Second Thoughts: Seeking the servant's vision

Today I want to take a quick mystagogical look at yesterday's liturgy of the word. You cannot
imagine my chagrin at what happened in my church instead of homilies yesterday on this major church feast, but I'm trying not to quench the smoldering wick here, and just want to accept what I cannot control while helping, I hope, to "move the deal forward."

I find that actually experiencing the liturgy of the word is often quite different from preparing it. After Mass, I often have new insights, heard different things, or concatenated the same things differently, from the way I had heard those passages and thought about those traditions before. This is the way it's supposed to work, of course, and it's why catechesis is built upon the same root as the word echo: you can't have an echo before the sound. Certainly there is good preparation and prayer to be experienced before the liturgy, but what happens because of the liturgy is, explicitly, the word of the Lord. That word proclaimed in the assembly of believers does God's work, rattling around inside of us, banging off of our inner walls and hallways, throwing light on the shadowy places and elating the places where our best selves cower, waiting for some affirmation or the arrival of a hero.

First reading
...he shall bring forth justice to the nations,
not crying out, not shouting,
not making his voice heard in the street.
a bruised reed he shall not break,
and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,
until he establishes justice on the earth (Is. 42, 1b-4a)

Psalm: The Lord will bless his people with peace. (Ps. 29, 11b)

Second reading: 
“In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.
Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly
is acceptable to him.
You know the word that he sent to the Israelites
as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all..." (Acts 10: 35-36)

Gospel: 
And a voice came from the heavens, saying,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Mt 3: 17)

Last week, I concentrated on the psalm, and didn't say much about the other readings. And I still think the psalm, especially as it reaches its climax in the refrain (which is the last part of the last verse of the psalm), holds a key to hearing the entire liturgy of the word. It's a valid question, I think, to ask, "What does it mean, that 'the Lord will bless his people with peace'? How does that happen? Where is the evidence? And what does it have to do with the Baptism of the Lord?"

What strikes me on first hearing is that there is nothing particularly "cozy" about the belonging implied by baptism as we hear so often in church. In these readings, the Spirit's messianic call to Jesus, and by extension to the Christian world, is announced on an international stage, most clearly expressed in Acts by Peter's speech in the house of Cornelius. Back to that in a minute. But the song of Second Isaiah is packed with language that speaks of the servant's peaceful mission that invites all nations to enter into the world of God's justice.

John's baptism, more than anything else, was a sign of cutting ties with the past, not augmenting them. It was an act of drowning the past in the sacred waters of the Jordan in order to live in a new way in the new order of God's realm, a realm which John himself did not clearly see but which he was given to know was imminent, definitive, and probably dangerous. His apocalyptic vision saw through the phony peace of Rome and the collaborating oppressiveness of the temple leaders, and in his baptism his disciples would wash away that world and rise envisioned by the nascent gospel. What was missing was peace.

We do not know what Jesus's mindset was as he went into the waters with John. Each gospel successively distances Jesus from the Baptizer, until by the time John is written there is practically an apology for the scandalous event. But Mark's narrative, told in just a few lines, leads to the desert experience from which Jesus emerges as the preacher. Jesus arrives, he is baptized, the dove, the voice, and the spirit "drove him into the desert." (Mark 1: 9-12) Whatever happened, the encounter with John, perhaps Jesus's kinsman (Luke says this, Matthew makes no mention of it), seems to have moved Jesus from a quiet life into a public one.

Peter's speech, in fact the whole narrative about Cornelius in chapter 10 of Acts, is one of the highlights of the New Testament for me. This little piece we hear on this feast is often heard during the Easter season as well. Hearing this bit should revive in us the memory of the whole story, a tale of Peter's unease and conservative fear as well as his openness to the gradual realization that Paul might be right about the Gentile question. Cornelius, remember, is not just a Gentile. He's a Roman centurion, a soldier. You might say, "Strike one, strike two, strike three." But God has other plans, and through visions sent to both men, the world begins to change. I urge you to re-read it, using the link above. It is a mini-gospel. The important thing for this complex of readings is the reconciliation of ancient enemies by the gospel, people whom the world has made enemies and slaves and masters become family in the empire of God.

"You are my servant/son, in you I am well-pleased." This phrase sandwiches the entire liturgy of the word, from the declaration to the Servant in Isaiah to the voice over the Jordan in the last verse of the gospel. What makes the servant beloved? God's favor, of course, but the servant's life is described as a mission of justice, that is, bringing things into right relationship with God. But not through threats or violence. The servant doesn't raise his voice, or break a bruised reed, but steadily, relentlessly, peacefully brings God's justice to all the earth. It seems to be this vision of the servant with which Jesus came to identify, or at least which the church came to identify with Jesus in the New Testament, as he offered an alternate way of peace, and alternate empire of justice to his time and every time. God will "bless his people with peace," the psalm promises.

At the outset of the year, with the song of the angels still ringing in our ears, with the mages from the East still on the horizon, we hear about the mission of the adult messiah. This beloved servant of God will bring glory to God in heaven by announcing peace to all people on whom his favor rests, which, he further announces by his word and deed, is all people. The icon of the baptism of the Lord is painted in a broken world; divine peace, justice, and service bind it up and restore it, transforming it into what it was always intended to be. Peter, that blockhead, that slow but steady learner, dreams of a picnic from heaven and moves the community of Jesus toward the edges of humanity, teaching us that nothing beloved of God can be unclean to the rest of us.

I don't know how hearing all this over and over every year can keep us from wondering whether, for Christians, baptism might be the new circumcision or kosher law. How do we keep a group alive, with a credal and moral center, so that there is a group to expand to the edges? I know that I keep asking that question, not because I have an answer, but because the question won't go away. We continue to tell our story and celebrate in a liturgy that has a boundary, an in-group and an out-group, and that liturgy and story keep telling us that the boundary is just in our imagination. Without the story and liturgy, is it possible to sustain such a counter-cultural vision? Can we stand against tyrannies like economic structures and majority rule, structures that always create insiders-outsiders and winners-losers, without an "inside" group that (peacefully, gently, by example) proclaims a God who created us to be otherwise?

And that God, casting god-ness aside, disappears into humanity. There's something about that, too, isn't there?

Just some thoughts about yesterday's readings, knowing that what's coming next week will keep the questions fresh, right?

Two little words

"Dominus vobiscum"
"Verbum Domini"
"Evangelium Domini"
"Mysterium fidei"
"Corpus Christi"
"Sanguis Christi"

Each of those little two-word phrases is part of the Order of Mass in Latin, each has been rendered in English in slightly longer phrases, respectively:

"The Lord be with you"
The word of the Lord"
"The gospel of the Lord"
"The Mystery of Faith"
"The body of Christ"
"The blood of Christ"

Each is an element of dialogue, each calls forth a response from those to whom it is directed. None of the phrases has a verb. This is not unusual in Latin; in the absence of a verb, one generally assumes a form of "esse" (to be) or "fieri" (to become). So we carefully add the verb "be" to "The Lord be with you," because it's ambiguous, but still allows conversation. "Be" is a subjunctive usage in English. It can mean "may the Lord be with you", or it can be a sort of softened imperative (as in a blessing, because not even a priest can tell God what to do!), or it can just mean "is", which is kind of an archaic usage, but we're in very traditional territory here.

Each of these little two-word phrases is a kind of invitation into dialogue. Yes, literally, in the sense that we respond to them, but because they happen in liturgy, they are an invitation into a dialogue of life. The phrases, with readings, gestures, sacramental signs, and people, float around in the space and invite us into the grand mystery of Christ, dead and risen, gone, and present.

