The Light Within

 

The Gospel of John tells us that “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”[1]  It still is, but can we perceive it?  The light is coming, but are we looking for it in the right place? 

 

Often, we think of the light as outside of us, off somewhere in the distance.  If we wander too far away from the source, the light becomes dimmer and dimmer until it is no longer visible at all.  But what if the light that is coming into the world emerges from the heart, and is available to enlighten everyone because we already carry it wherever we go?  It is here that our Quaker relative, Thomas Kelly, invites us to look for the light:

 

Deep within us all, there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return .  .  . calling us home unto itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of humanity.  It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it.  It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst.  Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe earthly form and action.  And Christ is within us all.[2]

 

“Christ is within us all.”  The Light of Christ, the source of enlightenment, salvation, reconciliation, healing – is within us.  This is consistent with the message of the Gospel of John.  Christ is the eternal Word through whom all things were made, the life that is the light of all people, the light that the darkness cannot overcome. [3] The light of Christ within shines through us to illuminate a world that is radiant with the glory of God.  John’s Gospel echoes the psalmist: “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.”[4] 

 

Note the language of seeing: of perception and illumination.  The light within is not a little candle twinkling in our heart; it is the capacity to perceive reality holistically and compassionately with an undefended heart.  The light within enables us to see as God sees. 

 

John the baptizer testified to this light.  He refused to identify it with anyone or anything outside of himself:  not the Temple, or the Torah, or the priesthood; certainly not Caesar.  Religious leaders tried to force John to conform to their understanding, to the categories that they could interpret and control.  John’s reputation as a wild man came from his refusal to recognize any human authority as ultimate; he refused to concede to anyone control over access to the light.   He doesn’t conform to other’s expectations or resist them.  They just don’t matter.  He is too engaged in bearing witness to the light. 

 

Nor did John claim to be the light for anyone else:  he was neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet (he was merely a prophet).  The baptism he offered was an external sign of an inward reality.  John’s baptism was a preparation for, and public commitment to, the light that is coming into the world.  He baptized with water in anticipation of one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit, transfiguring our perception so that we become transparent to the divine light within.  

 

Jesus is the Christ because in him we find the perfect mirror in which to see the light within reflected back to us.  St. Paul understood this well when he wrote, 

 

For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.[5] 

 

The light does not come from us; it comes through us.  We are not the power source, but we can be a transmitter of the light. 

 

Embracing the light within opens up a tremendous field of freedom, but it also demands that we take responsibility for our lives.  Here again, St. Paul, was on target when, after admonishing the church in Philippi to “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” he concludes,

 

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.[6]

 

We can listen to a teacher like St. Paul, but the truth to which they bear witness has to be experienced directly.  It must become internal to us.  Even our devotion to Jesus and his way can too easily remain a purely formal, external, even transactional relationship (I will worship you if  you save me), rather than an internal reality (I will have the same mind as you).  We have to engage our own inner work.

 

And that work, though it is for our healing, can evoke a good deal of fear and trembling, because while the light is within us, so is the darkness.  Jesus himself teaches us that “The eye is the lamp of the body.  So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness.”[7]

 

As our perception is purified by the work of the Holy Spirit within us, then we become full of light.  But in the process of inner illumination, it can be disturbing to confront dimensions of our experience previously concealed by the darkness.   Father Thomas Keating offers a helpful image to express what I am trying to describe.

 

Suppose we were in a dimly lit room.  The place might look fairly clean.  But install a hundred bulbs of a thousand watts each, and put the whole room under a magnifying glass.  The place would begin to crawl with all kind of strange and wonderful little creatures.  It would be all you could do to stay there.  So it is with our interior.  When God turns up the voltage, our motivation begins to take on a completely different character, and we reach out with great sincerity for the mercy of God and for God’s forgiveness.  That is why trust in God is so important.  Without trust we are likely to run away or say, “There must be some better way of going to God.”[8]

 

