Sermon, First Sunday after Christmas, January 2, 2022, "The pandemic as a portal"

  C Christmas 2 Pilg 2021

                                               John 1:10-18

                                               January 2, 2022 

           In this socially distanced time, maybe your Christmas, like mine, was a procession of videos or Facetime calls from young relatives.  With all the glee of a prison inmate, these forced confessions, or, I mean, expressions of gratitude, come to us with the gift prominently on display presumably so that “A” we know the gift did truly arrive and “B” the young person remembers what they are thanking us for.  I imagine that when the communication to us is over, Aunt Beth’s gift is moved in front of the youngster and the process is repeated. 

           We may not get to see the joy of Kian or Eli opening their gifts, but I do appreciate my sisters and brother pushing their kids to do one of the not so glamorous but necessary rituals of Christmas.  Our children should learn and practice gratitude—even when it feels like they are being tied to a chair to do so. 

           Unfortunately, our family also experienced some of the hard lessons of pandemic.  A number of our family members made the trip to Florida, even went to Disney World, and somehow, in the mix, my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my niece all tested positive for Co-Vid.  My mom actually ended up in the emergency room but probably due to her vaccination status was fortunate to only end up with a deep cough and fatigue.  The Omicron variant is humbling even the fully vaccinated and boosted. 

           As we walk into another surge in this pandemic, I was reminded this week of the article written by the great Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, who observed in April 2020 that the pandemic was hitting some of the richest nations in the world the hardest, namely the United States.  The language we were using to offset the pandemic, the language of war, was not working out for us.  We would be prepared if our frontline workers had needed stockpiles of guns and bombs, fighter jets and submarines.  We did not have the language nor the resources ready for care and healing.  We did not have the resources or the language in place for care and healing.  We didn’t seem to know how to requisition that. 

Roy went on to write,

 

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.^[1]

 

The pandemic is a portal—a choice between two worlds.  The pandemic required and requires that we see all of us in this together.  The old way pretended that we could build a wall, circle the wagons, or a gated community around ourselves and escape the horrors of the world.  A new world needs to be imagined.

           Our Scripture verse today is a foreshadowing of Holy Week when Jesus stands in front of Pontius Pilate, interrogated by Pilate, the local representative of the Roman Empire.  Jesus responds to Pilate by saying, “My empire is not of this world. If my empire were of this world, my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Judeans; but as it is, my kingdom or empire is not of this world.”^[2]  The Greek word translated as “world” is kosmos and it is used in the first chapter of John when the writer seeks to define Jesus by saying, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and yet the world did not know him.”

           That word, kosmos, is used over and over again in Biblical books influenced by what is called “Johannine theology.”  Johannine theology is found as today, in the gospel of John, but also in 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation.   Most classic translations interpret the word kosmos as “world” which has led to some unhealthy theology throughout the ages. Christian tradition has sometimes used that classic translation to bend away from embodiment and bend toward denial of the body, away from the physical world toward more of a concern for heaven and the afterlife.  

But the late, great Biblical scholar, Walter Wink transformed the meaning of Johannine theology by recognizing that the more apt translation for the word kosmos was "Domination System."  In Jesus's context, Wink might even agree with me that "Roman Empire" could be another good translation.  Jesus tells us not to be of the Domination System or the Empire.  Do not practice its ways or be like it.  

           Jesus always tells his disciples to not be of the Domination System or Roman Empire.  Jesus is always telling the disciples within Johannine theology that we are born into the kosmos but we are not to participate in the ways or trade of the kosmos.

Jesus, before Pilate, in that Holy Week Scripture, is not saying, my kingdom or Empire is not of this earthly world, or is in heaven.  Jesus is saying that his kingdom or Empire is not the violence and death, oppression and slavery of the Roman Empire.  Jesus is not being otherworldly.  He is being anti-establishment.  The same is true in the passage before us today.  Jesus was in the Domination System, born into it, yet the Domination System did not know him. 

