Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 7, 2010

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 138, I Corinthians 15: 1-11 and Luke 5: 1-11

One of the themes that plays itself out in our lection this week in Luke’s gospel is that of abundance or even superabundance. “Simon does not ask Jesus for assistance with the fishing, but the catch that comes in is nevertheless so large that even all the available hands and both boats cannot deal with it…All the gospels, of course, associate Jesus with supplying abundance for God’s people, whether that abundance takes the form of food for a hungry multitude or wine for a wedding or fish for the fishers.” (Cousar, et al. “Texts for Preaching, pg.139) But here the story tells us about another kind of abundance; in this passage that of sharing good news with the world. Jesus commands Simon and the others to “launch out into the deep” or “put out into the deep water” (5:4) where they will find abundant provisions for life itself.

Our lection from Luke seems to suggest that powerful meaning and satisfying fulfillment come to human beings when they assume the risk, make the effort, avoid easy and obvious rationalizations and find the faith to move into the deep waters in a search for God’s truth of justice and love. In our lection from Isaiah 6, we can discover the idea of “response-ability.” Despite any misgivings about himself, (“I am a man of unclean lips” 6:5) he says, “Here am I; send me.” (6:8) And later on, he hears God’s promise that when you pass through the waters, I’ll be with you; when you walk through fire, you won’t be burned.”

Examples of Isaiah and Peter’s experience continue to the present.

I discovered one in Henry Alford’s book entitled, “How to Live.” It explores the question of wisdom and theorizes that very often it can be found in old people. Being one myself, he attracted my interest. Alford writes that the older we get the more life experiences we’re likely to have had and consequently the greater amount of wisdom we have to work with. He references Sherwin Nuland’s book, “The Art of Aging” which tells us that we humans have been given the ability to continue developing, even through the later periods of life providing — and it’s a big provision — that we don’t give in to doing otherwise. Eubie Blake, a ninety-six-year-old songwriter said that “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” I love it!

Getting back to our gospel, Jesus’ command to move out into the deep water and the abundance that follows, I was struck with the experience of Doris Haddock, a.k.a. Granny D. Alford uses her as an illustration of finding wisdom. At the age of eighty-nine, filled with a kind of “holy rage when justice is denied” (see 1/24/10 prayer of invocation at Immanuel Church) on January 1, 1999 she began a fourteen-month, 3,200 mile walk across the country in support of campaign-finance reform. At the time, her goal was to support the McCain-Feingold bill and its limiting of lobby-based or “soft” campaign financing. When she’s previously made her cause known to New Hampshire’s two senators, writing that it was impossible to get elected without being enormously wealthy, their response came in a form letter telling her that spending money is a form of political speech.

So, with a “holy rage” this “senior citizen,” filled to the brim with faith and courage, became a five foot, apple-cheeked activist walker. Starting in Pasadena, California, she walked through 208 towns in thirteen states outlasting four pairs of sneakers and accompanied by three different support vans plus three managers. On she went through desert and forest, winning battles with pneumonia and fatigue, all the while gaining attention to her cause and inwardly wondering why her opinion on finance reform seemed more worthy when walking than when sitting in her New Hampshire living room! But can any one doubt that the attention she received from people like Bill Moyers, John McCain, Jimmy Carter and Pete Seeger didn’t add a form of abundance to both her life and her cause?

When the bill passed in 2002, Granny D was standing in the congressional gallery with a strong feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. One piece of wisdom she articulated in this way: “If you are afraid of death, you are afraid of life, for living your life leads to death. Until you face death and see its beauty, you will be afraid to really live — you will never properly burn the candle for fear of its end.”

As Isaiah responded to God’s call with a “Here am I. Send me,” and as Peter and the other disciples left behind their boats, nets, and an abundant catch of fish to follow Jesus, they were “putting out into the deep water” of life and they were learning to burn their candles without fearing their ending.

What our lections this week suggest to me is that it still falls to people like us to respond to the personal call that Jesus and Isaiah felt so deeply. We need to grow to the point where we can say with confidence, “This is what I believe and here is what I’m going to do.” As scary as the world out there is, imagine how much more scary it would become if people of faith in a gospel of love and justice simply neglected their responsibility.

Ralph Ahlberg

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, January 31, 2010

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, January 31, 2010
Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Jeremiah 1: 4-10, Psalm 71: 1-6, I Corinthians 13: 1-13 and Luke 4: 21-30

This week our Epistle lection, arguably the most loved and familiar passage of many Christians, is from Paul’s First Letter to Corinth and its thirteenth chapter. It’s often been called Paul’s “ode to love.” In its rendering and interpretation, however, it’s been romanticized, idealized and often misunderstood. Okay, call me an elitist or grouch, but I do believe this famous passage from Paul needs to be better understood. It is true that the love ethic of Jesus is deeply and appropriately valued — at least in name — in all Christian communities. But within our mainstream of Protestantism, it has been long understood that the absolute love ethic of Jesus is far removed from anything possible in the present world. Paul understood that and taught it, especially in his Letter to Rome. So did Augustine, Luther and their heirs in our recent past, teachers like John Bennett and Reinhold Niebuhr and a host of others.

