(As I surveyed scripture readings for this sermon on MCC United Church of Christ’s 42nd anniversary, I was reminded that I asked all who preached on our anniversaries to imitate the last lecture series popularized several years ago. I just made it the criteria: imagine and preach your last sermon—the sermon and message that you would want to pass on to folks with your last words.)
I would like to describe myself as a heart specialist: not in any medical definition, nor in one of the match making or dating services online. A heart specialist functions to bring healing to the world or to channel to others what has been abundantly and excessive given to me. I do actions for others. Why do I try to be compassionate and loving?

Each Sunday as I take communion, I practice a meditation from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition—called tonglen. It means “taking and sending” or “receiving and giving away.” I take on the burdens and sufferings of others, and I send out what graces I have received from God for others. These are the words you hear as I take the host—Christ’s body and God grace to us. “I take this communion and offer the grace for those who are hungry, for the homeless living on the streets, those suffering from war and oppression, and for the Earth which has been oppressed and ravaged by humanity. I offer this grace for healing.” I vary my words occasionally.

My tonglen communion practice is a meditation to connect myself and yourselves with suffering —our own and the suffering of the world that we livein. It is a heart practice that dissolves the tightness in our hearts and opens our hearts to the suffering around us. It unites the suffering and death of Christ whose words at the last supper form the core practice and in fact spiritual participation in his own death and resurrection. “This is my body broken and given for you. And this is cup of my blood, shed for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.” Whenever we remember the words and Christ’s inclusive hospitality at table, we are connected to the suffering and death of Christ and more.
My communion practice of tonglen connects the suffering and death of Christ with the suffering of people, other live, and the Earth. It is meant to awaken our compassion that we experience with God, who experiences the death of Christ and experiences the suffering of the world. It is the flow of God’s grace offered to us through Christ but that flow does not stop within our hearts or within us. What we receive we send to the suffering in the world. We never keep any gifting from God for our own but pass it on to those in greater need.

I chose Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. It most exemplifies my opening words about tonglen communion practice. The story incarnates Jesus words in his sermon on the plain in Luke’s gospel: “Be compassionate as your Abba God is compassionate.” The context of the parable is the question to Jesus: “who is my neighbor?”

Jesus’ parable is an example that answers the question of neighbor. There ia man who travels from Jerusalem to Jericho but is mugged by robbers—who strip him, beat him, and leave him for dead. A priest is traveling the same direction sees the stripped body and deliberately goes out of his way to avoid the body. He does not even approach to see whether the man on the ground is still alive. Similarly, a Levite passes by the unconscious body as well; he disregards the body as well.

A Levite is a religious functionary who serves the priests in the Temple with their religious duties. They are like deacons, assisting the priests in their purifying hand washings and sacrificial role of killing and offering a portion of that animal to God.

Both priest and Levite are required by religious regulations to avoid occasions of impurity or defilement. Coming into contact with a dead corpse or nearly dead body would generate defilement so that they could not perform their religious duties in the Temple.

The third traveler–a Samaritan—despised by the Jews ethnically and religiously—sees the beaten body. He is moved to compassion, he treats the beaten man’s wounds with oil and bandages his wounds, places him on his own mount and brings him to an inn.

And the next day the Samaritan took out two denarii and the gave them to the innkeeper and said: “Take care of that man and whatever more you spend, when I return will give back to you.”

The details of the story have more depth when we look closely at the story. When I ask which character in the story I most identity with? I hope first for the Samaritan, but certainly not the priest and Levite, and perhaps most with the innkeeper. I will explain why momentarily.

The Australian poet, Henry Lawson, wrote a poem about the Samaritan. Listen to the third stanza:

He’s been a fool, perhaps, and would
Have prospered had he tried,
But he was one who never could
Pass by the other side.
An honest man whom men called soft,
While laughing in their sleeves —
No doubt in business ways he oft
Had fallen amongst thieves.

Lawson describes the Samaritan’s giving a foolish type exchange. From a business perspective, the exchange is not even an investment, it is a squandering of monies spent on someone already half dead and probably a sinner. How often is charitable giving is enclosed in businesss language of investment? Donations are given with strings attached. Or it is considered throwing the investment away unless it brings a return to the giver. Here Lawson characterizes the gifting of the wounded man by the Samaritan from a sense of compassionate care as an act of foolishness. From a business perspective, it is foolish giving with no return, squandering valuable capital on a poor investment.

On one level, the Samaritan in the parable is the Abba God of Jesus who attempts to compassionately love us. The Samaritan represents the God, who reaches out compassionately to the wounded man and relates to us as the good Samaritan. God compassionately offers extravagant life-giving care and hospitality to the wounded man left half dead.

When I reflect upon my experience of God’s love for myself, for you, and all life, I come up with: “extravagant hospitality” as the Father in the prodigal son parable rushing out to greet his returning son, “abundant love and unconditional love, and excessive compassion.” All these phases describe Hod’s giving to myself and yourselves.

What God gives us is excessive—more than we need or can use. We have life, the givenness of the world, friends, a community, companion animals, and more even if we think we have less.

God’s giving is not random—that is, a hit or miss display of love. It is prolific and wanton and directed at each of us. Its excessiveness generates our own giving. In the parable of the prodigal son, the son asks for inheritance and his father bestows upon himself. He goes away and squanders it on himself. The father gives the prodigal son his share of capital and property even knowing that his son will squander it. When he has lost everything, he returns home. And his father runs to meet him throwing his arms around him to welcome him. What the father has still is his son’s. The son not only learns about profound forgiveness and compassion from his father, but also learns that the joy of his father’s giving and giving again..

Excessive acts of kindness encourage more giving away. God’s giving always precedes us giving. God is love, and God’s love directed at us occurs before we are even aware of that divine gifting. But God’s giving always means that we who receive God’s excessive compassion and extravagant hospitality need to pass the gift on. When we pray in Lord’s prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” It is not merely prayer for daily bread for ourselves, for it is a prayer to receive bread to share with others. Whatever God gives to us, God gives for us to share and pass on.

Let’s go back to my identification with the innkeeper. The Samaritan gives the innkeeper a small subsidy or down payment in advance. The Samaritan entices the innkeeper to give more and provide generous care for the wounded man. The innkeeper gives again because he has received a gift. Is that not what God does with us? God call us to be innkeepers. God gives excessively and abundantly, and we as innkeepers are shaped by Good’s bountiful and over generous giving. In passing on God’s giving to us, we participate in God’s gifting by passing it onto others. God’s excessive acts of kindness are encouraged by a promise of repayment provides the opportunity to the innkeeper to pass the gift along to the wounded man.

Jesus holds up the Samaritan as a model of surprising generosity as Samaritan. It startles and shocks his Jewish audience. What Jesus intends to teach us is that God’s gifting creates a community of givers who empower others to give and in their cultivation of generosity and in gratitude to give again.

Stephen Webb, in his book, The Gifting God, writes:

Passing the gift along transforms the static and ambiguous obligation of gratitude into a joyous participation in the life of that gift. What we most give to others is to help them discover, develop, and deploy what they have to give, and sometimes this means that we must give up our own gifts, as did Jesus Christ, and learn how to receive.
For learning to receive God’s excessive gifts, God’s extravagant welcome and hospitality, God’s unconditional love is to learn not to hold onto the gifting but to pass the gifting away. We become channels of God’s gifting and, in turn, that gifting is passed on to others.
It stretches our imagination, for giving as God extravagantly gives to us becomes a goal and ideal for Christians. Religious sociologist Robert Wuthnow writes, “Helping others may not lead to a better society, but it allows us envision a better society.” We understand what Jesus’ parable presupposes: a new world where not only the barriers between us and them are dissolved, but that we realize that a stranger or even a supposed enemy can come to aid of one of us.
I believe with my whole heart and being in that dream of God for a better world shaped by God’s extravagant giving. Such actions in serving others, living and fighting for justice of people, other life, and the Earth

I am like everyone else I hate paying taxes for a number of reasons but I am realist that many of our services, that I expect, would be curtailed or non-existence. Taxes are a necessary part of living in the US. I do dislike the fact that taxes are unfair, especially on the poor and the middle class, when the very wealthy can pay at a lesser tax rate than many of us. The billionaire Warren Buffet has called attention to the fact his secretary pays a higher rate of taxes than he does as a billionaire because of the tax loopholes and deductions that are available to him but not to his secretary. I dislike how corporations shift monies overseas to pay reduced taxes and pay rates less than any of us.

