Led to Those at the Margins ...

When in our DIAKONIA class tonight we were talking about Luther's Theology Of The Cross, we spoke about how as People of the Cross we always are led to those who have been pushed to the margins by those who have the power. It was delightful to see how the students who only last week had bitterly complained about the "heavy" reading (Douglas John Hall), began to "get it".

As inspiration blew away their moans and groans, lights came on and wheels turned. The students "thought out loud", discovering that indeed we are setting ourselves apart when we communicate the Good News to those who are oppressed -- for the mighty ones know deep down that not power but love will win in the end.

Our Gospel lesson about the Woman at the Well illustrates this movement toward the ones who have become victims: Jesus appeals to the woman's hospitality, yet this is not supposed to happen. For the unnamed Samaritan woman, Jesus belongs to those who have made outcasts of the Samaritans in the first place; to her great surprise, here is one of the oppressors asking her, the oppressed, for assistance in his need. He is thirsty, and he is asking her for a drink.

The woman, outcast as she is, aligns herself with the corporate outcast identity of her country. In relation to an “oppressor” from the “establishment" (Jerusalem) she becomes one with the very people who reject her and mistreat her. She is a victim within her culture, and victims usually have no alternative to the rejecting culture for their cultural identity, and so it is that the Woman at the Well professes solidarity with her fellow Samaritans.

When he asks the woman to go and bring her husband, Jesus lays bare the woman’s place in her community as the communal scapegoat. Five men have married and divorced this woman and one other man has entered into a relationship with her. When we consider that it is likely that each former husband has married somebody else, implicating the whole family of each of these women, we begin to see that what Jesus is doing: he uncovers the way life at Sychar is organized around scandal.

This woman has received all of the blame for the divorces and her current tenuous status, and apparently, none of the blame has gone to any of the men. In a small town, this means that a significant part of the population is connected with this scandal. No wonder the woman has to absorb all of the blame!

Salvador Dali:  Da mihi bibere 

It dawns on the Woman at the Well that Jesus, just by talking to her, is changing her social position. He is unveiling the scapegoating mechanism of the town and undermines the fact that this community is organized around scapegoating.

"I am he, the one who is speaking to you." As Jesus says these words in Aramaic, he reminds everyone who knows Scripture of the first “I am” saying in the Bible; it was spoken by God to Moses when God appeared to him in the burning bush, and revealed his name, YHWH.

Now, Jesus speaks the first of the “I am” sayings recorded in the Gospel of John, and he speaks it to an outcast, a nameless Samaritan woman. Knowing the connection with the Old Testament reference, what sounds so innocent in our translation, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you”, means a whole lot more; a better translation would be: “I am God himself, here and now; I have always been, I will always be.”

By telling the woman who she is, Jesus shows her who he is. By confirming her true identity, he reveals his own, and that is how it still happens in any intimate relationship. In her relationship with Jesus, the Woman at the Well has a powerful epiphany and becomes an enlightened believer. She has received life-giving water. By the end of the conversation, she has the clarity that comes with true faith. She knows what she really needs, and she has found it.

Knowing in her heart that true life is just beginning, she is full of joy. She rethinks who she is. She learns to take all power away from those who have made her the scapegoat of the town. The people of Sychar come to believe in Jesus. Far from driving him away, they invite him to stay, and many more come to believe “because of his word.” What Jesus has done is gather the whole town of Sychar around the well.

The Woman at the Well is no longer the victim at the center of the society; she is at the edge around the well with everybody else in town. The center is now Jesus. The Samaritans have accepted the truth of what they were doing socially in their own town and have moved to the level of worshiping in spirit and truth; in the process, they are freeing themselves from their scapegoat status in relationship to the Jerusalem establishment.

By telling this story, John has given us a vision of God’s kingdom. The Woman at the Well represents the workings of God's kingdom in the midst of human failings. Her story shows us not only where to find that "living water": It also helps us to become sensitive to all the scapegoating around us, and how communicating the gospel and challenging oppression go hand in hand.

In the end, not power will win, but love. As we learn to embody love the way Jesus did, we realize that a triumphalist church is a church of the past; we are called to be the servant church. In proclaiming the Crucified God, we will be a light to the nations!

John 4: 5-29

Demonizing Muslims

40% of all extremist plots in America were thwarted as a result of Muslim American help. The majority of terror plots in America since 9/11 has been committed by non-Muslims, especially right wing extremists and white supremacists. Muslim American terrorism and involvement in extremism has significantly decreased.

