Thomas: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

Text: John 20:19-31

I began this Sunday by identifying who had missed last Sunday, or Out of the Cold now ended, or the congregation’s curling party the day before, or my own trip to Manhattan, taunting them:

Oh, you missed it? It was great!
You had to be there, or you wouldn’t understand..
I don’t have words to describe it…

If you can’t explain it - if it must be experienced, or it can’t be communicated – then we have got a fundamental human problem of community. We will resort to huddling in our mutual isolation, fearful and inarticulate, unable to relate to different experiences of reality, unless with people just like us – as the circle shrinks of those who have ‘been there’ with us for everything that matters.

That’s not just our problem, in our time and place. It was the problem of whoever wrote the gospel we call ‘John’, at least 60 years after Jesus’ death. There were no more eyewitnesses, just hearsay twice removed, who knew someone who knew someone who had been there. If you had to be there, if we didn’t find words, then it was going to be over, even though it mattered.


Solutions to this issue of apostolic succession varied. ‘The Boys & The Book’ is what I called it in www.hereticslikeus.com in Lent, borrowing Elaine Pagels’ thesis in The Gnostic Gospels. You could say that God has stopped revealing godself, and you need an unbroken line of bishops to safeguard the hearsay chain, and an authoritative book to close the story. This approach won out in the end, over charismatic movements more friendly to women who claimed the authority of God still speaking, and over the Gnostic movements of expert elites with secret knowledge, or Ebionite communal poverty, or Jesus people, or God-fearers, or Paul’s friends or foes.

Simultaneously, Judaism was being reinvented into the rabbinic Judaism we know. The 2nd temple had been destroyed, and the old ways of sacrificial worship were over. The rabbis wrote midrash and Talmud, developed oral Torah and synagogue practices of kasrut. This movement was more successful than John’s, safer from Roman persecution, and as a favoured sibling, the object of strong jealous talk from John. When John complains about ‘the Jews’, we read that term aloud in our church as ‘the religious’, to better understand what the original meant.

We’re not satisfied with ‘you had to be there’, not willing to be isolated in pockets of shared experiences with other inarticulate people, afraid of ‘the other’. We are suspicious of authority, ‘The Boys and The Book’. We’re skeptical of Pentecostal claims of direct inspiration of the Spirit delivering powers to charismatic leaders. We resist exotic experts who claim to know secrets long hid from us, like investigative journalists or spies. We’re not signing up with the sectarians, or ready for the new evangelical reactions. We’re stuck in the middle, with John.

The generalizers, the idealizers, glib liberals who ‘boil it all down to basically the me thing’ look and sound most like us, and like John. But while John shares the language of rabbis and of Gnostics, he subverts with flesh and blood, and he ‘uses his words’ as we say to young children. This is a game of show and tell, and not simply of tell and lecture.

Last week, John’s version of the story had a lot of running, until Mary slowed down enough to meet Jesus again for the first time. But the other disciples ran away, and this week we pick up their story, huddled in a house, for fear of ‘the religious’. After all, ‘you had to be there’ – they couldn’t explain it – so they had to huddle with others who had shared the experience of Jesus, people like them, safe from the ‘others’. It was a temptation for the first disciples, and for John’s community 60 years later, and in turn for us, here and now.

You can run, but you can’t hide. God’s not dead. Jesus comes to them, where they are huddling and says “Peace be with you”. Their experience of meeting Jesus again is assuring them, reassuring them, enjoying them, not scaring them. “Peace be with you” and then get up and go –
as the God sent Jesus, so Jesus sends the disciples. Get out of this closed, locked room, as if you’d been given peace to share peace, given spirit to share spirit, forgiven in turn to forgive.

The disciples after Jesus’ death, John’s community 60 years later, and this community in our time and place, all seek assurance, reassurance, enjoyment without fear. We need to find words and find ways, to reach across the gaps between and among us, let alone reconciling in the world. That’s not just the ‘forgive and forget’ of the glib, but the hard work of naming sins and changing what’s wrong, confessing and repenting, in order to reconcile. What you forgive is forgiven – what you retain is retained. You don’t have to bless evil, or invite repeated wrongs.

How do we get past ‘you had to be there’? We don’t. God does. God gives us new experience, of assurance, reassurance, enjoyment, fearlessness. And we in turn are sent to share it. If you forgive, it is forgiven. If you don’t, well, it isn’t. God’s not saving the world without you. God needs you. That’s all there is to it. ‘You had to be there’? Show what a difference it made, in what you do in response, even if you don’t have words to explain it. Otherwise it’s too vague. Anything you can neither show nor tell – may not be worth huddling over.

John’s version of the story doesn’t end with that appearance. He just runs another narrative loop about ‘you had to be there’. Thomas, called the twin, had missed the show. He came back to the disciples, and they said ‘we have seen the Lord’. Instead of the whole crowd huddling, now they are taunting Thomas with what he missed, and how excited and inspired they all are. Thomas’ response is ‘Oh, yeah?’ I remember Jesus. Jesus was my friend. Last time I saw Jesus, he was bleeding on a cross. What’s all this elation and happiness? Show me the holes!

This may have been what happened to Thomas and the others. It certainly reflects what happened to people in John’s community 60 years later, and in ours. Sometimes it feels like the majority in a church share one experience that defines that congregation. Their assurance and joy appears to others to be so heavenly minded it is of no earthly good, as it they had their heads in the clouds and feet in the swamp, or like they have stared too long in the sun. We who are newly arrived or returned are tempted to say, like Thomas: show me the holes!

Thomas sets the test, the standard – that the risen Jesus appearing must be the same as the crucified one, holes and all, not simply a cheap thrill religious experience of bliss. John’s story continues, and tells us that a week later, again in the house, Jesus appeared to the disciples, this time including Thomas. “Peace be with you!” Put your finger in my hand, put your hand in my side, do not doubt but believe! Thomas gets a do-over. Thomas gets a replay. Jesus does not condemn the doubt, but addresses it. The opposite of faith is not doubt. Test the spirits, and use your mind! The opposite of faith is fear, not doubt. Jesus addressed the doubt, relieved the fear.

