Grace upon Grace (John 1)

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” 

     In the Name etc.

     John’s gospel begins with a lofty proclamation of identity between the Word and God. This Word, or Logos as the Greek has it, is, as we know, not a spoken word in the ordinary sense, but rather the Word is that through which all things come into being. And that being is life and light for humans. And, as today’s Gospel makes clear, the Word is Jesus himself, the Word made flesh, who became human, and who lived in the world as a man. This Word, this God become human in Jesus, we also name the Second Person of the Trinity. I don’t want to get into a technical theological discussion, but rather I want to talk about the great themes that John the Evangelist introduces in today’s reading. Today’s reading is usually called the Prologue to John’s Gospel, the Introduction, that is, and in it John announces the great themes of his entire book: being, life, light, grace, truth.

     Being is here more than a philosophical or a theological term. The Evangelist identifies being with life and light. Light and life ARE being, and there is no being for humans apart from life and light. That may be an obvious thing to say, but there are many places in the world where there is very little light, where life is very difficult, and where any sense of being as coming from God, of any sense of life as coming from God, is not obvious at all, is very hard to believe in. I am thinking of the wars in Syria and the Middle East and Africa and so on. The moral darkness in those situations is very dark indeed. There are other situations which are equally dark. We can all think of them, in our own society and elsewhere. That is why the Evangelist says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” That is WHY the Word came into the world in Jesus. That is the real meaning of the Word, to be light and life in the darkness. The being that the Word shows forth in the darkness is light, is life.

     In verses 10 and 11, the Evangelist summarizes the story of Jesus’s earthly life. “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” It seems as though the Evangelist is saying that the darkness did in fact overcome the being and light and life that Jesus brought into the world. But we know that the darkness of death held Jesus for only a short time. The resurrection reversed that apparent defeat. John says, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.” Glory means light, the light of life and being in Jesus that could not be extinguished. It could not be extinguished because light and life and being come from God himself.

     And we are not separated from that light and life and being. The Evangelist says, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” There are no exceptions to this; the true light enlightens everyone. Where there are life, light, being, there is God, there is Jesus. This is easy to forget in our society, which emphasizes individuality and competition and difference so much. We are constantly tempted to forget that others are valuable in God’s sight, that others have as much of being and light and life as we do. The Evangelist says, “His own people did not accept him.” We usually take this to refer to Jesus, and it does, but it can also refer to our own lack of acceptance of the other children of God, our fellow humans, whom we see every day. They are as ‘enlightened’ by God as we are. It is a good spiritual exercise, to pay attention to the thoughts that flow through our minds as we encounter other people, and to be aware of how many of those thoughts are not as accepting as they could be. It is an enlightening exercise, to say to ourselves of every person we encounter, “The true light, which enlightens this person, has come into the world.”

     “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” Full of grace and truth. We say of Mary, the Mother of God, that she is “full of grace.” And today’s reading says that Jesus is “full of grace and truth.” Grace is that endlessly flowing love of God that keeps the universe and everything in it in existence, the favor of God that keeps all things flowing in a Godward direction, in their journey of return to him, to their final consummation in the new heaven and the new earth. So “full of grace” is not merely a title applied to two individuals, Mary and Jesus, but is also a description of the spiritual reality that pervades all things and people. The Evangelist says, “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” We have ALL received. So when we address Mary in our devotions as “full of grace,” we are reminding ourselves that we and everyone else and everything else are also “full of grace.” This suggests another spiritual exercise that we can use in our daily lives. When we encounter others, or even see strangers on the street, we can mentally address them as “full of grace.” If we do this regularly and routinely, it will transform us and the way we see the world.

     So we realize that the opening words of today’s Gospel are not a statement of a remote, aloof eternal reality, but a description of the world that we know, a clue to right understanding of it, and a guide to how to live in the world in such a way as to bring us all into awareness of the reality of God for us and everyone else.                      

     “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

    

    

The One who is to come (Matthew 11)

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

     All religious searching, it seems to me, one way or another, amounts to asking questions. And the questions are universal, they are very old, and every honest person asks them, sooner or later. What is real? Does God exist? Why is evil so widespread and persistent? What can be done about it? Is love real? Who among all the prophets and teachers and philosophers and mystics perceives the truth? What is truth? Does religion, any religion, offer any credible answers, any insights at all into the human condition, that we can use? And so on and on. We can all think of variations to questions like these, and we can all think of more questions along the same lines. Questioning is at the heart of the effort to understand our experiences and to do something to make them easier to bear.

