Faith and foolishness

Faith is one of those good "churchy" words we hear frequently – so frequently that perhaps we start to tune it out. The idea of "faith" is central to understanding the lessons we heard today, but all those good churchy words start to run together so that they all sort of mean something vaguely good. And then we miss the point. So what is Faith? To get there, I want to start with a related term: belief.

Belief is living as if something is true. Belief can be pretty mundane stuff. I believe Nativity is on 14 Mile Road; consequently, I'm not surprised to find it here, and that's where I go when I'm looking for it. Faith, on the other hand, is belief that persists even through doubt. Belief even in the absence of sensory confirmation. Belief despite a lack of proof, a lack of logical reason to believe. If you can see colors, it takes no great faith to believe that the banner hanging there is blue. But if I were to tell you that this sermon will last for about 12 minutes, so if you wanted go get a cup of coffee, and not miss the creed, you'd have to take it on faith. You haven't seen my prepared text. If you accept my word for it, that's faith. Still pretty minor, though. When the doubts get bigger and the consequences of being wrong get more important, the faith necessary to sustain a belief grows.

Let's take a look at the role of faith in the first lesson. Isaiah, a prophet, is speaking with Ahaz, King of Judah. Ahaz is descended from the great King David, and Matthew tells us that Ahaz is also a step-ancestor of Jesus. But every family has its bad eggs. Despite this pedigree, Ahaz was known as a bad king. We have a clue that the selection from Isaiah we heard started in the middle of the story, because the lesson begins "Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz." So perhaps we need some context to figure out what this is all about. A remarkable thing about the Jewish people from the time of the Passover up to the rule of Ahaz was that they were truly an independent people: they were neither subject to an emperor, nor did they rule over another conquered people. At the crossroads of a region of the world characterized by large empires ruling over vassal states, the survival of a people who were free, without taking freedom from others was something of a miracle.

Back in the Good Old Days, when David was king, the royal house of Jerusalem ruled a kingdom that included the Twelve Tribes of Israel. David’s grandson Rehoboam was an oppressive ruler, and the ten northern tribes rebelled and formed a separate kingdom known as Israel, leaving David’s descendents ruling Judah from Jerusalem. Relations between Israel and Judah were at a low point during the rule of Ahaz.

A new threat to the balance of power loomed to the east: the Assyrian Empire sought to place all of the known world under the rule of its emperor at Ninevah. The two kingdoms to the north of Judah, Israel and Syria, were afraid of the approaching empire. They formed an alliance against the Assyrians, and they wanted Ahaz and the Kingdom of Judah to join them in the fight. Ahaz, following the advice of the prophets in his court, refused to join in. So far, so good: Ahaz seems to be doing what God told him to do, not provoking trouble, and all is well. But then the folks to the north aren't so happy about his refusal to join them. They want to overthrow Ahaz as King of Judah and put someone on the throne who will join their alliance against the Assyrians. They lay siege to Jerusalem, with the intent of changing the leadership there. And at this point, Ahaz gets upset. It's one thing to have faith and avoid joining in a conflict a thousand miles away. When faith means ignoring an army camped on your doorstep and believing they aren't a threat, that's a lot harder. But that was the message our story tells us God sent to Ahaz: you're doing the right thing. This invading army can't really threaten you. Just wait, and they'll leave you alone.

Ahaz is wavering here. On the one hand, he wants to do what God told him. On the other hand, he wants to be prudent. A wise king takes care of his subjects. Sure, God said everything will be okay, but you have to be realistic. So Ahaz hatched a plan to send letters to the Emperor of Assyria asking to form an alliance with him to get rid of these armies trying to overthrow him. Yes, there would probably be strings attached, and the Assyrians would likely want tribute, or demand that the people of Judah worship the Assyrian gods, or other unpleasant matters, but the Assyrians were far away, and this threat was here now. A shrewd king like Ahaz might be able to play the various powers off of each other and keep his people safe. A risky plan, but less risky than doing nothing and waiting for his enemies to just decide to go home. Right?

