Not Peace, but a Sword (Matthew 10)

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” From the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 10, verse 34.

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

     Here we have another uncompromising, rather alarming statement of Our Lord. “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” We think of violence, war, and all the suffering that comes with the sword, which we all understand to be a weapon, an item made to maim and kill, which can’t possibly have any peaceful purpose. These are not words that we would expect to come from the mouth of Jesus, whom our tradition calls the Prince of Peace, but there they are. What are we to do with these words? How are we to understand what Jesus is saying here?

     Today’s Gospel reading is extracted from Jesus’s instructions to the Twelve, which take up all of chapter 10. It seems to me that all of this chapter could have been selected as the reading for today. It provides a list of instructions to the Twelve on how they are to conduct themselves, what they are to say, and it lists what kind of authority the Twelve are to have. The main instruction is, “Proclaim the good news. The kingdom of heaven has come near,” in verse 7. Jesus gives the Twelve authority over unclean spirits, and over sicknesses, and warns them not to be surprised by the hostility they will encounter. Jesus goes on to promise family conflicts and says that anyone who loves family more than him is not worthy of him. And he wraps up these promises, alarming as they are, with the final promise that “those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” All these remarks are one way to understand the sword, the lack of peace, which he promises in this reading.

     As we know, these remarks directly contradict what Jesus says about peace in John’s Gospel. In chapter 14 of that Gospel, Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” Jesus is making a distinction here, between his peace and the world’s peace, but, overall, the theme is peace, unlike the theme in today’s Gospel, which is one of conflict and loss. We have to reconcile these conflicting themes somehow.

     The very first appearance of the word “sword” in the Scriptures is in the book Genesis, chapter 3, verse 24. “He drove out Adam, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.” The sword is flaming and turning on its own. There are paintings which show the sword being held by angels, but the Scripture doesn’t actually say that it was held by anyone. The sword represents a spiritual reality, the loss of Paradise and the apparent impossibility of return.

     But is return impossible? We usually take the flaming sword to mean that the way of return to Paradise is closed to us, but is that the only meaning of the story? In fact, the sword is also showing us where the entrance to Paradise is, showing us the way back to the Tree of Life. The flaming sword is not only a barrier; it’s also a beacon. We can, in other words, begin to find our way back to Paradise. The flaming sword is showing us the way.

     The sword that Jesus is talking about is not just a symbol of conflict, a practical, realistic, this-world reference to the violence and conflict which we all know. The sword is also a symbol of the entrance to Paradise, to the Kingdom, to the peace which Jesus talks about in the Gospel of John. We can understand the sword of Jesus, in today’s Gospel, as that sword at the entrance to Paradise, which Jesus brings, not to create worldly conflict, but to lead us away from a false peace, which is nothing more than an absence of conflict. Jesus says, “I do not give you as the world gives.” Jesus realistically portrays the conflicts that his followers will experience, but those conflicts are not the end of the story, and the image of the sword shows us the way beyond it.

     What else can we learn from Scripture about the nature of the sword which Jesus mentions? To learn more, we can turn to the Letter to the Ephesians, where the Apostle advises us to “take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” Here Paul identifies the sword with Scripture, and also with the Incarnate Word, Jesus himself. Paul takes military imagery and turns it into spiritual teaching. Scripture is the sword which Jesus is brandishing, if that is the right word for it, and Scripture, the written word of God, also points to Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God. Scripture is, as it were, the flaming sword,  the beacon at the entrance of Paradise. It is the shining flame which shows us the way of return to the Kingdom. Jesus, and Scripture, proclaim the Good News, the Gospel, that the Kingdom of God is near, that we are near the entrance to Paradise. Jesus has opened the door to the Kingdom, indeed, he is the door to the Kingdom. The flaming sword has become the Light of the World. Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, by his presence in the world, has shown us that the Kingdom is already present. We have, in other words, stepped with Jesus through the entrance to the Kingdom. Jesus, when he says, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” is realistically telling us that many people will resist the return to the Kingdom, and is also telling us that he is that sword, that flaming light, that will guide us to the Kingdom.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
(2014 Adv.. 25.VI.17 TSP)

      

The Bread of Life / Griffiths (John 6)

     “I am the bread of life…This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” From the Gospel according to John, chapter 6.

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

     My talk tonight is not mine. It is by Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk of the 20^th century who established a monastery in India, and who wrote many books. One of them, Return to the Center, is my source tonight, particularly the chapter The Christian Mystery, in which he writes about the Church and the Eucharist.

     “The day before he surrendered his life on the cross, Jesus took bread and wine and blessed them and gave them to his disciples in a ritual action which he told them to repeat in memory of him. By this ritual action the mystery of his death and resurrection, of the divine life communicated to humanity, was symbolized and made present. Here, under the symbols of bread and wine, the divine life is present…the eternal Wisdom gives itself to be the food of all, and the unutterable mystery of the divine love offering itself in sacrifice to the world is shared in a ritual meal. This in turn is a symbol of the fact that this divine Mystery is present everywhere, present in the earth and its produce, present wherever human beings meet and share together, present in every gesture of unselfish love.

