Heed the Message

'A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding,  the spirit of counsel and might,  the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.'

--Isaiah 11: 1-10

'In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”'

--Matthew 3: 1-12

The second Sunday of Advent is one of those days that makes me chuckle a bit. Because despite the fact that when I read the text from Matthew I said,  “The Gospel of the Lord,” the Lord Jesus doesn’t actually make an appearance. It’s more like the Gospel of John the Baptist. Did you know that there is a small religious group that believe John the Baptist was the Messiah and the last of the prophets? They’re called the Mandaeans, and their number ranges from about 60,000-200,000 followers worldwide, most of whom are in Iran, Syria, and Jordan. This is a Mandaean Gospel if ever there was one, but that doesn’t make it any less of a Christian message, just because it’s John’s time to shine. The Baptist is both the inheritor of the prophetic witness of folks like Isaiah and the forerunner of Jesus; and they all are, effectively, calling folks to heed a particular message. 

The Baptist.

That message is one of metanoia, a Greek word that means “to turn oneself around,” and is generally translated into English as “repentance.” It can be a loaded word, and to be sure, a lot of preachers have misused it in such a fashion that folks think that it means they have to beat themselves up. To practice metanoia, though, is not to drown in self-imposed punishment, but to re-orient one’s self – heart, mind, and spirit – toward the grace, mercy, and love of God. It’s a paradigm shift, a changing of one’s whole attitude and self.

Jesus himself uses the word metanoia 14 different times, and like John, he will use that word in conjunction with another word that has been somewhat misused and misrepresented in our modern parlance, hamartia, which is an archery term meaning “to miss the mark,” but that gets translated into English as “sin.” John, as the forerunner, sets the stage for Jesus, urging people to heed this message of turning from their sins. To turn, to repent, as John articulates it, is itself a way of coming closer to God. Whatever drove the Pharisees and Sadducees out to see what John was up to was of a curiosity than a genuine desire to turn themselves around, which might be why John calls them a brood of vipers, an insult even Jesus will employ after John’s death. 

John’s message of repentance is one that calls folks to a sense of responsibility, looking deep into their own hearts and being truly honest with themselves, not hiding behind their egos or their place within a given community. The Pharisees and Sadducees were satisfied with being children of Abraham, that seems to have been enough for them. Modern Christians, too, have a version of that. We are satisfied with calling Jesus our Lord and belonging to a specific church. That seems to be enough. But such an attitude runs the risk of viewing sin as a kind of psychological dilemma, purely spiritual in nature, and not tied to the choices that we make on a daily basis. We pray, “God, guard my heart!” but then we get all out of sorts by what some might call “first world problems.” We ask Jesus, “Make me more prayerful, help me carve out time for spiritual practices!”, but then we say to him, “Geez, look at my schedule?! Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.” We ask for the mental assent to new life, but how often do we get to the actions that lead to the life-changing turn? We become like the car whose blinker keeps indicating that it’s going to turn any minute now….and is still blinking 10, 20, 30 miles later.

John’s invitation, which Jesus will carry forth, is to prove by the very way we live that we have, indeed, begun to turn. And make no mistake, this is not a one-time thing. We don’t suddenly turn around and realize we’ve got it all figured out – “Oh hey, Jesus! Didn’t see ya there!” - and keep walking along, now fully changed or enlightened. It takes doing again and again, that’s why metanoia is a spiritual practice; we gotta work at it all the time. It’s not a destination, it’a journey, one we embark on through prayer, personal confession, and those other practices that turn us away from our egos and toward the transformed life that Jesus has to give us. There’s a lovely story about when Father Thomas Keating, the architect of Centering Prayer, was leading a group of nuns in the practice, and one of the sisters approached him after they had done the exercise of 20 minutes of silence, and she said, “Oh Fr. Keating! I’m so bad at this. During the silence my mind went off in a hundred different directions, and I just feel awful!” Fr. Keating, smiling, said, “Oh wonderful! A hundred opportunities to turn back to God!” 

Father Thomas Keating.

The world is fixing to turn, and we are invited every day this Advent season to heed this message of continually turning toward the grace, mercy, and love of God; for in this message is the hope that God is working something new in our lives, something that bespeaks God again breaking into the world.  The vision from the prophet Isaiah is one of the most beautiful and powerful in all of Scripture, and it is all about metanoia.  A stump shall come up out of the tree of Jesse.  A stump, that which symbolizes death where there once was life.  But even a stump has roots, and lo and behold a shoot will sprout from those roots.  And what’s more, all living creatures will turn themselves around, the prey will lie with the predators, the former having let God quell their fear, and the latter surrendering to God their predatory instincts.  In their midst, a little child, the most vulnerable of all, will lead them. As Christians we read Jesus into this vision—he, a descendant of Jesse, is that promised shoot, that little child for whose birth we prepare —but those who first heard this vision would’ve known how it signals the birth of a new innocence in which trust, gentleness, and friendship are possible in an often-cruel world.  The whole creation is turning and moving in a new way; we need only ask to be shown where the moments are for us to turn, so that we finally click that blinker off. 

I cannot help but think, on a day like this with readings like these, of Rory Cooney’s Canticle of the Turning, an Advent song usually sung to the old Irish tune Star of the County Down. Our congregation sang it on Sunday, and below is a video of a virtual choir rendition they offered during the pandemic:  “My heart shall sing of the day you bring, let the fires of your justice burn; wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near; and the world is about to turn.”  Creation itself is turning, repenting. Perhaps if we all can heed the message, practice metanoia from our hamartia in the small, daily ways, then the bigger, systemic ways, will become more manageable, and this world can finally look like the loved, liberated, and life-giving place that God has always envisioned. 

