The God I Choose to Serve

Proper 16B; Joshua 24:15; John 6:67-68; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, 8/23/2015

Jim Melnyk: “The God I Choose to Serve”

I've owned this particular Bible for a little over 26 years now – more than a quarter of a century. It was a gift. It even has my name inscribed on the front cover. The inside inscription reads: “Presented to James Stanley Melnyk by the Prayer Book and Tract Society in Upper South Carolina on the occasion of his ordination to the Diaconate on June 10, 1989 in Trinity Cathedral, Columbia, South Carolina.” It is signed, William A. Beckham, Bishop of Upper South Carolina.

This particular Bible has hardly ever been used. Even before it was given to me on that special day, the Episcopal Church had begun a shift from this translation – The Revised Standard Version – to a newer translation – aptly named The New Revised Standard Version. The NRSV – as most folks call it – was introduced as my last year in seminary was coming to a close.  

It incorporated many of the shifts in translation that our seminary professors had been pointing to throughout our studies – and it is still the Bible of choice in most Episcopal Churches.

Even as I received this wonderful gift, the world's understanding of what its authors and editors were trying to proclaim had shifted. Our understanding of God had shifted. The ways in which we looked at God through the pages of Scripture had taken on new life – and not for the first time in the history of faith. In the years between 1952, when this version was first published, and 1989, when the NRSV was introduced, there were twenty-six other English translations of the Bible produced.

There were also another twenty-five translations and revisions of the New Testament alone. New understandings – new scholarship – newly discovered documents – along with new insights into history, culture, language and faith brought about changes in how the Bible would be read.

And you may have noticed that people tend to have their favorite – even solely authoritative – version of the Bible. Many Bible-belt believers will say the King James Version is the only real. But then we must ask, “Is that the version first published in 1611 – or one of the many revisions of that version?” I dare say that most versions of the King James Bible we come across today, whether in a home, a motel drawer, a pew or on a bookstore shelf are quite different from the problematic version first read in the 17th century.  And contrary to some popular belief, Jesus did not use the King James Version!

Now bear with me – I'm going somewhere with this – I promise. Before I was given this Bible those many years ago I had to take a vow – it can be found on page 538 of the BCP. I promised to be loyal to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as the Episcopal Church has received them. Then I said, “I solemnly declare that I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation….” Can you see where I'm going? The translations don't all agree! Even some of the stories in the same translation don't agree with each other! Our stances on doctrine, as a denomination, don't always agree! Did I have my fingers crossed back then? Have I crossed them each time I've renewed my ordination vows over the years? No. I can answer “No” because of what I believe about Scripture – what I believe about my vows and what they mean – and because of the God whom I choose to serve.

I believe this Bible – the Bible – is a gift from God and God's people which points to the wonder and grace of God. Too many people seem to see this book as God. It is not. It points to, and reveals, the One we call God, and that’s why we have this time on Sunday mornings, or study this book in Sunday School or our Monday Night Study Group – it gives us a chance to wrestle with the text – to use the gift of reason God has given us to interpret and understand – to remember that for us as Christians the true Word of God is Jesus.

Joshua told the people of Israel “choose this day whom you will serve!” When the twelve, struggling with what they are hearing about bread from heaven, are asked by Jesus, “will you also leave me?” Simon Peter says, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”  We don’t read these stories in isolation from their contexts – we read them with an expectation that like Joshua and the Israelites, and like the twelve who followed Jesus – we have to decide just who it is we choose to follow.

The God I choose to follow is revealed to me in the pages of Holy Scripture – in the words and images of both the Hebrew and Christian texts. But the God I choose to follow is not constrained by, or held hostage within, these texts! The God I choose to follow has spoken to humanity not just in days of old – and not just through the pages of Scripture. The God I choose to follow has spoken through people of faith throughout the ages – and not just people of Christian faith. Everything I need to know to find my home in God can be found in the stories, the songs, the poetry, and the history of this book – but there's so much more to understand and know about God that awakens my heart and draws me ever closer to my Creator.

The God I choose to follow – the God whom I choose to serve – is not constrained by these pages – if that were so, if God were to be constrained by these pages – what kind of God would that be?

And so, in response to Joshua, and in solidarity with Simon Peter, I want to share with you this morning something of the God whom I choose to follow.

I choose to follow a God who creates life out of death. A God who declares the goodness of creation – a God who looks upon this human family, even in all our brokenness, and says, “It is very good.”