This is another aspect of John the Baptist.  He is a wilderness prophet, and trusting the light within can at times feel like an expedition into the wilderness:  there be monsters there!  But it is only in the light of God’s love that whatever pangs of conscience, or stuck emotions, or trauma carried in our psyche and nervous system, can be revealed and healed.  Perhaps we so often seek the light outside of ourselves because we don’t want to confront the darkness within.  But we must work out our own salvation in fear and trembling, trusting in God’s grace.  Then, in God’s light we will see light, and drink from the fountain of living water within gushing up to eternal life.   And this light will radiate in such a way as to bring healing, not only to us, but to the world.  As Cynthia Bourgeault suggests,

 

When we see from resonant wholeness, what we see is the Kingdom of heaven, which is neither a place you go to when you die, nor a human utopia created by all sorts of pluralistic agendas.  Nor is it something that you simply discover, “Oh, it was there all along.”  I think the secret to it: we co-create it, because the light by which we see is also a stream of energy that beams out to it and allows it, in that light, to become what it can’t be until it’s suffused with the light.  What happens when the sun suddenly hits a valley where it’s been cloudy, and all of a sudden, the whole thing is bathed in light and turns golden?  It’s the same thing, but it’s the same thing at a different energy level.  That’s what happens.  “Light shines forth from a being of light,” says the Gospel of Thomas, “and lights up the whole world.”  That as we begin to create the stable radiant field, it’s the quality of that presence that goes forth into the broken and dark and hideous and maimed places of our culture and changes them, not by programs, but by the light itself.[9]

 

Or as Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.”[10]  Amen.

 

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[1] John 1:9

[2] Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 3.

[3] John 1:1-5.

[4] Psalm 36:9.

[5] 2 Corinthians 4:

[6] Philippians 2:5, 12-13.

[7] Matthew 6:22.

[8] Thomas Keating, Open Mind Open Heart (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1994), p. 94.

[9] Cynthia Bourgeault, “Introductory Wisdom School Transcript,” (Center for Contemplation and Action, 2019), p.  155.

[10] Matthew 5:14a.

Expect Delays

The parable of the bridesmaids is a parable about the fulfillment of human hope for a world of peace based on justice.[1]  Good Jews, like Jesus, expected this hope to be fulfilled on earth as in heaven; not in heaven after we leave earth.  It is a this-worldly expectation.  And in Jewish theology, the wedding banquet was an image of the great celebration when all the conditions come together for that hope to be realized.  In Jesus’ time, a wedding was celebrated for seven days, mirroring the seven days of creation.  The wedding banquet is about the promise of creation being fulfilled. 

The first thing the parable tells us about the realization of this hope is “the bridegroom was delayed.”[2]  Expect delays. Few things happen as quickly as we would like.   Frustration with delays is a common experience.   The road rage of impatient drivers, the rudeness of people waiting in check-out lines, the endurance of voters waiting hours to cast their ballot.  Waiting to hear back from a job application or for a diagnosis from a doctor.  Waiting for our young adult children to develop a fully formed brain!  It all takes longer than it “should.”  Some delays are inevitable.  Some are avoidable.  But no matter how often delays occur, we always seem to be surprised by them! 

 

The long shelter-in-place public health orders we’ve endured to combat the COVID-19 pandemic are a good example.  They’ve slowed everything down, when they haven’t brought them to a grinding halt.  I think our frustration with the response to the pandemic exacerbated the already high stakes of this election, and made the delays in the results feel even more unbearable.   We are tired of living with ambiguity and uncertainty.  It isn’t easy to accept delays, especially when the matter at hand is of existential importance. 

 

But I’m not going to lie to you.  I think it is harder for white people do deal with delays.  Part of the privilege of being white is that things just go smoother and faster for us: whether it is finding a job after being laid-off, securing a mortgage loan, waving down a taxi, or waiting in line to vote.  Our siblings of color have had to learn to live with a different set of expectations.  They expect delays.  

 

Waiting for Travon Martin, or Sandra Bland, or Alex Nieto, or George Floyd’s parents to receive justice for their murdered children?  Expect delays.

 

Waiting for justice for the indigenous people of this land who suffered the abrogation of treaties, apartheid, cultural and biological genocide?  Expect delays.

 

Waiting for the children torn from the arms of their parents at the border to be reunited with their families?  Expect delays.

