John 20: 24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”  28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”  29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

I read the following story in Sojourner’s Magazine long ago, back in the time when apartheid was yet the law of the land in South Africa. It comes from South Africa, and concerns a dream that a man had.

Now I am careful about not putting too much stock in dreams. If I took all of my dreams seriously, I would believe that I could fly, or that pizza grows on trees, and that I never showed up for my high school algebra class, the final exam is today, so if I fail it, that would put my college and seminary degrees in doubt, too.

Some dreams are not worth believing in.

But this dream struck me and stayed with me, even though it wasn’t mine. In this South African person’s dream, he died and went to heaven where he saw Jesus. He knew it was Jesus because of the scars on his hands, his feet and his side. So he asked Jesus, “If this is heaven, and we’re all supposed to have glorious, eternal resurrection bodies like yours, why does your body still bear the scars of your crucifixion?”

After all, Jesus’ body was still bearing the scars when he encountered the Apostle Thomas one week after his resurrection. Its a valid question because if our prayers for long, worthwhile lives are answered as we hope, then I don’t know how we’ll get through this life, in this world, without some sort of marks and scars. Both the external, physical scars, plus some internal, emotional scars. So, will we still be wearing our scars in the fullness of God’s kingdom?

Before I give you the answer that Jesus gave this man in his dream, I’ll mention some of the other answers that people have given over the centuries to that question, Why does the Resurrected Jesus still bear his scars? One saint from the Middle Ages said that it was so that, on the Day of Judgment, his scars would be Exhibit A of the evil in the world, and would thereby condemn his enemies. They may indeed have that effect, but I don’t think that saint was feeling particularly cheery or charitable on the day he wrote that.

Other saints said that it was to silence the false teachers who taught that God was not really incarnate in Jesus in such a way as to actually engage in the dirtiness, dangers and difficulties of this life, who said that Jesus was only a sort of ghostly projection from heaven acting out the Passion story as a sort of parable of an other-worldly spirituality. And only those who are wise enough and truly initiated would get the meaning of this charade, but not if we took the cross and crucified flesh literally. God forbid that, through Christ, he would so submit himself to the fullness of the human condition that he even experienced real physical and emotional suffering! That would be beneath God, they say.

Well, as for that idea, Jesus bearing his scars would have a dampening effect. But I don’t think Jesus still bears his scars for the sake of a theological argument that I don’t think is going on in heaven as I speak.

In Thomas’ case, Jesus was wearing his scars so that he would know that before him stood the very Jesus who had been crucified, and who died, and who was now alive and well and in the flesh.

That’s a sign similar to the white tab in the front of their black collars some pastors and clergy wear, or to the wedding or engagement ring that people wear. Each of those signs speak of a history that went into the wearing of that ring or that collar. They also speak of an ongoing, enduring commitment. So the wounds of the Risen, Eternal Jesus speak of a history of an involvement and a solidarity with us that was also costly and painful. Costly, like the missing finger I noticed on a commercial fisherman when I was 12 years old. Like most young kids, I couldn’t restrain myself from asking, “Oooh, Mister–What happened to your finger?” My dad nudged me with his elbow but the old fisherman didn’t seem to mind. He smiled, held up his hand and said, “I picked up a pike by the head to clean it, when I thought he were dead, but he weren’t.” Pike have very sharp teeth.

To the old man along Lake Erie, that missing finger seemed to be a badge of honor. I’ve noticed the same thing over the years with some farmers, millwrights, welders, mechanics, carpenters, fire fighters, lumberjacks, soldiers, construction workers and other skilled workers, artists and crafts persons who work with dangerous tools, in dangerous conditions. While none of them would have wanted the burns, scars and missing fingers, toes or even limbs they have sustained over the years, they sometimes treat those scars as badges of honor and signs of solidarity with their trade, and with other people in their trade. And they sometimes like scaring little kids like me with them.

With that I think we’re coming closer to the reason why the Risen, Eternal Jesus still bears his scars, or at least why he did for Thomas. Because we all bear scars of one kind or another.

There are of course physical scars like what my father has on his weather predictor knee. You can still see the straight line across it, from where he fell and broke it in his youth. Sixty years later, it tells him whenever the barometric pressure is dropping and a storm front is coming. You can tell its going to be really bad if he needs his cane. Among any group of people you can find scars from surgeries, injuries, assaults, accidents and sometimes just plain foolishness, like the ones people get on their arms from trying to pull catfish out from holes in the river bank. Or those we might see on people in America’s Funniest Home Videos.

More like America’s Most Painful Home Videos.

Fortunately, very, very few people today have the same scars that Jesus bears. But there are plenty of other kinds of scars. Because Becky’s parents regularly hosted international military officers at Fort Leavenworth, I once saw the round bullet scars on the arms and hands of two soldiers, at the same dinner table one day with us. They discovered that they had gotten their scars at the same battle. And they were from the opposing armies. Their response, when they discovered that they had been shooting at each other, was joy and relief that they were both alive to tell the tale. And they both agreed that the war they had fought in was pointless.

I’ve met other soldiers who bear scars we cannot see, except, perhaps, in the high rates of homelessness, drug and alcohol problems and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that they often suffer. And I’ve heard some of their regrets and guilt over what they had to do to survive. For that I blame most the people who put them in that position. Then there are the people who witnessed these things and who are still dealing, years later, with the trauma, fear, loss, anger. And guilt for having survived when others did not. Like a family member for whom the events of September 11, 2001 brought back long dormant memories and emotions from bombing raids on his German home 60 years before.

Not only might we bear scars from things that people have done to us, there can be self-inflicted scars from things we have done to ourselves and others. If anyone is taking suggestions for the next winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, I would recommend the inventor of the eraser or the Delete key. A lot of people have been spared a world of hurt from things that were almost said or sent, but, Thank God, they were not.

But my one gripe with this inventor is that he or she did not make an eraser nor a Delete key for time and events. Unfortunately, we can’t erase nor delete all the things we do or say. Every choice is like driving a nail into a board. We can go back with a claw hammer and pull each one out. In the same way, we can repent and confess our sins and obtain forgiveness. But just as the hole remains after we pull a nail out of a board, so do some scars remain, even after forgiveness, even if only in the form of memories. All things can be forgiven, but not all things can be forgotten. And like the Holocaust, some things must never be forgotten. We need the memories to serve as warnings against our powers of self-deception.

And there are some scars people have gotten for love. Like the burns on the hand of a man I knew who rescued his sister, whose clothes had caught fire. Or the surgical scar of a woman who contributed a kidney to her sister. Or the numbers tatooed on the arm of a Dutch woman who spent time in a German concentration camp for hiding Jews from the Nazis. Those examples are getting close to the reason for Jesus’s scars, and the reason that he seems to keep them.

Among my most treasured possessions is this tiny little round button from Poland, about 30 years old, with a red flag on it and the word, in Polish, “Solidarnosch,” or “Solidarity,” the Polish labor union that brought down Communism, peacefully. There was a time when wearing that button could get one imprisoned, tortured, or worse. A labor activist here in the U.S. gave it to me, and I think it had been smuggled out.

More than that button can ever be, Jesus’ wounds are his badges of solidarity with us. Jesus’ scars are proof of his love, of his 100 per cent commitment to us and to our human condition. Just as wearing this word, “Solidarnosch” cost many Poles dearly, so those badges of solidarity cost Jesus dearly. But they bought him something, too. Something priceless, treasured and cherished more than the ease and comfort that he gave up in exchange:

You.

Through love, then, the scars he suffered from people’s hatred and brutality have been transformed into something beautiful, noble, and strong. The gaping red evidence of his chosen weakness and vulnerability has now been transformed into signs and symbols of an invincible and victorious power, so that he is not just the Lamb of God but also the Lion of Judah, no longer the Passover Victim but the Resurrection Victor.

