Year C,
Epiphany III
February
3, 2013
The
Reverend Dr. Brent Was
“They got up, drove him out of town, and led him to the
brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off
the cliff.”
Last week, we found Jesus reading from Isaiah in his home
synagogue in Nazareth, thus declaring His earthly ministry… bringing good news
to the poor, release to the captives, the jubilee. Right?
We ended where this week begins, with the proclamation, “this scripture
has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
So this week, he is still in the synagogue in Nazareth
and you know what, they were quite impressed.
“They said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”
The way Luke tells it, this statement is not sarcastic, not in the tone
“who does he think he is?” but more “wow, this is Joseph’s son.” Then, Jesus does something rather puzzling;
he seems to try to tick everyone off. He
offers a Greek and Jewish witticism, “Doctor, cure yourself!” He suggests that they will demand miraculous proof of his authority like in
Capernaum, then he tells of Elijah and Elisha and how the grace of God was
delivered through them not to good observant Jews, but to the Sidonese widow
and the Syrian general Naaman, in turn the least of these and the Other (an
enemy even). If he had meant to anger
everyone, Jesus was very successful, so successful that they took him to the
brow of a nearby hill so they could throw him off a cliff. (For anyone who missed it, He got away.)
The primary lesson of this Gospel passage is quite
straight forward, it is about transgressing boundaries. In the drama of the story, we see how
challenging, how triggering, how frightening the Word of God can be,
particularly in the Word’s constant and consistent imperative to include and
embrace the other. Jesus did not just come for His own, YHWH, the God of Israel
is revealed in Jesus Christ as being God for everyone always and everywhere.
For everyone, always and everywhere. That covers a lot of territory. How can anything be so universal? Look at our world, how fragmented and
conflicted if not combative it is. And
right here, even Jesus personally is able to anger his hometown so deeply with
his theological commentary that they are ready to throw him over a cliff. If Jesus can’t get others to agree with him,
let alone not try to heave him over a cliff.
How doe we talk across
difference?
This has come up a
couple of places very distinctly this past week, that has really got me
thinking about how do we accept, or at least hear things we don’t agree with,
believe in, think is right, whatever. No matter what we do, where we live (even
South Eugene), no matter who we are, we will always be in relationship with
those with whom we cannot agree on much with. We all have brothers-in-law,
right? How, in our ever more polarized
society, from our ever more personalized information streams, from our evermore
isolated lives and degraded communities, how do we encounter the other?
We are in the middle of a quite remarkable book study
group, reading The Rich and the Rest of
Us: A Poverty Manifesto by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West. We have had a great conversation. The book is pretty left of center and the
authors are pretty unequivocal in their critique of mainstream American
politics, Republican and Democrat. I
think it is very good; not perfect, mind you, but good, solid, offering
unapologetic arguments about the rights and wrongs around poverty that we just
don’t hear in our national debate like the word “poverty.” When is the last time you heard that word in
the news?
There are critiques of the book, too. One person asked if the book got more
“prescriptive” rather than “descriptive,” a polite way to ask if they ever stop
complaining and make some recommendations.
Fair enough. And then someone
else lifted up their discomfort that the book is too much of a rant, too unequivocal that it will invariably
alienate those who see it differently, making dialogue impossible. True that.
I can’t imagine the response some of my old Marine buddies would have to
this book.
My response was that the word “Manifesto” is right there
in the title and that while manifesto is not actually Latin for rant (I looked
it up), it is pretty close. Think
Jefferson, Marx and Lenin, Solanas: the lines between rant and manifesto are
blurry at best, and the point of these writers is to say what they know no matter the consequence. Is that helpful?
Then closer to home, I went up to Portland on Friday to
meet with the Bishop. He’s well and says
howdy. (He thinks Resurrection is pretty
cool; he appreciates our liturgy and our leadership in outreach efforts). After the meeting, Mark, who road up with me,
introduced me around Right to Dream Too (R2D2 for short). R2D2 is a small lot on the corner of 4th
and Burnside. The gate to Chinatown is
their front yard if that helps place it.
On that plot of land live 50ish people in small tents, who have the
common mission to provide a safe place to sleep. They do that with a few large awnings where
the tired can lay down and sleep without fear that they or their belongings
will be harassed. It is sobering to see
15 exhausted men sleeping side by side in the middle of the day. Many sleep there during the day because it
fills up at night; they stay awake, walking to stay warm, then come to sleep
once the night sleepers are done and someone has taken the sleeping bags with a
handful of donated quarters to the laundromat for the day shift. It is an amazing place.
The homeless helping the homeless. This very basic thing, providing a safe place
to sleep, you can’t imagine the ire they have raised in Portland. The city is dead set against this rest area
to the point that the city fines them over a thousand dollars a month because
they re-zoned the land once the owner let them put up the camp. The only reason it even exists is that the
city shut down one of the land owner’s pornography shops, so as a counterpunch,
he leased the land to R2D2 for this purpose, knowing it would be a thorn in the
side of the powers that be. In addition,
the neighborhood association has been withering in its complaints and
critiques, even though crime is down measurably and there is a lot less trash
on the streets of Chinatown. And the
downtown business association’s private police force and certain members of the
Portland Police Bureau regularly harass R2D2 members, their guests and even
folks who help out with showers and the like.
They can’t even negotiate, because the city and the neighbors
can’t/won’t sit at the table.
And then there is little old here. From a conversation about assault weapons
that arose on the listserve, to inevitable disagreements about endowments,
music, how we do hospitality, what is going on in the parking lot, how or if to
build an addition and if so, how we should raise the money for it. We don’t have a culture of conflict here, but
conflict, disagreement arises as good people find themselves believing that
they are right while other good people think they are right. The organ
did this. A previous bishop did,
too. As did clergy and some good people
here did in the past, and around a variety of issues, sometimes important,
sometimes not.
Jesus told his
neighbors that God was for everyone and they tried to kill him. Our national political debate won’t even let
the word poverty be spoken, nor climate change.
Forget about constructive gun control or reasonable tax policy in this
climate that needs changing. The folks
at Right to Dream Too believe that everyone needs a safe place to rest, and the
city and their neighbors won’t sit at the table with them. We’ve had conflict here that drove people
from the church, all church, permanently.
We’re not going to do away with conflict, it is part and
parcel to existence. Two positive ions
in close proximity are in conflict, they repel each other; it is the nature of
things. So we must not fear the
reactions. What Jesus had to say needed
to be said. The ranting of Smiley and
West needs to be done, it is true. The
embodied prayer of Right to Dream Too needs to be prayed, even the decision to
add to this building or change our hospitality patterns, if they are made (and
I am not saying they will be…) we, all
people of principle and faith need to do what our hearts tell us to do, when we
glimpse truth, we need to proclaim it; when we sense the right, we have to
respond; when the word of God manifests before us, we have to act. Sometimes
our plans and expectations will be on the line.
Sometimes relationships lay in the balance. Sometimes, sometimes lives depend on the
right and true and good being expressed and acted upon. Sometimes we need to wade into the fray with
what we know. But how do we know when to
buckle down, when to make a stand, when to declare it Alamo time? The test is that one word, that one simple
that Paul so gallantly holds up for us: agape,
love. If it is done in love, honestly,
authentically, truly in love, agape,
kind of love, how could you be wrong?
And even if you are, if you are doing it in love, you will be
forgiven. AMEN
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