In the Steps of Jesus: "The Pioneer & Perfecter of Our Faith"

The author of Hebrews, in today’s Epistle, describes the Christian life in terms of a race which has no divisions or categories. We all run it. Today’s passage (12:1-14) follows the previous chapter where the author gives a sort of short course in biblical history. He singles out the great heroes of faith, from Abel to Samuel and the prophets. In Chapter 12, using imagery of a sports stadium, he pictures this great crowd of witnesses, who’ve already run their races, now cheering us on to run well. He notes the importance of running unencumbered by selfishness and bad habits. The race, moreover, isn’t a sprint, but a run which demands endurance. He says that we must run steadily and pace ourselves, which largely depends on where God wishes you and me to be in our life, at the time God determines, and for the purpose God has in mind. 

The greatest incentive for our running, he tells us, is looking ahead to the finish line, to Jesus, the beginner and completer, “the pioneer and perfecter”, of our faith. Jesus’ vision of “the joy which was still before him, in the future” is what gave him the determination and courage to keep going, even to death on the Cross, despite the shame, even despite opposition from enemies who turned out to be his own sisters and brothers. As if anticipating the likelihood that we may quit running at the first sign of temptation, the author of Hebrews reminds us that none of us has yet fully paid our dues: “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood”, as Jesus did. Suffering, the Cross, is an inescapable part of our human and Christian lives. Though we don’t like it at the time, by God’s grace it is always redemptive and it “yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

In Luke’s Gospel (12:49-56) Jesus tells us in most forceful terms about the demands of following him. Jesus echoes what John the Baptizer once said of him: that Jesus will baptize with Holy Spirit and with fire: “I came to bring fire to the earth...I have a baptism with which to be baptized...Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division...You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”
That’s not a message we particularly want to hear! We prefer the quiet, gentle, reassuring Jesus. Luke’s Gospel pictures Jesus and the disciples getting nearer to Jerusalem, the City of Peace where untruth, cruelty and violence -- even death --  will be unleashed on Jesus, as it was on the prophets before him. Jesus goes to the heart of his teaching, namely, the “reign of God”, the reign of truth and all that it implies. Jesus, the Living Word and Example, the Message of God in the flesh, challenges the disciples and each of us to choose whether or not we’ll generously align ourselves for or against the kingdom, the reign of truth.

Eight centuries before Jesus, Micah the prophet had foretold that believing in God can lead to painful anxiety, suffering, and division in all a person’s relationships: even in the closest relationship, to one’s family. In shocking detail Jesus repeats Micah’s prophecy in v. 53! It leaves no doubt that, once you commit yourself to God, God’s truth, God’s reign, there’s no thing, no cause, no person, not even a parent, a brother or a sister, whom you can put ahead of Jesus as a priority. 

In today’s first reading (Jeremiah 23:23-29) the prophet says much the same thing, from a slightly different viewpoint. In condemning the people’s reliance on bogus, hypocritical “prophets”, who say only what people want to hear, God reminds them that God isn’t a part-time God, present only when they need something, but that God is always present, even in the midst of their doubt and suffering. God is very truly God and part of one’s life, even when a person has drifted and is caught up in the pursuit of false freedom, pleasure, and possessions, and in the resulting emptiness and disappointment.

Jeremiah points out that phony prophets come and go in every age, while God remains present. We’re all familiar with so-called “prophets” who offer people, especially vulnerable, suffering folks, a whole range of pious platitudes, sweet assurances, magic solutions, but are, in the end, no real help in their suffering. In fact, preaching a gospel of ease and success, of wealth and blessing often compounds people’s problems. The Cross cannot be removed from the gospel, nor can the gospel preached by false prophets be a reliable defense against life’s real traumas. “Let him who has my Word speak my Word faithfully.”, God reminds the people.

Scripture scholar Gary Peluso-Verdend writes: “One of the common denominators in [today’s] lections is that telling the truth and deciding who is telling the truth often divides people...A contemporary comedian [Stephen Colbert] who satirizes the day’s news and newsmakers coined the term ‘truthiness’, meaning that in today’s parlance, public words that pass for truth are too mushy and questionable. Real truth often divides and evokes anger from those who live in and with lies. It is always time to speak in a truthful manner...It is not good to isolate the need for truthful speech and actions from the needs for compassion and community; sometimes we are afraid to speak of truth for fear of evoking anger or even violence against ourselves. Neither is it good to allow truthiness to go unchecked. Truth spoken in love nourishes even as it tears down in order to build on a solid foundation. Truthiness neither nourishes nor can [it] endure over time…”     

Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred by the Nazis in 1945, wrote from prison that to really believe is to stake your life on the something or Someone in whom you believe. And when you do so, you’re sure to experience, at some point, challenge or opposition or conflict, either from within yourself or from others outside. Religious faith and suffering go hand-in-hand when your life is set on Jesus the Christ. Bonhoeffer observes: “It is infinitely easier to suffer in obedience to a human command than to accept suffering as free, responsible men. It is infinitely easier to suffer with others than to suffer alone. It is infinitely easier to suffer as public heroes than to suffer apart and in ignominy. It is is infinitely easier to suffer physical death than to endure spiritual suffering. Christ suffered as a free man alone, apart and in ignominy, in body and in spirit…” 

If Jesus is, as the author of Hebrews says, the One who begins faith and the One who helps faith become fully mature and adult, then you and I must participate in and share His suffering and anguish. Only by involving ourselves in the “reign of God”, the reign of truth, in the life of this world, wherever we are, can we genuinely live in faith. Bonhoeffer sees this as a kind of Christian “worldliness”. It means, for example, that rather than simply add names to prayer lists, we involve ourselves one-on-one in healing, reconciling, encouraging, feeding and clothing our sisters and brothers. It means immersing ourselves in the family, the parish, the community, the world where God is often absent: a world of prejudice, hatred, and violence; of self-serving politics; of racial and sexist injustice; a world of terrorists and hostage-takers; of deceptive, immoral employers and corporations; a world of families ripped apart by divorce, addictions and abuse of all kinds; a world of lonely people, and people with little hope beyond just getting through tomorrow.

Setting our hearts on Jesus, believing and following him, means allowing ourselves to be caught up in the way of the Cross, the way of life, being in solidarity with Jesus’ sufferings in the life of the world, living in faith with determination and courage. In the words of St. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Holocaust martyr whose feast we commemorated on August 9: “Do you want to be totally united to the Crucified? If you are serious about this, you will be present, by the power of His Cross, at every front, at every place of sorrow, bringing to those who suffer comfort, healing, and salvation.”

Mary, Taken Into God's Presence

O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Letting Go Of Fear

In a letter I received back in the 1960’s, during the Vietnam War, a young soldier friend wrote to me: “I guess the way to survive is to expect the worst and hope for the best.” It’s an oft-repeated expression, drawing on two human emotions or attitudes: fear and faith.

We’ve all experienced the reality of fear at some time in our lives:

As children:

• fear of the dark; the need to have a light on
• fear of ghosts or monsters
• fear of loud noises
• fear of large animals
• fear that Dad or Mom will leave us

As young adults:

• fear of embarrassment or of being made fun of
• fear of standing out in a crowd
• fear of being rejected by a boyfriend or girl friend
• fear of the future, of what’s going to happen in college, or in a new job, etc.

In middle-age:

• fear of being unsuccessful, of not accomplishing, of not meeting others’ standards
• fear of whether or not we can remain financially secure
• fear in raising children: that they’ll learn the right values, that they’ll be safe, that they’ll make good life-choices
• fear that our spouse no longer loves us

In advancing age:

• fear for one’s physical health, mental alertness, security
• fear of being a burden on the family
• fear of losing our close friends
• fear of dying

Fear is real, not imaginary. It’s a fact of life, and some of us handle it well; some can’t handle it at all. Even Jesus, as he faced the most critical time of his life, expressed fear and asked that the cup of suffering be removed, if possible. Yet he also prayed: “Father into your hands I commit my spirit, my life.” Notice how often throughout Scripture people are advised not to fear:

• to Jacob: “Do not be afraid...for I will make you a great nation.” (Genesis 46)
• Moses to Israel: “Let not your heart faint, do not fear...for the Lord your God is the One who goes with you.” (Deuteronomy 20)
• the angel Gabriel to Mary: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” (Luke 1)
• God’s messenger to Joseph: “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary for your wife...” (Matthew 1)
• Luke 12: “Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
• Acts 27: “Do not be afraid, Paul...”
• Revelation 1: “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living One.”
• in the Genesis 15 reading this week: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, I am your sure reward.”
• in Luke’s Gospel passage (12:32-40): “Do not be afraid, little flock...”

As human beings we’re able to deal with fear and overcome it through faith: when God gives us the assurance of God’s Word, and we risk taking God at that Word, setting our heart and everything on it.