I choose to follow a God, who looks upon human suffering –who looks upon slavery and oppression – who looks upon hatred and bigotry – and says, “Let my people go!” I choose a God who would look upon the slaughter of the faithful and the innocent by groups like ISIS, carried out in God's name, and weep with horror at the cruelty of that act. 

I follow a God who is so much more than the witness we have in Genesis, where whole tribes of people are put to the ban – presented as burnt offerings.  As our understanding of God has unfolded we begin to understand a God who would see such acts as an abomination! I choose a God who would wail and rage at hearing the psalmist proclaim to the Babylonians, “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rock!” (137:9) Just because a war-like people understood God in this way 3,000 years ago – does that mean we should be bound to that same vision – just because it's in this book?

The God I worship, follow, and serve is the One who says, “Let light shine in the darkness,” who says, “Behold I am doing a new thing.” I follow a God who, in the person of Jesus, says, “Come to me all you who labor and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” My God is the God who says, “Peace be with you, my peace I leave with you” – who says “Love your neighbor as yourself” – who says “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” 

I choose a God who takes from my chest a heart of stone and places within me a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26) – a God who “brings good news to the oppressed, binds up the brokenhearted, proclaims liberty to the captives, and release to prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1 paraphrased). My God is a God who weeps with us when we hurt, and rejoices with us when we find love – love that honors and affirms those whom we love. Not a God of anger and death – not a God of indifference and poverty – not a God of separation, isolation, and ridicule, but rather a God of life – a God of grace – a God of hope – and a God of promise!

Does that mean I don't take this book seriously? No. But I read it with an open heart and, hopefully, with a discerning spirit. As the pages of Scripture unfold I see an understanding of God unfolding as well – and I see my understanding of God being transformed.

There are instances in these pages where God is more cantankerous; more hotheaded, heavy-handed, and mean-spirited then any of us can be on our worst day.  Is that God – or is it just humanity trying to see God through a dirty lens?

The Psalmist writes “But you are always the same, and your years will never end” (Psalm 102:27).  And I’ve come to understand that over the years God has not changed – but I have – we have – millennia of people before us – have changed.  Or at least I hope so!

Joshua says to his people, “Choose this day whom you will serve.” Today I say to God and God's people, “Here I stand!” Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who fifty-two years ago this coming Friday, said “I have a dream,” I, too, have a dream – a dream that some day we will find a way to make the love of God real for this broken world. I have a dream that separation and alienation will cease to have a place in our houses of prayer and the halls of our society. I have a dream that one day people of different faiths across this world will stand hand-in-hand and celebrate together the love of God and the power of God to make all things new. I choose the God of love – I choose the God life. Amen.

Enfolded in God

 

Proper 15B; Proverbs 9:1-6; John 6:51-58; St. Paul's, Smithfield, NC 8/16/2015

Jim Melnyk: “Enfolded in God”

A little boy, who would one day become a learned Rabbi, was once challenged by an adult: “Yitzhak Meir,” the grownup said, “I'll give you a gold coin if you can tell me where God lives!”  Yitzhak reportedly replied, “And I'll give you two gold coins if you can tell me where God doesn't live!” (Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, Vol. II, Page 303).

           

Meir's quick response concerning where God lives or doesn't live has much to do with our ongoing lessons about Jesus as the Bread of Life come down from heaven.  To be able to make sense of what Jesus means when he says, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” is just as hard as identifying where God lives – or for that matter, where God doesn't live.  And yet, isn't that part of our struggle of faith – to understand what it means for Jesus to be the Bread of Life or the Bread of Heaven that has come for the life of the world?  For nearly two thousand years Christians have tried to figure out what we mean when we say, “This is my body – this is my blood,” and the answer is as much a mystery today as it was when the words were first uttered.

           

When Jesus declares his body “food” and his blood “drink,” our heads and our hearts both tell us there must be more to the meaning than just those simple words.  Centuries ago, in an attempt to avoid any possibility of superstition, much of the post-Reformation Church declared the Eucharist to be memorial of the Last Supper.  Christ's ongoing presence in the meal was declared to be real in memory only.  And much of Christianity lost a great deal in that decision!

           

But as Anglicans we took a middle way – what I believe to be a better way.  Though we know we don't literally feed on flesh or sip real blood from the chalice, our faith has always maintained a mystical sense of the “real presence” of Christ in this most holy meal.  The words spoken by Jesus in John's Gospel, along with the accounts of the Last Supper in the other Gospels and in Paul's writings, while not entirely literal, are more than mere memory, metaphor or allegory for us. 