     And so it is with John the Baptist. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” He is looking for the Messiah, the Anointed One, who will deliver Israel from the foreign oppressor. John takes it for granted that there will be a Messiah. The only question is, who it is, and whether he has come or not.

     Jesus, it seems to me, doesn’t actually answer the question. Matthew lets us know in verse 2 that he (Matthew) thinks that Jesus is the Messiah, when he writes, “When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples.” But in this reading, Jesus doesn’t confirm that belief himself, or respond to that expectation directly. Instead, he tells John’s followers to report what they hear and see. Nothing more than that. What they hear and see. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news brought to them.” In other words, Jesus is not, at least at this moment, claiming the traditional religious title and role of Messiah. He’s doing something else: he is opening the eyes and ears of John’s followers, and ultimately the eyes and ears of everyone else who is ready for it, to the presence, the reality of divine power, attested to here by miracles. Notice how Jesus does this. He inverts, he turns upside down, our usual expectations of how the world works: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead have life. But the most world-inverting thing Jesus says in this reading is, “The poor have good news brought to them.” We live in a world very much like the ancient world, where the poor are slighted, denigrated, abused, deprived, and so on. This sort of thing goes on everywhere, even in our own city, where we do make good efforts to help the poor, to ‘bring good news to them,’ we may say. So even we can sense something of the impact this remark must have had on those who first heard it. The poor were of no importance in that world, so anyone bringing good news to them would be a sensation, and a subversive, dangerous one at that. And the good news they are brought is the news of the kingdom, and of their rightful place in it.

     Jesus is aware that he may be subverting traditional expectations. He says, “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” He knows that traditionalists may be disturbed, offended, by his teaching and miracles. But those who see and hear him for what he is, are blessed. That is, they have an opportunity to glimpse spiritual reality in the vision of the upended, inverted world, which Jesus is putting before them.

     John’s followers leave, to take back to John what they hear and see. And Jesus turns to the crowd, and he says, “So, what are YOU looking at? Hm? You came all the way out here into the desert for WHAT? A reed shaken by the wind? Well, you may be right there! There isn’t much in the desert except wind and sand and rock and the occasional plant! You came out here looking for glorious spectacle? You are definitely in the wrong place! No? Oh, you came looking for a prophet? Is that so? Well, then. Let’s talk about this!”

     I hope that my rewrite of verses 7, 8, and 9 conveys something of the impact that Jesus’s words may have had on his hearers, and may have on us, if we put ourselves into that scene and really hear them. Notice what is happening here. Jesus is distancing himself, again, from a traditional expectation, the appearance of a prophet, or rather, he is expanding on the meaning of ‘prophet.’ “What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.” Evidently the crowd thinks that Jesus is a prophet, but he deflects that expectation and talks about John the Baptist instead, as a forerunner to himself. And here Jesus again upends, inverts a traditional expectation. “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.” John, in other words, is the greatest of human beings, but in the Kingdom, that doesn’t count for much. Earthly hierarchies of status, importance, supposed closeness to God, don’t count for anything in the Kingdom. We don’t have to be prophets to reach the Kingdom, and the poor, the least on earth, will be ahead of the prophets in any case.

     Do we ask the same question of Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Have we, in other words, let the reality of Jesus’s words and deeds get through to us, or are we waiting for someone else, something else, to come along and answer all our questions and fix everything for us? Are we looking for prophets in the wilderness, in the desert? There are lots of would-be prophets around these days to choose from. Are we looking for spectacle, for something unusual to entertain us? Or are we prepared for the world-upending, world-inverting deeds and words of Jesus, which can answer our searching questions, and show us the way to the Kingdom in which we will have a place with him and the prophets?

     “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Widow & Unjust Judge. Pray always. Don't lose heart. (Luke 18)

“Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always, and not to lose heart.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 18, the first verse.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     We have Our Lord’s word for it. These two things go together. Pray always. Don’t lose heart. We pray in order not to lose heart, and we don’t lose heart, in order to pray. If my own experience is anything to go on, the two experiences are definitely connected. If I begin to lose heart, my own prayers begin to fall apart. I have to make myself return to them. I go through this all the time, almost, it seems, every single day. And if my prayers begin to fall apart, I begin to lose confidence in myself, and lose confidence in God. I lose heart, in other words. This is easy to do, as I suspect we all know.