One of my clear memories comes from early in my ministry on Long Island when I had the privilege of providing hospitality for Dr. John C. Bennett, the Dodge Professor of Applied Christianity at Union Seminary. He was educated at Williams College and Union, taught at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley for a few years and returned to Union in New York City as a colleague and good friend of Reinhold Niebuhr. In Rockville Centre where I was a pastor for most of the 1960’s, my congregation had a fund set aside to occasionally invite outstanding teachers as a way of enriching our congregational life. Dr. Bennett was one guest speaker who greatly impressed me. He taught that the love ethic was not directly relevant to modern Christians, because it was in fact unachievable. He would never, of course, disavow Christianity, but would remain a critic of that form of it which was overly idealistic. Here’s what he taught:

“It has never been characteristic of Christianity to think that the Christian ideal could be fully embodied in human life. Rather has it been taught that a human being never loses the status of sinner, at best he becomes a forgiven sinner. Realism about the stubbornness of human evil is no strange heresy but is in line with the main trends of historic Christianity.”

His colleague, Reinhold Niebuhr in a sermon about our lection from I Corinthians 13 said this: “When we talk about love, we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Let us not say that we as Christians are potential martyrs, or that we are more unselfish than other people. That is not what love means if we take it modestly. Basically, love means that life has no meaning except in terms of responsibility; responsibility toward our family, toward our nation, toward our civilization and, now, by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind which includes our enemies. ‘The greatest of these is love’ — ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ — that is the basic meaning of love, as the permanent, abiding value of life.”

Niebuhr spoke of a sacrificial love symbolized by the cross and not the dollar, even as, he reminds us, what often controls our actions in the world is by and large the latter. Yet, says Niebuhr, “We can’t dismiss the fact that there must be sacrificial love as an abiding value in life.”

Perhaps the highest form of sacrificial love is to be found in forgiveness. All through the Christian Bible, we are told that we can’t forgive one another if we think that we’re somehow more in the right than the other. I discovered a good illustration of this a few years ago on a trip to Pakistan with a group from Hartford Seminary. While in Lahore, we met with a leading Pakistani Muslim cleric, Dr. Israr Ahmed. He was mentioned in a recent “New Yorker” article as a speaker who is especially popular with Pakistani Army officers. I found him to be offensive. For example, he’s convinced that the Holocaust was “divine punishment” for Jews and assured us all Jews and most Christians were doomed to his imagined fundamentalist hell. So, for him, the idea of forgiveness must be non-existent…for how can one forgive if we believe ourselves more righteous than the other? While Muslims have their Israr Ahmed, we Christians have our Pat Robertson, a television evangelist who claims Haiti’s recent earthquake is a consequence of some sort of pact with the Devil!

No, the highest form of love, agapic or sacrificial love comes down to mutual forbearance. Neither Muslims nor Christians have perfected it. That’s why the mission of Hartford Seminary rings so true to me. For example, the Seminary just welcomed Ezekiel Abdullahi Babagario of Nigeria to its community. As a public relations officer of the Muslim-Christian Relations Committee in Kaduna, Nigeria he’s here in Hartford as a Christian to study Islam and interfaith dialogue in order to develop skills that might support greater forbearance and understanding among Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. It’s much needed! In recent days, dozens of Christians while at worship were killed when their churches were set afire by Muslims, who, like Israr Ahmed of Pakistan or Pat Robertson of the United States, have little use or knowledge of forbearance.

The bottom line is that for all authentic and mature communities and households that seek an ethic of love, mutual forbearance is a critical element. In our own homes, if there is a lack of justice in which one partner gives more than the other, how can there be any quality of happiness without that quality of mutual forbearance or forgiveness?

So, while Paul’s “ode to love” should not be idealized or romanticized, it should be valued and taken seriously. For it is the key to cooperation, justice and peace.

Ralph Ahlberg

Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 24, 2010

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Nehemiah 8: 1-3 and 5-6 and 8-10, Psalm 19, I Corinthians 12: 12-31 and Luke 4: 14-21

Our lection from the Hebrew Bible’s book of Nehemiah gives us an interesting story about Israel being renewed as Ezra helps them to rediscover their long neglected Law of Moses. The eyes of the listening people glisten with joyful tears and they are caught up, mesmerized even as Ezra lifts their spirits with words that they can understand. The authority of scripture was restored among them after a long absence and one insight gained was the instruction to share their bounty with other members of the community who have little or nothing (v.10)

Psalm 19 reminds us of our need to be open to both God’s just and loving purpose and also to gratefully received God’s forgiveness as we inevitably fall short of what we should be, both individually and socially.

Our lection from Luke’s gospel also fits this theme of discovery of both promise but also of judgment that inevitably comes when we neglect and ignore God’s intention for our human community. It tells the story of Jesus’ return to his home in Nazareth near the beginning of his ministry and at a time when he had attracted an increasing following due to his teaching and healing. As Ezra returned to the force and wisdom of scripture, so Jesus does the same as he lifts up the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue of his childhood. To his former neighbors he reads the words that point to his future work of human liberation. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Vs.18-19)

One commentary puts it this way: “The language of liberation has become so commonplace in North American society in recent decades that we may not hear the urgency and the daring of this call. To declare that the captives and the oppressed should go free, and that this action results directly from the will of God, suggests already that the kingdom of God is at hand.” (Texts for Preaching: Cousar, et.al.)