Some say the difference between faith and belief has to do with justification and proof. Faith, they say, demands a leap of faith, a suspension of disbelief. Belief, they say, is rational and justified. I don’t agree. I think that we are all construing, working on nets of beliefs, webs of working hypotheses. The issue for me is not knowledge and epistemological certainty, but of faithfulness, in action and reflection, in transformed lives, changed by religious experience and shared in religious community. A life of faith is a life of faithfulness, not one of knowing it all.

Oh, you missed it? It was great!
You had to be there, or you wouldn’t understand..
I don’t have words to describe it…
but I’ll show you how it matters

I’ve told you before that it’s hard for me, getting up in the morning. I set 4 alarms. After the first, I am up and dressed - in my head. After the second, I have finished breakfast, shaved and showered – in my mind. It takes repeated good intentions, and partial efforts to get me launched. Similarly, I confessed to you Sunday how many times I quit smoking in my mind, heroic and strong, except in practice. Then I asked you how Earth Hour went for you the night before: did you turn off all your power use? Just some lights? If God checked your meter, would you pass?

Faithfulness is about show and tell, a matter of doing, not just talking. It’s not just that I can’t put it in words, to describe the experience. It is also that you won’t believe it if I don’t show it. We expect one another to walk the walk, not just talk the talk – or at last to try to do a bit of both. The slogan on the fenders of York Regional Police cars puts it this way: “Deeds speak”. What do your deeds say about what you’ve been shown and given? It’s not about certainty, but more about character. Tennyson wrote “there lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” People respect an honest effort, more than an elaborate explanation!

We can talk of our loyalties, our values and our commitments, but without cost or price, what are such beliefs worth to us or to others? You can say you are committed to public services, to health, education, social welfare, and national programmes that distribute wealth and opportunity, but when you pay your taxes, you test your beliefs. And as you pay your taxes, you show what you really meant with your fine words about charity.

Last week in New York, I was struck by the level of talk about war in Iraq, both for and against. I showed you the New York Times, which publishes every time another 1,000 American soldiers die, the pictures of each one, without rank, just name, age, and hometown. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a thousand pictures are worth a million words.

Don’t just tell me what matters, and why. Show me, and demonstrate the cost and price, and I will see what matters. Apparently 4,000 young Americans have died, and over 250,000 young veterans are claiming disability pensions so far. In the face of patriotic talk as Thomas would say: show me the holes!

Jesus didn’t promise to show up on demand, a plastic Jesus on your dashboard, or Jesus in your back pocket on request, like a lucky rabbit’s foot. Thomas meets Jesus again for the first time, the same Jesus who bled on a cross, showing the holes, and Jesus says:

“Have you believed because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have come to believe.”

We are a community which includes a few folks who would say that they have met their risen Lord, and treasure their spiritual experiences of revelation. But that is not the goal of their religion and faithfulness, nor of the rest of us, the majority, the ungifted who have not seen. We are all in the business of transformed lives, of sharing in action, not just knowing but doing, not just experiencing and enjoying but serving and suffering in our turn. ‘Living the Questions’ study groups share their doubts, Out of the Cold and school lunches and Handicapable programs share the assurances – we’re all working out this game of show and tell, the best we can.

This second part of John 20 finishes with a modest confession that ‘Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book’. John’s gospel does not claim to be an exhaustive account of all appearances, as if God’s revelation has ended, and we’re stuck with “The Boys and The Book”. Nor does John’s account promise us secret knowledge, beyond doubt, and available only to insiders and experts. Rather, John’s account admits it is partial, and incomplete, affirming our own limits and doubts. John’s account won’t let us off the hook of flesh and blood, and walking the walk, and showing as well as telling.

The lesson ends by naming its goal: this is written so that you may come to believe about Jesus. But not so that you get a cheap religious thrill, not so that you believe for the sake of knowing, but so that through believing, you may have life, in this name.

Oh, you missed it? It was great!
You had to be there, or you wouldn’t understand..
I don’t have words to describe it…
but I’ll show you how it matters

‘Doubting Thomas’ reminded John’s community, 60 years after Jesus’ death, and it reminds us today, that we don’t all get the same experience, that we are blessed with brains and doubts, but that our purpose is the same: to live to show how it matters. Go on, play some show and tell, even though it seems like you had to be there, and you don’t have words to describe it. Walk the walk, and live as if it mattered, and made a difference, and overcame your fears. So be it. Amen.
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Mary: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

Text: John 20:1-18

Easter Sunday, and we export a lot of the regular crowd, and import others. We crank up the music a few notches, with triumphant alleluias after the Friday Cantata by Cantabile. This was my first Easter at Thornhill – the 23rd minister to work with our organist of 17 years. So, like any new preacher on an Easter Sunday:

I could say anything…
I wanted to say everything…
I risked saying nothing…
In the end, I had said something…

Time/CNN noted that this week saw a once in a millennium coincidence:
• Good Friday, our Christian holy day remembering Jesus’ death by crucifixion
• Purim, the Jewish festival based on the Esther megillah
• Narouz, the Persian New Year, celebrated by Zoroastrians, Bahai and many Muslims
• Eid Milad an Nabi, the Birth of the Prophet, celebrated by many Sunni Muslims
• Small Holi, Hindu, an Indian festival of bonfires
• Magha Puja, a celebration of the Buddha's first group of followers
I certainly got free parking at York Central Hospital on Friday, in this community with large minorities celebrating each of these festivals, and no majority faith.

My Catholic colleagues joined us on Friday evening, and one told me that CBC radio did notice the annual Passion Procession on College. The announcer said that if you had the day off, and were looking for something to do, you could go to the Easter Parade in Little Italy. It reminded me of all the jokes explaining Easter: Jesus comes our of the tomb, and if he sees his shadow we have six more weeks of winter. You see, our whole culture has the same challenge:

We could be anything…
We try to be a bit of everything…
We risk being nothing at all…
But in the end, we will be something – what?

So I tried to tell the story, according to John’s version, to choose a something: ‘Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb, and saw that the stone had been removed, and she ran to tell the disciples!’ Then I ran down the centre aisle out the back of the sanctuary, to make the point. It was a relief to children and their parents – nothing they could do would be worse than what the minister had already done.

John’s story continued: ‘She went to Simon Peter, and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him’ so, you recall, the two disciples run, the one Jesus loved winning the race, with Peter and Mary not far behind. They ran to the scene like ambulance chasers. Now John says that the other disciple looked in and saw the tomb was empty, but did not go in. Peter came along second, but he followed through, and went right in. So what did they do? They ran away home, and left the empty grave behind.

