Third Sunday after Pentecost--Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30

When we hear these words of comfort from Jesus, we must hear them in their context. Jesus has just concluded a long missionary discourse. He has instructed his disciples in the ways of conducting business. Go and preach my word, he tells them, and do not expect that it will be easy or without burden and danger. My goal is not as much about peace as it is about splitting the world in two so that the Word of God can get right into the center of life.

The disciples are presumably out in the world, doing their best to live with Jesus’ call to ministry when we enter into the lesson today. Jesus is facing a crowd of people, some of whom believe that the imprisoned John the Baptizer is the true Messiah of God. Although the crowd never asks a question, Jesus’ answer to them implies that their question is one that we have been asking of the divine from the beginning of creation—if you are not here to make us happy, to make us comfortable and peaceful, then how are you relevant in our lives?

Jesus’ answer is that he is here to expose the world to the Word of God. The way that we know that Word is to stop trying to haul all of our lives around by ourselves and go stand next to him. There are two kinds of equipment called yokes—a single yoke and a partner yoke. Being a city girl through and through, I would never have known this had I not been educated by my hosts when I lived in a developing country. A single yoke is extremely effective, and a person can haul great loads from some distance with it. However, the single yoke is painful. It takes a great deal of strength and stamina, and even the most skilled person tires easily under the weight. A double, or partner yoke, operates under a different rule of physics. It is a bit more complicated to work, because it requires a level of cooperation. However, because the burden is shared, one person or being can rest while the other pulls the weight for a time. The burden, the work, the weight is still present in both. The double yoke is just easier.

That is what Jesus is offering us today. The promise is not so much about easier as it is about presence. Jesus is offering us all of himself, all that God has to give. When we are willing to step up beside him and become part of a shared yoke, we experience the kind of rest that God experienced with creation on the seventh day. It is a wholeness, a complete connectedness, with the divine Creator. Jesus’ invitation to yoke with him still implies that there is work to be done. The promise is that the yoke will fit, because we have been crafted for it. [Katrina L. Holland, "The Healing Word," Homily Service 38.8 (July 2005): 7-8.]

Katrina L. Holland is pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Jefferson, MD. 

Guidelines for Interfaith/Intertraditional Worship

Some years ago, The Liturgical Conference published an issue of Liturgy that focused on ecumenical (meaning "inter-Christian" rather than "interfaith") concerns. In that issue, Susan J. White provided a set of guidelines for what the author called "intertraditional worship" that would serve us well in thinking about interfaith worship.

Perceptive appreciation for liturgical diversity has various implications for liturgists involved in ecumenical relations. First, it implies an obligation to avoid embracing a false liturgical ecumenism based on a superficial assessment of similarities and differences in worship and doctrine. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it implies a willingness to enter into the worship of Christians and those of other faith with openness and the vulnerability that that involves.

A host of questions now arise. Can we put aside our own particular liturgical agenda long enough to worship with Christians of other denominations and with people of other faith without the element of prejudice? Can we allow the worship of others to speak to us freely and with an independent voice? Are we willing to look, listen and enter into a liturgical world different from our own with due respect for its integrity and value? And are we able to move into genuine dialogue, in which each liturgical voice is truly heard? 

White proposed eight guidelines for “intertraditional” worship. We provide guidelines 1-4 this week, and will provide 5-8 next week.

    1. Learn to appreciate the worldview of which worship is a part…The first step… in appreciating a particular liturgical tradition is to gain some knowledge of its underlying structures. 

    2. Learn the names of things. In liturgy as in other worlds, naming things correctly is a first step toward understanding things correctly…Accurate naming not only helps us to disengage from our liturgical presuppositions but also lowers our chances of offending those with whom we wish to pray. 

    3. Find an interpreter. Anthropologists tell us that a “native informant” is one of their most valuable tools; so with liturgists and others engaging in ecumenical exploration... You might choose to make contact with the community before you attend a worship service by speaking with the leader and discovering something about the community’s ethos and liturgical practice. In some cases that step is essential, since not all places of worship are open to outsiders.

    4. Learn to observe and to listen…Learning to detach ourselves from our own theological and liturgical presuppositions is a necessary first step toward useful observation; asking the right questions is essential…By close observation and by attempting to abandon theological and liturgical bias, we can uncover perspectives on God and on the world, on human beings and on the nature of the community, that might resist detection by other means. [From Susan J. White, “A new relationship: Guidelines for Intertraditional Worship,” Liturgy 10.1 (Spring 1992): 45-50.]

