The Most Important Word in the Bible

The Most Important Word in the Bible by Sara Miles
[John 16:12-15]

It’s summer, and I work at a church, so I’m getting a fairly incessant barrage of emails from church youth groups all over the country asking if we have any last-minute volunteer opportunities for their coming mission trips to San Francisco. Can fifteen or twenty of their teenagers come to our food pantry some Friday and work for us? Do we know about any other service opportunities, since they’ll be here for three days and would like to do something for the homeless, or the hungry, or people in need?

They are so nice. And I always feel snappish. Partly it’s that our food pantry really can’t take groups: we’re just not big enough to have tasks for everyone, and I know what a drag it is for volunteers to stand around with nothing to do. But part of my frustration with mission trips has to do with my understanding of the Holy Trinity.

Let me explain. Recently I’ve been reading an article by Samuel Wells [ http://thecresset.org/2013/Easter/Wells_E2013.html], a theologian from Duke University and a priest currently working in England, who’s writing about a new framework for understanding Christian service. He’s not interested in what Christians want to do, think they should do, or even actually do for the poor. He’s interested what he calls, shamelessly, the most important word in the Bible.

It’s sort of like a theological party game. What’s the most important word in the Bible? Jesus? Love? Mission? God? Sin? Mercy? What do you think?

Samuel Wells, and here is where I think the Holy Trinity comes in, says the most important word in the Bible is…. with. It’s a trick question, but I have to agree: the most important word in the Bible is with.

The Trinity is, at heart, about with: about what Christians call “perichoresis.” This is the dance in which Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one being, existing through their mutual relationship. And God is always gathering all humanity into that undivided relationship, bringing us all into life with God.

Remember, at the beginning of John’s Gospel: “The Word was with God.” And Proverbs: “When God fixed the foundations of the earth…..I was there, ever at play in God’s presence, delighting to be with the children of humanity.” In other words, before time began, before anything else, there was a with. And until the end of time, there is a with, as Jesus promises: behold, I am with you always. With is the most fundamental thing about God.

With. And so we open our worship saying: the Lord be with you. And so we proclaim that the Word made flesh came to dwell with us. And so we call his name Emmanuel, meaning: God with us. And so we bless our gatherings saying: the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.

Notice: with, not for.

Because God is not actually for us: except in my crazy, private triumphalist fantasies in which God, who takes my side always, will magically appear and smash my enemies. God is not doing nice things for us, like strangers on mission trips who appear, hand out random goodies and go home. God is not for us in the sense that God is always going to be giving us what we want, protecting us from illness and harm, and making us rich.

God’s just with us. God sticks with us. Accompanies us. Delights in us, plays with us, suffers and abides with us. In trouble and in doubt, when everything goes perfectly and when things fall apart: God is with us.

Trinitarian theology has a reputation for being difficult. But I think the real challenge isn’t intellectual or doctrinal–– “Oh, it’s so complicated, how can three be one?” I mean, that’s sort of like saying, how can I possibly be Sara who’s Katie’s mother and Sara who’s Sylvia’s colleague and Sara who’s Roberto’s neighbor? Am I three separate persons, three Saras? No, of course not: I’m just one, existing with different people. All my relationships inform each other—who I am as Sylvia’s colleague affects and is affected by my relationships with my neighbors and family––but I’m actually not three separate persons.

And the Trinity is not three separate beings: God only exists in relationship. With God’s self, and with us. That’s the challenge. Because this understanding of the Holy Trinity, if we model ourselves on it, changes everything. Our lives as Christians must mean being with others the way God is with us. With, not for.

Doing for, as mission groups and lovers and parents know, is super-tempting: it’s easier and often feels safer than being fully with. Let me act on your behalf, doing something for you as if my being were somehow separate from yours. Let me hand you a sandwich at a sanctified distance. Let me solve your homework problems without getting entangled in your other problems. Let me send you some flowers to apologize when I’ve been snappish, without having a real conversation.

Being with is riskier. If I wait and listen and show you what I’m really like, my life becomes implicated in yours: we are no longer separate. And I might get changed by our relationship.