That, then is the journey and the possibility before all of us. Its too late for any of us to get through this life without wounds or scars, physical, emotional or spiritual, self-inflicted or otherwise. But I know someone who has proven that he can transform all wounds and scars from signs of shame and weakness into badges of love, honor, strength and triumphant faith. Thanks to Him, we don’t have to remain victims, nor villains. We are “more than conquerers– victors– through him who loved us” enough to share our scarred and broken condition. By forgiving and being forgiven, by trusting and loving, by repenting and returning, we too can overcome our past and make of our wounds signs of solidarity with all other sufferers and strugglers in this world. In that way, maybe we will bear our scars forever, like Jesus does. But they will be testimonies, and trophies, not of things that overcame us, but of things we overcame.

And that leads me to the answer that Jesus gave the man who asked him, upon meeting him in a dream, “Why are you still bearing your scars?”

Jesus did not give him a direct answer. Instead, he asked the man in return, “And where are your scars? Was there nothing, and no one, worth fighting for?”

But no one in NATO or Washington seems to be calling this a “war.” Its a “kinetic action.” And that is only one mystery, hinting at dishonesty and self-delusion, among others in this war. Mystery surrounds the roots of this war as darkly as it does the outcome, if wars can be said to have outcomes. More often, they are flare-ups of enduring conflicts over resources, security, territory and status, such as the Western European war that we can trace from before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 through World War II, or the war from the Korean War through the civil wars of Africa, Asia and Latin America, as expressions of the Cold War.

But war it is, however limited the aims or the means. And like most wars, there was violence before the shooting began, violence, at least, of a political, economic and social manner. Libya has long had its own share of inter-tribal violence, in the forms of blood feuds, revenge-and-honor-killings and favoritism for the spoils of government and oil. How much tribalism fits in to either the rebellion or Qadafi’s reactions is hard to say, but the current military stalemate between eastern and western Libya, and the differing levels of support for the rebellion in each side of the country, would tend to point in that direction.

Then there is Qadafi’s violent enmeshment in global structures of violence. Qadafi has long been a bad neighbor, in addition to being a bad ruler, most notably by his likely bombing of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. But he was also implicit in other conflicts, such as the civil wars in Chad and Liberia. Which leads some to suspect that there is an element of “payback” in NATO’s recent “kinetic action.” But for such crimes there are economic and political sanctions, which have only been applied in a chaotic on-again/off-again fashion against Qadafi over the years. I take the humanitarian concern of NATO governments and our president, expressed for oppressed and endangered Libyans, at face value and honor it. But until recently, the world seems to have been more interested in Libya’s oil than in Libya’s people.

The bigger picture of the current Libyan conflict is that NATO air strikes are destroying NATO heavy weapons that NATO countries (Italy, France, Germany, etc.) sold to Libya, purchased with money from the sale of Libyan oil to NATO countries that was stockpiled in NATO member-nation banks. Given that this money and these weapons allowed Qadafi to misrule his nation with impunity, was that not a form of violence that made Qadafi’s own violence against his people possible, and NATO’s violence nearly inevitable?

My nation is the world’s largest arms merchant as well as the world’s largest consumer of oil. That is not a recipe for a happy outcome, nor is it sustainable. How many other wars and “actions” are brewing, and soon to explode onto the scene, under similar causes and circumstances?

Once a dictator like Qadafi starts bombing, shooting and strafing his own people, and threatens to show them no mercy, pacifists and peacemakers like myself must not pretend that the world is not faced with a dilemma, fraught with unintended consequences, whatever our actions, or non-actions. But those who make the calls and push the buttons for war must not pretend that there are no dilemmas, nor any risk of unintended consequences, either, despite the typical militaristic sloganeering. A simple review of history shows that any war, any day, is rooted in the military solutions, or victories, of previous years. Somebody then needs to raise the difficult questions and bear prophetic witness about where and how we are sowing the ground for more military violence by means of economic and political violence, as was the case with Libya. Generals, presidents, arms merchants and manufacturers don’t tend to do that. Someone must do it for them, and before them, even when it requires the kind of courage and exacts the kinds of costs associated with soldiering. For it is that, another kind of soldiering, that is called for—one done with bread, not bombs, on our knees in prayer, not on the march with guns, with acts and words of love, not weapons of hate. And somebody needs to push ahead the art, science and wisdom of peace-keeping to at least the same degree that we have so madly developed the art and science of war-making. That somebody is the church of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” Lets not let the brutality of Qadafi, nor the boosterism of our governments and military establishments, push us off that costly higher calling.

Pastor Mathew Swora

[Note: We welcome Joshua Kielsmeier-Cook as a contributor to Emmanuel Mennonite Church's weblog. The following essay and reflections continue his sharings and contributions to our church's recent retreat at a Community-supported Agriculture farm late last September--Pastor Mathew Swora]

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

Genesis 2:15

The focus of Emmanuel’s annual church retreat this year was Local and Sustainable: Faith and Food. The synergy and interplay betweeen these four themes has become for me a constant conversation betwen the land, the Church, God, and myself. For two seasons I have worked at a small organic vegetable farm in the St. Croix river valley. As a reselft of working with the land, I have a strong God-given desire to explore the primal (by this I mean first and basic) relationship that humans have been placed into with the earth. The above verse is the foundational description of this realtionship. It is my desire that we, as Emmanuel and the Church universal, understand this primal realtionship and execute our primal vocation in light of this understanding.

From the beginning, followers of God have understood that our primary (by this I mean first and foremost) vocation is unity with the Godhead through an ever deepening unification and identification with the divine. The God-human, Creator-creature relationship begins with God’s act of creation and it is here that I want to begin the focus of this essay. In verse 7 of the creation account in Genesis 2 it is written, “the LORD God formed the man of dust from the gorund…” and he became a living creature. According to Ellen F. Davis, an Old Testament scholar at Duke University, the Hebrew word used here for “ground” is adamah, from which the name Adam is derived. Adamah can be taken to mean the land, the whole earth, and/or the fertile soil. God’s act of creation inextricably and purposefully binds us in relationship with the soil as the material of our genesis.

There are two active elements used in the creation of humanity, the breath of life and dust from the ground. God, the divine active agent in creation, chooses the fertile soil to be that which God animates with divine breath to become Adam. I want to venture as far as to say that the soil in this story has qualities of a mother in the creative function it is chosen to perform. The soil is made fecund by the breath of God. There seems to be a foreshadowing of Mary’s role as mother in the birth of Jesus, the second Adam, as the ground here gives birth to the first Adam. Biblical writers use mother language quite often when refering to the land, especially the land of Zion (Ps. 87:5, Is. 66:10-13, Is. 65:17-18, etc.). This language is not meant in reference to a pagan Mother Earth but it is language used of a fellow creature, the land, made fruitful by God’s breath of life in order to conceive us. This elemental connection between humanity and the fertile soil must lie at the heart of our renewed sense of identity and vocation as creatures. We must not stop here, at our original connection with the land, but it is necessary for us to move forward towards an understanding of our continued relationship with this elemental component of our identity.