To speak of faith is to speak of the Covenant, the promise, God made with the chosen ones, and which God renews with us, the new people of God. Very simply, God tells us: “I will take you for my people, and I will be your God.” (Exodus 6:7) That’s the promise, God’s Word. Each of Sunday’s liturgical readings expresses that same promise, each in its own unique way:

• in Genesis 15: “...the Lord reckoned it to him [Abram] as righteousness.”
• in Hebrews 11: “...God is not ashamed to be called their God: indeed, God has prepared a city for them.”
• in Luke 12: “...it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

God’s promise, a unique blend of covenant and hope, is a powerful biblical motif. As our part of the Covenant, God asks only that we trust, that we accept God’s promise, that we have faith. Sunday’s reading from Hebrews (11:1) provides us with, not so much a definition of faith, as a paradoxical description: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Luther translated the first part as “sure confidence”, so that the sense is “Faith is the subjective assurance I have of things hoped for.” Philo and other Hellenistic writers translate it in a more objective way as: “Faith is the reality or substance of goods hoped for, and these by nature have a transcendent quality.” 

In other words, faith makes the future reality present and the unseen presence real. Faith is the confidence of those who live certain that God’s redeeming work, God’s promise, will be done, despite what we see or experience around us. God invites us to believe in the promise despite the fact that we often don’t fully understand “why”, as Abram didn’t; despite the fact that we don’t have any tangible evidence or assurance that those promises are being fulfilled here and now, as many great heroes of faith didn’t; and despite the fact that we do fear, sometimes with reason, that the reign of God may not become a reality for us.

If, like Abraham and others, we can learn to be open to the future, to take God at God’s Word, then fear will begin to disappear from our lives. “Perfect love [which includes faith and hope] casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18) What fools we are to settle for fear rather than for trust! Last week’s Gospel spoke about the unmindful, unfeeling, unbelieving rich fool who put all his trust in his grain and goods. Luke’s message is that only a fool, staking his claim to perishables, would allow himself to hope for so little that he was unprepared for the enduring realities which God offered him. This week the fool is the person who chooses to live in fear and immobility, to center one’s focus on this world and its possessions out of fear of losing them, in exchange for trusting God to makes Godself known in the kingdom. Jesus reminds us that “The reign, the Presence, of God is within in you...and where your treasure is, there your heart will be.” God’s promises are fulfilled in the person and presence of Jesus the Christ, in us.

As God calls individuals out of fear into trust, so God calls the Church itself. God invites the people of God to set aside all fearfulness, mistrust, and to set our hearts on the promise of what God can make of them. This calls for continual re-evaluation of our ministry, of our very purpose for being the Church. That can be a frightening thing! Frightening, because it means that we have to drop our defenses and to seriously question and study such things as our theology of the stewardship of creation and of all “things”; our motivations for worshipping as we do; the quality of our evangelism and reaching out to the communities which surround us; the manner in which we choose to form our children, our young people, ourselves through education in God’s Word and the sacred Tradition handed down to us from previous generations; and, finally, the quality of how we address others‘ needs and pastorally care for one another. All of this involves risk, because it requires thoughtful change.

How ready, really, am I to let go of my fear, my insecurities, my prejudices? How willing am I to open myself to God’s promise of the only sure thing I need: God’s reign, God’s Presence, Godself? If we’re willing, as the Church, to journey together in faith, it’s likely that we’ll pick up that pioneer spirit reflected in the “honor roll of faith” mentioned in today’s passage from Hebrews: “They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on earth...” and “...that they are seeking a homeland...a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” 

The conclusion of the story in the first reading from Genesis is one of the most moving in Scripture: “God brought Abram outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.‘ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And Abram believed the Lord...” 

Can you and I do likewise?

Being Rich Towards God

Here is a story which I gleaned from the blog site of Fr. Rick McCracken-Bennett, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in New Albany, OH:

“There is an old story about two brothers who inherited the family farm. They also inherited the core value that, within the family, everyone must be treated with absolute equality. One brother was single and the other was married with three children. As the story goes, there were two houses on the farm, so each brother got one. There were two large barns and two smaller barns and each brother got one of each. The animals were divided equally and when there was an odd number they had a cookout in which they, of course, equally shared down to the last bratwurst. The land was divided equally as well, acre by acre, pasture by pasture.

Now some thought these brothers were taking this fairness thing to extremes because every evening they would make certain that the animals were back to whichever brother they belonged and any grain left over was divided into sacks and taken to each one’s granary. 

Absolutely everything was divided equally, just as their father had wanted it. This worked just fine until one day when the younger brother began to think about this arrangement. “This is not fair…not fair at all. We must change this arrangement. Why, my brother has a wife and three children while I am single. He has more mouths to feed than I. Ah! I know what I will do.” And that evening, under the cover of darkness, the younger brother took a sack of grain from his own granary and  took it to his brother’s granary and left it there. He continued to do this every night thereafter.