Recently, I was at home working on a deadline. It was a beautiful warm day, and all the windows were open, and I was trying to focus on my writing and not get distracted. And then from the street I heard someone loudly wailing: “Help, help, help, help…” I looked out the window but couldn’t see anything. I waited, thinking that maybe a neighbor, or a teacher from the school across the street would respond. The wailing continued. “Help, help, help.”

“Oh, man,” I thought. “I bet it’s just that drunk lady who hangs out on the corner, but I guess I should go down and make sure everything’s OK,” and I went outside.

It was that drunk lady on the corner…a puffy, bruised, middle-aged woman who bounces back and forth between the street and the hospital and the county jail without ever getting sober; who mostly either sits on the sidewalk and moans, lies on the sidewalk in a stupor, or passes out.

I’d talked with her a few times before, when she was a little more alert and had been able to walk down the block. Once she wanted to chat about the baby she was expecting—this was a total fantasy, as far as I could see––and it occurred to me that she might be really demented or mentally ill, as well as suffering from alcohol poisoning.

But now she wasn’t talking. She was just moaning. “Help, help, help.” I asked if she wanted me to call an ambulance for her. No, the drunk lady said. Did she want me to get food for her? No, she said. Then she started wailing again—not even “help,” this time, just moaning. “Wo, wo, wo, wo.” She was crying. She was impossible. I couldn’t do a damn thing for her. And so I just sat down with her while she wailed. I think I said something stupid like, “I’m sorry you feel so bad.”

And after a while she stopped, and closed her eyes, and we sat there some more. I got up to go home, and crossed the street, and she started crying again, and a neighbor came out of her house and addressed me. “This is very upsetting,” she said, crossly. “I have little kids, and I don’t want them to hear this. Can’t we call someone to take her somewhere they can do something for her?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

The neighbor introduced herself to me, and she said again how messed-up and upsetting this was, and I agreed, and we talked together for a while as she walked with me back to my front steps.

Sometimes there is nothing to do for anyone. I hate that. I can’t tell you how much I want to make things better by doing something for people, and how little it turns out I want to just be with them. Because if I have to be with them—well, then someone is drunk and crying, and she just wants another person to be with her in her unhappiness, and I have to sit there. Or she’s upset and worried about her kids, and she just wants another person to be with her in her anxiety, and I have to stand there and let her see how useless I am. Or I’m scared –about meeting my deadline, or not doing the right thing, or being snappish, and I have to let my own weakness and neediness show to all kinds of other people.

Being with people means I can’t leave messages for them on their phones, at a time I conveniently know they won’t be there. I can’t do good deeds for them and go home. In fact I can’t do anything for them: I have to abide with them––even if for ten whole minutes––and allow them to abide with me.

The most important word in the Bible is the most important word in our lives: and it is a word made flesh. God lives with us, just as Jesus lives with the Father, and we with one another, and the Holy Spirit, the very breath of life, lives with us all. Amen.

Sara Miles is Directory of Ministry at St Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco; she's the author of Take This Bread, Jesus Freak, and City of God (forthcoming January 2014.)


Originally published on the Lead at the Episcopal Cafe.

You are the Ethicist!

How would you respond to this?

My good friend just died. In the last weeks of his lucidity, he told me he absolutely wanted his mistress of many years to attend his memorial service. He relayed a few messages through me to her, as he lay dying. His wife did well in her role as caregiver, running an in-house hospice for him. But their marriage was — by his account and all available evidence — in shambles for years. His wife knew the mistress existed, and only in the waning months of his life did my friend sever the extramarital relationship (in order to die with less complexity at home). There will be a funeral, hosted by his family. The dilemma: Enact the expressed will of my friend and ensure the mistress is present or — given the wife’s emotional fragility and proneness to angry outbursts — enact my friend’s constant goal of peace and simplicity for his child. NAME WITHHELD, NYC

I agree with the Ethicist in the NY Times magazine - the funeral is public & it is for the family and friends, some private viewing for the mistress would be the better way to handle it.

You can read his whole response:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/magazine/the-mistress-at-the-funeral.html?ref=theethicist&_r=0

Bernard Mizeki, A Saint from Mozambique

 

Bernard Mizeki was born about the year 1861 in Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). In his early teens he escaped from his native land and arrived in Capetown, South Africa, where he was befriended and converted by Anglican missionaries. He was baptized on March 9, 1886.