But this prophetic call of Jesus and the language of liberation find strong resistance, as it almost always does. For when Jesus includes those outside as well as inside of Israel as his concern, those same neighbors turn on him “filled with rage…and drove him out of town,…let him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.” (Vs.28-29)

In a recently published book by Jim Wallis entitled, “Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street and Your Street,” we are often reminded of Ezra’s and Jesus’ warning of what occurs when the purposes of God are ignored. He unpacks the current crisis of our faltering economy but reaches deeper into the question of neglected and false values that inevitably saturate our society when “in numbers released by the Federal Reserve Board in the summer of 2009 we saw the in 2007 the top 1 percent held $3.3 trillion in wealth, or 33.8 percent of the entire nation’s wealth. The next 9 percent of the richest Americans held 37.3 percent of the nation’s wealth…the bottom 90 percent only 28.5 percent. What is even more disturbing is that this analysis left out every person on the Forbes Top 400 wealthiest individuals. They held $1.3 trillion in wealth, more than the entire bottom 50 percent in our country.” That’s 400 people possessing more wealth than half of the whole country, which is akin to the disparity of wealth prior to the Great Depression of 1928 and following.

Sadly, our nation while holding as an ideal a “preferential option for the poor” seems to have been living a “preferential option for the rich.” In 1965, according to Wallis, we have experienced a social engineering that has produced an increasing inequality favoring the most wealthy while creating great suffering among the poor and middle class in a fashion akin to sin of biblical proportions.

We all pray that the outcome of our nation’s present crisis will be the restoration of a moral compass that has sadly been lacking in recent decades. As I have read Christian social ethicists, I have been impressed with the wisdom of past thinkers and activists like a Graham Taylor in the 19th century and a Reinhold Niebuhr in the 20th. After struggling with injustice, both eventually concluded that capitalism was preferable to socialism, because the former allows for individual initiative and creativity while the latter has a propensity to stifle them. But, and we’re learning it’s a big “but,” capitalism must be protected from unscrupulous greed and worse by strict governmental regulation.
What our nation is experiencing today comes as a result of neglecting what our founding fathers recognized as a fallen human nature, i.e., human sin.

Ezra and Jesus called us back to the fundamentals of love and justice, knowing that when they’re neglected our humanity suffers. Our lections this week offer guidance as we move into the dangerous days that lie ahead.

Ralph Ahlberg

Second Sunday after Epiphany, January 17, 2010

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Isaiah 62 1-5, Psalm 36: 5-10, I Corinthians 12: 1-11 and John 2: 1-11

The lection that caught my attention this week is from John’s gospel and the delightful story of Jesus at a wedding celebration in Cana of Galilee. On the guest list that day among many unnamed others are Jesus, his disciples and his Mary his mother. As the story unfolds the hosts of this gathering either misjudged the needed supply of wine or underestimated the thirst of the guests because they run out of wine. Of course, what provokes Jesus’ first miracle, according to the story, might be described as Mary’s celebrative anxiety and concern for the wedding celebration itself. I can imagine her giving Jesus a heavy elbow as if to say, on what better occasion than a wedding, with all of its associations with new beginnings, to exercise power and introduce yourself in a new way.

At this point, the expositor of this story could move in any of several directions. We could, for example, focus directly on the miracle of changing water to wine. Did Jesus really change six thirty gallon jars of water into fine wine?

Or, moving in another direction, we could focus on the drama of confrontation between mother and son that comes before the miracle. Mary says to Jesus, “they’re out of wine…” Jesus responds, “what concern is that to you or to me? My hour has not yet come.” (Jn.2:4) But then, as if to say, “well son, my hour has come, and I want a glass of wine” she seems to ignore Jesus and calls the servants over and says to them, “Do whatever he tells you.” (2:5) That apparently forces Jesus’ hand and he does as she asks.

Still another direction might focus on Jesus’ very presence at the wedding. For it was an affirmation that all of us need times to celebrate the good gifts that life offers. Jesus might well be affirming God’s intention to enjoy those things that bring joy and pleasure to human beings. Jesus could indeed be instructing all of us that good food, good drink, good conversation, good companionship, good love-making — the enjoyment of such gifts is what it means to be fully alive.

Of course one caution is that this doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to revel in the material to the exclusion of the spiritual. It’s rather to indicate that God wants us to notice and to enjoy the beautiful things that happen in life. Recall that Jesus was criticized by his detractors as a wine-bibber and glutton. Apparently they were able to hang that on him because he did go to weddings and apparently enjoyed them, along with the companionship of friends gathered over a good meal. From what we know of him, he loved people and he loved life. He could look over a field of flowers and say that “never in all his glory was Solomon arrayed like these.” He was moved by the common sparrow, the birds of the air. He recognized the image of God in the smallest and most vulnerable child as well as in the most broken and destitute of outcasts.

And so if we attempt to look at life through the lens of Jesus, we might well recognize and celebrate God’s spirit in the faces of our friends and maybe even our enemies. Or in turning from the remarkable beauty of the moons light on January’s snow to enjoying a glass of wine while sitting in comfortable chair before a warm fire. Like Jesus, perhaps this lection can teach us to recognize what a gift life is!