Think about the times that the dialogue "Dominus vobiscum/Et cum spiritu tuo" is exchanged at mass. There is one at the beginning of mass (sometimes a longer exchange is used, like, "Grace and peace of God our Father...be with you," but these are all options), one before the gospel, one at the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer, another version of it (Pax vobiscum) right before the kiss of peace and communion, and one last one at the beginning of the dismissal rite. What does that mean?

The liturgy is reminding us that God is present—with us, yes—but in us. In us as assembly. In us gathered as we begin. In us as we hear the gospel proclaimed, alive in the Word and alive in us. In us as we say again the great prayer of thanksgiving to God, asking for the transforming power of the Spirit in our lives and in our world. In us as we offer shalom, the shalom of the Messiah, to one another, and share the food and drink that make us one. In us as we are sent into the world to live the mission of the Messiah. In short, in us as Christ, brothers and sisters of the Beloved Son, who have been given in baptism the Christic identity by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

We keep forgetting who we are, so we have to remind each other over and over again. "Dominus vobiscum," the priest says, "the Lord be with you as you gather, listen, give thanks, share, are sent." "Et cum spiritu tuo," we respond, "you too," we say, "you, who are our community person, marked with the spirit as ours in your ordination."

Are you beginning to see why it's so important that we not mess around with the words? "The Lord be with each and every one of you." That's a riff. "Vobiscum" means "you, all of you". the sense is of many-as-one, not many-as-individuals. We get to the latter by the former. Furthermore, it's just bad form to change ritual dialogue. It's saying, "It's OK for me to improvise my part, but you should just say what you're supposed to say." My experience is that it gets weirder and weirder until you wonder whether it's even possible to respond. "A selection from the gospel of Jesus Christ, written to us from Matthew." Huh? No it wasn't. But I digress.


As we come to those acclamatory dialogues before and after the readings and at the offering of the Eucharist, again, we are asked to respond to the mystery of faith. "The word of the Lord," we hear, and we're specifically not told, "This is the word of the Lord." Why? Because the latter is too narrow and descriptive. "This" reading is not "the word of the Lord" in the liturgical sense: God's word is living and active. God's word is Jesus Christ, alive in this room, alive in the saying and living of these words, and we are invited to renew our baptismal calling to be the Word of the Lord as we respond. "The body of Christ", "the blood of Christ," we are offered at communion. It's specifically not "This is the body..." or "this is the blood," again, because it's too narrow a focus to think that the liturgy is talking simply about the transformed bread and wine. The mystery into which we are invited is to be the body and blood of Christ, to participate in the Paschal Mystery, day in and day out, as we were made in our baptism.

Mysterium fidei in a revised translation of the Eucharistic prayer lost the pronouns and verbs ("Let us proclaim...")  and was stripped down to a similar acclamatory invitation: "The mystery of faith!" proclaimed over the Eucharistic meal, as the Holy Spirit is called over the offering. The dying and rising of Jesus, made present in the sacred meal shared among the baptized, is the mystery of faith which we sing. I get enthusiastic about that.

Being invited to awaken to the wonder of who we are, the sons and daughters of God: presence, word, gospel peace, body, blood, mystery of faith. This is who we have been made by baptism: Christ! This is the calling we have received. I try to remind myself about that as I say those responses, hard as it is not to be distracted by the well-meaning improvisations of some presiders and the still-new awkward formality of "and with your spirit." The wonder of the mystery ought to be overwhelming. and invite me to surrender more completely. The Easter season, through the feast days at the beginning of summer Ordinary Time (Pentecost, Trinity, and the Body and Blood of the Lord) relentlessly invites us to believe that the risen Christ is with us, and to carry his shalom to the world. But every Sunday's liturgy reinforces that reality with two little words that we hear over and over in our own language, a little Easter and a little Pentecost, telling us that we belong to Christ and to one another, and inviting us into a way of life that will make the love of Christ clear to all. Deo gratias!

Two little words. Let's hear it for the economy of liturgical grace.

Behold, the Lamb – Here Am I (A02O)

gathering:  Lead Us to the Water (Kendzia) or Songs of Thankfulness and Praise
resp. psalm:  40 Here I Am (Cooney)
prep rite: Lord, When You Came or Wade in the Water
communion: Come to the Water
sending forth:  Abide, O Spirit of Life or All the Ends of the Earth

The readings this weekend will sound like reruns to some people, but the confusion is definitely understandable. It’s harder to point out differences than it is to say that there is one.

The John version of the baptism of Jesus is told as though it has already happened. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary tells us that the early Church was so scandalized that Jesus would submit to a baptism “for the forgiveness of sins” that each successive gospel makes the event a little more distant. Mark, writing in about 70, tells the story quickly and matter-of-factly. John baptizes with a baptism of repentance, we read in chapter 1, and then, “It happened in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.” Just like everybody else. And Mark moves on from there, sending Jesus into the desert at the Spirit’s urging to be tested. Luke concentrates, as he does, on Jesus praying and the coming of the Spirit; Matthew, as we heard last week, almost makes the baptism sound like a charade: “Do it this way for now...” John doesn’t even have the baptism, just that the Baptist points to Jesus as the Lamb of God. This is important because in the Johannine passion narrative, Jesus is killed at the very hour that the paschal lambs are slain, on a Passover feast that fell on the Sabbath.

As we read through the scriptures for Sunday yesterday at staff, though, what I heard in the readings was a sort of linking between the servant in Isaiah and the Baptizer's strange eponym for Christ, the "lamb of God." No matter that the name is lain upon Jesus most of a century later by the evangelist putting the words into the mouth of John; the name is still spoken with inspired faith. In Isaiah, the servant's destiny is to restore the unity of all the people of earth. For John, it is the lamb of God who is to take away the sin of the world. This recognition of the lowly as the instrument of God is worth our consideration, because in the inspired words of the responsorial psalm, as the assembled and aware body of Christ in this place and time, we sing together, "Here am I, Lord, I come to do your will." Hearing God's word, using God's word, we submit to becoming God's word in the world. We. Us. We who don't think we're good enough, holy enough, connected enough, smart enough to do God's work. But we're called to be the servants of God, the lamb of God, not to do what we want, but what God wants with God's strength; not to wrest the world violently from its dream of self-actualization and autonomy, but to be the light and health (salvation) of the whole planet, and the cure for the pathology of its sin.



This is a dangerous vocation. It was lethal for John the Baptist, it was lethal for Jesus, it was lethal for the prophets and apostles and for martyrs from apostolic times into the present day. (It was lethal for Dr. King, whose birthday we celebrate today, peace be upon him). Human habits of sin are so ingrained and systemic that they seem personal, have their own spirit, even divinity. Little gods, powerful gods, seem to be in charge of nations and economies and belief systems, circumscribing strategies of power, wealth, and privilege with fearsome, almost impenetrable auras. Yesterday I came across a list of "nineteen theses for living and dying" by the great scripture scholar Walter Brueggeman. The whole article is here, but I just want to summarize because it crosses into these thoughts about Sunday's peaceful opening salvo in this year's negotiations for the human heart. Brueggeman describes the Christian message as a "counter-narrative" in the human narrative of "technological, therapeutic consumer militarism." The key character/actor in the script is the God of the bible, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He describes the counter-narrative as "ragged and disjunctive" precisely because the character is God, by definition, undefinable, unknowable as Godself. Most tellingly, he says that those of us in ministry, I should say, those of us who find ourselves among the baptized, are ambiguous about adopting the counter-narrative as a way of life. We don't want to give up our participation in the dominant narrative, what I would say Sunday's gospel calls "the sin of the world," which the lamb is called to erase. His theses are an honest assessment of the mess that scripture can be, and a warning against too easily reconciling the embarrassingly violent and "irascible" God who dwells there with our pacifist fantasies. I'm not sold on that kind of language, but it's similar to what Dominic Crossan's conclusions are, and both of those guys are much more immersed in the culture of scripture than I.