Yet Congressman King stubbornly insists that Muslims have not cooperated with law enforcement -- after the tune, why let the facts get in the way if I can hold on to my opinion.  Mr. King has convinced others that a congressional hearing must be held under the bombastic title, "Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response".  Something about this picture is very wrong!

As Lutherans we know how much Martin Luther agitated against certainty in most matters.  To be sure, Luther was certain of his faith; however, everything beyond that was for him a world in the process of becoming. He consistently warned against those who thought they had it all together, knowing full well that there are no such people.

Fellow preacher Barbara Brown Taylor comes to mind, in her interpretation of Nicholas of Cusa, one of Luther's spiritual forerunners. She says:

In Nicholas's scheme, the dumbest people in the world are those who think they know. Their certainty about what is true not only pits them against each other; it also prevents them from learning anything new. This is truly dangerous knowledge.  They do not know that they do not know, and their unlearned ignorance keeps them in the dark about most things that matter.

It's not for nothing that in old maps the edges, known as terra incognita (unexplored and thus unknown territories), were marked with the words "here be dragons".

Absolute certainty sells -- as one of my teachers used to say, "it's always cheaper to stay unconscious" -- but it's unrealistic.  Real life doesn't work that way; it's riddled with doubt and uncertainty and pain and suffering and blunders over blunders.

Luther laughed at those who tried to erase uncertainty and doubt and replace them with certainty and absolute faith -- against those triumphalists he held up the Cross of Christ in all its messiness.

Singling out one particular group -- in this case Muslims -- is always born of fear and self-righteousness, and always wrong, for there is no "other".

Singling out one particular group denies the fact that we are all made of the same fabric, one human family: no matter what we look like, no matter where we come from, where we live, what we believe, how we vote, who we call our friends -- we are one, and each of us has been made to represent our creator.  Divisions are all about power and the fear of losing control.  Divisions are selfish and greedy.

The only way to heal divisions is love -- which, as St. Paul writes, "is patient and kind; ... not jealous or boastful; ... not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; ... is not irritable or resentful;  ... does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends".

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Disordered clocks and an ebony box: Commemorating George Herbert

 George Herbert

 Blest be the God of love,
Who gave me eyes, and light, and power this day,
  Both to be busie, and to play.
  But much more blest be God above,

  Who gave me sight alone,
  Which to himself he did denie :
  For when he sees my waies, I dy :
But I have got his sonne, and he hath none.

  What have I brought thee home
For this thy love? have I discharg’d the debt,
  Which this dayes favour did beget?
  I ranne ; but all I brought, was some.

  Thy diet, care, and cost
  Do end in bubbles, balls of winde ;
  Of winde to thee whom I have crost,
But balls of wilde-fire to my troubled minde.

  Yet still thou goest on,
And now with darknesse closest wearie eyes,
  Saying to man, It doth suffice :
  Henceforth repose ; your work is done.

  Thus in thy Ebony box
  Thou dost inclose us, till the day
  Put our amendment in our way,
And give new wheels to our disorder’d clocks.

  I muse, which shows more love,
The day or night ; that is the gale, this th’ harbour ;
  That is the walk, and this the arbour ;
  Or that the garden, this the grove.

  My God, thou art all love.
  Not one poore minute 'scapes thy breast,
  But brings a favour from above ;
And in this love, more than in bed, I rest.

George Herbert (1593 – 1633), the author of "Evensong" above, was a Welsh born English poet, orator and Anglican priest. He is commemorated by Lutherans on March 1, and is represented by the hymn,"Come, My Way, My Truth, My Life" in most hymnals.

When last week I looked at the poem above, some of the imagery made me grin (our "disordered clocks" that need "new wheels"), but some of it made me cringe as well (namely that ebony box in which, the poet says, we are enclosed by God).

George Herbert pursued government early in life, but then changed course and studied for the ministry.  Much of his poetry was written when he was a priest in a small Anglican parish, where he was adored as a kind and loving shepherd of his sheep.

When on Saturday a friend's husband, Louis, passed away after a futile battle with cancer, all of a sudden some of the phrases that I had dismissed as baroque and dated gained new meaning. "My God, thou art all love. Not one poore minute 'scape thy breast, But brings a favour from above; And in this love, more than in bed, I rest."   

To rest in God's love is what counts -- it keeps our priorities on track and reminds us where home is. Louis has gone home, back to the source of all life, where pain and cancer and tears have no power any more.