It isn't easy to live as if a whole bunch of people with sharp swords who have camped out around your city aren't really a threat to you. To have faith that everything will be okay in this context is tough stuff. And that is where our story begins: God offers Ahaz some help with the hard part. God offers Ahaz a sign. What is role of signs and prophesies in the faith process? If the signs were proof that the words spoken by a prophet are true, there would be no need for faith. But signs and prophesies aren't proof; they're reassurances. They don't replace faith; they help it along. Like an unnamed person in Mark's Gospel said, asking Jesus for help, "Lord, I believe; help me in my unbelief." They make it easier to live as if something you might doubt is actually true.

God tells Ahaz he can have a sign as big as he wants. And then Ahaz says he wants nothing to do with it. No sign for me, thanks. Why not? Because he has a rational, prudent course of action already planned. A sign might tempt him to trust faith and do nothing about the threat. A sign from God lead him to act in the foolishness of faith and not with the prudence of practicality. Faith leads people to do irrational, ridiculous, foolish things.

Isaiah responds by getting upset with Ahaz, and telling him that he’s getting a sign, whether he wants one or not. Isaiah then gives a sign that forecasts the future. Prophets, whether religious like Isaiah or secular like stock analysts, are folks who claim to have some sort of direct line to Wisdom or the Divine. They frequently predict the future, but predicting the future isn’t the primary function of a prophet; prescribing present behavior is far more important. Prophets predict the future to help build credibility: “Listen to me because I’m someone with insight into how the world works.” If the prophet really understands the workings of the world, or is bearing news from a higher power that does, then it follows that the prophet can make potentially falsifiable claims that turn out to be true. On the basis of this track record, people need a smaller leap of faith in order to believe the words of a prophet – to live as though they are true. If a prophet or prophetic tradition has a record of making true claims in the past, it becomes easier to believe new claims.

So Isaiah makes his claim: It’s okay to ignore the threat from the northern Kingdom because they’ll go away soon. Look at that young woman over there. She’s pregnant. The child she will give birth to will eat curds and honey before he comes of age. Curds and honey aren’t siege food. Curds require pastures, and honey requires bee hives and fields of flowers surrounding your city, not besieging armies. If the unborn child will grow up in a land of milk and honey, he’ll grow up in a land where the current war is just a memory. Isaiah is making a claim here, risking his reputation. He’s saying that King Ahaz doesn’t need to make any alliances to end this conflict; it will take care of itself, and he just needs to ride it out.

Ahaz was no fool. He refused to follow Isaiah’s counsel. He did the prudent thing. He invited in the Assyrians. They demanded tribute, and they demanded that the people of Judah worship their gods. Ahaz, in realistic prudence, insisted on doing something when the voice of faith called him to patience. And an era of foreign entanglement emerged from which the Kingdom of Judah never really recovered. What Isaiah called Ahaz to do in faith was foolishly naïve. It also happened to be right. And as a post-script, the child born to the young woman in the royal court indeed ate honey and curds before coming of age: the northern kingdom of Israel was soon destroyed and the siege ended.

Fast forward seven hundred years: another case of a messenger calling someone to live as though something foolish were true. Joseph is engaged to marry a young woman, but, as our Gospel lesson today delicately puts it, “before they lived together, she was found to be with child.” Joseph was a righteous man – the King James Version called him “just.” He clearly wished Mary no ill. His plan was to quietly end their relationship. No fuss, no vengeance, no repercussions, but what else would be a reasonable response? His fiancée was pregnant with a baby that wasn’t his. Now we think of prudence as good, and we think of righteousness as good, and they are. But faith called Joseph to respond beyond what was righteous, beyond what was prudent. Faith in the angel’s message called Joseph to believe – to live as if the baby his fiancée carried was the child of God. Outside the realm of normal experience? Certainly. To believe the angel’s message took great faith – this was no small commitment to raise as his own a child biologically unrelated to him. Unlike his ancestor Ahaz, Joseph responded in faith. Joseph believed – he lived as if what the angel told him was true. And the Holy Family came into being.