Our music for this Sunday echoes some of the themes that run through the scriptures: that the Messiah is for the whole world (“All the Ends of the Earth” and “Come to the Water”), that the baptism of Christ is a manifestation of God’s presence (“Songs of Thankfulness and Praise”), and that our participation in the baptism of the Messiah and his mission has ramifications for us in relationship to one another (“Psalm 40: Here I Am” and “Abide, O Spirit of Life”). “Wade in the Water” is a spiritual that is a metaphor for liberation, and just plain fun to sing - the youth choir loves it (well, so do the rest of us.)

This thing about decisions, though, about realigning ourselves with the gospel, and identifying and rejecting the social pathologies that, in Brueggeman's words, are the "dominant script" that we rejected at baptism, our entry point into God's counter-narrative, well, those songs need to be written. I'd like to work on them, if I only knew how they should go, and if I could let go of my own ambivalence about surrendering to the gospel's bright, dangerous narrative.

Baptism of the Lord, and Psalm 29

Music for Baptism of the Lord at St. Anne (2014).

gathering:  I Have Loved You (Joncas)
Sprinkling Rite
Glory to God: Mass of St. Ann (Bolduc)
resp. psalm:  Psalm 29 "While the Storm Blows On"
prep rite:   Advent Herald (Wren/Cooney) or You Have Anointed Me (Dameans) or Wade in the Water (trad.)
communion:  Here I Am, Lord (Schutte)
sending forth:  I Send You Out (Angotti)

We haven't had rehearsal for three weeks, and tonight the choir is partying to say goodbye to longtime member Mike Hawkins, who winters in Arizona but will be living in Iowa now instead of nearby Hoffman Estates. Mike's ministry in music antedates mine at St. Anne, so he's been active for more than twenty years. So add another rehearsal week skipped, except for the minutes we'll take to go through the responsorial psalm for Sunday, one that I wrote about six years ago.

So this year I opted to choose music that linked the feast day with Jesus's awakening to his mission, though I have no idea what that might mean. I just believe that he wasn't pretending to be beginning something new in his life, wasn't pretending to be turning to something new as he underwent baptism in the Jordan. Whatever is true of Jesus's divinity, for his humanity to be real, it had to have been a process of discovery and acceptance, just like we have to go through.

I like to think that one beautiful thing about this feast is about the transformation of water. I believe it is the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann who speaks about the Eucharist as not only transforming bread into the real presence of Christ, as we believe. He speaks about how Eastern thought thinks of the transformation in fact makes bread at last into real food. That is, it has always been able to feed the human body and give the body sustenance. But as eucharist, it gives food and sustenance to the soul as well. I know that in a sense this sounds like dualism, but if we just reject dualism as a principle, we can see what he's getting at through the image: the bread, by divine presence, becomes capable of feeding the whole, infinite person. It's a breathtaking thought. Well, in a similar way, I was thinking about how the baptism of Jesus might transform water into a cleansing and regenerative substance for the entire human person by its physical contact with the Savior. Always capable of giving life and death, always capable of cleansing and refreshing the body, when transformed by divine presence water becomes itself finally, and is capable of cleansing and refreshing, destroying and giving life to the whole person. It's probably a stretch, even for me, but it is at least an expansive stretch. Creation in and of itself suffuses water, wheat, the whole cosmos, with divine presence, and aside from humanity, as far as we know, creation never disobeyed the creator. But the incarnation makes possible the reconciliation of the people with the cosmos as well as with the creator, so that other created things can be for us sinful humans what they truly are, what they were created to be.


Psalm 29 is a poem that sounds like it describes a thunderstorm going on while the temple is at worship: “The voice of God thunders above the waters, the God of glory thunders, and in the temple all say ‘Glory!’” Of course, it could just be a metaphor linking inside and outside, robust praise sounding like thunder remembered, I suppose. The psalm calls upon the spirit world to join the temple’s laud of the Holy One: “Heavenly beings, give the Lord glory due his name.” My setting of this psalm is dialogical: choir and assembly interact like this with the cantor:

Choir and all: Glory to God!
Cantor: Let heaven’s spirits say it.
Choir and all: Glory to God!
Cantor: The glory due his name.
Choir and all: Glory to God!
Cantor: Within the temple pray it: let the people praise you while the storm blows on.
Refrain:     With a voice above the thunder,
                    In the roaring of the sea,
                    Though the storm should shake temple,
                    God will bless his people with peace.

The other verses are similar in form, though the acclamatory words change to “the voice of God!” and “the Lord shall reign!” You can probably tell that I am trying to work with the storm-temple image axis and reinforce the scripture’s witness that, no matter how bad things are, God is with us. We need to keep focused in faith, keep our center, which will help us make better decisions in the face of the storms that rage outside of worship, both in the temple courtyard (the church) and in the surrounding world. It's worth noting that the psalm imitates the psalms of the (defeated) Canaanites, whose weather-god Baal is ridiculed by the psalm's call that all should worship YHWH as master of storm and temple.

All are welcome—to what? The quandary of the open table

This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.

The whole ecumenical, what-would-Jesus-do scene gets a little mixed up when it comes to the Eucharist. Everybody believes the Eucharist should be for everyone, but the how of that is where we get messed up and start arguing.

Christian communities with open tables welcome all believers to the Eucharist. It's not that there's any kind of test, but they don't make an issue over your confessional status when you come to worship with them. Communities with closed tables, and Catholics are among these, believe that the table of Lord is a rite reserved for the confessional community, for those whose belief is the same. For us, this translates into having been initiated into the Church through baptism, either as an adult through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults or as a child through baptism. What we believe about baptism is, in fact, that it is the doorway to the Eucharist. Baptism incorporates us, with confirmation, into the body of Christ. The Eucharist is the sacramental celebration of that reality, in which the gift of the fullness of Christ, head and members, is given by Christ to the Father in love and to the world as food. That is to say, the Eucharist is always a visible sign of the invisible reality of the kenosis (self-emptying) of the Logos, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Eucharist thus completes, in an ongoing and repeatable way, the sacraments of initiation. Just as the self-gift of Christ is eternally present in every place and time, and the ministry of the church in the world is eternally present in every place and time, so the table-fellowship of Christians around the Eucharistic table takes place throughout time and space to signify the work of God among us.

Now, incorporation into Christ in baptism means something. It means a lot of somethings, but among those many things it means that a person is delivered from the separation and isolation of sin by being made a member of a community, permanently, filled with God's Holy Spirit. A person becomes  a member of Christ's body, a living reality, and thus shares in the mission and destiny of Christ. As we have shared in his death, so we shall share in a like resurrection. "As the Father has sent me, so now I send you." Christ is sent on mission to the world, to announce the forgiveness of sins and the immanence of the dominion of God, and to begin living in this world that reign of equality and peace. Thus, incorporation is both a matter of being (a member of Christ) and doing (the work of Christ.) It is both a matter of belonging and mission, being in and being sent, organically, at the same time.

The Eucharist is sometimes narrowly seen as having been invented or instituted by Christ at the Last Supper, but a richer and certainly more revealing view of Eucharist would include the entire table ministry of Jesus, much of which is described in the gospels, both during his life, including the Last Supper, and even in the post-resurrection meals, such as at the household of Clopas in Emmaus, and on the shore of Lake Tiberias, where Jesus cooks breakfast for the disciples. All four gospels recount one or more miracles of Jesus feeding multitudes after giving thanks over small amounts of food, a remarkable narrative confluence not often repeated between the synoptics and John. The Last Supper itself, while mentioned in John, makes no mention of sharing food, bread, and cup, only referring to Jesus' washing of the disciples' feet after the meal. 