     The Church as a visible institution is constituted by the Eucharist. For the Church in this sense is simply the community of those who have recognized the presence of the divine live, of the kingdom of God, in Jesus, and who meet together to share this divine life in the ritual meal which he instituted. But, of course, the divine life is not confined to the Eucharist. It is present everywhere and in everything, in every religion and in every human heart. The Eucharist is the ‘sacrament’ of the divine life – the outward and visible sign of this divine mystery instituted by Christ – and the Church itself is the ‘sacrament’ of the kingdom of God, the sign of God’s presence on earth. It has the value of a sign, of something which makes known the hidden mystery. The doctrine, the ritual and the organization of the Church all belong to the world of signs, to the sacramental order, which manifests the divine Mystery, the one eternal Truth, by means of human words and actions and human organization. The danger is that the signs may be taken for the reality, the human may overshadow the divine, the organization may stifle the Spirit which it is intended to serve.

     What, then, is the essential Truth which is signified by the doctrine, the ritual, and the organization of the Church? If we attempt to put it into words we can say that it is the presence of the divine life among humans, of the infinite, eternal, transcendent mystery of being, which is the Ground of all religion and of all existence, manifesting itself in the person of Jesus Christ. In this revelation the mystery of being reveals itself as a mystery of love, of an eternal love ever rising from the depths of being in the Godhead and manifesting itself in the total self-giving of Jesus on the Cross and in the communication of that love to men and women in the Spirit. The organization of the Church, with its doctrine of Trinity and Incarnation and its Eucharistic ritual, has no other purpose than to communicate this love, to create a community of love, to unite all men and women in the eternal Ground of being, which is present in the heart of every person. This is the criterion by which the Church is to be judged, not by the forms of its doctrine or ritual, but by the reality of the love which it manifests. [This love] reveals itself in the depths of the heart. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’

     The essential nature of the Church, therefore, is to be this mystery of love, of the divine love revealing itself and communicating itself to men and women. All the sign-language of doctrine and ritual has no purpose but to reveal and communicate this love. This is the light in which the doctrine, the ritual and the organization of the Church are to be judged.

     The original message, the essential truth, of every religion is the sacred Mystery, the presence in this world of a hidden Wisdom, which cannot be expressed in words, which cannot be known by sense or reason, but is hidden in the heart – the Ground or Center or Substance of the soul, of which the mystics speak – and reveals itself to those who seek it in the silence beyond word and thought. All…ritual, all doctrine and sacrament, are but means to awaken the soul to this divine Mystery, to allow the divine Presence to make itself known. Myth and ritual, word and sacrament, are necessary to make known the Mystery,” which is the Mystery of Love, of Life, of eternal Life, in Jesus Christ.

     “I am the bread of life…This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven.”

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

    

Pentecost (Acts 1)

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

     In Jewish tradition, Pentecost, meaning the fiftieth day, commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai, fifty days after the Exodus. There God speaks the words of the commandments to Moses, as it says in the book Exodus, chapter 20, “wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire…while the whole mountain shook violently. As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder.” Fire, smoke, thunder, noise, earthquakes, are components of a very dramatic and even terrifying manifestation of the presence and power of God. Here God is making his will known in an overpowering way to the tribe of wandering Hebrews, recently escaped from Egypt, on their way to they-knew-not-where. We can all picture this scene, and we can recall movie versions of it. The terror of the people, their fear of death, accompany this experience. Moses even says to the people, in a somewhat contradictory statement, “Do not be afraid, for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you.” So this first Pentecost is one of power, described here as a volcanic eruption, in which God makes himself known as the divine lawgiver. It is worth noting, by the way, that the lawgiving doesn’t stop with the Ten Commandments; the next several chapters of Exodus present a very long list of laws and ceremonial regulations, meant to govern every detail of tribal life. In Exodus, God does not restrict himself to generalities, but announces regulations and laws about slaves, violence, property, restitution, and much, much more, all of them concerns of the tribal people of the Exodus.

     Christian Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Easter, and it commemorates, as we know, the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and those with them. In the first chapter of Acts, it says that the crowd numbers about one hundred and twenty persons. If I understand the text correctly, I think that is the total number of people, up to that point, who are either witnesses of the resurrected Lord, or believers in the Resurrection. And this may be speculation on my part, but I think that the number ‘one hundred and twenty’ is significant, since it is a multiple of ‘twelve,’ the number of the tribes of Israel. The story of the coming of the Holy Spirit is a story of the Spirit’s descent on the Church, the New Israel, and it is possible that the number of believers is expressive of this new understanding, of the Church as the New Israel.