           

I believe we're called to look at these events at an anagogical level – that is, at an interior level – at a level of insight that calls out and speaks to the soul.  In the Eucharist Christ feeds us at a level that calls to our souls – that nourishes our souls – that touches the deepest part of our being where we know ourselves to be at one with God – where we know ourselves to be created in the very image and likeness of God.  To meet Jesus at this soul-level is to meet Jesus at that place where we somehow know him to be fully present with us and fully present for us, in the holy meal we share.  Julian of Norwich understood this way of knowing Jesus when she wrote, “A mother feeds her child with her milk, but our beloved mother Jesus feeds us with himself.” (Enfolded in Love, Daily Readings with Julian of Norwich, The Seabury Press, NY, 1981, p. 36)

           

The challenge – the struggle for us – is to allow ourselves to be comfortable NOT fully understanding the words of Jesus.  And it's so strange that in a day and time where imagination and fantasy abound – whether on TV or in the movies – in books or even in real life – it's so strange that we modern day folk have lost the ability to imagine theologically.  We've lost our ability to allow ourselves to be enfolded in mystery and imagining.  We want the stories of our faith to make the same kind of sense we find in a news report, or in a lab experiment, or in a history book – thinking, “How can these things be?”

           

Stories like the Last Supper or the Feeding of the Five Thousand – or stories like Wisdom's invitation to feast at her table, or the author of Ephesians call to be filled with the Spirit – all are invitations by God into Holy Mystery and Holy Imagining!  All are invitations to meet God at that interior level – at the level of our souls.  The stories invite us to suspend our inadequate understandings of creation and Creator and believe in God's ability to fill us, and fill this world – to believe in the ability of God to always do something new!        

           

These stories, and our weekly pilgrimage to the Holy Table, invite us to believe – and to live – as a people united in God through the love of Jesus.  We are invited to believe – to make real in our hearts – the power of God to bring each one of us into God's presence through the body and blood of Christ once offered and forever shared!

           

Holy Mystery!  Holy Imagining!  The Creator of the Universe finding yet another way of making God’s Self real for us – of reaching out to us and drawing us near – of enfolding us with a never-ending love which won't let go – of taking those who were once “no people” and making us God's People.  Holy Mystery! “This is my body!”  Holy Imagining!  “This is my blood!”  Somehow, in the wild imaging of our Creator God, we have been drawn together –drawn into the circle of God's love – by a simple meal shared among friends so long ago by a simple preacher who wasn't quite so simple as the world wanted to think – as the world often wants to think today.

           

We, who might never have met one another but for the mystery of Christ's most precious gift, we come together at this Holy Table and are bound together – we are made one – by the mystery of God's love made known to us in the breaking of the bread.  But it is not the one little bite of bread itself that nourishes us with its meager calories – it is the real presence of Christ in the community gathered – and it is the community gathered as we are made one with Christ that nourishes us each week.  As our fraction anthem later today declares, “Be known to us, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of the bread. The bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ.  One body are we, for though many, we share one bread” (S-167, The Hymnal 1982).

           

It is the power of Holy Mystery which moves us to hear the cry of those who are made outcast by the world.  It is Holy Imagining which opens our hearts to our children's cries of confusion and fear as they face an uncaring world with its deadly choices of bigotry, hopelessness, indifference and hate – a world that would teach them not to care – a world that tries to teach us not to care.  It is the most precious gift of Christ's self which brings us together – so that where one voice cannot be heard above the maddening din of the world, our many voices joined together can speak out for the justice, peace and love of God that has the power to transform a world.

           

Someone once wrote, “The breath of God comes and dwells in the things we habitually do and makes them new starting points.”  We come together to this Holy Table with a prayer that God will somehow transform us and make us new – because often, it seems, we need to be made new on a daily basis. 

           

We come together at this Holy Table with a prayer that God will spark our imaginations in such a way that we will know God has given us the power to transform the world.  Holy Mystery!  God enfolding us, we are transformed into the body of Christ!  Holy Imagining!  God enfolding us, we become the blood of Christ for the world!  God drawing us into the deepest places of not just our own being – but into the deepest places of God's own being – into the deepest places of God's own hopes and dreams – the deepest places of God's own heart.  And there are all kinds of implications for us and for our lives when we understand ourselves to be filled with Christ – and when we understand ourselves to be inhabiting the deepest places of God’s own being – of God’s own hopes and dreams – of God’s own heart.

