Poem for a Tuesday — “Gott spricht zu jedem” by Rainer Maria Rilke
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
got to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
/
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist. He was the only son of an unhappy marriage. His mother mourned the death of an earlier daughter. During Rilke’s early years, she sought to recover the lost girl through the boy. According to Rilke, he had to wear “fine clothes” and “was a plaything [for his mother], like a big doll.” He attended military school and trade school before studying literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague and Munich. He was a mystic, proto-modernist, and early proponent of psychoanalysis. He traveled extensively throughout Europe and Russia before settling in Switzerland. At the time of his death from leukemia, his work was largely unknown to the reading public, but his posthumous followers have been many. He is now considered the most lyrical and influential of the German early modernists.
Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Pride” Luke 4:1-13, Luke 18:9-14
This is the first in a Lenten sermon series on the Seven Deadly Sinsand the Seven Heavenly Virtues.
Our Lenten season begins with Jesus in the wilderness. As the Lord fasts and prays, the Devil confronts Jesus with a series of temptations. “Use your holy power to turn stones into bread. Bow down and worship me in exchange for world domination. Put God to the test, reveal your glory, and be worshipped.” Jesus turns away from the tempter’s wiles with scripture quotations. He remains sinless. Unfortunately, we do not.
The Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Heavenly virtues are grounded in scripture. There are thirteen virtue lists in the New Testament, from 2 Corinthians to First Peter, and there are twenty-three vice lists, from Matthew all the way through Revelation. In the first centuries of our faith with the rise of asceticism, church leaders began to think systematically about those lists of sins and virtues. As Christian mystics and monks withdrew to the Egyptian desert to focus on God, they noticed that they had some big distractions. In the fourth century, Evagrius of Ponta identified a list of eight thoughts that could interfere with spiritual practice—these would become the Seven Deadly Sins. A century later, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens wrote a 1,000-line poem, “Psychomachia,” in which he identified seven heavenly virtues that corresponded to the deadly sins. Clemens argued that Christ our Lord helps us with “the jewels of virtue,” which he places within us to battle sin and delight wisdom. Augustine argued that the seven virtues characterize the new life in Christ and grow within us out of love—agape.
The Seven Deadly Sins and corresponding Seven Heavenly Virtues found renewed interest in the Middle Ages. In his 13th century opus Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas wrote that the virtues are habitual dispositions, “patterns of mind and heart,” that bring about good actions and curb our sinful impulses. In meditating on scripture, imitating Christ, and practicing the virtues, God’s grace deepens and matures in us. So popular was this thinking on the deadly sins and heavenly virtues that they became a favorite theme of Medieval art. Church walls were painted with murals depicting them. Countless medieval illustrated manuscripts of Clemens’ poem “Psychomachia” still survive, depicting the sins and virtues—in female form—doing battle.
These days, the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues are a helpful framework in our spiritual formation. We acknowledge that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, yet we realize that God’s grace deserves our response. In meditating upon scripture, in following the way of Jesus, we can look within. We can identify the sins with which we struggle. We can cultivate the virtues, those spiritual weapons given to us by Jesus. We can seek to curb sin and grow into virtue as we grow into the beloved people whom God created us to be.
We begin with the sin of pride. In his 2006 book Pride, Michael Eric Dyson of Vanderbilt University notes that pride has a favorable value in our society. We have school pride. We feel pride in our achievements wrought through long, hard work. We have cultural pride that ties us to our ancestors and celebrates what made them and us the people we are. This reasonable, appropriate regard for others and for ourselves is not what I am talking about.
We can chalk that up to the limits of the English language, in which we have a single word to describe the full spectrum of pride. Latin, on the other hand, uses the word superbia to talk about the sin of overweening pride, arrogance, contempt for others, self-righteousness, and the belief that we are not subject to God. C.S. Lewis taught that superbia pride “is the complete anti-God state of mind. It is ‘The Great Sin’ that leads to all other sins, because pride is the exaltation of Self above all authority, even God’s authority.”
The prime scriptural example of superbia is found in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18). Two men go up to the Temple to pray. The Pharisee prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” The Pharisee clearly thinks he is better than his neighbors—those “other people.” He also imagines that he doesn’t really need God. His exceptional piety and righteousness are enough to justify him.
The tax collector presents a stark contrast. He knows his sin and feels completely unworthy. He stands far off, unable to lift his eyes to heaven. He beats his breast in mourning and prays, “‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” The tax collector knows that he doesn’t have a leg to stand on before God. In the punchline of the parable, Jesus cautions his listeners that it won’t be the Pharisee who is justified before God. It will be that scoundrel, the tax collector.