Today’s gospel appears to be about taxes, but I want to suggest that the issue is more than taxes. The first clue is that the Pharisees joined the Herodians to entrap Jesus. You see the Pharisees and the Herodians are enemies, they are political parties frequently in conflict over their goals. In this case, they unite against Jesus. They become convenient friends to go after Jesus.
The Herodians developed their power from the Roman occupation. They were named after Herod the Great—the king who tried to kill Jesus in Bethlehem. His son Herod Antipater killed John the Baptist. Herod made life difficult for Jesus, and we can safely assume that Jesus was itinerant, constantly moving around Galilee and in and out Galilee, escaping the troops of Herod. They were the landed gentry who practiced their Jewish religion with explicit allegiance to Rome. They were Hellenized Jews who practiced the religious cult to the Emperor. The Roman Empire kept them in power as they oppressed Galilean peasants.
The Pharisees represented the purity party that supported the Temple and chief priests. They built a fence around the Torah regulations with a series of oral traditions to keep as pure as the Temple priests. Yet the Pharisees collected the Temple tithes and reinforced a boycott of those who did not pay there Temple dues. Out of necessity, they deferred to Roman authority because the Temple cooperated with the Romans.

The Herodians represented the interests of the Roman Empire and its system of control while the Pharisees represented the Temple interests. The Herodians felt Judaism’s future belonged to Rome and the Herods installed as rulers by Rome. They supported the Roman system of taxation that was burdensome and kept the Jewish peasants poorer. The Herodians became money launderers for the Roman tribute, and they profited from the money exchange of Jewish coinage into Roman coinage.

The Herodians stood by Herod Antipas in Galilee. Herod had killed John the Baptist, and here was another popular charismatic prophet causing trouble. In fact, people from the circle of Herod Antipas found their way to this charismatic prophet. Joanna, the wife of an administration official in Herod’s court, became a disciple of Jesus.

The Romans levied a grain tax, taxes on all produce, sales taxes, occupational taxes on certain trades and guilds, custom taxes, temple taxes, transit taxes. These revenues from conquered peoples supported Roma and its citizens. The Pharisees represented the alternative religious tax system that took 10% of all that the peasants produced plus the requirements for sacrifices for forgiveness, annual feasts and festivals in Jerusalem. 95% of the Jews who lived in Palestine suffered from the burdensome taxes.

These two groups come together in their opposition to Jesus. Jesus disturbs the religious and political powers with his message of God’s reign. We have seen where religious and political groups align themselves together against an opponent. In 2008, the Mormons, the Catholics, and the Evangelicals came to support Prop 8 because of their opposition to same-sex marriage while despising each other.

They intend to ensnare Jesus on the question of taxes. Will he deny the taxation system of the Roman Empire or the Temple? In the coinage collected by Roman officials and their proxies, they collected denarri with the image of the Emperor Tiberius, son of the divine Augustus Caesar. The Pharisees would objected to the denarii or foreign currency. For the Temple taxes and offering had to be exchanged for coins without the image of Caesar or acknowledging any national god outside of the Jewish God. The Jewish God was the only God. The Pharisees advanced the view that any payment to the emperor with denarii coins was idolatry. The Pharisees rejected foreign currency because it violated the first commandment against graven images. In Judea, the Temple authorities minted coins in Hebrew creating an alternative religious currency. Jewish coinage or coinage without any image of Caesar or god was acceptable.
Payment of Roman taxes meant paying tribute to Rome and its divine ruler and gods. The Pharisees did not want to accommodate with the Greco-Roman culture nor with paying tribute. But they were forced since ending the tribute would have brought dire consequences of the Roman military, further enslavements and punishments.

So the question posed to Jesus by the Herodians and Pharisees: “Teacher, we know you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?”

When Jesus asked for the coin, he realized his challengers asked him to make a choice between two taxation systems, fraught with political consequences. Did he publicly side with the Herodians or the Pharisees? Or, did Jesus side with the accommodating Herodians who saw relations with Rome as the future? If he agreed with the Pharisees, the Herodians could charge him with rebellion against Rome. If Jesus agreed with the Herodians, the Pharisees could charge him with idolatry. And this would end the week-long challenges of Jesus in Jerusalem and discredit him in the eyes of the people.

Jesus asked for a coin. When Jesus asked for the image and the title on the coin, he made the Pharisees and the Herodians face up to the choice they gave him. Rome or the Temple? Jesus cleverly sidetracked the political trap.

Jesus renders his verdict as they produce a coin. He says to them, “whose head is this and whose title is this?” They concede, “The emperor’s.” Then Jesus says, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When two options are presented in Aramaic language, it is always the second that holds importance. In this case, he says pay the taxes to Caesar but recognize that ultimately the greater allegiance belongs to God. Jesus probably remembered the prayer in the Psalm:
The earth belongs to the Lord, and all that is in it,
The world and those who live in it.

Jesus prohibits unquestioning loyalty to Rome, and a few days later in his demonstration in the Temple, in his prophetic action of overturning the table of the money-changers, he pronounces his verdict, “My father’s house has become a den of thieves.”

Loyalty and allegiance to the Roman Empire or to the Jewish Temple are secondary to the reign of God. Unquestioning loyalty to the state or to the church are dangerous at any time. Jesus message about God’s reign takes precedence over all claims. The guards at the Nazi concentration camps considered themselves loyal Germans and good Christians. And look at the atrocities they did in crucifying Christ in the concentration camps

(Youtube Clip from Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtEzV9jTpvI

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his writings are studied in many mainline seminaries and universities. In the early 1930s, he studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York City with the famous theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, a member of of one of the earlier churches that formed into the United Church of Christ in 1957, and Bonhoeffer participated in the Abyssinian American Baptist Church in Harlem and enjoyed African-American Spirituals. He was on collision course with the Nazi politics of his native Germany. He joined the resistance. Next week after service we watch the movie—Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace. But today I want to show you a clip from the movie when the Gestapo come into church, informing Bonhoeffer that he can no longer teach, preach, or lead worship. The Gestapo intimate the congregation to profess the Nuremberg Confession:

The pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote,

Let’s not delude ourselves that if we take the loyalty oath to Hitler it means they’ll let us worship in peace. The Nuremberg laws are an attack on Christianity itself. Adolf Hitler demands nothing less than total commitment. He’s the elected chancellor, yes. But more than that, he considers himself de Fuhrer, and as “the leader,” he craves to be the conscience of every living German. But his claim upon us is a claim that a Christian can only accept from Christ Himself.

There are times that our conscience informed by the Gospel of Christ and our God may lead us to realize that there is a higher allegiance than Caesar or Hitler or corporate greed. I tried to think of one, and my thought is on the Tar Sands pipeline from Canada. Should it be approved, thousands, if not tens of thousands of people who love and care for the Earth, will stand and obstruct the construction of the pipeline which will cross the largest aquifer in the heartland of the US. A major spill could effect the water supplies of millions of Americans and American farming. It is folly to construct this for greed for fossil fuel. I will stand with Sierra Club and peoples of faith in civil disobedience to such a construction project. It will harm the Earth and life. Here is a more contemporary example of rendering to God.