Ahaz’s failure to choose faith over prudence directly led to the end of the sovereign Kingdom of Judah, where the Law of Moses alone governed the people of God. Joseph’s embrace of foolish faith over prudent righteousness led to the beginning of the new Reign of God, which continues to arrive about us, even as we gather here. Choosing between good and bad is fairly easy. Choosing between two goods – that’s harder. Prudence and righteousness and wisdom and order are good things. But while they can keep the brokenness of the world at bay for a time, they cannot heal us; they cannot restore our world to God’s glory. Only through the foolish leap to faith can we dare to love without bounds, to trust without reason, to do what we have no reason to expect we can accomplish – and thereby serve as the hands of God to renew this broken world. Sometimes that faith is a call to patience – to wait for God’s time. Sometimes that faith is a call to service – to take on more than we can reasonably hope to do, trusting that God will step in where our abilities end. Sometimes that faith is a call to listen and reflect and wonder just where our unseen God leads us.

Amen.

How can I keep from singing?

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

My life flows on in endless song above earth’s lamentation
I hear the clear though far-off hymn that hails a new creation
No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I’m clinging
Since love is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

When Mary heard Elizabeth’s proclamation in today’s Gospel that she was blessed by God, her response was to sing God’s praise. In response to hearing that God’s love and power were manifest in her, Mary could not keep from singing.

God is mighty. God is good. God’s promise to look out for us will be kept. God’s in his heaven; all’s right with the world.

Those are great thoughts. It’s good to know that God will take care of us.

Except when things aren’t going well.
Except when God seems absent.
Except when it seems like everything is falling apart.

Earth’s lamentation is all too real.

Mary knew about Earth’s lamentation. As an engaged young woman who unexpectedly found herself with child, she could have been stoned to death, according to the law.

Elizabeth knew about Earth’s lamentation. As an aging childless woman, her place in her society and her livelihood were anything but well-established. Her husband Zachariah continued to serve as a priest in Jerusalem, and so her family had a steady income. But it was a long and dangerous commute between their home in the hill country and the temple where he served from time to time. Were he to die, a widow in that society without grown children to provide for her would have no guarantee of even enough to subsist on.

The hungry, the lowly, and the outsiders knew about Earth’s lamentation then and know it today.

Last Tuesday, 270 hungry people needed meals at the soup kitchen in Morristown. The international non-profit organization Bread for the World indicates that 35.5 million people in the United States—including 12.6 million children—live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger. This represents more than one in ten households in the United States. Globally, 1.02 billion people are hungry. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes.

In Uganda, homosexuality currently carries a penalty of up to life in prison, and legislation is pending that could increase the potential sentence to include the death penalty.

Betsey Hall of Homeless Solutions, Inc. in Morristown estimates that demand for housing in Morris County’s five homeless shelters is up 20% from this time last year, and even more remarkably, 54% of people entering the shelter her organization runs are employed full-time when they become homeless.

In Detroit Michigan, where it looks like God is sending me for the next chapter in my life and ministry starting two weeks from now, the official unemployment rate is at 17%, and local analysts estimate that the total number of people involuntarily out of work or involuntarily working part-time approaches 50% of the workforce.

Major depression afflicts approximately 15 million American adults each year.

I could go on and on, but I think it’s fairly obvious that Earth’s lamentation is real indeed. The poor, the sick, the outcast, the marginalized, and the lowly suffer greatly.

There’s one reading of this Gospel that’s been all-too-common through the years. This reading of the Gospel says that the suffering of the poor and outsiders is nothing to be concerned with, because God will provide for them in heaven. The labor organizer and songwriter Joe Hill accused street preachers of the early 20th century of promising the poor that they’d “eat pie in the sky when they die” but doing nothing to help them eat now.

Life is a vale of tears, we suffer through it now, and then God rewards us in heaven. We don't need to worry about suffering. There’s no need to *do* anything to improve the lot of the poor and outcast. God will take care of it.

Indeed, to alleviate the suffering of the poor is a bad thing, in this telling, because it deprives them of the opportunity to store up treasure in heaven. It is this kind of religion that Karl Marx was correct in calling the “opiate of the masses.”