We know this sort of superbia pride when we see it. It prompted Hitler to annex the Sudetenland. It has driven Putin to roll his tanks into Ukraine. We see superbia in the racial pride of white supremacy that drives a speeding car into a crowd of peaceful protesters. Superbia is in the arrogance and utter disdain with which we belittle and trash-talk our rivals and enemies. Superbia pride seeks constant adulation and praise from an army of “yes-men.” Superbia kills our marriages and friendships because we believe that we alone are right—and everyone else is wrong. We see superbia in the context of our faith communities when we believe that we don’t need to practice confession, we don’t have to hear what the preacher says because we’ve heard it all before and we know it all, and we don’t really need church because we don’t need saving—we are just fine on our own. Woe to us when pride drives the bus.
Jesus saw the remedy to superbia in the virtue of humility. He followed that teaching about the Pharisee and tax collector with the words, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Humility is the recognition of who we are in relationship to God. In other words, God is God, and we are not. Humility submits to the authority of God and the guidance of scripture. Humility acknowledges that our personal abilities and resources are gifts from God that are to be used and shared to the glory of God and for the building up of our neighbors.
To comprehend humility, it helps to think about the origin of the word. The Latin form humilitas shares the same root as humus, the organic component of soil, formed by the decomposition of leaves and other plant matter by microorganisms in the soil. When we practice humility, we are down to earth, grounded, and aware of our limits and mortality. Yet, Martin Luther warned that even humility can lead to sin. As a monk, Luther sought humility. He wore hairshirts to mortify his flesh. He fasted, prayed, and slept on the floor. “I finally achieved humility,” Luther quipped, “and I was proud of it!”
Humility finds its scriptural revelation in Christ’s death on the cross. Although sinless, Jesus took on the burden of our collective sin and died a brutal, scandalous, shameful death to reveal God’s great love for us. Thank you, Jesus.
So, what does humility look like for us? Humility is knowing that we need God at the very center of our lives and our families. Humility is good sportsmanship—acknowledging our losses and our opponent’s better abilities on any given day. Humility is accepting responsibility for our mistakes and seeking to make things right. We say, “I did it. It’s my fault. Let me make amends. I am truly sorry.” Even if we are convinced that we are right, humility demands that we stay in relationship, listen, find common ground, and work through differences. Humility is identifying with the poor, the sick, and the despised people of our world. It’s seeking to make a caring difference because we know that they are worthy, deserving of our love and tender care. A world shaped by humility is blessed because it looks a lot like Jesus and anticipates the Kingdom.
So, my friends, as we begin our Lenten journey, let’s spend some time building that Kingdom by tempering our sins of pride with the virtue of humility. We can begin by noticing the ways that pride has separated us from God and one another. Then, we can find healing as we ground ourselves in humility, turning to the world with deep truth and abounding love. May it be so. Amen.
Resources:
Neal Conan. “Interview with Michael Eric Dyson” in Talk of the Nation, Feb. 13, 2006. Accessed online at npr.org.
Jerry D. Kistler. “The Deadly Sin of Pride” in The Montrose Press, March 8, 2019. Accessed online at https://www.montrosepress.com/.
Ryan Griffith. “The Seven Heavenly Virtues: An Ancient Framework for Spiritual Formation” in desiring God, November 1, 2021. Accessed online at desiringgod.org.
Becky Little. “How the 7 Deadly Sins Began as the ‘8 Evil Thoughts’” in History, March 29, 2021. Accessed online at history.com.
Luke 8:9-14
9 Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Poem for a Tuesday — “I Yield Thee Praise” by Philip Jerome Cleveland
For thoughts that curve like winging birds
Out of the summer dusk each time
I drink the splendor of the sky
And touch the wood-winds swinging by —
I yield Thee praise.
For waves that lift from autumn seas
To spill strange music on the land,
The broken nocturne of a lark
Flung out upon the lonely dark —
I give Thee praise.
For rain that piles gray torrents down
Black mountain-gullies to the plain,
For singing fields and crimson flare
At daybreak, and the sea-sweet air —
I yield Thee praise.
For gentle mists that wander in
To hide the tired world outside
That in our hearts old lips may smile
Their blessing through life’s afterwhile —
I give Thee praise.
For hopes that fight like stubborn grass
Up through the clinging snow of fear
To find the rich earth richer still
With kindliness and honest will —
I yield Thee praise.
from A Sacrifice of Praise, ed. James H. Trott. Nashville: Cumberland House, 1999.