     “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind…divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each one of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” The wind and the fire recall the presence of God on Mount Sinai, but in this story there are only wind, and tongues of fire, not the thunder and lightning and earthquakes and smoke of Sinai. And there is no terror in this story, no fear of death, but only the “rush of a violent wind” which fills the house, but doesn’t terrify anyone.

     But bewilder them it does. “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation…living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” As the story says, there are Jews living throughout the Empire and beyond, and they speak the languages of the regions where they come from. And they hear the apostles speaking about “God’s deeds of power,” in this case not the giving of the law from a mountain top, but God’s deeds in Jesus, and his latest deed, the outpouring of the Spirit.

     Peter, in his sermon, the beginning of which we hear in today’s reading, quotes the prophet Joel, who says that “God…will pour out [his] Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” There is no tribal restriction here, no merely local concern; all flesh, that is, all humanity, and perhaps even every living thing, will receive this outpouring of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not given to the Hebrews alone, but to the whole earth. And that is the mission of the Church, to make the presence of the Spirit known, and God’s deeds of power know, to the whole world, in all times and places.

     Joel, as Peter quotes him, does remind us of the events at Mount Sinai. God says, according to Joel, that he “will show portents in the heaven above, and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood.” Joel is talking about eclipses of the sun and moon, universal phenomena which people around the world can see. These portents are not local events which affect one tribe or people only, like a volcano in the Sinai desert, but affect tribes and peoples and nations around the world, since they are visible to all. Joel’s prophecy, in other words, is universal, not local or merely tribal, which is why Peter quotes him, and it teaches us that the Church, the New Israel, comprises all the tribes and peoples of the world. The work of the Holy Spirit, in making known God’s deeds of power, makes them known to the whole world. The Holy Spirit speaks all the languages of earth, past, present, and future, and is present to all peoples.

     There are no distinctions of gender or status either in Joel’s prophecy. When God decreed laws and regulations concerning slaves and property and so on, at Sinai, he took slavery for granted. Slaves had no rights at all, and clearly were not members of the tribe. But Joel’s prophecy, as quoted by Peter, makes it clear that God pours out his Spirit even upon slaves, males and females both, “and they shall prophesy,” says the Scripture. Peter’s understanding of the generosity of God is still not fully developed from our point of view, but it is an advance on the understanding expressed in Exodus.

     The gifts of the Spirit that Peter quotes in Acts are prophecy, visions, and dreams. And slaves of either gender receive these gifts. But the greatest gift of all is salvation, as Joel says, “then everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” This is what the outpouring of the Spirit makes possible. God, in sending his Spirit, is making it possible for us to call upon his name, to invoke it, to open up to us the way to our eternal destiny. Joel, and Peter, have revealed that God is making it possible for the human race to grow spiritually far beyond merely local concerns, to the universal, even eternal, realm of the Holy Spirit.

     The Apostle Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, develops the list of gifts that we receive from the Spirit. Paul teaches us that the same Spirit pours out varieties of gifts “to each…for the common good,” as he says. And we all know what they are: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, discernment, interpretation, and more. The Spirit allocates gifts individually, for the good of the whole community,

     So we have come a long way from the Pentecost which commemorates the giving of the Law to the Hebrews at Mount Sinai, to the Pentecost which recalls the outpouring of the Spirit on the Church, the New Israel, for the good of the whole world. As the Collect for Pentecost says, “Almighty God, on this day you opened the way to eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth.”

     In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

    

    

 

If you love Me (John 14)

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever." From the Gospel according to John, the fourteenth chapter, verses 15 and 16.

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

Here we have, in two sentences, a summary of the Christian life. Jesus connects love with the keeping of his commandments, and he promises that the Father will send us an Advocate, who will support us in this life of love. That is, we will not need to rely entirely on our own natural powers to live the life which Jesus commands. Jesus says, "You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you." The Spirit of God is in us, and we are in him. What we may call a double indwelling of ourselves in the Spirit, and the Spirit in us, makes the life of love possible.

It may seem odd to pair a life of love to a life of obedience to commands. But let us remember that the commands of Our Lord are really only two: to love God and neighbor, and to remember Jesus in the breaking of the bread. And that remembrance is not mere recollection, but is, as we believe, a celebration of the Lord's presence in the here and how. So we are surrounded by presence and infused with it, both by the indwelling of God's Spirit, and the living presence of the Son. It is the reality of this presence, both spiritual and Eucharistic, which makes the life of love possible. The life of love then is not merely one of submission to external commands, but a living out of the presence in us of the Spirit.

