

sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away,

and the wolf catches and scatters them.

This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep.



How do I know, as a paid minister of the church, that I’m being a “good shepherd” and not a “hired man”? In context, I can see the parallel between the “hired man” in this passage, with its dominant metaphor of the people of God as sheep, as the equivalent of the tenant farmers in the parable of the vineyard, or even the builders’ unrevealed plans that are replaced when the rejected stone becomes the keystone of the structure. One one level, these are the equivalent of the “false shepherds” exposed by the prophets, who lead people away from Torah. For instance, there is Ezekiel’s stunning philippic that pervades chapter 34:


Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel,
in these words prophesy to them (to the shepherds):
Thus says the Lord GOD:
Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves!
Should not shepherds, rather, pasture sheep?
You have fed off their milk, worn their wool, and slaughtered the fatlings,
but the sheep you have not pastured.
You did not strengthen the weak nor heal the sick nor bind up the injured.
You did not bring back the strayed nor seek the lost,
but you lorded it over them harshly and brutally.



I didn’t want to get sidetracked by this, but it does appear that the charge against the religious leadership of Israel during the time of the prophets and again at the time of Jesus was that it was self-serving, concerned about its self-preservation, enrichment, and legacy to the detriment of the people from whom they were chosen. By the time of Jesus, the ruling class including the temple priesthood of Jerusalem were often collaborating with the occupying power of Rome to hold back the tide of potential violence if the nation appeared to be restlessly moving toward revolt, as they might while observing the memory of Passover each year and their deliverance from Egypt. The swollen ranks of the temple aristocracy skimmed enough money from the overtaxed peasantry to arouse general resentment. Thus, Jesus could make a priest and a Levite the object of (mild?) ridicule in the parable of the good Samaritan, as well as win points with the populace in his game of status-and-shame with his inquisitors on many occasions. 


What does that have to do with me? Well, ultimately, the choice is the same on any minister of the church. Which god do I serve? Of which empire am I a citizen? Are my efforts in my work toward building the empire of God, this God, this shepherd, or the empire of “the world,” and its strategy of self-preservation, acquisitiveness, survival-of-the-fittest, and might-makes-right? That’s a tough question. Like everyone else, I’m culturally entangled in the web of civilization that makes me complicit in the domination of others in ways of which I’m not even aware. But the possibility of action is there for me to the extent that I'm aware of my complicity, and so am able to make decisions about how to act. 


But it is the metaphor of the rejected stone that I think most helps me relate to the paschal mystery this week. The cornerstone of the temple of the Holy Spirit, the building of living stones that is the church, is the rejected stone that is Christ. It is the stone that did not appear to be worthwhile because it was too weak, not worthy, not suited for such a task. And yet it is this very stone that becomes the cornerstone. What this made me remember is Paul’s observation in the second letter to the Corinthians about his “thorn in the flesh,” and the answer he received from God when he asked that the weakness be removed:


But (God) said to me: “My grace is sufficient for you,
for power is made perfect in weakness."
I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses,
in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.
Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints,
for the sake of Christ;
for when I am weak, then I am strong.  



It is here that I encountered the Easter presence of Christ in the scriptures Sunday, the way that Christ revealed the paschal mystery to me a little more fully in the scripture from Sunday. This weakness-is-strength is a scandalous idea in a universe that appears to run by strictly Darwinian natural selection. And yet it pervades the revelation of scripture, from the moment that a slave nation is chosen to be the people of God and wrested from the hand of Pharaoh. The sin of the first parents initiates a new strategy of divine participation in the human enterprise. The deceit of a son secures a birthright from Isaac, the favored runt of Jacob’s litter is sold into slavery and emerges as the savior of both Egypt and his murderous siblings.The youngest of eight sons, a shepherd, is anointed as the king of Israel. A stuttering murderer is God’s advocate before a Pharaoh, children and tree nurses are selected to prophesy to kings. The choice of the apostles themselves, and their characterization in the gospels as clueless, ambitious fair-weather friends of Jesus belies their emergence as the foundation upon which the temple will be laid, with Christ as the cornerstone.