The Church of the Advocate's virtual choir singing The Canticle of the Turning.

Again and Again and Again

'Jesus said to the disciples, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”'

--Matthew 24: 36-44

Here we go again. Another season – Advent – and the start of another church year – what we call Year A. I find great beauty and comfort in it, the rhythms and the routines of our liturgical cycle. As our secular calendar prepares to turn over, the Church gets something of a head start, moving into a mindset of preparedness for what is to come. It’s an old dance, but I’m always happy to join it again and again and again.

Still, the readings for the First Sunday of Advent always take me by surprise. I expect the gospel to be the opening lines of Matthew, which give us Jesus’ lineage and genealogy going back to Abraham, or at the very least I figure it’s going to be Matthew’s backstory of Jesus’ birth, which mostly focuses on Joseph. It throws me for a loop that our first Gospel for Advent in Year A features Jesus preaching about that day of many names: the Second Advent, Second Coming, the Eschaton, the Day of Resurrection, the Day of the Lord, the End Times, the End of the Age, take your pick.

When I hear this passage I think of a sermon preached by the Rev. Cleophus James at the Triple Rock Baptist Church in Calumet City, IL. Rev. Cleophus said in that sermon, “don’t be lost when your time comes; for the day of the Lord is coming as a thief in the night!” The congregation followed up with a singing of Old Landmark and dancing up and down the aisle. 

Reverend Cleophus James preaches to the flock at the Triple Rock Baptist Church.

I wish I could say I heard that sermon in-person, but I didn’t because Triple Rock Baptist Church doesn’t exist, and the Rev. Cleophus James was a character played by the late-Godfather of Soul, James Brown, and the sermon and song-and-dance routine are from an early scene in my favorite live-action movie, The Blues Brothers. That film will preach, y'all! There’s good news in Reverend Cleophus’ sermon; good news that Jesus imparts in his own sermon to our ancestors and to us even still; though it might not seem so at first glance.

The thought of Jesus sneaking up on us at some unknown hour doesn’t exactly sound like the good kind of news, am I right? Considering the stress that we are already under – like, all the time – now we have to guard against a surprise visit from Jesus? To borrow a line from Seinfeld: I hate the pop-in (and I bet many of y’all do too)! To constantly be at red alert, under threat of intrusion, even by Jesus, whom we profess to love, sounds utterly exhausting. Can’t he at least send a text first?

Wonder if Debbie is ready...

Realistically, though, does it seem likely to any of us that Jesus actually wants to scare us into readiness? He’s not some cartoonish evil engineer, stepping off the train as it races forward at top speed, leaving us to steer the thing, then threating punishment if it gets off-track. He’s the same Jesus who will say at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Maybe this dire warning of his – and the many more we will hear in this Gospel throughout the year – are not merely about a future day that we affirm in our Creed will eventually come; maybe warnings such as this one are about all of our days.

To be on guard against some spectacular, sky-breaking day, whose date is unknown can leave us feeling even more anxious and unprepared. To know that Jesus comes unexpectedly EVERY DAY, though, changes our lives and hour whole perspective. Now each situation, each place, each person is where Jesus is apt to appear. Life becomes less of a threat and more of an adventure. Jesus showing up again – and again and again – maybe even today(!) - becomes the expectation that he will, no doubt show up soon and very soon. We become like the congregation of early Christians in Rome to whom Paul reminded, “Keep awake!” Or, in our more modern parlance: stay woke! 

I asked our Bible Study group last week: how many Second Comings have y’all survived? Passages like this Gospel text today may evoke thoughts of our more evangelical siblings and their penchant for trying to predict when Jesus is coming again to judge the quick and the dead. I wonder what kinds of fears and anxieties are at work in the hearts, as they feel it so necessary to get that date right. Perhaps there is grief over what is going on in their lives at the present moment – I’m sure we can all understand that – and they try to almost will Jesus to come on back and take them away from all of the pain and suffering they see. It’s that bargaining phase of grief, an effort to make sense of what we is being experienced. If we can fine-tune when he’s going to get here, we can be ready; it’s a form of maintaining control. Yet Jesus himself says that it is not our place, nor is it even his place, to know when such a moment will occur. That privilege belongs only to God. So maybe it isn’t about being anxious or fearful of the future. Maybe it is in the present moment – all of our present moments, from now until that day – that we are called to practice making room in ourselves for his arrival, or noticing him when he already shows up in our neighbor. In our churches we engage in spiritual practices of prayer, study, and mindfulness; we meet him at the Table, and we see him in one another, as we pass the Peace, we welcome the stranger, and we break bread together after worship. Yet if Sunday morning is merely the dress rehearsal for the rest of our lives – as one colleague of mine is prone to say – then what could it mean for us, as we head back out into the world, to have that kind of mindful preparedness, to anticipate Jesus’ arrival wherever and with whomever we go? At the gas station, the grocery store, or the Target: what if we prepared to see Jesus there?

The opportunities for Jesus to surprise us are there every day. From the moment our open our physical eyes up to the moment they close, there is the possibility that they the eyes of our hearts can be open to some sort of heavenly breakthrough. Maybe that’s our prayer this Advent: to have those eyes to see, to have the curiosity so as to be surprised, to prepare with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind, for Jesus’ arrival.

