The Good Shepherd who takes no Sabbath

Painting by He Qi

I began my sermon today by asking for a moment of silent prayer for the victims of the shootings in Aurora, Colo., and for those caught up in the fighting in Syria.

The lessons for today are 2 Samuel 7:1-14a, Psalm 23, Ephesians 2:11-22 and Mark 6:30-34, 53-56.

Here is my sermon:

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I believe I can speak for all of us by saying that we could use a day off from the violence, cruelty and tragedy of our world.

Allow me to invite you to find space for that here in this sacred place this morning. Allow me to invite you to find moments for that space in your week.

And allow me to invite you to have a bit of compassion for Jesus, the prince of compassion. It has been a tough week.

In Mark’s gospel today, he cannot catch a day off.

He tries to go on a short summer break to the lake, and takes his friends and family with him.

“Come away,” he says, “to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.”

So they get in a boat and go.

I wish the gospel lesson ended right there. If we were only to read the first part of the lesson, it would be a perfect permission-giving lesson for going on vacation.

But life intrudes. The crowds catch up to him, and before he knows it, sick people are begging for his compassionate touch.

We get both parts of this section of Mark’s gospel, and what is edited out of the middle, apparently in the interest of brevity for summer worship services, is the story of the feeding of the thousands.

Jesus and his disciples are doing a lot of heavy lifting when all they want to do is rest awhile at the lake.

You might say that this lesson represents a collision of the spiritual ideal and the reality of the world.

As your priest and pastor, I want you to pray, to make it a regular practice each day to set aside time for personal prayer and silence.

I would like you to read your Bible, read good books, think deep thoughts, enjoy a great meal, go on retreats, go to the lake, and, of course, come to church more often.

We do need rest – Sabbath time – to renew our bodies and soul. Slow down, take a break, keep life simple.

But I also know that life intrudes. There are kids to feed, the in-laws to visit, jobs that are demanding and require you to go in on your day off, even on a Sunday.

And the cruelty of the world does not take a day off. Not in the time of Jesus, and certainly not in our own time.

Life is complicated and it is often hard to find the time to feed our souls. Even Jesus, the prince of compassion, still had to work when all he wanted was a nap. He does what he must do.

Many come, and he is their shepherd, and not just the shepherd for his circle of disciples, but for the many. So he goes to those who are sick and hurting and in need.

He loves them all no matter who they are or where they come from. He does check their baptismal certificate or anything else. He goes.

Sometimes we, too, are confronted with moments when our compassion is tested, and sometimes we don’t get a chance to catch our breath. The call comes in the night and we go.

We do what we must do.

Summer is a time for a break and rest, and I earnestly hope you find that time. But I also know that real life intrudes – the terrible shootings in Colorado a few days ago, the fighting in Afghanistan and Syria, and people in our congregation who are in the hospital, or struggling with addiction, or who are out of work.

Real life takes no Sabbath, and the Sabbath does not always come when we need it most.

There are times when we need the Good Shepherd, and times when we are called to be the hands and feet of the Good Shepherd. We might be the one to give someone a meal, or a smile, or a sympathetic ear.

Sometimes all we can do is pray, and know that will be enough.

And I hope we will hold onto this:

The God of Grace, the good shepherd of all the sheep of this world, will be there to hold us, and love us, and carry us through.

That is the simple truth of this gospel, and the simple truth to hold close especially when life is most difficult or most perplexing.

My prayer and hope is that you will find those moments to pray, to recharge, to renew.

And when you find that moment, I pray you will have a renewed sense of the presence of the One who gives himself for us, and who will be there with us always.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.


He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his Name's sake.


Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.


Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.


Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. 

AMEN

By James Richardson, St. Paul's Memorial Church, Fiat Lux

Walking the Sunken Road and the Killing Fields

The Sunken Road, photo by Lori Korleski Richardson

FREDERICKSBURG, Virginia – Every age, it seems, glorifies war, and every age needs to be reminded of the Sunken Road.

Here in December 1862, the Union Army attacked the Confederate forces led by Robert E. Lee. The federal soldiers crossed the Rappahannock River, and took the town of Fredericksburg. But when the Union soldiers charged up Marye’s Heights, on the western side of town, they were met with ferocious fire from rebels entrenched on a road behind a stone wall.

This killing field became known as the Sunken Road.

