Here I Am

Readings: Acts 2:14a, 22-32, Psalm 16, 1 Peter 1:3-9, John 20:19-31

What was different about the risen Christ?


We can infer from the gospels that there was something unfamiliar in his appearance. Last week, Mary Magdalene met him outside of his tomb and mistook him for a gardener. Not until he spoke did she recognize him, and then came the joy of being unexpectedly reunited.

This week we recall his encounter with the disciples, who similarly do not seem to know him at first. He greets them, but not until he offers a sign—the wounds of crucifixion—does the light of recognition dawn on them.

Jesus walks about in anonymity. A resurrected messiah, we know, would have been wild news—people would have wanted to see him. Certainly the crowds would have exceeded those he drew before, even when performing miracles. But the risen Christ is obscure.

Even Thomas, an apostle, does not believe the news. His brethren assure him, in their excitement, that they have seen Jesus, that he has been among them again; but Thomas scoffs, saying, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe" (John 20:25).

This seems a gruesome request. But then, Thomas has been asked to wrestle with an unprecedented idea: that death might be reversed.

Jesus is understanding; he responds to Thomas’s insistence upon tactile proof. Put your hand in my side, if you must; he says. It’s me. And Thomas knows him.

There’s something different about the risen Jesus. Those who walked with him before do not know him until he declares himself. They do not doubt him once he is revealed; but they are hapless until the anonymity is peeled back.

This seems, to me, to be such a powerful injunction to be kind to those who walk among us. It is disquieting that the apostles saw him without seeing him; if they, who had known him in life, were so sightless before him in his new life, how are we, who see him only in the gospels, to recognize him?

Jesus said, “What you do to the least of those among you, you do to me.” He suggested he could be sought in the meek, in those brought low by their circumstances, in the hungry and in the searching. In the eyes which we often avoid meeting, there he is. In the lonely corners we do not visit, he waits.

I read a story this week about a young girl who was taunted and physically abused in public because of her appearance. This young twenties person was shifting between genders, and something about that piqued her torturers; they decided to assault her. To teach her a lesson? To put her “in her place”? Such acts defy reason. We are so illogically prompted to be cruel to one another.

The mystery of Easter is this: Jesus was crucified. Jesus is risen. Jesus walks the world again. We do not see him when we look for the man who healed, who walked on water, who fed the masses and defied Roman authority; that figure has departed us forever.

But what about those from whom we shrink? In the teenager reviled by their peers for daring to be who they are internally compelled to be: can’t we look for Christ there? In the face of the girl who was beaten, do we sense a glimmer of recognition?

The lesson of this season is that God does not abandon us to our fallible flesh. The world, post-resurrection, is a dress rehearsal, is an unset stage awaiting the last revelation. What we do in this moment has bearing on that; we have to ready our eyes to see.

Through our faith, we anticipate clear sight: “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:8). By acts of loving kindness to those we encounter, we attest our belief.

Hands which need to feel torn flesh belong to those who have not yet seen. Hands which reach out to greet those who seem, at first, just strangers, trust in the resurrection. We give our love to others knowing that it will someday come back to us, that Christ will someday from them say, “Here I am.”

photo credit here

April 4 -- Waking Up

This week’s lectionary texts: Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 65:17-25, Psalm 118:1-2 and 14-24, 1 Corinthians 15:19-26 or Acts 10:34-43, and John 20:1-18 or Luke 24:1-12.

It might not quite look like it in Boston today, but spring has sprung! Tiny green buds are covering the trees; daffodils and crocuses are dotting yards and birds are chirping in the bushes and branches. The snow is long gone -- rain keeps falling, but that rain is sure to bring even more new vegetation to life after the cold slumber of winter. The world, it seems, is waking up.

April 4th is Easter, the day that we remember Christ's triumph over death -- a triumph that allows us to wake up, to start fresh, to begin a new day full of hope and joy and renewed perseverance. On Easter, we are called to awaken to new possibilities, to new awareness of the needs of our world and our neighbor, to new understandings of how God is working in our lives. The resurrection of Jesus stands as a testament to God's unfathomable love for us -- through Christ, we have been roused from our complacency, our despair, our stagnancy, and urged to claim our new lives as beloved children of God.

This week's lectionary texts are full of beautiful reflections on the power of God to create and recreate, to awaken and enliven the world and all its creatures. In Isaiah, the prophet gloriously recalls God's promises to the world:

"For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth...But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight...no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress." (Isaiah 65:17-19)

God has promised to restore and renew us, to give good things to God's people and to encourage all of creation to live together in new ways that are life-giving and love-increasing. "They shall be offspring blessed by the Lord," we read; "Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox" (Isaiah 65:23-24). God wants to help us build a world of peace: "They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord" (Isaiah 65:25).

We all understand that this world can be full of pain and destruction, just as it can be full of beauty and goodness. But as Paul tells the Corinthians, there is hope in Christ: "For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:22). His is an eschatological vision, in which Christ has destroyed death itself, opening us to new chances to live spirit-filled, courageous, radically loving lives. Even if we feel held back -- by our circumstances, by our pasts -- God has promised us forgiveness and urges us to preach peace (Acts 10:42-43).