 

That same day the older brother thought to himself, “This is not fair…not fair at all. We must change this arrangement. Why, my brother is single, while I have a wife and three children. They will take care of me when I am old and can no longer work on the farm, while my brother will have no one to care for him. Ah! I know what I will do.” And that evening, under the cover of darkness, the older brother took a sack of grain from his granary and took it to his brother’s. He continued to do this night after night.

One very, very dark night, as the story goes, when each of them was moving grain from their granary to the other’s they smacked into each other. When they recovered and realized what the other had been doing, they embraced in a brotherly embrace and, I’m told, they continued their practice until the day when they were too old to carry the sacks of grain anymore. And to this day, their children and their children’s children, and even their children carry sacks of grain each day to help them remember and honor the unselfishness of their ancestors.”

Such people, says the Gospel, realize that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions”, outwardly or inwardly. They know how to be “rich toward God.” The Scriptures from Hosea the prophet (11:1-11) and from the Epistle to the Colossians (3:1-11), along with St. Luke’s account (12:13-21), teach us how that is possible for us.

Hosea offers a picture of the Lord God as a loving, nurturing parent, agonizing over the punishment of wayward, wandering children: a parent who is as pained as a child to whom discipline is given. Hosea, having two sons and a daughter of his own, could relate to this, and could thus describe God as a parent lifting an infant to the cheek, helping a toddler walk, picking up and embracing a child. "I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love." Hosea describes the risks of raising children, even the possibility of rebellion. Though God's children turn away to idols, God reacts with tender compassion, rather than anger. At the end of the passage, Hosea envisions a homecoming: “They shall go after the Lord…[God's] children shall come trembling like birds...and I will return them to their homes…” God’s people become “rich toward God” by witnessing God’s uninhibited compassion and mercy at work in their lives.

The result is that God’s people grow from selfish narcissism and spiritual infancy, to toddlerhood, to adolescent arrogance and open rebellion, while God as parent, all the while, remains steady in lovingkindness, until the wayward ones grow weary, their souls faint within them, their inner thirst and hunger for true life drawing them back to the source of living waters. They become “rich toward God”.

The Epistle to the Colossians was possibly written by a disciple of Paul who borrowed his name, a frequent practice in the first centuries. Epaphras, not Paul, had founded the church at Colossae, and Paul never actually visited there. Nevertheless, Paul felt a deep connection to the community. In this passage he responds to reports of divisions within the church. Some of the members felt that they could “supplement” their faith in Christ, particularly by engaging in various ascetic practices, which might aid them through ecstatic visions or mystical experiences to participate more directly in the worship of God. Paul cautions the Colossians: “Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body...grows with a growth that is from God…” He questions unorthodox “human commands and teachings.” “These”, he says, “have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.”

Paul then exhorts them, much like parent would a young adult who’s about to leave home, perhaps to enter college, or go to a new geographical location, or be married or to take employment away from one’s birthplace. Many of us have been on the receiving and giving end of such “loving warnings”: ”Remember who you are, be careful, take care of yourself. Make sure you wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident.” In a similar way, the author of Colossians firmly exhorts his hearers: “Seek the things...Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth...your life is hidden with Christ in God...you also will be revealed with him in glory...Put to death...fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)...get rid of...anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth...Do not lie to one another...you have stripped off the old self...and have clothed yourselves with the new self...In that renewal...Christ is all and in all!” These are words which you and I, and anyone who claims to follow Jesus need to hear, even those whose conversion may have been long in the past. In the verses following today’s passage there is a refreshing restatement of who we are, as Christian women and men, and as fellow parish members, and of how we might learn to be truly “rich toward God”. Paul says: "As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body..."

Finally, in Luke’s Gospel passage, Jesus himself shows us how to be be “rich toward God”: 
1) “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” If Jesus, to whom God gave authority to judge, refuses to condemn the greedy brother of the man who approached him, what makes you and I think that we can condemn others, and even do so in Jesus’ name?  
2) “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” There was a  motto back in the 1980s which declared "Greed is good". Obviously, Jesus doesn’t “buy” that.  Sara Dylan Breuer says that Luke “makes clear that Jesus' way privileges reconciliation over merely being right. And that's a very liberating way to live. When we're dead set on accumulation, whether it's some kind of moral points we think we're gathering or wealth to shield us from misfortune and suffering, we end up trapped in anxiety. Behind insisting that we're right, others are wrong, and God will vindicate those who are truly good, there's usually an anxiety that others are getting ahead of us. Behind our efforts to accumulate enough to handle any illness or disaster that comes our way, to live in a ‘good neighborhood’ where bad things supposedly don't happen, and to experience enough luxury to distract us from insecurity and fear, there's usually an awareness that we're kidding ourselves, that life involves vulnerability…” 

Instead of cataloguing our personal, or family, or parish, worries and potential disasters, and calculating how much we need to shield ourselves from them, wouldn’t it be much more constructive -- and comforting -- for you and me to bring our mistrust, our anxiety, our fear, to God, and to treat the world, the Church, our parish or our family as places gifted to us by God in which we can witness and participate in God's indiscriminate compassion and mercy, places in which you and I can become truly “rich toward God”? 