The total killed or wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg: 18,000 on both sides in four short days. The Union casualties just at the Sunken Road was 7,000 dead and wounded. The bodies were piled deep, the blood soaked the ground, and most were ever after identified with a number on a stone grave marker.

Sunken Road, photographed 1863

On Friday, Lori and I walked the Sunken Road, and we spent the day exploring the battlefields around Fredericksburg.

Since moving to Virginia four years ago, we’ve been to Harper’s Ferry, Appomattox Courthouse, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, Gettysburg, and now Fredericksburg.

During the course of war, there were four major battles near Fredericksburg, and by war’s end 105,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in the immediate vicinity.

In each of these places, I am continually struck by how small these battlefields are. Huge armies crashed into each other in very confined spaces. The Napoleonic tactics of an earlier age met the industrialized warfare of a later age, and the results were lethal on an enormous scale.

As we walked the Sunken Road, Lori remarked that the Civil War was “a personal war.” Unlike wars of our age, with airplanes, missiles and drones, those who fought the Civil War saw who they were killing. They could see each other’s faces when they pulled the trigger; they often fought hand-to-hand with knives, rifle butts, and even rocks. They watched each other bleed to death. It was a personal war. “That’s why we’ve never gotten over this war,” Lori observed.

Sgt. Richard Kirkland

Each of these battlefields has stories of great courage and cowardice, bravery and dumb luck, and stories of cruelty and stories of mercy. Here at Fredericksburg, a 19-year-old Confederate soldier, Sgt. Richard Kirkland of South Carolina, left the protection of the Sunken Road and took water down to the wounded Union soldiers as they lay dying. Both sides stopped shooting to let him pass. Kirkland became known as the “Angel of Marye’s Heights” and he was killed in a subsequent battle. The only large monument dedicated to a soldier of either side at the Sunken Road is to Kirkland.

It was a very personal war.

Later in the day, we crossed the Rappahannock River and went to Chatham Manor, a huge slave plantation that became a hospital for the Union wounded. By the end of the battle, the walls and floors of Chatham Manor were covered in blood, and amputated limbs were stacked outside. The plantation never recovered as a plantation.

I was born during the Korean War, grew up during the Vietnam War, and I’ve lived through our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though these wars are broadcast instantly into our living rooms via television, ironically warfare has become more impersonal. It is fought from command centers thousands feet in the air, directed by generals and presidents halfway around the globe in “situation rooms.”

Confederate cannon, Marye's Heights

We don’t see the carnage directly. We have a “volunteer” military, and no one is drafted from our households to fight these wars. Less than 1 percent of the American population serves in the military. We don’t see the personal cost unless we go out of our way to see it, or unless it comes unwanted to our own doorstep when someone we know is wounded or killed.

Once again we have political leaders who are pushing us toward another war, this time with Iran. They talk of “preventative war” and “red lines” that Iran may not cross. We do well to remember that wars never turn out the way their architects promise, even when those wars seem unavoidable, and even when a war, like the Civil War, is fought for the highest of principles.

We do well to walk the Sunken Road now and again.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
– Psalm 23:4, appointed for this evening

"A New Version of the Psalms of David, in English Metre, fitted for publick Use"

Our Education for Ministry groups yesterday had quite lively discussions on all sorts of topics, from the nature of Christ, the theology of Paul, the English Reformation and much else.

We ended a long day of these conversations with a psalm we found in the 1776 Book of Common Prayer on my book shelf. I've never noticed this version of the 23rd Psalm; it is a translation done in 1696 by William Bridgeman, undersecretary of state for King William. He did the entire psalter in English meter, and as the introduction says, it "may be used in such Congregations as think it fit to receive it."

Here is Bridgeman's version of Psalm XXIII:

The Lord himself, the mighty Lord, 

vouchsafes to be my Guide,

The Shepherd, by whose constant Care 

my wants are all supply'd.

In tender Grass he makes me feed,

and gently there repose;

Then leads me to cool Shades, and where 

refreshing Water flows.

He does my wand'ring Soul reclaim,

and to his endless Praise,

Instruct with humble Zeal to walk

in his most righteous Ways.

I pass the gloomy Vale of Death,

from Fear and Danger free;

For there his aiding Rod and Staff

defend and console me.

In Presence of my spiteful Foes,

he does my Table spread;

He crowns my Cup with chearful Wine,

with Oil annoints my Head.