As the creation story of Genesis 2 continues, the fertile soil is shown as not only elemental to our identity but also to our existence as nourisher and revealer. The story continues as the LORD God plants a garden in Eden and places God’s new creature into its physical reality of ecological beauty and abundance. Here, God casues “to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen. 2:9a). Again, by God’s hand, the land is made fruitful, this time in order to meet our needs as spiritual and material beigns. The trees of the garden are not only “good for food” (material) but “pleasant to the sight” (spiritual). Humanity is bound in relationship to the land by the nourishment it provides for our bodies and also by the revealation it provides for our spirit. God is revealed by the land as a God of love, for nourishment is born of love, and a God of truth, for what is beauty if not truth? Ultimately we are placed in the bosom of a fellow creature, the land, from which we receive double: nourishment and revelation. It is from the fertile soil that we were brought into existence and from its divinely seeded fruitfulness we continue to exist. God has bonded us together with the land in intimate ways that we have begun to forget and ignore. When this primal relationship is forgotten how can we remember our primal vocation?

Let’s return to the verse used to open this essay, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). To begin to understand the vocation given to humans in this verse we have to see that this vocation was not circumstantially isolated to the garden nor an accidental arrangement due to lack of foresight but an intentional and divine calling. The concrete reality of God’s action in the formation of the vocation “to work it and keep it” is evident by the verbs, took and put. First, God takes, removes, the man from some original state or location of creation. When we take something it is always intentional, whether we are aware of our own intentions for not. We can assume that God is infinitley self-aware and acts with full intention when God takes the man. Secondly, God puts the man in the garden of Eden. God removes man from somewhere in the primeval milieu of creation and with intent places him in the garden. What purpose does God’s activity here at the dawn of all being hold for us? The question posed by God’s activity in the beginning of the sentence is answered by the latter half of the same verse; “to work [the garden] and to keep [the garden].”

These two verbs, work and keep, carry almost as many possible meanings in the Hebrew as they do in English. All of the following discussion on the maning of these two Hebrew verbs comes form Ellen Davis’ book, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture. The verb work in Hebrew most frequently means to “work for someone, divine, or human, as a servant, slave, or worshipper.” Much less frequently but in the surrounding context of the creation story, work means to work on or with something, usually the land. We know that both understandings of the verb work are necessary in our continued existence on the land. It is impossible to continually work the land and expect its continued fruitfulness without at the same time working for the land. I think we can embrace the verbal ambiguity and comprehend work in this context as fitting both possible understandings. Our God calls on us to both work the land and to work for the land.

The Hebrew verb for keep adds even more to the rich ambiguity and content of our God-purposed vocation. Commonly, this Hebrew word is translated as “keep” as in, for example, a flock, or a household, or a brother. More frequently, the translation is “observe” as in observing the world to gain understanding, or observing moral statutes or justice, but mostly to “observe/keep” the commandments of God. I believe that the ambiguous meaning of this verb is purposeful and is meant to help us recognize that we are charged to keep the land, as a sibling or a spouse, but also to observe the land to gain wisdom and to keep the divine limits of it. Perhaps we are called from the beginning to not only keep the commandments of God but to also keep the limits of the land. Today, the Church’s understanding and keeping of the limits of the land are more necessary than ever as the land is forced to produce more and more. As human population continues to mushroom we need to seek more creative ways to maintain the land and its fruitfulness that we depend on. In the end, we are charged by the Creator to work and keep the land, a fellow creature upon which all life depends. We, the Church, must not fall short of our divine vocation.

Now the questions begin, slowly at first but gaining momentum. How do we at Emmanuel Mennonite Church live fully in our vocation? I want to repeat the hope I expressed at the retreat, that this vocation will become a core part of Emmanuel’s identity. We will learn, talk, pray, and act our way into being faithful to our primal vocation. There aren’t any easy answers. We all know the wonderful admonitions to eat local, buy organic, grow a garden, get to know a farmer, etc. that are circulating in our culture today but our fulfillment of this calling must run in a deeper current. This deeper current is defined by relationship, commitment, reciprocity, sacrifice, and above all love. We must love God; we must love God’s creatures and as I have tried to communicate in this small essay, we must love that creature that makes up so much of what, who, and where we: the land. I pray that we might recognize the divine createdness of the fertile soil and come to honor and love it as we have been called.

Though I’m Christian, not Muslim, I am just as distressed at the idea of the proposed “International Burn the Quran Day” as I would be if it were “International Burn the Bible Day.” But that’s precisely what Pastor Terry Jones and his church, the Dove World Outreach Center, of Gainesville, Florida, have proposed as a way of observing the next September 11, 2010, the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS5AuRgeoAE): burning copies of the Quran.

I’ve studied the Quran (or at least an English translation of it) and my supreme loyalty is still to the Bible. Yet I offer the Q’uran respect similar to what I offer my Muslim friends, just as most of them respect me and my Bible. This seems a fair and reasonable exchange. If Pastor Jones and the Dove Outreach Center wish to help people come to know Christ, as is his stated goal (mine too), will they gain a fair hearing by such a threatening and provocative act of flagrant disrespect? Or is his a magical world in which he expects respect, but he doesn’t have to give it?

In his interview on CNN, Pastor Jones recites a litany of charges against Islam, such as forced conversions, terrorism and lack of freedom. I’ve also heard Muslims recite litanies of historic grievances against Christians, going back to the Crusades and to old and contemporary forms of Western colonialism. Their reasoning is so similar, they must either both be right, or equally mistaken. To me, Al Qaeda is to Islam as the Ku Klux Klan is to Christianity. Both appeal to one religion or the other, and both are perversions of it. So, just as I would not want myself and my sacred scriptures discredited by association with the Ku Klux Klan, we must make the same distinctions when relating to all who call themselves Muslim. I know, love and respect all the many Muslims in my life. And I haven’t met an Al Qaeda jihadi yet.

I’d like to take Pastor Jones to meet some of my Muslim friends, including the Muslim family in West Africa that effectively “adopted” Becky, our daughters and myself, without requiring us to become Muslim. They even said we could host prayer meetings or a church on their property. That may not be as unusual as Jones thinks.

So, count me as a conscientious objector to International Burn the Quran Day on September 11, 2010. We have, as a nation, more and better grieving to do about the events of that tragic day, nine years ago, if we are to break out of the cycle of victimhood, vengeance and violence. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the burning of the Quran are part and parcel of our entrapment in aborted and misdirected grieving. Doing something as vindictive and disrespectful as burning the Quran, in order to poke Muslims in the eye, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with the events of that day, will lead to no one’s healing, including our own. Quite the opposite. Respect and reconciliation will go much farther toward healing the wounds of September 11, which were felt just as strongly in the Muslim community of America, as among non-Muslims.

Similar errors and attitudes are at work over plans for a newer, larger Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the World Trade Towers attack. My thoughts: outside of the people of Manhattan and their elected and appointed city officials, its no one else’s business. There may be reasons related to zoning laws and civil safety codes that would argue for or against it, same as if a church were proposed for that site. Religion (or which one), however, should not be a deciding matter in the case, unless we want to start a precedent of legalized religious preference and persecution. We Mennonites should be familiar with where that leads. Our experience has taught us instead that the Holy Spirit has more powerful means of convicting and convincing people than what human laws and regulations can ever provide.

More importantly, what does it say about us that a proposed mosque has become a major national election year issue? Besides fear of Muslims and Islam, it also indicates ignorance. There are already thousands of Muslims living, working and worshiping in Lower Manhattan, with plenty of mosques there even now. Furthermore, the imam and potential builder of the proposed Islamic Center is a Sufi Muslim. Sufism is the most peaceful and universalistic sect of Islam, the one least likely to inspire, recruit and send forth armed jihadists and suicide bombers. In fact, Sufis are more regularly targeted for persecution, violence and murder by Al Qaeda types than are Christians and Westerners, at least by number of successful attacks and body counts.

