O God of love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and eve-rywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will. Amen.

      Some years ago I was lucky enough to hear a series of three lectures by religious historian Karen Armstrong, who is a prolific writer and popular speaker on the major religions of the world.  She was speaking about her work published in The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, noting the extreme violence that characterized the time of beginning of each of the major world religions and drawing a comparison with our contemporary violent world.

      Her central (and rhetorical) question was, can religious practice or religiosity bring healing to the world?  (It’s a good question.)  She spoke about how all of the major world religions teach that acts of compassion lead to divine encounters; and that the task is to uncover and reclaim the essential compassion that is at the heart of every one of the major religions in their origins.  The challenge is to address violence not with more violence – because violence begets more violence, but to address violence with compassion.  Furthermore, she challenged us to begin with a critique of our own context, noting that it is far easier to identify and critique violence in the other.

      It’s easy, isn’t it, to look outside and see violence – outside our politics, outside our spirituality (however we define that) – outside Christianity, outside the Episcopal Church, outside of Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston.  The real challenge is to see the violence that we do and the violence done on our behalf – violence done by commission and violence done by omission.  The real challenge is to see the violence that we celebrate – and stop it!

      What a wonderful message to reflect on for today’s readings – for what the Church calls “Good Shepherd Sunday.”  Shepherding sheep is an ancient and common metaphor for what kings do.   The prophet Ezekiel’s critique of those who led flocks, was, “You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them.”  His criticism was of the 6th century government of Judah – not of Babylon, the nation that captured and destroyed Jerusalem.  Written 2600 years ago, it seems to me just as apt today as a critique of our government.

      Our Gospel lesson was a critique too – it is, in fact, the same critique as the one in Ezekiel.  It is absolutely not the case where the Christians were doing it right in contrast to the ancient Hebrew people.  And both lessons – all three lessons – are pictures or dreams of the goodness of God in the midst of a violent world.  They are not descriptions of reality, but of the dream of God.

      Because Armstrong challenged us to begin to address violence where we are, I want to begin with you, to look at the violence celebrated in our worship.  It is violence celebrated in the rhetoric of our music and our prayers and our sacred scripture.  In many cases, the images in the language are ancient – and in an ancient context, they were often comparatively less violent than their alternatives.  But in 2009 we have different alternatives and I want to challenge us to consider how we glorify violence and suffering in our religious rituals.  Some of you will recall James Carroll’s Emmanuel Center talk last fall when he spoke about the ritualized violence in our Eucharist.

      I’m going to give you a couple of examples of where I find “sacred” violence in Christian scripture, prayers, and music.  In our Gospel passage for today about Jesus as the good shepherd, Jesus who cares for and feeds the flock, protecting them from danger, the strong message is that the shepherd dies for the sheep.  In both the first letter of John and the Gospel of John, Jesus’ death is not the result of the Roman government sentencing him to crucifixion, but rather it is the deliberate plan of God to redeem humanity.  The extreme suffering of Jesus is attributed to God, rather than to forces of evil.  According to John, the Roman government and all those who contributed to Jesus suffering and death were simply playing out parts predestined by God – doing God’s will.  Violence is celebrated as what saved humankind (or at least the Christians). 

      Our Eucharistic prayers contain violent imagery.  This had never really sunk in for me until I was about to be ordained a priest.  Somehow, when I was in the pew and the priest was saying the Eucharistic prayer, I didn’t notice this.  Or maybe I noticed it a little bit, but it never really bothered me.  I had been ordained a deacon almost a year and was anticipating being ordained a priest when I joined my colleagues who were also about to be ordained priest for a required week-long silent retreat.  We had a lot of down time to use however we wanted to study, to reflect, to pray.   I decided that I wanted to spend some time, alone in my room, practicing saying the Eucharistic prayer along with “the moves” so that when I did it for the first time in front of real people, I wouldn’t be stumbling through the text.  I also wanted to decide what Eucharistic prayer would be my “first.”  I felt like I’d been waiting my whole life to be able to consecrate bread and wine for people.

      So I started with Eucharistic Prayer B in Rite II.  It seemed like the best one.  I got almost all of the way through it – almost to the end, when I heard myself say, “In the fullness of time, put all things in subjection under your Christ.”  That stopped me dead in my tracks. The words caught in my throat.   Here are the synonyms for subjection in our vernacular:  helplessness, hopelessness, weakness, inability and incapacity.  I didn’t want to pray that – at least not my first time!

      So I turned to Prayer C.  I was humming along, said the words, “And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace.”  (so far, so good)  Then the congregation responds:  “By his blood, he reconciled us.  By his wounds, we are healed.”  I don’t believe that and I didn’t want to prompt the congregation to pray it.  I believe that by his love he reconciled us and by following the example of his life we are healed.

      Okay.  So Prayer A.  “He stretched out his arms upon the cross, and offered himself, in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.”  Nope.  On to Prayer D.  “To fulfill your purpose he gave himself up to death.”  Ugh.  I knew Rite One wasn’t going to be any better.

      I started feeling panicky.  I wanted to be a priest but I didn’t want to say any of the Eucharistic Prayers.  Ordination was only a week away.  I left my monastic cell, found one of my friends and whispered a plea for her to leave the monastery with me – to take a walk so that we could talk.  She very generously agreed.  As soon as we were out of the gate, I told her the problem.  I was about to be ordained a priest and I didn’t think I could say any of the Eucharistic prayers.  She looked at me incredulously and asked, “Do you think you might have thought of this before now?”  I can’t remember what either one of us said after that.  My hunch is that we spent most of the rest of the walk in silence.  What was there to say?

      Easter hymns are particularly gruesome –the choices for the six weeks of Eastertide pair beautiful music, and plenty of Alleluias with phrases like:

“I will sing unto the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and rider thrown into the sea” or

“At the Lamb’s high feast we sing praise to our victorious King, who hath washed us in the tide flowing from his pierced side”  or

“Christians to the Paschal victim offer your thankful praises…” or

“Now Christ our Passover is slain, the Lamb of God without a stain.  His flesh, the true unleavened bread, is freely offered in our stead.”  or

“Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast.” or

“Hallelujah we sing, to our Father and King, and his rapturous praises repeat:  To the Lamb that was slain, hallelujah again, sing all heaven and fall at his feet.”

      All of this may leave you wondering how I reconcile the violence in the scripture and the prayers and the music.  And the answer is that I can’t.  I can tell you that I argue whenever possible that we shouldn’t sing the hymns – but I haven’t reconciled what to do about the Eucharistic Prayers or what on earth to do with my beloved Bible.  I haven’t reconciled how to live with integrity in my beloved church.

      What I know is that we have to stop celebrating violence if we are to bring healing to the world.  We cannot use violent rhetoric and pretend it doesn’t matter if we are to fully participate in restorative justice and reconciliation.  We must witness to the truth in words and deeds that acts of compassion lead to divine encounters and truly divine encounters lead to acts of compassion.  It is in extending hospitality to strangers that we entertain angels. It is in being with those who are in prison, sheltering those who are homeless, feeding those who are hungry that we see the face of Christ.  It is in extending forgiveness and compassion to even our enemies that we do God’s will.  To paraphrase Karen Armstrong, it is the religious practice of compassion that will transform the self, the other, and ultimately, the whole wide world.