And that is certainly one way we could hear Mary’s song. God will take care of the poor, so neither those of us who are poor nor those of us inclined to stand in solidarity with them need to concern ourselves with suffering because God will take care of everything.

There’s earth’s lamentation, and then there’s the song that lets us tune it out, because God will provide in the world to come. You'll eat pie in the sky when you die.

But the Good News is that the Kingdom of God is not in some heaven to arrive in an age to come. Mary’s song the Magnificat is not in the future tense. The reign of God is at hand. Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation.

The presence of misery in the world means that we cannot claim that good has already triumphed, that suffering and death are no more, and that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

To push God’s reign off to some future world to come, where all that is wrong now will be made right, such that we needn’t even trouble ourselves with present injustice numbs us to human suffering.

So we are left with the present: even now, as we worship here, the Kingdom of God arrives.

In the Magnificat, Mary sings of God’s great reversals. The hungry are filled with good things, but the rich are sent empty away. The proud are scattered in the imagination of their hearts – the self-delusion that they are truly great and important – and the lowly are lifted up. As the collect says, things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

That’s a powerful message. Scary. Dangerous. I’ve found a number of writers who have claimed that the military dictatorship of Guatamala banned public recitation of the Magnificat in the early 1980’s because it was considered revolutionary. In my research in the past week, I haven’t been able to track down whether this is historical fact or pious legend, but in some ways, the historicity of it isn’t really what’s important. These are dangerous, transformative, revolutionary words. They do turn the social order on its head.

And it gets even more exciting when we consider that this isn’t an account of what has already happened to produce the utopia we live in now, nor is it a prophecy of what will happen in a mythical far-off age to come. The song we sing animates the work we do here and now.

In economics, we have an idea of what discourages people from contributing to solving public problems. There’s this notion that people would be happier, and better off if society solved big problems like poverty, injustice, crime, disease, hunger, but the problems are so epic in scale, it discourages people from jumping into them. Economists call this the “drop in the bucket” problem – the problems are like giant buckets, and anything any of us can do is just a tiny drop, and doesn’t make the bucket noticeably fuller.

And that’s where Mary’s song meets us. God’s kingdom is arriving, and we’re participating in it. Every moment we live in the presence of the arriving Kingdom of God, we help make that kingdom more present. 1.02 billion people are hungry in the world. But 270 of them got meals last Tuesday because of volunteers at the soup kitchen from this church.

Just a drop in the bucket of hunger? Of course. But the leap of faith is that while alone, this isolated act doesn’t do much for the problem of world hunger, as a part of something bigger, it can.

As Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, You have to do your work as if everything depends on you, then leave the rest to God. We can persist in doing God’s work not because any of us accomplish great things, but because God, moving through all of creation, can and does.

Our song isn’t a song that good has already triumphed and evil is no more – just look around. But neither is our song a passive longing for some far-off paradise that will someday fall from the sky.

We sing the mighty power of God that animates us and heartens us and gives us grace and strength to serve, even in the face of dishearteningly huge challenges.

Our song calls us to mission, and reminds us that while each of us alone can do very little, the hand of God working through all of us together can do all things.

Mary and Elizabeth remind us that our small acts of saying “Yes” to God’s call to us provide the opportunity for abundant grace to enter the world. Each of our voices alone are tiny, but we are called to join in the heavenly choir with all the angels and saints.

For love is indeed lord of heaven and earth. How can I keep from singing?

Requiem

Requiem

Who is like God?

Who is like God?

This is the feast of Saint Michael and all angels. The name Michael comes from this Hebrew question: who is like God?

And the first answer to this question is “No one.” No one is like God: God stands alone. There is no other who is creator of the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in it. There is no other who created, redeemed, and sustains humankind.

No one is like God. God alone is our rock and our salvation. But our mind wanders from this first answer, and the image of St. Michael, the archangel that fights the powers of evil, brings to mind another answer to this question: The angels are like God.