That’s a lot of running, in John’s gospel. Matthew’s got two women one angel, and great joy. Mark has no resurrection experience, and ends with fear. Luke ends with four women, perplexed, then terrified. But John starts with running, and no reported emotions. I called this part of John the Roadrunner resurrection tale, with lots of rushing about that needs less heat, more light. It reminds me of Stephen Leacock’s “Gertrude the Governess”, in which Ronald, told to marry an heiress, refuses in all righteousness, insisting on romance:

“Lord Ronald said nothing;
he flung himself from the room,
flung himself upon his horse
and rode madly off in all directions."

We’re a busy people. That’s a confession, not an accusation. We’re running, driving, overbooked, overworked. We are busy children, busy parents, busy workers – and the retired folks tell me they don’t know how they ever found time to work! We travel to re-creation – I’m spending Easter week in New York, back Saturday for a funeral and church curling. We are a busy people – and our Easter may be too much like this bit of John’s gospel. We run, sometimes too fast to feel things fully. You see, it’s not just the preacher, but the parent and the children, the overworked and overcommitted, the young not-yet and newly partnered:

We could be anything –
We try to do everything –
And fear becoming nothing –
We will be something… what?

Easter’s not a bad moment to pause, on the brink of the winter ruts melting, in anticipation of new spring starts, lest the marathon yield only to sprints, roadrunner rushing. So the reading continued: Mary, alone, weeping outside the tomb, was getting beyond the roadrunner rushing. God bless the busy ones, who dare not pause, lest they face the abyss. What did she see? We projected a simpler image to replace the Roadrunners – and empty tomb, with shafts of light, and a dove in flight, to evoke or provoke, for those with eyes to see, and impression or allusion of what Mary might have seen.

The story kept going: when she saw this, she turned and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. She did not recognize him. Apparently he was not a walking corpse, a golem, a zombie, like ‘night-of-the-living-dead’. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu used to say, with his hand splayed out behind himself: Jesus didn’t walk around with a dinner plate behind his head, or a neon halo floating over him! In the coming weeks, Thomas and Cleopas have the same kind of story about meeting a risen Jesus – and not recognizing him.

‘Meeting Jesus again for the first time’ was the title of Marcus Borg’ bestseller, a liberal progressive reading of scripture in terms of the pre-resurrection Jesus and the post-resurrection Jesus. He suggests that our childhood naïve understandings of the Jesus stories have to be revisited, and we have to ‘meet Jesus again for the first time’ – not the one we expect to meet, but the one who is waiting for us to recognize what’s really being revealed to us. John’s story has Jesus say to Mary: Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? John says Mary though Jesus was the gardener – or a grave robber- and asks Jesus where Jesus was.


Even when Mary slowed down, and wept, even when Jesus spoke to her, and asked her to name her sorrow, and her search, she couldn’t recognize him. She saw the gardener, the help, the background. She was looking right past him, or looking right through him – she wasn’t really seeing, at least what he was showing her. Even when we get past our Roadrunner panic, we still have to learn how to look and learn how to listen.

Who do you overlook, or look past, or through, of fail to really hear or see? Middle aged guys like me are often said to ignore the aged, and youth, and women, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered neighbours. I confess that I’ve got lots to learn about how to look and listen. But I suggested this Easter Day that race and class demand more confession from me. If Jesus appeared to me like Jesus appeared to Mary as a gardener, who would Jesus be?

When I worked in a congregation that was majority black, I learned to expect to recognize friends on the transit, and realized how many downtown commuters I had been ignoring. When I worked in a congregation that was majority Filipino, I stopped looking at the doctors in hospitals and nursing homes, and expected to recognize the people who were really running those places. Who do you overlook, or look past or through? Those on transit, the cleaners, the aides, the ones in the Tim Horton’s visor caps?

We need to adjust our eyes to see what God is showing and telling, in the flesh. So the blessing for this Easter season will be this one:

‘May you see the face of Christ
in everyone you meet
and may everyone you meet
see the face of Christ in you

Lest that become anonymous baptism – I recalled the Hasidic tale from Elie Wiesel: ‘when does light become day – or darkness become night?’

When you see the face of a stranger coming
And recognize there a friend you haven’t met
Then day has come

When you see the face of a stranger coming
And see there an enemy and an unknown threat
Then it remains night, however high the sun rises…

Church is not simply a memorial society, or a happily-ever-after club, but a living faith. People do come back from time to time, to check the tomb, and they see what they expect to see. Some come to confirm that this body is dead, this parrot is deceased, and they will see what they expect. Others come to prove that this tomb is empty, that spirituality is elsewhere, not in church. They will not see or hear anything different than they expect, either. But for those with eyes to see, and ears to hear, there is something here:

Jesus could be anybody –
I wish he were everybody here
I fear he will be nobody here –
But I expect that somebody has something to show and tell me.

Mary recognized Jesus in the face and the voice she first dismissed as just the gardener, or worse, as the villain grave-robber. Mary went off to tell her experience. She was not just a roadrunner, this time, not just rousting the boys against ‘them’. Mary was the first evangelist, according to John, one of deep passion and compassion. Mary had paused and named her sorrow, and her search. She had learned to look and listen, and meet Jesus again for the first time, reminded again who she was, and whose she was.

The logo on the screen through most of this service, and for the coming weeks, alludes to a less literal vision, but a no less physical resurrection. It’s not spiritualized into anything or anybody, or everything and everybody. It belongs at the edge of the abyss of nothing and nobody, until it becomes something and somebody. Come Ascension, with the scouts, we will move to the postresurrection Jesus. Unlike Barrie Wilson’s new book, we will be affirming both Jesus the Jew, and the Christ of our later tradition, not reconciled, but complementary – like each of you and us together, who:

If we get past dreaming
of being anything or anybody

And slow our running, trying
to be everything and everybody

And face our fears, name our sorrow and search
At the abyss of nothing and nobody

Will proudly learn to look and listen, then our own story…
Like Mary, something to tell, and somebody to tell it,
who met Jesus again for the first time…
And told the world!