Jesus in today's Gospel gives the Spirit a name: the Spirit of Truth. And he distinguishes it from the world. As he says, "This is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him." In other words, rejection of the Spirit is always possible. There is no compulsion in Jesus's commandments. The presence of the Spirit in us and around us does not force himself on anyone. We need to want to see him and know him, before we can receive him. But, "You know him, and he will be in you." The disciples have the reassurance that comes from Jesus's physical presence, and he is saying that his presence will continue, even when he is physically absent.

"I will not leave you orphaned," Jesus says. We've all had the experience, one way or another, of the loss of a loved one, or some event which leaves us feeling abandoned. Jesus is saying that he will not abandon us as we live out the life which he has made possible. We will always have his presence, and the presence of the Spirit, to help us maintain the confidence that the disciples had when he was physically present.

"In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live." We realize that Jesus is foretelling his death and resurrection. But not only that, he is promising that his followers will share in his life; the idea of life as participation in the life of Jesus, and his participation in our lives, pervades John's Gospel. Life in this Gospel is not one of isolated, merely individual experience, but one of shared awareness of the Spirit-filled, resurrected life, in which we all have a part. Jesus says, "On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." We are the Body of Christ, his presence in the world, and we are present in him. The Spirit of Truth makes this possible, makes it possible to keep Jesus's commandments, makes it possible to love God and neighbor, and to know the presence of Christ in us.

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Power from on high (Acts 1)

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1.8

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

     The word “power” appears several times in our readings tonight. Beginning with the Gospel, Luke says that the disciples will be “clothed with power from on high!” That’s an interesting image, power as clothing. We think of kings, dressed in robes that indicate their uniqueness, their authority, and even perhaps their isolation. I don’t know whether the expression is still current, but not so long ago men used to talk about wearing “power suits.” And, I remember the saying from my youth (and from later, no doubt) that “the clothes make the man.” Now, in our gender-conscious period, that saying needs to be revised, of course. But we are all familiar with the belief behind it, that a certain appearance, a certain way of dressing, can confer power, worldly power that is, on a person. And it is power like this, at least in part, that we may think of here, kingly power I mean, since we do traditionally think of Jesus as “prophet, priest, and king.” So there is a suggestion here that Jesus will confer his kingly power on his disciples. 

     Now what kind of power is this really? We’re talking about a small number of people who possess, in everyday-world terms, no power at all. But they’ve just been through some shocking, and outright impossible, events. First, their leader, their teacher, was executed and all hope appeared to be lost. Then Jesus returns and appears before them; these appearances have an odd quality, in that at first Jesus is not recognized at all, by Mary Magdalene in the garden, and by the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Recognition is gradual. Eventually, of course, all becomes clear, and the disciples are ready to hear and see Jesus as he is, during the forty days between his resurrection and ascension. And it is during those forty days that they learn of the nature of the power that Jesus is conferring on his disciples. 

     Luke says, in the first chapter of Acts, that “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” The connection is clear, between the Holy Spirit and power. And what is this power, this kingly power, for? “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” So that is the first power, the power to be witnesses, witnesses of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and, later, of his ascension. Since these events are real to the disciples, the power to witness to them is the power to convey the reality of them to others. They were so successful at this, that the reality of these events has been transmitted from generation to generation, and it is the Holy Spirit that has made this possible and that continues to make this possible.

     Notice that this power is not limited geographically. “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem…and to the ends of the earth.” That must have been a very startling, even shocking thing, for the disciples to hear. Their world has been Jerusalem and Judaea. But Jesus includes Samaria, which would have been outside the limits of a good Jew of the time. Not only that, Jesus includes the whole world, the “ends of the earth.” There is going to be no limit to this “power from on high,” to this new royal power which, far from isolating Jesus, like a worldly king, behind the clothing of royal power actually extends it and makes it and him available to the whole world.

     Paul, in his Letter to the Ephesians, uses the word “power” several times. He writes about “the immeasurable greatness of his power for those who believe.” God “put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand.” 

     What does this power do, this power that Paul mentions? Paul prays that “God…may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation…so that…you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.” So the power which the Holy Spirit gives us is one that leads to hope, revelation, and wisdom. It is the same power which raised Jesus from the dead and seated him at the Father’s right hand. The Feast of the Ascension celebrates this power, power which leads to new life in God. Powerless as the disciples may have thought themselves to be after the Crucifixion, the Resurrection completely transformed their perceptions. And Paul, who apparently did not know Jesus in his earthly life, was likewise transformed by a vision, a revelation, of the risen Lord. It is that kind of experience that Paul wants his readers and hearers to have, an experience so powerful that it sent him on long journeys around the Empire, making known the mystery of God’s will. Paul says in the first chapter of his letter, that God’s plan for the fullness of time, is to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. It is the power to accept this, to believe in this, to participate in this, that Paul is writing about. It is this “immeasurable greatness of his power for those who believe” that we receive “when the Holy Spirit” has come upon us, and we, along with Paul, will be Christ’s witnesses.

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