Mealsharing in the New Testament always has some revelatory aspect. Matthew reports that Jesus was called a glutton and a drunkard; one can only imagine that, for such epithets to be remembered, he must have been known as someone who made a point of eating with others a lot, and certainly the number of meals that are reported in the gospels bears that out. Those with whom Jesus ate are also mentioned: prostitutes, tax collectors (collaborators with the occupying and ritually impure Romans) are mentioned as his table companions. He also ate with those wary of his status, like Simon the Pharisee, whose banquet was infiltrated by a woman of the town who had a bad reputation, and whose love and hospitality Jesus commended as having originated in God's forgiveness of her sins. Each of the three great parables in chapter 15 of Luke, which we hear in this weekend's liturgies, have at their literary centers a meal or celebration over the finding of a lost sheep, coin, or child. Wedding banquets make up the context of parables, Jesus' first miracle is at a wedding feast where the host runs out of wine. Food and eating seem to be so much a part of the messianic message (see Isaiah 25:6ff) that we first meet Jesus in Luke's infancy narrative when his mother wraps him in swaddling clothes and lays him in...a manger! Already, just a few minutes into his earthly existence, the divine Logos is, literally, at the eating place!

So for Jesus, table fellowship with the outsider, with those deemed "unworthy" by the religious establishment, seems to be a kind of street theater. This is not to say he was "acting," but to say that he was making a public proclamation by his deeds. It wasn't enough to "speak" the word, he had to live the word in a visible way. He was making sacrament, using signs and symbols to forge new meanings for those who were able to see. The sharing of life and hospitality, the welcoming of the other, the stranger, even the perceived foe, at the dining table is to make visible and present the reign of God. Michael Joncas makes the point that one of the great miracles of the table of the Lord is that for the duration of his public ministry, people at opposite ends of the political-religious spectrum, who probably began regarding each other as bereft of honor, dined together in something like harmony. On the one hand, Matthew, the tax-collector, was a collaborator in the employ of the Romans. On the other, we have Simon the Zealot, a member of a party dedicated to the violent overthrow of the Roman occupiers, along with Judas called "Iskarioth," which might put him in a cabal called "the dagger," a group of assassins who killed collaborators and Romans by stealth. All three were members of the Twelve, Jesus' inner circle of table companions.

There is some modern scholarship suggesting that the open table in early church life was a recruiting strategy. Imitating the behavior of the master, the apostles (particularly the latecomer Paul, whose influence in the history of the church in nothing short of remarkable) would host tables to which all were invited. Wealthier sympathizers might provide the location and board, but the meals were occasions for evangelization, continuing Jesus's invitation to participation in a different worldview, the "kingdom of God," contrasting it with the hollow, fearful drudgery of the Pax Romana.

In modern church life, too, table-fellowship means something outside of Sunday Eucharist. As a matter of fact, like every sacrament, the authenticity of the sign depends

to some extent on the conscientious participation of those who take part in it. In a wedding, for instance, if there is any indication of coercion, or doubt, or fear, or incapacitation (say, a drunken bride or groom), there is no wedding, no matter what is said on the day of the ceremony. This is not to say that God was not present, or didn't want the wedding to happen, or even that there was not love between the partners. It's just that, as Jesuit liturgist John Gallen used to put it, "you can't say 'I do' if you don't," or if you literally can't. The same must be said of the Eucharist, of baptism, and any sacramental action of the Church. God is here. God wants to save the world. But those who are taking part in these sacred actions must also "show up." We have to be there, too, and want to act in love, in good conscience, to be part of the divine action. If you don't know there is a divine action, then you can't authentically take part in it. If you aren't connected to Christ through the community (in baptism), then you really can't share in the Eucharistic table, because there's no 'there' there. This is not to say that everyone is not called to the table, somehow, in God's plan. But the way there isn't through coercion, or a good feeling, or a general invitation to eat, as though that's all there is to it, because it isn't. Being called to the table of the Lord is being called to the community made by baptism. The way to the table is through the font. The way to the font is through bonding to the community through ministry of the word, through prayer, through common life and missionary attitude. The font, and sealing with the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, makes us members of the Body of Christ, and thereby we are called to eat and drink at the table to be made, week by week, ever more conformed to Christ, or remade in his image, by the work of the Holy Spirit. The Eucharist is the outward sign of this action. Most of it happens in the other 167 hours of the week when we're NOT at mass.

So is everyone welcome at the Catholic eucharist? Yes, of course. But there's only one way in, and that is through baptism (and, in the case of adults and children who are old enough for understanding, confirmation). Is everyone welcome on Sunday? Yes, of course, to partake of the table of God's word, where Christ is truly present, and to know the real presence of Jesus in the ministry of the church (priest, assembly, musicians, readers, etc.) and in the very gathering of the ekklesia, those who are called out for this work. The Eucharistic meal, though, is for those who have been called to it through baptism. No one has a "right" to it. It is God's gift to the Church, through faith, made visible by a person's assent to (and the community's discernment of) that choice by God in baptism. Chosen by God to feed the world, the Church is fed in the Eucharist. 

One might say, "But not even all Catholics live this way, live differently." You would be right. We have a lot of work to do.

Still, no IDs are checked. Priests who act responsibly in the liturgy don't say, "only Catholics may approach." It's certainly not part of the Roman liturgy in any book I've looked at. But just like a marriage in which there's some impediment to authentic consent, it may be that nothing happens. Kisses may look alike, but they don't all say "I love you." If Catholics want to do what Jesus would do, I would suggest we do less of inviting people to pretend that they belong at the Eucharistic table, and more of what we know Jesus did: go out and make friends with people who are shut out. Let them eat at our tables. Eat with them at theirs. Make the connection to the banquet of the Messiah, and show them how followers of Jesus live. They might just get interested in what makes us tick, why we go to the "bother" of being with them. At that point, we might be able to tell them who taught us how to eat and drink, and ask them whether they'd like to know more. All of those gospel meals with the Lord happened after they heard the words, "Follow me," and set out on the road to Jerusalem, the cross, and the empty tomb. Sometimes we need to be reminded that “when we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the death of Lord, until he comes.” If someone sits down to this table, they ought to know what they’re getting into. That includes us.

Theological Tempests in Musical Teapots, Part 2

Maybe you saw this coming after Monday's post.

The song of mine that continually has received the most bad internet press from the champions of their own orthodoxy is "(I Myself Am the) Bread of Life," which I originally wrote in 1985, and was first recorded on the CD Mystery in 1987. Later, we recorded the song again when anthologizing the NALR years for Oregon Catholic Press. This CD was called Change Our Hearts, and we recorded it in 2000. (You can listen to a brief clip on iTunes by clicking here.)

First, let me say that I'm trying to be positive here and not be negative about the "conservative" movement in the church which tends to label as heresy everything with which they disagree. This is hardly conservatism in a church that began with political enemies breaking bread at Jesus' table (Levi, the tax collector, and Simon the Zealot) and blossomed by opening its narrow Jewish theological doors to Aristotelian logic, Roman rhetoric, and Eastern mysticism. The Christian church always been the church of "the big tent." We don't call ourselves "catholic" in the creed for nothing. We're not a parochial, civic, national, or even international church. We're catholic - universal! So the narrow-mindedness of some conservatives is a little distressing to me. Used to be more distressing; now I'm really, really trying to be less caustic and reactive, since narrow-mindedness can run both ways.