Paleontologist and priest, the late Father Teihard de Chardin once wrote that for him, “all joy and…achievement,” the very purpose of his being depends on the union of God and this world. And in an almost ecstasy of joy he writes: “O God let others…proclaim your splendors as pure Spirit; as for me…I have no desire…no ability to proclaim anything except…your incarnate Being in the world of matter.”

There are many temptations to despair of the future. David Brooks in a New York Times column this week (1/05/10) wrote that seemingly every idea associated with the educated class has grown unpopular in our nation over the past year: the reality of global warming is mocked, abortion rights for women are opposed, gun control is disdained, an internationalist foreign policy with multilateral approaches is denigrated while “going is alone” is urged. According to some polls, 41 percent of our citizens support such positions. It’s not difficult to find reasons for pessimism about our world as we move into the future!

But then there are other voices of hope that discover and celebrate and work for the human values of nurturing and sacrificial love. This week I received an electronic message from a fellow board member at Hartford Seminary. Hans Ucko, acutely aware of the destructive forces at work in our world, writes from Geneva, Switzerland about a “possibility to light up the night with kaleidoscopes of fireworks criss-crossing the skies in formations, structures, patterns, colors and sounds that defy the depression griping us.” Just as Jesus did at Cana, in the midst of a troubled world, my friend calls us all to celebrate the possibilities that exist in the future for good. And he cites his own determination in 2010 to support an initiative rooted in Myochikai, a Japanese lay Buddhist movement that seeks to bring people of religions together in cooperation with UNICEF and its Convention on the Rights of the Child. As he reminds us, the child is celebrated and valued in every religious tradition.

So as we enter a new year, the message I hear ringing through our lection from John is Jesus’ call to celebrate life and friendship, to enjoy our material comforts. But also to be aware of our hurting world, to pray for it and to take whatever actions we can to further what Jesus so often called, “the reign or commonwealth of God.”

Ralph Ahlberg

The Baptism of Christ (First Sunday after Epiphany, January 10, 2010)

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Isaiah 43:1-7, Psalm 29, Acts 8:14-17 and Luke 3: 15-17 and 21-22

The lection this week from Luke marks a dramatic insight into the ways of God. A voice from heaven gives Jesus titles such as “Son” and “Beloved.” We get the sense that even those others who were there with him also are caught up and become touched by God’s reconciling spirit. In other words, this is a major place in Luke’s gospel where Jesus and the others have an epiphany.

A few days ago on Thursday, January 6th and the beginning of the Epiphany season were celebrated in many Christian settings with a reading from Matthew 2. It’s a passage that remembers how the Wise Men followed a Star in the East toward Bethlehem. W.H. Auden helped me to better understand the meaning of that passage when he wrote: “To discover how to be truthful now is the reason I follow the star,” says the first Wise Man. And the second says, “To discover how to be living now is the reason I follow the star.” And the third says, “To discover how to be loving now is the reason I follow the star.”

That word, “epiphany,” you see, means insight. It has to do with the sudden dawning of awareness, a revelation of what life is all about. It has to do with why and how God allows Godself to be known within the human community. If we were to catalog all the ways that God does this, I’m sure there’s be lots of diversity and maybe even disagreement. For some of us, it might well be a star in the East, but for others it might be a good book or a passage from scripture or the music of Bach or Springsteen. For some it might be a quiet walk through a nature preserve or a strenuous climb full of adventure to the top of a high mountain.

For most of us, there are special places or times that seem to have an eternal dimension, and whatever those times and places and experiences are, we all need whatever epiphanies we can find. Because they guide us on our way. How would you answer someone if that person asked where you’ve found an epiphany? Where do you look for some visible, audible, tangible manifestation or showing forth of God’s spirit in human life?

The Bible offers all kinds of epiphanies. But not for everyone and not all of the time. There are times when it’s as dry and lifeless as an old telephone book. But there are other times when the stories and personalities of the Bible are like stars on a dark night.

Then there are places like New York’s Metropolitan Museum or Hartford’s Atheneum. The love of beauty and craft and discipline that’s evidenced in the richness of those settings lifts one up. Visiting them often becomes an epiphany of God’s gift of life. Personally, as I’ve strolled through halls of Chinese porcelain or French impressionist painting or Russian iconography, I find myself raised up to the Psalmist’s question and the answer he receives, “what are human beings that you are mindful of them…yet you have made them little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.”

Desmond Tutu once said in his book, “Hope and Suffering” that Jesus didn’t come to us as anything more than a human being. But through him our humanity has been forever united with divinity. We’re temples of the Holy Spirit. We’re God-carriers and, he said, “ought to genuflect to one another.”

As I think about the implications of “genuflecting to one another” and what that might mean for a world filled with war and hunger and homelessness, I feel, to say the least, challenged. But it’s that challenge that our Christian faith calls us to accept.

It calls us to risk following that epiphany where we genuflect to one another and where we follow the Star that promises us in the words of W. H. Auden, “rare beasts and unique adventures.”

There’s a story about the French artist, Henri Matisse. In his younger years, he painted still life’s he could churn out one after the other and for which there was a substantial market. As a married man and the father of three children, of course he was tempted to continue churning them out, even though he felt he was compromising his talent. But then something changed. In the artist’s words: “I’d just finished one of those paintings. It was very similar to the previous one, and I knew that upon delivery I’d get the money I needed. There was a temptation to deliver the painting, but I knew if I did, it would be my artistic death. Looking back, I knew it required courage to destroy that picture, particularly since I owed the butcher and the baker. But I did destroy it. And I could count my emancipation from that day.”