"Come, my joy, my love, my heart: Such a joy as none can move;

Such a love as none can part; Such a heart as joys in love."  Amen.

May Louis rest in peace!

A Cure for Worrying: Commemorating Sr. Elizabeth Fedde

On February 25, Lutherans commemorate Elizabeth Fedde (1850-1921), a Norwegian deaconness who, at age 33, followed her brother's urging to come to New York City. At his request, she took up "the work among the poor and lost Norwegians”, but rather than confining herself to visit the ill and poor in their homes, she found herself working in hospitals, on ships and in the streets.

Three years later she asked the newly founded Norwegian Relief Society to start a deaconness home and hospital. Sr. Elizabeth became well-known, and after enlisting businessmen such as Charles Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller, a thirty-bed hospital at Fourth Avenue and 46th Street was dedicated in 1889. Soon the Norwegian Relief Society re-incorporated as the Norwegian Lutheran Deaconesses’ Home and Hospital. Then, in April 1892, the first two deaconesses were consecrated in Brooklyn.

But besides being the "mover and shaker" in ever wider circles, Sr. Elizabeth remained dedicated to her work with the sick and the poor. Even though there was some financial support, she was a pioneer. Lack of sleep, being "on call" at all times and the many sick people she worked with -- all this took its toll on her, and she fell ill more and more frequently.

Her ill health made it necessary for Sr. Elizabeth to return to Norway in 1895, but her work lived on, and mightily so. When in 1956 Lutheran Norwegian Deaconess Home and Hospital merged with Lutheran Hospital of Manhattan, the result was Brooklyn's Lutheran Medical Center, which proudly honors Sr. Elizabeth as its founder.

I could write about Sr. Elizabeth because I am the child of a former deaconness. I could write about her because my first couple of years of chaplaincy training took place at Lutheran Medical Center. Or I could write about her because the first church I attended in the United States was on the very spot where Sr. Elizabeth's first hospital stood: 46th and 4th in Sunset Park. Even though those are all good reasons, today I want to write about her faith and her courage, and especially about her ability to trust God.

This is from Sr. Elizabeth's diary:

March 21: Should stay in and sew but was taken to a poor family; quite young people who have been without work so long that they had no money. Mrs. Børs’s $5 was a welcome gift, even though it brought tears; I asked the woman to come Monday to get clothes for the baby who will arrive shortly; I have nothing now, but because I need it, I believe something will come. March 22: Home for housework, and a woman came with a parcel of children’s clothes and asked if I had use for them. I knew I would have them in time for Monday. At meeting in the evening to get help for the poor... 

"I have nothing now, but because I need it, I believe something will come" -- that's putting into action what Jesus says in Sunday's Gospel: "If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you -- you of little faith."

Sr. Elizabeth is not a woman of little faith, not by far, and somehow people around her begin to have a sense that God's love radiates from her.

Here's what she writes one cold January night:

Out in dreadfully cold weather to a poor family down in a cellar, and after talking to them awhile gave them what I had in my pocket because I thought my purse contained carfare; when I looked, I found nothing and I set out on foot late and in bad weather, but God can soften all hearts. A streetcar driver called and said, “Get on!” I said, “I have no money,” and he cried, “Just come!” That sort of thing has never happened to me before.

Her faithfulness shines especially with those who are skeptical. After describing the cyncial attitude of an unemployed and debilitated young man from Norway, she says, "We stood and talked long together. He stood his ground, but when I said that I prayed God every day that He would send me to those He wanted me to see and that I was sure that God had arranged the meeting with him, tears ran down his cheeks, and they said more than words."

Every so often Sr. Elizabeth admits to be "in a very bad humor". One of those times, she is quite frank in describing the effects of a board meeting on her (some of us have been there and felt similar!): "God be merciful! I have the whole board against me and everything is wrong and I wish I were dead. God be merciful to me, a sinner!"  

Yet some time later, her diary says this: "Tired from the day's work, I sit now and wish I had a thousand mouths and a thousand tongues in each mouth with which to praise God for all goodness to me."

Here is part of Sunday's Gospel in the "Cotton Patch Version" by Clarence Jordan:

So cut out your anxious talk about ‘what are we gonna eat, and what are we gonna drink, and what are we gonna wear.’ For the people of the world go tearing around after all these things. Listen, your spiritual Father is quite aware that you’ve got to have all such stuff. Then set your heart on the God Movement and its kind of life, and all these things will come as a matter of course. 