Philip Jerome Cleveland (1903-1995) was a Congregational minister. His diverse ministry included service as a prison chaplain, a newspaper editor, a radio pianist, and a Sears and Roebuck Santa Claus. He pastored churches in Nova Scotia, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. He had several bestselling novels about church life, including It’s Bright in My Valley, Three Churches and a Model-T, and End of Dreams. After his death, a portion of his manuscripts, articles, and papers were acquired by The University of Southern Mississippi — de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection
Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Mountain High, Valley Low,” Luke 9:28-43a
When Heidi Neumark was called to pastor the Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the South Bronx, she was in for a challenge. The recent seminary graduate came to a parish that faced daunting, even toxic, realities. The community was New York City’s dumping ground. Waste treatment plants managed the city’s sewage. A giant incinerator burned hazardous medical waste from area hospitals. A massive dump received the city’s refuse. The air was filled with toxins that fueled New York’s highest incidence of asthma. Arriving on Sunday mornings, Neumark would often have to clear away garbage. Broken furniture, old appliances, and boxes of worn-out household items were left at the church under the cover of darkness to avoid paying dump fees.
The social difficulties of Transfiguration Lutheran Church were every bit as daunting. 60% of neighborhood families got by on government assistance. 80% of children lived in poverty. Unemployment for the South Bronx was 70%. 20% of adults suffered from HIV. 28% of deaths each year were attributable to drugs, AIDS, and violence. The church’s neighbors were the extreme poor, those left behind when others moved away: addicts, prostitutes, abused women, single mothers and their children, and gangs. Those were overwhelming realities for a church that had seen its heyday in the 19th century and experienced a hundred years of decline.
When Neumark arrived, church doors were locked, except on Sunday mornings. A faithful corps of members persevered, gathering to worship God in the midst of that blighted community. Although it was a tough call for a new pastor, Neumark found hope in the church’s name: Transfiguration Lutheran Church. In Breathing Space, Heidi Neumark’s spiritual memoir of twenty years of service to that church, she writes that the transfiguration of Jesus could be “a vision to carry us down, a glimpse of unimagined possibility at ground level.” The spiritual mountaintop of Transfiguration Lutheran Church was being called to the needs that awaited them in the valley of the South Bronx.
On Transfiguration Sunday, we join the disciples on the mountaintop with Jesus and watch as he is revealed in heavenly glory. Flanked by those titans of the Hebrew scriptures, Moses and Elijah, Jesus is transformed. His face shines. His clothes dazzle. This clearly is no ordinary rabbi and healer. This is no prophet. Jesus is the Holy One of God. Peter may have wanted to enshrine the moment with three permanent dwelling places, but God had other plans. In a theophany, a heavenly proclamation, God instructed Peter, James, and John, “This is my Son, the Chosen One; listen to him.”
Transfiguration Sunday also takes us to the valley. There another father calls for special attention for his beloved son. Although Jesus had given his disciples the power and authority to cast out demons and heal the sick, they have failed to provide relief for this boy. The anger and frustration that Jesus feels as he learns of the child’s suffering suggest that the disciples’ failure had nothing to do with ability and everything to do with willingness. Those disciples may have been daunted by the power of the oppressive spirit. Or, perhaps they feared the boy’s violent seizures. Or, it could be that they had been too busy. Or, maybe they doubted the very abilities that Jesus had entrusted to them. These disciples may have not been listening to Jesus, but the demon that possessed the child does. As the demon convulses the boy in a violent fit, Jesus steps in, rebukes the spirit, and casts it out. Freed from his suffering, the cured boy is returned to his father. Jesus’s healing and restoration transfigure the lives of father and son who are no longer held captive by the power of destructive evil.
Those two very different stories: the shining moment on the mountain and the convulsed chaos of the valley belong together. In reflecting on our transfiguration reading, Prof. Sharon Ringe, a New Testament scholar at Wesley Seminary, writes that “the glory of God’s presence and the pain of a broken world cannot be separated.” That’s a powerful, world changing statement, “the glory of God’s presence and the pain of a broken world cannot be separated.”
Indeed, in Jesus God enters into the world’s suffering and suffuses it with God’s presence. That’s what we see on the mountain high. And Jesus has the power to meet the world’s suffering head-on with healing, compassion, and love. That’s what we see in the valley low. The Lord hopes that his disciples will make his glory known, not just on the mountaintop of reverence, worship, and praise, but also in the valleys of sickness, powerlessness, and despair. When we listen to Jesus, when we bring his power and authority, compassion and love, to our neighbors, transfiguration happens. The world begins to change and so do we.
At the Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the South Bronx, profound change began to happen for the church and the community when members brought the glory of God’s presence to meet the pain of their broken world. They began by listening to their neighbors and pondering how they could respond to some of their most pressing needs. Then, they moved beyond Sunday morning worship, unlocked the church doors, and welcomed the community in. The church launched a food pantry which serves between 130 and 140 families weekly. They opened up their hall to twelve-step fellowships to support folks seeking recovery from addiction. They pondered how they could best help local youth and established the Community Life Center, an after-school tutoring program and job training center. They provided resources and healing groups to address domestic violence and help folks living with HIV. They even partnered with local police to host a gun buyback program to get illegal handguns out of homes and off the streets. Pastor Heidi got other churches involved, too, working to establish South Bronx Churches. This ecumenical fellowship provides mutual support and collaboration for pastors and churches as they seek to address the community’s needs.
