Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11C, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz, July 17, 2016

O God of shalom, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

What a hard week, in a series of hard weeks. There seems to be no end in sight to the violence at home and abroad. I want to say something about each of our three scripture readings this morning. I don’t know about you, but I hear the prophet Amos speaking directly to us from about 760 BCE. Amos, a shepherd and dresser of sycamore trees, was the first prophet of the Hebrew Bible to write his description of what happens when some people in a society get richer and more powerful, at the expense of those who are poor and getting poorer. He was writing at a time when his country had expanded in wealth and military might by taking advantage of the most vulnerable, the neediest people, violating the Torah commandments to care for refugees and aliens, and others who cannot care for themselves. Perhaps you already knew what it means that Amos was a dresser of sycamore trees, but I had to look it up. Sycamore trees in the Middle East produce fruit that smell like figs, but taste pretty bad. Only poor people eat it, because nobody with other options would touch it. If the fruit is punctured while it’s still on the tree, it ripens faster. A dresser of sycamores is someone who is helping to feed those who are poor.

In stark contrast, the basket of summer fruit that God shows Amos in the beginning of our passage this morning, is a basket of delicious figs. There’s a word play here, because the word for summer fruit or figs sounds just like the word that means end (as in, the opposite of beginning). I was trying to think of a similar word play in English – where something of beauty could also mean something that is over. With the terrible reports coming out of the Bastille Day celebration in Nice, I thought of a fireworks show with a flashy finish. Or maybe you saw the photo of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, lit up as a show of solidarity for France, as the military staged a coup. The story is something like, God displays a flashy finish and the question is, what do you see? We see a flashy finish – finish can mean appearance and end. A chilling description follows in Amos: “the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place” and still, the needy and poor are being bought for silver and a pair of sandals. We know this is true, don’t we. (Our parish is located on Newbury Street.) But as a Kabbalist Rabbi once wrote: “Hurt people hurt people. That’s how pain patterns get passed on, generation after generation” (and I’m paraphrasing here — ) in order to break the chain, we must meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. [1] It’s a shocking idea, and I believe it’s the only way.

Amos describes a future famine in the land – not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the Word of the Lord. We are in the midst of such a famine. Listen. He says people will wander from sea to sea, and from north to east, they shall run to and fro, seeking the Word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.” And what is the Word of the Lord? Listen. The word of the Lord is Mercy. Listen. The word of the Lord is Compassion. Listen. The Word of the Lord is Dignity and Honor for neighbor, Dignity and Honor for self. Listen. The Word of the Lord is Love, for Love’s sake. And it is up to us to help people who are wandering, who are running, who are staggering, it is up to us to help people who are famished for mercy, and compassion, and love, to find it. That’s our whole job. That’s our reason for living.

The passage that Jaime read from Colossians is a hymn text claiming something cosmic and universal about the reconciling urge of the Divine, known in the Church as “the Christ.” The writer also asserts the singularity of Christ as Lord. I always want to make sure that folks know that Christ was not the surname of Jesus! To say that Jesus was the Christ, is to affirm that he was the complete embodiment of God’s reconciling desire. It sounds great when the words are set to Immortal Invisible, God only wise. Some of the Colossians theology is more difficult when spoken.

Tragically, from my point of view, the theology in the letter to the Colossians marks a turn away from pluralism and non-hierarchical communities of Jesus followers, to an intolerance for Jewish religious observances, hierarchical household codes, and a doubling down on imitating Jesus’s suffering, rather than understanding suffering as a consequence of imitating Jesus’ life. Focusing on suffering, glorifies suffering. Focusing on fullness of life and love, may result in suffering, but suffering is not the goal! Along with that, Colossians also marks a turning away from the more Jewish understanding of faith as trust, as “living as if,” to a more Gentile, philosophical idea of faith as belief. The letter to the Colossians is interesting to me in the way that an archeological dig is interesting, but not otherwise very edifying!

Our Gospel story today about Mary, Martha, and Jesus is nestled in between the story of the Good Samaritan, with Jesus’ summary instruction to go and show mercy, and the story of Jesus’ teaching about how to pray that we will hear next week. The Martha and Mary episode is a story that pits sisters against each other and often fuels division in groups that study it together. Our tradition has made Mary and Martha (and Jesus, for that matter) so flat. Calling someone a Martha or a Mary evokes strong and one-dimensional images. I long for them to engage as whole, complex women with a whole, complex Jesus. The story we have seems overly simplified, thoroughly domesticated, and woefully incomplete. I want to hear Martha’s retort. She was a leader in the early church. Martha’s Christological confession in the Gospel of John is right on par with Peter’s Confession. Surely she would have had a strong reaction to Jesus’ rebuke! Perhaps, “yes Lord, but you do want to eat don’t you?” I want more from Mary too – an invitation to Martha to sit down for a while, an offer to trade places for a while, something!