These first four guidelines are significant: they require that we make no assumptions about what worship is or does; they require that we pay attention, that we watch, and that we listen; and, above all, they require our willingness to learn from those we so often label "other."

Susan J. White is Emeritus Professor of Spiritual Resources and Disciplines of Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, TX. She and her husband Kenneth Cracknell now run Sutton Books in Norwich, VT.

Second Sunday after Pentecost--Matthew 10.34-42

These final verses [from Matthew 10] take up the matter of the reception of the disciples by those to whom they are sent. Jesus tells the disciples that when people receive them in their mission they are actually receiving Jesus himself. In fact, they are receiving the God who sent Jesus to send the disciples. Hospitably receiving the disciples is an act of receiving God…Receiving a prophet because one is a prophet is to receive a prophet’s reward. Receiving a person who is truly righteous is to receive a righteous person’s reward…To give a cup of cold water to a disciple, a “little one,” will also bring a reward to the hospitable one….

Scholars have also maintained that the “least of these” in the judgment parable in Matthew 25:31–46 (vv. 40, 45) also refers to the reception of the disciples of Jesus. The parable announces that the Human One who comes from God to judge the nations will separate them like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats…The sheep inherit the kingdom prepared for them because they saw Jesus hungry and thirsty and a stranger and naked and sick and in prison and ministered to him. The righteous are stunned! [They] are totally unaware of their own righteousness. Thus it is always the way with the truly righteous. They never keep score of their own righteousness…Reception of “the little ones,” deeds of mercy done to the “least of these,” has its rich reward in the eyes of God.

The contrary is true of the goats that are to depart into eternal fire. They failed to see Jesus in the face of needy humanity…“When did we not see you and not minister to you?” [They] have kept score of their righteousness and they seek to present their case before the judge. But the judge says, “No!…as you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me” (20:45).

There is much food for sermonic thought in these parallel verses from Matthew 10 and 25. One could preach a quite surprising sermon on “true righteousness” based on these verses. In our contemporary context another possibility comes to mind. We live today in an incredibly new multifaith world. This can be just as true for people living in rural areas as for people living in urban settings. Our neighbors today might very well be Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or any of a vast panoply of religious backgrounds.

How do we live in a multifaith world? How do we relate to our neighbors of many faiths? …In our outreach to people of other faiths we become the “little ones”; we are “the least of these” …those who receive us with hospitality receive Jesus as well! Those who offer us a cup of cold water shall not lose their reward. [Richard Jensen, "Ideas and Illustrations," Homily Service 38.7 (June 2005): 43-45.]

Richard Jensen is Carlson professor of homiletics emeritus at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.

Interreligious Worship--Finding a Faithful Way

As we continue our exploration of interreligious/interfaith worship, we turn to David Gambrell's reflections on the response developed by the Presbyterian Church USA to some of these questions, published as Respectful Presence: An Understanding of Interfaith Prayer and Celebration from a Reformed Christian Perspective (the link takes you to the full document and an accompanying study guide).

Gambrell sets up his reflections with the following questions: 

From questions about prayer in public places … to the dynamics of diverse neighborhoods … we live in a religiously complex and changing society. How do people of faith find faithful ways to navigate this strange and shifting land? Specifically, from a liturgical perspective, how do people of faith practice their faith in religiously plural contexts? Is it better to adopt a via negativa, wrapping our religious belief and identity in the comfortable ambiguity of “silent prayer or silent reflection”? Or should we boldly pour out our prayer and praise, even at the risk of flooding an already “oversaturated” religious landscape? If some combination of strategies is called for, how do we discern which approach might be appropriate for a given situation?

He then provides the following summary of the document, beginning with its definition of "respectful presence":

Respectful presence is ... “authentic attentiveness to the symbolic expressions of other religious communities” and “Christian willingness to offer witness in our liturgical expressions of the presence of God.” [It] “goes beyond mere tolerance,” and ... it “engages Christians in receiving as well as giving testimony to deep religious convictions and actions.” Within this carefully nuanced approach, there is room for participants to worship out of the integrity of their own tradition, simply to observe others engaged in worship, or perhaps even both, within the same event. (Quotes from Respectful Presence, 8.)

As Gambrell notes, 

the second part of the paper … delineates three broad scenarios in which interfaith prayer and celebration might take place:

when people of other faiths are present in Christian worship;

when Christians are present in worship activities of other faith communities;

when people of different faiths are together for interfaith prayer,          celebration, or worship. (Respectful Presence, 12.)

In each of these scenarios, Respectful Presence provides helpful and practical guidelines for ... (1) extending hospitality to people of other faith traditions, (2) being a respectful guest and an authentically Christian participant/observer, and (3) planning events with people of other religious traditions in the spirit of openness and mutuality. [From David Gambrell, "Finding a Faithful Way: Respectful Presence in Interfaith Celebration and Prayer," Liturgy 26.3 (July-September 2011): 46, 48-49.]

These last points are suggestive of a range of questions for every faith community: What does "hospitality" look like in our communities? What does it mean to be a "respectful guest" and "an authentically Christian participant/observer"? What does a "spirit of openness and mutuality" look like from the perspective of our Christian communities? Does it look the same from the perspective of other (non-Christian) faith communities? David Gambrell is an associate for worship in the Office of Theology and Worship of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a candidate for the PhD in liturgical studies at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.

Trinity Sunday (Year A)

Trinity Sunday is an occasion many preachers would rather avoid, as they do not know what to do with this strange feast day celebrating a doctrine. And, it is often an occasion for some fanciful, if not creative, theological discussion. Perhaps the early church was closer to the mark--even in the midst of its theological debates: the Trinity is better celebrated than explained, better served through doxology than in theology. Yet even such celebration leads to our need for pastoral, healing, words, which Rev. Paul Bieber provides this week:

Where's the healing word in a doctrine, particularly one as abstruse and easily misunderstood as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity? From those parishes who blow the dust off the Athanasian Creed on this day and celebrate the faith as intellectual assent to a series of authoritative, correct, and quite incomprehensible propositions, to those who regard this doctrine as a relic of history that only stands in the way of knowing Jesus and being about his mission in the world, it seems that this doctrine wounds more than it heals.

And yet, and yet—in a world wherein nothing needs more healing than our relationships, could it be that the understanding of God as Trinity could be the most healing word of all? For what the doctrine of the Triune God shows us is that God is relationship, that each Triune Person is identified precisely by relationship with the others.

The Father speaks the universe into being through the Word who is the Son. The Son is begotten, not made; filiated, not built, and so organically, substantially, ontologically united with the Father, not a product or construction. The Father breathes life into the creation through the Spirit who proceeds through space and time, bringing God's presence into the height and depth, the past and future of all that is.

And because God so loved this created world, the creative Word was enfleshed among us. He came not to condemn the world but to speak a saving word, a healing word, and to live out his word of self-giving love all the way to the cross and the empty tomb. For only the One so sent among us and anointed by the creative Spirit could speak and embody the identity of our merciful and gracious God. Only this One can claim all authority in heaven and in earth and promise to be with us always.

In creation, in new creation; in crib and cross and resurrection; in the height and depth of all things and in the inner recesses of our heart, this Jesus is with us. And if he is with us, so is that transcendent source of all things whom he called Father, and so is the Spirit of their future for us: God with us, always, creating and recreating us, saving and healing us, bringing us into the fullness of relationship that is the very image of God. [Paul Bieber, "The Healing Word," in Homily Service 41.3 (May-August 2008): 17-18.]

Paul G. Bieber is the pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church in San Diego, California.

Interfaith Worship—Continuing a Christian-Jewish Conversation

As we continue our series on interfaith worship, we continue the Christian-Jewish conversation begun last week. In that posting we looked at the "vision statement" that has guided Rabbi Samuel Gordon and Rev. Stephanie Perdew VanSlyke in their work. Such a vision led them to a pulpit "swap," an invitation to the Christian congregation to join the Jewish congregation in a celebration of a Passover seder, a shared service of prayer after 9/11, as well as joint celebrations of the installation of Rev. Perdew VanSlyke as pastor and of the departure of the synagogue's cantor. Their work together also helped them discover some of the limits of interreligious worship, which is the focus of the excerpt below.

Along the way we were very clear that our congregations were not the same, that we each had our own called or appointed leadership, that we were engaged in a relationship of interreligious sharing and education, but not an effort of syncretism. Nevertheless...congregation life cycle moments led to the poignant and clear realizations that our lives had become intertwined….

During these years of space-sharing partnership, we did reach and recognize limits to our interreligious sharing in worship. Visiting one another's worship did raise theological questions for our congregants, which we explored in our own educational programs in synagogue and church, and in shared interfaith dialogues.