Since God doth thus his wond'rous Love

through all my life extend,

That Life to him I will devote,

and in his Temple spend.

On the road with the blind beggar

We have a guest preacher at the 10 am service, The Rev. Dr. George Regas, the retired rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Pasadena, California. He also spoke on Friday at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.

I am preaching at the 8 am service, and my sermon is below. The lessons for the day are 1 Samuel 16:1-13, Psalm 23 , Ephesians 5:8-14, and John 9:1-41. Here my sermon:

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Today we meet Jesus and the blind beggar along a road, and a chorus of naysayers who pick an argument about Jesus breaking the rules. They blame the victim for being healed and the healer for healing. 

There are a lot of words in the gospel story today, a lot of places to get lost, to let the mind wander. It is another of these long narratives from the Gospel of John that increases the tension as Jesus walks to his crucifixion. 

We could go many places with the story. We could talk about human nature and human rules, or even human ignorance. 

Or we could talk about the urge to make the extraordinary fit into ordinary explanations, the urge to keep things neat, logical, intellectual, comfortably religious. We could talk about all of those themes.

But I’d like us to walk with the blind beggar for a time, stay on his road for a few miles. The story asks us: Who, really, is blind? 

The blind beggar has been blind since birth, and not by his own fault or the fault of his parents. He is an outcast, and not just because of his blindness, but because everyone around him believes he deserves to be blind. They try to fit the blind man’s condition into their tenaciously held ideas about sin. 

Jesus finds the blind man along the road. The blind man does not “find” Jesus – Jesus finds him. The blind beggar doesn’t ask for anything at all. Jesus simply goes to the blind man, makes mud, and touches the blind man with it – and the blind man sees. 

When Jesus cures him, no one recognizes him. They only knew him as blind; they don’t know what to do with him when he can see. Now they are blind. 

Jesus doesn’t ask the blind man to be converted first, to see what he cannot yet see. There are no catches in this – Jesus simply reaches out in love, touches this blind man and heals him. And Jesus goes on his way. 

The chorus of religious people tries to fit this miracle into their theological categories. At first they think it is a trick – that a different guy was blind. Then they try to catch his parents in a verbal trap, but that doesn’t work. So they ask the blind man if he thinks Jesus is a sinner. 

But the blind man is thoroughly naïve about these theology games. “One thing I do know,” he says, “I was blind, now I see.” And he then asks why do they want to know – do they want to be disciples too? 

For the blind man, his experience leads him to a deeper understanding of how his healing has come from the One sent by God: Jesus. But he doesn’t get there all at once. 

What is curious about the people in the story is that the physicality of this miracle – a blind man gaining sight with mud smeared on his eyes – is not as important as the debate over its meaning. 

God-words can make us blind. 

For the beggar, the meaning is not in words, but in the act itself – his eyesight is restored. “One thing I do know,” he says, “I was blind, now I see.” 

Eventually, he will come to be a follower of Jesus, in God’s own good time and in God’s own good way. 

For us as onlookers, it is enough for us now to see the healing, and how this loving act of healing comes from God, and to not get so caught up in arguments about the meaning of healing. 

Healing is defined by medicine as the replacement of diseased or damaged cells with healthy cells. Yet sometimes not all that is unwell with us is physical. For the blind man, healing is not just in his eyes, but in his spirit. 

This is about a man who gains not only physical sight, but spiritual sight, going from abject spiritual darkness and into spiritual light, going from disease to health in every sense of the word. 

Healing is more than about biological cells, but is also about the health of mind and spirit, and replacing what is damaged with what is healthy and full of new growth. 

The ancient purpose of Lent, after all, is to open our eyes, remove what blinds us, and see what is unhealthy in our life, and remove it so that health can gain a foothold and grow. 

One of my favorite spiritual writers, Henri Nouwen, in his book “Turn my Mourning into Dancing,” wrote that healing happens because God is dancing with us and showing us the steps especially when we are in pain. 

We may not get rid of the pain, but we can learn to dance with “God’s healing choreography.” 

And in the dance we will learn to see with compassion, and to dance with others. 

The great blessing of being in this faith community is that when I stumble in the dance, or get tired, or forget the steps, you are there to hold me up, share my pain and be with me. And that is because God is within you, showing you how to dance. 