           

The story is told that “one day, as he began his daily prayer, a Desert Master saw pass by him a cripple, a beggar, and a beaten person.  Seeing them, the Master went deep into prayer and cried, 'Great God!  How is it that a loving Creator can see such suffering and yet do nothing about it?'  And out of the depth of prayer, God [answered the Master and] said, 'I have done something about it.  I made you.'” (Understanding the Sunday Scriptures, A Synthesis Commentary, Year B, Page 62)

* Second photo from Student Affairs at Duke.edu

Got Bread? Got Jesus?

Proper 14B John 6:35, 41-51; St. Paul’s Smithfield, NC 8/9/2015

Jim Melnyk: “Got Bread?  Got Jesus!”

As we move into the third week from the Bread of Heaven Discourse in John’s Gospel it’s almost like listening to Monday Night Wrestling: “Let’s get ready to Grrr-Ummm-Ble!”  Everything was cool while the loaves and the fish were being passed around and everyone’s bellies were getting filled, but then Jesus decides to explain the inward and spiritual meaning behind the outward and visible signs of the seemingly never-ending supply of food.

           

"I am the bread of life,” says Jesus. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (6:35).  John gives us his version of Jesus running up against the wall of those who thought they knew him – and his family for that matter – more than he knew himself, and it should remind us of the negative reception Jesus experiences in his hometown as we hear about it in the other gospels. 

Now at this point it’s important to point out that John uses the term “the Jews” for those who are upset with Jesus, and we have to be very careful with how we consider John’s use of the term.  It’s both “ambiguous and problematic” for those of us following Jesus two thousand years later – especially when we recall that both “Jesus and his disciples are also clearly ‘Jews’” (Richard Manly Adams, Jr., Feasting on the Gospels: John, vol. 1, page 195).  “Though the crowd’s Jewish identity is evident in the reference to ‘our ancestors’ (6:31), the use of ‘the Jews’ [by John] singles out those [particular] Jews who do not follow Jesus.  The term is not meant, nor can it be used, to identify all Jews as opponents of Jesus,” and we are best served if we see this as John’s understanding of an in-house argument between Jewish followers of Jesus and those who stand in opposition.  But they are all Jews in this passage (ibid).  

John then introduces a new verb at this point in the gospel, egongyson, which gets translated as “complain,” “grumble,” or “murmur.”  Although it is making its first appearance in John’s Gospel, it is the same word used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to describe the complaining or the murmuring of the Israelites in the wilderness “during the time when God was providing manna (Exod. 17:3; Num. 11:1; 14:27-29; 16:41; 17:5; cf. Isa. 29:24; 30:12)” (ibid).  Those who stand in opposition to Jesus begin to grumble or complain among themselves "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” They thought.  “How can he now say, `I have come down from heaven'?" (6:41). Like their ancestors, they cannot believe what they are experiencing – God’s constant desire to provide for God’s people from the very beginning of time.

Jesus reminds them – and reminds us – that God indeed provided the Israelites with manna – the bread that came down from heaven in the wilderness.   But he also reminds them that while Israel’s ancestors ate the manna they still died (6:49). 

Those who were dissatisfied among those in the wilderness didn’t understand that while the manna was God’s ongoing gift to sustain them in the wilderness, the Torah – the Teachings of God – the Torah was the true bread given Israel to enliven their souls.  As Jesus, quoting Moses, tells the Tempter in the wilderness, “One does not live by bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4).   

 

Jesus comes on the scene in Galilee and feeds the multitude with a picnic seemingly conjured out of thin air, and once again those who receive this marvelous bread from heaven fail to understand that the true bread that would enliven their souls had nothing to do with the bread and the fish handed out that day, but had everything to do with the One standing before them.

In John’s gospel Jesus doesn’t speak about the Last Supper in his Passion Narrative, giving us the Foot Washing instead – commandments to love and serve one another – commandments to set our hearts upon God – to put our trust in God.  Rather, John Eucharistic language is found in this passage – this is John’s explanation of the self-giving action by Jesus that will become the basis for what we celebrate together each Sunday in this place.  Long before we get to the Upper Room and the cross in John’s gospel Jesus tells us what it will all be about – and as we will see in the coming weeks, many of his followers find his talk of flesh and food too difficult to handle.

