October 27, 2019 + The 20th Sunday after Pentecost +
Dave Grishaw-Jones
1.
It’s an unsettling moment for those of us who think of ourselves as progressive Christians, or liberal believers. Peter and John at the gate of the temple. Peter and John fixing their attention on the beggar there. Peter and John saying to him: “Look at us.” We’re inclined toward Christian compassion; we’re even comfortable sometimes with Christian charity. It might make sense for Peter and John to give this beggar a few bucks, or a good list of social services, or maybe even a hug. If they’re wired that way. But Peter says, “I have no silver or gold, and those social services are underfunded and outdated. But what I have I give you.” And this part, the part that unnerves some of us, if we’re honest: “In the name of Jesus the Christ, stand up and walk.”
That’s
Peter, looking at the beggar by the gate of the temple. Responding to his reasonable request. For a little change. “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I
give you,” he says. “In the name of
Jesus the Christ, stand up and walk.” I
know it’s a risky proposition in liberal congregations like ours. We’re understandably suspicious of those who
invoke Jesus’ name to manipulate political situations or even bully unassuming
neighbors. We’ve seen it. We’ve heard it. It turns our stomachs.
But I
want to offer to you this morning that we—you and me in the United Church, you
and me dancing out here on the progressive wing of the tradition: I want to
offer to you that we would do well to call on the name of Jesus more often,
even to invoke Jesus’ name as good news and robust hope for the world, for our
friends, and yes, for that tired beggar at the gate. “In the name of Jesus the Christ, stand up
and walk.”
2.
You
know, in the first generations of the movement, the Christian movement, when
adults were baptized into the faith, and into the radically inclusive and resolutely
loving community of faith, the baptizer would immerse each one in a river or a
lake, or in the beachy shallows of a cove.
And then that same baptizer would pull each one out, each convert, soaked
to the bone, dripping wet; and he’d hold him or her by the shoulders. And the crowd on the beach, the beloved
community on the beach would cry out in joy and celebration. “Rachel in Christ!” they’d cry. “Zechariah in Christ!” they’d cry. “Timothy in Christ!” “Elizabeth in Christ!” To be baptized was to be given a new name:
“Rachel in Christ!” “Zechariah in
Christ!” “Timothy in Christ!”
Most
often these women, these men, these converts prepared for a year, maybe two,
for their baptism. Learning spiritual
practices like prayer, meditation, forgiveness.
Serving the poor, the sick, the hungry in their midst. Mentored—for a year, maybe two—by other
believers. Think about that. To be baptized was to be immersed in the
spirit, the ethos, the practices of Jesus.
To be baptized was to be joined to the name of Jesus Christ.
And in
the Jewish tradition, and the early Christian tradition as well, names
conferred power; names conferred purpose; names conferred potential. When Rachel-in-Christ stepped out of the
river, when Rachel-in-Christ went about her life, when Rachel-in-Christ moved
around the city where she lived, she was newly empowered; she was animated by
Jesus’ own purpose; she was alert to the love of Jesus in her heart and the
potential of Jesus in her hands and choices.
Rachel-in-Christ was baptized now.
And I
think that’s exactly how it is for Peter and John in this reading today. And how it might be, how it ought to be for
us. If you’re a Christian, if you’ve
made Jesus the touchstone of your life, God’s love is the steady constant, the
ever-flowing stream, the promise you receive every morning when you open your
eyes. If you’re a Christian, if you’ve
made Jesus the touchstone of your life, God’s love is also the commitment your
heart makes every day. To celebrate life
and breath and being. To love your
neighbor as yourself. To pursue justice
and make peace. I think Peter and John
love Jesus. I think Peter and John have
awakened, somehow, along the way; they’ve awakened to an awareness of the Risen
Jesus, the Risen Christ, in their own fragile and imperfect lives. And this awakening changes everything. “I have no silver or gold,” Peter says to the
defeated beggar at the gate, “but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus
the Christ, stand up and walk.”
Now
I’ve had some interesting conversations lately—with some of you—about the
difference between hope and courage.
Some of us are wondering whether hope is enough, whether hope is active
enough, robust enough, daring enough to meet the challenges of 21st
century faith. If we simply hope for
action around global warming and climate change, can we reasonably expect to
repurpose economies and transform human culture and meaningfully honor and
cherish and bless life on earth? If we
simply hope for racial justice and the healing of our original American sin, is
that enough—just the hoping—to turn our hearts and minds to one another in
honest communion and sister- and brother-hood?
Implicit in the questions themselves is the suspicion, the insight in
fact, that sometimes hope just isn’t sufficient. Sometimes hope even misses the mark.