Noah, Jesus reminds us, prepared for what was to come, even during the sunny days. Though his neighbors scoffed at him, though he could have tried predicting when the rains would start to fall, he prepared each day as if that could be the moment. Advent is the time for us to make such preparation. The more we prepare, the less anxious we become, and the more ready we are for Jesus’ Second Advent, whenever that may be.

German theologian Karl Barth said that we live between Creation and Re-Creation. It’s a liminal space, this life of ours. Ferris Bueller said that life comes at us fast, and if we don’t slow down, we might miss it. We dare not miss those moments, sisters and brothers. We dare not be numb to the world around us so much that we miss the opportunity each moment presents for Jesus to show up again…and again…and again. 

Superhero or Savior?

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. The people stood by, watching Jesus on the cross; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews."

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

--Luke 23: 33-43

One of my favorite philosophers is Homer…Simpson. He is so wise. One of my favorite of Homer’s teachings occurred during a time when he inexplicably found himself floating down a river in a cherry picker as his daughter Lisa looked on helplessly from the shore. Homer clasped his hands in his hour of need and looked up to heaven and said, “I’m not normally a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman!”

Homer praying.

Homer wanted a hero to swoop down and save the day; and who could blame him? Superheroes are the ideal versions of ourselves, the ones who are always there to rescue us from the muck that we get ourselves into. In the early fall my parish held a class called Supergods, where we talked about how characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, are modern-day mythological heroes, divine-like beings who do the kind of saving that, frankly, we might sometimes wish God would do. How often have we, like Homer, clasped our hands and prayed for someone to save us from our time of trial, maybe even swooping down from the sky with a cape flapping in the wind? Is this our image of the Divine?

It should come as no surprise to us even now that folks in Jesus’ own time thought of him as something like this kind of hero, one who would rescue everybody and fix their problems. Plenty of people still do. Jesus, after all, was the promised Messiah, the King of Israel, the one who would overthrow the tyranny of Rome and replace it with a new version of the old Kingdom that his ancestor David had reigned over; and like King David, he would be a conquering hero, super even. That was the hope, anyway.

They wanted a king. Some still do. This past Sunday was the Feast of Christ the King, a day that was created in 1925 to remind faithful followers of Jesus, during the rise of European fascism, that Jesus alone must reign in their hearts and minds, and not the State or its would-be kings and dictators. Pope Pius XI, who established Christ the King Sunday, called it a day of joy, which is why I wore white vestments. So where do we find Jesus our sovereign on this joyful, feast of the Church? At the place called the Skull.

Icon of Jesus being crucified among the criminals.

It's here that the King of Glory reigns. Instead of a throne, there is a cross. Instead of crown of jewels we have one of thorns. Instead of subjects praising and adoring Jesus we have soldiers and religious leaders and passers-by mocking and deriding him. This isn’t an image of kingship, of majesty, and power. It’s a joke, a mockery of the very concept, and the only one who seems in on it, who even begins to understand, is a criminal who is hanging there with Jesus.

This exchange between Jesus and the other two men being crucified only appears in Luke’s version of the story, and it’s quite telling. The original Greek word used to describe the criminals is kakourgos, literally meaning, ‘workers of evil.’  These were not robbers or thugs, these were seditionists, insurrectionists, militants who had carried out plots against the tyranny of the empire. Not exactly a royal court for Christ the King.   Still, in this moment we see the qualities that mark his kingdom.  He pleads to God, “Father, forgive them!” on behalf of those mocking him and putting him to death.  The first criminal joins in the derision, hearing Jesus’ words of forgiveness and paying them no mind, as he is only interested in what Jesus can do for him now.  The second, however, hears Jesus’ words, and he seeks a place in such a kingdom, where the defining characteristic is pardon, not punishment, where even condemned criminals can be redeemed:  “Jesus,” he begs, “remember me.”  And Jesus’ offers grace in his reply to this man, whom the Church will remember by the name of Dismas, telling him that he will be with Jesus in Paradise. Forgiveness for his executioners and grace for criminal – the qualities of Christ’s kingdom.

Saint Dismas.

This is a complete flipping of every idea that the world has ever had about kingship, sovereignty, and power. But that’s the point. Of the Jesus story and of this feast day. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, which we’ve been reading all year, Jesus has been telling us, in his own words spoken through parables what his kingdom –  what he called the Kingdom of Heaven – looks like: a wasteful, prodigal child returning to a father’s loving arms; a hated outsider, a foreigner, serving as the model of neighborly behavior; a shepherd foolishly going off to find one lost sheep; a rich man’s feast open to the poor and marginalized. A day called Christ the King may seem to invite a Gospel reading like Matthew, chapter 24, with images of Jesus coming with the angels, riding on the clouds and shining like the sun at the trumpet call, but instead we get Jesus being crucified, labeled among the enemies of the state, because the kingship of Jesus is summed up right here at the cross: that if Jesus is king, no one else, not even Caesar, can be.

In his excellent book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Dr. James Cone writes that the Gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair. The Christian Gospel, he goes on to say, is an immanent reality, a powerful liberating presence among the poor right now in their midst. The Gospel is found wherever poor people struggle. This is the lesson of the cross. It’s not a superhero saving the day; it’s a Savior who suffers in solidarity.