What word to you have for our hearts
What face will you present to us next
Give us eyes to see, and ears to hear
Amen

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Passing on the Fellowship of Faith

Passing on the Fellowship of Faith
Notes from www.billbrucewords.com
Thornhill Ministerial Ecumenical Services, 5th Sunday of Lent

Text: 1 Peter 2:1-10

I got to speak at St Luke’s Roman Catholic church this Sunday evening, graciously hosted by liturgist John Humphries and presider Nathalie Doucet, with the welcome of Father Bill and Father Sean. This was the 5th of 6 Ecumenical Lenten services in the 40th annual such exercise by the Thornhill ministerial, including Baptist, Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, and indipendent congregations. I was grateful for the invitation, but as I confessed, bemused by the choice of me to preach on a theme of fellowship. I guessed my colleagues didn’t know me yet.


I am by heritage an Ulster Scot, the people who brought you the Orange lodges, hardly your first choice to preach at the Catholic parish. I am by earlier profession a lawyer. I am clergy of the United Church, a denomination known for hanging our dirty laundry in public, usually regarding GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered) clergy, or perhaps our abuse of first nations children in residential schools. It’s like the matrimonial lawyers on Yonge who advertise a website ‘familyfight.com’, or the old joke about people like me saying to strangers: “Is this a private family fight, or can anybody join in?”

Not only categorically, but personally, I am an unlikely speaker on the theme. As our church administrator summed it up soon after I arrived in November: “You’re not really a ‘people person’, are you?” Nope, I am introverted at best, grumpy in the morning, and generally misanthropic. Perhaps my colleagues had begun to sense this already, but not before they had invited me to speak in this spot on a roster of ‘Passing on the faith’ themes, about ‘fellowship’.

Why ever did they invite me, to tell you, about this lesson assigned from the catholic and pastoral epistles at the back of he bible, the good advice from which I rarely preach? Who am I to tell anybody else, to echo or elaborate on the lesson which opens with the paraenetic charge:

Rid yourselves of malice, guile, insincerity, envy, and slander.

I am a person of unclean lips, and I come from a people of unclean lips. The text addresses me and mine, before if addresses you and yours! I neglected to bring along a cartoon from my office wall, of a fat cat sitting behind a big desk, addressing a mouse pushing a janitor’s cart: “I’d like to apologize for how my ancestors treated your ancestors – there, that should square things!” And of course, the mouse carries on cleaning, and the fat cat is still behind his desk.

Perhaps I was assigned ‘fellowship’, since my people appear to lack the other signs or ‘marks of the church’, as Luther put it. I nearly failed my oral exam for ordination when my professors handed my a United Church hymn book, open to the hymn ‘The church is wherever God’s people are praising’. The second verse is ‘The church is wherever God’s people are helping’. I was asked which marks of the church were missing. I didn’t know. What’s essential, and what is ‘adiaphora’, or optional extras? Now, I will never forget: sacraments are missing in the hymn, and ordered ministry, and confessional creeds – and scripture only in passing. Perhaps we should stick with being a relentlessly cheerful helpful fellowship, in our denomination.

Mine is the youngest of denominations in our ministerial, a pragmatic invention of the 20th century, the first of a union movement among former colonial denominations. We are now 50 million strong, including the Church of North India, and of South India. I have served exchanges with the Uniting Church of Australia, and the United Reformed Church in the UK. We try to stay connected to the Reformed Alliance, and the World Methodist councils, while including independent free churches and some brethren and holiness movement groups. We’ve been trying for about 3 generations now – many people find us very trying.

Ask the Presbyterians: we surrendered the Westminster confession, in favour of sloppy generalizations, and they called us on it in 1925. Ask the Anglicans: we are anticlerical, resisting ministerial authority, let along a threefold ordered ministry of deacons, priests and bishops. I was a young elder when we rejected the Plan of Union in 1973, and still regret our choice. We surrendered sacramental order to free church and holiness movements. Think of us as your willful younger brother – impulsive, his mouth in motion, brain not always engaged – good-hearted, but not that bright. Perhaps that’s why we ask the United Church to address this topic.

I admit those errors – as a confession of sin and a confession of faith. I want to keep all my friends, who are irreconcilable one to another. So I stretch out my arms to my free church and high church and confessional and sacramental friends, just as you reach out to your friends who would not easily befriend one another. And I find myself in a position suitable for a Christian, as if on a cross, arms outstretched.

I admit the consequences, that we have shrunk, from cultural numerical dominance to marginal status, once a majority or plurality in Toronto, now 25 thousand of 2.5 million in ‘416’ Toronto with half a billion dollars of insured real property. I’m not sure of the ‘905’ numbers. We’ve been slightly ahead of our time, demonstrating Reginald Bibby’s statistics of decline – though I’m guessing some of our sister denominations are following the same curve.

People said they wanted ‘religion lite’, relevance above all. We offered it, and people said they’re glad we have it, and they visit occasionally to make sure it’s still not interfering with their business, politics or beliefs. ‘Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment’. You can watch our train wrecks, our public hanging of dirty laundry, and then you can do it your own way, in your own time. \\

We courted and lost the ‘cultured despisers of religion’. We were working people, following Wesley’s Methodist instruction to ‘earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can’, and of course the Calvinist Protestant work ethic. Next thing you know, we’re middle class, and talking social justice, as the NDP at prayer. We are the apotheosis of glib liberal trajectories toward inclusiveness at all costs. Into what are people invited to be included? Who are we, and whose?

So again, who am I to tell you to ‘rid yourselves of malice, guile, insincerity, envy, and slander’? I can only listen to the lesson with you, as one who shares the living stones, who discovers that what we keep rejecting is the head of the corner: ritual and roots, past the enlightenment, bigger and older than us, and younger and new than us. If you’ve had a taste of better, you never get over longing for it, like a newborn infant, longing for the pure, spiritual milk.

So I was hearing with you, not telling to you. Cree grammar has a distinction of us without you, and us including you, a sort of ‘first and a half person’, between first person and second person. This is 1.5 plural person – ‘us’ns’, not ‘youse’. Us’ns, including youse, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people. Once usn’s were not a people, but now youse are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (There’s a sort of double predestinarian dismissal of ‘them’ not included – releasing us from selling them)

We proclaim one holy catholic church, of which each particular church is a part more or less pure, in our young denomination. Wesley never wanted out of the Anglican church, just started a lay outreach movement that got out of hand when offical missions lagged urbanization. Calvin never set out to tyrannize, let alone trigger wars or religion, just to be faithful in his city of exile. Wesley taught a ‘quadrilateral’ of authority balancing ‘scripture, tradition, reason, experience’ and Calvin taught that God’s revelation was the same in creation, Torah, prophets, Jesus, and the Spirit – and if you thought something was at odds with that typological truth, read reality again!