 

Waiting for a woman to be elected to national office in this country?  Wait no more!  The Vice-President elect takes office in 73 days.  But who’s counting?

 

I don’t mean to rain on anybody’s parade today.  I celebrate the progress made in this country toward becoming a more perfect union, with liberty and justice for all.  But it is important to acknowledge that some of us have been waiting for an awfully long time for the Bridegroom to arrive.  Some are still waiting.  

 

Four years seems like a long time to endure the lies, corruption, and sheer incompetence of the current administration and its party’s enablers.  Eight months feels like an eternity to shelter-in-place.  Four days seems like forever when you are waiting for a national election to be called that will determine the fate of democracy.  But, friends, some of our siblings have been waiting their whole lifetime, some generations, some centuries for the Bridegroom to come.  And they have faithfully kept their lamps trimmed and the oil stock supplied.  

 

So maybe we need to learn to expect delays and to check our privilege the next time we are tempted to criticize others for not waiting more patiently.  Maybe we need to see what we can do to speed things up for the bridegroom.  Maybe he is delayed because we haven’t done our work.  The prophet Amos criticizes the privileged people of his day; the immorality, decadence, and smug hypocrisy of those who “trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and push the afflicted out the way.”[3] 

 

Alas for those who are at ease in Zion, and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria . . . Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches . . . but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!  Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.[4]

 

It is ironic, according to the prophet, that the very people who exploit the land and the poor, think that the “Day of the Lord” will be their vindication.  They think the fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises to Israel will be a validation of their privilege – only more so!  Amos disabuses them of this idea, and warns them that they will experience the “Day of the Lord” as darkness rather than light, as reeling from one disaster to another, unless justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.[5]  Expect delays.

 

Delays in the fulfillment of the promise are due to human injustice and greed.  Our choices have consequences, and God’s desire for the fulfillment of creation does not abrogate human ethical responsibility.  We can delay this fulfillment, and the consequences are severe:  growing inequality, social discord, the unraveling of the bonds of affection that hold us together, and the desecration of the earth.   So we must be prepared to expect delays, and avoid being the cause of them.  More than that, we must actively work to overcome the evil that resists God’s desire.  The Bridegroom is waiting for us to get the party started.

 

Expect delays, our Gospel reading warns us.  It also warns us to stay awake.  This message is echoed by many of my friends of color, who have expressed to me their fear that, after this election, white people will go back to sleep.  I can’t blame them.  We’ve done it before.  We get all aroused over some media moment highlighting a particularly spectacular example of injustice, but never get around to actually deconstructing the structures and policies that make them possible.  Will we do it again, or will we stay awake?

 

Preliminary estimates of the voting patterns in this most recent election are not encouraging.  Trump actually increased his percentage of the white vote, from 54% in 2016 to 57% in 2020.  If it were up to white people, Trump would have been reelected.  It was the 63% of Asian-Americans, 66% of Latinos, and 87% of Black Americans voting against Trump who decided this election.   It was the Navajo people and Latinos who gave Biden his margin of victory in Arizona.  It was Black voters, especially Black women, who flipped Georgia and drove turnout in major cities.[6]  It is important for those of us who are white to acknowledge that our siblings of color see this country very differently than we do.   We remain a deeply divided people. 

 

Who will be awake AND ready when the bridegroom comes, when God’s dream of a world of peace based on justice reaches the tipping point of its fulfillment?  Who will be ready for the party God is throwing, and who will be off somewhere else?  The five foolish bridesmaids were not ready, and went to the marketplace at midnight to buy some oil (good luck with that!).  They miss the Bridegroom when he comes and discover that the party has started without them.  The door is shut, and the bridegroom no longer recognizes them.  The parable ends with the admonishment to stay awake, echoing the conclusion of the sermon on the mount earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, warning us that 

 

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’[7]

 

The parable, like the prophet, points out that the fulfillment of God’s dream is a matter of ethical responsibility – doing the will of God.  It is the life of the beatitudes, solidarity with the poor in the pursuit of mercy and justice, that defines how we should respond to the delay.  It is the foundation that will allow us to weather the storms of life and prepare us to welcome Christ in our midst. 