There's been an article circulating for years on the internet that originated in the Adoremus bulletin that contains the passage quoted below, which summarizes the objection to the lyrics to "I Myself Am the Bread of Life" in certain quarters. The author, I believe, mistakenly constricts all of liturgy action under the umbrella of dialogue, as though in the liturgy itself the assembly is not self-aware, or is only aware of itself when it sings praise to God in the second person. This rubric covers much of the Eucharistic liturgical action, but does not explain, for instance, the Creed, the General Intercessions (which are addressed to the assembly, then offered to the Lord), the Confiteor, liturgical hymns like Victimae Paschali Laudes, which is directed in all kinds of ways, or many liturgical acclamations from other rites, such as the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. The author accuses a dozen or so composers of getting the theology of the eucharist wrong, alleging that the Eucharist is a dialogue between us, the "bride," and Christ, the "bridegroom."

But this isn't the essential dialogue at the heart of the Eucharist at all. The dialogue at the heart of the Eucharist is the dialogue between Christ and the Father in the Holy Spirit. The task of the Introductory Rite is to awaken in the assembly its true but often forgotten identity: Christ. In the baptism of every person present at the Sunday Eucharist, we ceased to live as ourselves. We died in the water, and rose up again as Christ. That is the source of our identity and mission; it is the reason we gather around the table where we remember the Lamb of God who is offered again without blood to the Father, ending the murderous, bloody sacrifices that religion to that day had concocted. We are Christ. Every one of us belongs to Christ, members of his body. We did not choose to be so. We were chosen for this, filled with the Holy Spirit in our baptism, sealed with that Spirit in confirmation, and summoned again and missioned by that Spirit in the Eucharist. 

Here's part of the article, "Ritus Narcissus," by Father Paul Scalia in Adoremus vol 5, #1, March, 1999. It is reprinted and quoted in numerous places on the internet:

"Bread of Life" by Rory Cooney, provides a splendid example of this self-centered conversation. The theme of the song lends itself to the Communion rite. But unfortunately, the words distort the meaning of Communion and the dialogue that should be taking place: I myself am the bread of life you and I are the bread of life taken and blessed, broken and shared by Christ that the world may live.Aside from the fact that this song radically distorts Our Lord's "Bread of Life" discourse, it also leaves God out of the conversation: we talk to ourselves.

I, for one, don't see the rhetorical difference in the language of that refrain from, for instance the Creed:

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ...

or the Confiteor:

I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters,that I have greatly sinned...

or the Easter sequence, also an ancient Christian hymn:

Christians, to the Paschal Victim offer your thankful praises.
The Lamb has redeemed the sheep,
The innocent Christ has reconciled sinners to the Father....

Communion antiphons of the Roman Missal often employ the first person in their rhetoric:

This is how we know what love is:
Christ gave up his life for us; and we too must give up our lives for our brothers (sic).
(26th Ord. A)
Because there is one bread,
we, though many, are one body,
for we all share in the one loaf and the one cup.
(27th Ord. A)

Perhaps most tellingly, this antiphon uses the words of Christ on the mouth of the assembly without using a qualifier like "says the Lord":

As the living Father sent me,
and I live because of the Father,
so he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will live because of me.

I point this out not to confuse the issue further, but merely to point out that the nature of the liturgical dialogue is not as univocal as the author says, and, in fact, contrary to the authors explicit statement, we sometimes do in the liturgy make the Lord's words our own in song.

The lyric of the song attempts to do exactly what the General Instruction says to do, namely, "to express the communicants' union in spirit by means of the unity of their voices, to show joy of heart, and to highlight more clearly the "communitarian" nature of the procession to receive communion." (86)

So, yes, it is the community that sings "I myself am the bread of life" and the rest of that text. How can I sing that authentically? Not because of anything that I did, but because by baptism, "I live now no longer myself, but it is Christ who lives in me." Therefore, whatever in scripture Jesus says about himself, whatever the spirit does through him, that is the calling that we have received in our baptism into Christ. Here's a comparison that IS in scripture: in John, Jesus says "I am the light of the world." In Matthew, Jesus says "You are the light of the world." Why? For the same reason. The gospel compilers believed that the community was the ongoing presence of the risen one in the world.

So I think that we are the bread of life, we are the resurrection and life, we are the way, the truth, and the life. Not because of ourselves or anything we can do, but because by baptism we live as Christ. Either we are the body of Christ or we are not. The same spirit that made Jesus messiah fills the church to make it the "anointed" of God in every age. All of 1 Cor 10-12 is about this.

The final stanza of my song "Walk in the Reign" says the same thing:

When we stand together to stand against hell,
The name of this people is 'Emmanuel.'

A couple of more thoughts: the line "a living sign of God in Christ" refers both to the bread (and cup) and the assembly. "Sign" does not mean that the presence of Christ is not real! It means that Christ is visible in a different form. The 'real presence' is the real presence of Christ, head and members. Not just Jesus, but all of Christ, because Jesus himself, through the gift of the Spirit from the cross and at Pentecost, intended it to be so.

Finally, let me make one more plea here on behalf of metaphor and poetry. If I say 'you and I are the bread of life', I'm not saying we're made of yeast and flour. I'm saying that Christ can break us, and nourish the world with us. If this is not an expression of the Catholic theology of eucharist, then all that I believe is wrong. Not only has it been wrong, but I would prefer to believe it to the alternative that some revisionist folks would have us think.

Some closing thoughts: I'm grateful to OCP for keeping this song in their hymnals for all these years in spite of the outrage of the few. That means a lot to me, but it should also mean something to you, namely, that I'm not just making this stuff up! This is a valid way for us to think about and sing about Eucharist. Also, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the publication of this song, I wrote some new verses last summer. 

I leave you with the word of St. Augustine that further help us see that this idea that we are the bread of life is a genuine and mainstream theology in the church. In one of his most famous homilies, Bishop Augustine speaks to this reality in these words: 

“If you therefore are Christ’s body and members,
it is your own mystery that is placed on the Lord’s table!
It is your own mystery that you are receiving!
Be a member of Christ’s body then,
so that your ‘Amen’ may ring true!
Be what you see; receive what you are!”

"Super hanc petram aedificabo..."

I like it when the sanctoral cycle, ordinarily celebrated at weekday masses by the  pious faithful who pray there, irrupts into the Sunday schedule. It happens too rarely. Feasts of the Lord can and do, and this year the feasts of the All Souls and the Dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the pope’s cathedral in Rome, will do so, the latter being a celebration of the Lord made visible in the Church and in churches. The feast of the Transfiguration (August 6) displaces Ordinary Time when it falls on a Sunday, as of course do the feasts of the Holy Trinity, the Body and Blood of the Lord, and the Baptism of the Lord (nearly) every year. But the sanctoral cycle is less hardy in its encroachment. All Saints, of course, occasionally falls on a Sunday, and the Birth of John the Baptist, but really the only other feastday which falls in Ordinary Time and has the significance to displace the Sunday cycle (that I can think of without actually doing any actual research ☹ ) is the one that occurs this Sunday on June 29, the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul.

What does the liturgy have to say about these two men who are the pillars upon which the church grew in the first century of its existence and whose profound influence upon the interpretation of the gospel is felt today? The opening prayers praise God that through their teaching the Church “first received the faith,” and asks that we be kept true to their teaching. The alternative prayer paraphrases the letter of Peter, praising God through whose great mercy we have received “new birth and hope through the power of Christ's resurrection,” and asks that their prayers for us we might reach the inheritance of heaven with them. (Quotations are from the previous Sacramentary.)