Peter Berger, another sociologist of religion, wrote a pamphlet called A Rumour of Angels. He argues that religion involves cognitive deviance. We set up ideas that buck common sense of our culture, and resists the powers that be in our political economy. Individual believers will need counter-community, unless they have the fortitude of desert saints, to challenge common sense or resist the powers that be. That’s why, says Berger in a delightful turn of phrase, religious people ‘huddle together with like-minded deviants’. I recognize like-minded deviants in the ministerial, and in our sister churches, and I thank God.

I also cited a theologian who has been key to me for 25 years now. He wrote a pamphlet called 'Living with the Church' in the Sythesis series with proper imprimatur. He argued cogently that our identity is built from our identifications. Our identifications with what this theologian called the ‘empirical church’, distinct from the one holy invisible catholic church, are many and comprise important parts, but not the whole of anybody’s identity. This argument resonates with me, as Thornhill ministerial, and now St Luke’s Roman Catholic church, are identifications of mine, parts of my identity, among the irreconcilable friends to whom I reach out in cruciform posture. This smart writer, from 1978, was called Joseph Ratzinger. I hear he’s doing well.

I invited you to imagine my United Church, or Ratzinger’s ‘empirical church’, as the vestibule, or foyer, airlock in the spaceship, in the submarine versions of the ancient ark. We are here for folks on the way in, or on the way out, of the one holy and invisible catholic church. We are a sort of revolving door for the whole reign of God. If you prefer agrarian images, I cited one of our United Church theologians, who said that theology is not a fence in the field, but more like a post, or a salt lick: how close do you want to come, how often? And I said that if the world is going to hell in a hand-bucket and only a few will be saved, then I’m not kicking the bucket.

This is all about arguments of ethos, not logos. Instead of logos, or orthodoxy or right belief, which risks fundamentalist reductions, we are invited to consider ethos, identity or identification. Nor is this a Christianity of pathos, reducible to human experiences. As I often chant:

There’s so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in best of us
That’s it’s hard to know which of us,
should re-form the rest of us.

I closed by quoting another German theologian of Ratzinger’s generation, Dorothee Soelle, and a poem called ‘The Long March’ in a book called Revolutionary Patience:

1.
Perhaps we pictured things too simply
Way back then when we set out
On the long march through the desert
To find better ways to live with each other

O lord we thought let us become
Instruments of your peace
But what followed was
Tiresome conflict with authorities
That want order not peace
The daily struggle for small victories
And the terrible sense of being abandoned
Then the instruments of peace
Became disruptive and tiresome obstacles
To harmonious accord.

2.
Many have known all along
That nothing can be done from within the church
Who can live on manna year after year
If he sees no point in what he’s doing

Many are fed up and wish they were back in egypt
Where tithes flowed like milk and honey
And the churches were filled and the hymns rang out
Loud and clear because everybody knew them

How much longer is this march to last
What does that mean forty years
Is it only our generation that will be squandered
Or the next one too and what for
Can the goal justify a whole lifetime
Of work and conferences
Will we ever get beyond numbness
Nothing but sand and stones no human beings
Who will stick with us in our work
Help us speak clearly and openly

We receive little help from below
Are seldom understood by our peers
And those above fall back on the old trick
Of deeming any substantive question
A breach of discipline
That’s hoe they assert their authority maintain order
And keep away form the pulpit
The rude speech of the common people

The desert through which we wander
Restless fearful
Impotent confused

O lord make us into instruments of your peace
Instruments of conflict not harmony
Instruments of truth not obfuscation
Instruments of happiness not stupefaction

Let’s see if that can’t be done.

3
We have to talk over with you god
What we’ll need for peace
We’ll need a lot more friends
If we’re going to make more peace
Friends from different classes
Even if they don’t read Thomas Mann
Friends from different churches
Even if they do have rosaries
Friends of both sexes even gays and lesbians
Friends with different interests
Even if we don’t like them
Friends who share a vision
Of peace that can be achieved.
Friends who believe

Keep us from the romantic illusion god
That friendships are made in heaven
And from the conservative illusion
That they grow slowly over the years like trees
Teach us to see that friendship is work
And has to be built like everything that is good for us

We need friends who are
Not putty in other men’s hands
Who have a voice and a say
Who side with the penalized
Who grow more and more fearless
And so spread peace….

1 Peter 2:1-10 NRSV

Rid yourselves, therefore,
Of all malice, and all guile,
Insincerity, envy, and all slander.

Like newborn infants,
Long for the pure, spiritual milk,
So that by it you ay grow into salvation –
If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Come to him, a living stone,
Though rejected by mortals
Yet chosen and precious in God’s sight,
And like living stones,
let yourselves be built into a spiritual house,
To be a holy priesthood,
To offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God
through Jesus Christ.

For it stands in scripture:
See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
A cornerstone chosen and precious;
And whoever believes in him will not be put to shame

To you then who believe, he is precious
But for those who do not believe,
The stone that the builders rejected
Has become the very head of the corner,
They stumble because they disobey the word,
As they were destined to do.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, God’s own people,
In order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him
who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light

Once you were not a people
But now you are God’s people’
Once you had not received mercy,
But now you have received mercy.

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Ezekiel, 5th of 5 'Not-Yet Guys'

Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14

Today was the last of a series of 5 sermons, revisiting what you already knew of some basic Hebrew bible characters, and inviting you to think about them as adults. We started today with the whole congregation singing an old spiritual that seemed familiar to most of you:

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…
Now hear the word of the Lord –

The hip bone’s connected to the leg bone…
The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone…
The knee bone’s connected to the shin bone –
Now hear the word of the Lord!

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…
Now hear the word of the Lord –

Look, this is not just orthopedic naivete, or a bad anatomy lesson! Jack Zimmerman with his new knees, or Irene Locke with her new hip plate, should continue to rely on their surgeons! Ezekiel is answering a different questions, with a different answer. Did you wake up this morning, and look at another snowfall that needed shoveling, in this record winter, and moan: “Oh, my aching bones”? This is not always diagnostic medical symptom, but a lament. The psalmist says ‘teach these broken bones to dance’ – from a similar psychic space.