The resurrection story in the Gospel of John presents Mary Magdalene as the first witness to the resurrection of Jesus. Upon arriving at the tomb and finding two angels where Jesus' body had been, she begins to weep. Turning around, she runs into Jesus -- whom she fails to recognize -- and he asks her, "Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?" (John 20:15). She asks Jesus to tell her what has been done with the body -- but then, as Jesus calls her name, she suddenly recognizes that the man in front of her is her dear friend, the man who was once dead but who has been restored to life.

So often we sleepwalk through life, our eyes closed to new opportunities for service, new ways to develop our God-given gifts and talents, new understandings of community and interconnectedness. How many times have we failed to recognize Jesus in a person in need? How many times have we been unable to see God's glory because we are just too tired to shake up our usual patterns and look at the world with fresh eyes?

Indeed, God understands that it can be difficult -- sometimes seemingly impossible -- to wake up. We can be held back by challenges both external and internal, difficulties that prevent us from awakening to the new life God has in store for us. But this Easter, let us hear the call to the joyful, vibrant, beautiful promise we have been given in Christ. Let us ask ourselves how we have fallen asleep and become disconnected from God and from our neighbors. And let us wake from our slumbers and greet the morning with boldness, proclaiming with the psalmist,

"This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!" (Psalm 118:24)

March 28 -- Palm Sunday

This week's lectionary texts: Psalm 118:1-2 and 19-29, and Luke 19:28-40 or John 12:12-16.

Growing up Catholic, I remember spending one Palm Sunday gathering with the rest of the congregation in the parking lot of our church. Someone had started a huge bonfire on that chilly morning, and as we all huddled together, everyone was handed a palm frond. After some initial prayers, the priest then led us into the sanctuary, singing and waving our green leaves.

I have to confess that as a child, I was much more fascinated by the actual palms -- their bright colors, the way that you could peel off the edges into little strings -- than by their symbolism. Indeed, the whole story of Palm Sunday seemed strange to me: Jesus riding on a donkey? The residents of Jerusalem welcoming him with palm branches? It all sounded a little silly.

Now, the story of Palm Sunday still seems a bit strange, but in a different way. Namely, how could Jesus be so warmly welcomed one moment, and less than a week later have been sentenced to death, crucified, and resurrected?

This week's lectionary texts do not quite get at the question of how things took such a sudden turn. But they do offer reflection on the ways in which Jesus is continually portrayed as someone who upends expectations and changes our perspective on what it means to be powerful.

As the psalmist writes in Psalm 118, God is good; God's "steadfast love endures for ever" (Psalm 118:1). He offers a stirring image for entering into God's presence:

"Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it." (Psalm 118:19-20)

Paralleling the psalmist's words, John and Luke offer us their own interpretations of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As Luke writes, two of the disciples are sent ahead to find a young colt and to bring it to Jesus for his entrance into the city. As he rode along, "people kept spreading their cloaks on the road," and the disciples "began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, 'Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!'" (Luke 19:36-38).

While Luke omits any mention of palm branches, John writes that as Jesus entered the city, "a great crowd" appeared, taking "branches of palm trees and [going] out to meet him," shouting praises to the Lord (John 12:12-13). Here, John references the prophet Zechariah, explaining that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a young donkey to echo what had been written: "Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey" (Zechariah 9:9).

Indeed, the texts we read this Palm Sunday are full of fascinating -- and sometimes unintuitive -- happenings. Jesus is the son of God, but he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey -- hardly the most noble of animals. He is welcomed with praise and excitement by the palm-carrying populace -- but condemned by them just days later. The psalmist seems to echo these seeming contradictions when he writes, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone" (Psalm 118:22).

Jesus is constantly causing us to readjust our expectations, to realize that things are not always what they seem. Just as Jesus entered Jerusalem to shouts of praise, only to see his entire life upended just a few days later, we too may experience upheavals in our lives. Things can go from good to bad in an instant; they can just as quickly go from bad to good. Life is unpredictable, and the story of Palm Sunday shows that Jesus can empathize with us when things don't go as we expect them to.

The photograph above was taken in Mexico several years ago. I was sitting near a palm tree, when I noticed a tiny nest woven into the branches. Every few minutes, a little head would poke out and chirp, and, without fail, a bigger bird would eventually return with a new tidbit for its baby. This went on for at least an hour as I watched, totally transfixed. It was a beautiful example of the care of a parent for a child, much like God cares for us, even in the midst of confusion or uncertainty.

We all know what happens after Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem that day -- he will come face to face with his own death, a death advocated by the men and women who had just welcomed him with palms. How rapidly things changed. But through it all, God is constantly there, constantly caring for Jesus, as God constantly cares for us. As the psalmist simply and powerfully puts it, "O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever" (Psalm 118:29).

Photo by the author.

Sept. 20: the Anonymous Exorcist

"Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."
"Do not stop him," Jesus said. "No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward."