Jesus reigns from the cross, from that place of suffering. Jesus reigns in hospice houses, homeless shelters, and prison cells. Lately, Jesus has been reigning in the Home Depot parking lots around the Triangle of North Carolina, and at the detention center in Alamance County that’s been used to house those illegally detained. Border Patrol and ICE agents rolled into North Carolina like thuggish Roman soldiers, hellbent on intimidating people into submission. In the same way that they crucified the Prince of Peace in a public space so that onlookers could see “This is what happens when you defy the emperor!” they arrest innocent men, women, and children in an attempt to bully our immigrant neighbors – namely those who are people of color, let’s be honest – into giving up and going “back where they came from.” Stay here and defy our would-be emperor, and you’ll get the same treatment, they say. 

ICE agents in Durham.

Many were met with good old fashioned North Carolina resistance and have fled like the cowards they are. Others remain in cities all over the country, but what they don’t know is that they have already lot. Because the one we follow, the one so many of our immigrant neighbors follow, the one we love, the one we call our king, our sovereign, our Lord, our Savior, and our friend, is not a superhuman hero that will come fix all of our problems if we say the right prayer to him; he reigns from the cross. He who knows suffering is found in the very places where his people suffer, and in that solidarity he will transform their despair into hope, just as he transformed that ugly Friday afternoon into a gloriously beautiful Sunday morning. 

If we want to see our king reigning in his glory here and now, all we need to do is go to the cross, go to the places where suffering is so real, so present, and just be there, in solidarity with the suffering poor, especially our immigrant neighbors right now, and we will see his kingdom in real time, a kingdom, that we affirm in our Nicene Creed, will have no end. As the Greek scholar Preston Epps once wrote:  the kingdom of humanity says assert yourself, the kingdom of Christ says humble yourself; the kingdom of humanity says retaliate, the kingdom of Christ says forgive; the kingdom of humanity says get and accumulate, the kingdom of Christ says give and share.  So which kingdom will we claim? 

Resurrection Eyes

'Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."

Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."'

--Luke 20: 27-38

Every week I find a spot somewhere to sit – usually a coffee shop, or maybe a place to eat lunch- and I have a little sign that reads “Free prayers and conversations.” You wouldn’t believe some of the folks who stop by and talk with me and some of the things that they have to say. Some are prayer requests – even from folks who say they don’t believe, but they ask me to pray for folks who do – or one time when a random stranger handed me 20 bucks and said in a Northeastern accent: “Here, Fadda, this is for the church!” Sometimes, though, I get a little tripped up; someone will have a deep theological question that I can’t easily answer, one in which it feels like I’m caught in a kind of trap. One such question I’ve been asked on more than one occasion is  If the resurrection is real, what’s it like?

Weekly setup.

I’ve tried, in those moments, to remember how Jesus answered a question like that. We find him this morning during the final week of his life, teaching in the Temple.  After confrontations with scribes, chief priests, and Pharisees, now it’s the Sadducees’ turn to go toe-to-toe with Jesus, the only time they ever do so.  We talk a lot about the Pharisees, but who were the Sadducees?  The Jewish historian Josephus described the Sadducees as wealthy, urban, conservative aristocrats.  Where the Pharisees cared little about politics—anyone could be in power as long as the Pharisees got to exercise their faith—the Sadducees were the high priestly class, part of the collaboration system with the Roman Empire, and hell-bent on maintaining their wealth and status.  They followed only Torah—the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures—and ignored the prophets, the Psalms, or any other wisdom literature.  They did not believe in a day of resurrection; after all, if you’re rich and powerful, who needs an afterlife?  Nor did they believe in a coming Messiah. Both events would cause a disturbance to their carefully ordered lives.  So when they approach Jesus with a question about resurrection, they are not at all being sincere, but rather they just want to trip him up with a question designed to humiliate him and his ridiculous belief.  This moment is “gotcha journalism” at its finest, to borrow a line from a colleague.  

Their question goes something like this:  OK, Jesus, if there really is a resurrection, suppose a woman’s husband dies and they have no children, prompting the man’s brother to marry her in accordance with the Law, but he dies childless, and the pattern continues until the woman has married all seven brothers without bearing a child. So whose wife will she be at the resurrection?

You can hear the smugness come through, can’t you?  We got him, they’re saying to themselves, maybe even with a dude-bro fist bump or two.  Then Jesus responds, and his response is so profound that Luke says in the very next sentence following the end of our reading today, that nobody dared question him from this point forward.  

Jesus confronts the Sadducees. 

So how about that response? The Sadducees think that if there is a resurrected life, then it must follow the same pattern and rules as this one, and this life is governed by Torah, the Law.  In the Law there is the prescription for a man to marry his dead brother’s widow if no children are born.  The reason that this Law exists is to maintain justice for the widows, to be sure that they are not forced to live as beggars after their husbands’ deaths.  It is a well-meaning law, but it fails in one crucial way:  it treats women as property.  “Whose wife will she be?” they ask, implying a sense of ownership.  

Immediately, Jesus rejects this.  His rejection is not of marriage but of possession.  He acknowledge that in this age people are “given” in marriage, but it is not so in the age to come; that is, in the resurrected life with God.  It’s important to remember that in Jesus’ day marriage was not an institution oriented around romantic love and affection between two people, but a rather it was an economic institution, whereby families’ allegiances were maintained in the giving of a daughter away in exchange for a dowry. But, as Jesus points out, in the resurrected life with God, no one is “given” in marriage because that great sacrament from God that makes two become one is not about possession or property but about belonging; the couple’s belonging to each other, which reflects all of humanity’s belonging to God.  As our own marriage rite says, it is a reflection of Christ’s love for us, a reminder of that belonging.  To imply that a woman would remain the property of a man in the age to come is to infer that God’s future is merely an extension of our own present, but Jesus makes clear that resurrection entails transformation into something new, or in this case into that original vision of how God intended for people to be in relationship with one another.