Indeed, the image of angels draws our mind to contemplate God. In his dream, Jacob saw the angels going up and down the ladder, the stairway to heaven, and knew he was in the presence of the divine. When Jesus conveyed to Nathanael that he would see extraordinary things, he said “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Jesus invoked the image of the angels ascending and descending to tell Nathanael that he would see things he had never seen before. The image of the angels in this story tells us that something beyond ordinary human experience is going on here.

The angels are otherworldly, preternatural. The scriptural images of them fall into two categories: first, praising God, showing us just how highly exalted God is, that an entire cohort beyond our ordinary experience exists just to praise God.

To the extent that the angels are “like God” — powerful, otherworldly, transcendent — they draw attention to the greatness of God in that however much the angels are like God in comparison to us, God is greater still. The angels help us to contemplate the greatness of God.

The lesson from Revelation alongside today’s collect evokes a second function of angels in scripture: to serve as proxy defenders of human kind. In the Revelation lesson, Michael defends the world from the forces of evil. We pray: Mercifully grant that as thy holy angels always serve and worship thee in heaven, so by thy appointment they may help and defend us on earth.

This collect predates the Book of Common Prayer, although Archbishop Cranmer added the phrase “by thy appointment” to make it clear that the angels help and defend us because God tells them to; in other words, they may be like God, but they are only our help and protection because God, our ultimate help and protection, so decrees.

So the angels are mighty beings that exist to worship God, and to help, protect, and serve human kind. They worship God, and serve human kind. Worship God, and serve human kind. We’ve heard that somewhere before.

Hear what our Lord Jesus saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

But these aren’t commandments for the angels. The Law and the Prophets give the task of human kind. For the mission of the angels, to worship God completely, and to love and serve humanity, is none other than the end our own existence.

The angels remind us just how high above us they are, and how high above them God is. And yet their task is the same as ours, for we are made in the image and likeness of God. We speak of the angels to bridge the gap between the transcendence of God and the immanence of God.

So we have a third answer.

Who is like God?

When through God’s grace we live out God’s high calling for us, despite our failings and fallings from our creation in God’s image, we are like God.

May the witness of the angels and the grace of God help us to live accordingly.

Amen.

Operators are standing by

Order now! Operators are standing by. For three easy payments of just $19.99 each, you can own this box set of the 100 greatest hits of the 1980's. Call now! Don't wait another minute to make this fantastic collection yours. And if you call in the next three minutes, we'll throw in the bonus set of the 50 not-quite-greatest hits of the 1980's absolutely free. That's right, fifty more classic songs absolutely free. All you have to do is pick up your phone and order NOW, NOW, NOW! Operators are standing by.

I hate being rushed into decisions. If I'm making a purchase, I like to shop around, weigh my options, look at different products and prices, and then ponder whether I really need to make the purchase at all. I don't like to hurry to a hasty decision. And that's for something minor, like buying a new six-pack of dress socks. (I ended up getting the Target store brand ones). So Matthew's abrupt life-changing decision in today's Gospel is pretty shocking to me.

One verse. Jesus saw Matthew sitting at the tax booth. Jesus called Matthew. Matthew came. Just like that.

And let's be clear, Matthew at the tax booth wasn't some bureaucrat leaving a desk job. Matthew's job was more like being the front man in a protection racket. Matthew wasn't paid according to a civil service pay schedule; he got a percentage of whatever he could extort from his own people on behalf of the hated occupying Roman army. Walking away from the tax booth meant leaving not just his job, but also his political allegiances and likely his safety. It's not an easy job to quit. So how did Matthew do it so decisively? Is there more to this story? Perhaps our other scripture for the day can help us unpack this.

Paul's second letter to Timothy reminded him to cling to the scripture he had known from childhood that would instruct him in salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Now to be clear, the scriptures Timothy could have known as a child weren't the Gospels, or Paul's letters, which would have yet to be written, but the Hebrew scriptures. Perhaps THIS is Matthew's story. Could the scriptures of his childhood have set the stage for his sudden conversion? If anyone was in need of teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, it would seem to be Matthew, who got rich by helping the Romans steal from the Jews. Yet all Jesus said to him was "Follow me." What sort of seeds had been planted in him, ripening from the days of his youth, that he might be so ready to be harvested when Jesus came past his tax booth?

