...Then Were We Like Those Who Dream...

Brad Sullivan

Proper 28, Year B

November 18, 2018

Emmanuel, Houston

Mark 13:1-8

…Then Were We Like Those Who Dream…

“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.” (Psalm 126:1-2)  That’ Psalm 126 verses 1-2, and whether in those words or in other words, that idea is a recurring theme through the history of Israel.  “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”  God restores Israel.  God restores his people.  God restores creation and covenant.

Before God restored the fortune of Zion, well obviously Zion’s fortunes weren’t doing so well.  Babylonian captivity and the near total destruction of the nation of Israel.  The capturing of the Ark of the Covenant by the Philistines, God’s very presence seemingly taken from Israel.  40 years of wandering in the desert after the Israelites lost faith in God that he could bring them into the land that he had promised them.  God’s anger and rejection of the people of Israel after they formed a Golden Calf to replace God almost immediately after God saved Israel from slavery in Egypt.  In each of these cases, after Israel’s fortunes weren’t doing all that great, God restored the fortunes of Zion, and then were the people of Israel like those who dream, then was their mouth filled with laughter and their tongue with shouts of joy.

That portion of Psalm 126 seems to me the unspoken promise within Jesus’ prophecy of the destruction of the temple.  His warning / prophecy sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it.  Not only will the temple be destroyed, there will be wars, rumors of wars, nation against nation, earthquakes, famines, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.  “This is but the beginning of the birthpangs,” Jesus said. 

All that stuff I just described, it’s gonna get worse after that.  The birthpangs, they begin, and then there’s full blown labor, and it’s gonna hurt, cause labor tends to do that, and sorry guys, there’s no epidural for this one, no nerve block.  The best you can do is that breathing thing.  Labor is coming, guys, and it’s gonna hurt, Jesus was saying, but let’s put a different emphasis on what he said.  Rather than, “This is but the beginning of the birthpangs,” let’s say, “This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” 

Well, after birthpangs and labor comes a baby.  So, what you’re saying, Jesus, is that after the destruction of the temple and all that other bad stuff happens, something fantastically wonderful is coming?  Oh!  Well that’s great!  “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream.”  That’s what’s coming.

Now, what came was not the rebuilding of the temple, nor even the restoration of the nation of Israel, at least not for about 1900 years.  What happened was the people of Israel were dispersed and scattered without a nation, and the people of Israel survived, and even thrived.  Rather than ceasing to be a people, they became even more fully a people, God’s chosen people spread throughout the world.   The Temple was not restored in Jerusalem, and the religion changed at that point, but synagogues spread throughout the land.  A people with one temple became a people with countless temples where folks could come and dwell and become God’s people. 

I would say Emmanuel had a fairly decent dose of birthpangs back in August of 2017.  I could say that Harvey and Emmanuel’s flooding, and all that has happened since “is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” To be faith think we’re still in labor, but guys, all that has happened, the flooding, the work, the fear, the discord, the coming together and the work to be done is but the beginning of the birthpangs. 

A baby is coming.  New life is coming.  What’s that gonna look like?  What does it mean for us to be a post-Harvey Emmanuel, a new creation by water and the word?  I think we’re starting to find that out as we go, as we receive hospitality, as we continue to be Emmanuel even without our home, as we learn to be adaptive, gracious and flexible, practicing gratitude as life comes our way. 

Ultimately, I think a post-Harvey Emmanuel, a new creation by water and the word, looks like a spiritual oasis in West Houston in which we are a spiritual oasis because you are a spiritual oasis, and you are a spiritual oasis, and you, and you, and all of y’all, and I are all spiritual oases.  The Emmanuel being born is an Emmanuel in which the community is a spiritual oasis as we are all spiritual oases.

That’s the disperse nation of Israel after the destruction of the temple, bringing the light of God not in one place, but in countless places throughout the world.  Emmanuel as each of us being a spiritual oasis in which God’s presence, peace, and nurture is present wherever any one of us is present, deeply rooted in prayer and scripture, deeply rooted in Jesus, always acting in love for others, with compassion, mercy, and peace. 

That’s what I see in a post-Harvey Emmanuel.  We gather as a spiritual oasis, and we leave as spiritual oases where the weary, the sin-sick, and the burdened come to be refreshed by the love and peace of Jesus present in each one of us.  As spiritual oases, we each continually refresh ourselves through daily prayer, almost monastic in our practice of the four daily prayers of the Episcopal church.  We continually refresh ourselves with daily reading of scripture, dwelling in God’s presence throughout history in the sacred stories of our faith.  We continually refresh ourselves through other practices through which we remember and become aware of God’s presence, and love, and peace all around us. 

No ain’t none of us gonna get it right all the time, and sometimes the best we’re gonna do is to reach out to someone else when our well has run dry and we need refreshment from them as a spiritual oasis.  That too is what Emmanuel is becoming, this new baby being born, the new creation by water and the word.  All the turmoil and strife has been but the beginning of the birthpangs.  Emmanuel is becoming what we have been striving to be, a spiritual oasis in west Houston, by each one of us continually refreshing ourselves in God’s presence, and love, and peace.  Emmanuel is becoming a spiritual oasis in west Houston by each one of us becoming a spiritual oasis.  Emmanuel is becoming a spiritual oasis as our hearts are filled with God’s promise of restoration.  “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”

There Is Only We

There Is Only We

(Meditation on Mark 7:24-30 & James 2:1-10, 17)

In one of my favorite and rather troubling passages of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is met by a gentile woman who asks him to heal her daughter.  He basically calls her a dog (we all know the modern word for female dog) and says he won’t heal her daughter.  She’s one of those others, one of those gentiles, and he’s not going to waste his time with her.