As the church brought the glory of God’s presence to meet the pain of their broken community, it wasn’t just the community that was transfigured. Transfiguration Lutheran Church changed, too. They attracted new people, some of whom had never set foot in a church before. They came for programs but got passionate about the church. They worshipped, prayed, and found the love of Jesus. They got busy cleaning and refurbishing. They tackled long-deferred maintenance. They stepped into leadership. Burnice was an addict who came to the church to pick up a Christmas gift at a give-away. She intended to trade the gift for enough drugs to take her own life. But she didn’t. There was something about the church that kept her coming back. With encouragement from the church, she got into recovery, earned her GED, and found a job. Once a neighbor to be feared and avoided, Burnice is now a pillar of the church and a community leader.
Despite their real challenges and personal tragedies, church members have worked together to help one another and their neighborhood. In shining Christ’s glory for others, they have been richly blessed with that glory themselves. Heidi Neumark writes, “I have learned that grace cleaves to the depths, attends to the losses, and there slowly works her defiant transfiguration.”
On Transfiguration Sunday, we hear a renewed call to bring the glory of God’s presence to meet the pain of a broken world. We spend our Sunday mornings on the mountaintop. We encounter Jesus in prayer and music, scripture and the word proclaimed.It’s glorious. Yet Jesus always sends us back down into the valley. We go forth to fathers who worry about their ill children and mothers who struggle to put food on the table. We go forth to a community where sisters and brothers wrestle with the oppressive spirits of addiction. We live in a place of middle-class homes, multi-million-dollar seasonal camps, tumble-down cabins, rusted out trailers, and hardcore generational poverty.
We may feel daunted by the power of those oppressive spirits. We may fear all that need. We may doubt the very abilities that Jesus has entrusted to us. But God’s transfiguration hope is that the glory of Christ may meet the suffering of the world through disciples like us. Transfiguration Sunday finds its fulfillment when we move from reverence to action. The world gets transfigured, and so do we. May it be so. Amen.
Resources:
Heidi B. Neumark. Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. “A Review of Breathing Space” in Spirituality and Practice, 2004. Accessed online at spiritualityandpractice.com.
Sharon Ringe. “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 9:28-43a” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1, 2009.
Kimberly Miller Van Driel. Homiletical Perspective on Luke 9:28-43a” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1, 2009.
Luke 9:28-43a
28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. 34 While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35 Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” 36 When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. 37 On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38 Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. 39 Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. 40 I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” 41 Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” 42 While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43 And all were astounded at the greatness of God.
On this snowy North Country Friday, I thought you might enjoy a little Mediterranean sunshine. This is the view from the site of Pilate’s compound at Caesarea Maritima. It’s within eyeshot of the Hippodrome where troops drilled, around the corner from the amphitheater, and featured saltwater and freshwater pools for exercise and relaxation.
“I sing requiem for the dead, caught in that mercantilistic madness.
We have not built lasting monuments of severe stone facing the sea, the watery tomb,
so I call these songs shrines of remembrance where faithful descendants
may stand and watch the smoke curl into the sky in memory of those
devoured by the cold Atlantic. In every blues I hear riding the dank swamp
I see the bones picked clean in the belly of the implacable sea.
Do not tell me it is not right to lament, do not tell me it is tired.
If we don’t, who will recall in requiem the scattering of my tribe?
In every reggae chant stepping proud against Babylon I hear a blue note
of lament, sweet requiem for the countless dead, skanking feet among shell,
coral, rainbow adze, webbed feet, making as if
to lift, soar, fly into new days.”
from Requiem by Kwame Dawes, Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 1996.
Poet, professor, and Pulitzer Prize winner Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana and raised in Jamaica. Dawes’s work in reporting on the HIV AIDS crisis in Haiti after the earthquake for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting won the National Press Club Joan Friedenberg Award for Online Journalism. He says that his spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music is a central influence in his poetry. He is a foremost scholar of the work of Bob Marley. Dawes is the Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of Nebraska.
Sabbath Day Thoughts — Luke 6:27-38 “The Good Measure”
On October 2, 2006, milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV barricaded himself inside the one-room West Nickel Mines School in Lancaster County, PA. He had taken ten Amish girls, aged 6-13, hostage. He lined them up and bound their feet. As police sought to breach the schoolhouse, Roberts opened fire, killing five children and wounding five others before taking his own life. Later that day, when the parents of Charles Carl Roberts learned that their son had been the shooter, they were shocked. The husband Charlie turned to his wife Terri and said, “I will never face my Amish neighbors again.”