What I
see in this morning’s reading, what I see in Peter’s chutzpah outside the
temple, is something like hope quickened by courage, something like compassion
animated by conviction. Peter calls on
the name of Jesus—and he does, he calls on the name of Jesus—but not as a
matter of theological pride, not because he’s figured out something that others
haven’t, but because Jesus’ spirit lives in him, because God’s love is his one
true gift. And once you come to that,
once you accept that that’s how it is, you simply have to give it away. The gift only makes sense if you give it
away.
So
there’s nothing passive about our hope in the church: it’s a different kind of
thing. There’s nothing passive about
Peter’s hope, about John’s hope in our story.
Peter reaches out to take the man’s arm, and raises him up. “In the name of Jesus the Christ.” And the story says that “immediately the
man’s feet and his ankles are made strong.”
And isn’t that something: that the joints where his body meets the
planet, the bones where his flesh touches the earth, these bones are made
strong again. He’s been exhausted for so
long. He’s been peripheral for so
long. But Peter raises him up: into the
center of things, into the very heart of the action. And he’s connected again: to the planet, to
the city, to the temple of God.
And if
that’s not enough, he jumps up, and begins to walk with them; and then he
enters the temple with them, with Peter and John, walking and now leaping and
praising God. Isolation becomes
jubilation. Despair becomes
communion. The three of them
together. “In the name of Jesus the
Christ.” The exhausted soul is strong again. The peripheral man moves into the heart of
the action. You see, compassion and
charity are sweet; but the vocation of faith, the purpose of discipleship is
communion and community. The people of
God rejoicing in God. And singing to
God. And leaping and bounding into the
temple. Not one left behind. Not one soul left behind!
So
friends: let me dare suggest that we would do well to call on the name of Jesus
more often, even to invoke Jesus’ name as good news and robust hope for one
another and for the world and for our children too. Maybe Jesus means courage. Maybe Jesus means imagination and love. Maybe Jesus means not one soul left
behind. Again, I’m thinking about those
conversations I’ve had, with some of you, about hope and resistance and the
profound challenges we face as a planet.
Jesus isn’t the only way to overcome despair; he’s not the only spiritual
path to transformation and joy. But let
me suggest that he’s our way, our way in the church. And his love moves always and precisely in
our brokenness, in our brokenness (!) and in our frailty, to make tired feet
run and achy ankles strong and weary spirits sing.
4.
A
dozen years ago, during a sabbatical in the Holy Land, I was invited by a
Palestinian family, a dear sweet family in the West Bank, to join a large
community of their friends at a weekly protest.
Every Friday, for years, they prayed at their mosque in Bi’lin and then
marched together (all of them) to the militarized fence, the barrier being
carved into their farmlands by Israeli security forces. (By the way, you can check this whole story
out on Netflix in the film, “Five Broken Cameras.”) That barrier separated Bi’lin’s families from
their ancestral fields: the fields that had fed their families for generations,
and employed their people, and (maybe most importantly) rooted this proud and
lovely village in the land, the soil, the earth itself. And in fact, this seemed the point of the
barrier itself: to uproot proud Palestinians, generations of farmers, from the
orchards, groves and fields they loved most.
It’s pretty much the colonial project, right? Wherever that project’s in motion.
So I
walked with them, these several dozen West Bank Muslims, accompanied by UN
observers and Israeli peace activists, crying out for liberation, demanding
their lands back, insisting on human rights, land rights and justice for their
children.
And when
we reached the fence itself (it’s a grim concrete wall now, but it was a fence
then) armored Israeli vehicles were waiting on the other side. There was a certain pattern to this Friday
action, and these soldiers on the other side were ready for it. Several Palestinian men walked down to the
fence, hung a Palestinian flag there, and shook the fence, demanding an end to
the occupation, a dismantling of the barrier: they wanted their farms
back. I hung a ways back, near the crest
of a hill; because I’d been told that most often the army tired of this
protest, after an hour or so, and dispersed the crowd by firing tear gas
cannisters their way. I wasn’t much
interested in tear gas. So I watched
from a distance, took some pictures, and jotted notes, observations in my
journal.
But it
turned out that I wasn’t far enough away. When soldiers fired their tear gas cannisters
up that hill, one landed in front of me, and another not far behind me. As I turned to seek higher ground, I stepped
right into a cloud of the burning, stinking gas. (Gas that was brewed and packaged right here
in Pennsylvania, by the way.) And I fell
to my knees right there. Wretching and
gagging.