This Wednesday evening, I was at an opening event for 'Darwin' at the Royal Ontario Museum. It’s in the basement of the crystal, and includes not only his actual bugs, but also his Greek New Testament, from the voyage of the Beagle. There are live Galapagos turtles (and dead ones). We were proud to be among the individual patrons of an exhibit that did not need security guards against creationist protesters. We are smugly aware that only 51% of Americans believe in evolution, and many of those only buy it as part of an ‘Intelligent Design’ vision. But the Globe yesterday informed me that no corporate sponsor was willing to back Darwin at the ROM – and that Angus Reid polls only 59% of Canadian believing in evolution.

I happened to read Barack Obama’s 'The Audacity of Hope' last week. He acknowledges most Americans don’t “believe in evolution”, then he models how to be respectful of that statistic, instead of assuming that all those competent voters are idiots. More Americans believe in angels than evolution. What’s going on? Perhaps, like our rendition of ‘dem bones’, we’re talking about different answers to different questions. As Dom Crossan warns us, ‘you don’t just want to have the right answer to the wrong question’. We looked at the snow and moaned ‘oh, my aching bones’, then echoed the chorus of ‘dem bones’ this morning – but it wasn’t about medical diagnosis, but spiritual lament, seeking some expression of hope, meaning and purpose.

Charles Taylor’s 'A Secular Age' visits the ‘Darwin refuted the bible’ script, and concludes that ‘one moral vision trumped another’. The sophisticated philosopher canvasses issues of epistemology, buffered identity, instrumental reason, agency, the good, teleological order, and other esoteric terminology for the related philosophical issues. What I offered you today as most helpful is Taylor’s distinction between ‘closed immanent frames’ and ‘open immanent frames’. Granting the power of materialist empiricism within an ‘immanent frame’, he suggests that one need not stop there with a ‘closed immanent frame’. You might acknowledge the power of the ‘immanent frame’ for instrumental reason and agency, but maintain an ‘open immanent frame’ that allowed for a transcendent dimension, including meaning and purpose.

Many people who tell pollsters they ‘don’t believe in evolution’ mean a popular version of Taylor’s esoteric complexity. We (that’s right, people including me) deny a ‘closed immanent frame’, and reject the denial of teleology or providential order. We demand that there be a point to our existence. It’s the Peggy Lee theology of her song ‘Is that all there is?’, or Harry Nillson’s ‘Me and My Arrow’ song from ‘The Point’, where a boy with a pointed head is sent to the pointless forest since he can’t fit in – but his dog has a point, too, and can play triangle toss.

Don’t be afraid to sing along! Hans Kung’s trilogy, on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, applied Thomas Kuhn’s theories of scientific revolution to the paradigm shifts and layered meaning in religious traditions. ‘Dem bones’ is not a song of orthopedic naivete or anatomical ignorance – let’s at least allow that there might be different questions, provoking different answers, and wonder with me what they might be!

Ezekiel was the 5th and last of 5 ‘not yet guys’ in Lent, after Adam, Abraham, Moses, & David. We revisited Genesis, then Exodus, then former prophets, now major prophets. It’s 600 years before Jesus. The north fell to Assyria over a century earlier, and Josiah’s reform 20 years before was followed by younger kings, tipping a geopolitical balance between Egypt and Mesopotamia, Nile and Tigris-Euphrates valleys, Africa and Asia – let alone Mediterranean Europe. The 1st deportation of an elite from Jerusalem to Babylon occurred in 597. Cut the heads off a society, and leave a puppet king: that was the plan. Ezekiel was a name on the list. Was he our prophet?

I don’t know if Ezekiel prophesied in Iraq about Jerusalem’s follies, or in Israel, but for 36 chapters, he fulminates doom and gloom, accusations and blame and warning, for Jerusalem and all the nations: ‘don’t think God’s going to bail you out!’ In denying the easy nationalist line, Ezekiel moves to a sacred history, beyond secular time, and speaks of ultimate outcomes: imagine a valley of dry bones in a desert valley. Can these bones live? God knows. This is not a problem to be solved, not a matter of progress of evolution. These are terminal, unsalvageable, dry bones. No program or legislation can fix this situation!

Once you’ve got the bleak vision – then you appeal to the supernatural, transcendent change: rattling of the bones, making skeletons, then flesh and skin, then breath, and standing. I hope this reminds you of adamah and issah, earth and breath, flesh and spirit, body and soul. If Adam was the ‘not-yet guy’ of creation, then Ezekiel is the ‘not-yet guy’ of resurrection. This is no tale of self-made men pulling their own bootstraps, but of prudence relying on providence. Ezekiel yells at us for 36 chapters, but we focus on the hope of these chapters, a vision beyond history, of hope for a river flowing from the throne of God, a battle of Gog and Magog – apocalyptic stuff.

We began with an individualized take on ‘dem bones’, identifying with our personal laments of ‘oh, my aching bones’. I invited you to think communally, too, before we ended. People my age and older grieve and lament the ‘good old days’ of Christendom, when the churches were full, and the hymns rang out loud and clear because everyone knew them. We see a valley of dry bleached bones. Younger folks simply imagine how the bones might go together as a puzzle, and imagine life breathed into the company raised up. We can gather and blame leaders and programs at annual meetings or General Council meetings, like the first 36 chapters of Ezekiel. We might instead lament the dry bones, and wait and watch for a deeper hope to raise us up.

If you take that communal lament and hope to a political level, you can face the failures of leaders and their programs and get a wider, deeper perspective to sustain your engagement. Diefenbaker promoted a Bill of Rights as a program, long before our Charter of Rights, but that initial attempt to enshrine human rights in our constitutional framework failed. The key test case, ironically, was R v Drybones. There was a law that said ‘Indians’(sic) could not buy or drink alcohol, for their own good. Drybones was an aboriginal man charged with drinking, whose defence was that the law breached the Bill of Rights, discriminating on the basis of race. The Supreme Court of Canada rejected the defence, and cut the Bill of Rights off at the knees. That failure of the human rights movement was worthy of lament, but not the end of hope. We might do well to have the same sense of penultimacy this week, as Louise Arbour announces retirement from the UNHCR, and pundits praise or pillory her for her international efforts in recent years

‘Oh, my aching bones’ can be a lament, seeking hope, personally, communally, or politically. That’s neither orthopedic naivete nor anatomical ignorance. If you wish for a program or a leader to save you, or relieve your aching bones of lament and grief and despair, you will not find hope, just wishes. Ezekiel is answering a different question, with a different answer, in this vision of a valley of dry bones. Spend some time re-imagining his vision, seeking hope and purpose and meaning in a disenchanted universe of secular ‘closed immanent frames’. Let the sound track play in your mind again: Peggy Lee singing ‘Is that all there is?’, Nilsson ‘Me and My Arrow’, or our whole congregation, ending as we began today, singing together:

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…
Now hear the word of the Lord –

The hip bone’s connected to the leg bone…
The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone…
The knee bone’s connected to the shin bone –
Now hear the word of the Lord!