But face them he did. After the private funeral that the Roberts family held for their son, their Amish neighbors surprised them at the gravesite. About thirty Amish, some of whom had buried their daughters the day before, showed up, arriving in their buggies and walking across the fields. They surrounded the Roberts family in a crescent, as a sign of forgiveness and love. Charlie Roberts’s Amish neighbor came to his home and spent an hour with his arm around him, offering comfort. Ten months after the tragic attack, the Amish shocked the Roberts and the world again. Community members had contributed money to create the Roberts Family Fund to support the widow and three young children of the man who had taken the lives of five of their own.
Those gestures of mercy from the Amish may have humbled, puzzled, or even outraged us. We may have shaken our heads and thought, “Those people are better than I am. There’s no way I could have put myself at that gravesite.” Or we could have asked ourselves, “What’s up with that? How could you hold in your heart both the anguish of untimely, tragic grief and the possibility of compassion for a stone-cold killer?” Or we may just not have believed it. Vocal critics at the time argued that the Amish didn’t forgive. They simply went through the motions of mercy that had been imprinted upon them by their culture. Yet on the day of the shooting, a grandfather of one of the Amish girls turned his family away from hate, saying, “We must not think evil of this man.” Another father said, “He had a mother and a wife and a soul and now he is standing before a just God.”
“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” The forgiveness and mercy of the Amish in the wake of the West Nickel Mines school shooting put hands and feet and hearts to those tough words that Jesus spoke to listeners when he delivered that Sermon on the Plain. For the disciples and others who had gathered to hear Jesus preach, those words would have felt impractical and unthinkable.
The Ancient Near East was a world driven by retributive violence. An accidental death could readily explode into the murder of an entire family. Blood feuds pitted neighbor against neighbor and nation against nation for generations. If you’d like to read a story of this sort of explosive, escalating, unstoppable violence, take some time to read Genesis 34. The sons of Jacob took retribution against Shechem, who had sexually assaulted and married their sister Dinah. To exact revenge, Levi and Simon came upon Shechem and his kin unawares and slaughtered all the men. Then, Jacob’s other ten sons plundered the community, taking for themselves all the valuables, livestock, children, and wives.
The covenant of the Torah, the Jewish law, tried to limit this escalating cycle of blood violence by teaching a tit-for-tat justice. Exodus 21 instructs that vengeance must be measured and reciprocal, “If there is an injury, then you must give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise, wound for wound.” To help the people move away from blood vengeance, six cities of refuge were designated in Israel. There the perpetrators of accidental manslaughter could claim the right of asylum and await appropriate justice.
Yet Jesus broke even with this moderate teaching of measured retaliation by insisting that his followers exceed the standards of the Torah. Instead of pulling out their opponent’s teeth and blacking their eyes, Jesus’s friends were to love, do good for, bless, and pray for their enemies. It was a completely new ethic that flew in the face of everything that his followers knew and experienced. The love that Jesus enjoined his disciples to practice is agape, the love that God practices. Agape chooses to act for the good of the other, regardless of what our hearts might be telling us.
Love your enemies? Love / agape is a tough choice that we learn to make. We can only find the ability to practice agape when we consider the mercy of God to us. Those of you who studied the ten commandments with me a number of years ago will remember that disobeying the moral code that Moses imparted to us carries a death penalty. We are all deserving of Yahweh’s judgment, and yet God is shockingly merciful. Instead of judgment and death, God became flesh and entered into this world’s darkness. In Jesus, God chose to live for us and show to us the way of agape. Traditional enemies like Romans, Samaritans, and Canaanites were welcomed, helped, and healed. Clueless, fickle disciples and merciless executioners were prayed for and forgiven. In the ultimate act of agape, on a merciless cross, flanked by common criminals, Jesus revealed that God loves us enough to die for us.
It is in the enormity of God’s costly love for us that we begin to see another way. We begin to think that maybe we can move away from demanding an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We begin to see that only love can heal hearts, transform an enemy into a friend, and make a changed future possible. With frail and feeble efforts, we begin to choose love. We fail often. And yet, we trust that God’s mercy is there to catch us when we fall. The grace of Christ is sufficient for us.
What might this transformational ethic of agape look like for us? It might be letting go of a long-held grudge. It could be letting bygones be bygones in a family feud. It might be giving a second chance to a friend who betrayed a confidence. It could be working hard together to mend a marriage that has endured infidelity. It is choosing to act always in the best interest of the other and knowing that we can borrow some of God’s love when ours is in short supply.