It all comes down to this: Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan freedom of religion (and atheist freedom from religion) is our freedom of religion as well. Respect for Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans and atheists is tied up with our respect as well. Respect does not mean agreement, nor is it to be confused with postmodern relativism, the belief that all beliefs are equally true, that they all lead to the same destination. They aren’t, and they don’t. To say otherwise is not even respectful to any religion and its adherents. But respect is indispensable to a Christ-like way and witness in the world. In this fearful post-9-11 age, it could even distinguish us.

Pastor Mathew Swora

As I talk with unbelievers, one common reason they cite for not believing is not so much the beliefs themselves (they often believe things that require at least as much faith), but the church’s abuse of power, politically and economically, as well as sexually. A Reformation Point Three would recycle some of the original Protestant and Anabaptist criticism of entrenched, hierarchical, institutionalized religious power. It would also take us back to an apostolic understanding of church leadership, as a tool for the maturation and empowerment of all believers, even to the cultivation and multiplication of power and leadership. In the kingdom of God, those are not zero-sum schemes; Holy Spirit-given power and leadership grow with the sharing. And that takes us back to the model of leadership and power exercised by Jesus, who gave himself away to the ultimate degree, so as to share his life, power, mission and authority with his disciples.

In a Reformation Point Three, we will relearn how to minister and witness without the kinds of power and prestige that the church hierarchy was trying to protect with its cover-ups. That kind of power and prestige are going, going…..gone even as I type this. That will lead to new/ancient and more grass-roots forms and shapes of church, operating against social headwinds of mistrust and contempt. Again, nothing new in our history. The setting, in fact, for some of our finest moments.

April 7, 2010

Pastor Mathew Swora

I can hear my comrades howling over the fact that the same press that lambastes their hierarchy for sexual misconduct turns around and nearly celebrates the sexual misconduct of certain politicians and celebrities. Point taken. But the church is being taken to the woodshed not just for engaging in the very conduct that it condemns (the politicians and celebrities don’t build careers on making moral prescriptions); the problem is also with the cover-up, which celebrities, by their very job description, don’t engage in, either. Most importantly, there is the matter of predation, the vulnerability of the victims, and broken trust. Whatever one might say about philandering  or swinging actors and politicians, these are not as regularly the features of their misconduct.

This is not just a Roman Catholic thing. Other Christian denominations and communions have their stories and histories of abuse, perhaps even of some cover-ups. It is a power thing. And religious power can be an especially fertile field for the abuse of many kinds of power. In systems of church leadership you have a heady, powerful brew that can either lead to the eternal maturity, glory and empowerment of eternal human beings, or you have a web of expertise, domination, attention, intimacy, dependency and symbolism that can ensnare, exploit and infantilize people. The difference depends in part upon how the clergy see themselves. Are we seeking honors and satisfaction from God, or from people? Has our spiritual and theological development served to enlighten us to the fact that we are each “the chief of sinners,” or have we come to feel entitled and superior? Are we using the power that comes with our calling to glorify God or to aggrandize ourselves and our institutions? Do we even see this power as something to share and to cultivate in others, or is it a zero-sum game by which we gather power at other people’s expense?

The clergy sex abuse scandal occurs at the point where sexuality, spirituality and ecclesiastical power meet. Clergy, how are we doing at growing up and being sexually mature people? Or are we taking out our immaturity upon our congregations either by denigrating sexuality, or idolizing it? Within our internal “wiring,” sexuality and spirituality are only a hair’s breadth apart. How are we doing at the balancing act of affirming the goodness of our created sexuality, while submitting it to our spirituality? The latter should direct and define the former, not vice versa.

How are we doing with issues of intimacy and self-disclosure? Do we appreciate just how much intimacy is already involved when we share our faith lives, our questions and our beliefs with other people, especially when we pray with them? As for our temptations and struggles, do we have a “confessor” to whom we can take them? If not, why should anyone bring their temptations and struggles to us? After all, we of all people should know that we are “the chief of sinners.” The totality of our lives and souls cannot be an open book to everyone. But between all the persons in our lives, is all of our life then an open book to someone? Besides God, of course? God made the church for a reason.

Mathew Swora, April 6, 2010

That is why I neither preached nor blogged on the recent federal insurance reform legislation while it was the hottest topic in the land. My faith makes me care very much about the un-insured and the under-insured, and it moved me in one direction on the legislation more than the other. But I could see how reasonable people might disagree with me, based on the faith and values we share in common.

But some things happened in the course of recent protests in Washington, D.C. against health insurance reform in Washington, D.C., that revealed an ungodly and anti-Christ tendency, or temptation, that cuts across all political lines and unites us all, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. To that, I as a pastor must speak.

It is visible in several Youtube videos, such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ik4f1dRbP8&feature=channel. It is the response of some protesters to a man who showed up with a sign saying he has Parkinson’s Disease. At the very least, he was engaging the Tea Party activists with an important question, namely, What is someone like him to do if a private insurance company drops him, or denies him coverage, and he can’t get it anywhere else?

Maybe some of the protesters had some good ideas for him. Maybe some of them engaged him in a respectful and reasonable discussion on that. Maybe they would even have been right, even more right than the legislation being passed. But the cameras caught several protesters who treated him to hostile, threatening contempt, with people stereotyping him as a lazy bum just looking for a handout. That you get on the other [presumably black and poor] side of town, one person shouted. Its evident on the video that the hecklers were much more healthy than the Parkinson’s sufferer, at least physically. Compassion at that part of the protest rally was replaced by a culture of contempt for the weak and the needy, at least on the part of those caught heckling and ridiculing the man with Parkinson’s disease.

How do they respond to someone with cystic fibrosis, or Downs’ syndrome, or an elderly person bent over with advanced arthritis and osteoporosis? I wondered. If they feel a twinge of judgment, fear and a desire that such persons disappear from their sight, I would have to confess that they are not alone. Sometimes the same ugly thoughts and desires run through my head at the sight of human suffering. Fear and contempt can run a mile down the road while compassion is still tying its shoes. But hopefully that gut-level reaction of hostility and contempt is recognized for what it is: fear of our own vulnerability and mortality. Hopefully it is restrained and overcome by an awareness that “there, but by the grace of God go I.” That’s what being spiritual is about, at least for Christians. And if my prayers for a long life and a chance to see my children’s grandchildren are answered, the odds go up astronomically that “there will go I.” In which case I don’t want someone yelling in my face telling me to disappear, contemptuously throwing me a dollar bill to expedite my exit.

This culture of contempt for human weakness is not the exclusive property of either donkeys or elephants. Its not a conservative or liberal thing. I’ve seen and heard much judgmentalism and contempt on both sides of America’s culture wars. The earliest, oldest wisdom from ancient prophets and psalmists tell us that we are indeed “our brother’s keeper” and that the true measure of spirituality is not whether we can project our spirits out of our bodies or do other feats of martyrdom and meditation, but if we “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8).” We can’t get any more “conservative” than that. At their best, liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats are simply arguing over how best to flesh out a culture of compassion for the weak and needy (all of us, eventually). Hopefully they’re listening to each other compassionately and respectfully (What planet am I on? you ask). To live out a culture of compassion in a world of changing technology, we always need new ideas for implementing ancient values. No party and no politician have the last word or the complete picture on that.

But to display contempt, especially for the weak, needy and vulnerable, is to short-circuit the search for truth and effective policy. Because they are no longer the issue. Power is. We’ve been down this road before, like when Nazi Germany was disposing of its “useless eaters,” including the disabled, the infirm and the elderly. Contempt of the weak and the sufferers becomes contempt of oneself, because weakness and need are inescapable to the human condition. I can only hope that when those particular protesters are in wheel chairs, hospital beds or nursing homes, which I can guarantee that they will be, if they live long and rewarding lives, they will have a change of heart toward human suffering and the weak. I also hope they will be surrounded by people who will not mock or turn away from their weakness and need, but who will embrace and support them.