           We remain in the season of Christmas—a time when the entrance of Christ into the world highlights how God’s order and way of doing things engages, confronts, and collides with Rome’s order and way of doing things.  Too often, what I feel in the pull of a cultural Christmas, is to be more like the materialism and violence of Rome than the countercultural values of God born in Christ.   That cultural narrative is so strong, so powerful.  So strong and and so powerful that often I hear the Christian church touting the way Rome did things based on militarism, violence, domination, numbers, and commercialism.   The Christian church then, without reference to who Jesus said he was or what he did, names those things Jesus and Christ and God to ordain a focus on militarism, violence, domination, numbers, and commercialism. 

And I’m drawn to that cultural Christmas—the flash and buzz of it as I scurried around trying to make sure I had an expensive enough present for nieces, nephews, daughter, sons, and spouse. 

           Sometimes, even outside Christianity, there are echoes of doing things a different way.  Maybe you’ve heard of one of those echoes.

 

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?^[3]

 

Did it?  Does it?  Do the boring and mundane values of gratitude, mutual healing, care, the sharing of bread, love for God’s good earth, kindness, hospitality, and non-violence mean a little bit more –even when we might have to push our kids to make the video just to say another boring thank you?

           The pandemic is a portal.  It not only has told us who we are but given us permission to imagine a different way of doing things, another world.  I was reminded this past week how different that world might be when I read this short and simple message from faith leader, Carlos A. Rodriguez, that reminded me of values that were about my family, my wider community, and who we are to be in this moment in time, praying for a new kosmos.  Rodriguez wrote: 

 

Someone is alive this week because you wore a mask last month.

Someone is healthy today because you followed the guidelines and kept your distance.

Someone is not hospitalized right now because you got boosted already.

Thank you for your kindness!

Keep loving.

 

            I pray, dear friends, that your Christmas is one filled with the values of a kosmos that means a little bit more.  We were born into a Domination System as Christ was.  God, in Christ, especially during this season, calls us to imagine a whole new way of doing things.  May we all have the courage to fight for it.  Amen. 

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^[1] Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca. 

^[2] John 18:36

^[3] Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!  (New York:  Random House, 1957). 

Second Sunday of Easter, "Stop breathing on me!" April 19, 2020

A Easter 2 BFC 2020

John 20:19-23

April 19, 2020

            In an April 3^rd article in Financial Times, one of my spiritual directors from afar, a great truth-teller, the Indian author, Arundhati Roy, writes about how we will never be able to use words like “going viral” again without a pause or shudder,  with now over a million people infected, over 50,000 dead.   She worries about her own country as the leader of India, Narendra Modi, parrots other world leaders by strictly enforcing social distancing, not recognizing that, social distancing applied without imagination in India, this means packing people together, almost certain to lead to untold suffering and death in that country. 

           Roy writes that the leaders who are managing this pandemic are openly referring to it as a war.  “But if it really were a war, then who would be better prepared than the US?  If it were not masks and gloves that its frontline soldiers needed, but guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets and nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage?”[1]  We were not prepared for care and healing.  All the time we have been preparing for, giving away our loyalty to, giving our hearts over to violence and war.  We don’t even have the words for care and healing.

           I messaged Tracy a couple days ago that I didn’t know a time in my almost 60 years of life when the world has felt so frighteningly fragile.  Yet, that seems very privileged of me, so unbelievably narcissistic in a world where some people before the pandemic had to worry about their sons wearing a hoodie, others had to worry that their daughters might go missing, in other countries whole communities might get disappeared, and knowing that, unless we change,                   the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s conservative estimates that we have 10 years before we are headed for continuing climate catastrophes.[2]

           I know that is a bummer . . . and a downer.  Who really wants to come to Zoom worship and hear the pastor roll out that kind of dour forecast?   But here is my concern.  If I don’t share that Good Friday awareness, I am not sure we get what resurrection stories, like the one we have before us, must have meant for the early Christian movement, known as The Way. 