This parable originates with Jesus and against the backdrop of conflict with the Jewish leadership of the Temple. It was perhaps the last week of Jesus’ life. This is called the parable of the “murderous tenants.” The vineyard is a typical image for Israel with God as the absentee landlord. The servant who are sent to collect the revenue or portion of the produce of the vineyard at harvest time are the prophets. One is beaten, another killed, and the third stoned. The landlord sends his own son, “They will respect him.” But they seize him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him for his inheritance.

Jesus addresses a crowd in Jerusalem, asking them: “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” The crowd answers, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time.”

Two things stand out immediately in this parable. The first is the courage of Jesus telling this parable about his fate and expected death in Jerusalem the week before his crucifixion. How many of could tell a story about our impending murder and death? The second is that the Pharisees and the priestly leadership of the Temple hear this parable directed at themselves.

In the gospel today, the temple leadership realizes that Jesus’ parable undermines question their leadership abilities over the vineyard. There has been a series of confrontations and oral conflicts this last week in Jerusalem. They may have been seething with anger but the crowds temper their anger public display of anger. The crowd viewed Jesus as a prophet.

But what does Jesus mean telling such a gloomy and prophetic parable? This is certainly not God’s reign with the tenants killing the vineyard owner’s son. Is the reign of God with God coming end wreaking vengeance upon the murderers of his son?

If we leave at the end of the parable, we might make some sense of the story as the opposite of God’s kin-dom. This is not God’s kin-dom, this is the way of the Roman Empire and the empires of the world. These are the actions of religious folks in Jesus’ time and in our time.

For his audience, there is hope that the temple leadership will get their due for their greed, oppression of the poor, and desire for power. There is a glee in their fate and punishment. But the landlord portrayed is not the God of Jesus and his ministry. It is a vengeful God taught by the temple leadership. This is how the world works and how God deals with such a world from traditional religion. God punishes the wicked, even vengefully.

But Jesus throws a curb into his story with the addition: He says, “Have you never read in the scriptures: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes?” Jesus goes on: Therefore I will tell you, the kin-dom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who produces fruits of the kin-dom.” He disturbs his own story with how God will genuinely act to overcome the evil of the murderous action of the tenants. God will undermine the vision of the world that promotes violence and killing as the only solution.

Jesus quotes a verse from Psalm 118:22-23 that changes the parable. Jesus affirms God often changes the circumstances even when they are tragic and horrific. He affirms that even his own death is the ultimate violation warranting the vengeance of death. God, however, works differently from human empires and religious institutions. God will restore the stone that is foundational for the kin-dom and rejected by the tenants. That is how God works with surprises and unexpected ways. There will be a new people who will bring the reign of God, and it will neither be the Romans nor the coopted Temple leadership. It will be people of the resurrected one who trust in God with their hearts even when all odds are against them.

The core affirmation of Jesus is that God’s resurrection of himself and resurrection in general tells us much about the gracious God of the universe and how God deals with evil and tragedy in life.

Jesus recognizes that there is a lethal price to pay in Jerusalem for the week of conflicts and confrontations with the religious authorities. He will pay dearly with his life, crucified to a cross by the Romans.

I want to turn your attention to the not too distant past when several folks who bore witness to Christ and God’s kin-dom and care for the poor against the military rulers, the rich families that supported the oppressed the poor and hungry, and the church bishops who refused to speak out. Archbishop Oscar Romero, a moderate bishop in San Salvador, who cared about his people spoke up against the military violence and injustice against the people. In the movie, Romero, he is a poor village, and his cassock is torn by the military officer, and the Archbishop starts to preside at a mass on the spot. He lives the gospel of Christ in the midst of persecution.

Here are his words:

It is very easy to be servants of the word without disturbing the world: a very spiritualized word, a word without any commitment to history, a word that can sound in any part of the world because it belongs to no part of the world. A word like that creates no problems, starts no conflicts. What starts conflicts and persecutions, what marks the genuine Church, is the word that, burning like the word of the prophets, proclaims and accuses; proclaims to the people God’s wonders to be believed and venerated, and accuses of sin those who oppose God’s reign.

Romero mirrors the ministry of Jesus God’s Christ in the last week before his death in Jerusalem. He– like prophets sent to the tenants– was murdered at the altar by a military assassin while celebrating mass. He knew in his heart that in following Christ he would be killed. Even today the Catholic bishops of El Salvador have blocked the investigation into the death of Romero because of the Catholic Church’s complicity in his death. The tenants of the vineyard are still alive.

I find myself in admiration and awe of Jesus for telling this parable about himself and his placing his trust and heart in Abba God. It raises a question the title of a book written by the Jewish rabbi Harold Kushner—When Bad Things Happen to Good People. He wrote the book because his three year old son was diagnosed with a degenerative disease and would live only into his early teens. He writes as heart-broken parent and rabbi. There are no easy solution to the doubts, fears, and questions when tragedy or something terrible happens. This is a question that impacts all of us who have been challenged by various cancers, health challenges, tragedies, and harm perpetrated against us.

According to John chapter 9, Jesus was unable to answer a question why a man was born blind. He rejected the Temple authorities and Pharisee’s explanation that the man was born blind because of his sin or the sins of his parents. Jesus refused to accept the explanation. Evil and tragedy may strike you and spare your neighbor or person who is just the nastiest person imaginable. This mystery has bewildered the understanding of human beings from the very beginning of history. There is no easy answer, Jesus felt that on the cross when he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”

Let me push this problem to another example of horrific proportions.

Another Jewish author, Elie Wiesel, who authored the book The Trial of God, explores this issue in massive death. It takes place while he was imprisoned in Auschwitz. A group of rabbis in the concentration camp placed God on trial during the worst possible nightmare of death and horror they could imagine—the extermination of Jews and other peoples by the Nazis.

If you have ever gone through a Holocaust Museum, you will understood part of the magnitude of evil and horror. I went through the Holocaust Museum in Washing D.C. I was speaking at Georgetown University on gay theology, and the hos that I was staying with arranged for me to go through a VIP tour of the Museum. You can choose a real live person to follow through the concentration camp. I chose a gay man who was interred and died the gas chambers in Auschwitz. My mistake was going through the experience alone. I witnessed the cattle car that housed and shipped a hundred people to the camp. I saw a real gas chamber, the art of the children murdered in the chambers, and the smelled the decaying shoes left over and brought from the camp. At the end of tour you end up a quiet space to feel the intense emotions evoked by the experience. There were several people in the room in tears, including myself.

Going back to Wiesel, several rabbis place God on trial for God’s silence about the experience at Auschwitz. The issue is the questioning of God by Job on the justice of God. Is God apathetic because does God not care or is God powerless to save us?

In this case, the trial is how can the rabbis understand God to be just and good in light of the innocent suffering and massive death around themselves? If is truly God, why does God limit God’s power in this situation of horror and the many horrific events in history. At the end of the trial, the rabbis find God guilty of silence, but they take some hoarded bread crumbs to celebrate the Friday Sabbath service. They are faithful to observe the Sabbath and placed their faith in God despite the guilty verdict.

Elie Wiesel often retells the story about two Holocaust survivors, one a rabbi, who meet after liberation of the camps by the Allies. The survivor asks the rabbi how he can still believe in God after all he witnessed and experienced in the concentration camp. The rabbi responds by asking how, after all their experiences of the horror and death that has happened, can he not believe in God.

The question of evil and its meaning when it strikes—such as diagnosis of cancer or a terminal illness or the horrors of death of AIDS in the early stages of the pandemic—remain unanswerable. We can look to the faithfulness of the rabbis who attested that God may be silent but God was with them in their suffering and impending death.