And that their health care needs will be met, one way or another.

Pastor Mathew Swora

Where I Corinthians begins, with the cross of Jesus Christ, it ends. The last controversy in Corinth that Paul addresses, in chapter 15, has to do with the resurrection, and whether or not God brings the dead back to life in real bodies. They should already know the answer to that question, because he starts out by saying, “I remind you of what I preached to you before….that Christ died for our sins.”

So as I explore some more of Paul’s deep thoughts about the cross and what it says for Christian community, I don’t want to come to Easter and the end of Lent with anyone not hearing the same thing: that Jesus Christ died for our sins, on the cross. I don’t want anyone coming through Lent to Easter wondering, “How can my sins ever be forgiven?” or “What can I do to atone for my own sins? Or “How can I know that God would ever forgive me or accept me?” The cross stands as God’s answer with an exclamation mark, to all such questions, declaring that the mercy and compassion and acceptance of God know no bounds or limits, and can overcome any sin, shame, guilt or gulf between people.

There’s no evil so big that the goodness displayed on the cross cannot overcome it. There’s no guilt deeper or taller than the mercy displayed there when Jesus prayed for his executioners and said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” There’s nothing we can do to detract from, or add to, his work there, who died for his enemies, and those who abandoned or betrayed him, rather than avenging himself on them. We can only accept it, or not. The last thing that I, as your pastor, want is to stand before the Great White throne of God and hear him ask me, “You preached every Sunday, but did anyone ever hear from you the same good news that gave you such relief when I laid hold of you?”

And that implies something else: A Jewish rabbi was once asked, “Why is it that so few people find God?” His answer: “Because so few people are looking low enough.” That could have been the rabbi Saul, when he wrote in today’s passage, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are… …so that no one may boast before him.”

Here we come to another implication of the cross, something else it says about the church, about Christian life and relationships, once we understand its leveling word of forgiveness: before the cross of Christ, no one is in a position to boast. At least not about themselves. Before Christ and the cross, all human clamor, claims and comparisons must go silent. In chapter I, Paul has two related kinds of boasting in mind: one has to do with social class and status; the other he mentioned earlier in this passage, when people divided themselves up and said, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” Which implies that Paul and me are better than Apollos and them. Or vice versa. Such boasting about social class and “Who’s my preacher?” are probably connected and related.

First, about dividing and boasting about preachers and teachers: Oratory, teaching, preaching and public speaking skills were to First Century Greeks what basketball or football skills are to our society today, especially for the educated and upper classes who could attend schools of oratory. “How about them Vikings?” you might hear around the water cooler on a Monday morning. On a Monday morning in ancient Corinth, the talk might have been more like, “How about that Apollos and his sermon yesterday?” Funny how people could get all worked up about how well someone spoke, all the while forgetting what it was that they said.

The first time we meet Apollos is in Acts Chapter 18, after Paul had left Corinth, after he had then lived and worked three years in Ephesus. Then there came to the church in Ephesus a Jewish Christian from Alexandria, an Egyptian university town, one Apollos, who we read was very well educated, and very polished, persuasive and skilled in the art of public speaking. After helping the Christians of Ephesus a while, Apollos went on to help the Christians across the sea, in Corinth. Thank God for Apollos.

Because there’s no evidence that Apollos and Paul were personally at odds. Paul refers to him respectfully in chapter 3 of this letter and says, “We both are God’s servants by whom you were led to believe. Each one of us does the work which the Lord gave him to do; I planted the seed; Apollos watered it, but God gave the growth.”

So if neither Paul nor Apollos were stirring up trouble against each other, then there are two likely reasons why their fans were at loggerheads: again, class and status; the other is because of that stubborn tendency in human nature to clamor, claim and compare, in effect, to find something to compare ourselves over, and to start boasting about it. It may be helpful when comparing cars; it may be fun when talking smack about our favorite sports teams. But in the kingdom of God, its like introducing wolves into a sheep pen.

Interesting: Paul does not say, “Stop boasting,” or “Don’t boast.” Rather, he says, “Let anyone who boasts boast in the Lord.” With that Paul displays an amazing understanding of human psychology. He seems to understand that as humans we’re going to look for some sort of hook on which to hang our sense of worth and value. And we’re going to want to express it and extol it. Its incurable. We might do it over a clique in school, or a social class, or a celebrity, a sports star, a sports team, or a politician and his or her party, or our nation and its military might, maybe even our denominations, churches and preachers. When we do, we’re giving these things and people the power to make us happy or sad, to feel like winners or losers, by how well they do in competition with other cliques, classes, countries or celebrities. As though we were succeeding or failing through them. As though our worth and identity were based on their’s. As though we were even living vicariously through them. That’s why we see a lot of grumpy faces in this town on Monday mornings…………… during the NFL play-off season.

So instead of saying, “Don’t boast!” Paul says, in effect, “Hitch your hopes, your value, your honor on the Lord, even, on the Lord who went downward, into dishonor, on the cross, against all the normal human striving for honors and upward mobility. Let him be for you what you tried to make of Apollos and me” (or of the Vikings, the Twins, Jennifer Aniston or your country); let him do for you what Apollos and I (and the Timber Wolves and your social class) can never do for you, namely, give you an unfailing and unshakable sense of worth, value and meaning. There’s nothing more powerful and striking anyone can do to affirm our worth and give us honor than what Christ did by dying for us, in dishonor, on the cross. That’s what we express and extol in worship.

The other reason why the Corinthian Christians were at loggerheads, had to do with social class and status. When Paul first worked among the Corinthians, he says he didn’t approach them with fancy flights of eloquence and open and shut cases of elegant logic. Those who responded to his simple, startling and straightforward message about “Christ and him crucified” were, for the most part, poor, slaves, and the semi-educated. “Not many among you were considered wise, powerful or of high social standing,” he said. Like the kinds of people who ended up on crosses whenever they forgot their place.

When Apollos showed up in Corinth, with his gifts of education and eloquence, could it be that he appealed to a different class, the upper, wealthier, more highly educated, more socially-respected and influential crowd? Even those of noble birth? If so, great. Nothing wrong with them coming into the church: the ground is level at the foot of the cross. But later in this letter we find evidence of tension between social classes in the church. We’ll read that some come to love feasts with lots of food and pork out, while others come empty-handed and leave with empty stomachs. Some get invited to feasts in the temples of idols, and some do not. Some could engage the legal system to start a lawsuit against their brother or sister, who were only at their mercy.

Not that they were always being rude and predatory. Maybe they were just clueless. Its harder for people with power and wealth to know how that power and wealth are affecting others; they are often barely aware of it. Those without such power and wealth are often aware quite aware. And it’s one reason why the life and work of the poor and powerless can be so complicated and nerve-wracking. The Evil One may have used those class distinctions to create tension between those different groups, who then said, “I am of Paul” or “I am of Apollos.” Those could be divisions of class, as well as divisions around who’s the better speaker and teacher.

What they need, and so do we from time to time, are reminders of how God works in the world. Just as God used a tool that looks like great weakness and foolishness to the world—the cross—so too does God most often use people who look to the world like agents of foolishness and weakness: the poor, the un-influential, those without the credentials, the lowest in class, status and power. “The foolish things of the world” which God has chosen “to shame the wise,” and “the weak things of the world” whom God has chosen “to shame the strong,” are often people.

That’s what the tool on the altar is about: a visual, physical symbol about the seemingly weak and foolish things and people that God uses in the world, so that the honor and power are his, not ours. Whether its a homeless and crucified Christ, or Gideon in the Old Testament, leading 300 men against the entire Midianite army, armed with nothing more than torches and clay pots. Not that God loves the poor and lowly more than the middle class or the rich and famous. Not that the poor and lowly are better people than the middle or upper class—remember, the effect is supposed to be that no one can boast. Rather, as that rabbi said, they are looking low enough to find God, because they’re already low enough.