Jesus described the fruit of a life lived in agape. He called it the “good measure.” When you went to a first century marketplace for grain, the merchant filled a measure to the brim and then gave it a good shake to ensure that every nook and cranny was filled. The merchant then poured that overflowing measure into your apron to carry home. It’s a beautiful earthy metaphor for a life that abounds with goodness. When we practice and experience agape, the world gets blessed and so do we. As we haltingly live into agape, we show God’s Kingdom to the world and in some immeasurable and hopeful way, that Kingdom comes.
In the days following the terrible events at the West Nickel Mines School, Terri and Charlie Roberts, the parents of the shooter, considered leaving the area. Their grief, shame, and pain were so immense that they couldn’t imagine a way forward, but the Amish did more than forgive the couple, they embraced them as part of the community. That generous agape prompted the Roberts to host a summer picnic in their backyard for their Amish neighbors, nine months after the attack. They all came, including a little girl named Rosanna King, wheelchair bound, unable to speak or feed herself, the youngest of their son’s victims.
A few months later, Terri Roberts asked Rosanna’s mother if she could help with the girl’s care. Until her death from breast cancer in 2017, Terri spent nearly every Thursday evening at the King Family farm, bathing, reading, and attending to Rosanna until her bedtime. Terri Roberts remembered the evening that a father said to her, ‘None of us would have ever chosen this. But the relationships that we have built through it, you cannot put a price on that.” Terri believed that the Amish choice for agape, the decision to allow life to move forward with love, was profoundly healing for her and her family. Terri said that is “a message the world needs.”
“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”
Resources:
Colby Itkowitz. “Her Son Shot Their Daughters 10 Years Ago, Then These Amish Families Embraced Her as a Friend” in The Washington Post, October 1, 2016. Accessed online at washingtonpost.com.
Story Corps. “A Decade After Amish School Shooting, Gunman’s Mother Talks of Forgiveness” in Morning Edition, Sept. 20, 2016. Accessed online at npr.org.
Charles Bugg. “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 6:27-38” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.
Luke 6:27-38
27“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
37“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
The nation may be having a “Me Too” moment, but sexual harassment is alive and well in the church. The target? Women clergy.
It starts early. As a student pastor, I noticed that my sermon feedback forms sometimes contained unsolicited, inappropriate comments. “Nice legs.” “Love your dress.” “Easy on the eyes.” “How do you keep that figure?” When asked if he had similar experiences, my colleague and supervisor Jeff was red-faced with shock. “No! Never!”
Pastor Laurena served two small yoked churches in rural New York. While still a newcomer to the ministry, she made a pastoral visit to a widower to plan his wife’s funeral. He greeted her at the door in his bathrobe and slippers. “Please pardon my appearance. I haven’t been feeling well. I thought, for sure, my wife would outlive me. Can you come in?”
Laurena did. After planning the funeral at the kitchen table, her elderly host opened his robe and flashed her. She ran. “The worst thing,” Laurena laughs, “was that I still had to do the funeral!”
Harassment is often expressed more subtly as parishioners refer to their women pastors as sweetie, sweetheart, honey, kiddo, girl, girlfriend, and in one case, “the witch.” In a particularly newsworthy case, Rev. Dr. Amy K. Butler, who pastored Riverside Church in New York City, one of the pre-eminent Protestant congregations in the country, received a bottle of wine and a tee-shirt from a former member of the church’s governing council. Both bore the label “Sweet Bitch.” When confronted about sexist labels and names, most parishioners will stop, but some persist.
Misconduct is experienced by even the most respected and experienced of women religious professionals. A female seminary professor relates that one day, while she was making copies in a common area, an older, influential, married male colleague stopped by and stood close behind. “Mmmm,” he purred, rubbing her shoulders and back. She also shared about incipient sexism. For example, male faculty members regularly expect her to take notes and minutes for meetings. Pastor, professor, and secretary?
Beyond the sexualized comments and behaviors, women clergy experience spectacular, gender-based, public challenges to authority that their male colleagues do not. An Episcopal priest, Anne, reminisced about her earliest days in ministry at a multi-staff church. One Sunday, a woman colleague served communion, a first for the church. The members didn’t like it. Indeed, some refused to receive the sacrament. Anne relates that the matter was resolved after the fact by a male priest, who took the most influential complainant aside, explaining to him that he was “not rejecting the woman celebrant, but he was rejecting Jesus. Those were sobering words, and the woman priest had no trouble from then on.”
Not all women clergy have the support of male colleagues. A smalltown pastor shares that she participated in an annual ecumenical community festival. All clergy were invited to preach, but when she took the pulpit, the men walked out and the women turned their backs. “I was grateful to the congregation I served who defended my role before their fellow townspeople. Still, it was a lonely place to be.”
