Dichotomy, or Paradox and Complexity?

The Gospel reading appointed for this Sunday includes “John’s” (the Johannine) Great Commission in John 20:20, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

Which begs the question…“Where’s he sending them, and by extension, us?” Jesus doesn’t clarify here, but we know the answer to that from the Great Commission found in Matthew 28: into “the world” to make disciples.

And that being the case, it behooves us to know—in the proper and biblical sense—as much about how we ought to see and interpret “the world” as we possibly can. Is it a world of dichotomy (good/bad, sacred/secular), or is it a world full of paradox and complexity? Knowing the answer to this question will radically shape how we embody our Mission (“to make disciples”) and our Shared Vision (I’m hoping you know what that is by now).

One of the signs

This Sunday is the Fourth Sunday in Advent and this week’s Gospel reading tells us much about the character of the Son of God. On the one hand, he is forthright in carrying out his ministry to preach the Gospel, heal the sick, and feed the hungry. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…” (see Isaiah 61:1-5). Here is the mission of the Servant of God to Israel, and it compels Jesus to carry it out in feeding a multitude, the fourth of the seven signs in John pointing to Jesus as the perfect fulfillment of all the law and the prophets.

Something Deeper?

The church where I grew up regularly hosted traveling music groups. They’d always have their LPs (yes, LPs) and other stuff—their “merch”—to sell, but at our church they weren’t allowed to do this. At least not in the sanctuary or the foyer where most people entered. The rationale came, at least in part, from this week’s Gospel reading. Jesus clearly didn’t like it when folks hawked their wares around the Temple, and therefore we shouldn’t sell stuff around the sanctuary.

To be sure, the place of worship in first-century Israel and the auditorium of a small independent church in Southern California don’t correspond exactly, but true to Jesus’s words, my church didn’t want the place of worship to be co-opted as a place of commerce. And that much is right.

But is merch in church really the heart of the issue…or is it something deeper, something much more invisible and insidious?

Cardinal Point

We’re all familiar with cardinal numbers, cardinal points on the compass, cardinal virtues, and Cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church. None of these have anything to do with either the bird or the color red.

Cardinal comes from the Latin word for hinge, like a door or a gate turns on.

This week’s Gospel describes a cardinal point (cardinalis punctum) in the ministry of Jesus. From Peter’s limited perspective, in one brief moment the whole thing takes a turn. And not for the better.

Been there, experienced that.

Lent lasts forty days excluding Sundays, because as celebrations of the Resurrection of Jesus they are always feast days and never fast days.

These forty days recall Christ’s fasting and temptation in the wilderness following his baptism by John in the Jordan River. And because we’re in Year B of the three-year Sunday Lectionary cycle, this Sunday’s Gospel comes from Mark (Matthew is Year A, Luke is Year C). As opposed to Matthew and Luke, who give a lot more detail, Marks account is astoundingly brief. The entire forty days take up only two quick sentences in Mark 1. That’s it. We get the specific content of the three temptations Jesus faced in Matthew and Luke.

But still, even in Mark’s brevity, the stunning point is clear: we have a God who knows by experience what it’s like to be tempted and tried. He’s been in the wilderness...and knows—truly knows—what we face every day.

Transfiguration in the Age of Spectacle

In an excellent 2023 New York Times opinion piece entitled “The Age of Spectacle Is Upon Us”, David Brooks makes the case that “spectacle” has become the modus operandi of our time. It’s just the way stuff gets done.

Spectacle is a moment of time in which a collective gaze is fixed on some specific image, or video, or event (Google “Taylor Swift Super Bowl” and you’ll see what I mean). Spectacle is something that captures an instant when our eyes and brains focus and fixate on something projected at us. But spectacle always demands more. It aims to provoke something in us only to extract something from us. It demands all sorts of things—our time, our tears, our outrage, our sympathy, our lust, our affections, our money, and our votes…but mostly our attention.

On the last Sunday of Epiphany each year, we commemorate and contemplate the Transfiguration of Jesus, celebrating the power of God the Father revealing the glory of his mind-bendingly incarnate Self and Son to the world.

But in revealing these he demands something, too. “Listen”—pay attention—“to him” (Mark 9:7). Which is difficult when our attention is elsewhere.

World mission

On Sunday, the Anglican Church of North America commemorates “World Mission.”  Sounds exciting!  As Anglicans, we are certainly blessed with a global perspective since our connections with Africa, South America, and Asia are strong and vigorous.  You can hear that often represented in our Prayers of the People, when we remember our persecuted brothers and sisters and our missionary partners. 

 And yet, what is “World Mission,” exactly?  In our current politicized culture, it may sound colonial or oppressive.  Or to those of us who are not called as missionaries, it may sound distant or irrelevant or unattainable.  

 As we explore our text from Revelation 7, we’ll see that “world mission” is not a program but a process of transformation that includes all of us.  

 O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

 Amen.

Sunday to Monday

In preparation for our Thursday morning men’s study this week, we read a stimulating and evocative piece in Devotional Classics by Kathleen Norris entitled, “Finding Faith in the Mundane.” In the final paragraph she writes, “It was in the play of writing a poem that I first became aware that the demands of laundry might have something to do with God’s command that we worship, that we sing praise on a regular basis. Both laundry and worship are repetitive activities with a potential for tedium, and I hate to admit it, but laundry often seems like the more useful of the tasks. Both are the work that God has given us to do.”

This resonates deeply with my core belief that the Four-Chapter Gospel (Ought-Is-Can-Will), the overarching narrative of Scripture, insists on the radical connection of Sunday and Monday. The inseparable nature of worship and work.

In the Psalm appointed for this week the admonition to us, in fact, is to worship God for the work of his hands. God himself desires—by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—to be known as a worker (a word used to describe him seven times in the passage). And it’s his image in which we are created.

This Sunday we will explore the sacredness of both Sunday and Monday mornings.