But the readings point to their faith in Jesus and God’s support of them in their hour of need. The first reading, from Acts, describes the rescue of Peter from prison by an angel of the Lord, and the responsorial psalm, from Psalm 34, celebrates that “the angel of the Lord will rescue those who fear him.” In the second reading from 2 Timothy, the first part of which is so familiar to all of us who attend so many funerals through the years, Paul, writing from prison himself, confesses that his life is slipping away, poured out like God’s life and the life of Jesus, but that in every trial and in his time of need “the Lord stood by me and gave me strength.” The gospel is one we will hear again later this summer, the confession of Peter from Matthew 16, in which Peter announces, to Jesus inquiry as to his perceived identity, that "you are the Christ (messiah) of God," quite possibly giving the right answer but meaning the wrong thing. Jesus changes his name from the Jewish “Simon” to the Greek Kephas, in Latin, Petrus, a cognate of petra, which means rock, leading to the famous wordplay written in huge letters around the cupola of the dome of St. Peter’s in Rome: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam. (“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”)

That Peter and Paul came to have the same feast day is a triumph, I suspect, of some historical revisionism begun by the evangelists that homogenized and beatified a relationship in the early church that was probably anything but amicable. In Reza Aslan's recent book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, which sought to popularize some theories about the historical Jesus in the context of first century Judaism in a Roman world, what was arguably the best and most convincing part of the entire work was the last chapter, which analyzed passages in James, Acts, and the Pauline letters to reveal the serious rifts that divided the apostolic church and at the same time made Christianity possible after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 CE. While Aslan is concerned about the animosity, possibly the antipathy, between James (the brother of the Lord) and Paul (who never met Jesus), Peter is clearly in James's camp. I don't want to get distracted by all this today, but the short version of Aslan's theory is that James knew Jesus, and led the Jerusalem church as a movement within Judaism that kept the Jewish law sacred in a way that edified the church's Jewish milieu. Paul, on the other hand, preaching in the diaspora and poaching Greek-speaking Jewish sympathizers had a more liberal bent, and preached that the law could do nothing to save a person, only faith in Jesus Christ. Hints in their letters show their barely concealed distaste for each other's teaching.

At the distance of two millennia, we have reconciled, to some extent, the faith vs. works argument, and rationalized a belief that sees, as James writes, that faith without works is nothing, and that good works are an outward sign of a faith that believes in the genuine Jesus. Still, even within Christianity that letter of James is not considered canonical by all believers. The question can be settled without it, I suppose, but it's interesting to me that, in spite of the heat of these arguments that separated these lions of the faith at the dawn of Christianity, they all believed in Jesus, his message, and his risen life to such an extent that these servants went to their violent deaths at the hands of the same governments and gods that had crucified the master. The Jewish Jerusalem church that had flourished under James and Peter disappeared after the razing of Jerusalem in 70, and what was left were the churches of the diaspora in the Mediterranean basin, Rome, and beyond that had been cultivated by Paul and his disciples.

So, rather than focusing on these men, who in the words of the entrance antiphon “(conquered) all human frailty, shed their blood and helped the Church to grow,” the liturgy focuses on the God who empowered them and who will empower us to continue to work to build up the church and make it truly catholic. Tacitly taking up last week's evangelical refrain to “be not afraid,” the liturgy encourages us to trust that the angel of the Lord will rescue us as well, and to trust that God will do what the word of God promises. The life and memory of these two men, so unlikely to share a feast day in a sense, who knew each other as allies and adversaries at the same time, is testament to a God who, in Christ, reconciles all things to himself.

Here’s our music for this weekend:

Call to Worship: Be Ye Glad. Michael Kelly Blanchard's great song of ransomed joy is a favorite of ours, and the choir is singing an arrangement as a call to worship. I chose it because it recalls the miraculous release of Paul and Silas from jail, a story from the readings of the vigil, not of the feast day, but still to the point. The spiritual "Eyes on the Prize (Hold On)" takes off from the same event. Blanchard's text is so beautifully crafted. If you are not familiar with it, this is the second stanza, the reason I chose it for today:

Now in your dungeon, a rumor is stirring.
You have heard it again and again.
Ah, but this time, the cell keys are turning
And outside there are faces of friends.
And though your body lies weary from wasting
And your eyes show the sorry they've had,
All the love that your heart is now tasting
Has opened the gate. Be ye glad! (© Gotz Music/Benson )

Gathering: The Christ of God, by John Foley, SJ. OCP octavo. I wrote about this song in my blog last year (see link). I like that the triumphalistic refrain is framed by a recitative question, “Who do you say I am?” The verses, complementing the faith expressed in the refrain, describe the role of the Christ and the disciple: “The servant of God must suffer much, be rejected, and yes must be killed....Take your own cross, and come, follow me.”
Psalm: Psalm 34: The Angel of the Lord, setting by Rory Cooney, OCP octavo. This is an alternative refrain to my setting of “Taste and See” from Cries of the Spirit 1, written for this feast twenty-something years ago.
Preparation Rite: God Is Love by Rory Cooney or A Dwelling Place, by John Foley, S.J.
Communion Song: Heart of a Shepherd, by Rory Cooney, (link is to a blog post on this song in the "SongStories" series) adapting verses from the Gelineau Psalm 23.
Recessional: Anthem by Tom Conry or Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones (traditional).


Fire, light, and glory (Presentation of the Lord)

It has been eleven years since the feast of the Presentation of the Lord fell on a Sunday, and you could tell that by the difficulty our priests had preaching on the subject. I heard about Pete Seeger, Boy Scouts, and Horton Hatches an Egg, but I'm not really sure anyone knew how to deal with the texts we had, and any notes they might have had from previous rounds through the lectionary were long lost in half a generation of filing. On a midwinter day where "glory" in America boiled down to the tantara and hype of the SuperBowl and its advertisers, "glory" might have been a good starting place, to keep us from completely consumed by our culture's preoccupation with consumption and glitz.

It has been traditional in most years for the Vatican to leave its large Nativity scene up until yesterday's feast day to emphasize that, while the liturgical season of the nativity ends on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, there is an aspect of the nativity cycle that lasts the forty days from Christmas to this feast day. I thought of this at mass yesterday, and while we did not have much left in the main church by way of Christmas environment, the white poinsettias around the altar platform and the many red ones in the gathering space provided at least some visual context that linked the celebration to the Christmas season.

We blessed candles at all the masses, though we had no procession as such, people held lit candles in the pews for the blessing and singing of the Glory to God, and I admit to loving the ambience of all the lit tapers both for the sacramental effect of light, warmth, and beauty, but also for the visual memory of the Easter Vigil. These emotional linkages are somehow important, don't you think? Like Luke's prophecy of Simeon concerning the "sign that will be contradicted," and the pain that is in the future of the child and his mother, they connect the events of the Nativity with the events of the Passion-Resurrection narrative, and to the larger world of Acts. To some scholars, Crossan and Raymond Brown among them, this is the whole point: the infancy narratives are either "overtures" to the gospel, or even gospels-writ-small, a literary metaphor for the meaning of what will happen to the adult Jesus and the church.

We can't really hear that first reading from Malachi any more without hearing the corresponding aria and chorus in the Messiah, can we? To me, the reading suggests at least two connections to the feast day, first, that the Lord will come to the temple, and second, that the coming of the Lord will be like a "refiner's fire or fuller's lye," that is, a purifying event, that will change the "sons of Levi." This is not just a reference to Israel, but specifically to the priesthood of Israel. The purified priesthood will offer to God a pleasing sacrifice. Hebrews orients our attention to the life and death of Jesus as that sacrifice, which was for "the descendants of Abraham," the brothers and sisters of the Lord, to deliver us from slavery and the power of death.

The temple narrative of the Presentation in the gospel, and in particular, I think, the oracle of Simeon, pull all of this together. But we need to try to grapple with what the author of the third gospel means by words like "light" and "glory." It does help to orient our hearing to the infancy narratives, in which we recall that, at the birth of the Lord, the "glory of the Lord shone around" the shepherds at the appearance of an angel, then an army of angels, who sang that the "glory to God in the highest (is) peace on earth."

Simeon says,

“Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace,
according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you prepared in sight of all the peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and glory for your people Israel.”