Or we as Christians can look to Jesus. He answers, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” He points to his trust he has in Abba God and the resurrection. God may allow his creatures to do evil actions and crimes, but God experiences our suffering, knows what it means to abandoned and betrayed, arrested, flogged, scorned, the pain of crucifixion, and the last and painful breath of Jesus as he dies. We may not have the answers when bad things and evil strike us, but we know that God is with us each step with us and God will raise us to life with God’s self.

James Stuart is a Druid/Wiccan priest and dear friend of our church. He preached with husband Michael on St. Francis of Assisi Sunday. Enjoy the message..

A friend shared an interesting story on facebook just last Sunday. It chronicled what happened when wolves were intentionally introduced back into Yellowstone National Park in 1995. The Deer and Wapiti population had exploded in the park due to a human created lack of natural predators and were completely disrupting the ecosystem. Some areas had been grazed and browsed down to a near desert like status. When the wolves re-entered the ecosystem, they killed and ate a few deer, culling the herd. But the changes didn’t stop there.

The deer stopped frequenting open areas where they were easier prey, in particular the open over-grazed valleys. These areas almost immediately began to sprout new growth, inviting back birds, squirrels, insects, and reptiles. Within a few years, barren plains had become meadows and were turning into forests. Existing trees previously kept stunted by the browsing deer, shot up an astounding five times their height in just a few years. These trees then became an attraction for beavers. The dams built by the beavers created a welcoming environment for returning fish, amphibians, ducks and otters.

The wolves also killed and displaced some of the oversized coyote population, with the result that rabbits, mice, and other small rodents began to multiply again. This then, attracted their natural predators: foxes, weasels, badgers, hawks and bald eagles. Most remarkably of all, the rivers themselves, because of less erosion, and the dams of the beavers, became more stable in their courses, with less flooding or loss of topsoil to the surrounding areas. The entire ecosystem benefited. This phenomenon, where a species at the very top of the food chain has a dramatic impact upon its entire environment and beyond, is referred to as a “trophic cascade.”

This story serves to underscore the importance and value of every species in the rich tapestry of creation. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is today, understood a little of this, and was condemned for it by many of his fellow churchmen. He lived in an era when all of creation was considered by most, to be placed by God, at man’s disposal to do with what he liked, even unto destruction. Fortunately, far fewer people still believe this today. Unfortunately, some still do.

As people of faith, we are watched and judged, and followed by others. We are expected not only to speak out upon moral issues, and to take moral action, but also, we are judged by what form that action takes. We are not political leaders, who are often forgiven for committing crimes in the name of justice, waging war in the name of peace. We are not allowed such leniency, not by the public, not by our consciences, not by the Divine. Because we claim to answer to a higher power, we are held to a higher standard.

Francis too, felt that he had to speak out about what he felt was right. He advocated and took a vow of poverty, when many in the church had grown rich and fat on the contributions of the poor. These corrupt churchmen found his selflessness, and respect for all beings, human and non-human threatening. When he appealed to the Vatican to create his own order, the Franciscan, some, particularly amongst the wealthy and powerful Dominican Order tried to stop him by accusing him of an “unnatural love of animals.” The implication was, not that he understood and loved all of Nature, as God’s wonderful gift of Creation to be cherished, but that he engaged in bestiality, and was therefore the worst of sinners, perhaps even a heretic. Because he questioned and upset the established quo, he was being attacked personally.

Today, is no different. There are those who refer to those of us who speak out with legitimate concerns about the health of our planet, as “eco-terrorists” or “environmental fascists.” Nonetheless, we will continue to speak out. We cannot do otherwise.

But speaking out is not enough. We must act. Like the wolves of Yellowstone, we are at the top of the food chain. What we do as a species, even as individuals, most often has a far more dramatic and far-reaching effect upon our environment than we could ever imagine at the time. This has certainly been true of the thing which we have done with resulting ill effect, but it can also be for the better as well. Our government’s visionary, conscious and deliberate reintroduction of the wolves to Yellowstone is an excellent and awe-inspiring example. We must not lose sight of the fact, that as the primary source of change upon this planet, we have the ability to be the primary source of improvement and renewal. We can be responsible for our own trophic cascade.

In many religions, perhaps most, humanity is viewed as being the link between Creator or Creatrix and Creation itself. We have dared to believe, that though we are not quite divine, we are also somehow not quite completely a part of Creation. Indeed, it is that notion of being somehow above Creation, which has got us into this environmental mess in the first place. But, we are a part of Creation. We are not just its recipients, not just its custodians; we are part and parcel of it. And it is part and parcel of us. We are the cognitive link between the Divine which creates and that which has been created. We understand, or at least, flatter ourselves that we understand, some small part of the will of God. That notion, also, has frequently got us into much trouble in the past, but can just as well, with perseverance and some sacrifice, can also be our salvation.

In the beginning of Genesis is the Word, the Logos, also called the Divine Wisdom, the Hagia Sophia. This is the spark of all Creation, elsewhere referred to as the Holy Spirit. This is the spark which we carry within ourselves. This is the spark which we must use to ignite a wildfire of understanding, compassion, empathy, peace and harmony, especially in these troubling times, for all people, of all religions, for all beings, for all of Creation. We are all children of God. We must never forget that. If we are ever to be worthy of the unique position which we hold in this planet, we must rise to this challenge. We have very nearly been the death of Creation. We must now seek and find the Divine Nature placed by God within ourselves and become the Resurrection.

In order for you to better understand my own perspective, I will give a couple of examples from our Druid liturgy. In each of our rituals, we honor the Divine, as we see it, in all its varied forms, and we honor our Ancestors, all of those who have come before us, regardless of race, or religion.

But also, we honor what we call in Gaelic the Sprideanna na Talaimh, the Spirits of the Land, “Creatures of Fur, Fin and Feather, of Bark, Leaf and Twig, of Stone, Rock and Crystal, Creatures both Seen and Unseen.” The belief held here, is that we are all one family, and that the Spark of Creation, which we call the Awen, and which you know as the Holy Spirit exists in everything, whether it appears alive or visible to us or not. The Awen is the symbol which I wear around my neck, three tongues of flame descending from the Heavens to inspire humanity, like the Holy Spirit of the Pentecost.

Also, amongst our Sacred Hallows, we bless and sanctify a tree. It is not the specific tree which is important. We do not worship it, contrary to what some believe. It is merely symbolic of a concept, a great World Tree, which exists only in Spirit, our Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Its roots are said to grow deep into the nether realms where the dead sleep, waiting to be awakened. Its branches are said to reach high into the Heavens, beyond the Gods whom we claim to know, to touch the very Face and Breath of the Unfathomable One Who has created us all. Its trunk and branches stretch out to support and touch every being on Earth, every part of Creation. You can see why I associate it with the Holy Spirit. It is with this belief and understanding that we say in our liturgy, “Crann Naomh, fas isteeach muidsan. Sacred Tree, grow within us.”

We are asking that the Holy Spirit which connects all of Creation to God, continue to thrive and grow within ourselves, that we might become not just worthy of Divine salvation and blessing, but its very instrument. To some, this may sound a bit vain on the part of imperfect beings such as ourselves. But with all humility, I believe that it is necessary, now more than ever, and I believe that Saint Francis of Assisi would wholeheartedly agree. With that in mind I offer you this final wish and blessing: may the Sacred Tree grow within each and all of you.

This is a shared sermon on Oct. 5th St. Francis Sunday by two Druid/Wiccan priests and dear friends of our church. Enjoy Michael and his husband’s James sermon.