     Pray always. Don’t lose heart. Do one thing, and don’t do another. Following the first command makes it easier to follow the second. Our Lord is proclaiming that prayer is central to everything we do. This is one meaning of “always” in “pray always.” Every activity, thought, and mood is in some way influenced by prayer, and prayer in turn is influenced by everything that we experience. The “heart” in “don’t lose heart” is that center of feeling and will and love that we all have, that influences prayer. This double motion is really one, since the two experiences can’t really be separated. Prayer needs a lot of heart to support it, and if we begin to lose it, heart needs a lot of prayer.

     Jesus in this reading is talking to his disciples. And he tells them the somewhat odd story about the widow and the unjust judge. The story is odd because it seems to be comparing God to an unjust judge, who grants the widow’s request simply because he is tired of her. But of course that is not the real point. The story is really about the widow’s persistence, and there, in her persistence, we have the main clue to the nature of prayer, and how to keep going if we find ourselves losing heart.

     Persistence. Standing firm. Not giving up. Years ago I heard a homily by an Orthodox priest about what it takes to maintain prayer. People, whether lay people or clergy or monks, typically need a structure, a daily or weekly structure, to maintain prayer. In the Western Church in the Middle Ages and later, there were several offices, several periods of prayer a day, said or sung in common in monasteries and many churches. Usually, offices were not much more than three hours apart. In other words, in the monasteries it took regular prayer several times a day, to maintain the monks’ prayer life. And it was prayer in common. It is important to remember that prayer is never purely individual. The prayer Our Lord taught us, the “Our Father,” is “Our” prayer, not just an individual prayer. Our own Prayer Book reminds us of this, with its title “The Book of Common Prayer.” Even, especially, when we are praying on our own, at home or in some other situation, we must remember that we are actually praying in a very large company of people past, present, and future, on earth and in heaven, who are constantly at prayer, asking God for help, offering prayers of adoration, and so on. This is another meaning of Our Lord’s command to “pray always.” It is always to be aware that our prayer is part of a vast, deep river of adoration, flowing from past, present, and future, from earth to heaven. Awareness of this is very strengthening; it helps us not to lose heart.

     For those of us who are not monastics, our Prayer Book suggests different ways to pray. We can use the daily offices for morning, noon, evening, and night which the book provides. There is also a collection of brief daily devotions which are modeled on the daily offices. And there are many, many prayers included in the book, which we can use. The book is not the property of the clergy only, for use in daily and weekly services. It is meant for the prayerful use of everyone. So, when you go home, please look through your copy of the Prayer Book, if you haven’t done so before, and work out ways you can use it in your daily prayer life.

     Prayer, our own or the prayer of others, is always there to support us, no matter how we may be feeling from one moment to the next. We may imagine that we are losing heart, but even the desire to pray, or the awareness of that it is sometimes difficult to pray, are themselves kinds of prayer. Prayer is never far from us, even if we think it is, and we need not imagine that we have somehow failed, just because we don’t feel up to it, that we have somehow lost heart. The prayer of the Church, on earth and in heaven, is there to support us, no matter what.

     Today’s reading connects prayer with justice, with our desire for justice, and God’s granting of it. “I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them,” the Gospel says. This brings to mind the great issue that many people have with prayer, that it does not often seem to be answered, at least not immediately, especially prayer for justice. This problem, justice, has occupied minds great and less great, for centuries. It is the subject of Plato’s dialog ‘Politeia,’ or ‘The Republic,’ and people today are seeking justice all over the world, in all kinds of situations: war, economics, and social causes of one kind and another. Prayers ascend endlessly to heaven, seeking justice in those and many other situations.

     I came across a cartoon, just the other day, that illustrates the nature of this problem. I can’t remember where I saw it. I went looking for it online, but could not locate it. But the story goes something like this: A young man is having a conversation with God. It looks like they are in a park or some such setting. The young man says, “God, I have a question for you. Why do you allow injustice and war and starvation and disease and exploitation and abuse?” And so on, in this vein. And God replies, “Man, I have a question for you. Why do you allow injustice and war and starvation and disease and exploitation and abuse?” And so on. According to the cartoonist, at any rate, the solution to the problem of justice is actually within our power; God has in fact answered the prayer for justice by giving us the means, the power, the understanding, actually to do something about it. And, so far it seems, we humans have been taking our time getting around to it. Now of course I know that the situation is much more complicated than that, but at root, the prayer for justice, which Jesus mentions in this parable, is a prayer which has, in a way, already been answered in God’s granting to us the ability to take responsibility for justice ourselves.

     But we are reluctant to, at least some of the time. This is one meaning of the concluding line of today’s Gospel, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” This line seems to be out of place in a teaching about prayer, and seems especially out of place as the concluding line of a parable about God’s granting of justice. But is it really?