In today’s story, the disciples are social distancing out of real fear for their own lives.  These rural, backwater Galileeans know that to be seen in the local Jerusalem marketplace or on the city streets might cost them their lives, might end up with more crucifixions.   We should remember that the crucifixions of the Jewish people do not end because Jesus is resurrected.  Appearances of the Risen Christ, as the story goes, happened before we find the disciples hiding from the city authorities.  The question remaining for the disciples, locked away and social distancing in an upper room, is, does anything of Jesus’s life and ministry mean squat in light of crucifixion?  Or does the imperial violence and narcissism, the lack of bandwidth found among the Jerusalem city officials, mean that the movement dies with the leader of the movement . . . that the movement dies when setbacks, violence, obstacles, trauma, and threats  come to a people?

What the Scriptural story tells us is that Jesus comes to the disciples and stands square in the midst of them, addresses them in the plural, as a community, and assuages their fear.  Peace, he gives them, not as the Domination System gives—through military might, power over, and economic leverage—but in a way that continues to midwife community.  Jesus does all this in a way that is spiritually embodied. 

Biblical scholar Ched Myers reminds us that, as Christians, we live in a spiritually embodied tradition.  This is not a ghostly tradition.  Myers writes, in embodied form, he is the “Executed One, Beat-up One, Famished One, Refusing-to-be-Dead One.”[3]  Sanitizing these texts is only available to the privileged.  Those who are not so privileged know that Good Friday happened and happens.  The wounds are still there, the blows and strikes are still evident.  But the Risen Christ is there to remind them that the work they did, the mission they were on, it transcends all of that.  It’s bigger and must continue. 

The value the Risen Christ asks for here is a derivative of the Greek verb, pistis.  Pistis has traditionally been too often translated as “to believe”—a word that connotes intellectual assent or idea.  In the Bible, it has even been stretched to believing the unbelievable.  Like, “I believe the tooth fairy is real!  See my quarter?” 

Recognizing that early gospel writers were aware of the imperial cult and the Caesar-religion, they would have also known that Caesar Augustus had rejuvenated loyalty or faithfulness as a primary Roman value using the word pistis.[4]  For Rome that verb was much stronger in connotation than intellectual assent.  Pistis meant loyalty, faithfulness, or what Strong’s biblical concordance translates it as, “moral conviction.”[5]  As Lisa read in the introduction to the Scripture, I translated it as, “what we give our heart to.”  With its repeated usage in this resurrection story, the word would ring in First Century ears where people are being asked to give their loyalty to Caesar in small, everyday ways and in large, Roman centurion ways.  Listeners of this story are hearing the story and being confronted with where their loyalty or allegiance lies—with Caesar or with Christ?  If you choose not to be loyal to Caesar, in the First Century, it could mean the decimation of your community or the crucifixion of you and your family.  “Belief” does not capture this loyalty test. 

In this time, in this day, with an authoritarian despot who considers loyalty to be his primary value, how can we not hear this passage as a direct challenge to his way, his path, his rule?  If you are not loyal, maybe you don’t get enough ventilators for your state or your community. 

As Jesus sends the disciples out into the world with a countercultural allegiance, the story borrows from the first creation story in Genesis.  In that creation story, God breathes into the fertile topsoil, breathes into nostrils to animate life.  Humankind comes into being.  God’s inspiration becomes humankind’s respiration.  Repeating the Genesis story, Jesus re-animates the community movement and sends them back out into the Domination System, full well knowing that violence, authoritarianism, and class warfare will continue to be a part of the wider narrative.  You must continue to be different.  You must continue to speak another language.  The community comes back into being.  Divine inspiration becomes community respiration. 