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…
Now hear the word of the Lord –

What word do you have for our hearts, O God, give us ears to hear. Amen.

Prayer from March 9

God who calls us, we’ve come –
Through the snow and the sun, we’ve come
Despite the winter, because of the winter, we’ve come

You know the aches and pains we bear –
You know we come despite them, because of them
You know how we have whined about our aches and pains
You know how we’ve cared for our pains, not others pains

We’d rather have our aches and pains
Than the alternatives of oblivion -
We don’t want numbness –
we don’t seek to rush to our death
We don’t just want to escape
But you know, God, how often we do numb our pain
Suppress it, redirect it,
Run from it, mask it…

You gave us the roots of our empathy
For others’ aching bones
Solidarity and community –
Our basic humanity….
Remind us of all we share –
All we have in common
Though much of it we’d rather avoid…
Teach us to recognize our sisters
Who are not, like us, temporarily physically able,
Who are not, like us, temporarily employed, and solvent
For we confess how much and how many
We overlook, as if they were not, like us, yours

God who calls us, we’ve come –
Through the snow and the sun, we’ve come
Despite the winter, because of the winter, we’ve come

You know the aches and pains we bear –
You know we come despite them, because of them
You know how we have whined about our aches and pains
You know how we’ve cared for our pains, not others pains

Forgive us, we pray, as we sing together
Kyrie Eleison –
Lord, have mercy….

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David: 4th of 5 Not-Yet Guys

DAVID: 4th of 5 “Not-Yet Guys”
Notes from www.billbrucewords.com
4th Sunday of Lent, March 2, 2008

I Samuel 16:1-13

"My elemental duty is not to cling to positions,
much less to stand in the way of younger persons,
but rather to contribute my own experience and ideas
whose modest value comes from the exceptional era
that I had the privilege of living in.”

I opened and closed with that quote today, and asked you who said it, when and in what context. It’s Fidel Castro, less than 2 weeks ago. Fidel Castro, who took power in Cuban by revolution, becoming Prime Minister February 16 1959, President February 16, 1976, and now resigned, in what we all hope will be a bloodless process of succession, so far from Castro to Castro. I invited you to reflect on politicians, and their legitimacy and succession, authority and legacy.

Americans have gone from Bush to Bush – will they go Clinton to Clinton, or choose McCain, the third generation Navy hero, or Barack Obama? Canadians have gone form Diefenbaker to Stanfield, Clark to Mulroney, Pearson to Trudeau, Chretien to Martin to somebody else. Sex scandals and rash wars may sell in the south, but we prefer petty graft and me-too alliances. Mulroney looked bad at the ethics committee talking about Airbus, till we heard news of Chuck Cadman bribed for a vote – and remembered money paid to advertisers for little or nothing.

I reminded you of the election in Kenya in December, and civil strife as thousands of supporters of Kibaki and Odinga have been killed or wounded, and hundreds of thousands displaced, before last Thursday’s power sharing agreement brokered by Kofi Annan. It’s not just Cuba, or the US or Canadian politics – the news in any week in any year will talk about political legitimacy and succession, authority and legacy.

The issues are not much different in any workplace, or church, or even in many families. We teach our children due respect for authority, and in due course, due caution. “When I left home, I couldn’t believe how ignorant my parents could be – when I returned years later, I was surprised how much they had learned!” A my last church, I kept a wooden duck on the bookshelf, legs forward – a ‘sitting duck’ – until a year ago, when I removed a leg – a ‘lame duck’ – and last summer, as I left, it fell over – a ‘dead duck’. I asked if you recognized the pattern. You did.

In this Lenten season, I’m offering 5 weeks of basic stories, reminding you of what you learned with due respect, and now in due course giving you permission and invitation to revisit them with due caution or suspicion: Adam, Abraham, Moses, and now David. The first ones were easier, from Genesis, the first book, and Exodus, the second book of the Torah. Today we moved to less familiar terrain: the ‘former prophets’, histories of a people, a nation, a land. Who reads Joshua and Judges, 1&2 Samuel, 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Chronicles, Ezra & Nehemiah, let alone the apocryphal Esdras and Maccabbees accounts? I promised that as I have been daily blogging heretics in Lent, I will blog some bible browsing for the season of Easter.

I encouraged you to visit the epic sagas moving from anarchy to misrule, from Samuel to Saul to David to Solomon. These are tales told with the wisdom of 20/20 hindsight, in retrospect, making sense, but not whitewashing the scandals. I did suggest you revisit Joseph Heller’s novel God Knows, assuming the voice of David in his old age, remembering his scandalous life. Perhaps you will rent a movie version, like Richard Gere in 1985, or Gregory Peck in 1951. They all offer accessible retellings of the racy stories of political succession and legitimacy, authority and legacy, which are harder to read, but present, in your bibles.

Imagine about 1,000 years before Jesus. There is a collection of loosely affiliated tribes in the Holy Land. When one is threatened, they pull together ad hoc common defence under charismatic leader, the ‘judges’ who are not always men, and more like warriors than lawyers. People started to whine: “why can’t we be a real nation, with real kings”. Samuel warned them to be careful what they asked for, in case they got it! They could end up with war and graft and scandal – and sure enough that’s what they got with being a real nation with real kings.

Samuel anoints Saul as the first king, by pouring oil on his head in public. This is legitimation, or authorization, and we recognize it without the oil. Dalton Camp anoints Tories. Ted Kennedy anoints Obama. We baptize and ordain with laying on of hands: “What are they doing to mom? They’re just removing her spine!” We have a search committee seeking our next minister – and you know how leadership is anointed in your workplace.