Like Auden’s Wise Men, Matisse assumed the risk and followed a star that transformed him and led to a life of greater creativity, integrity and peace. It’s the quality of transformation made possible when we see ourselves and others as epiphanies — God’s beloved and priceless creation.

Ralph Ahlberg

Second Sunday after Christmas, January 3, 2010

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Jeremiah 31: 7-14, Psalm 147: 12-20, Ephesians 1: 3-14 and John 1: (1-9) 10-18

As Christians, we believe that our lives and indeed the creation itself are purposeful and have meaning. And that meaning and purpose has always had to do with God and God’s intervention in some manner within human history. Apart from God’s intervention we have always believed that life would indeed be bleak. Our lection from Jeremiah (31: 7-14) pictures a people in exile, a people for who despair and grief seem to be the only option. The apparent eternity of winter’s grasp dominates Psalm 147 (12-10) with its picture of God sending “snow like wool” and “frost like ashes.” The author of Ephesians calls to mind the blessings that have come from the entry of Christ into history. And John’s prologue imagines the hopelessness of life lived out in a dark world, a powerful place in which humans blinded by the darkness can’t see their way to a better life.

The message that sings through our lessons this week is that through these purposes of God, exile has ended, our hopeless winter has passed, and our dark world has been invaded by God in Christ from who, if heeded, flow the blessings of wholeness and health of both a personal and corporate nature.

Elisabeth Sifton in a book about her father, Reinhold Niebuhr entitled, “The Serenity Prayer,” raises the false claim, popular since the Enlightenment, that rationality and goodness are all that is needed for human fulfillment. Where, she asks, in all of human history is there evidence of that? Look around the world at starving children, war-blighted villages, and the plight in so many nations with inadequate or often non-existent health care. Look even at democracies and at the push and shove in the legislative process for personal and regional advantages. “Greed, corruption and vanity,” she writes in introducing her father’s insistence that “even the possibility of future usefulness of religion demands the largest possible measure of immediate detachment from the unethical characteristics of modern society. If religion cannot transform society, it must find its social function in criticizing present realities from some ideal perspective and in presenting the ideal without corruption, so that it may sharpen the conscience and strengthen the faith of each generation.” (Sifton, pg. 122)

That’s a tall and largely neglected order! Yet, the meaning and ethical balance that derives from an authentic grounding in the revealed religion of Judaism and Christianity is reason for hope. And at the beginning of a New Year, hope is certainly something we very much need. I find inspiration in two figures within my lifetime, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dag Hammarskjold, who lived public lives within the often boiling cauldron of human fear and greed, yet rose above it to be servants of Christ in furthering progress toward that promised Kingdom of God, so longed for in human history. As Secretary General of the United Nations during a contentious time (when has it not been?) Hammarskjold kept a notebook he called “Markings” a kind of white paper that reflected his struggles and hopes for himself and his world. His positive hope reflected a faith in God that allowed him to affirm a “yes” to life, given even all of its negativity. During the year that his life was dramatically changed as he assumed heavy leadership responsibility at the United Nations, he wrote, “Night is drawing nigh,” quoting from a Swedish hymn that his mother always read on the eve of each New Year. It was a solemn reminder to him of how tentative and precarious life really is. Yet, Hammarskjold in 1953, at the beginning of his difficult and almost impossible assignment, was also able to write “For all that has been — Thanks! To all that shall be — Yes!”

That “Yes” was to be repeated many times during the difficult years that lay before him to become fixed as a yes to God, to himself, and to destiny. Like Bonhoeffer before him, he lived a life of conscious and attentive faith while engaged in assuming the heavy and demanding responsibilities of discipleship in a world “come of age.” In the flux and uncertainty of such a world, both leaders found in their relationship to Christ a “cantus firmus,” so that Christ became for them a firm song in their hearts and minds that was a counterpoint to all the other often discordant and even strident melodies that life brought upon them.

As we enter into a New Year, as we reflect on our lessons this week, may each of us find our own “Yes” in the hope that Jeremiah posited as a consequence of the ending of Israel’s exile, that the Psalmist praised in his experience of the sovereignty of God, that the author of Ephesians rejoiced over in the benefits and blessings of Christ’s gifts of redemption, and that the gospel writer, John, announced in his discovery that in Christ is a light more powerful than any darkness the world can bring.

May our lessons as we near a new year and decade bring with them our own “cantus firmus,” our own firm song of hope, our own “yes” for what lies ahead!

Ralph Ahlberg

First Sunday after Christmas, December 27, 2009

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: I Samuel 2: 18-20, 26, Psalm 148, Colossians 3: 12-17 and Luke 2: 41-52

The setting for our lection from I Samuel brings us back in history to a time centuries before Christ’s birth to a place where Israel’s situation was transitional and precarious. There was the threat of external enemies, principally the Philistines, which was made even more dangerous because Israel had no king to rule over them. There was no royal figure in Israel’s life that could unify them and build their internal confidence. Up to that time, kings had been considered a negative, but now the people were beginning to believe that a king could provide order and discipline; a king could rally an armed force and intimidate a potential foe. Such a leader was gaining value in their minds.