Which leads to a startling idea–the vision of something never before seen or done in human society: a class-free, status-equal human community. It’s God’s dream, its called “the kingdom of God,” and his demonstration plot for this class-free, status-equal community is called, “the church.”

We may say, “But even the church has never accomplished that!” And that would be true, sad to say. Go to some big, beautiful European cathedrals and they’re inspiring, all right. Until you see the special, tall, doors through which the nobility entered and worshiped on horseback, to keep watch over their serfs, and to remind them of who’s in charge. What Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said about race is even truer for class: that the Sunday morning worship service is the most segregated hour in America’s week.

Now, about Emmanuel Mennonite Church, we have as great a diversity of class and wealth as you’ll find in most American churches, especially for our size. And those with wealth to share have been as generous as any you’ll find anywhere else. Visitors have remarked on how friendly and welcoming this church is. But I know what the struggle is like inside when a visitor appears to have great needs, or shows signs of the physical or mental health problems that can keep poor people poor. I know it can be scary. Until, that is, we remember that we’re all just hanging on and keeping it together, one day at a time, by the grace of God and the skin of our teeth. Whenever we’re tempted to draw back in fear from the poorest, weakest and neediest, maybe its because they remind us of who and how we really are.

But then again, we haven’t gotten too many of such visitors. In part, I think its because the poor and those of high needs and lower social status are much more alert to cues and signs of wealth, power and status, than are those who have wealth, power and status. As often as not, the poor may protect themselves from shame and discomfort by shying away from middle and upper class people. It takes a while to earn trust, for people to learn and word to get out just who are the people who won’t look down on you even though you haven’t got the formal education that they have, or the grammar, or the clothing, housing or income. Or even, that these people are willing to listen to you and learn from you, because they value the education we got on the streets, and in the school of hard knocks. They understand what Paul says about God choosing the weak to confound the mighty, and the foolish (in the eyes of the world) to confound the wise, because they know, deep down, that they are them. Maybe they’ve even experienced the warm welcome and the sacrificial hospitality of the poor. It may be their last meal of the week or their one meal of the day that they’re offering you; they’ll miss it worse than you; but it would hurt them worse if you refuse it.

Do such relationships sound impossible? They can and do happen. And here at Emmanuel Mennonite Church in the Phillips Neighborhood of Minneapolis is as good a place as any. For God has not given up his kingdom dream of a class- free and status-equal counter-cultural community, and the cross reminds us of it. All people stand before God with no more than what Jesus took to the cross, after the soldiers gambled for his clothes, which is even less than what the typical homeless person carries from the streets to the shelter where he sleeps at night. We might as well get used to that before that day of reckoning arrives. But on the other side of the cross, in the New Jerusalem, God’s people will be equally honored, rich and esteemed. We might get as well get used to that too.

Now that is something worth boasting about.

So, parents, you’re just about ready to go to work, or out with your spouse for a date while waiting for the baby-sitter, when all of a sudden, your child says, “I don’t feel so good,” and the next thing you know, you’re cleaning up, putting a sick child to bed, and calling the boss or the baby-sitter to cancel all plans. Or students and recent graduates, maybe you’ve experienced something like what a friend of ours has recently: just when he’s starting his new job and preparing for a major test in his field, for his professional license, a friend of the family dies, and the funeral is just days before the licensing exam. And its on the West Coast, two flights there each way. He’s been a straight A student all his life, but with this curve ball suddenly thrown at him, he’ll be grateful just to pass the licensing exam. Which he will. Just maybe not with another A.

As frustrating or scary as those complications can be, they’re all small potatoes compared to the need, and the cry for help, coming from Haiti this week. The year 2010 may be remembered as the year in which some of the best-laid plans did not get off the ground because of the time and resources committed to our friends in Haiti. And that is as it should be. May their need bring out the best and most noble in us.

If you’ve ever faced any such surprise interruptions of your best-laid plans, you know the truth of what John Lennon said, that “life is what happens while we’re making other plans.” Or as a corollary of Murphy’s Law puts it: “The most important things in life are all scheduled at the exact same time.” Sometimes the most important things in life are not even on the schedule.

At such times its easy to despair and to think that we’ll never get any traction on our precious plans; that life will always be an uninterrupted series of interruptions that must be interrupted if we are ever to get anything done. But experience has shown me that, in the days and years that follow many such surprises and last-minute, unforeseeable interruptions, I may not even remember what those waylaid plans and projects were. Or if I do, I am glad for having remembered and done what was most important instead. In fact, there are few better barometers of my true spiritual state than how graciously I respond to the unexpected cry for help from one direction, while I was heading in another.

For such interruptions to our best-laid plans can serve to remind us who is God and who is not, who lives within the realm of time and who created time. They force us to ask ourselves, what are our most important priorities, and who matters most to us? In fact, in every moment of our lives, more often than we admit, we are already choosing what is most important from among many options. In that sense, it is always “such a time as this.”

That was how Mordecai told Queen Esther to view the unforeseen crisis of huge dimensions and monstrous character that had suddenly and surprisingly imposed itself upon her best-laid plans and schedule: it was “such a time as this.” That is how she was to consider all the steps and stages of her history that had brought her to that critical moment, as having prepared and positioned her to deal with the crisis in her life. It came as a surprise to her, but not to the God who had led her there and prepared her for “such a time as this.”

We’re not told what was in Esther’s day planner or her weekly schedule when she was suddenly and shockingly confronted with the imperial plans to liquidate her people, the Jews. I’d like to think it was something along the lines of advocating for racial and economic justice, for environmental stewardship, or for public education, such as what some previous American first ladies have done, like Eleanor Roosevelt. But that all became a moot point for Esther when she learned about plans being hatched for this earlier round of “The Final Solution,” in the same spirit and toward the same end as what Adolf Hitler tried to do.

That was also how Martin Luther King, Jr., experienced the call to lead the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, in 1955. It was just the second year of his first pastorate, when he was already busy serving Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, his family, and with leadership positions on several community organizations, such as the local inter-church pastoral alliance and the Montgomery Improvement Association. That was an inter-racial alliance to improve conditions and race relations in the city. We often look at all this leadership Dr. King took on so quickly and say, “Wasn’t he an on-fire, motivated, minister?” He certainly was. But after my 17 years in ministry, I wonder if it also was because, in local ministerial associations, the old hands are often quite willing to let the newcomers take on as much responsibility as they want. The old-timers have learned to pace themselves if they’re going to survive. Let the newcomers learn the same way they did just how scary busy they can get if they don’t know how to say No sometimes.

Just how scary and busy things could get was brought home to King when Mrs. Rosa Parks, a black woman, was arrested on a city bus for not giving up her seat to a white man. Groups like the Montgomery Improvement Association were just waiting for something like Rosa’s case to press the case for civil rights in the city. And the Montgomery Improvement Association was logically the group to lead it. In the year that followed, the MIA led the successful boycott that ended racial segregation on the city buses.

But Dr. King seemed reluctant at first to lead the charge. He was a fast learner, so perhaps he was already growing aware of the limits of his time and energy. You might almost say that the black community of Montgomery led him into the boycott cause as much as he led the community. Perhaps it was the response of all the attendees at a meeting, the night after Mrs. Parks’ arrest, in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, when King took his turn at the microphone and said, “There comes a time when people grow tired of being trodden under by the iron feet of oppression.” Something about those words brought the audience to their feet, cheering, clapping, weeping, yelling amen! In those simple words King gave voice to the feelings and the stories of his listeners. The audience’s response may have done as much to motivate King as he had done to motivate them. Like Esther, he recognized that then and there was “such a time as this.” The rest is history.