 

Is it too late for the foolish bridesmaids?  The parable doesn’t really say.  The door is closed for now.  But the party is still going on – for at least seven days.  I’m counting on the door opening again.  I don’t think this is a one-time offer.  But I suggest we stay awake.  Who wants to miss even one minute of the party? 

 

There is a certain realism in the prophet and the parable.  They both recognize that the evil powers of this world resist God’s will.  Expect delays.  But the parable adds a twist:  the Bridegroom, Christ, is here.  Both the delay and the arrival are real.  The delay is evil’s long rear-guard action resisting the fulfillment of our hope.  Christ is already here among us – especially among the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoners – as Jesus will explain in another parable that we will hear in two weeks.[8] 

 

When justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream, when we live beatitude lives in solidarity with the downtrodden – we begin to participate already in the great wedding banquet and realize that the Bridegroom is with us. Each generation in history has its part to play in the fulfillment of God’s dream of peace and justice.  

 

Expect delays.  But don’t despair.  There is good work to do even while we wait.  The Bridegroom is here so get ready to join the party.  Stay awake,  however long it takes.

 

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[1] Matthew 25:1-13.

[2] Matthew 25:5.

[3] Amos 2:7.

[4] Amos 6:1,4.

[5] Amos 5:18-24.

[6]  Fabiola Cineas and Anna North, “We need to talk about the white people who voted for Donald Trump,” VOX (November 7, 2020) at https://www.vox.com/2020/11/7/21551364/white-trump-voters-2020.

[7] Matthew 7:21-23.

[8] Matthew 25:31-46.

The Cost of Awakening

 

Currently, I’m taking an online course for continuing education through the Center for Action and Contemplation taught by the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault.  I highly recommend their website, which has some wonderful resources.  Recently, Dr. Bourgeault spoke about the cost of spiritual awakening, quoting another great living wisdom teacher, Brother David Stendl-Rast.  Her teaching touches on something that many of us are experiencing at different levels.

 

First, she notes that spiritual awakening does have a cost!  We might think that being spiritually awake is all about being able to stop and smell the flowers; it is all rainbows and unicorns!  But truly being awake to our senses and consciously present to reality requires vulnerability.  As Brother David says,

 

. . . you can’t touch without being touched, and as you awaken to touch, the pain of the world touches your heart and you carry it, and you have to be willing, and much more than willing – ready – in your nervous system to bear the river of pain, the collective pain body that is our planetary existence.  And to bear it lightly, joyously, and sacramentally. 

 

Then Dr. Bourgeault comments,

 

It costs something.  You have to be strong and clear inside to do it, because if you bear it with drama, everything’s going to fry.  You’re going to go tense and physically contract and you’re not going to help a bit.

 

So, clarity, strength, equanimity, balance.  All these beautiful human skills that lie beyond the egoic level.  To the degree that you are willing to sacrifice your personal pleasures and your personal dramas and your personal stories to instill and stabilize those qualities, then you join the great evolutionary flow. 

 

Cultivating these qualities that allow the river of pain to flow through us, rather than drowning us,  enables us to be present to suffering without being defined by it.  We remain loose, flexible, adaptive, capable of responding in ways that are helpful and that promote the spiritual evolution of our species.   But we have to know our limits, our capacities.  This requires honesty and humility.  Otherwise, we become overwhelmed and we shut down – or worse, we react in ways that increase suffering. 

 

I can’t stress enough the importance of the integration of our own inner work and the work of repairing the world.  Presiding Bishop Michael Curry speaks about it as the way of love.  We must learn, as William Blake said, “to bear the beams of love.” 

 

This is the urgent call of our time: to learn to bear the beams of love.  Jesus is our model and our guide.  But following his way requires discipline.  There is a cost to spiritual awakening.  That is why St. John of the Cross wrote,

 

God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness because if we fully knew what was happening, and what Mystery, transformation, God and Grace will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or stop the whole process.

This is faith: to trust God’s slow work in us, to be willing to be transfigured by love, and in giving ourselves away in love become capable of receiving everything.  Beloved, be gentle with yourselves.  Trust God’s slow work in you, and pace yourself accordingly.  Don’t take on what is not yours or that for which you are not yet ready.  And be prepared to be surprised by what you are able to embrace at the appointed time.  God is with you!