The original vision of God, as we have said before, is justice for all of God’s children.  This is an important piece to remember, because, as collaborators with Rome, the Sadducees had a stake in maintaining unjust systems.  Of course, they will deny a resurrection, or some life to come with God, because if there is no resurrection then this life right now is all there is and the only opportunity for God’s justice to be realized, and that is bad news for a population under Roman occupation.  It’s bad news for anyone who has known and still knows the sting of injustice, the endless cries that fall on deaf ears.  But the reality of resurrection gives hope to the oppressed, a promise that there will come a day when God will break through, and justice will roll down like waters for all of creation.  Such a promise was terrifying for the Sadducees.  

What is the one thing that people in power are most afraid of? Losing their power. Resurrection takes the power that humanity has tried to claim, over one another, and over life itself, and gives it back to God. Resurrection reminds us, reassures us, that, to quote the prophet, “My ways are not your ways,” says the Lord. In our time we see this with the fast rise of artificial intelligence and the attempts by the billionaire tech-bros – something of a modern-day Sadduceess – to overcome that pesky little problem of death, so that their power and influence will live on forever. But only one thing lives forever, and that is love. The love of the God who is love, the love Jesus embodies in feeding the multitudes, healing the sick, and letting the state kill him, only to mock death to its face three days later and show the world that even the grave can’t hold down love. The rules on this side of the kingdom, a side that is permeable and broken, no longer apply. Our addictions to possessions, prestige, and power, have no place in a resurrected life. 

How fitting, then, that we read this passage one week after All Saints Day? We were reminded then that those we love but see no longer are alive in the resurrected life that will be ours one day; a life that is beyond the injustices of our own time because God is God, not of the dead, but of the living – for God there is no distinction between the two; “life is changed, not ended,” our burial rite says. This is the life that is to come beyond death, yes, but it is also the life that is to come here, on earth as in heaven. It is a promise for which we all hope; truly, good news for the poor. Resurrection is simply the nature of who God is, and cannot ever be understood with minds that cannot imagine a reality beyond their own experiences, as the Sadducees had. We can keep scratching the perpetual itch of uncertainty, waiting for more proof to be given so that we have a better answer and understanding, or we can start seeing life, the life right now, as well as the life to come, through resurrection eyes. The proof will be in the living. 

I Mean to Be One Too

I wanna tell you a story about a saint. You won’t find any schools or hospitals named for this person. No icons. His name was Sam Dotson, and he was a saint on earth if ever there was one. Sam was born up a holler in Pound VA in 1946. He was a quadriplegic and lived with cerebral palsy. Given up by his mother, he was raised by his paternal grandmother, but once she died he entered a nursing home, where he would live for the rest of his life. I first met Sam when I was about seven or eight years old; a group of folks from my home church of All Saints in Norton, who had attended Cursillo, which is a Christian renewal weekend, decided to start up a little worship service at the nursing home where Sam lived. He had this big motorized wheelchair and spoke with the help of a computer that he typed with his index finger. I’d sit with him and sing along with the songs – his favorite was always I’ll Fly Away, he shared that with my mother. 

With Sam Dotson, circa 1995.

Sam loved basketball, and as it turned out, my dad was the coach at the local college right across the street, so many nights my mom and I would wheel him over, and he’d sit there at the end of the bench with me, watching intently and always reacting to every play. The team thought so much of him that they dedicated the seat directly across from Sam’s spot in his honor. 

What I remember most about Sam is his grace and attentiveness. My mom was going through some hard times in those days, and she would often go and just sit and talk with Sam because she knew he’d listen and that he cared. One time, being the dumb little kid that I was, I asked Sam if he blamed God for what happened to him. Who wouldn’t, I thought. He immediately shook his head over and over again and typed out his response on that little computer. He said he never blamed God or got mad at God because he was grateful for every single moment that God gave him. I’ve never seen someone who understood the meaning of gratitude quite like him. I can still see him, can still feel his hugs, and hear him say, in his own voice, as we’d leave his room, “Be good.” Always. Be good.

Sam died in 1997 at the age of 51. By all accounts he lived a much longer life than doctors originally expected, but it still didn’t feel at all like enough time. My family were actually the last folks to see him there in Norton Community Hospital. I think of Sam every All Saints; in fact, one year in college the church I was attending invited folks to write down the names of people who’ve been saints in their lives and told us to hang on to them. I still have mine. 

I share the story of Sam Dotson because every saint has a story, and every one of them deserves to be told. I’m sure that you all have such stories; stories of family members, mentors, teachers, maybe even priests, who have gone on to glory, whose examples still resonate with you. Hold them close during this Fall Triduum of All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls, because they are very much with us right now. 

