Month: April 2020

Readings from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures for Tuesday in Holy Week include a passage from Isaiah in which God declares that ‘his’ Word is not for Israel only, but for all of humanity. A letter from Paul to the Corinthians admits it looks like foolishness, but God’s wisdom is not like ours. In John’s gospel, some curious Greeks seek out Jesus’ friends Philip and Andrew, asking them for an introduction to Jesus. The Psalm was written by an old person, vulnerable, in trouble, but trusting in God no matter what.

God made Israel to be a light of God’s presence, self revelation and truth shining out in a world struggling to grasp an idea of the holy. It was never intended to be for them alone. When the time was right, the light they had tended for two thousand years became a blazing beacon of pure love shining into every nook and cranny of the world. Not that the powers of darkness didn’t try to overcome it, but they failed.

Philip and Andrew bringing curious Greeks to meet Jesus symbolized what today is called a tipping point: a point at which the time has come for everything to fall into place as something new is brought into being. The Greeks who came looking for Jesus are place holders representing all of humanity, including you and me. They had heard about Jesus, maybe they’d seen him from afar, they were foreigners, not Israelites, not even Samaritans, and they wanted to meet him. Philip and Andrew brought them to Jesus just as Paul and all the disciples would do for the churches they started.

Perhaps it was coincidental that the Roman Empire was more or less at peace for a very few years surrounding the time of Jesus. Roads connected much it, and fleets of ships connected the rest; travel was relatively safe; one could even send letters back and forth. Major cities and towns in the eastern Mediterranean were likely to have a modest Jewish population and a synagogue or two. It was the right time, maybe the only time, when it was possible for the good news of God in Christ to be spread throughout the empire: and so it happened in the thirty years following his death and resurrection.

God works in mysterious ways. They can look foolish to our human eyes, but God’s wisdom is not our wisdom, ‘his’ ways are not our ways, ‘his’ thoughts are not our thoughts. What looks foolish to us, is the wisdom of God at work. And what is that work? It is the saving grace of God extended to the whole world, all of humanity, all of creation, and for you and me. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if that blazing beacon of pure love shined again, especially now. It can. Jesus said that in him each of us would become a bearer of the light of the world. My lamp may flicker and sputter, so may yours, but together we can be a blazing beacon of hope. That’s what those Greeks who sought out Jesus wanted to see. Philip and Andrews took them. Who can we bring?

The theme of Holy Week is deliverance. It was last year, it is this year, it will be next year. In the midst of pandemic we might be inclined to ask, as does the psalmist, “Why are you cast down O my soul and why are you disquieted within me?” And then comes the answer, “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

The story of deliverance starts in the beginning with God doing a new thing: creating the universe and bringing life into it (Episcopalians have no problem with science, big bangs, and evolution). It continues with God doing new things on nearly every page of scripture. For all of it, God had long promised another new thing to come, something yet more astounding than anything before.

As Jesus rode into Jerusalem, humble, on a donkey, Zechariah’s prophecy was being acted out as an announcement that the new thing had arrived (Zech. 9). The servant of whom God had spoken through Isaiah was Jesus, and the promised new thing was about to be fully revealed (Isa. 42). It would be the sealing of the new covenant God had promised through the voice of Jeremiah so many centuries before (Jer. 31). It was to be a new covenant sealed in blood.

I have written before about the importance of blood as the symbol of a binding covenant. Hebrew scripture affirms that blood flowing through all living creatures is holy, the bringer of life that is God’s own gift. Therefore, something sealed in blood was holy and irrevocable. Other cultures have understood it in other ways. The custom of making blood brothers/sister by exchanging blood was common world wide, not just in old cowboy movies. It confirmed a seal that could not be broken. At God’s command, Moses took sacrificial blood, splattered it on the altar and then on the people as the seal of the covenant between God and God’s people (Exodus 24). It was the first covenant.

In Christian scripture, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews attested that Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant, not in the blood of an animal, but in his own blood, making us, in a sense, his blood brothers and sisters. We renew that covenant every time we participate in the Holy Eucharist (Holy Communion). It is a costly exchange. Not only was Jesus crucified, we are asked to surrender our very souls to him. We like to think we’re self sufficient and can earn our own way, but as the psalmist wrote, “Truly, no ransom avails for one’s life, there is no price one can give to God for it. For the ransom of life is costly, and can never suffice that one should live on forever and never see the grave” (Ps 49). Indeed, in Christ no ransom was paid. The new covenant in Christ’s blood is the fulfillment of God promise, that we are his by grace, not for today only, but for eternity. It is sealed.

It is a covenant of healing, reconciliation, justice, and peace. Our obligation as Christians is to live into it as best we can.

I was interviewed recently about my blog, Country Parson (stevenwoolley.com), by noted Kindle book critic, Sam Woodward. Here’s a partial transcript for those of you who may have missed it on NWPB.

Woodward: I understand you’ve been publishing Country Parson for over a decade.

Me: Yes, I started it shortly after I retired. It was something to do, and writing is passion.

Woodward: Blogs are so dated, no one reads them anymore, don’t you feel a little out of step with the times?

Me: Well, I’m a little dated too. Videos and podcasts are just not my thing. Give me a little credit for hanging in there with the written word.

Woodward: Speaking of which, you write on politics, economics and religion, is that right?