Loving Through The Pain

Beloved, it has been a week!

 

In our national politics, we’ve gone from a major story about the President’s taxes, to a “presidential debate” that defies description, to the President and the First Lady being diagnosed with COVID-19 after hosting a series of super-spreader events at the White House and on the campaign trail that also infected a number of the President’s advisors, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, and at least three U.S. Senators.  We don’t know yet how many other people may have been infected or precisely when the President knew he was infected, and there are conflicting reports about his current health status.  All this in a week when racist nationalism and assaults on the integrity of our electoral system reached new heights.  The great American project of creating a just and egalitarian multi-ethnic democracy hangs in the balance.  Violence is in the air.  

 

In the midst of this chaos, we are all dealing with our own concerns about the pandemic and the related recession.  Some of you are still grieving lost loved ones.  Some of you are still on furlough and anxious to know if the federal government will provide another round of economic assistance.  All of us are struggling with the effects of varying degrees of long-term isolation due to sheltering in place; worried about aging parents and home-schooled kids and our own loneliness; discouraged by our nation’s failure to collectively address this public health crisis.  California is on fire.  It just seems to go on and on. 

 

And then there are the “everyday” challenges of illness, medical tests, divorce, custody battles, employment discrimination, eviction fears, worries about money.  We don’t have to look far to find all of these things.   They are right here in our beloved community of St. James.  Sometimes, it seems like we can’t bear to handle one more thing. 

 

I want you to know that I see you.  I see how tired you are.  I see how your heart is breaking.  My heart is breaking too.  I see your beautiful and even courageous care for others, even as you are carrying your own secret pain.  I see how well and deeply you love, and truly, it sometimes takes my breath away. 

  

I know you are not perfect; neither am I, as you well know by now.  But I trust that we are all striving to be the best versions of ourselves.  Perhaps you have found yourself harboring . . . uncharitable thoughts this week.  Perhaps you have not loved your neighbor as yourself, much less your enemies.  Or perhaps, you have, and that is the problem.  Sometimes, loving people as much as we love ourselves is a low bar.  

 

Often, we can find ourselves trapped in self-images that bear little relation to the divine image in which we are created.  Martin Laird tells the story of a women he knew, an extremely talented dancer, plagued by self-doubt and driven by a relentless perfectionism.  She was trapped in a video loop of herself as worthless, and could never do enough to fast forward past it.  

  

Most of that video was about pain.  When she was a little girl, her mother walked into her bedroom one day and found her looking in the mirror.  “I hope you don’t think you’re beautiful,” she said.  Later, as a teenager, after winning a prestigious scholarship to study ballet, her mother said, “Why would they give you that?  Everybody knows you’ve got two left feet.”  Martin Laird observes, “This video was the cage that kept her running in tight circles.”[1]  If we want to be free to love, we have to become free of the story we’ve learned to tell ourselves about ourselves; free from being defined by our pain.

 

Her story is a story about violence: how it works in sometimes subtle ways, eating at one’s soul one cut at a time; cruel words whispered in secret, a contemptuous look, simply being ignored.  Such violence works its way through our nervous system, shapes our consciousness, and ramifies through or social relations.  It corrupts hearts, families, and whole societies.  It can be hard to love our neighbors, much less our enemies, because we do not love ourselves.  How much easier it is, how much more familiar sometimes, to lash out at others or turn in against ourselves.   

 

We have to find another way to deal with our personal and collective pain.  This story about Martin Laird’s ballerina friend reminded me of a story I once heard Methodist theologian Tex Sample tell about himself.  When Tex was a teenager, he went from being 5’5’’ tall to being 6’2’’ tall in about 5 minutes.  He was the scrawniest, gangliest thing you ever saw.  And, of course, his glands went crazy.  He had terrible acne.  He could hardly bear to show his face at school and his classmates were not kind.  