I get asked sometimes how someone becomes a saint in the Episcopal Church. What qualifies someone? Do they have to be Episcopalian? No. Do they have to have some miracles attributed to them? No. Our definition of saints is more in line with how the earliest Christians thought about them. These were not perfect individuals, but merely faithful ones. They were the folks whose lives spoke out loud the grace, mercy, and love of God. Many were killed for their faith, yes, but that certainly was never a requirement. And while we do have a process for approving folks onto our official calendar of saints, it’s not as convoluted or lengthy as some others. We Episcopalians believe that while everyone might not be a saint, everyone does have the capacity to be one, because everyone is made in the image of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God. On Sunday morning, the cantors of our parish opened our All Saints Eucharist with a litany of saints, and the chapel was decorated with the pictures of all those folks we love but see no longer. Those named folks, and those known by only a few in those pictures, all have stories, and they all deserve to be told.

On Sunday I invited our folks to look around at the saints who surrounded us that day in ancient icons and modern photography. They are our legacy, not merely the legacy of the Advocate, but the legacy of our everyday lives. They are the ones who have inspired us, loved us, brought us back from the brink, and helped us discover our truest, deepest selves. That legacy is the reason why folks that day were invited to bring their pledge cards to the altar during our offertory, so that they may be blessed for next year, yes, but more than that; so that they may help ensure the legacy of the Advocate, for generations to come. Maybe one day, when we’ve all joined that great cloud of witnesses, our pictures, too, will hang in that chapel on All Saints, and our children and children’s children will point and say, “She’s the reason I’m here. They inspired me with their faithfulness. He always told me to be good.”

I've thought a lot about legacy and wondered too what some of those saints would think about the world today. Would St. Martin still give the coat on his back to the beggar? Would St. Alban give safe lodging to a Muslim imam fleeing angry authorities and die in his place, as he once did for a Christian priest? Would St. Moses the Black and St. Mary of Egypt find anyone to join them in repenting their sins and going into the wilderness to meet God? Where are the saints today? Who will speak truth to power? Who will speak up against the sin of xenophobia and demand, in the name of Jesus, that the stranger be welcomed? Who will denounce the powers and principalities that would willingly take away, especially from children, SNAP benefits and the basic human right to food and sustenance – give us today our daily bread! Who will carry on the legacy of the saints who gave everything – including their lives – for the Gospel of love proclaimed by the Prince of Peace? The saints of God are just folks like me….and I mean to be one too….right? What we do in life, someone once said, echoes in eternity. The saints remind us of that.

St. Moses the Black, who repented of a life of crime and moved into the wilderness to meet God.

Several of the saints that surrounded us on Sunday were depicted in icons, but there is a saying amongst our Orthodox siblings that one’s life is meant to be a living icon. Wherever you go, folks are meant to see Jesus, to know his love, his forgiveness, his hope in something much greater than the powers and principalities of this world. The waters of baptism, with which we were splashed once again, unite us to Jesus, to one another, and to the saints in heaven and on earth. The bread and wine are food and drink for our journey into a world that is often scary, but because we eat the Body of Christ, we can go and BE the Body of Christ. The saints were and are the people who give us the courage to face the challenges of our own times, just as they did, and thanks to the legacy they have left us, we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that love always wins, and that nothing, not even death itself, can ever separate us from the love of God that we have in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

I don’t know much; I’m just a small town bird lawyer (if you know, you know!). But as I say in most of my funeral homilies, I do know that heaven is real, it has to be because I’ve staked my life on that claim. And I know that whatever it looks like, it is not only the place where the saints feast forever in the presence of Jesus, but it’s something that Jesus himself said has come near. Thanks be to God for Sam Dotson and all the saints in this and every generation who inspire us to make Jesus’ words fully known in our day until the day we are united with them again on a far greater shore. May all the saints, who from their labors rest, pray for us.

That Kind of Love

'Jesus said to his disciples, “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world-- therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, she will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.”'

--John 15: 17-27

When my friend Marshall Jolly, the beloved new(ish) rector of St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church in Aiken, SC, a man with whom I share a long history and a deep appreciation and admiration, asked me to preach that church's patronal feast day, there was one important question to consider: floor or pulpit? Because the fact is that over the two years I was blessed to serve as the Director of Youth at St. Thad’s and gym teacher (yes, gym teacher!) at Mead Hall School, and over the several times I’ve been able to go back to that church, I never stood in the pulpit. I blame Jospeh Whitehurst, their longtime churate/associate rector, who had a greater impact on my early days in church work than he will ever know. Thus, I gave this message/homily/sermon from a very familiar spot: the floor of the nave of St. Thaddeus. 

St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church, Aiken, SC

I’ve carried St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church and Mead Hall School with me everywhere I have gone. Even what I wore while preaching. My cassock (the black robe) and surplice (the white…thing) were a gift from St. Thaddeus. And my red stole, even though it didn't match Marshall’s dress or the other hangings, was really special because it belonged to Mother Mellie Hickey, the first woman ordained a priest in the state of South Carolina, who, along with her husband, Fr. Howard Hickey, ministered in this place until she was over 100 years old. Your previous rector gave me this stole on the occasion of her death, and I’ve worn it at both my ordinations and only break it out on special occasions. I think this feast day qualified.

With apologies to Simon the Zealot, but as far as the folks in Aiken are concerned, this day is about his companion , Jude Thaddeus. The name is pretty redundant – and repetitive – given that Jude and Thaddeus are both variations on the name Judas. Considering that folks probably didn’t want him confused with…..the other guy, Judas – not Isacariot – is more often referred to as either Jude or Thaddeus. I suspect most of us are more familiar with Jude – what with St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and all – but since about 2007 or so, he’s always been Thaddeus to me. But what’s in a name, right?