The Spirit In Prayer

In a way, people pray to each other. The way I say “you” to another, respectfully, hopefully, intimately, in desperation, or expectantly: all this is a way of praying. Could it be that praying to God grew out of this human experience of speaking to and communicating with one another?

It’s hard to pinpoint the origins of what we call prayer. Praying is simply there in the holy books of all the religions of humankind. The Bible takes prayer for granted. So much so, that the Hebrews really had no technical phrase for “to pray”. They used words like entreat, rejoice, pour out one’s heart, cry aloud, praise, bless, according to however a person felt in relation to the Divine. The Hebrews prayed to their own God, Yahweh, the only One who could help. Other gods -- and the people of Israel were surrounded by many -- were helpless. Psalm 115:5 proclaims: “Our God is in heaven, and whatever God wills to do comes to pass. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands... Those who make them are like them, and so are all who put their trust in them...” 

The Holy God revealed God’s presence, Godself, to Israel. The Hebrew word for God = Yahweh means something like “I am who I am”, but with the added idea of presence, of being with. The unique thing about the God of the Hebrews is that what God says God also does.

God’s covenant with Israel through Abraham is renewed down through history. Each time God remakes the Covenant, God is revealed to the people as a Father with two qualities: 1) lovingkindness, mercy (hesed), and 2) faithfulness, reliability, loyalty, dependability (emeth). Implicit in Hebrew prayer to such a God was a request for life, i.e., total blessing, a filling of all of one’s needs, personal, earthly and spiritual, both for the individual and for the nation, the community.

Everything was allowable for the people of God in prayer. No word was too bold or too spontaneous to be used before God. This was, after all, the same God who walked through the garden with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening (Genesis 3:8); the God whom Abraham, father of the chosen people, tried to “fast-talk” in today’s first reading (Genesis 18:20-32); the God whom Jacob wrestled in fierce competition so as to claim God’s blessing. (Genesis 32:24; 26-28) It’s against this background and within this understanding of prayer that Jesus of Nazareth was formed and lived and taught.

Luke’s Gospel reading (11:1-13) today reminds us of our need to turn back again and again to the words and actions of Jesus in order to learn how to pray. Jesus’ disciples, feeling that their own prayer lacked something, approached him and asked, “Teach us to pray.” They’d seen Jesus pray many times, and knew that it was something important to him. They also noticed that John the Baptizer taught his followers to pray, as rabbis often did. Jesus, a master teacher, offers them a simple and direct way of praying. Only one other text, Matthew 6:9-13, records this prayer. Luke’s form seems to be the original one in Greek. Translated literally, Jesus says something like this: “When you express your wish toward God, say this: ‘Father, may your name be held holy. May your reign come. Give us continually, every day, the bread sufficient to sustain us through tomorrow. And let go, don’t keep any longer, forgive our going wrong. For even we ourselves pass over the dues owed to us by others. And do not bring us to the test, the proving.’”

What Jesus hands on to us here is far more than a mere formula: much more than a treasured “Lord’s Prayer” to pass on to posterity, to record in our books of worship and to preserve like some ancient museum piece. What Jesus gives us in these six short lines is a way of touching God’s very Presence. For Jesus, praying means bringing to a personal, loving Father our deepest needs, and then letting go, yielding ourselves to God so that those needs might be in harmony with God’s purpose.

Praying means asking God, as Jacob did, “What is your name?”, i.e., “Tell me who you really are.” To pray is to turn that little word “God” into a name which means something to you and me. Biblically, the name stands for the person. It’s never just a word or a label. A person’s name is full of personal history. Biblical names, especially, speak of the person’s mission or purpose: Abraham, father of a multitude; Isaac, he laughs; Jacob, God protects; David, beloved; Jeshua or Jesus, God is salvation. 