In 1891 Bernard Mizeki volunteered as a catechist for the pioneer mission in Mashonaland, and was stationed at Nhowe. In June, 1896, during an uprising of the native people against the Europeans and their African friends, Bernard was marked out especially. Though warned to flee, he would not desert his converts at the mission station. He was stabbed to death, but his body was never found, and the exact site of his burial is unknown.

A shrine near Bernard’s place of martyrdom attracts many pilgrims today, and the Anglican Churches of Central and of South Africa honor him as their primary native martyr and witness.

 

A Prayer:

Almighty and everlasting God, who kindled the flame of your love in the heart of your holy martyr Bernard Mizeki: Grant to us, your humble servants, a like faith and power of love, that we who rejoice in his triumph may profit by his example; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

From Holy, Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints © 2010 by The Church Pension Fund.

We Need Some Crazy Christians

The following sermon was presented at the 77^th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, meeting in Indianapolis IN in the summer of 2012.

The Commemoration of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Saturday, July 7, 2012

We Need Some Crazy Christians

by the Rt. Rev. Michael B. Curry

Diocese of North Carolina

This day we are commemorating the witness of Harriet Beecher Stowe, a woman who used her words to set the captive free.  I’ll say more about her later, but right now I want to note that in 1944 her witness was celebrated in a Broadway play titled Harriet. It was Helen Hayes who played the part of Harriet Beecher Stowe. At the end of the play Beecher Stowe’s family stands around Harriet and sings the words of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” affirming the Christian witness of this brave and bold woman.  Part of the hymn goes like this:[1]

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom, that transfigured you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Glory, glory hallelujah,
Glory, glory hallelujah,
Glory, glory hallelujah,
God's truth is marching on.[2]

For a text today, I offer these words from Mark 3:19-2: “Then [Jesus] went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’” The King James Version of the Bible translates the concern of Jesus’ family for him in these words: “He is beside himself.” The old J.B. Phillips New Testament translates it, “People were saying, ‘He must be mad!’” But my favorite is from the 1995 Contemporary English Version which says, “When Jesus' family heard what he was doing, they thought he was crazy and went to get him under control.”

So, forgive me for saying it this way, but Jesus was, and is, crazy! And those who would follow him, those who would be his disciples, those who would live as and be the people of the Way, are called and summoned and challenged to be just as crazy as Jesus. So I want to speak on the subject, “We Need Some Crazy Christians.” 

I don’t want to be too quick to judge Jesus’ mother and the whole family. They had good reason to be concerned.  We just read from 1 Peter a teaching that reflects what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing” (1Peter 3:9). That's crazy.  In the Gospel reading from Matthew, read just a few moments ago, Jesus says, “The greatest among you will be your servant” (Mt. 23:11). That's crazy.

What the world calls wretched Jesus calls blessed. Blessed are the poor and the poor in spirit. Blessed are the merciful, the compassionate. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst that God’s righteous justice might prevail. Blessed are those who work for peace. Blessed are you when you are persecuted just for trying to love and do what is good. Jesus was crazy. He said, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, pray for those who despitefully use you. He was crazy. He prayed while folk were killing him, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” Now that’s crazy.

We need some Christians who are as crazy as the Lord. Crazy enough to love like Jesus, to give like Jesus, to forgive like Jesus, to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God -- like Jesus.  Crazy enough to dare to change the world from the nightmare it often is into something close to the dream that God dreams for it.  And for those who would follow him, those who would be his disciples, those who would live as and be the people of the Way?  It might come as a shock, but they are called to craziness.

Let me suggest one example of such a call from the New Testament: Mary of Magdala, Mary Magdalene.  For whatever reason, Mary often gets a bum rap. Think back to the crucifixion of Jesus. Crucifixion was execution by the Empire for crimes against the state. It was public torture.  It was an intentionally brutal means of capital punishment, an execution designed to send a message that revolution and revolutionaries would not be tolerated. If you were a supporter or follower of the person being crucified, it was dangerous to stand too close by during the execution. The rational and sensible thing to do was to go into hiding or exile.