Church tradition says that Thaddeus was one of the original 12 apostles, along with Simon the Zealot. He was present at Pentecost and received the Holy Spirit that day, which is why he’s often showed with a flame above his head. And they say he traveled all over Mesopotamia in the days afterwards, mostly with Bartholomew; in fact, when the St. Thaddeus youth group joined with the one from St. Bartholemew’s in North Augusta for our first ski trip in 2008, their youth minister, the now Rev John Bethell, told the kids that our trip wasn’t the first time Bart and Thad had traveled together. Despite the two both being claimed by the Armenian Church as their founders, Thaddeus shares his feast day with Simon the Zealot, with whom he was martyred around the year 65 or 66 in Armenia; Thaddeus is often depicted holding an axe or a club to indicate how he died. You can use your imagination. 

St. Thaddeus and St. Simon, who share a feast day.

 Jesus told Thaddeus and Simon and the others: I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. This was part of Jesus’ last great teaching to them before his arrest and crucifixion; we call it the Farewell Discourse. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. What commands? A short while earlier Jesus had told them to not let their hearts be troubled, to believe in God and believe in him. They were going to face trials and hardships, Jesus didn’t have to be a psychic to understand that. Yes, Thaddeus, Simon, and the others would face those hardships, but consider that these words were written down almost a whole century after Jesus would’ve said them, to a community of folks who were scared, anxious, and altogether unsure of what the future held. For the folks who first heard this Gospel read in their midst, they had experienced the loss of their Temple and a resounding defeat in a war with the Romans. Questions abounded about what their faith could even look like in the aftermath of such trauma. It’s not hard to see how the words of Jesus would’ve hit them. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe in me. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. I can’t help but think that Thaddeus and Simon held on to those words, held on to each other, and held on to Jesus as they faced their deaths. I’d like to hope we could do the same. What wondrous love is this, O my soul?

But what’s love got to do with it…got to do with it? English is such a fickle language because we only have one word for love. I love my wife. I love the Cleveland Guardian. I love...lamp. There are eight Greek words used in the New Testament, which are translated into English as ‘love,’ but the word Jesus uses, agape is not used in any other contemporary Greek texts outside of the Bible. Think about that for a second. What kind of love must this be? There is no direct English equivalent, but the best we can come up with is Christian love. The love of God as expressed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Pierce Pettis, one of my favorite singer-songwriters has song called That Kind of Love, I played it one time at a youth group function where we shared songs that made us think about God. His is the best definition of agape I’ve found: “love triumphant, love on fire; love that humbles and inspires; love that does not hesitate, with no conditions, no restraints; that kind of love.” Former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry used to say that if it ain’t about love it ain’t about God. That kind of love. The kind of love that sets captives free, even as they are led to their deaths, as Simon and Thaddeus were. Love that comes in the hospital room at 4 am to clean you up when you’ve had a terrible accident, as an angel named Linda did for me after I received a liver transplant four years ago. Love that gives kids a chance when others might not, as Mead Hall teachers have done. Love that welcomes all, strangers and friends, as the clergy and people of St. Thaddeus have done for more than 180 years. I know this love is real, and I’ve staked my life on it. I know Jesus’ words were not just for Simon and Thaddeus, or the community of the Fourth Gospel that wrote them down, but they are for us. Now more than ever. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. 

Pierce Pettis: That Kind of Love

There’s an old saying among our Orthodox siblings that Jesus welcomes everyone to follow him but doesn’t expect anyone to remain the same when they do so. If you are really about that kind of love, be warned, it will change you. It will take you down paths that you could never have imagined. It will make you see God in the ordinary stuff of life, as we meet Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, the water of baptism, and the oil of healing. It will tug at your heartstrings and make you root for the underdog. It will give you eyes to see that your life and the life of your neighbor – every single neighbor – is intricately linked, as Simon and Thaddeus’ lives were linked, even unto death. And it will call you away from the world’s temptations of power, prestige, and possessions – the same temptations Jesus himself faced in the wilderness with Satan - and it’ll lead you to kenosis, the emptying of oneself, that Paul uses to describe Jesus’ love on the cross, and to metanoia, the turning around of oneself that we also call repentance.  

It's not a pie-in-the sky, high hopes, Precious Moments, kind of love. It’s a love that gets down in the trenches with one another, and it’s a love I learned how to cultivate because I saw it at St. Thaddeus Church. You showed me that. Ella Breckenridge and Clarke Saunders of blessed memory showed me that. The patrons of the soup kitchen showed me that. Far too many people for me to name right now because I am sure to leave someone out, all showed me that. Now, as I told St. Thaddeus, go and show the world that kind of love! 

Wrestling With God

'The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." Then the man said, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved." The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.'

--Genesis 32: 22-31

'In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.'

--II Timothy 4: 1-5

'Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, `Grant me justice against my opponent.' For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, `Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"'

--Luke 18: 1-8

I have a confession to make.  I am closet fan of professional wrestling. I got hooked when I was in high school, thanks to Kenny Mullins, the senior in my 8th grade algebra class who said to me one week, “Just watch it!” I did and it’s been all downhill ever since.  I gave up religiously watching several years ago, but I’m still fascinated by it. It may be predetermined, but at its core it represents something fundamental about the human condition: the struggle between the babyface good guy and the heel bad guy, and in the end there is always a resolution.

Cody Rhodes (babyface) v. Roman Reigns (heel) at Wrestlemania.