To answer this question, we turn to the other lesson we shared today, a lesson Matthew would have known from his youth:

Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes,* and I shall keep it to the end.
Give me understanding, and I shall keep your law;* I shall keep it with all my heart.
Make me go in the path of your commandments,* for that is my desire.
Incline my heart to your decrees* and not to unjust gain.
Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless;* give me life in your ways.
Fulfill your promise to your servant,* which you make to those who fear you.
Turn away the reproach which I dread,* because your judgments are good.
Behold, I long for your commandments;* in your righteousness preserve my life.

When we read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the scriptures, when we practice little steps of following Jesus in unremarkable but real ways in our lives, the seeds are growing in us. And when the acceptable time arrives when God speaks to us, on the day of salvation when God calls us to take a leap to faith and risk everything for the sake of the Kingdom of God, these seeds may come ripe in us as they did in Matthew. We, like Matthew, can cling to what we once learned and firmly believed so when Jesus says, "Follow me," all that remains is to follow immediately. No need to keep those operators standing by. Amen.

Article for the Messenger

My role in the Recycling Ministry is the simplest thing in the world. In Kit Cone’s daily Recycling Ministry newsletter, he puts out a call: someone to help with a pickup from a donor in, say, Boonton on Tuesday at 9:30 am. I check my schedule. If I can, I say, "Here I am." The truck shows up at my door. I get on. Kit drives somewhere. We move things. In contrast with my overly cerebral life as a college professor, it’s a welcome change of pace.

In the monthly Messenger column about the Recycling Ministry, you've probably become accustomed to reading stories about deliveries the Recycling Ministry has made. Lives changed. Workers on the truck profoundly moved by the poverty and gratitude they encountered. "Clients" who say the RM workers who intervened in their lives with the critically needed furniture or more must be angels. We often hear about deliveries because they are so often most obviously, as Kit Cone aptly titles them, "Moving Experiences."

The bulk of my RM experiences, and all of my recent ones, have been pickups. They’re important, of course. We can’t deliver what we don’t have. Without beds and couches and chairs and cribs and tables coming in, they can’t go out to those who so desperately need them.

Despite this critical role, it’s undeniable that there’s just far less glamour in pickups. No one says, "Now I can sleep at night because the sofa I had in my storage unit has been passed along to your warehouse" (not unless they take Luke 12:20 particularly seriously). No one says, "I never thought anyone cared enough about my family to take away our old bookshelf." No one breathes a sigh of relief that their children will now be safer at night because the crib their children have grown out of isn't in the attic anymore. Donors are genuinely glad to be able to share, and perhaps even grateful for the freed-up storage space, but, of course, it’s just not the transfiguring mountaintop experience that deliveries are.

Delivering beds to a family that has been sleeping on the floor can be transformative for both the receiving family and the workers who experience how deeply they are touched. Picking up a used mattress is unlikely to be a life-changing experience for either donor or mattress-hauler. Its quotidian nature, though, is part of its beauty.

I love working on pickups, and even more I love the less-glamorous-yet task of unloading the truck into a warehouse, or even moving things from one storage space to another. There’s something almost meditative and prayerful about the sheer mundanity of it. Much like reciting the Psalms during the Daily Office, the lack of excitement or too much thought to the process allows its sheer repetition to sink in and shape the soul. Can loading a truck be prayer?

What better way to train to be a disciple than to repeat the unremarkable motions of service until they become second nature? What better way to contemplate the presence of Christ than to toil for those of whom Jesus said whatsoever you do to the least of these you do to me? My experience of Christ’s presence when I’m kneeling at the altar rail and Christ’s presence when I’m lugging a mattress are profoundly interconnected.

The Anglican poet John Keble, whose feast we would celebrate March 29 if the date were ever available for a Lesser Feast, wrote words that seem apt for reflecting on the gift of mundane service:

If, on our daily course, our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,
New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.

The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us daily nearer God.

Only, O Lord, in Thy dear love,
Fit us for perfect rest above,
And help us, this and every day,
To live more nearly as we pray.

Panem Angelorum

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!