Women clergy express disappointment that some of the most persistent challenges to their authority come from other women. A number of clergywomen indicated that they had been targeted by gossip within church women’s circles, a grapevine that critiqued everything: weight, hairstyle, clothing, parenting, and marriages. Sadly, female parishioners are sometimes the most vocal in rejecting a woman’s calling to ministry and place in the pulpit.
One pastor recalls the day that a local woman worshiped with her rural church for the first time. After the service was over, the woman berated her. “Women are not supposed to preach. We are to learn from men in submission and silence.”
In reflecting on their experiences of misconduct, many clergywomen report that they are unclear how to respond. Those who entered the ministry decades ago simply found that harassment “goes with the territory.”
Even if women wish to take action, they may not have a process or a support network that can assist them. Mennonite pastor Melissa Florer-Bixler reports that although churches have publicly embraced the “Safe Sanctuaries” movement that guards church members against sexual misconduct, few denominations have developed policies or procedures to address sexual harassment and bullying of women clergy. It’s problematic that the people who harass may also be the people who hold the purse strings and control compensation. Also, church personnel matters are typically handled by member volunteers who are untrained in matters of misconduct and bullying.
The harassment that clergywomen experience reveals an underlying ethos of gender bias that is pervasive, even among the progressive mainline protestant churches that have been ordaining women for more than sixty years. Female pastors are paid less than men. The 2019 Presbyterian Church (USA) salary survey (the most recent data available) indicates that women have lower effective salaries in every region of the country and in every ministerial capacity. Female pastors make on average thirteen percent or $8,503 less than their male counterparts. The General Assembly of the PC(USA) resolved in 2018 to urge their 166 constituent Presbyteries to “act decisively and embrace a goal of gender equity for all ministers.” Even with decisive action, the gap won’t be bridged any time soon.
An Alabama Methodist clergywoman relates that even when churches are willing to change, forces within denominations sometimes are not. “I was offered a significant raise by my church when I became the senior pastor. But the bishop at the time had the church reduce my salary by $5,000. The bishop told me it could be bad for my husband’s self-esteem if I made so much money since my husband was clergy as well, it might be hard on our marriage.”
Yet the problem is more than pay. The Hartford Institute for Religion and Research reports that only twenty percent of mainline congregations are led by women. Female pastors are much more likely to serve in smaller congregations, often with limited finances and big problems. Indeed, only a handful of large, high-steeple churches have women serving as heads of staff.
Lee Hinson-Hasty of the Committee on Theological Education has an insider’s perspective on the dynamics of gender as men and women respond to God’s call. In a blog post, Hinson-Hasty suggests that churches—and the committees that prepare candidates for ministry—still give priority to men, even as more women are ordained. On average, it takes women longer to move through the ordination process. Upon graduation from seminary, men are more likely to have been offered jobs. Once ordained, women not only are paid less, they are also fifteen percent less likely to have benefits like healthcare, pension, and insurance.
Increasingly, denominations realize that, if change is to come, action is needed. Both the United Methodist Church (UMC) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have taken creative initiatives to raise awareness of the experience of clergywomen with videos that show male pastors reading aloud the outrageous, sexist comments that are routinely said to their female counterparts.
Imagine a grey-haired pastor in a clerical collar stating, “Now that you’re pregnant, your belly sticks out further than your boobs,” or a bearded, young, hipster pastor saying, “I keep picturing you naked under your robe.” The spontaneous shock and discomfort of the men highlights the seriousness of the problem. They were incredulous, demoralized, angered. One male pastor said afterward, “My heart is broken.”
The resulting short films, “#HerTruth” and “Seriously? Actual Things Said to Female Pastors in the NC Synod,” aired at the conferences’ annual meetings and were greeted with standing ovations. According to the UMC Commission on the Status and Role of Women, the object of the videos was to make church members uncomfortable with the sexism that female pastors routinely experience. The Rev. Chrysti Dye, who chairs the North Carolina commission, said “There’s a collective hope that you’re lifting the veil on a culture in society and in the church of demeaning women, sexualizing them and objectifying them. We want to wake up everyone.”
Despite the harassment, sexism, and gender bias, women clergy persist. They do so because God has called them to ministry. That holy purpose counter balances the hardship. Some women even affirm that their church work is uniquely rewarding in gender-specific ways.
Jane, who specialized in pastoral care as a minister with a multi-staff church, feels that her identity as a woman allowed her to make a healing difference in the lives of her female parishioners, especially women over sixty.
A 75-year-old woman made an appointment to see Jane. “Her husband had been dead a good ten years. She confessed that she had an affair when she was in her 20s and her husband was in the service. It had paralyzed her for years. I was able to put a priestly hat on and offer her God’s forgiveness through prayer. She wept and said it was a gift to be able to let this burden go. She said she never would have said this to a male pastor.”