The concept of exorcism is beguiling. The passage from this week’s Gospel of Mark reading features the so-called Anonymous Exorcist, also referred to in Luke 9: 49-50. The reader is never given a picture of the exorcist in action. We only learn of him through indirect speech: “Teacher,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name . . .” Yet this brief passage raises significant questions, including: what role does exorcism play in the Gospel of Mark? How do the exorcist narratives—there are three more—illuminate Jesus Christ as portrayed by Mark? And finally, on a practical level, what does exorcism entail?

Etymology of the modern-day word “exorcism” is described here:

“. . . driving out (an evil spirit) by prayers, ceremonies . . . from Late Latin exorcizare, from Greek exorkizein, "exorcise, to bind by oath" (ex-, "out of" + horkizein, "to cause" or "to make a person swear, to administer an oath to", from horkos, "oath"; also literally, limitation, binding). As noted above, "oath" is to be found at the etymological heart of exorcise, a term going back to the Greek word exorkizein, meaning "to swear in, to take an oath by, to conjure", and "to exorcise".

In this particular verse, Mark seems to drawing a parallel between Jesus and Moses, as portrayed in the book of Numbers in Hebrew Scripture. After the Israelites complain about life in the wilderness, Moses in turn asks Yahweh for relief. Yahweh’s answer is as follows, asking Moses to gather seventy elders of Israel: “I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself (11:17). After Yahweh extends the spirit that was give to Moses to the elders, Moses is informed by a young man:

“Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. . . But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them! And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp. (27-30).

When applying this passage to a congregation today, one can make an interpretive move that the editors of the New Oxford Annotated Bible make: “The movement is not to be defensive or controlling” (NT 75). Thus this passage can be read as a strong sign, not only to passively wait for healing to arrive from an outside source, but to actively take initiative. Virtually all we know about the Anonymous Exorcist was that he was not one of the Twelve Disciples, yet he was successful in driving out demons in Jesus’ name. John and his companions do not tell the Exorcist to stop because his work is fraudulous, or ineffective, thus giving their group a bad reputation. They object merely because he is using Christ’s name, yet not “one of us.”

Jesus’ response is to legitimize the Exorcist who he has never met or seen. He describes doing good works as a method for in effect drawing near to him: “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.”

Thus, it is possible to read the Anonymous Exorcist as a model for would-be leaders whose voices have historically not been heard. Both Jesus, and Moses in the parallel passage, rebuke their followers for drawing too tight a fence around their communities of faith. It is also notable that the Exorcist is neither invited, nor forced, to join Jesus and the disciples. The narrative leaves the reader with the view that he continues to do his work offstage, with Jesus’ commendation. The passage can in this regard be read as pointing to different but parallel spiritual paths.

One great source for readers interested in more information about exorcism is Eric Sorenson’s Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity (Mohr Siebeck, 2002).

The author brings a sustained focus on linguistics and historical breadth to this specific study. He contextualizes exorcisms depicted in the New Testament with similar passages in the Hebrew Scriptures--drawing on the traditions of prophets Daniel and Ezekiel in particular--as well as in non-Biblical texts from Mesopotamia and the Greco-Roman world from this time period. He also pays particular attention to the rich and varied Greek and Hebrew words depicting, not just exorcism narratives, but instances in which a figure receives "the spirit of the Lord."

A strength of this book is the extent to which the author reads exorcist narratives side by side, putting them into conversation with each other. Explaining that the Gospel of Mark offers the first existing evidence of exorcism in the Christian tradition, Sorenson how, unlike Luke, Mark uses different verbs for Jesus’ exorcisms that the verbs that describe healing (Sorenson, 135-136). He focuses on three narratives in Mark in which Jesus performs an exorcism: Mark 1:23-28, the man in synagogue (also in Luke); Mark 5:9, the Gerasene demon named Legion; and Mark 9:21, 29, the speechless boy (both in Matthew and Luke.)

Sorenson argues that the exorcism scenes in Mark are not written with the goal of informing others how to repeat them—in other words, they are not “How To” narratives. The words Jesus says are written in the Greek imperative tense (138), but there is no one formula highlighted as singularly effective. Rather, the success of the exorcisms comes from Jesus’ spiritual authority. Sorenson writes,

"In contrast to the Marcan healings which can employ several distinct actions, the exorcisms in Mark are simply wrought, often performed only a command or a rebuke. . . For this reason the Gospel of Mark can be immediately distinguished from the Mesopotamian ritual manuals . . . Further, Mark’s austere descriptions set Jesus’ technique in contrast, perhaps deliberately so, with the elaborate methods known to have existed for other exorcists outside of the New Testament" (Sorenson, 136).

Sorenson also explores similarity between the exorcism and healing narratives, as indicative of divine agency relieving suffering:

“Aggressiveness pervades Jesus’ and the disciples’ interactions with the hostile demonic world. The synoptic authors work on the assumption that exorcism reveals the exorcist as a mediator of divine power that constrains and overthrows and equally aggressive evil that has willfully caused innocent people to suffer” (Sorenson, 138).

The photo credit can be found here, and bibliographical (and ordering) information on Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity can be found here.

The complete lectionary readings for this weeks are Proverbs 31:10-31 or Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22; Psalm 1 or Psalm 54; James 3:13 - 4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37 (optional Hebrew reading: Jeremiah 11:18-20).

--Elizabeth Fels