The literary parallelism in those last two couplets equates what "my eyes have seen" with "in the sight of all peoples," that is, "your salvation." The nature of that "salvation," or making-healthy, is the child who is "light of revelation --> Gentiles" and "glory --> your people Israel." Again, parallelism like this implies a relationship of equality. The prophetess Anna spoke of Jesus to "all who looked forward to the redemption of Jerusalem." I took this to mean, "who looked for a political messiah". Already, the game is afoot. Luke has situated this entire story in the political context of the Roman empire, under the rule of Augustus and the governorship of Quirinius. It is going to be a political story, but it's not going to be politics as usual, neither for the Romans and other Gentile followers of Jesus, nor for the Jewish subjects of the empire, nor their priests, nor for their political agitators.

The culmination of the story? Jesus is taken home by his parents. It's as simple as that. He grows up like a normal kid in his home and on the village lanes of Nazareth.

I couldn't help but remember an episode of the old cop series NYPD Blue, in which Detective Sipowicz and his wife Sylvia Costas bring their newborn son Theo to their (Greek Orthodox) church for a "churching" ceremony, a service reminiscent of the presentation ceremony in Luke, which reunites the mother with the community, and introduces the child. (citation) The priest took the child from his parents, and carries him to different  places in the church, but what I recall most distinctly is that he held the baby up and spoke the words of Simeon, "Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation..." In other words, this baby, today, is (also) your light of revelation and glory. Our baby. This ordinary baby from these ordinary people, is light and glory and salvation. Just like all the babies that passed through this door in the past, and will pass through it in the future.

So, on this day when everyone couldn't wait to get home to start millionaire-athlete worship, the competition, the "tailgating" glut, the cult of advertisement, need-making, and consumption, the Church was reintroducing us to the other "way," the way of ordinary life, salvation by relationship, and the rejection of competition among factions in favor of mutual service.

Since, it seems to me, that as long as they keep the SuperBowl on the first Sunday of February, the feast of the Presentation will, every dozen years or so necessarily coincide, we would do well to keep these things in mind, don't you think? Glory is not money, cars, power, influence, but peace among people. As long as we let the light and fire of God's word speak in the temple, and reflect on its meaning, we should have something to say to one another about Caesar's world, whether it's run by Augustus, Fox Sports, Anheuser-Busch, or Madison Avenue. "And he shall purify the sons of Levi." Priestly people, I think that's us.

Taste and See the Goodness of the Lord (reflection on B20O)

“[I]f you believe in God omnipresent, then you must believe everything that comes into your life, person or event, must have something of God in it to be experienced and loved; not hated.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, Green Dolphin Street

Yesterday, August 16, it was my privilege to give the reflection on the readings at my parish, St. Anne in Barrington. This is, more or less, what I had to say to my friends and neighbors at church.

As I was reflecting on the readings for this weekend, I thought it would be interesting to look at the "bread of life" discourse, and what Jesus says about the himself in John 6, through the lens of the psalm we have been singing for four weeks now. Just in those very short verses of Psalm 34, there is a lot to ponder as we "address one another in psalms and hymns and inspired songs, singing and playing to the Lord" in our hearts, as Ephesians said. But before I do that, I'd like to briefly look at some repeated words in those first two readings, and how they suggest a way to think about the word of God today.

Did you notice that both Proverbs and Ephesians start off with exhortations to "forsake foolishness"? What do they mean by that? I suspect we'd have a wide range of meanings for "foolishness." If there were a political debate, say, between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and each used the word "foolishness," they would probably mean almost universally different things, probably pointing to the other as they said it. But what is foolishness to the writers of today's readings?

It would help if we looked at all of Proverbs 9 today, because there are two women inviting people into their houses. Lady Wisdom's invitation is here, but Lady Folly's invitation doesn't begin for a few more verses. The whole of chapters 1-9 in Wisdom speak of the tug-of-war between wisdom and foolishness. The call to the simple and uncomplicated in today's first reading is an open invitation to experience the bounty of Lady Wisdom's house by obedience to the Torah, acting with justice toward the neighbor. Folly, on the other hand, does what it wants to do, without regard to the law and prophets. The path to each house and the outcomes of living in them are clear. They are the result of choices that we make in life. They are not rewards and punishments. They are consequences of our choices. Good choices, symbolized by the covenant or Torah, are made possible by God's invitation.

The teaching of Jesus is much the same, though Jesus also reveals for us the love behind the law. Jesus preached in Galilee, a Jew in a nation under the rule of the Roman empire. Rome, like every empire before and since, embraced a view of civilization that used military violence and threats to keep a version of peace. As long as people accepted Rome as their master and paid their taxes, they would have a measure of peace and security. And Rome had a god—Caesar—Octavian, later called "Augustus," the "majestic," who also had titles like "son of God," "God" "savior of the world”, LORD, and "prince of peace." Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, passed these titles on to his adopted son, Tiberius, and so on while the Caesars lasted. (Footnote: the word evangelion, the word we translate as "gospel," was a word used by the regional governors of the empire to commemorate the victorious Octavian's military victories which brought "peace" to the world. They used the word in the plural; the Paul and the NT writers use it in the singular to refer to the gospel of Jesus Christ: that is, his death and resurrection which are the peaceful "victory" over Caesar.)



That was the "gospel" of Rome; but Jesus, and later the church, preached a different way. He knew people knew that things weren't working, that people weren't happy, that they were suspicious and often jealous of each other, that they worked too hard, and were afraid of what terrors the next day might hold for them and their families. Of course, that was then, and this is now, right? Jesus wanted people to remember who they really were: God's chosen people. So we might hear his message as, "How's that Roman empire working out for you? How is that god 'Caesar' working out for you?" And he reminded them, and he reminds us, about who we were before Caesar and the rest of the civilizers showed up: Jew or non-Jew, we are the sons and daughters of a God who wants us to act like a family that takes care of each other. To make this as obvious as possible, he called this God "father, abba"—the head of the household of creation. He called for a world organized not by violence and threats but by justice, equality, and love.

Rome disagreed, and executed him as a disturber of the Pax Romana. But we know the rest of the story. Abba raised him up, the beloved son, the servant, on the third day. And his disciples continued to preach the message of the empire of the Father, a world organized by love and justice. So when the Church called Jesus “Lord,” or "Son of God" or "Prince of Peace," it was as a clear alternative to the "Lord" of Rome. At the heart of this new movement of healing, love, and reconciliation was a meal shared in equality in memory of Jesus. As Jesus had shared his table with everyone, the infant church gathered around a meal to remember Jesus and spread the word of the empire, the kingdom of God.

I want to say that this is what Jesus means by the "bread of life." Do you remember that these gospels began four weeks ago with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and that the whole event took place "near the time of passover"? The "bread that came down from heaven" is part of the passover story. Manna, the bread of exodus, the bread of freedom, is the bread that came down from God. Now Jesus says, "I am the bread that came down from heaven. I am the bread of life." We're meant to hear "I AM" as the name of the God of the Exodus, the god of freedom. Wisdom, freedom, joy, equality, and God are life. Whatever is not like this God, whatever belongs to the other god, Caesar, the one who civilizes by threats, violence, and force, that god is death. To choose that god is to choose death, to taste and see death. Just like the two women in Proverbs, there are two calls into two houses. Each comes with consequences. But only one call comes from God.