 

But every night, before he went to sleep, his mama would come into his room and sit on the edge of the bed.  She’s stroke his forehead and say, “Tex, you are the purdiest boy I’ve ever seen.  You are so purdy, I can hardly stand it.”  Telling that story 40 years later, Tex realized that his mother saw him as God saw him.  And in the light of such love his pain was transfigured.  No matter what the culture or his peers tried to tell him, he was able to receive his identity from a source much deeper and more true.   

 

Jesus understood the everyday violence that suffused his own culture and made it difficult to love.  He was very much aware of the structural violence of poverty, patriarchy, and imperialism in first century Palestine.  He was intimately familiar with both state-sponsored violence and revolutionary counter-violence.  He hung out with Roman soldiers and Jewish rebels.  He saw how people suffered violence and was bold enough to say that the kingdom of God suffers violence too.[2]  God is with those trapped by videos of the pain they have suffered; and, I daresay, the pain they have caused.  God is with you and me in our pain.  Jesus offered a practice of God’s love that transfigures human pain so that God’s kingdom could be a violence-free zone.

 

The parable of the wicked tenants is a parable about everyday violence.[3]  It is about the pain of oppressed people exploding in a violent uprising against the injustice and greed of their oppressor.  It is a common story.  We’ve seen it play out over and over again in history.  About the time Jesus was born, there was a similar uprising in Galilee against Roman oppression.  Jewish rebels would rebel against the Romans again about 40 years after Jesus died.  In both cases, the uprisings were brutally repressed by the Roman empire.  

 

So, there is nothing surprising about the response of the chief priests and elders when Jesus asked them what would happen to these tenants.  As part of the Jewish aristocracy, many of them were no doubt absentee landlords like the one described in the parable.  They knew how to deal with unruly tenants.  They knew how this story would end.  And they were right.   

 

But they were also wrong.  They thought that the tenants were getting what they deserved, that violence against them was justified – even divinely ordained.  Jesus just shook his head and said, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes?’  Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” [4]

 

The chief priests and elders are right about the cycle of violence.  What they fail to understand is that God has nothing to do with it.  The stone that the builders of civilization rejected is nonviolence.  Can you imagine a civilization built on love as the cornerstone rather than violent coercion?  Now that is amazing to our eyes!

 

This is a teaching that leaves us all a little bit uncomfortable.  Jesus rejected calls for law and order masking the everyday violence of an oppressive state, but he also rejected violent resistance.  Jesus stood in solidarity with the victims of injustice, marching with them at the head of a protest into Jerusalem, occupying the Temple, and calling the authorities to account for turning a house of prayer into a den of robbers exploiting the poor.  Jesus took a knee while the guardians of law and order wrapped themselves in the flag and demanded to know just who he thought he was.[5]  Then he told them this parable: I am the cornerstone of a new community based on revolutionary love.    

 

Violence is in the air.  In our pain, it is hard to know how to respond.  What do we do with all this pain?  We can’t absorb it – that just keeps us locked in the self-image of victimization, running circles in our cage.  We can’t reflect it – that just keeps the cycle of violence going.  We must transfigure pain through love.  Only then can we resist evil without mirroring it.  

 

St. John of the Cross said, “It seems to the soul that the entire universe is sea of love in which it is engulfed, for conscious of the living point or center of love within itself, it is unable to catch sight of the boundaries of this love.”[6]  Jesus invites us to become conscious of this center and live from it.  This is what gave him the courage to love.  Deeper than our pain and our fear, there is a kingdom within us and around us.  It is here that we must learn to make our home.  When we do, we will know how to love ourselves, and our neighbors, and our enemies.  

 

Beloved, I know it has been a week.  I know it is hard to love when we hurt so much.  Share your pain with God.  Let God love you up.  And then let God continue to love through you.  You are not alone.  God is with you. 

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[1] Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 20-22.

[2] Matthew 11:12.

[3] Matthew 21:33-46.  This is the second of three parables Jesus’ tells the authorities who question him.

[4] Matthew 21:42, quoting Psalm 118:22-23.

[5] Matthew 21:1-23.

[6] Quoted in Laird, p. 17.

