Blessed Spirits
Matthew 5:1-16; Ezekiel 37: 1-14
May 31, 2009
Bonjourno!
It is good to be back. It was good to be away, and must appreciated. In case you somehow missed it, Bud and I spent a week in Italy, and the entire family spent a weekend in Philly. I’ve been posting a few pictures on my blog and Facebook page, and perhaps at the next AFAC gathering we’ll inflict more. I promise, however, that no one will be subjected to all 300 photographs or three hours of video clips.
Travel is always a good way to learn, and, not surprisingly, our sojourn through Italy and a few days in Philly offered up some interesting prompts concerning church.
Italy is full of ancient and beautiful churches. We stepped inside more than I can recall, and toured many of those. Renaissance art and architecture abound. The size and scope of the buildings is amazing: you could fit our entire building four or five times over inside some of the sanctuaries we walked through.
And my first observation was simply this: thank heavens we do not have to take care of a thousand-year-old building! You think we have paint problems here and there? Imagine having to worry about a Renaissance masterpiece crumbling in your chancel. You think our flooring is old and troublesome? Imagine having to worry about the marble covering a hundred tombs beneath your feet as you worship.
You think we have plumbing and electrical issues? Imagine the challenges of a building constructed a thousand years before electricity and centuries before indoor plumbing.
I am so glad that such places remain; and I am all the more so glad that I don’t have any responsibility for their care.
But on this day of Pentecost, as we consider the birth of the church, I can’t help but observe also that the church in Italy strikes me as remarkably similar to the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel.
The heart of the ancient church, the home place of the Roman Catholic tradition, the hearthstone of historic Christianity: these days no more than one in ten Italians participates in church. All of those ancient and beautiful churches? Most of them function more as museums than as living houses of worship and praise.
There are, of course, all kinds of historic and cultural reasons for this. The challenge of being the church in Europe after Auschwitz is staggering, particularly when so much of the church was, at the very least, complicit in the Holocaust. Postwar existentialism was not merely an intellectual movement, it was and remains for many a cultural reality that makes secularism the dominant milieu for an entire continent.
The toll of two world wars can be measured not only in bodies and buildings destroyed, but also in belief systems thoroughly undermined.
It is not merely the question of doubt, however. After all, doubt is part and parcel of faith. Indeed, the opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty. And the certainty that seems to prevail in the contemporary secular West is this: we are on our own; there is nothing more than what we can see and taste and test.
The bones are dead and dry. There is no breath of spirit within them, and none coming from without to revive them. The bones are dead, and death is the end. Period.
On the other hand. On the other hand, we visited historic Christ Church in Philadelphia last weekend. Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, Betsy Ross and so many others worshipped there. They sat in the same sanctuary that stands today: 312 years old.
Sure, it is but a baby compared to the Italian churches, but, just like them, it too has many bones lying beneath its floors.
The tombs contain the bones of the famous and of the faithful unknowns, and the guide told us the story of one of the latter: a woman who died more than 200 years ago, whose name is not writ large in the history of the nation, but is surely recalled in the household of God. She set up a fund that continues, more than 200 years after her death, to help feed the hungry of Philadelphia.
She understood, clearly, that her faith – her trust in something beyond what she would see and taste and test in her own life – called her to ministry beyond her own horizons. She trusted that the Spirit of God not only empowered her, but would continue beyond her own time to empower the faithful to lives of loving service. She opened her heart to the Spirit, let its breath inspire her own, and her faithful work has continued down through the generations.
Blessed are the meek, indeed.
Some dictionaries define “meek” as “submissive” or “compliant.”
It will not surprise you to hear me say that I have never interpreted that phrase, “blessed are the meek,” to be an instruction to quiet acceptance of that which should not be accepted.
Instead, I hear in this beatitude a blessing of those who resist without recourse to violence.
That way, sometimes, lies martyrdom, to be sure. We had dinner one evening in Rome at a ristorante in Campo di’ Fiori – a plaza in which stands a statue of Giordano Bruno, a 16th-century philosopher burned at the stake in that plaza in 1600, having been declared a heretic by the Inquisition. Historians differ as to the precise nature of Bruno’s heresy: was it a precursor to Galileo or a more strictly theological matter?
What is clear, however, is that Bruno was put to death.
If by the “meek,” as suggested by the Greek word in question (praeis), Jesus meant “those who do no harm to others, even those others who have done harm,” then clearly the church itself has much to answer for.