So when our psalm sings, "Taste and see the goodness of the Lord," we should try to keep in mind which Lord the psalmist is so enthusiastic about. It is the paschal God, the God of passover. We can taste and see that God because God created everything out of God's own goodness, so that everything created shines with the freedom and love that made the universe. This is the God who doesn't even cling to divinity, but pours self out to come among us when we lose our way to show us, in an utterly human body and soul in Jesus of Nazareth, what the real God is like. In Jesus, I AM shows us how to live with compassion and healing, and how the walls we put up between each other with money, power, property and greed are nothing but illusions that will dissipate when we just turn around from one god to the other, when we turn from death to life. So, in the words of our psalm,

When we bless this Lord at all times, the "lowly will hear and be glad."
When we seek this Lord, the paschal God, the god of freedom and love, then this Lord will answer, and deliver us from all our distress.
When we look to this God, the paschal God, our faces will not be ashamed.
When we cry out to this God, the paschal God, then the poor are rescued from distress.

It is this God whom we taste and see in the Eucharist. It is this God who says, in Jesus Christ, I AM. I AM the bread of life. I AM the living manna. And it is into this God, in Jesus Christ, that we are baptized, and whose life we share not through any good we do or any merit of our own, but because of the loving kindness and the call of God. It is this God whose spirit, in baptism, makes us into the body of Christ, to keep proclaiming by our lives the gospel of compassion and service. It is now our vocation to ask one another, to ask the fearful, jealous, unhappy, overworked world, "How's that other empire working out for you?" It's for us show by our lives a different way, not reinforcing "civilized" threats of force and violence, but demonstrating a way of living together based on service, compassion, freedom, invitation. That is the goodness that we can "taste and see" when we encounter this Lord in the body that is this church and in the body that is the eucharist. That is the goodness that we are, that enables us, that inspires, in-spirits us to sing,

I myself am the bread of life.
You and I are the bread of life,
Taken and blessed, broken and shared by Christ
That the world may live.

We begin to taste and see the goodness of the paschal God, of one another, of a world that God is bringing to be, when we live as the daughters and sons of Abba, and come together around the supper table of the Passover lamb.

So at communion today, let us say "amen" to who we are, the beloved children of God, committed to God's empire of peace, justice, and freedom, and "taste and see the goodness of the Lord," both at the table of the Eucharist, and at the table of the world.

Psalm 22 and God's Passion

It’s the question of rescue that keeps coming up for us since the Shoah. If God can deliver us from the suffering that is in the world, why doesn’t God do it? One might expect that, in keeping the promises made to Abraham, Moses, and David for the Chosen People, God would at least deliver them. In the context of the preaching of Jesus in the Christian scriptures, one might expect that God would deliver everyone from suffering, since the distinguishing ethical message of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is that we should “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” Surely if this radically anti-intuitive behavior is expected of people, then God must lead the way?



But what if God is “changing”? What if Jesus' baptism in the Jordan was, in point of story if not fact, a baptism of repentance, and God is changing the terms of the covenant and his image for the future? What if God is no longer going to be a god of war, with mighty hand and outstretched arm, delivering people from the powers of earth and other gods, but is going to be God of Life, winning the victory over death, a victory whose spoils will spread through the land of the living as people hear the gospel that death itself has been defeated and is no more to be feared?



These are the questions and insights of Jack Miles’ book Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God. They are both challenging and comforting. They bring up new questions as they begin to lay others to rest. The book certainly puts the question about the value of suffering front and center for us. It alleges, in a sense, that the crucifixion is the anti-exodus, that rather than delivering Jesus (and by extension, all Jews) from enemies by an act of power, God reveals that Jesus in fact has no enemies, and allows himself to be killed by the oppressing authority to show that he goes before his people, all people, in eschewing retribution and violence. God validates Jesus’ extraordinary preaching and living by raising him from the dead, the “first of many brothers and sisters.” The death and resurrection of Jesus are a witness to his enemies, as well as to his friends, that there’s a new sheriff in town, and the sheriff’s judgment upon everyone is mercy.



The words of Jesus on the cross in Mark, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me,” are from Psalm 22, which we sing every year on Passion/Palm Sunday. They articulate the cry of the suffering servant, of the ones whom God has promised to be-with in covenant, and who are on the verge of death. Seen as an isolated verse, the first verse, in fact, of the psalm proper, it seems to be a statement of despair and alienation from God. But when we look at the whole psalm, which we might well imagine was in the mind of the crucified Jesus, we get a different picture. It is a picture of someone who has a complaint against God, yes, for a betrayal of the covenant. It is a picture of someone who says, “Listen to my enemies, Lord, if you won’t listen to me. They may kill me, but look at what they’re saying about you. If you let me die, then they’ll be right: their god or their gods or their might and righteousness is mightier and stronger than yours. If you’re not a greater god than they, why didn’t you tell me before now? Are you some kind of liar?”



But the psalm only begins this way. As it makes its way through the list of grievances and agonies imposed on the singer, it moves through memory…

Yet you drew me forth from the womb, made me safe at my mother's breast. Upon you I was thrust from the womb; since birth you are my God...



to prayer, to hope, to assurance, and ultimately to renewed covenant and gratitude for safety.


You who fear the LORD, give praise! All descendants of Jacob, give honor; show reverence, all descendants of Israel! For God has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch, Did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out. I will offer praise in the great assembly; my vows I will fulfill before those who fear him. The poor will eat their fill; those who seek the LORD will offer praise. 



The way that Psalm 22 is sung in Catholic churches, or the way it is presented in the lectionary, both clarifies this and obfuscates it. It clarifies by using sections of the psalm from several of these movements of the heart; it obfuscates the psalms development of thought by having the assembly come back to the first line of the psalm, “why have you abandoned me?” The setting I wrote about ten years ago tries to get around the problem of the development of the thought by making the “responsorial” part of the psalm the repetition of a revelatory line in each stanza by the assembly, rather than going back to the beginning verse. In the fourth “movement,” the assembly sings an ostinato phrase, “You who fear the Lord, praise him,” while the cantor sings the vow of praise of thanksgiving over the assembly’s song.



I don’t really have a major problem with the lectionary layout, either. Certainly at any given moment, on any given Sunday or any day for that matter, members of every assembly, and certainly members of the extended body of Christ scattered in space and time, are in the throes of abandonment. And there is a sense I have, right or wrong, that the paschal mystery, the mystery of death and life in God, is not “solved” after life, that it’s not at all about getting through trouble and finding rescue after death, but that the paschal presence of the Lord is available and most active right in the midst of death itself, however that manifests itself to us. The call to “be not afraid” is not a way of saying “hang in there, there’s a new world after you die,” but that there is life in dying itself, and that God knows this, and has gone through it before us. In fact, what I want to believe is that this is just what John means when he says that “God is love,” and what Paul means by the kenosis of God. The very nature of divine life is love, and that love is self-emptying to the point of death, but it is nevertheless life, even though that seems invisible, even impossible, to us because of our fear of it.



Maybe this is the passion of God, which became (becomes) the passion of Christ, this self-emptying agape into which we are born again by water and the Holy Spirit. Maybe it is made most clearly manifest in that moment of apparent abandonment, when the comforts of other empires are stripped away, and life is as clear as a dream of water. If this grain-of-wheat love is what made the universe, then it is a discipline I ought to keep trying to learn. The message of Holy Week and Easter is that it is learned on the road to Jerusalem, through the gates of imperial judgment, and ultimately, and only, on the way of the cross.



Here’s the music we’re doing at St. Anne on Sunday:



Gathering: Psalm 122 - The Road to Jerusalem (Cooney-NALR/OCP, Palm Sunday verses)
Psalm 22 for Passion Sunday music by Rory Cooney
 (GIA)
Gospel Response: We Remember (Haugen- GIA)

Preparation Rite: Faithful Cross (Kendzia, OCP)

Communion: Jerusalem, My Destiny (Cooney, GIA)

Recessional: Glory in the Cross (Schutte, OCP)


"He relied on the LORD;
let him deliver him,

let him rescue him, 
if he loves him."