Speaking someone’s name reminds us of all that we share in common and of our whole relationship with that person. Calling someone by name enables the person to be him/herself. It shows that we take them seriously as a person. When a loved one dies, the name spoken recalls his/her presence. By deliberately not using someone’s name, never addressing a person by their first name or always making do with a surname or a nickname, or simply by calling out to someone “Hey, you”, in some way lessens that one’s status as a person. In praying to God by name as “Father” or “Mother”, since God is beyond human designations or categories, and the precedent for which many saints have historically set, we let God be Godself: the Holy One who is with us, the faithful and lovingly merciful God. We show that we take God seriously.

In the Gospel Jesus uses an illustration to make two points about prayer:

1. To pray takes persistence, work, and trust. Jesus uses the parable of the persistent friend. His point is that we approach God on God’s terms, without giving up, and, above all, with faith. There’s no need to plead with God as with a hostile judge or an insensitive neighbor. God inevitably recognizes our need. Jesus‘ advice is to ask, to search, to knock. The Greek text gives the idea of a continuing action. We’re to pray continually, in all situations of our life, not only on selected occasions of crisis or depression.
2. A parent listens to the “prayer” of a child. Jesus speaks of a child asking the father for basic food (bread, fish, egg). He tells us that if we can trust a human parent to respond, how much more God. “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask!”

In Chapter 8 of his letter to the Romans, and elsewhere, Paul speaks of  “the Spirit of Christ”, the presence or closeness of God personified in the Holy Spirit. It’s that Spirit, active in the life of Jesus, he says, which brings you and me freedom, life and peace. “...you are not of the flesh; you are of the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you...” That contrasts vividly with what Paul calls, in today’s Epistle, “the elemental spirits of the universe... not according to Christ”. For Paul, the Holy Spirit is intrinsic to prayer: “...the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:26-27) Julian of Norwich records a delightful dialogue with Jesus in her Revelations which always greatly reassures my own personal prayer: “And all this brought our Lord suddenly to my mind and He showed these words and said: ‘I am the ground of your praying -- first, it is my will that you have something, and next I make you to want it, and afterwards I cause you to pray for it. If you pray for it, how, then, could it be that you would not get what you ask for?” This, in essence, is what Paul means in referring to the Spirit’s intercession.

What can we conclude from all this?

• Prayer requires discipline. It’s an art developed through intention, effort and practice. One learns to pray by praying: not merely by reciting prayers or repeating words. There’s a “holy monotony” in prayer. And there are inescapable distractions. But if your prayer life only repeats someone else’s words, where is the “closeness of the Lord”, the communication, the presence?
• Addressing God as “Father”, as Jesus taught us, involves an awesome responsibility, viz., addressing one another as “sister” and “brother”. There’s no such thing as “just me and Jesus”. In Baptism, where we become part of the Communion of Saints, we accept the whole Christ. We’re one with him and with one another.
• Prayer isn’t an application for spiritual welfare assistance! The prayer which Jesus taught us first and foremost asks that God be honored and that God’s reign, God’s presence, be shared universally. Only then do we ask for ourselves, and even then, only for what God knows we need most.
• In a “Ziggy” cartoon I once saw, Ziggy is standing all alone in darkness on a high hill. Looking up into the clouds he wonders, “Have I been put on hold for the rest of my life?!” We’ve all felt that way. God always answers prayer, but it’s on God’s terms and in God’s time. And in this God is always full of surprises! There’s no way to barter with God, or to try to be a wheeler-dealer or con-artist, as Abraham attempts to do in today’s first reading. Notice the last line of that story: “And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham.”
• The best pray-ers are the man, the woman, the child or the congregation who is willing to trust. “...don’t be anxious about your life...Instead, set your hearts first on God’s reign, and these things will be given you as well.” (Luke 12:22; 31) In prayer we seek not the consolations of God, but the God of consolation.
• Finally, the fundamental place where you and I meet the Father, Jesus and the Spirit in prayer is here in the breaking of the Bread and the sharing of the Cup. The Book of Common Prayer calls this word and action “the principal act of Christian worship”. We, the praying community, ask for the revelation of God’s name, the revelation of who God is, so that we may come to know who we are. Artist Corita Kent says that “to celebrate is to explain who we are and to say ‘yes’ ceremonially...” 

There’s an old Hasidic story about an ignorant villager who, having heard that it’s a good religious deed to eat and drink on the day before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, drank himself into a stupor. He awakes late at night, too late for the opening service. Not knowing the prayers by heart, he devises a plan. He repeats the letters of the alphabet over and over, asking the Almighty to rearrange them into the appropriate words of the prayers. The following day, after the closing service, the rabbi asks him about his absence the previous evening. The villager confesses his failing and asks whether his way of reciting the prayers can be pardoned. The rabbi replies: “Your prayer was more acceptable than mine because you uttered it with the entire devotion of your heart.” 