It is against this background that the story of Samuel’s birth (I Samuel 1:1-2:26) is told. When Hannah offered her prayer to God, it was because she was childless, a condition in that world that brought shame and a sense of failure. But God’s answer to her prayer was not a future warrior king, but a son who would provide a bridge or connection between a time when the people had no king and a time when a reign of kings would bring stability and greater safety. That reign was to eventually find its apex in David and a kingdom centered in Jerusalem.

But first came Samuel, the vehicle or instrument of that transition. And forming Samuel’s character and strength was Hannah and to a lesser degree Elkanah, a mother and father possessed with such devotion and faithfulness to God that Hannah was able to offer their new son Samuel to Eli to be dedicated to God and raised in the Temple.

This text is said to have inspired the gospel-writer, Luke. As Hannah’s gift of Samuel to Israel’s God was made at a time of great crisis in its corporate life, so, once again at a time of great urgency we are told that God touched Mary in a way that provided the people of Israel with Jesus, who would save or show the way to the healing and health of the people. And once again, Luke wants to tell us that the new hero of faith was like Samuel grounded in the life of the Temple.

So, first, that Temple setting continues Luke’s desire to associate the gift of God that is Jesus with the great tradition of Samuel and his devotion to the spiritual life of the nation. Like Hannah and Elkanah, Mary and Joseph are parents of great faithfulness and fidelity who have nurtured their son in faith. It was that quality of faith that brought them to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. And it was there that we find the only story in the gospels that tells us about Jesus in the time of his youth. What we learn about him is his engagement in discussion with Israel’s teachers in the Temple.

Second, the story in Luke “anticipates the radical commitment that Jesus’ teaching will later demand of his hearers.” For Jesus, even when presented as a child, family considerations for him are secondary. The story tells us that his first priority is God. Jesus even names God rather than Joseph as his Father, something most unusual during an age when family loyalty was so culturally dominant.

And third, the story communicates the anxiety of Jesus’ parents when they discover him missing and return to find him in the Temple. Mary’s question emphasizes the fear they felt. Note that it is Mary not Joseph who asks, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” Neither parent understood the meaning of this event. They have to wait and see what will unfold in Jesus’ life, how he will turn out, where God will lead him. Mary especially is described in this narrative as a figure of trusting faithfulness, trusting that their young son is one sent by God. In this, commentators on this passage tell us she represents those of us in the present church, waiting hopefully in faith, consenting in obedience and trying to understand in the crises and conflict of our own world what lies ahead.

In seeking greater understanding of these faith and commitment stories from our lection for this Sunday that the church has so valued over many centuries, I came upon a small essay that Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave to his parents at Christmas in 1942. Hitler was nearing defeat and lashing out in fear, seeking in desperation to destroy those who opposed him and especially incensed by those associated with the attempt to assassinate him. Bonhoeffer was arrested and in prison. It was to be his last Christmas. At a time of great anxiety and discouragement in his home, among his friends and, indeed, throughout most of the world and in fear of his own life, he wrote:

“There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future…It may be that the day of judgment will dawn tomorrow; and in that case, we shall gladly stop working for a better future. But not before…The ultimate question for a responsible man (sic. human being) to ask is not how to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live.”

Perhaps during our time of conflict over climate change, war and health care, these lines of the great Christian martyr capture the spirit behind our lections better than many attempts of interpretation.

Ralph Ahlberg

Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 20, 2009

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Micah 5: 2-5a,
Luke 1:46b-55 or Psalm 80:1-7, Hebrews 10: 5-10 and Luke 1: 39-45 (46-55)

Ponder this: “It appears from the gospel texts,” our gospel lection for this week, “that only two people understood just how subversive this little life would be: the most powerful man in the country,” Herod, “and a powerless, penniless, illiterate Jewish peasant girl.” (John Ortbert, “Christian Century Magazine” 12/15/09, pg. 20) Of course, that would be Mary. Her song has resounded through the centuries, puzzling and inspiring millions of people: “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” (1:52-52)

I have often puzzled why those designers of the lectionary chose this text for what most of the Church (protestant at least) celebrates as “Christmas Sunday.” Perhaps that’s why children’s pageants appear then or lessons and carols. Anything, but don’t disturb the peace with Mary’s song about disturbing the status quo! And let me quickly confess that to my memory, only once in more than forty-five years of ministry have I chosen the gospel lection for that Sunday myself. The text, you see, turns everything upside down. The winners become losers, the ups get put down. Mary tells her audience that the world, our world, has about everything wrong. She seems to imply that God refuses to countenance greed, violence, injustice and that God gets angry when people are afflicted with hunger, as are apparently a fifth of American school children, or die from inadequate health care as do forty-five thousand Americans every year. Not a very pleasing message to deliver on Christmas Sunday as families gather for mostly warm and happy celebrations of one kind or another. Spending more than a decade in Greenwich, I had my share of festive gatherings during this time of the year — and I enjoyed them. So why be wet blankets, O you builders of the lectionary?