As for Esther, I can understand if she ever wondered where she might go to get a new uncle. Orphaned at an early age, she was raised by her uncle, Mordecai. Even when she rose to prominence in the king’s harem and became queen, her uncle kept telling her not to let on that she was Jewish. Only when it could get her killed did Mordecai then urge her to identify her faith and her people (Gee—thanks Uncle Mordecai!). After all that time of silence, this seemed hardly the right time to stand up and be counted among the king’s targets. But time was running out before the genocidal edict was to be put in place. Even in the palace she would not be immune to the coming imperial pogrom.

To get an idea of how much courage and faith Esther needed “in such a time as this,” consider why she was queen in the first place. She was chosen to replace a previous queen, Queen Vashti, who resisted her husband’s demand that she put on a personal public beauty show, something like a Bronze Age photo op. Her good looks were supposed to make the king look better. It was more about him than about her. She had enough self-respect though to not want to be treated like a trophy. But “What will happen to men around the empire if their wives hear that the queen got away with such insubordination?” the royal counselors ask. So she was divorced and sacked from office.

Esther became the new queen through a beauty contest. That’s all we need to know to understand why that empire went down the tubes. What Esther, the new queen, must do, to seek the king’s audience, and then to advocate for her people’s survival, and, if that weren’t gutsy enough, to declare herself one of them, far surpasses even Queen Vashti’s act of self-respect and of courage and conscience. But that is why she was queen: for “such a time as this.”

Brothers and sisters, we too live “in such a time as this.” In fact, for God’s people, it is always, “such a time as this.” We live in the time when God’s kingdom has come, with Jesus, while we wait for God’s kingdom to come, in its fullness, again with Jesus. As God’s mission to the world goes forward, as human needs cry out for our attention, it is a time of danger and of opportunity. A time to choose among competing choices. A time to remember and to claim our highest, holiest priorities. A time to do the little we can do at the moment, rather than to wait forever for a chance to do many things that are beyond our power and responsibility. A time to take risks and pay the cost, and embrace the cross for the sake of love. A time to reply to the call for help from unexpected directions, while we were heading in another. A time to trust that God is not caught off guard, even when we are. Even, a time to trust that God has already positioned and prepared us precisely “for such a time as this.” Because we never know if “such a time as this” will come again tomorrow. We aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. God gives us right now and forever, but we can’t presume upon later and tomorrow. Yes, with all the possibilities and problems that dog us every moment, it often seems like there’s never a good time to do the right thing. But its always the right time to do a good thing.

No, that does not mean that there are no limits to what can be asked of us. Only God can be on, 24/7 for everyone, everywhere. Yes, there are times to turn off the telephone and the pager, to get away from email, twitter and facebook, to lock the door or get out of the house, and seek rest, solace or solitude. Or to concentrate on that one most important relationship, with God or another person. But even that is to recognize that we have come to a critical moment, to “such a time as this,” when the uninterrupted stream of other pressing needs and demands must be interrupted, to attend to that highest, holiest priority.

Maybe that’s how we should define the historic Mennonite value of simplicity. Instead of seeing it as just a dress code for simple, black and white clothing, which a few of us grew up with, or instead of defining it by what we don’t own by way of flashy cars or the latest technology, as the Amish and some Old Order Mennonites do, we can see simplicity in terms of our few highest priorities among our many options and limits. As people of God’s peace, we can be at peace with our human limits and can let God be God. And as people of God, we find freedom in the fact that we can only do a few things well, with great love, so we don’t need to try and do it all, with little love and much anxiety and agitation. Because our priorities are clear: to seek first the kingdom of God and God’s justice. Anything else, among all the competing demands and choices calling to us, we can let go and leave to God, because it is always “such a time as this.”

Daniel 7:7 “After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast—terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns. 8 “While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth that spoke boastfully.  9 “As I looked, “thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze. 10 A river of fire was flowing,   coming out from before him. Thousands upon thousands attended him;  ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.The court was seated, and the books were opened.  11 “Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking. I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire. 12 (The other beasts had been stripped of their authority, but were allowed to live for a period of time.) 13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. 15 “I, Daniel, was troubled in spirit, and the visions that passed through my mind disturbed me. 16 I approached one of those standing there and asked him the true meaning of all this.  ”So he told me and gave me the interpretation of these things: 17 ‘The four great beasts are four kingdoms that will rise from the earth. 18 But the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, for ever and ever.’

For most of us, this may be the first sermon you’ll have heard on on these beasts and talking horns and visions of a fiery throne in Daniel 7. But I had a relative, now deceased, who could probably have quoted this Bible passage to us by memory. She belonged to a sect that specialized in piecing together Bible prophecies to the point that their conjectures about the future were pretty much their gospel.

When I was in high school, the monthly magazine of this sect told my relative that Jesus for sure was coming in 1975. And only those who were members of this sect would live through it. So she really put the pressure on us, constantly, by letter, telephone call or in person, to convert and join her church in order to be ready for Christ’s return. Obviously 1975 came and went and things remained the same. Or did I miss something? I still don’t know how that denomination’s leaders explained that one. But my relative backed off on her non-stop arm-twisting and ear-bending after that. Today you can still tell when people of this sect have been to your door by the colorful glossy brochures they leave on your door knob, with pictures of lions, bears, leopards, dragons and talking horns.

And to their credit, they got these images from the book of Daniel, even chapter 7. Daniel saw four ravenous, frightening beasts, one with talking horns; obvious pictures of global politics and powers. But for all their end-time speculation around these images, what many people overlook is that these images tell us at least as much about Daniel’s story, and Daniel’s time, as they do about ours. There were beasts prowling about the earth then in the form of violent, idolatrous empires and emperors, claiming and doing all sorts of violent and blasphemous things. They’re still prowling about and roaring today. I think I see them in the form of, Oh, let’s say, the growing global pornography industry. Or the global arms and warfare industry. We and our Mexican brothers and sisters are dealing with monstrous, man-eating drug cartels. Our Somali friends and neighbors fled the front line of global holy war to come here.

These things seem at first to have to do with money and politics. But Daniel’s dream pulls back the curtain to reveal that behind them are monstrous moral and spiritual trends and forces. And they bedevil all our attempts to do good. We learn to split the atom for power and we get nuclear weapons. We invent the internal combustion engine and we also get global warming and wars over oil. We invent the internet and we also get scams, spam and pornography. We organize our communities for roads, parks and public education, and we also get empire. Does anybody still doubt the existence of spiritual and moral monsters, like what Daniel saw?

But if we try to arrange these symbols like pieces of a puzzle to figure out what’s happening next week, we’ve missed the main point. The main point of Daniel 7 is not the monsters in the darkness, but the light up ahead, through the darkness, in the thicket of the forest.

That light is another one of the gifts given to God’s people, Israel and us, from Israel’s 70 years in Babylon. If we, like those Hebrew exiles, want to “seek the peace of the city to which God has called us,”–and that verse from Jeremiah’s prophecy has been our banner verse this past year—we need those gifts that Israel received, and which sustained her. Last week I spoke on one of those gifts, the promise of eternal life. This day I shall speak about that second gift, that I call the light in the forest, that we see through the tangle and and the thicket, in the long dark night of the world.