The Great Allower

 

This morning’s gospel lesson is the parable of the laborers in the vineyard; the parable that everyone loves to hate![1]  It evokes pretty strong reactions from folks, because it offends our sense of fairness.  Reading this parable from within the paradigm of the dominant culture – our shared worldview – we are scandalized by the idea that equal pay is given for unequal work.  I suspect we are even more offended by this than the far more common practice of unequal pay for equal work!  But the point of parables is to break open our usual assumptions and usher us into a whole new world: the kingdom of heaven. 

Albert Einstein is reported to have said, “No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it in the first place.”  Parables provoke metanoia, a shift in consciousness that profoundly reframes our worldview and gives us new eyes to see.  Parables are in the service of spiritual awakening so that we can participate in the conscious evolution of our species.  If we try to force a parable to fit into the old framework, we distort its meaning and miss the point.   

This is the problem with most allegorical readings of the parables:  they operate from within our current level of consciousness, the consciousness that caused us problems in the first place.  Too often, we read a parable, like this one, and immediately assume that God is the wealthy landowner; or, as in other parables, the king.  While that may be a comfort to real estate tycoons and autocratic rulers, it doesn’t exactly subvert our normal way of seeing the world.  Sometimes a king is just a king, and a landowner is just a landowner. 

So, let me suggest a couple of rules of thumb for reading parables before turning to today’s doozy.  This first is to consider that when Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is “like” something, it means that it is “likened to” or can be “compared to” something else.  It is both like and unlike what it is being compared to.  Parables may be most instructive in helping us to see how the kingdom of heaven is not like the world of the parable – the world we live in.  

The second rule of thumb is to translate words like “kingdom” and “vineyard” into an idiom that we relate to easier.  People of Jesus’ time lived in actual kingdoms, and the image of a vineyard was often used to describe the kingdom of Israel.  It connotes not just a geographic area, but a community, a way of life.  Today, we would probably say “culture” to describe this reality.  So, the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God can be understood as the “culture of God”:  again, what is at issue here is a divine worldview in contrast to our “normal” worldview.  How might we come to see the world as God sees it?

Both Matthew and the lectionary gives us a little help with today’s parable.  The lectionary pairs this gospel with the final passage from the Book of Jonah, which our Jewish siblings will read a week from tomorrow as part of their observance of the Day of Atonement.[2]  The prophet Jonah is filled with resentment, angry enough to die, because God has shown mercy on the people of Nineveh.  Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian empire,  Israel’s bitter enemy.  It is isn’t fair!  They don’t deserve the chance to repent!  God should be punishing them, not forgiving them! 

Jonah is stuck in his friend-enemy paradigm and an idea of justice that leaves little room for mercy.  Jonah can’t be Jonah and Israel can’t be Israel for him unless Assyria remains Assyria – the identity of the one as holy and the other as evil is essential to Jonah’s identity and perception of reality.  

In Matthew’s Gospel, today’s parable follows the story of the young man who came to Jesus and asked him, “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?”[3]  The young man represents the dominant worldview.  We are human doings, and reward is based on merit.  Jesus tells him, “Keep the commandments.”  Great, the young man says, I’ve done that!  What else do I have to do? 

Then Jesus throws him a real curve ball.  “Sell your possessions, give them to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  The young man went away grieving, because he had many possessions.  He was locked into the paradigm of reward and punishment.  He was identified with his possessions as a sign of his virtue and source of his security; poor people deserve their suffering.  He was not willing to have this worldview shaken.  Jonah was filled with resentment.  The rich young man was filled with grief.  Neither was willing to be in the flow of mercy.  Neither of them was ready to embrace the culture of God.   

The world of Jonah, the world of the rich young man, is the world of the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.  It is a world in which the sabbath economics of the Jewish Covenant are ignored, making indebtedness, landlessness, and servitude permanent fixtures of life.  It is a world in which day laborers displaced from ancestral lands must travel from one place to another in hopes that someone will hire them.  It is a world in which a rich landowner make the rules, plays cruel head games with people making a subsistence living by forcing those who worked all day watch the guy who only worked an hour get the same pay, and then brags about how generous he is in the process.  It is a world in which those who have little are envious when their neighbors have as much, because of rivalries among the have-nots fomented by the powerful, and designed to keep people distracted with arguments about who deserves what, instead of asking questions about the arbitrary and unjust exercise of power. 