At that time Jesus said, “Father, Lord of heaven and earth! I thank you because you have revealed to the unlearned what you have hidden from the wise and learned.” (Matthew 11:25)

Francis of Assisi is one of the most “popular” of all the saints. He may be seen in gardens around the world. He is enshrined on bird baths and bird feeders. The prayer that we associate with him, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,” is arguably one of the most popular prayers circulated to this day. He is associated with cardinal works of mercy to the poor and marginalized. He is the patron saint of animal lovers, peace-makers, and environmentalists, and even viewed by some neo-pagans as the last great druid. It’s rather amazing how the 21st century has learned how to back-engineer almost anything to prove our current viewpoint. But I digress . .

Animal lover . . . peace-maker . . . environmentalist. . . worthy attributes indeed . . . But these are not the aspects of Saint Francis that I want to speak about today. So often, I think, most of us have a tendency to view the saints as persons who were superheroes; who were capable of gritting their teeth and doing the Right Thing in the face of total adversity. As such, I find them to be totally unlike me. The problem here seems to be not so much that I can’t do the Right Thing, but that more often than not, I’m not certain what the Right Thing is!

In this wireless, interconnected Global Village we live in today, we are assaulted by conflicting values and oppositional demands. The necessity of doing the Right Thing is constantly upon us, even in the simple demands of day to day living: regular or low-fat, recycle or not recycle, welfare or no welfare. Although this might seem simply to require a certain fluidity on my part– a refraining from deciding, as it were–in actuality I know I must eventually make a decision. And when I do, how can I know I’m Right?
So the aspect of Saint Francis that speaks to me most strongly today is this: he was a man who Didn’t Get It Right! Yes, you heard me correctly . . .Throughout the course of his life he steadfastly refused to join the ranks of the wise and learned–of those, who were certain of the Right Thing. He remained a fool for God, and as such, was always open to rethinking the Holy Spirit’s inspiration. I’d like to tell a couple little stories that illustrate my point.

When Francis was a very young man–that is, before he really had any inkling of the vocation God had in store for him–he thought he might like very much to be a knight. In fact, we have in the records a dream that Francis had about this time: He is in a large room full of knights’ armor and the trappings of chivalry. And Jesus is there with him. Jesus says to Francis, “Francis, I want you to be my knight.”

There is evidence that this somewhat idealistic endeavor was fueled by the popular literature of the day in which knights in shining armor vanquished dragons, rescued fair maidens, and generally did the Right Thing for the sake of good. Remember, this is the late 12th century – – the Golden age of Chivalry. Francis conveyed this hope to his father, who was a prosperous cloth merchant in Assisi, and I imagine that his father found this to be a very pleasing scheme. At the time Assisi was engaged in one of its many wars with the neighboring city of Perugia, and for a middle-class merchant to have his son fighting for the city, outfitted as if he were a lord, would have had some appeal to Francis’ father. So he bought him the armor, swords, lances, gowns and horse that would be required.
But Francis was already who he was and when the day came to ride off to Perugia, he noticed that among the company there was an impoverished nobleman who had no armor, horse, etc. So Francis give his entire outfit away, and marched off to Perugia unarmed.

Needless to say, the encounter proved disastrous for Francis, and he was captured and imprisoned. When he was finally ransomed, he was ill with a high fever. If Jesus had wanted him to be a knight, Francis reasoned, something was clearly going wrong. Perhaps, like a fool, he had gotten the message wrong. He continued to search. What could it mean to be Jesus’ knightly champion?

A few years later, after he had gone off to live the life of a hermit, he had one of the more remarkable experiences in what was to be a most remarkable life. While praying one day before the crucifix in the ruined church of San Damiano, the figure of Jesus came to life and spoke to him saying, “Francis, rebuild my church, which, as you see, is falling down.” Francis looked around him and saw that, indeed, the church of San Damiano was falling down. He immediately began putting stone on stone, rebuilding the church. Again his father was upset, so he renounced his family. The people of Assisi thought he was a fool. Slowly, again, he began to understand that he’d gotten it wrong. It wasn’t until much later in his life that he understood that Jesus had meant for Francis to rebuild his Church, with a capital “C”.

And when he understood that, perhaps he also began to understand what it might be to be Jesus’ knightly champion.

Francis was also famous for his bodily austerities. He would throw ashes into his beans so that he couldn’t enjoy them too much. He called his Body “Brother Ass” and was known to roll naked in thorns and snow to discipline his body. As he lay dying (while still a young man of 44), he may have had an understanding that, again, he’d been foolish and hadn’t Got it Right. He asked “Brother Ass” to forgive him, and perhaps realized that he’d squandered one of God’s greatest gifts by not being a little bit kinder to himself.
So what are we to make of this famous saint? He has been called “the Other Jesus” by some. He is revered and loved universally, by Christians and non- Christians alike. And yet, he didn’t seem to Get it Right.

Perhaps this is what Jesus is talking about when he suggests that the foolish and unlearned may know something that the wise and learned don’t know. Perhaps certainty and Being Right are not what Jesus wants from our lives.

Maybe Saint Francis shows us something completely different, something that looks more like perseverance in the face of uncertainty. Maybe the lesson I can learn from Saint Francis is the lesson that faithfulness is more valuable than Being Right; that humility and unknowing are a more appropriate response to God than certainty and knowledge. Perhaps abandoning the pride of self may be the way to begin to understand God. Or, in the words of Saint Francis’ famous prayer, that it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

If you are one of those Christians that need to live by boundaries, borders and walls, this sermon is not for you.  Today in Matthew’s gospel, we see that Jesus tackles the question of clean/unclean and pure/impure.  As much as Jesus fought in his life against the exclusions and maps of purity/impurity, Christians continue to imprison his ministry of grace and freedom in a quagmire of purity codes, pollution language, and exclusionary behaviors.

All cultures, especially, religious cultures have their own maps of what is pure and impure.  For the Hebrew scriptures, there are ethnic and gender boundaries, often claimed to be divine boundaries between clean/unclean and pure/impure and often connected to righteousness/sinfulness. For example, my heritage of being Scottish, Irish and Greek would make me unclean in the eyes of Pharisee. These purity maps are meant to exclude things, foods, certain actions and behaviors, and peoples.  In food, you do not mix certain foods to together such as dairy and meat or with animal products. So bacon cheeseburgers, while tasting great, violate the Jewish kosher laws on two levels: eating bacon and mixing cheese or dairy with meat. You don’t mix various two types of cloth in the same garment.

Mixtures of categories are forbidden because such mixtures, claimed by practitioners, confuse what it considered God-ordained categories with discrete boundaries.  The concept of natural/unnatural is one variant of this purity code.  Sins against nature are hardly sins against the environment but what the majority or the religious authorities consider unnatural.  They are unnatural only because the plurality or religiously powerful have the authority to say what is unnatural or natural. According to St. Paul, long hair for a male is unnatural and short cropped hair is unnatural for a female.  I wonder where wigs fall into such schema. I suspect they are unnatural because they confuse categories, especially when you cross dress, another unnatural action of confusion.  Here is an example of a sin against nature!

Our garden violates the purity or kosher laws because we mix plants in same fields. Not surprising, we are, of course, an unnatural church because we cause confusion by not separating out the plants of certain types in their own fields.  We mix dessert succulents and landscape with tomatoes and other plantsin the same bed.  We are church that fails by confusing the boundaries on the level of gardening but also on many other levels of gender categories and sexual orientation codes because we believe in inclusiveness.  And radical inclusiveness violates purity codes.

Inclusiveness is so messy for the religious obsessive folks and compulsive purists or Christian fundamentalists.  In fact, it is a nightmare…..What is pure becomes polluted, what has been sacred suddenly become profane….I read how one fundamentalist Christian, who is a baker, refused to make rainbow cupcakes because it would taint his relationship with Jesus. It might lead to the false impression that he accepted LGBT folks or same-sex marriage.

