Social Justice and the Feast of the Visitation

He bared his arm and showed his strength,    scattered the bluffing braggarts.He knocked tyrants off their high horses,    pulled victims out of the mud.The starving poor sat down to a banquet;    the callous rich were left out in the cold.  Luke 1:51-53

Today we celebrate the event of the visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with the future John the Baptist...a person who would figure prominently in the spiritual development of Jesus.  This story as told by the earliest Christian communities contained a hymn placed in Mary's mouth that we have come to call "The Magnificat" after the first word in the Latin version.

We tend to be most familiar with the first part of the hymn--"My soul magnifies the Lord"--because it fits in with our very human desire to see salvation in terms of our individual  relationship with the Divine One.  We are less familiar with the second part of the hymn from which the lines quoted above are taken.

The God that "has done great things" for Mary, the God magnified Mary's soul is not a God of individual holiness abstracted from the realities of human existence.  The God whom Mary proclaims, to whom the Hebrew Scriptures testify, about whom Jesus taught is a God preeminently of justice.  This prayer is not a nice little hymn by a pious and demure young woman but a revolutionary declaration that the world is at odds with the gospel.  If Christians do not work to turn things upside down, they are not being faithful to the deepest values of their faith tradition.

Can I be a child...and enter the Reign of the Divine One?

The people brought children to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. The disciples shooed them off. But Jesus was irate and let them know it: “Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom. Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.” Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them.  Mark 10:13-16

This passage is very familiar to us and can be understood in many ways.  I think the key is to be clear about what it means to be a child.  I think this becomes clear when you observe children and their interactions.  Children seem to be at their most "natural" when they are playing with each other with out any kind of adult supervision or "rules."  Not to overly romanticize this--I have raised seven children who have 17 grandchildren--but children at play enter fully into a play world.  They seem to create a new reality with relationships and interactions that have meaning within that new reality.  It is a world that they create and into which adults cannot gain admission unless they become part of that new reality.  An adult who attempts to enter as an adult breaks the new reality apart.

Sometimes this passage has been misinterpreted by those in powerful positions in religion to mean that members of a church should accede to the judgments and decisions of those in leadership without questions, a kind of childlike obedience to adult authority.  This is tantamount to an adult trying to enter a child's play world while remaining an adult.  One can do it but it changes and degrades the reality of the child's play world.  More than that, any one who has spent any time with children knows that the last thing one would say about children is that they are "unquestioning!"  The unending series of "why" questions makes that quite clear to those who listen.  The exasperated adult who finally ends that sequence with "Because I said so" is simply using authority to break the reality of the child.

Can I enter into the Reign of the Divine One with the commitment of a child?  Can I enter into this new reality with all my being?  Can I leave aside the authoritarian inclinations of human nature and become fully one with a new reality?

St. Paul in Athens: What lesson for us?

For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’as even some of your poets have said,‘For we too are his offspring.’Since therefore we are the offspring of God,we ought not to think that the divinity is like an imagefashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.  Acts 17:28-9

Although it is tempting to read these lines as confirmation of the universality of the Divine One's self revelation, I think the relevant message for us today concerns Paul's failure in Athens.  These lines are taken from Paul's address at the Aeropagus--public gathering place--in Athens.  He was trying to use the prevailing cultural and religious beliefs to communicate the Christian message to those considered pagans.  He takes lines from two poets--and he takes them out of context--to try to convince the Athenians that the Christian message is compatible with their traditional beliefs.  Interestingly he mentions nothing about "The Way" of life that is central to Christian faith.  His communications tactic does not work and he never find Paul again trying to use this to spread the message.

This reminds me of some of the current Christian thinkers and writers who seem convinced that quantum physics has provided a way to "almost prove the validity" of the Christian revelation.  I am not a physicist but I do have two children who are.  If I have learned anything from them it is that when I think I understand quantum physics especially through the writings of someone who is not a quantum physicist, I almost certainly do not understand it.  Most writers of this sort use words that seem understandable but which are distortions of the quantum insights.  It is all too easy both as physics and as theology.

Paul learned that the Athenians were not buying his facile interpretations of Athenian religions.  Just so, we should learn that those who understand--if that is even possible--quantum physics find the Christian message undercut by such tactics.  The core Christian message is about a way of life and the only effective evangelization will be based on lives lived in that way.  Philosophical and theological analyses are certainly important but will never bring people to faith.  Contact and engagement with Christians who are on the way will do that.  The analysis will come later if at all.

"I am the Way, the Truth, the Life."

Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

These words of Jesus are at the beginning of his final discourse with the apostles as he is about to be betrayed, condemned, and executed.  I have heard them many times and typically understood them to describe the essential requirement of being a Christian in order to enter the reign of eternal life, i.e., heaven.  There is another way of understanding them that I now see is much closer to what Jesus intended and more in line with a 21st century world view that extends well beyond our immediate geographic and social environs.

It is helpful to me to use a simple but profound distinction between orthodoxy and orthopraxis.  These are theological terms from the Greek with relatively simple meanings.  The first, orthodoxy, is the more familiar to us and means "right teaching or thinking."  We are orthodox if our beliefs accord with the standards set by, in this case, the Christian church.  The second, orthopraxis, means "right practice or behavior."  Jesus himself is the source of this distinction.   “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’(orthodoxy) will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father (orthopraxis) who is in heaven." Matthew 7:21  His emphasis throughout his ministry was not on sectarian practice or theology but on behaviors that evidenced the Spirit of the Divine One living in and through people.

These words of Jesus refer to the kind of life one lives, not the religion to which one is an adherent.  No matter what we say our religious beliefs are, there is only one way to the Father:  living a life of solidarity and service to all all brothers and sisters and indeed to all creation.  Or as Jesus said, "Love one another as I have loved you."  It would be easier if he had said, "Profess what I have taught you."  He didn't, however.  He did say, "Live the life that I have lived even to laying down your life for others."  That is why Jesus is the way, the light, the truth.

Be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect. Really?

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  Matthew 5:48

 This line is not in the readings for today but it is resonating with me because of a conversation I had with a new friend a couple of days ago.  Perhaps because of my engagement with social ministry at the moment, I have been focusing on works of mercy and justice as the works of the reign of the Divine One in my life.  Prayer and individual holiness have perhaps taken a back seat to a more proactive life in the world.

When he mentioned that his journey in faith had led him to focus on becoming perfect even though he knew that he could never be perfect in this life, it brought me up short.  Had I shifted my focus from who I am to what I do?  Unknowingly perhaps, but still.  The dynamic is always from the inside out.  What I do is to be a natural result of who I am and who I am becoming.  If my work in the world becomes disassociated from that inner reality, it begins to be more of the world and less of the spirit.

Jesus' notion of perfection is not some individually focused holiness.  The lines that precede the one above contain his aphorisms about going the extra mile, giving more than is asked for, and turning the other check.  Perfection has to do with my being which then produces the fruit of mercy and justice, not in some forced way but in the same way that fruit appears on a tree:  naturally and without external interventions.

Repentance can seem a bit trivial to us.

On the day of Pentecost, Peter said to the Jewish people,
“Let the whole house of Israel know for certain
that God has made him both Lord and Christ,
this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart,
and they asked Peter and the other Apostles,
“What are we to do, my brothers?”
Peter said to them,
“Repent and be baptized, every one of you,
in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins;
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Acts 2:36 ff

To me repentance has always seemed like an individidual movement.  Perhaps the understandable and often necessary focus on personal sin when I as growing up predisposes me to think of repentance as an acknowledgement of my personal sins and a resolve not to sin again.

The Christian call to repentance is much more than that.  While Jesus interacted with those who had committed personal sins, his concern was much more clearly focused on social sin, the ways in which a people or a class acted in ways contradictory to the values long espoused by the Divine One in the long history of the people God had chosen.  Thus in this passage from Acts, the people repent because they realize that they as a community have killed the long awaited Messiah.  Their sense of desperation and regret is palpable.  Their sin is not personal sin--the very sin with which we seem fixated--but the social sin committed, often unkowingly, by a group, class, or community.

It is easier for me to confront my personal failings than it is to cofnront the ways in which my community, group, class has perpetuated inequities and damaging inequalities on the most vulnerable persons in my community.  Regret for my personal sins generates a relatively easy sense of conversion.  Realization of my complicity in social sin generates a call to conversion of my life style which is much more difficult to act on or to ignore.   It mmakes me uncomfortable in ways that regret over personal since does not.

Perseverence based on faith.

Though I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength,
Yet my reward is with the LORD,
my recompense is with my God.   Isaiah 49:1-6

These words describing the "Suffering Servant" are particularly apt for those disciples actively involved in social ministry of mercy and justice.  That is work that seeks to make the Reign of the Divine real in the world right here and right now.  This means that it will never be fully successful until the "end of the age."  Those who are deeply involved cannot let success be the standard by which they judge themselves but rather faithfulness to their call to justice.