She persists and pleads with him, that even if she is a dog, she’ll take whatever scraps he drops for her.  Jesus then has a change of heart.  “For saying that,” Jesus then says, “you may go - the demon has left your daughter.”

What in the world is going on here?  I thought Jesus was supposed to be without sin, and  yet here he is calling this woman a dog and refusing to heal her daughter because she is the other.  Was he testing her, as I’d often heard asserted in various efforts to defend Jesus’ actions?  Maybe, but that’s a bit too easy, to let Jesus off the hook like that.  He wouldn’t test the faith or devotion of a gentile woman, one who wouldn’t have had any faith in God in the first place.  Such notions seem like they’re just trying to defend Jesus’ goodness as God. 

Lest we forget, however, Jesus is also fully human.  As a human Jesus had to learn and grow as we all do.  He had an uncanny knowledge and wisdom of the scriptures, and we’re also told that he grew in wisdom as he grew up.  He learned as he went, as he was taught.  He might have been taught some wrong things.

Centuries ago in America, many white folks in our country believed that black Africans were not fully human but rather some lesser being.  They therefore had no problem enslaving Africans and later African Americans because they viewed them as the other.  Something else. Something lesser.  The slave owners and others in America would of course teach this view to their children, that black people were the other, were less than human.  Children grew up knowing this to be true.

Then, some of these children began having real interactions with their enslaved fellow humans, and they began to understand that what they had been taught was wrong.  They began to understand that being from a different part of the earth and having a different skin color didn’t make people less than human.  It didn’t make them other.  They were all brothers and sisters.

I don’t know if something similar happened to Jesus, but he did grow up in a society which looked down on non-Jews and referred to them as “gentile dogs.”  Jesus was likely taught that same view as a child, knowing that gentiles were beneath him. 

Then he met one, a gentile woman with a sick daughter.  A mother who loved her daughter  and would take any insult and debasement if it meant healing for her daughter.  A mother’s love, like his mother’s love.  Human, not some lesser thing.  Perhaps this is what Jesus realized in his interaction with the gentile woman, and he saw her and all gentiles not as the other, but as beloved brothers and sisters.  In John’s Gospel (10:6), Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”  Perhaps Jesus’ ministry to the gentiles and his realization that they belonged to him just as much as the people of Israel happened in this interaction with the gentile woman. 

We don’t know, but it certainly honors the full humanity of Jesus as he learned what it was to be fully human.  Being fully and truly human means there are no distinctions between us.  There is no “us” and “them.”  James points this out in his letter.  “Do you by your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” No.  In our acts of favoritism and our us vs. them mentality, we can’t really say that we do.

In the Episcopal Church, we have a bit of a history of acts of favoritism, a bit of a reputation for accepting the well to do and having some reservations for those who are less fortunate.  This reputation is somewhat justified, somewhat not, and I see us getting better.  We’re becoming more of a community of all. 

To be fair, all churches have some form of other.  Some churches won’t allow folks who believe in evolution to be a part of them, even if they also believe in creation.  Some won’t allow folks who question their faith.  If you wonder too much, then you are declared other.

A young woman I know has been questioning her faith…not really questioning her faith, just pretty sure she doesn’t believe in the faith of Jesus, and so she has been exploring other beliefs.  Now, she hasn’t been looking at one of the other Abrahamic faith, not Judaism or Islam, nor has she explored any of the more known faiths of the world, Buddhism, Hinduism.  She’s been exploring a faith that Christians would think is pretty out there.  We’ve been discussing this, and I’ve been giving some counsel, not to keep her following Jesus (I can’t and wouldn’t make her do that), but to consider well the ways and beliefs of this other faith. 

So, last Sunday, she told me that she had decided on this other faith, but she hadn’t fully converted yet, and she asked me if she could still have communion.  “Of course you can,” I said.  Nothing could prevent her from being able to join in this meal of Jesus’ body and blood.  Nothing can separate her from the love of God in Jesus Christ.  Even though she believes in a different faith, she is not the other.

We have all sorts of others in our world today.  People of different religions.  People from different countries.  Worst of all, different political parties - those damn Democrats and those awful Republicans.  We have such a propensity for declaring someone else as other, and yet Jesus shows us in his interaction with the gentile woman, that there is no actual other.

If ever there was an other, we would be the other to God.  Wholly different from God, creatures rather than creator, and yet God became human so that we are not other than God.  In becoming human in Jesus, God became one with us.

Christian, Jew, Muslim, believer, non-believer, atheist.  Republican, Democrat, American, Russian, native, immigrant.  Gay, straight, transgender, cisgender, conservative, liberal.  Black life, blue life.  There is no other.  There is only we, all of us one with God.