But answering for its own violence has never been a strong suit of the church – whether the Roman Catholic Church or its Protestant step children. On the 400th anniversary of Bruno's death, Cardinal Angelo Sodano declared Bruno's death to be a "sad episode." However he added that people should not judge those who condemned Bruno. He went on to argue that the inquisitors wanted "to preserve freedom and promote the common good and did everything possible to save [Bruno’s] life.”
Perhaps our own inability to confess – to engage in simple truth-telling – helps explain empty churches across Europe and increasingly across the U.S.
What, in the end, is the gift of Pentecost? It is the spirit of truth.
Jesus did not say, “blessed are those who tell the truth,” but truth-telling is at the heart of the Beatitudes.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit”? Who are these poor in spirit? Jesus would have been referring to those economically marginalized – either by choice or situation – who practiced an utter reliance upon God. In other words, those who grasped and were honest about our common existential reality: we are all, ultimately, utterly dependent upon God. Some of us are truthful about this; most of us live in denial.
Likewise with the blessing of those who mourn. Each and every one of us mourns. We suffer. We lose loved ones. We grieve and sorrow and mourn. But too often in our own culture, in particular, we do not wish to acknowledge our own brokenness and suffering for fear of being perceived as weak. Jesus extends the blessings of God, here, to every one of us, and thus creates space for our own truth telling about our own common human condition.
What might happen if the church became a site for such truth telling? Is the Spirit calling us to this?
Of course, if we are to become such a place – a site for truth telling, a place of honest confession – then persecution will follow. After all, those who have truly followed Jesus in every time and culture have found the way difficult, the gate narrow, for Jesus spoke a truth that the world has never wanted to hear much less acknowledge.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives. God has sent me to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind. God has send be to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of jubilee.”
When Jesus announced that mission in his first public sermon in his hometown of Nazareth, the crowd responded by trying to throw him off a cliff.
But the truth is, the poor desperately need good news. The world desperately needs to be set right. Those captive to a culture of bigotry, violence, homophobia need to be set free.
We are the ones called, at this moment, in this place, to speak that truth to the world no matter what it costs us.
For on this day of Pentecost, we are richly blessed and the Spirit of the Lord is upon us. Let us walk in the light of that Spirit and go boldly into God’s world to feed the hungry, bless the poor, speak the truth, resist all violence for in so doing we lay claim to the truth – the living embodied truth – of the kingdom of God among us. May it be so, and may we be call blessed spirits. Amen.
May 31, 2009
Bonjourno!
It is good to be back. It was good to be away, and must appreciated. In case you somehow missed it, Bud and I spent a week in Italy, and the entire family spent a weekend in Philly. I’ve been posting a few pictures on my blog and Facebook page, and perhaps at the next AFAC gathering we’ll inflict more. I promise, however, that no one will be subjected to all 300 photographs or three hours of video clips.
Travel is always a good way to learn, and, not surprisingly, our sojourn through Italy and a few days in Philly offered up some interesting prompts concerning church.
Italy is full of ancient and beautiful churches. We stepped inside more than I can recall, and toured many of those. Renaissance art and architecture abound. The size and scope of the buildings is amazing: you could fit our entire building four or five times over inside some of the sanctuaries we walked through.
And my first observation was simply this: thank heavens we do not have to take care of a thousand-year-old building! You think we have paint problems here and there? Imagine having to worry about a Renaissance masterpiece crumbling in your chancel. You think our flooring is old and troublesome? Imagine having to worry about the marble covering a hundred tombs beneath your feet as you worship.
You think we have plumbing and electrical issues? Imagine the challenges of a building constructed a thousand years before electricity and centuries before indoor plumbing.
I am so glad that such places remain; and I am all the more so glad that I don’t have any responsibility for their care.
But on this day of Pentecost, as we consider the birth of the church, I can’t help but observe also that the church in Italy strikes me as remarkably similar to the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel.
The heart of the ancient church, the home place of the Roman Catholic tradition, the hearthstone of historic Christianity: these days no more than one in ten Italians participates in church. All of those ancient and beautiful churches? Most of them function more as museums than as living houses of worship and praise.
There are, of course, all kinds of historic and cultural reasons for this. The challenge of being the church in Europe after Auschwitz is staggering, particularly when so much of the church was, at the very least, complicit in the Holocaust. Postwar existentialism was not merely an intellectual movement, it was and remains for many a cultural reality that makes secularism the dominant milieu for an entire continent.
The toll of two world wars can be measured not only in bodies and buildings destroyed, but also in belief systems thoroughly undermined.
It is not merely the question of doubt, however. After all, doubt is part and parcel of faith. Indeed, the opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty. And the certainty that seems to prevail in the contemporary secular West is this: we are on our own; there is nothing more than what we can see and taste and test.