           Three of the gospel writers have resurrection stories.  All of the gospel writers either imply or state plainly that if the resurrection is to be a reality it must be because the community of Christ continues the work begun by Jesus and his community.  In other words, the gospel writers all indicate that the resurrection only happens if Christ’s community continues the ministry.[6]

The Risen Christ re-creates the disciples by breathing on them a holy spirit.  He then gives the disciples, often representing the divergent churches or traditions within the gospels, the power to determine what will be considered sinful and what will not, what will be forgiven and what will be not, who will be in and who will be out.  In this way, the author of John suggests that what the disciples, what the divergent churches decide on earth will be the divine decision.   

The author of John offers an incredible freedom to the early church.  The author of John offers an incredible responsibility to the early church.  Whatever you decide, it shall be so.  The early church is charged with an awesome responsible freedom to discern how God shall be still speaking, how the Risen Christ shall still act.

We are also charged with that awesome responsible freedom.  The world needs to hear God speaking through us as Billings First Congregational Church—not as divergent individuals, but what we have decided as a community collectively.  If we are not able to share what God is speaking in this day and age, we know other church communities who will tell us what God has to say.  We may laugh at them or chide them for assuming that they can speak with clarity and confidence about what God is saying, but how would anyone assume that God has to say anything any different—about who is sinful and who is not, about who is forgiven and who is not, and about who is in and who is out?  How would anyone assume that God has anything different to say if other-hearted people of faith have nothing to say?  If we cannot get together and decide what our baseline is, what our core values are, how do we would expect large issues like world peace to be brokered, racism to be healed, or that national male leaders might step back so that women might have basic rights like equal pay for equal work?   This congregation is a manifestation of the Divine seeking to re-animate community and what God would will and want for the wider world.

Collective discernment is hard work.  To be responsible in this freedom God gives a very divergent people, we would have to sit down at the dialogue table, use the language of faith, and show a willingness to share how God is speaking to us and be willing to hear how God is speaking to others. 

The world so needs to hear the voice of Christians who love this good earth, who cherish its peoples and animals, and who hold values in keeping with deep values in our tradition of justice, compassion, hospitality, solidarity, and protest.  The Risen Christ moves into our upper rooms, where we have been locked in fear, pronounces peace, and breathes on us—this group of divergent disciples.  Today let us be re-created for the way God is still speaking in the world.   The violence, domination, and inequity in our wider world do not mean the movement dies.   It means that our work will be often difficult and challenging.  Where will our loyalties lie?

As the Divine blows through our community, we are called to speak another language.   Crucifixions of the First Century reminded people that the world could not continue with the same loyalties and allegiances, that world transformation was necessary.  Arundhati Roy writes of the current pandemic we are living as a portal to something else. 

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different.

It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.[7]

In each age, we must be willing to acknowledge the immense suffering and death, violence, domination, and inequity that occur.  As people of faith, however, our story tells us that the Risen Christ stands in our midst again and again, to let us know that these death-givers do not have the final word.  Breathe deeply.  The pandemic is a portal.  Christ is once again re-animating us to other loyalties, another language, ready to imagine another world.  He is sending us out into the world ready to struggle for the peace, not as the Domination System gives, but as he gives.  Let it be so among us.  Amen. 

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[1] Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca.

[2] Jonathan Watts, “We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN,” The Guardian, March 8, 2018.  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report. 

[3] Ched Myers, “Four Brief Meditations on the Way to Easter – Part IV. Easter Sunday: The Somatic Traumatic and Pandemic Lockdown,” chedmyers.org, April 14, 2020, https://chedmyers.org/tag/bible-study/.

[4] Focus of the book by Matthew Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2016); detailed by Richard Horsley, Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (New York:  Bloomsbury Academic, 1997),  pp. 149ff

[5] Strong’s “pistis,” #4102, bibletools.org, https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Lexicon.show/ID/G4102/pistis.htm.

[6] Brian P. Stoffregen, Exegetical Notes at CrossMarks, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/john20x19e2.htm

[7] Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca.