On The Road—Again, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 4/23/23

The biblical story, as reported in Luke’s gospel (24:13-35) about what happened on the road away from Jerusalem and towards Emmaus is a classic story: something so radically outside the realm of our expectations happens that we can’t believe it. We can’t believe our eyes, our ears. These followers of Jesus knew that he had died—dead and gone. 

I remember such a feeling when I saw the bare body of my dead father, his frail bony legs hanging limply over the arms of the big burly funeral director who carried him from his home. I knew he was very sick with esophageal cancer. The surgery to remove the tumor had left him unable to swallow. I knew he was going to die. He was only seventy-one. I knew I’d received a call from my mother early that Sunday morning that “Daddy died.”  I, with my sister and mother, had kept vigil, taking turns for days as my father moved through his dying process. It took nearly a week. I timed his groans— every fifteen minutes as he tossed and turned on the pillow. The nurse said he wasn’t in pain. Was he wrestling with “demons” or himself or God?  I thought I would die from helplessness just listening and counting. I knew my father was dying, yet when I saw him dead I did not believe it. I could not believe it. My love was not ready for this death.

*  *  *  * 

A neutral Jewish historian at the end of the first century reported: “When Pilate, upon hearing him (Jesus) accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemn him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. (from “Overture” The Gospel of Jesus, by scholar John Dominic Crossan.)

Does this mean that these early Christians were stunned by their disbelief as if it were a delusion, or did it mean that some kinds of love never dies? I don’t know. But I do know that Emmaus-like experiences happen all the time. The couple in this Emmaus story left the crucifixion scene and walked along the road, incredulous. Of course they talked, trying to understand the incredible death. The gossip and the wondering ran wild. Who do we believe? How will we know? A stranger came along and asked them what they were talking about. They told him of Jesus’s death, and their incredulity. 

Later that evening they invited this stranger to join them for more conversation and a meal. In the meal, the breaking of the bread, they recognized the meal we now call the Communion/Eucharist, the meal Jesus had told them to keep on doing for remembrance and for ongoing sanctification of Truth. Suddenly, they remembered all they had experienced in their travels with Jesus. Yes, he was dead and yes, he still was alive with them in this meal. Only then did they race back to Jerusalem in high spirits, proclaiming the aliveness of Jesus the Christ/Messiah.  

Crossan wrote: “The symbolism is obvious, as is the metaphoric condensation of the first years of Christian thought and practice in one parabolic afternoon. Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.”  

*  *  *  *

Some time after Dad died I rummaged through his drawers to find some kind of memory. I found his old faded golf sweater. I put it on. Its sleeves hung down well below my hands. I smelled the scent of his cigarettes, poked my fingers into the little holes made in the sweater by cigarette ash. I wore that old sweater on and off for some years, until one day, I knew I would never forget my father and his dumb toxic habits, nor his love for me and mine for him. That day I rolled up the sweater and placed it gently into the trash basket with a gentle pat. My father was dead. My father remains alive in my heart. 

Will I see him again? I don’t know, nor do I much care. Remembering is enough. Loving and writing the memories is enough. Continuing to celebrate the sacramental meal Jesus instituted in God’s name is enough to keep the Love he preached alive—to trust and reenact its potency always.  AMEN. 

2022.09.18 God's Wealth, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

 

Jesus, a good rabbinical teacher, is remembered as telling his listeners realistic illustrative stories that often challenge long-held, traditional assumptions. No one goes away unmoved after listening to one of his parables; everyone is called up short.   

The parable in Luke (16:-13) about a businessman of great corporate wealth who suspects his business manager of squandering his properties and profits and threatens to fire him, is one that always leaves me reeling, gets me twisted in knots. Business as usual is obviously not an option in God’s economy. But what is?  Christian scholar and theologian, John Dominic Crossan, calls this story a challenge parable—not morally obvious but spiritually unsettling. Money tends to do that to most of us. 

*  *  *  *  

Once there was this business manager who panicked at the thought of losing his job. He devised a scheme whereby, if he is fired he will be taken care of by those who can least afford to do that. Why can’t he take care of himself? Because he is not strong enough to work, too ashamed to beg, and just plain scared. So he schemes.

The scheme: When debtors come to repay their legitimate debt to the boss, the manager tells each of them to halve the amount due and pay only that. Thus he cheats the boss out of his legitimate profit, and gains some money for himself as well as good will around the neighborhood.

 

He imagines that his “generosity” to the poor debtors might also please God who, according to Jesus’s teachings, likes open-hearted generosity. But Jesus tells the story to warn listeners that wealth accrued by cheating, even if you think the businessman has too much wealth, is itself dishonest behavior not pleasing to God. 

One cannot, Jesus teaches, “buy” friendship with money, and wealth accrued by dishonest means is an insult to the ways of God, or divine economics. And here Jesus delivers one of his best, and probably least heeded yet most preached, one-liners: “You cannot serve two masters, both God and wealth/mammon”  

The semitic translation of “mammon” is “that in which one fully trusts.”  Frankly, I do feel more secure when there is money in my wallet, and in my bank, and a credit card in my bag.   But what good would that do me if my purse were snatched, my wallet and checkbook gone. I’d feel naked, unsafe. I’d report everything. I’d pray. I’d give thanks that I was alive and that my wee phone was still safely tucked away in my back pocket. I would also know that this all was not what God would like at all, and not because of the money I lost.  

*  *  *  * 

God obviously does not despise money or wealth itself. What God despises are two things: first, putting your whole trust in your wealth, as if wealth could save you, or love you, or even give you emotional comfort; and second, the regular practice of “dishonest”—half-hearted— generosity. Pop a coin in a beggar’s cup, but never a paper bill. 

The mental calculation might go something like this: AFTER I have my yacht, my mansion, my diamonds, my fortune, my business, my high moral standing, my religion, my politics, my comfort, THEN I will become a philanthropist and give generously and unconditionally to works of justice, the arts, and the needs of others.

Is philanthropy, the name we often use to describe the generosity of BIG donors to benefit  good causes, and a word derived from philos + anthropos, meaning man-loving or human-loving, in line with divine open-hearted generosity? Or is God’s generosity something we desire but that we are sure is unattainable, because, after all, we are only human? Ah yes, and we are also rich with grace, beauty, love, wisdom, and hope. Are these not the riches of God?

*  *  *  *

Can we, in partnership with God,

be trusted then to waste,

to lavish, spread, fling far too wide

the riches of God’s grace?

-hymn text by Episcopal priest, Michael Hudson, Songs for the Cycle, 2004 

2016.01.24 Shimmers of Stuff

A friend recently asked, “What’s an apostle? We say in the Creed, we believe in 'one, holy and apostolic church.'" He hastened to tell me he understood “one” and “holy” but wondered what apostles were, then added that he didn’t like saying what he didn’t believe in or understand.

I thought, “Well, join the group", but that was quick sarcasm. Still, I wanted a better answer, so I said, with equal haste: “The early followers of Jesus who preached the gospel all over their little world and, thanks to them, it took hold. Apostles."

That was an blah response really. But something else, equally icky but with more pizazz, occurred to me, so I added. “Apostles were first responders.” We laughed. 

Tomorrow is the day we remember the Confession of St. Paul, known as “apostle”—a man accosted by the holy presence of the Risen Christ, a blinding light—glaring enough for him to realize that the one everyone else was calling the Christ was asking him, a non-believer to say the least, to preach the good news of resurrection. Paul didn’t turn into an apostle overnight. He didn’t run off immediately to take on this assignment. His conversion to the ways of Jesus Christ was not magic or easy. Paul spent much time, as the legend goes, in literal blindness, wondering and questioning, and coming to the truth of who he was—really, truly, deeply. All this before he went forth to do the work of an apostle, to become a Christian missionary.

This story is biblically dramatic, but do not we all go through such times when something intersects our lives and we see ourselves anew, perhaps taking new directions?

It’s nearly impossible to describe such soul-collisions, such conversionary experiences. Poetry does it best, or maybe a wise insight of a reverent mind, a bit of amateur prosody, or even a throw-off but passionate line in a TV series. Whatever it is you are, for a second, blinded.

Self Portrait
    It doesn't interest me if there is one God
    or many gods.
    I want to know if you belong or feel
    abandoned.
    If you know despair or can see it in others.
    I want to know
    if you are prepared to live in the world
    with its harsh need
    to change you. If you can look back
    with firm eyes
    saying this is where I stand. I want to know
    if you know
    how to melt into that fierce heat of living
    falling toward
    the center of your longing. I want to know
    if you are willing
    to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
    and the bitter
    unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

    I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
    the gods speak of God.

      -- David Whyte
          from Fire in the Earth
          ©1992 Many Rivers Press

“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”
― John Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus.

Who Told Me Who I Am?

I was a miracle,
a gift from God.
My mother told me so.
But I demurred
and tripped on all her haloes.
No, not my status, Mom.
But gift from God?—
showed promise.
I looked above and then below
and finally looked within where
Lo! Behold!
I quickly saw that a present
was really a Presence.
    Lyn G. Brakeman, 2016


“Healing is an art. Every person is our Sistine chapel.” (A nurse’s line in the television series, “Mercy Street” )