Me: Yes, those are my three subjects, with occasional nonsense thrown in. Maybe I’ll publish this interview, it’s about as nonsensical as they come.

Woodward: That’s a little cruel considering I’m a well known book critic doing you a favor. And by the way, A quick read of a few of your columns reveals grammatical and spelling errors, with commas randomly scattered about.

Me: OK, well, I type very fast, and sometimes miss things, then my eyes aren’t what they used to be, and besides, my editor is an abstract artist and you know. Look, it’s really about content, not commas.

Woodward: Back to the question about content, do you actually know anything about any of this?

Me: A little bit. I spent thirty years in and around politics, much of it in public policy consulting. From time to time I’ve been the source de jour on television and radio. Even done some teaching. Then I went off to seminary and became an Episcopal priest.

Woodward: Does anyone read your stuff?

Me: Not many. I once had nearly 2,000 subscribers, but it turned out they were mostly bots. I’m down to less than 200 I believe to be real people. On a good day there might be 10 or 20 who wander in off the internet. Aren’t a lot of good days.

Woodward: Of your three subjects, which one generates the most readers?

Me: Politics, especially when I write about Trump and his devoted followers from my center-left perspective. Then I get attention from places like Egypt, Pakistan, and China. Russia used to be there, but I think they’re farming out their bots these days.

Woodward: And the least?

Me: Religion, or more particularly Christianity understood in the Anglican traditions of the Episcopal Church. I’m offering some pieces on Holy Week right now, and for the most part they’re flops. Now and then a piece gets more hits when I can work in sex, violence and revenge. It attracts the Netflix crowd.

Woodward: What about economics, you said that didn’t you?

Me: Yes. I write not as an economist, but as an informed observer of the economic scene. It used to make sense, but under Trump all the normal rules were annulled, so I’m less inclined to say much these days.

Woodward: Economics is a big word, can you narrow it down a little for me?

Me: I tend to follow Krugman and Pikkety. I’ve actually read Pikkety’s “Capitalism in the 21st Century.” Can’t say I followed the math very well, but that’s another story. In the old days I was interested mostly in how local economies worked, and how they related to each other.

Woodward: And people find this interesting?

Me: No, they don’t. Except for the libertarian right wingers. I can get them going. They’re still upset with FDR, think Keynes was a commie, and love Friedman. That is to say, they would if they knew who any of them were. When I’m bored I can entice them to create a little excitement.

Woodward: I’d hoped this interview could be shopped around to big media, but frankly, the ramblings of an old man about things he used to know about don’t have much of a market. I’ll see what I can do.

Me: OK, I guess, I’d hoped for more, but enjoyed the conversation just the same. Was a little surprised at all the gin you drank while I sipped on tea, but what can you expect from an ebook critic in a Hemingway beard and tweed jacket. Bet you even have a pipe in there somewhere.

There is no question that Holy Week can feel like a downer. It seems to go deeper and deeper into darkness so that the glory of Easter might shine the brighter. The intentions are good. Sometimes we need to be shaken out of our complacency, but it has its limitations, especially in a season like the one we’re in now.

Let’s try for another way to approach it starting with this from Friday’s Morning Prayer: “Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace…” The way of the cross is the way of life and peace. It’s the way of deliverance from death to life. Walking in the way of the cross is to have a rich foretaste of the life and peace that lies yet ahead. Holy Week is not about walking into darkness; it is about walking out of darkness toward the light; it is about deliverance; God’s promises fulfilled, not for a few but for the whole world.

Walking in the way of the cross seems counterintuitive, but it works. At my dad’s funeral, a local minister said that he was the rare man who had always walked on the sunny side of the street. It wasn’t true. He’d survived the Depression, survived the South Pacific in WWII, had emotionally wrenching disappointments on the way to business success, had to retire early, and died from complications related to debilitating disease. But, his life was spent walking in the way of the cross, and in it he found and radiated life and peace to those around him.

Holy Week often raises questions about atonement. What does it mean to say Jesus died for our sins? In a recent note to my congregations, I cited Karie Hines Shah who wrote in Christian Century that “Jesus suffers not because it is horribly rare but because it is horribly common.” Popular among many Christians is the “doctrine of substitutionary atonement” that says we are such miserable sinners, undeserving of God’s love, that we need to be punished for it. But God, in his mercy, heaped all of that punishment on Jesus in our place. Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie, “The Passion of the Christ” was a hit sensationalization of the doctrine, but really gross and really bad theology.

Jesus suffered as thousands of others had, and would for centuries to come. He joined with the suffering of both the guilty and unjustly convicted right through the very end, but it wasn’t God’s punishment for our sins, and it wasn’t unique. It was the final and most profound instance of the fullness to which our Lord would share in the reality of our lives, and a sign that we would share in the fullness of his. Can an omnipotent God really, truly know what you and I go through as mere human beings? Yes, God does because God has.

Substitutionary atonement is but one of many doctrines of atonement that have come into and gone out of favor over the centuries. The Anglican tradition, as expressed in the Episcopal Church, doesn’t dogmatically teach any of them. All of them have something worthwhile to say, and provide endless opportunities for academic theologians to write books. But for us it is enough to say that in Christ and through Christ our sins are forgiven. “In him, you have delivered us from evil, and made us worthy to stand before you. In him, you have brought us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life.” We accept this in faith as a holy mystery to be lived into, not explained.