This Gospel story might be a lesson about the superior value of being still for reflection and prayer, about Sabbath time. It might be about privileging one ministry – the ministry of discernment and prayer over another ministry – the ministry of hospitality and service. It might be the earliest Christian example of triangulation in the Church! It might be a radical assertion of the right of a woman disciple to study just like a male disciple of a rabbi. It might be a reflection of the tension in Luke’s time about the leadership of women. Martha was the head of her household and the description of her welcome in Greek (hupodexomai) indicates extra enthusiasm and warmth. Surely Jesus would not be criticizing that! Some think that Jesus’ rebuke had to do not with her work but just with her grumpiness or resentment at not having enough help, and to that I want to say, “don’t go there Jesus.”

Is it a radically affirming story about the importance of sitting at Jesus’ feet? Yes, probably. Is it a terrible story about discouraging ecclesiastical leadership of women? Yes, probably. Is it something else altogether? Yes, probably. This story is probably all of these at the same time, and we naturally see one or the other. I thought of the famous drawing of a beautiful young woman and an ugly old hag that is used to teach about perception. Do you know it? Depending on how your mind interprets the various lines, your visual system will lock into a meaningful understanding or explanation, seeing either the beautiful woman or the ugly old hag. Your age, your gender, your interests, your experiences, will all influence the interpretation. Often, with some assistance, you can “see” the alternate understanding or interpretation, and with practice, even go back and forth between the two interpretations.

Perhaps you know the Museum of Science’s exhibit about perception. There are about a dozen examples of visual presentations that demonstrate how our brains search for resolution to perceptual ambiguities. In the smallest fraction of a second, our brains create explanations and interpretations to reconcile conflicting information. Our brains are wired to wrap things up neatly before we even know that there’s anything amiss! The museum exhibit has all kinds of helpful suggestions to counteract the jumps to conclusions about visual ambiguities: move closer, move further away, move back even further, close one eye, look with both eyes, stare for an extended time and watch the image shift, see if you can shift your interpretation at will.

It’s striking to me that “do you not perceive?” is a question that Jesus asks repeatedly in the Gospel stories. There are ten different words in our Greek New Testament that get translated “perceive” – the idea of perception was very nuanced and seems as critically important then as now. How might we improve our perception – our ability to see and understand the realm of God that is, as Jesus said, at hand, even in a week and a world like ours? How might we improve our perception – our ability to see and understand the realm of God that is, as Jesus said, within each one? (Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Blessed is the day when one realizes that within and above are synonymous.”) What is our version of stepping back and stepping forward, of closing one eye and opening both eyes, of getting assistance so that our perceptions shift? How can we increase our recognition and appreciation of multiple meanings, whether we are going deep into ancient texts or wide into world events?

One answer, for Christians, is always in present community. Feminist biblical scholar Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza asserts that by asking questions and hearing one another to speech in the context of diverse community, if we’re listening carefully, we can learn to recognize and honor multiple interpretations in such a way that they strengthen people’s resolve to stand up for their own dignity and rights, and to stand up for the dignity and rights of others. [2] Ask questions about ancient texts and current events like: what do you notice, what speaks to you, what difference does it make? Imagine that all of the characters in a story or event represent a part of you. For example, what part of you is represented by Mary? What part of you is represented by Martha? What part of you is represented by Jesus? There are always questions about culture, religious education or experience, age, gender, class, race, sexual orientation, financial circumstance, and how they affect one’s perception. If your community is not diverse enough, expand. Many of our communities in Boston are notoriously racially segregated.

So here’s an example of how to expand. In the last week, about 70 clergy serving both historically white and historically black congregations in Boston have come together to better organize our collective work to dismantle racist structures and white supremacy in our own hearts, in our religious institutions, our neighborhoods and our city. We are pledging to join our heads and hands in moral, ethical, and theological witness to the fact that Black Lives Matter. We began by having dinner together the other night. I met a minister who told me she’d been married at Emmanuel, with then rector Al Kershaw presiding. He was a rare Episcopal priest in the 1960’s who would preside over the marriage of a Christian and a Jew. She told me that he began services with the word Shalom. He knew that Shalom doesn’t simply mean peace. Shalom means well-being, harmony; it encompasses justice and mercy, right relationship interpersonally and institutionally.

Listen. The Word of the Lord is Shalom. And it is up to us to help people who are wandering, who are running, who are staggering, it is up to us to help people who are famished for mercy, and compassion, and love, to find it. That’s our whole job. That’s our reason for being Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston.

← Back to sermons page