John is our preeminent theologian of the Incarnation – the Word becomes human flesh and dwells among us.  And John presents us with a Jesus who minces no words when it comes to the meaning of his death and how we are to remember it in so tangible a way.  “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (6:51).  And while I am in no way a Biblical literalist – that is, I do not take the whole of Scripture literally in every instance – I am quite certain that I am meant to take Jesus at his word here: The Word of God made human flesh, who comes to dwell among us as one of us, gives up his life – gives up his flesh – for the life of the world.  And we as followers of Christ – in the infinite mystery that is God – somehow take that very presence of Christ – the very body and blood of Christ – into ourselves every time we partake of his body and blood in the Eucharist.

Author Michaela Bruzzese writes, “In the third sequence of readings with food imagery, we find we cannot possibly hope to complete our journey to spiritual maturity without the right nourishment and determination” (Michaela Bruzzese. Sojourners Online, Preaching the Word, 8/9/2015).

She goes on to say, “In John's telling of the bread-of-life discourse, Jesus hints at exactly what kind of passion and discipline is required. The verbs used in this sequence, while translated as the more general word ‘eat’ in English, were originally the Greek words used to describe eating in a ravenous, animal-like nature, closer to ‘gnaw’ – [which, I suspect, might offend our more polite Episcopal sensibilities.  But] this usage emphasizes the true fleshiness of Jesus' body, and therefore its suitability as real food for the journey. Don't be fooled” Bruzzese concludes, “Christianity is not a tea party, and the Eucharist is not a platter of tea sandwiches. Christianity is a difficult journey, with deserts to cross and mountains to climb, and the Eucharist is the only real food suitable for the task (ibid).

You know by now there’s always a Facebook meme going around that has something to say about what’s going on in the gospel for the day.  One I saw recently shows a priest holding the host up for all to see.  The caption reads, “Body of Christ – You are what you eat.”  And to that I say, “Amen!”  Christianity isn’t a tea party.  It’s meant to be difficult.  Good Lord, the One we follow was crucified by Rome because he was a threat to the status quo – a challenge to a way of life that objectified human beings for their own gain.

We are what we eat.  Some of us choose to eat the bread of bitterness, wrath, anger,  of arguing and malice - and not only that, but we revel in it!  That's just the way I am, angry and bitter and you just have to accept me and what I say and do and like it.  Some of us choose to eat the bread of murmuring and grumbling even in the midst of God’s constant provision - the Eyores of life - woe is me, woe is me.  But some of us choose to eat the bread of kindness, of tenderheartedness, of compassion, and forgiveness – which is the body of Christ.  We get to choose the bread we eat.  We, therefore, get to choose who and what we become.

When we participate in the Holy Eucharist – when we partake of Christ’s body and blood – we leave this place carrying the very presence of the living Christ within us – within us!  We do not go out into the world alone.  We become what we eat – we become the presence of Christ to the world.  As it is written in the Talmud: “God has no other language than human beings” (Synthesis Today Quote for August 4, 2015), and we might add Christ has no other body but our bodies – no other heart but our hearts – no other tangible sign of love but our love for the world.

So, if I might borrow from the not so hallowed halls of Madison Avenue: “Got Bread?  Got Jesus!”

Lessons from the Labyrinth: It’s not just me and my shadow

Lessons from the Labyrinth: It’s not just me and my shadow

This morning I walked the labyrinth as usual.  I am trying to make it a regular act before starting work whenever I am in the office.  Sunday mornings are especially nice because it’s early and usually much cooler.

This morning I was hoping for some high clouds to at least cut the sun since it was already hot at 9:00.  And it was muggy – did I mention muggy?  But alas, as they say, the sun was shining bright as I stepped to the entrance of the labyrinth.  And so it goes…

I decided to give thanks for the abundant sunshine and the warmth.  And it was easy to give thanks for the bit of breeze that swept across the sacred space as I walked.  And as I walked I found myself paying attention to my shadow.  At first it was more for fun – since I like to take shadow selfies.  But then I noticed something interesting about the walk.

Since the labyrinth takes so many twists and turns as we move along the pathway, my shadow obviously made those twists and turns along with me – sometimes following behind, sometimes running ahead, and at other times either to my left or right.  I became mindful of the sixth verse of that wonderful hymn, I Bind unto Myself Today, attributed to St. Patrick and translated by Cecil Frances Alexander.

“Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.”

I’ve never thought of seeing my shadow as a reminder of Christ’s constant presence in my life – at least I don’t remember ever considering that reality.  But as much as my shadow is always present, so Christ is always present.  Even when I cannot see my shadow, I know that with the slightest bit of light I will see it right there – a sign of my own presence in the world.  And likewise, even though I cannot always “see” Christ present with me, my faith tells me that this is so.  And I become mindful that not only is Christ present with me, but that Christ is present with all.