Life is not fair.  Bad people prosper.  Good people suffer.  And God allows it.  We may respond with resentment, we may respond with grief, but are we willing to have our worldview blown open?  Are we willing to let go of our identification with our tribe, our status, our possessions, our sense of entitlement, our sense of victimization?  Can we imagine a whole new world, the culture of God? 

We are scandalized by this parable because, as Richard Rohr argues, it confronts us with the possibility that God is not the guarantor of our paradigm of good and evil, reward and punishment, friend and enemy.  Rather, God is the “Great Allower.”[4]  This is the God who, as Jesus said, “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”[5]  This is the God, as Jesus reminds us, quoting the prophet, Hosea, who “desires mercy, not sacrifice.”[6]  The culture of God is a culture of mercy; a mercy so great, so all encompassing, that it explodes our dualistic paradigms and our fierce attachment to identities that pit us against each other and justify sacrificial violence. 

God allows everything.  This is a scandal to us.  But God also gives us everything.  Everything!  God is not like the vineyard owner in the parable, who gives stingily only to foment rivalry, enhance his ego, and preserve his status.  The vineyard owner does not give nearly as much as he takes.  God gives us everything and asks nothing in return; God gives us everything, not because we have earned it, or deserve it, but because we are.  Life is not fair.  Life is.  And it is all gift. 

To enter the kingdom of heaven is to enter into a great sea of mercy, and to discover ourselves as one wave on that immense sea, intimately related to the whole.  Are all questions of justice dissolved in that sea?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that in the flow of mercy, in which I cannot tell where I end and my enemy, much less my friend, begins, the question of justice is radically reframed. 

Pastor Paul Neuchterlein tells a true story that illustrates this radical reframing.[7]  When Paula D’Arcy was 27 and pregnant with her second child, her husband and first child were killed in an accident by a drunk driver.  This shocking tragedy left Paula completely undone, challenging everything she thought she knew about God and the world.  The recognition that life is not fair set her on a spiritual journey that continues to evolve into a deeper acceptance that life just is.   Through great darkness, Paula came to experience life as a gift. 

Paula’s dear friend, Susan, came through the tragedy of a painful divorce to discover healing in a second marriage.  But it so happened that Paula was visiting Susan when Susan received the same terrible news that had upended Paula’s life: on his way home from college, Susan’s 22 year-old son, Mark, was killed by a drunk driver.  Paula accompanied her friend to the hospital but initially gave her the privacy of going into the Emergency Room alone to be with her son. After a long time, Susan called for her friend to join her, gently saying to her when she arrived,

“Please tell me the truth. He never was really mine, was he?” Paula answered simply, “Susan, none of them are ours. It’s all gift.”  “If that is true, then he can’t be taken from me. If he was gift, then at this moment I will give him back.” And Susan took Paula’s hand and one of her son’s hands, raised her eyes to the heavens, and prayed, “God, before me is the greatest gift you ever gave me. And now I give it back. Thank you. Thank you for all these years.”

My son is 22 years-old.  I don’t know that I could pray this prayer in the emergency room.  But what I do know is that beyond the laborers’ rivalry and the landowner’s privilege, beneath the resentment of Jonah, deeper than the rich young man’s grief, there is a wellspring of mercy:  for ourselves, for our beloved, even for our enemies.  And in that mercy, the question of who deserves what is eclipsed by the wonder that we have been given everything.  Will we seek to possess what is given, to cling to it, to grasp it?  Or will we let it flow? 

The difference between the culture of God and the world as we know it, may be as thin as the wall separating our resentment and grief from the mercy that flows just beneath the surface of our ordinary awareness.  The problems of our current culture can only be resolved by our willingness to receive a new consciousness, a profound awareness of the sea of mercy upon which all of reality exists.  And so we pray, “thy culture come on earth, as it is in heaven.” 

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[1] Matthew 20:1-16.

[2] Jonah 3:10-4:11.

[3] Matthew 19:16-22.

[4] Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for the True Self, p. 18-20.

[5] Matthew 5:45.

[6] Matthew 9:13, quoting Hosea 6:6.

[7] http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper20a/