The struggle to live as God has outlined begins in the heart:  it is justice, mercy, faith, love, and compassion.  Sacred tradition cannot be hardened into unchanging traditions of stone tablets while Jesus understand that religious laws and customs are written in sand.

Many Christian scriptural texts are firm in Jesus’ rejection of rabbinical notions of purity and impurity and their schemas to categorize people. They present Jesus’ ministry as a continual violation of scrupulous ritual codes of exclusive and purity.  Jesus sat and ate with sinner, tax collectors, and prostitutes, the unclean and clean, men and women of suspect purity status. He broke all the purity maps of holiness groups, and those groups hated him for breaking what they considered sacred and measured their holiness by adhering strictly to them.

The early crisis after the death and resurrection of Jesus was whether his  Jewish followers could even eat or sit at table with non-Jewish followers of Jesus. This sounds so much like the attempt of particular states to exempt homophobic exclusions of business in extending housing and other services to LGBT folks.  It is matter of religious codes, outdated. Ifw e asked “what would Jesus do?”  He would clearly break them/

In Acts, there was controversy in which the Holy Spirit gives Peter a vision of animals of mixed purity status and reveals that they are all holy to God before he visits the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household.

I have heard so often how churches and church leaders have scolded folks for cross-dressing. “You should dress appropriately to the gender in which  God created you. God makes no mistakes.  It is wrong; it is unnatural to undergo a sex change procedure or take hormones to alter your gender.”

Yet in Acts of the Apostles, Philip, part of the liberal wing of the Jesus movement, baptizes a non-Jew, in fact, an African proto-transgender person, the Ethiopian eunuch as a follower of Jesus. The Eunuch is an African, a non-Jew, and a non-male or non-female, a third gender as the first non-Jewish convert to the Jesus movement. You don’t hear churches speaking about the gender variance of the Ethiopian eunuch.  What is called unnatural in the human world, is often natural in the biological world. Joan Roughgarden is a transgendered woman ecologist and wrote a book entitled Evolution’s Rainbow,  where she documents the gender variance, transitions, and diversities within nature. What we call “sins against nature,” it appears our Creator God is continuously guilty of creating such gender diversities to enrich biological life.  God is the worst offender of the so call, sins against nature.

Remember the baptismal formula in Paul: “There is neither Greek nor Jew, male or female, free person and slave.”  In Christ, there are neither identities nor any other markers such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexual or gender identities, for we are all children of God.  There are no exclusions that separate the children of God. We are all siblings.

Let me take you one step further in the inclusive confusion of categories:  In Ephesians 5:22-23:  “Wives be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church the body of which he is savior.”  This text has been used my men to dominate their wives. But I also have heard this text at transgender and same-sex weddings.  It is an ecclesial transgender confused scripture.

Insofar women are part of the body of Christ through baptism, they are called to be Christ to others, so they must be as grooms and husbands to the brides and wives, whether it be a man or a woman.  The church consists of men and women.  This text justifies not only all sorts of transgender but also same-sex relations. How many women grooms have married their brides while one of the first weddings I officiated in the 1970s was a gay man in full blown wedding dress with husband I a tuxedos and two lesbians in tuxedoes standing up for them.  In this text from Ephesians, this is normal.

But the image is very queer. Christ a male is literally the head over the body—his church, which consists male, female, gender variant, intesex, heterosexual and bisexual, and so on.  The body of Christ and traditional baptismal theology are some of the queerest concepts in Christianity. The logic of Christian inclusiveness not only confuses the homophobe and transphobe but those who understand that marriage is between one man/one woman. This is Christian traditional baptismal theology. Churches came to the conclusion if we baptized LGBT folks, we must recognize their calls to marriage and ministry.  It is simply logical.

Christians today have re-animated the purity of codes of the Jewish fundamentalists of Jesus time.  Were not these purity codes supposed to be abandoned by Jesus during is ministry?  Those who oppose same-sex marriage use the argument that marriage ordained by God is one man/one woman, and that this is pure while same-sex marriage pollutes marriage.   Changing your gender is unnatural because it pollutes the gender codes of God.  God made you the way you are. Men are naturally superior to women because men reflect the image of God more unless women are subjected to their husbands. Only fundamentalists accept this premise.

Christians use the language of clean/unclean/ pure and impure, pollution, sins against nature. Categories of natural/unnatural, abomination, pollution, dirty, unclean, sinful, disgusting, diseased  are applied to people living with HIV and AIDS. Even our community uses such as “cleanub2”, referring to being HIV.  We speak of drug addiction as unclean, free from drug addiction as clean.  Let’s keep America pure and protect our southern border, means let’s keep Caucasians in power and protect ourselves from ethnically different or in this case the invasion from the south of tens of thousands of refugee children.  This is xenophobia, a racial attitude of fear of the   We do not worry about the Canadian menace and invasion except on South Park. Mixed marriages were 50 years  understood as polluting the categories of race, by mixing or Catholic-Protestant as mixed marriages.  Segregation in the US and apartheid in South Africa were racialized purity codes.

Let’s keep the body of Christ pure.  Inclusion is never about purity and walls to exclude. It is about inclusion, tearing down barriers and walls that exclude. Or some would call it Christian confusion of the categories, following in the footsteps of Christians. Fundamentalist Christians appropriate the ultimate purity category: Are you saved? Or are you damned?  They proclaim their group saved while they arrogantly look down with condemnation and arrogance, proclaiming “You are not saved.”

After the debate of clean/impure dispute with the Pharisees, Jesus enacts a border crossing out of the geographical areas of Israel to the regions of Tyr end Sidon in Phoenicia. He encounters the Syro-Phoenician woman.  But here we learn the true nature of radical inclusion. What we consider as radical inclusive is neither radical enough nor inclusive enough.  He is approached by the Syro-Phoenician woman who addresses Jesus as he Jewish Messiah and pleas for a healing of her daughter.  Jesus, at first, passes by her pleas for healing, and then answers her: “It is not fair to take children’s food and throw it to dogs.”  What appears as a racial slur does not stop the woman.  She comes right back: “Yes, Lord even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Jesus is invited to stretch his radical inclusiveness even further to include Gentiles.  At that  moment, he realizes he has fallen easily into mental trap of exclusion, and this is not consistent with his message God’s grace. He does and proclaims the woman’s faith is great. This becomes a parable of warning to us as church folks to be weary thinking that we are inclusive enough. We are never inclusive enough, only God is.  And God calls through the ministry of Jesus to fight against the bigotry and exclusions from such religious prejudice and sinfulness.

Who do you say I am?” Jesus asked his Jewish disciples. Peter responded with a Jewish answer: “You are the Messiah” (Matt. 16:15-16). Given the plurality of religions in the United States today, it is perhaps inevitable that other religions, even those not historically connected to Christianity, would recognize the pivotal nature of Jesus of Nazareth for Christian faith and human history and comment on his life and times.  “Who do Buddhists think Jesus was?”

Dalai Lama  is most arguably, the most famous Buddhist in the world, the  spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists.  So his book, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, is where I draw his view of Jesus.  The Dalai Lama claims his reverence for Jesus stems from his understanding of Jesus as a fully enlightened human being, a bodhisattva.  He is very humble about his attempts to understand Jesus and his words.”   The Dalai Lama understands Jesus as a great teacher who taught humanity how to have a good heart.

For him, someone who is passionate commitments about the religious life and advocates to his disciples and others a common humanity grounded in compassion and love, an unshakable openness to life and people,  sacrificial love to end suffering has good heartedness. He has advocated to many Buddhist monks and clergy to read the teachings of Jesus.  They can learn good heartedness from Jesus.

Thich Nhat Hanh presents a different vision of Jesus in Living Buddha, Living Christ. He too likes Jesus. He likes him very much indeed, and does not hesitate to tell readers, especially Christian readers, why. Yet his is a very different approach to Jesus from the one taken by the Dalai Lama.