Saul turns out to be a wimp who haggles and compromises with the Amalekites instead of just beating them, as Samuel said God wanted. You don’t mediate a crime. You don’t plea bargain or settle, in some situations, or you’ll be back, in the Balkans or in the Gulf wars. Saul is still king, but a sitting duck, then lame duck, then dead duck, lacking legitimacy. Defensive, lashing out – there are rumours of madness

Samuel knows God wants him to anoint another. Samuel is old, scare of Saul – but he knows he has to choose again, and he goes to Jesse the Bethlehemite. Rachel’s favorite was Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob Israel, and the little tribe around Bethlehem claimed that heritage. Jesse has 8 sons, and trots out the eldest 7 for Samuel. Samuel and Jesse figure it’s easy to predict that the eldest, tallest, smartest, strongest will win. But like a crowded field of candidates in politics, none has the magic. This is not an Olympic competition. God keeps a different score.

The story goes that David is picked, the youngest, the shepherd, the musician, who soothes Saul and beats Goliath and loves Jonathan with a love surpassing that for women. Can you recognize the political spin doctors working overtime? David’s succession of Saul was not legitimate. When the Philistines killed Saul and Jonathan in battle, where was David? For 7 years, David ‘ruled’ in Hebron. In other words, he ran a guerilla band or a protection racket in the hills, while Ish-bosheth tried legitimate hereditary succession of Saul. Flower it up all you want – it still smells fishy. That’s why we pile up stories defending David’s succession.

It gets worse, of course, and David’s rule has war and graft and sex scandals. He has at least 8 wives, lots of kids fighting among themselves. The succession from David to Solomon will be as messy as that from Saul to David. It has ever been thus. Samuel warned us that if we wanted to be a ‘real nation’ with a ‘real king’, we’d get it, with war and graft and sex scandals. We did. David may be the ideal king – but he ain’t perfect!



One part of the biblical tradition rehabilitates David’s reputation. We will teach kids respect, eh? But the whole subversive story remains: in due course, due caution and due suspicion, lest we think in totalitarian terms, idealizing the strong man who can so easily become a tyrant. These are stories inviting us to think about our own expectations of leaders, and legitimacy and succession, authority and legacy. Our tradition need not be authoritarian.

Where do you fit in the traditional stories? Do you identify with David, or his brothers, or Samuel called to choose when the first choice has become sitting, lame or dead duck? Your sense of the story of David and his succession of Saul shapes your perception of any leader, of any authority – and ultimately of Jesus. After all, Jesus is the Son of David, born in Bethlehem of the house and lineage of David. The gospels tell us that whatever we know of David, that’s the shape of Jesus’ claim to authority, too. My David is not an Olympic hero but tragic human.

I played with you about David’s sisters, ruled out of succession, and recited Dory Previn’s song:


did jesus have a baby sister?
was she bitter?
was she sweet?

….did he have a sister?
a little baby sister?
did jesus have a sister?
did they give her a chance?
did he have a baby sister?
could she speak out by and large?
or was she told by mother mary
ask your brother he’s in charge
he’s the whipped cream
on the cake…

did jesus have a sister?
what was her name?
did she long to be the savior
saving everyone
she met?

and in private to her mirror
did she whisper
saviorette?
saviorwoman?
saviorperson?
save your breath!
did he have a sister?
a little baby sister?

did jesus have a sister?
was she there at his death?
….ask your brother
he’s the boss
he’s the chief
he’s the man
he’s the show
did he have a sister?
a little baby sister?
did jesus have a sister?
doesn’t anyone know?

The biblical tradition preserved not only the patriarchal narrative of due respect for David, building him up as the great king of Israel. It also preserved the subversive narratives in due course of due caution and due suspicion of the claims of authority and power. Those voices sound like Dory Previn, as sung by Connie Caldor: ‘did Jesus have a baby sister’? What’s the cast of characters in your political vision? Is there only a perfect leader, and submissive crowds? Is the only issue ‘what would Jesus do’? I say let David be David, and let Jesus be Jesus – and figure out our own roles as citizens and disciples.

There is a tendency in the church to become authoritarian. Sometimes we have to listen to critics from outside, or from the next generation, to confess our faith and confess our sin better. Castro has a reputation as a ‘Godless Communist’. Listen to what he says in response:

“There is a great concurrence between Christianity's objectives
and the ones we communists seek,
between the Christian teachings of humility, austerity, selflessness and loving thy neighbor
and what we might call the content of a revolutionary's life and behavior….

No churches in Cuba were ever closed down — none of them.
There was a time when the political confrontation became really fierce and,
because of the militant political attitudes taken by some priests, especially the Spanish ones,
we requested that they be withdrawn from our country. ...
However, we authorized other priests to come to Cuba
and replace the ones who were asked to leave. ...
[The church] was a rancid aristocracy...
It is not with religion that there were problems,
but with the religious institutions….

I invited you to think again today about politicians, and their legitimacy and succession, authority and legacy. I invited you to think about leadership in the church – and in your workplaces and even your homes. We are not simply an authoritarian patriarchy, though that is part of our story over the millennia. We are also a subversive tradition that challenges authority and demands that it be tested. We pray that succession in Cuba and Kenya, as in America and Canada, be bloodless –but not at any cost, or the cost of injustice. Listen again to Fidel Castro:

"My elemental duty is not to cling to positions,
much less to stand in the way of younger persons,
but rather to contribute my own experience and ideas
whose modest value comes from the exceptional era
that I had the privilege of living in.”

We too in our day and generation must prepare for graceful, legitimate succession, with due respect, but in due course with due caution and due suspicion. My David, and my Jesus, are not tyrants demanding blind obedience. My church, and my tradition, is a living one, with a future. Who will be our anointed ones – and who of the anointed will be sitting, lame, or dead ducks? Like Samuel, we may be called to choose and choose again. We closed by singing Harry Emerson Fosdick’s 1930 hymn ‘God of Grace and God of Glory’ written at Riverside Church New York in the Great Depression, and resonating in times of war and cold war, as a hymn of liberal protestant militancy, ending each verse with a prayer:

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour…
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days…
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, lest we miss your kingdom’s goals…
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, that we fail not them nor thee…

What word do you have for our hearts, O God, give us ears to hear. Amen.
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