Our praying together is like gathering up all the scrambled letters of our lives in the week just past; our hopes, mistakes, good intentions, heroic moments and our failures. Together we hold them in our outstretched hands, particularly when we receive Christ’s Body and Blood in Communion, and repeat them over and over to our Father, with and through Jesus, in the closeness of God’s Holy Spirit...with the entire devotion of our hearts.  

The Apostle To The Apostles

To St. Mary Magdalene

You claimed

the false

until you found

the True;

your beauty

wounded

until Beauty

wounded you,

and plunged your soul

into a spring so sweet

your tears

fell as chaste pearls

at Mercy's

feet.

(A. Page, CSC [aka Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald], Paths From Bethlehem)

Solidarity In Suffering

There’s a scene near the beginning of the musical, Fiddler On The Roof, where Lazar comes upon Nachem the Beggar. Nachem cries out: “Alms for the poor, alms for the poor...” “Here, Reb Nachem, is one kopek”, says Lazar. “One kopek!” Nachem yells, “Last week you gave me two kopeks.” Lazar replies, “I had a bad week.” “So,” Nachem whines, “if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?!”

Implicit in that comment is the age-old question in the face of suffering: “Why?” “Why me?” The Hebrew Scriptures tell us that Job grappled with it, as have people ever since. Elie Wiesel, noted author and Holocaust survivor, whom I was privileged to hear speak at the university here in 1994, has spent virtually his entire life trying to understand, to make some sense of that horrific tragedy and of the question “Why?”, in order to bring hope to future generations.

Christians, generally, and the Anglican and Episcopal Churches  particularly, have a long tradition of people who have known suffering: St. Alban, c. the 3rd century, the first English martyr, who sacrificed his own life in place of another; Bishops Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, burned at the stake in the 16th century; Ugandan Archbishop Janani Luwum, shot to death by Idi Amin’s forces in 1977.

Years ago, whenever, as seminarians, we were faced with difficulties or illnesses, I can remember being advised to “offer it up”; to accept it “all for Jesus”; to embrace “self-denial and mortification”. Such advice often didn’t make sense and fostered the danger of ignoring or denying the reality of suffering. For the most part, our surrounding culture looks upon voluntary suffering as an absurdity, offering no useful lesson other than to make us miserable. Suffering is especially hard to comprehend when we see good people go under, while misfortune often seems to pass by those who are uncaring or who cause evil. Again, it’s the age-old story of Job. In recent centuries it seems that many in Western society have become conditioned against all degrees and kinds of suffering, perhaps because it’s so prevalent.  I remember a sad newspaper story some years ago where a young teenage girl up in Auburn, who’d been arrested with her friends for assault, casually commented: “We stabbed an old woman today. We had fun.”

Our society seems to try, with the help of the pharmaceutical industry, to avoid pain and discomfort at all costs. All day long TV ads push “doctor-recommended” tranquilizers, sleep-inducers, painkillers and hemorrhoid-shrinkers, intertwining these commercials with the latest news reports on who’s been beaten, robbed, stabbed, raped and maimed lately. Human life has apparently become that cheap for some. Compassion and pity seem to have become low priorities for many. We’ve almost institutionalized a new kind of barbarism, not least in our movies and video games.

The meaning of suffering in any form is difficult to grasp. We often don’t know what it is because suffering doesn’t seem to be uniform. Starvation in Mali or Haiti, for example, isn’t exactly the same as the hunger of a welfare recipient. Dying in the ovens of Auschwitz isn’t quite the same as dying in the bed of a nursing home. The physical pain of cancer doesn’t necessarily feel the same as the inner pain you feel when your spouse leaves you. Perhaps we understand suffering so variously because how we respond to it largely determines how we experience it. Throughout history men, women, and children suffer and are made to suffer. They accept, submit, and resist. The struggle between life and death is fought out in a thousand ways. We know little about the nature of suffering because it’s hard to measure or systematize how intense it is. For one person, a mental hunger may hurt more than an empty stomach. For another, separation and loss through death may affect a lover or mourner more deeply and lastingly than the loss of a home or property.