Nhat Hanh is interested in emphasizing the activist side of Jesus’ ministry, and that interest emerges in the descriptions he gives of how Buddhism, true Buddhism, and Christianity, true Christianity, relate to one another. He uses his philosophy-of-religion approach to demonstrate how congruent Buddhism and Christianity are on this point, and how congruent the life and teachings of Jesus and the life and teachings of Gautama are when it comes to their core messages: “I do not think there is that much difference between Christians and Buddhists.”

First, Nhat Hanh is more interested in right understanding than in the good heart. By all accounts, mind you, Nhat Hanh has a good heart and endorses others’ good hearts. reflectiveness of the Beatitudes.  Jesus represents nonviolence in action. He writes,

Nonviolence does not mean no action. Nonviolence meant we act with love and compassion.

He explains Christianity to Christians: “Jesus taught a gospel of nonviolence. Is the church today practicing the same by its presence and behavior?”

Three elements of the socially engaged Christ:

Awareness or mindfulness:  Jesus meditates and prays, and this make him more aware of his present surroundings and people around.

Identification and Understanding human suffering: Through prayer and mindfulness, Jesus becomes aware of suffering; he identifies in solidarity with human suffering and pain.

Action to relieve suffering: The final step of mindful awareness and  compassion, is action to relieve the pain and sufferings of others.

Let me finish how Buddhists see Jesus.  There are more Buddhist monks and clergy who have read the four gospels about Jesus than Christian clergy have read about the Buddha.  May be if we did we could establish a profound conversation with Buddhists, become faithful friends, and cooperate to end suffering in the world.

Hindus:

Shaunaka Rishi Das is Hindu scholar and Director of Hindu Studies at the Oxford University Center on Hinduism.  He tells this story:

I’ve an Indian friend who, when he was seven ,moved with his family from India to England, where he was enrolled at a new school. On his first day he was asked to speak to the class about a saint from his Hindu tradition. Enthusiastically he began to tell the story of the saint called Ishu, who was born in a cowshed, was visited by three holy men, performed many amazing miracles, walked on water and spoke a wonderful sermon on a mountain. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/beliefs/jesus_1.shtml

He observes astutely, more than Christians that Jesus Christ was not a Christian but Jewish. Believe or not if you did a survey of Christians in the pew or in the classroom that they will tell you Jesus, Mary his mother, and the disciples were Christian.  The word Christian was not coined until a 100 years after the death of Jesus.

For Hindus, Jesus is a sadhu, a holy man, a sage or saint.  He represents the essence of God on earth. Hindus look at Jesus’ teaching and behaviors.  He is humble, in control of his senses and his mind, compassionate, and non-violent.  Jesus teaches humanity about universal love of God and human beings.

Shaunake Rishi Das writes how Jesus influenced his own spiritual journey.

I read such passages as Luke 5: “forsake all and follow me”. I remember distinctly, as a 14 year old, developing my own understanding of what that meant. I had formed a sense of mission and vocation by reading the Bible, seeing that the love of God should be shared with others. The greatest commandment – to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our words and all our deeds, and love our neighbour as ourselves – struck me as an instruction, as a plea and, actually, as a necessity. Considering how to do to that, how to forsake all and follow God out of love, has provided me my greatest challenge in life. Ibid.

He became a follower of Krishna and a better Hindu because of Jesus but venerates Jesus as aSaint, a manifestation of God on earth. He wonders if Jesus went to Belfast Ireland whether Protestants or Catholics would allow him in their churches unless he identified him as Protestant or Catholic.

Another Hindu teacher, perhaps the greatest teacher of non-violence in the 20^th century is Mahatma Gandhi He understood Jesus. These are his words:

What does Jesus mean to me? To me. He was one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had….Is all the grandeur of his teaching and of his doctrine to be forbidden to me? I cannot believe so. My interpretation of Jesus…is that Jesus in his own life is the key to the nearness of God; that he expressed, as no other could, the spirit and will of God.  (Ellsberg)

If Jesus were here today, he would bless me people who have never heard of him. He was an example of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, promoting the good and welfare of people, and living love among the people.

Finally, I want to introduce you to the Muslim Jesus that appears in the Qur’an. He is mentioned in stories over 300 times and his mother Mary is the only woman mentioned in the Qur’an and remains a model for Muslim of a courageous and loving mother. Now Christians will find their stories of Jesus in gospel quite different than the Muslim Jesus. For example , the night Jesus is born (not in a stable) but in the middle of the desert, He is able to talk from the first moment. Jesus is the next greatest Muslim prophet. He turns clay birds into real birds as child. But the Romans try to crucify him, and God takes him directly into heaven.  Humanity is not saved by Jesus’ death and resurrection as Christians claim but submission to God.

Jesus is a strong example of what moral and obedient human being can be. He has only three possessions: a robe, a bowl for water, and a comb to comb his hair. Muslims can perceive Jesus as a word of God, not the Son of God because Muslims believe that Jesus nor any person can image God who is pure Spirit.  He is understood as a great prophet who will come at the end of time to fight the final battle against evil as the end of the world comes.  While we Christians and Muslims have different views of Jesus, we also share Jesus. See The Muslim Jesus on youtube.

Hans Kung a theologian gave a talk at Santa Clara University about 10 years ago.  He said, ”There is no peace in the world until there is peace among religions.”

I receive criticism in emails for my openness to other religions by conservative and fundamentalist Christians. They fall into an easy trap of demonize what they do not understand or take the time to have conversations with their neighbors who practice a different faith tradition.  We do not have the luxury to be in opposition but to find common ground between religions if we as humans are going to deal with greatest crisis of the 21^st century. Climate change will impact all, no matter what religion you belong.

When Jesus says in John’s Gospel that “I am the way,” I do not use exclusively to separate Christians from non-Christians. I understand his saying inclusively by remembering the above and Jesus can be a bridge for common values between religions.  We need to find common bridges, and my suggestion this morning is that we use Jesus as a bridge to understanding other peoples of faith because they too have reverence for Jesus even though their understandings may expand our own or make us uncomfortable.

Can we afford the time to fight between ourselves and not make peace among religions while all life is threatened by the climate changes effect human recklessness and profit?