These images of beasts and light come from Daniel’s description of a dream. It starts out as a nightmare. Its a nightmare in his sleep about the waking nightmare that the world is living through still. Its a nightmare like that common technique you see in some scary movies. Flipping through the TV channels to catch the Sunday afternoon game I have several times run across segments of movies in which the screen is dark, except for the main character’s worried face. I always wonder how, if its so dark, we can see his face. He’s walking through the woods, in the dark, guided by a glimmer of light up ahead, one which keeps fading in and out whenever a tree or a branch momentarily blocks the light. In addition to the scuffing noise he’s making in the leaves as he stumbles through the forest, you start to hear other noises in the woods as well. He stops and for a few seconds you can hear other footsteps in the leaves, or a twig snapping. Then the light up ahead is momentarily blocked by the shape of something big passing by. By which time the music is getting more screechy. He’s not alone in these woods and its anyone’s guess whether or not he’ll make it in time to the safety of the light and the shelter that it represents At which point I always wimp out and switch the channel. If you’ve seen the movie, don’t tell me what happens next.

Just like we can switch the channel, we can usually wake ourselves out of a nightmare. But Daniel’s not just having a nightmare. It changes to a dream in which he gets to the light. Or rather, the light gets to him. The light turns out to be a person, God, and then, “The Son of Man.” And that’s all we need to know from Daniel 7: The final score of history, like the dream, is Monsters zero, Son of Man ten thousands upon millions, in terms of his grateful, glorified subjects. In contrast to the blasphemous beasts of Daniel 7, its the Son of Man who wins the planet and the universe.

Who is this “Son of Man?” That’s actually the most important question we’ll ever have to answer. Its the one which we heard Jesus presenting to Peter along the road in Caesarea Phillipi earlier in this service of worship: “Who do people say ‘the Son of Man’ is?” After Peter ran through the short list of the prophets or John the Baptist back from the dead, Jesus asked him, “Who do you say that I am?” In that pair of questions, Jesus identifies himself as Daniel’s “Son of Man.”

Peter answered Jesus’ question and confessed, “You are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Jesus confirmed Peter’s insight by saying, “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but rather, my Father in heaven.” But then Jesus warned Peter not to get too clap-happy and triumphalistic, because there would be much suffering and rejection for him to endure from the monsters of his day before, “the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.” The Son of Man wins, not by out-monster-ing the monsters with their own violence and terror, but by suffering love and patient faithfulness to God.

Peter called Jesus, “the Son of God.” And Jesus added to Peter’s statement the title he often gave himself, “the Son of Man.” Don’t get too worked up about what that might say about how much Jesus is divine and how much he is human, as though “Son of God” applied to his divinity and “Son of Man” applied to his humanity. That would be an important issue to work out later. But for the moment, then and there in Caesarea Philippi, near where Galilee met Syria, where Jews and Gentiles rubbed elbows and pagan idols and temples stood next to Jewish synagogues, and Rome was the undisputed monster—I mean, master– probably the fourth beast in Daniel’s nightmare, Jesus was serving notice that he is that person they read about in Daniel chapter 7, the “Son of Man.” The One who said, “I am the light of the world,” is claiming to be the light which Daniel saw in his dream, the light in the dark through the monster-infested forest.

And what a light. Daniel is given something like another movie technique, a flash forward in time, in his dream. In that flash forward we see that the light through the thicket is more than a light, its a glowing, fiery image of God, on his glowing, fiery throne, seated for that great day of accounting and vindication for all who sought refuge in him. But even there, in the presence of blazing, blinding light and fire, the beasts and monsters and talking horns are challenging God with the most blasphemous and boastful claims to victory, they’re so crazy, loony full of themselves. But the monsters are decisively defeated, and cast onto the trash pile of history. Instead, The Son of Man– or The Human One–takes his rightful place of honor and rule, forever.

We are told in verse 18 that this Son of Man figure also represents all the saints of God who remain faithful to God through their time of stumbling through the darkness of the thicket where beasts and monsters prowl. In this sudden substitution of a humble human for a boastful talking horn, we see the complete reversal of the temptation in the Garden of Eden, when because they listened to a snake in the grass and grasped for godhood, the first humans fell from their place of honor and rule. With the victory of this “Son of Man,” humanity is restored to its place of honor and rule in creation.

So, this Son of Man is a person, and he also represents all the faithful who seek refuge in God. By Jesus’ time, Jews were calling this “Son of Man” figure, “The Messiah.” That just means, “The Anointed One,” or king. Every king in Israel was inaugurated by anointing with oil. We use the Greek word, “Christ” for that.

This, again is that other gift that came to Israel, and us, during her difficult years of exile. She lost her own kings and kingdom only to be promised a global, cosmic and eternal king, and a global, cosmic and eternal kingdom. Israel was overwhelmed and nearly annihilated by worldly kingdoms of vast, global power and size, only to emerge from Exile with the promise of a global and everlasting kingdom of God. Israel was the prey and plaything of beastly, monstrous emperors, and she foresaw a glorified, restored and exalted humanity. That restoration is what Jesus had in mind when he preached, “the kingdom of God is at hand.” Either they were crazy, or they were right.

If they were right, as I believe they were, then this is a gift to the world as well. Among other things, it means that time is going somewhere, that God has the last word on history, and that God’s last word is “the Son of Man,” the Human One, a restored and glorified human—and a restored and glorified humanity. If Daniel’s vision was right, then humanity wins, compassion wins, so do we, and the angel with the flaming sword at the gate of the garden lets us back in while keeping the monsters out. In a way, that’s what history comes down to: a fight between arrogant, violent monsters, and our humanity, represented by the Human One, the Son of Man. The nightmare of man-eating beasts gives way to Daniel’s glorious dream.

Each of us has a piece of that dream, for example, in the fight to ban cluster bombs and land mines, or to humanize our punitive immigration system, or lack of system. That was brought home to me with extra force this week as someone in this neighborhood told me about his dehumanizing treatment in a federal detention center, while he was seeking asylum here. Maybe its in our partnership with those who are working to raise this neighborhood and community from one known for its many needs and problems to one known for its many gifts and delights. Or in our efforts to reach across the barriers between the church and the gospel and communities closed to the church and the gospel. Or in the care, time and attention many people here give to the nurture of our youth and children. At times we experience the fight not only out there, against persecution, indifference to God, injustice and oppression, but within ourselves, against the ravenous beasts of our own nature. For me, my piece of the dream is the church, and all its saints and friends and partners growing in Christlike character and relationships, growing in partnership and participation in the growth of God’s kingdom, here in the Phillips Neighborhood, and around the world. My piece of the dream is seeing everyone grow in godliness and giftedness, leveraging my ministry and leadership to encourage and equip everyone’s ministry and leadership.

Whatever our piece of Daniel’s dream, we are encouraged to hold onto it and to pray and labor for it, because we know who wins: “To him [The Son of Man] was given a kingdom, an everlasting dominion.” The honors go to us, too, not because we’re more powerful than the beasts, but because of the One who takes our place, our humanity, and who takes on the battle for us. Of course I’m talking about Jesus.

I wouldn’t be talking about Jesus if he had not claimed that very title, from this very passage, for himself. We may read Daniel looking for inspiration and encouragement for our lives of resistance to the beasts and monsters around us. And within us. That’s how Daniel’s dream spoke to his fellow Hebrews and encouraged them, in the last centuries before Jesus. But Jesus read Daniel and saw the script for his life and ministry: He is the Son of Man, the Human One, who represents us to God, and God to us. He is God’ s man on earth, and our man in heaven. He is God before us, and us before God. Through his triumph over the boastful beasts and monsters, we triumph as well.

The ultimate gift then of Israel’s years of Exile is Jesus, “The Son of Man.” And with this Son of Man comes our new humanity, a restored, a glorious, and triumphant humanity. Keep your eyes on that light which Daniel saw in the darkness of exile. Hold onto your piece of that dream and pursue it, and we’ll make it through the thicket of the world’s long dark night.