Katrina echoes Jane’s belief in the special ability of women clergy to help and heal. She has a memory that she deeply cherishes. She was pastoring an elderly woman, widowed for over 40 years, who one day offhandedly mentioned that she always accepted hugs because she didn’t get enough physical touch in her life. “After I learned that,” Katrina says, “anytime we’d happen to sit next to each other at coffee hour I’d reach for her hand under the table. We would carry on regular conversation above the table while secretly holding hands below. Her eyes would shine at me, overflowing with love in these brief moments of physical connection and care.” It was an act of caring that would be off limits to male clergy, whose handholding might be construed as a sexual advance.
Woman clergy also find blessing in their special capacity to balance mothering and pastoring.
Melodie remembers the Sunday morning that she was charged with leading worship and caring for her two-year-old granddaughter, “In the middle of the sermon she stripped off all her clothes, stood on the front pew, and announced, ‘Memama, I’m naked!’ That was the end of worship that day! Everyone laughed!”
I’ve had those special moments, too. In a program with children, I asked each of them to write their name on a piece of white paper. The other kids were then invited to add the gifts and special abilities that they saw in one another. On my paper, someone scrawled, “A good Mom.” I don’t have children. Not long before, we had gone through a miscarriage. “A good Mom” felt like a blow to the gut. I learned that it was written by four-year-old Lizzie with the help of her older brother Matt. Lizzie had decided—and told her parents—that if anything happened to them, she wanted me to be her Mom. I kept that paper taped to the door of the pastor’s study for years.
Clergymen may not have the same experiences of harassment and gender bias. They may be paid more. They may serve larger churches with bigger bank accounts. They may have better benefits. But I bet that never happened to a male pastor.
Thank you to the many clergy women who shared their experiences with me.
Resources:
Melissa Florer-Bixler. “When Your Sexual Harassers Sit in Your Pews” in Sojourners, July 11, 2019. Accessed online at sojo.net.
Sam Hodges. “New Video Calls Out Harassment of Women Clergy” in United Methodist News, June 25, 2019. Accessed online at umnews.org.
Hinson-Hasty, Lee. “More Presbyterian Women Ordained than Men 2001-2016” in Theological Education Matters, August 13, 2018. Accessed on-line at presbyterianfoundation.org.
North Carolina Synod of the ELCA. Seriously? Actual Things Said to Female Pastors in the NC Synod, October 10, 2018. Accessed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTcaAkG86QQ
Rick Rojas. “Pastor’s Exit Exposes Cultural Rifts at a Leading Liberal Church, July 11, 2019 in The New York Times. Accessed online at http://www.nytimes.com.
Poem for a Tuesday — “Passage” by Elizabeth Alexander
“Henry Porter wore good clothes for his journey,
the best his wife could make from leftover
cambric, shoes stolen from the master. They
bit his feet, but if he took them off he feared
he’d never get them on again. He needed
to look like a free man when he got there.
Still in a box in the jostling heat,
nostrils to a board pried to a vent,
(a peephole, too, he’d hoped, but there was only
black to see) there was nothing to do
but sleep and dream and weep. Sometime the dreams
were frantic, frantic loneliness an acid
in his heart. Freedom was near but un-
imaginable. Anxiety roiled inside
of him, a brew which corroded his stomach,
whose fumes clamped his lungs and his throat.
When the salt-pork and corn bread were finished
he dreamed of ice cream and eggs but the dreams
made him sick. He soiled himself and each time
was ashamed. He invented games tried to
remember everything his mother
ever told, every word he hadn’t
understood, every vegetable he’d ever
eaten (which was easy: kale, okra, corn,
carrots, beans, chard, yams, dandelion greens),
remember everyone’s name who had ever
been taken away. The journey went that way.
When he got there, his suit was chalky
with his salt, and soiled, the shoes waxy with blood.
The air smelled of a surfeit of mackerel.
Too tired to weep, too tired to look through
the peephole and see what freedom looked like,
he waited for the man to whom he’d shipped
himself: Mister William Still, Undertaker,
Philadelphia. He repeated the last
words he’d spoken to anyone: goodbye
wife Clothilde, daughter Eliza,
best friend Luke. Goodbye, everyone, goodbye.
When I can, I’ll come for you. I swear,
I’ll come for you.”
in Furious Flower, ed. Joanne V. Gabbin. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004.
Elizabeth Alexander is a Black writer, poet, and educator. Born in Harlem and raised in Washington, DC, Alexander studied at Yale, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania. She is a gifted educator, who has taught at Haverford College, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Smith College. Her father served as the United States Secretary of the Army. Her mother was a distinguished professor of African American Women’s History. She was just a toddler when her parents took to the March on Washington in August 1963. In 2009, she recited her poem “Praise Song for the Day” at President Barack Obama’s first Presidential Inauguration.
Joann White 