I would like t explore four events in life of Jesus during his last week in Jerusalem: His procession into Jerusalem, the disturbance in the Temple, his Last Supper, and the Garden of Gethsemane. Each of these could be explored imaginatively in depth, but I want to touch up these events because they present dense and dangerous moments in the life of Jesus. They tells us a lot about God’s mission in Jesus and reveal the depth of Jesus’ passionate involvement with us.
Jesus enters Jerusalem or to Warren Carter’s phrase “Making an Ass of Rome:” What we are celebrating today with the blessing and distribution of the palms this morning is Jesus entry into Jerusalem. The conflict between Jesus and Pilate begins the day that Jesus enters in Jerusalem.
Prior to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is Pilate’s entry. Within the LGBT community and Hollywood movie events such as the Oscars, dramatic entrances are important. They are choreographed theater on red carpets, communicate success, attention to the gowns, and companions attending. Roman entrances into city were triumphant. No red carpets, but soldiers trumpeting, followed cadence war drums sounding the entrance of the conquering hero with Roman legionnaires brandishing shields, and spears, and military insignia. In this case, it was Pilate who represented the triumphant Roman Empire and Emperor Tiberius. It communicates Roman greatness and military power, reminding the crowds that they were conquered by the powerful Roman legions—the greatest power in the world blessed by the Gods.
But Jesus intends to literally make an ass of Pilate and Rome. He choreographs his own dramatic and symbolic entrance into Jerusalem. He adopts some of the Roman trappings but queers them or rather reframes them in symbolic counter challenges. His entrance into Jerusalem is to remind the Jews of their religious history in which God enters the holy city to serve, not dominate. He chooses an ass, not a war horse in which Pilate rode into the city. He uses dramatic parody of the Roman triumphant procession to point out to his disciples and the people. Matthew remembers the line from the prophet Zechariah: “Tell the daughter of Zion, your king is coming on an ass,” (9:9). The rest verse states that your king comes triumphant and victorious, and humble riding an ass.
Jesus is recognized as a king, or more likely anti-king. He is teaching humility, non-violence, and peace-making, not conquest and domination. God’s community does not consist by military domination but is constituted by a new a kinship as children of God—not be wealth, prestige, gender, or ethnicity. It is constituted by God as Abba, parent in love with all and equally.
Jesus lives what he teaches—as meek and lowly in heart. He identifies with the suffering poor, the throw-away people, the powerless and humiliated—those crushed by military Empire of Rome. He parodies Rome and Pilate with God’s empire whose kinship comes from love and service and sharing of goods together.
Jesus acting up in the Temple: Jesus had problems with the Temple from the very beginning of practice of radical inclusiveness at table and his ministry. He associated indiscriminately with independent minded women such as Magdalene and the Samaritan woman at the well, prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers and the ill. The religious authorities of the Temple and their Pharisaic collaborators were horrified at his coming in continuous contact with the unclean and sinners. They represent a Temple of orderly social and religious categories of people into pure/impure and holy/sinful. At the heart of this system was the book of Leviticus, whose author biblical scholar Callum Carmichael points out is reflecting on the Israelite ancestors in the book of Genesis. Male homoerotic relations are abomination because they are deformity of Israelite masculinity. The purity code in Leviticus is justifying what constitutes as normal masculinity.
Remember that the purity code in Leviticus is grafted onto animals and humans alike. Its religious perspective divides humans and animals into pure and impure, deformed and acceptable. It is also the book that spells out and inspires the Pharisees and priests to categorize all people into holy/unholy such as mamzers (born out of wedlock), sinners, shepherds, gentiles, abomination, etc. It is the same book that details the rituals of animal sacrifice.
In referring to the Pharisees, Jesus says, “every plant that my heavenly Abba has not planted will be uprooted.” (Mt: 15:13). Jesus’ demonstration against the Temple and the holiness schema promoted is deliberate. I cannot believe that it was an incidental target for starting an ACT UP style of demonstration. He made chords from ropes, overturned the tables and released the doves to be sold for sacrifice. Doves were sacrifices for the poor who could not afford a sheep. Jewish factory farms, similar to our own, were required to supply 140,000 doves a year for animal sacrifice. Jesus’ demonstration disrupts the whole Temple system of animal sacrifice and the whole system of categorizing and stigmatizing people and animals. Jesus’ intention was to disturb the heart of the Temple system with the God of compassionate love and peace-making.
Creating companionship for life: Companionship is created when we share food together. Jesus has already entered Jerusalem, publicly making the Romans an ass. He disturbed the Temple system; he challenged the Pharisee’s and their practice of making their home table celebration as exclusive as the Temple—excluding the defiled, the impure, and the sinner from their own table meals. Holiness companionship was based on exclusion. As a side note, how many Christian tables have exclusively functioned like the Temple or the Pharisaic tables.
There is no question that for Jesus the table had to be open and inclusive. I cannot accept the readings of the Last Supper as an exclusive meal. It goes against the very nature of who Jesus was. People from the highways and byways are to be invited into the meals. It was populated with a diversity of people: outcasts, prostitutes, abominable people, tax collectors, those folks that terrify Pharisees and Christians alike. He did not moralize, berate them how to change their lives, threaten them that could not share the table if they did not change their ways.
Jesus disrupted their normal behaviors in an oppressed world. He would assist them in the presence of Abba God to undo their defensive selves, centered on themselves and their own survival. In Christianity’s Dangerous Memory, Diarmuid O’Murchu describes Jesus’ parables, healings, and ministry. It is equally applicable to his meals and his to Last Supper:
They defy the criteria of normalcy and stretch creative imagination toward subversive, revolutionary engagement. They threaten major disruption for a familiar manageable world, and lure the hearer (participant) into a risky enterprise, but one that has promise and hope inscribed in every fiber of the dangerous endeavor.
Jesus’ meals were dangerous. There were no hierarchies at table, no one in charge or in power. There were only those who voluntarily served others, gladly washed the feet of their companions, who cheerfully assisted folks at table to heal from the years of religious abuse and oppression. Jesus encouraged them to dream a future with hope, with God with resources and the abundance of food created by the companions of the bread and the cup. Our moments at table undo our ordinary patterns and behaviors.
At the last meal, Jesus gave his companions, literally “bread sharers” a gift of life. Let me give you an example by tell a story. In an interview with a woman who survived Auschwitz was asked “Why did you survive when so many perished?” She was separated from her family, stripped by the guards, humiliated, shaved all her hair from her body, and given a concentration uniform. She was part of a group similarly humiliated and abused prisoners. Then a young girl broke ranks and placed a piece of bread in her hands. “At that moment”, she said, “I decided to live.” (Primavesi, Gaia and Climate Change).
Jesus gave his friends a similar gift, a piece of life-giving bread handed to them with love and unconditional forgiveness. It was an intense moment of self-giving of himself, his life and blood for them out of an excess of unconditional love—mirroring Abba God’s unconditional love and grace. A piece of bread and a cup of wine were given to them as the young girl gave a piece of bread to the survivor woman in Auschwitz. Jesus told them to live, for life would be given in his death the next day. He created a ritual of life in shared bread and a cup.
One of the ways I look at our communion lines is to remember how in our cities the poor line up for distribution of food. We, on Sunday, line up for an unconditional handout of grace, forgiveness, and love. We are all poor in need of God’s abundant grace. We should be so undone by God’s love for us as to break our self-centeredness for the revolutionary moments of self-giving and love to others.
Final Preparation in the Garden: Jesus finished the meal and invited disciples voluntarily to follow him to the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew it was only a short time before the Romans and the Temple police would find him and begin to punish him for defiance for God and God’s people. He was aware that he would be shortly betrayed by Judas, and Jesus sought some alone time in solitude with Abba God and asked a few disciples to stand nearby in prayer with him. Anyone standing close to death would feel the challenges that Jesus had that evening. Luke tells that he sweat drops of blood. Did these drops remind him of sharing the cup of his blood with disciples earlier? Would God’s vision of peace-making, nonviolence, bread empowerment around the inclusive table, his affirmation there are no divisions between God’s beloved children and that there is kinship with all life? Would they survive beyond his brutal death? Or did they remind of the blood sacrifices of the countless animals at the Temple? Would he be crucified and dead by the time that paschal lambs were slain for the Passover meals later in the day?
If Jesus is like most of us, he would find his mind adrift with these questions and the thoughts what was impending in an hour or just a few hours: humiliation, raped of his clothes, flogged nearly to death, mocked and abandoned, alone. In the moments of doubts and pain, he surrendered to God with his whole heart, and heart to heart met God in love and profound emotional suffering. As he tried to find his centeredness in Abba God, the noise of marching soldiers surrounding the garden to apprehend him, the ensuing clamor to arrest him broke his concentration. He would try to prevent any violence….
These are four window glimpses into Jesus the last few days of his life. He disturbed the world in Jerusalem with his love of God and God’s disturbing message. He would be turned over to Pilate by the Temple priests with the charges: “He perverted the nation. He was blasphemer. Jesus of Nazareth rebelled against the power and might of the Roman Empire. “
Jesus of Nazareth died as a no-body in a distant province of the Empire. But we know that God intended to disrupt the whole world on Easter Sunday when God acted up against all human sin and violence throughout all time! These are a few thoughts for us to think about as we enter the passion of Christ this week.