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I shall fear no evil; *  

for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

And when you can’t dance, someone else will dance for you. It is truly in the giving that we receive, in the giving that we dance together. 

It is my prayer for each of us on this Lenten road that our blindness will be lifted, and that God’s holy light will shine on our path and we will always learn the steps together. 

May each of us have courage and hope, healing and grace, and may God in Christ bring us out of the darkness and soon into the promise of Easter. AMEN.

Painting: "Blind Beggar, Guatemala," by Ken Crook, Green Valley, Arizona. 

Part III: Original sin, arguing with God, forgiveness, healing and a few other Big Hairy topics: My theological reflection

I’ve taken you on a roundabout theological journey the last few days, starting with questions about the concept of “original sin” as an explanation for the brokenness of the world and the calamities we endure. If you are still with me, thank you and congratulations for coming this far.

As my reflection has unfolded, I’ve seen “original sin” not as a transmission of wrongful acts by a proto-human (Adam and Eve) but as an allegorical statement of the human condition of being born into disconnection from God.

I might add that the original author of the original sin doctrine, Augustine of Hippo, viewed the Bible primarily in allegorical terms.

As an Augustinian Christian, this brings me ultimately to the story of Jesus, but also raises questions about finding the meaning in Jesus dying on the Cross. Often Christians use the shorthand “Jesus died for our sins” to explain the crucifixion, but that phrase has some disturbing implications for how we view God.

The phrase comes partly from a Christian interpretation of the “Binding of Isaac,” the biblical story of Abraham nearly killing his son, Isaac in Genesis 22:1-24, discussed yesterday. In this strain of Christian interpretation, Jesus becomes the lamb – the substitution – for the sacrifice of Isaac, who represents us, hence we call Jesus “the lamb of God.” He died so that we might be spared of being sacrificed ourselves, or the “atoning sacrifice.”

But there is something deeply troubling about this concept of atonement. It leaves us with a blood-thirsty God demanding a blood ransom of his own son for human wrongdoing. And if Jesus is divine, is God killing himself?

And if this was a ransom to get us off the hook from our own sins, why is the world still a mess and full of evil and sin? The ransom didn’t seem to work.

There is another way of seeing the Abraham-Isaac story (see yesterday’s post) and that might also bring us to another way of looking at the meaning of the Cross. But rather than getting bogged down in theological abstractions, let me tell you a few stories:

In my time as priest (and even before) I've heard many stories of people who have had experiences of the Holy coming to them in an extreme crisis; a friend nearly dying in a car accident, and feeling enfolded by the arms of God; patients in hospitals seeing a gleaming face; a woman who thought she was about to lose her daughter to cancer and then feeling the presence of the Virgin Mary.

Recently a young mother told me how one of her children suffered a terrible accident and nearly died. The doctors told her they weren’t sure they could save her son, that it was touch-and go. As she waited in the hospital, she felt she was standing on the edge of the most terrible abyss imaginable.

And then she felt this amazing unexpected presence, and a voice telling her “I love you. I will hold you. I don’t know how this will come out, and it may not come out the way you want, but I will be with you, and I am never going to let you go. I will love you forever and I will always love your son. I will always be your companion.”

Call him Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, or the Hand of God, the divine came to each of these people and absorbed their pain. Each of these hurting people saw and experienced a divine presence in a way that spoke to them personally, and each felt their burden lifted from them.

To me, all of those experiences come from Christ speaking from the Cross. The woman in a car accident had not “sinned” – nor had the young boy who nearly died, nor his mother. None of them deserved to be standing at the abyss.

This was not about a ransom or a sacrifice. It was about Jesus being with them because he had been there before, on the Cross, on the edge of the abyss and beyond.

The message each heard was not about moral failings, but about unconditional love in the worst moment of their lives. The salvation they received was not delayed for their afterlife, but came then and there. Jesus spoke to them from the same place of suffering where they were suffering. He could do that because he had been there.

The story of Jesus, as it unfolds in the gospels, is a story of how he willingly lived with fractured people in their broken places to the point of going to his death with them. He sought out the hurting and the sick, touched them when others thought they were dirty, healed them of their wounds, and traded places with them when they died.

The point of the Cross is that Jesus was willing to dwell with us in our most painful place imaginable. By sharing our pain and showing us we are loved unconditionally, he also points us to a life without fear, here and now by reconnecting us with our creator. It is not about an insurance policy for the next world, but about a way to live in this world.