That last question’s answer, of course, is because justice and love are at the very heart of the gospel message. It’s that as we celebrate the entry of the Christ child into human history while avoiding a potential charge of hypocrisy and unfaithfulness, gospel writers and we ourselves need to be true to the meaning of Christ’s birth. Yet, as Ortberg in his Christian Century column cited above puts it, this new child we celebrate at Christmas would grow to become one who

“wouldn’t overthrow Herod by using Herod’s methods. He wouldn’t out-Herod Herod. He would out-love Herod and defeat Herod’s capacity to hate by his greater capacity to suffer. He would humble himself — be born in a staple, grow up in poverty and work with his hands. He would teach wherever people would listen. He would be accused unfairly, tried corruptly and mocked. He would be executed. He would overcome the dominion of sin through his suffering on a cross. God would turn everything upside down, and it would all start on the bottom of the pile with little Mary. And her baby.”

Still, at Immanuel Church’s recent late afternoon Sunday service of lessons and carols, I confess to feeling the hope inspired by the rival of Mary’s baby on the human scene. Lots of emotion soared within, so that I could barely sing the words of “Once in Royal David’s City,” the processional carol. It caught me up and drew me back to many prior Christmas celebrations surrounded by loved ones and filled with meaning. And it reminded me of what is again at the heart of our faith, which is our longing for love and justice and peace. Let me close this meditation with the words of that carol. It’s very good theology.

Once in royal David’s city stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her baby in a manger for a bed:
Mary was that mother mild, Jesus Christ her little child.

Jesus came to earth from heaven, who is God and Head of all,
Sheltered in a rustic stable, cradled in a common stall;
With the poor and meek and lowly lived on earth our Savior holy.

And through all this wondrous childhood Jesus honored and obeyed,
Loved and watched the tender mother whose strong arms a cradle made.
So, like Jesus, we should be serving God obediently.

Jesus is our childhood’s pattern, daily like us lived and grew,
Jesus, little, weak and helpless, tears and smiles and comfort knew.
Jesus felt the pain of sadness, and the joyous lift of gladness.

We at last shall meet our Savior, fount of God’s redeeming grace,
For that Child so dear and gentle reigns within a glorious place;
Leading all God’s children on to the heaven where saints have gone.

A blessed Advent and Christmastide to all!

Ralph Ahlberg

Third Sunday of Advent, December 13, 2009

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Zephaniah 3:14-20,
Isaiah 12: 2-6, Philippians 4: 4-7 and Luke 3: 7-18

“No emotion is more welcomed into human life than that of joy. Joy is the realization that deeply held hopes have been or shortly will be fulfilled. Joy is also the dawning of an understanding that those events which have been most feared will not occur. But if joy is always one of the sweeter sensations of life, especially exultant is that joy which is completely unexpected, or which breaks suddenly into the midst of our gloom.” From “Texts for Preaching,” Year C, Cousar et.al.)

A number of years ago, someone asked Albert Einstein what was the most important question that anyone could ask. The great scientist responded by saying, “Is the universe a friendly place or not?”

Einstein believed that this is a friendly universe. His question, however, is a worthy one for all of us to ponder. For how we answer it depends to a great extent on the nature and strength of our faith. For many, I suspect, the universe is seen as unfriendly, threatening and lacking in joy.

In Frank Baum’s great story, “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy and all her friends made it through all kinds of threatening and scary ordeals to arrive at the Emerald City, the home base of the great and powerful Oz. With the greatest of timidity and in awe of their surroundings, Dorothy and scarecrow without a brain, the Tinman without a heart, and the cowardly Lion knock on the door of the imposing castle, but the doorkeeper sticks his head out and tells them to go away. Then, when they finally gain access to the Wizard himself, they experience thunder, smoke and lightening that caused them great fright.

Although that is not the way most of us picture God in our time, for many in Jesus’ era, God was like the Wizard of Oz — mysterious, ominous, seemingly full of wrath and unquestionably unapproachable. For those who think of God in that way, the chances are their universe is, indeed, a cold, unfriendly and joyless place.

Sometime during these days approaching Christmas, I suspect we’ll sing the carol entitled, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, the third verse of which goes like this: “And ye, beneath life’s crushing load/ with painful steps bending low/ who toil along the climbing way, /with painful steps and slow, / Look now, for glad and golden hours/come swiftly on the wing/ O rest beside the weary road, /and hear the angels sing.”

For me, this verse conjures up all kinds of poignant images of people who are just tired out and who carry heavy burdens within joyless lives. A few years ago when my daughter worked as a social worker in New York, she came home telling of young girls who’ve never known parental love, who’ve never had the guidance of either home or church. Some of these girls too often become the victims of seeking love the only way they know how and become thirteen or fourteen-year-old mothers with most unpromising and potentially joyless futures. Or I think about the people I see in nursing homes, places they’d rather not be, but who have no where else to be. Or what about our fellow Americans called out to leave their homes and loved ones and risk their lives in Afghanistan and probably Pakistan? Not to mention all those who become the accidental victims of war and our weapons sophisticated but not sufficiently so to exclude non-combatants.

It was recently reported that the total cost of stationing one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for one year is $1 million. So, asks, Tom Friedman in a recent column, “what if we kept just one soldier back from Afghanistan” and gave it to the governor of a Brazilian state that has the largest national park in the world. The governor’s answer was that if three soldiers were kept back saving $3 million, it would suffice to keep his state university educating 1,400 students for a year in environmental studies.

As Christians, we speak a lot about that word, “salvation,” and too often, I’m sure, we associate the word with the afterlife. But it’s important to remember the primary meaning of the word has to do with the present tense. To be saved means to be given health and wholeness of spirit and to be made useful in God’s realm — now.

Within our Christian tradition, the Third Sunday in Advent lifts up the anticipation and joy associated with Christmas and the Coming of Christ. Our Good News is that in spite of all the negativities which have always accompanied human experience — ultimately the universe is a friendly place because its creator is God. It’s a universe, therefore, in which we can let go of all our excess baggage, our hates and fears, our resentments and jealousies, our feelings of doubt and inadequacy. For we live in a universe, however fragile and precarious, where, whatever our circumstance, our lives can be useful. We can act with love and energy. Our faith and courage can be a response to the message and to the hope which Christ brings. It can bring us joy!

Ralph Ahlberg

Second Sunday in Advent, December 6, 2009

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Malachi 3: 1-4,
Luke 1: 68-79, Philippians 1:3-11, Luke 3: 1-6

Vaclav Havel, the playwright and former resident of Czechoslovakia, in one of his books, “Living In Truth,” writes about a person who reminds me of John the Baptist. During the days of communism in Czechoslovakia, Havel worked for a time in a brewery. He quickly observed how much the brew master loved his work. He was one who was proud of the quality of his beer. In fact, he spent almost all his time thinking up ways to improve his product. But the brewery was managed by a communist appointee who didn’t understand nor like his job. The manager took a dislike to the brew master, a man whose energy and interest was so focused on making good beer. In every way he could, the manager tried to put a damper on his energy and industry. Finally, after months of harassment, the brew master had enough. He tried to go over the head of the manager, who was ignorant of beer-making but who was well-connected politically. When the Communist Party’s district committee met, they saw to it that the situation was resolved in favor of the manager. The brew master was thrown out of his job and shifted to another that required no skill and was unrelated to making beer.

The hard truth coming through this story is that all too often within that society, when a person spoke the truth, she or he ended up as a sub-citizen and enemy of the state. In the case cited by Havel, he saw signs of the eventual downfall of communism, simply because it couldn’t stand the truth-telling of women and men like the brew master.

In a similar way, John the Baptist was a truth-teller. What we have in our Gospel lection this week is the story of one who has come to ‘prepare the way of the Lord’ (Isaiah 40:3; Malachi 3:1), the one who, in defiance of those who apparently exercise power, is on hand to proclaim the kingdom of the truly powerful, Jesus Christ. His role was something like an advance man. His part was to set the stage for what would follow. In fact, Jesus couldn’t have accomplished what he did without him. So, quite naturally, during this season of Advent we look at his preparatory work. We ask what it is in John the Baptist that might help us to better understand the meaning of Jesus’ entry into human life.

In order to do that, we need to get in mind exactly what John did. It’s clear from all four of the gospel records that John created quite a stir before Jesus ever appeared on the scene. Out in the Judean wilderness where he’d grown up, John began to preach with a strange and compelling power. He spoke charged words from the heart to the heart that penetrated deeply into that place where people profoundly feel and care. And the message was something like that of the Czechoslovakian brew master! Like him, John the Baptist said that there was a need in the world around him for change.

Most of us are at best ambivalent about change. One side of us says that there are many ways to brow and expand and develop both ourselves and our society. We know we aren’t the kind of creatures by nature who can stay absolutely immobile. We either grow or we diminish. We either get better or we get worse. And for most of us, change has the aspect of adventure. In other words, the prospect of the new excites us.

But another side of us resists change. It awakens our fears and we wonder what the no-yet-experienced will mean for ourselves and for our world. If someone suggests that we should change because we’re not adequate the way we are, our pride and our shame are somehow activated, and we grow defensive and feel threatened.

So, whether it’s brewing beer or improving a health care system or dealing with any other aspect of life, there’s an inner challenge that a call to growth and change always has to face. John the Baptist was able to cut through all this kind of ambivalence and to mobilize the positive against the negative.

As we study the lections assigned for this Advent season, we discover that they are filled with the experiences of those who’ve seen something of God’s vision and purpose for creation. In the terminology of the Church it is called God’s Realm or Kingdom. And there are many who have experienced at least intimations of such a Realm where there’s freedom and responsibility, both of which are infused with virtue and love. Our Advent hope is that as we move into the future there will be fewer wars, less hunger and homelessness, more racial and religious harmony and always a prioritizing of resources that allow for human growth to take form and shape.

All this, under God, is a human possibility. That’s why the Church, year in and year out, turns back to reflect on John the Baptist as a preparation for the coming of Christ into our lives. It’s because we know that before any significant new thing can happen in our lives or in the life of the larger society, there has to be a rebirth of a desire to grow.

That’s John the Baptist’s contribution. He was able to make people feel, at the same time, dissatisfied with the way things are and yet hopeful about what they can become. And both are necessary because without some sense of need, without a clear recognition that change ought to take place, there’s no impetus for growth. And without the hope that something creative and good can be accomplished, then the thought of change only brings depression and despair.

Heath care for all, peace with justice for all, decreasing support for the NRA and a consequent reduction of guns whose sole purpose is often to kill other people, advances in enabling a environment of health for our planet — all are positive human possibilities. John the Baptist points the way.

Ralph Ahlberg