     Have we lost heart in our prayer for justice? Have we lost faith in it? We remember that one meaning of ‘faith’ is ‘trust.’ Have we lost trust in God’s promise that he will grant justice quickly, that is, that he will give us, has given us, the means to work for it?     Let us pray, then, and not lose heart. That is, let us not lose trust in God’s promises, especially today in his promise of justice.

     “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. (20.X.13 Adv. 20.X.19 Adv)

Jesus brings fire to the earth (Luke 12)

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled…Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” From today’s Gospel, the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 12, verses 49 and 51.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. 

     Well! What are we going to do with today’s Gospel? “I came to bring fire to the earth!...Do you think that I have come to bring peace?...from now on, five in one household will be divided…You hypocrites…do you not know how to interpret the present time?” There isn’t much wiggle room in these texts; they are lacking in any kind of comfort or mitigation that we can use to take the edge off them. They are, at the very least, bracing. They demand our attention, and there appear to be no concessions in them, implied or stated, that we can resort to, to find a way out of them.So we must do our best to find out what our Lord means by these remarks.

     There are really two readings here: Jesus the Cause of Division, as our translation titles the first one, and Interpreting the Time, the second part of the reading. The two are connected, and the connection is our ability to understand the present correctly. Everything that Jesus says in the reading is meant to prod us into seeing and understanding “the present time.”

     What is the “fire” that Jesus came to bring to the earth? Physical imagery comes to mind right away; we all think of forest fires and calamities like building fires and so on. And, indeed, we live in a world, thanks to global warming, in which large, catastrophic fires are becoming more frequent. But this is not the fire that Jesus has in mind.

     In the Scriptures, fire is a frequent symbol for God, for the Holy Spirit, for the angels, for the word of God. In Deuteronomy, Moses says “For the Lord your God is a devouring fire.” There are many references to fire, in connection with the wrath of God, the temple sacrifices, the Holy Spirit, and more. In Matthew’s Gospel, John the Baptist says, “One who is more powerful than I is coming after me…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” This “fire” is the presence, the reality of God, which consumes all before it and takes away everything which gets between us and God. Jesus experiences this presence, this reality, and to him it is like a consuming fire, and he wants us to experience the reality of God as directly as he does.  “How I wish it were already kindled!” he says.

     Jesus is being realistic when he says, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No…division!” This is what can happen when the reality of God gets close to us. Perhaps we prefer to keep God at a comfortable distance, as an idea, a word, a hope, a God who doesn’t impinge much on our daily lives, but whom we acknowledge politely in our ceremonies, and, truth to tell, whom we may like to leave there as a ceremonial object. Jesus is saying in plain words what happens when we let God, that consuming fire, get close to our lives. We all know from experience what can happen. Arguments, derision, fear, anger, rejection, and who knows what else. It is interesting how Jesus describes this, entirely in family terms, with family members divided against each other. And we all know from experience that the family is often, maybe usually, the place where division occurs, when God becomes real and present to someone in the group. Jesus is telling us to be ready for this, not to be surprised by it, but to understand it as almost a consequence of making God known, of bringing fire, that is, God, to the earth. Not that I am recommending this kind of division…I certainly am not, but Jesus is being realistic about human nature.

     Jesus is addressing a crowd, all of whom can understand the point he is making. He includes them in his teaching, when he says, “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky.” In other words, they have got some way on the path to awareness of reality, at least as far as correctly interpreting the appearance earth and sky. In our society, this kind of interpretation is, it seems to me, almost the whole of our science, and our way of life depends on it. We, like the people whom Jesus is addressing, are very good at this. And we should be.

     But that is not the whole story. Jesus goes on to say, “Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” In other words, there is more to understanding the world than interpreting the appearance of earth and sky. We must interpret the present as well, the present in which God is real and close at hand, in which we can’t safely box him up and keep him out of the way, a present in which God is not merely another appearance that we can interpret to suit ourselves.

     Today’s reading ends with that question. And Jesus provides no answer, and, as far as we know, no one in the crowd attempts to answer either. The question is rhetorical, as we say, not really intended to be answered, because we already know that we are often reluctant to really face the present, especially when Jesus tells us how difficult the present can actually be. In today’s rather alarming Gospel, we are reminded of the reality of God. The more we pay attention to the present time, the more we become aware of the reality of God. And the more we become aware of the reality, the better we understand the present, and the better we will be able to bring God, that consuming spiritual fire, into the world.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.