The biblical stories of healings by Jesus are not about cures that make bodies invincible – that never happens in the stories – and that, I would suggest, is a huge clue about the underlying “original sin.” The healing that comes from Jesus is about reconciling people with God so that they might live no matter what happens to their bodies. Even Lazarus, raised from the dead, passes from this earth again.

Here is where I believe this “original sin” concept is crucial.

Notice that Jesus nearly always mentions forgiveness of sin when he is healing people. The two are usually spoken of together, for example with the paralyzed man in Luke 5:17-26 who is healed and told “your sins are forgiven.” Jesus underlines three times in the story that healing is connected to forgiveness.

Yet we may ask, what sin did the paralyzed man commit? What did he do wrong to deserve being paralyzed? Luke doesn’t tell us. We should presume none at all. Nor does the paralyzed man “repent” of any "sins," or even ask Jesus to be healed (his friends do that for him). He’s done nothing to “accept” Jesus or anything else to deserve healing. He’s paralyzed and he is completely incapable of doing anything, good or evil. He is healed with no strings attached and told he is forgiven.

What then is this concept of sin and forgiveness that Jesus is getting at?

It may be that the sin Jesus is talking about is living in this fractured broken world that seems perpetually disconnected from God – the “original sin.” The paralyzed man, like Job, has done nothing wrong. But by being born and paralyzed he is living in a sort of silent paralyzed disconnection from God. He can do nothing. The forgiveness he receives is not about moral forgiveness, but about reconnection and ending the silent paralysis.

That same disconnection from God begins for each of us when we are born from our mother’s womb. The Garden of Eden is an allegory for the womb, and the “fall” of Adam and Eve an allegory of human birth.

We must be born to be human; we must learn many things including good and evil to survive. To be born is to learn how to live in a fractured broken world. To be healed and forgiven – to have salvation – is to be reconnected with God despite the brokenness of the world that we enter.

As I see it, the forgiveness Jesus pronounces is about reconciliation with God and not about moralistic dogmas. Jesus says to the paralyzed man, in effect, “You are healed, your body mended, and you are reconnected with God. The fracture with God is healed, the brokenness is now unbroken. Go now and live acting in this knowledge.”

That does not mean there are no morals or ethics, quite the contrary. Our morals and ethics spring from our compassion and connection to God and each other. We live morally and ethically because it is the right way to live, not because of an expectation of reward and punishment. Our sin – our silence with God – is forgiven, and that healing brings us back into conversation with God about how to heal this fractured out-of-kilter world we inherit by our birth.

Jesus throughout the gospels links forgiveness and healing to action, or “discipleship.” You are healed, you are reconnected to God, so get up, go forth and do something. To be a follower of Jesus – to be a disciple – is to do likewise: "Forgive others, be an agent of healing and be there with others who are on the edge of the abyss. When you do, I will be there with you because I've been there before."

This call for discipleship weaves throughout the story of Jesus, beginning even before his birth. In Luke 1:68-79, Zechariah tells his baby son, John (the Baptist), how he is to be a follower of Jesus, and it is a mandate for action to all of us:

“To give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

To walk with the way of the Cross is to agree to live in the fractured places with others because that is where Christ truly dwells. That requires being vulnerable to our own brokenness, to touching our own pain (Psalm 23): “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me…”

By being there in those painful places with others, we are also reconnected with God as they are reconnected with God. The silence ends, the paralysis is over. At the very end of the Bible, comes this declaration that the story of original sin is ended, once and for all, because God dwells with us forever: (Revelation 21:3-4):

“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

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Thanks for coming along with me the last three days on this journey of reflection. To any who have been offended, my apologies. Where I have strayed, forgive me; this reflection is mine alone. Whether you agree or disagree, I hope it has given you at least food for thought and prayer. I am also much influenced in this view of forgiveness and the Cross by the writing of Jesuit Jon Sobrino in his book Christ the Liberator: A View from the Victims, and former-Domincan James Alison in his book Raising Abel: The Recovery of Eschatological Imagination. And now I am off to the Diocesan Council. Keep me and those who take council in your prayers.

Crucifixion art above: Folk art from Cameroon; Medieval stained glass; painting by He Qi, China; "The Ascension of Christ," Salvador Dali.