The bones are dead and dry. There is no breath of spirit within them, and none coming from without to revive them. The bones are dead, and death is the end. Period.
On the other hand. On the other hand, we visited historic Christ Church in Philadelphia last weekend. Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, Betsy Ross and so many others worshipped there. They sat in the same sanctuary that stands today: 312 years old.
Sure, it is but a baby compared to the Italian churches, but, just like them, it too has many bones lying beneath its floors.
The tombs contain the bones of the famous and of the faithful unknowns, and the guide told us the story of one of the latter: a woman who died more than 200 years ago, whose name is not writ large in the history of the nation, but is surely recalled in the household of God. She set up a fund that continues, more than 200 years after her death, to help feed the hungry of Philadelphia.
She understood, clearly, that her faith – her trust in something beyond what she would see and taste and test in her own life – called her to ministry beyond her own horizons. She trusted that the Spirit of God not only empowered her, but would continue beyond her own time to empower the faithful to lives of loving service. She opened her heart to the Spirit, let its breath inspire her own, and her faithful work has continued down through the generations.
Blessed are the meek, indeed.
Some dictionaries define “meek” as “submissive” or “compliant.”
It will not surprise you to hear me say that I have never interpreted that phrase, “blessed are the meek,” to be an instruction to quiet acceptance of that which should not be accepted.
Instead, I hear in this beatitude a blessing of those who resist without recourse to violence.
That way, sometimes, lies martyrdom, to be sure. We had dinner one evening in Rome at a ristorante in Campo di’ Fiori – a plaza in which stands a statue of Giordano Bruno, a 16th-century philosopher burned at the stake in that plaza in 1600, having been declared a heretic by the Inquisition. Historians differ as to the precise nature of Bruno’s heresy: was it a precursor to Galileo or a more strictly theological matter?
What is clear, however, is that Bruno was put to death.
If by the “meek,” as suggested by the Greek word in question (praeis), Jesus meant “those who do no harm to others, even those others who have done harm,” then clearly the church itself has much to answer for.
But answering for its own violence has never been a strong suit of the church – whether the Roman Catholic Church or its Protestant step children. On the 400th anniversary of Bruno's death, Cardinal Angelo Sodano declared Bruno's death to be a "sad episode." However he added that people should not judge those who condemned Bruno. He went on to argue that the inquisitors wanted "to preserve freedom and promote the common good and did everything possible to save [Bruno’s] life.”
Perhaps our own inability to confess – to engage in simple truth-telling – helps explain empty churches across Europe and increasingly across the U.S.
What, in the end, is the gift of Pentecost? It is the spirit of truth.
Jesus did not say, “blessed are those who tell the truth,” but truth-telling is at the heart of the Beatitudes.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit”? Who are these poor in spirit? Jesus would have been referring to those economically marginalized – either by choice or situation – who practiced an utter reliance upon God. In other words, those who grasped and were honest about our common existential reality: we are all, ultimately, utterly dependent upon God. Some of us are truthful about this; most of us live in denial.
Likewise with the blessing of those who mourn. Each and every one of us mourns. We suffer. We lose loved ones. We grieve and sorrow and mourn. But too often in our own culture, in particular, we do not wish to acknowledge our own brokenness and suffering for fear of being perceived as weak. Jesus extends the blessings of God, here, to every one of us, and thus creates space for our own truth telling about our own common human condition.
What might happen if the church became a site for such truth telling? Is the Spirit calling us to this?
Of course, if we are to become such a place – a site for truth telling, a place of honest confession – then persecution will follow. After all, those who have truly followed Jesus in every time and culture have found the way difficult, the gate narrow, for Jesus spoke a truth that the world has never wanted to hear much less acknowledge.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives. God has sent me to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind. God has send be to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of jubilee.”
When Jesus announced that mission in his first public sermon in his hometown of Nazareth, the crowd responded by trying to throw him off a cliff.
But the truth is, the poor desperately need good news. The world desperately needs to be set right. Those captive to a culture of bigotry, violence, homophobia need to be set free.
We are the ones called, at this moment, in this place, to speak that truth to the world no matter what it costs us.
For on this day of Pentecost, we are richly blessed and the Spirit of the Lord is upon us. Let us walk in the light of that Spirit and go boldly into God’s world to feed the hungry, bless the poor, speak the truth, resist all violence for in so doing we lay claim to the truth – the living embodied truth – of the kingdom of God among us. May it be so, and may we be call blessed spirits. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
8:24 AM
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