This God, the God of the paschal mystery, is the rejected stone. This God, who did not believe status of “godhead” was something to be grasped, is the one revealed in Jesus Christ.
 

I guess, then, no more thinking that the job is too big for me, or that I don’t have the talent or the means to accomplish the task. I don’t. But it’s not what I can do, or what kind of ability I have. It’s not even about succeeding, if success is defined by civilization and the culture of domination and strength.

Like the Good Shepherd, my task is to serve, to lay down my life for others. God’s grace, my baptism into the mystery of this God who pours Self out for the good of all, has to be enough for me. As the first letter of St. John reminded us yesterday,

See what love the Father has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God.
Yet so we are.

The DNA of the paschal mystery is imprinted on us. I’m a child of the God who is not ashamed to be revealed as weak, as slave, even as an enemy of the state. But it is this love that created and sustains the universe, and which calls me to unity and peace with every other person on the planet, every other child of God. Nothing else will give me life. There’s no way to build any other temple to God than upon the rejected stone that is Christ, and him crucified.

The stone which the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone.

By the LORD has this been done;

it is wonderful in our eyes.

(Psalm 118)

Jesus (and the Christian) as God's "good shepherd" (B4E)

Christ the Good Shepherd, from the
catacombs of St. Domatilla.

The fourth Sunday of Easter in every cycle visits the metaphor of Christ the shepherd. Shepherding is an ancient metaphor, antedating Jesus, for leadership in the community of Israel. Prophetic literature often rails against the “shepherds of Israel” who mislead God’s flock, the God about whom Psalm 23 proclaims, “The LORD is my shepherd; I lack nothing.” Leadership among the people of God, by king, priest, or prophet, is supposed to mirror the qualities of the Holy One of Israel from whom authority flows. As Psalm 72, a psalm probably used in the coronation liturgy of Judean kings, puts it:


O God, give your judgment to the king;
your justice to the son of kings;
that he may govern your people with justice,
your oppressed with right judgment,


That the mountains may yield their bounty for the people,
and the hills great abundance,


That he may defend the oppressed among the people,
save the poor and crush the oppressor...


For he rescues the poor when they cry out,
the oppressed who have no one to help.


He shows pity to the needy and the poor
and saves the lives of the poor.



From extortion and violence he frees them,
for precious is their blood in his sight.



The expectation is that the leaders will act, in God’s place, as just arbiters, impartial, loving freedom and peace. This, of course, is not the way of the world, and kings, prophets, and priests are often condemned as false shepherds who lead the people to their ruin.



But why is Christ the good shepherd? For the author of John, where there are numerous references in chapter 10 to the work of shepherding the God’s flock. How is Jesus uniquely good as shepherd? By his intimacy with his flock, an intimacy that is analogous to his intimacy with Abba (10:14-15). His intimacy with them extends to his death in their defense. It seems important to me that he suggests not that he will kill in their defense, but that he lays down his life for them. He acts as God’s surrogate, then, coming among us with love, and unlike the false shepherds condemned by the prophets, ruling as God rules, through solidarity and service. This clarity or transparency of the Good Shepherd is critical: his way of being with the sheep is an image of the invisible God.

So Peter says, “there is no other name given to the human race by which we are saved.” All other metaphors and avatars are empty. It seems to me that this is a critical reflection on the meaning and significance of Christ, one which differentiates true Christianity from other religions. God is not revealed by manipulative despotism, no matter how benign; not by holy wars fought for “just” or even sacred purposes. God’s way is revealed by the shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. God is love. God is kenosis. As we make other choices about how to live in this world, we need at least, then, to be honest about our efforts being divorced from the way. Our violence and strategies of accumulation, however well-intended, are not God’s way. Throughout our political and economic lives, we need to cling to the prayer of supplicants throughout the Christian scripture: Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Is it any wonder that this litany begins our liturgical prayer nearly every Sunday? As St. John’s first letter reminded us last Sunday, whoever does not says he knows God without living in divine love, self-emptying love, or agape, is a liar. Saved from the despair of our situation by grace; we’re sinners, and the liturgy at her eternal heart knows it, and won’t let us forget that.

There is no salvation through anyone else,

nor is there any other name under heaven

given to the human race by which we are to be saved.