Suffering, as it has existed and exists today in our society, is often a cause of depression, even despair. The great Greek epics and elegies narrate and lament the fall of Troy and the death of great heroes. The tragedies offer their spectators a catharsis, a purging, with pity and terror. Those of us participating in the Diocesan Bible Challenge will have just completed reading the Book of Job this past week. The Book of Job outlines our sad plight as human beings, as well as the hope which Wisdom brings. Yet though all of these leave us with some small glimmer of hope, the question “Why?” remains at the forefront of our minds and hearts. For a follower of Jesus, the answer to the question “Why?” is the acknowledgment of suffering as a reality, but a reality which we confront, not alone, but in solidarity with our sisters and brothers. The Christian viewpoint is not fatalism or defeatism. There is a certain kind of escapism, such as that reflected in Psalm 124:7: “We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler; Our help is in the Name of the Lord…” Escaping, as Ulrich Simon notes, is “...but a first step in resistance [of suffering].  “As we run away from all sorts of prisons and tyranny we meet with comrades and find solidarity. A suffering shared may become a suffering redeemed or at least eased.” 

For a Christian, the answer to the question “Why?” is also the acceptance of suffering shared as redemptive. You’ve heard the old adage: “Misery loves company.” There must be truth to that because, according to the Good News which Jesus preached, through our solidarity in suffering as people of faith we’re somehow able to lessen it and even overcome it. We can’t argue this by way of the world’s logic. It doesn’t seem to make sense, but when we share each other’s burdens, we experience a sustaining love which goes beyond and conquers suffering and evil. God, in Jesus, has been depicted through the centuries as the eternal sharer in our suffering: most notably, in medieval icons, in the music of Bach, etc. 

The Epistle passage today from Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1:15-28) helps us understand this: “...I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church…” Paul certainly isn’t implying that a balanced, mature, normal Christian person enjoys suffering or sets out to be a victim or a martyr. But once one faces inevitable suffering, or even death, that suffering and dying can be transformed through union with Christ crucified. Polish workers back in the 1980‘s had a sense of this in the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) workers’ movement. Solidarity with Jesus has been the hallmark of all those who’ve accepted suffering and dying as the mystery of “Christ in you, the hope of glory”. It’s  never a question of abnormally delighting in pain, but rather of making a conscious choice to bear the reality of our suffering in union with Christ’s Body, in order to go beyond suffering.

Our Christian witness is to share with those suffering and dying all around us, who are part of us, that despite our suffering we and they are in solidarity through the Person of Christ, that their hurts and needs are ours, and that because we are the Communion of Saints, we’re committed to do what we can to minister to their needs.

This message has become an increasing reality for me these past three years especially. During that time I’ve struggled daily with the fact that my closest friend, Fr. Leo Joseph, priest at St. John’s, Lakeport, was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, and with the reality of his eventual death. It’s hard for me to imagine a time when Leo won’t be around. Our friendship began in September, 1994, when I was Rector here at St. John’s and Leo came as a guest preacher. Two years later, when I was appointed Regional Missioner at Ukiah and Lakeport, we became close colleagues in developing shared ministry in what became the Redwood Episcopal Cluster. I can hardly think of a week, sometimes even days, in a row since then that Leo and I haven’t talked by phone, in addition to our many visits together. As “Roman retreads”, according to Episcopalians, we’ve bantered about the commonalities and quirks of our shared Roman Catholic background: the “in” jokes, the love for good liturgy and theology, and spirituality. As one of the most pastoral priests I’ve ever known, Leo has taught me in so many ways about what it means to genuinely care for others. He consistently represents in his own daily living what the patron of his Order, St. Francis of Assisi, had in mind for his friars. Even in the midst of Leo’s worst suffering over the past three years, his deep spirituality has still enabled him not to lose his devilishly refreshing humor, even his quips about wanting to be remembered as “St. Leo, Virgin & Martyr”! He and I have helped one another over the years through each of our “down” times, thankful for our solidarity in suffering, as we’ve equally rejoiced together in celebrating the good things with which we’ve been blessed.

Through Leo’s incredibly realistic, honest, and wholesome confrontation of his illness, suffering, and eventual death, he continues to convey to me and others what I spoke about earlier: learning hope through the presence and power of Jesus and through solidarity with one another in the face of suffering and death. Leo truly understands Paul’s words: “Christ in you, the hope of glory”. As he told his congregation at St. John’s, and as he’s told me many times, Leo sees his present journey as one of letting go and “going home”. He inspires and witnesses to all who know him by living with such graciousness, “securely established”, as Paul says, “steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel…” Like Mary of Bethany in the Gospel reading, Leo has “chosen the better part”, that is, being “a [true] servant of this gospel...rejoicing in [his] sufferings for [others’] sake...in [his] flesh...completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body...the church”; a true servant commissioned by God “to make the word...fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages...but has now been revealed to his saints.”

My prayer is that you and I might be given such grace and courage to cope with our suffering together.