Having said that, let’s call the roll of those Jesus called to follow him, let’s take the attendance of the apostles at the crucifixion of their Lord. Simon Peter? Absent. James? Absent. Andrew? Absent. Bartholomew? Absent. Thomas? Absent. Judas? Definitely absent. Mary Magdalene? Present and accounted for! That’s a disciple! When the old slaves sang, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” there was a woman named Mary who could answer, “I was there!” Now that’s crazy!

Now it may not be obvious at first, but we actually have a day to remember crazy Christians. I think we call it All Saints’ Day. It’s not called “All the Same Day,” it’s All Saints’ Day, because, though they were fallible and mortal, and sinners like the rest of us, when push came to shove the people we honor as saints marched to the beat of a different drummer.  In their lifetimes, they made a difference for the Kingdom of God. As you know, we are even working on a book to help us commemorate them. We are calling it Holy Women, Holy Men.  But we might as well call it The Chronicles of Crazy Christians.

One of the people we celebrate in the book is Harriet Beecher Stowe, a descendant of Mary Magdalene.   She was born in 1811 into a devout family committed to the Gospel of Jesus and to helping transform the world from the nightmare it often is into the dream God intends. She is best known for a fictional work titled Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  In this fiction, she told the truth. She told the story of how chattel slavery afflicted a family, afflicted real people. She told the truth of the brutality, the injustice, the inhumanity of the institution of chattel slavery. Her book did what YouTube videos of injustices and brutalities do today.  It went 19^th-century viral.  It rallied abolitionists and enraged vested interests. The influence of that book was so powerful that Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said, upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first time, “So this is the little lady who started this great war!”[3]

A woman of her era was supposed to write nice stories, not stories that would disturb the conscience of a nation.  She was supposed to marry well, raise well-bred children, participate in a few charitable activities, and be fondly remembered by all who knew her. That was the life she was supposed to have.  But she had been raised in a family that believed that following Jesus means changing the world from the nightmare it often is into the dream that God intends. And sometimes that means marching to the beat of a different drummer. Sometimes that means caring when it is tempting to care less, or standing up when others sit down. Sometimes it means speaking up when others shut up. Sometimes it means being different – even being crazy.

When Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Inc., died last year, an old Apple commercial from the 90's went viral on YouTube. It was a commercial that aired in 1997 and that attempted to rebrand Apple products. The tag line for the commercial and the company was, Think different, a phrase that is grammatically incorrect, which is part of the point.

In the commercial they showed a collage of photographs and film footage of people who have invented and inspired, created and sacrificed to improve the world, to make a difference. They showed  Bob Dylan, Amelia Earhart, Frank Lloyd Wright, Maria Callas, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, Jim Henson, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, Pablo Casals, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, and on and on and on. As the images rolled by, a voice read this poem:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.
The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore.
They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
are the ones who do.[4]

We need some crazy Christians. Sane, sanitized Christianity is killing us.  That may have worked once upon a time, but it won’t carry the Gospel anymore. We need some crazy Christians like Mary Magdalene and Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Christians crazy enough to believe that God is real and that Jesus lives. Crazy enough to follow the radical way of the Gospel. Crazy enough to believe that the love of God is greater than all the powers of evil and death. Crazy enough to believe, as Dr. King often said, that though “the moral arc of the universe is long, it bends toward justice.” We need some Christians crazy enough to believe that children don’t have to go to bed hungry; that the world doesn’t have to be the way it often seems to be; that there is a way to lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside; that as the slaves used to sing, “There's plenty good room in my Father's kingdom,” because every human being has been created in the image of God, and we are all equally children of God and meant to be treated as such. 

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom, that transfigured you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Glory, glory hallelujah,
God's truth is marching on.

---

[1] Susan Belasco, “Harriet Beecher Stowe in Our Time,” www.nationalera.wordpress.com

[2] Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

[3] Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints (New York: Church Publishing, 2010), p. 448

[4] Apple’s “Think Different” commercial, 1997

Questioning the Gospel of Guns

There was an interesting article in the Sunday NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/media/banished-for-questioning-the-gospel-of-guns.html

It is sad to see that we can't have a reasonable debate about what regulations we can put in place to keep guns and ammunition out of the hands of criminals and terrorists and those who should not have weapons.

The law in Chicago banning the sale of handguns was struck down the other day.  Although gun violence is at an all time low there, I think an outright ban was too strict.   We need to balance public safety and what law abiding citizens can own and purchase.