Sr. Elizabeth had her priorities right. Because her heart was set on God and God's kind of life, "all these things" people worry about, they came to her as a matter of course. She believed and thus she received. She remained in God's love, and God's love radiated out of her for all to see. May her faith embolden ours; may it help us navigate the world in new, more trusting, ways!

When everybody else worries his or her head off, it's our business to stay still. We will receive what we need, without fail.

Matthew 6:25-33

No more Rotten Potatoes!

In tomorrow's Gospel Jesus intensifies and radicalizes Old Testament law, by taking up four of the more contentious issues of his day -- anger, adultery, divorce and swearing. The common motif is how we treat broken relationships as the People of the Kingdom.

Four times Jesus begins with "You have heard" and continues with "But I say". Four times Jesus shows that God's law is about God's love.

He enables his disciples to see the world with the eyes of God, and to be transformed in the process. Charles H. Talbert of Baylor University observes:

To see differently is to have our perceptions altered. From that come changes in our dispositions, intentions and motivations. The Beatitudes and antitheses shape character by enabling a new way of seeing God's will.

Until just a few years ago, every time I returned from visiting my parents, I was such an emotional mess that nobody wanted to be around me. Visiting my folks made me come home with anger and resentment and sadness, ... but no more, for one fine day a friend gave me the story of the sage and his disciple, a story that indeed transformed me by helping me see.

Once there was a sage who asked his disciple to carve out names of the people he could not forgive on potatoes, one potato for each name.

Then, the disciple was asked to put all the potatoes in a sack and carry it with him at all times, for one week.

The longer time went by, the heavier the potatoes seemed to have become. To make the matter worse, those carved potatoes also started to rot and smell bad. It was such an unpleasant experience for the disciple.

At the end of the week, the master asked, "So, what did you learn?" 

The disciple told the master that he now realized that holding on to grudges only brought negative things to him. Asked how he should go about correcting that, the youngster said he should strive his best to forgive everyone that used to cross him and made him angry. 

The master then asked, "What if someone crosses you again after you unload this present load of potatoes?"

The disciple suddenly felt terrified at the thought of having to start all over again with new potatoes, week after week. He said, "What can I do if there are still other people crossing me? I cannot control what other people do to me!"

At which point the master replied, "So far we only discussed the conventional way to approach forgiveness, that is, to strive to forgive. But striving is difficult. It is also quite unneccessary."

Seeing the disciple completely at a loss then, the master asked, "If resentment and anger are the potatoes, what is the sack?"

The disciple finally grasped it, "Ahh the sack is something that allows me to hold on to the negativity. It is my inflated sense of self-importance!"

The master said, "Once you learn to let go of the sack, whatever people say or do against you will no longer matter. Forgiveness is your conscious decision to get rid of the sack altogether, not just the potatoes. Get rid of your self, and your resentment will be gone."

Angry, resentful and sad, I read the story of the sage and his disciple. I cried a bit and read it again, that day and the next few days. And then I got it. It dawned on me that in my navel-gazing and my constant saying "woe is me" I had been in the way of these relationships. All I had been willing to see was my inflated ego and its constant yelling "Me-me-me".

Little by little I learned to get rid of the sack. Every time my best friend heard me returning to the old broken record of my resentment, he said, "So you put that sack on your back again, did you?"  My relationships with my family have changed, and much to the better.

"To love", says Juris Rubens, Latvian Lutheran pastor, "is to want another person to acknowledge that it was worth creating you." Forgiving my folks made it possible for me to love them again. And in doing so, I acknowledged that they were created by God with the same exquisite love and care as everything and everyone else.

The Sufi mystic Rumi -- often reduced to a new-age "poet of love" -- conceives of every expression of human love as an echo of our relationship with the divine lover:

Both light and shadow

are the dance of Love.

Love has no cause;

it is the astrolabe of God’s secrets.

Lover and Loving are inseparable

and timeless.

Although I may try to describe Love

when I experience it I am speechless.

Although I may try to write about Love

I am rendered helpless;

my pen breaks and the paper slips away

at the ineffable place

where Lover, Loving and Loved are one.

Every moment is made glorious

by the light of Love.

"Where Lover, Loving and Loved are one" -- if someone were to look for a hermeneutical key for the Sermon on the Mount, this would be a good start!


Matthew 5:21-37