Now I
was never in danger, not really, though young Palestinians have been badly
injured in protests like that one over many years now. But I gagged some, and as I did, the gas did
its nasty work on my throat and then in my chest. And frankly, it kind of freaked me out. Which is the whole point of tear gas,
right? I was disoriented for several
moments, and wasn’t at all sure which direction even to go. Old folks were yelling and young men were running
past me. My knees buckled.
And
then I felt a hand on my shoulder. A
gentle, kind hand. Because you know, you
can tell. And turning, I found another
hand, stretched out, palm up, with an onion, a white onion, cut in half. A tall Palestinian man, in a beige suit, a neatly
cut beard and wire glasses: this tall Palestinian man stood to the side,
extending this strange communion to me.
“Take,” he said, quietly, but urgently, with a thick accent. “Breathe.”
And when I didn’t understand, when I looked puzzled and dizzy, he took
one of the onion halves, brought it to his own mouth, and inhaled deeply. “Take,” he said again. “Breathe.”
Now
maybe you all know this. But onions
work. On tear gas. I don’t pretend to understand the chemistry
of all this: but something about the onion counteracts the burning of the tear
gas, at least enough to get you centered and on your feet again. And so it was with me. I brought the onion to my mouth, took a deep
breath and found myself relaxing, just enough to see the tall man smiling at
me, just enough to see him pointing my way forward. “That way,” he said. “That way to your friends.”
Only
later did I learn that the tall man in the beige suit, the bearded man bearing
onions that day, was a Palestinian Christian.
To be honest there aren’t many left, not in that part of the West
Bank. This man lived miles and miles
away, and traveled to that protest on foot, every Friday, bearing onions in a
satchel. By and large, the villagers in
Bi’lin were all Muslim; but that lone Christian made a point of going every
week, in support, in friendship. With
the love of Jesus in his heart. And that
bag of onions in his hand. It was his
ministry. It was his promise. He rarely said much at all. But he always seemed to be in the right place
at the right time. And he always had
enough. Onions. A strange communion indeed.
5.
So here’s
a line from a lovely book by James Carroll—a brilliant theologian and writer
for the Boston Globe. James
Carroll writes: “When we proclaim, with the tradition, that Jesus is ‘Christ,’
that Jesus Christ is ‘risen,’ that Jesus Christ is ‘God,’ we know that we are
not asserting scientific facts.” This is
so important, friends: “When we proclaim that Jesus is ‘Christ,’ that Jesus
Christ is ‘risen,’ we know that we are not asserting scientific facts.” James Carroll goes on: “We are [instead]
offering interpretations of a bottomless mystery, ever to be plumbed, never
mastered.” Isn’t that something? Isn’t that right? When we proclaim that Jesus is Christ for us,
that Jesus is risen in us, we’re offering interpretations of a bottomless
mystery, ever to be plumbed, never mastered.
Which is to say: to be a believer, to be a Christian, to follow Jesus is
to live in the mystery of God’s love: not to lord it over others. To be a believer, to be a Christian, to follow
Jesus is to trust the promises of God, to dance by the light of grace: not to
argue that his light is the only light there ever was or will be.
I call
on the name of Jesus in my prayers every day, and in my ministry, and in my
politics and activism too: not because Jesus is the only light, but because the
light of Jesus shined on me that day in Bi’lin.
I remember the shiny onion on my lips and the sharp smell of it in my
nostrils. I remember the tall man, his
beige suit, his neatly cut beard. And
the love in his eyes. And the way his
finger pointed me toward safety. I call
on the name of Jesus every day: not because it gives me permission to lord it
over others, or to pontificate on the best ways to do things or say things or
solve puzzles. I call on the name of
Jesus, every day, because that’s how hope turns to courage in my chest, and
that’s how compassion becomes communion in my practice. Jesus is that hand on my shoulder. And he never lets go.
“God
has said YES and AMEN in Jesus,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer from prison in
1944. “God has said YES and AMEN in
Jesus. And this YES and AMEN is the
solid ground upon which we stand.”
Again, I offer this to you: we who love the planet, we who seek justice
and righteousness for the brokenhearted and the poor, we who wish blessing and
beauty and compassion upon all beings; we would do well to call on the name of
Jesus even more often than we do. We’ll
find that that name is indeed a bottomless mystery, to be sure. Ever to be plumbed, never to be
mastered. But in our hoping, in our
loving, in our serving, and in our blessing, I suspect we’ll find holy ground,
good ground, solid ground for the work and love that lies ahead.
Because
God says YES and AMEN in Jesus, and then God says YES and AMEN in you and me
too.
Amen.