However you may now think of me, pro wrestling is what I first thought about when I read our Scriptures for this past week. In Genesis we find Jacob running for his life, and to be honest, he’s kind of the heel in this story. He has cheated his brother Essau of his birthright, stolen a blessing from their father Isaac that was reserved for Essau, and altogether cheated and lied to get what he wants. Classic heel. Essau is out to get Jacob, who we find in today’s reading on a mountain where he wrestles all night with a stranger. It is widely accepted that this stranger is some kind of earthly form for God. All night long they struggle, grappling with one another. God knocks out Jacob’s hip, but Jacob is relentless and won’t quit until he receives a blessing. When morning comes the blessing is granted, God gives to Jacob a new name, Israel – literally, one who wrestles with God. Jacob even names that Peniel – the face of God. Wrestlemania’s got nothing on this bout. 

Jacob wrestles with God.

Our epistle from II Timothy paints the picture of an early Christian community that is struggling, wrestling both with their leadership, and probably with one another, as some are jumping ship. This letter, written to the community’s leader, is less of a chastisement of struggle and more of encouragement to persist and persevere through those kinds of struggles;  to wrestle with one another in ways that lead to healing and shared mission within the community.

That same persistence is what Jesus is articulating in the parable from the Gospel of Luke.  Let’s be honest, this isn’t the easiest parable in Jesus’ bag. If the judge in the story – often called the Unjust Judge – is a stand-in for God, he’s no babyface. He refuses to grant the widow’s request time and time again; she finally wears him out, wrestles with him, until he gives in to her demands, weary that she will exhaust him, or as the literal translation of the Greek reads: ‘Give him a black eye!’ I don’t believe, nor do any biblical scholars I could find believe, that we are meant to view the judge as a stand-in for God. Our relationship to God is not one where we have to pester God to the point that our request is granted – that is a pretty immature kind of faith; God isn’t some sort of cosmic vending machine that will eventually give us what we want. Yet sometimes, it can definitely feel like we are wrestling with, or even pestering God. The moral of the parable, then, is that our faith should be persistent and relentless, not so that we get what we want, but so that we always remember that God is not like the Unjust Judge, and does, in fact, hear us and bring about a resolution, even if it is not always the kind that we’re seeking. 

The Parable of the Unjust Judge by Nicola Saric

The story of Jacob, the commentary on the community of II Timothy, and the parable of the Persistent Widow speak to something to which we all can relate, and that is the struggle we sometimes feel with God, and maybe even with one another.  There isn’t a person out there who has not wrestled with God, sometimes all night like Jacob.  There isn’t a person out there who has not felt like they have pestered God again and again with their request. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there, maybe in the last year, certainly in the last five years, and even in the Before-Covid Times, we found ourselves in those knock-down, drag-out struggles. When change came suddenly and without warning. When we lost a job, or a loved one died. When everything we thought we knew to be true about ourselves was challenged. We’ve all been there, and some are there now.

I’ve had a lot of conversations with people over the years who have been really going through it and are scared because they had been taught that you don’t wrestle with God or question God. You just accept everything that comes your way, without complaint. Yet this is contrary to what the Bible actually shows us. It’s not just in these Scriptures for this week. Maybe the best example, of course, is Job. We don’t read nearly enough from Job, but that story is one that often gets misinterpreted. We celebrate his patience or the fact that Job coined the phrase, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ but we sometimes forget that even Job eventually cursed God and cursed the day he was born.  Job is old, one of the oldest stories we have, whose roots can be traced back to an era long before Judaism existed, and its lesson is older than our Scriptures themselves, the lesson that part of what it means to be human is to wrestle with the Divine.

Eastern Orthodox icon of Job on the dung heap.

 

I actually believe that that is Good News. Here’s why. It’s the lesson of the cross, the lesson of struggle, the kind of realization that comes from wrestling with God in such a way that, like Jesus in that moment, we exclaim, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” To accept a message that says we should not wrestle with God, or that struggle with God and one another should never happen, minimizes our experiences of pain, and we no longer ground ourselves in reality, the reality that the writer of II Timothy knew, which is that living in community is hard, whether that community is a family, a church, or even just our one-on-one relationship with God. The wrestling matches we get into may not be easy or shot – they are seldom either- but in the end, out of those struggles, comes clarity and. an understanding of who we really are, like Jacob getting a new name, and a new path forward, like the empty tomb in place of the cross.

We may often come to the Scriptures looking for the message that makes us feel good, only to be hit with stories like these. They remind us that when we wrestle with God we are not doing anything wrong. We are, in fact, growing deeper in our knowledge and love of God, becoming more mature in our faith. It is similar to a marriage. I’ve probably learned the most about my wife, myself, and our relationship in the times we’ve wrestled with each other. They’ve actually made our relationship even stronger, more mature and meaningful. Cynthia Bourgeault, who is an Episcopal priest and contributor with Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation, says in her book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, that the hallmark of a healthy relationship is not so much how well you get along but how well you fight, how you move through those wrestling matches, and come back to each other; the resilience that is at the heart of the relationship that tells you never to quit on each other. God doesn’t quit on us. Why should we quit on God or each other?

So if you find yourself today questioning God, wrestling with God, know that it’s ok. If you feel like you’re pestering God, that’s fine because God can take it. And in the end, you might come away changed, maybe with a limp or a new name, but one way or another, when the bell sounds, you’ll discover who you really are.