For members of First Congregational, visits to Jewish worship and the observation of the limits of Jewish participation in Christian ritual led members of a theologically liberal church to grapple more whole-heartedly with their Christology and their understanding of the Trinity than they might have otherwise.

For members of Congregation Sukkat Shalom, many of whom are intermarried, visits to Christian worship helped to clarify, in many instances, why they were raising their children Jewish, or how they could honor a parent's Christian tradition even if their Jewish family identity was primary.

Together as rabbi and pastor we were asked to articulate limits to those in the wider community who mistakenly thought we were a messianic congregation or engaged in some kind of syncretistic observances. Although we both have co-officiated at weddings of intermarried couples, we also said no to a few weddings if we did not perceive the couples to be serious about either of their religious traditions or about thinking through the difficulty in honoring both traditions in a marriage. We said no to a couple who wanted us to preside at a combined baptism/bris, attempting to educate the couple in understanding that from both of our perspectives, we believed such dual theological “citizenship” was untenable and that the birth of a child in an intermarried family did present a choice about the tradition in which the parents would raise the child. And we at times said no to members of our own congregations, often well-meaning in their own spiritual seeking, who wanted to worship together more often than we thought appropriate, or who were clearly having trouble distinguishing the limits of our two traditions.

When we reached these limits, we turned to those efforts in which we can always share: learning and study, and social justice and service.

Stephanie Perdew VanSlyke was guest editor of this issue of Liturgy. She is senior pastor of First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Wilmette, Illinois. Samuel Gordon is founding rabbi of Congregation Sukkat Shalom in Wilmette, Illinois.

Pentecost

Pentecost, the consummation of Eastertide, has come. The birth of the church, the explosion of tongues, the Spirit poured out: our joy and gratitude are due to all of these. But we do not celebrate the church's birthday in order to lift up institutional priorities. The miracle of tongues is a mystery of unity in diversity of which we can barely glimpse the meaning. And the Holy Spirit poured out on all flesh—what on earth does that mean? We understand the relationship of filiation; the relationship between the First and Second Person of the Holy Trinity parallels the relatedness of human families. But how can we know this Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son?

It seems counterintuitive, but our most intimate relationship with God is with this Third Person. The unbegotten Source of all, none can look on and live. And even though we treasure a personal relationship with Jesus, that relationship is mediated by the stories of the evangelists, the words of preachers, and the actions of those who show us Christ in their lives. And when we pray that this Spirit be sent upon bread and wine laid upon the table of the Lord, we pray that the one loaf and the cup of blessing be empowered by that same Spirit to be the body and blood of Christ, so that we may ourselves prove to be the body of Christ, blessing the cup in which our forgiveness is covenanted. And then going forth to be a blessing, sharing all our varieties of gifts in the same Spirit for the common good, forgiving others as we have been forgiven. That makes us sharers in the new creation, the work of the Holy Spirit in the broadest sense. The One who brooded over the tohu wa bohu of the first creation looks upon the chaos of our unforgiving lives of underemployed gifts and calls to holiness unanswered. This creator Spirit breathes life into the husks of our lives. And as suddenly as on that first Christian Pentecost, what had seemed burned out glows again with new ardor.

When the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us, this Paraclete brings along those Persons who pour out the Spirit, who say to us, receive the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the way to a personal relationship with the Persons of the Triune God. That is a relationship characterized by forgiveness, by understanding, by unity that does not quench diversity. We cannot keep that relationship going. Left to ourselves, we wind down into chaos in our lives, in the confusion of our tongues. But the Spirit keeps on being poured out, enlivening us as with tongues of fire. And so we keep this day of celebration as a day of prayer: Come, Holy Spirit. [Paul Bieber, "The Healing Word," Homily Service 41.3 (May 2008): 7-8.]

The Rev. Dr. Paul G. Bieber is the pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church in San Diego, California.

Interfaith Worship—A Christian-Jewish Conversation

Last week we began to explore the question of interfaith worship with an excerpt concerning the possibilities of Christian-Muslim worship. This week we continue with a comment about Christian-Jewish worship. The writers of this article, a rabbi of a Reformed synagogue and the pastor of a UCC congregation have been involved in this conversation for many years, as their two congregations shared a “ritual space” for more than ten years. In the full version of their article, they explore several examples/ experiments in worshiping together as well as some of the limitations. This week’s excerpt provides a “vision statement” for their work, next week some of the limitations they encountered.

Just as the prophet Isaiah envisions both foreigners and the people of Israel praying in God's house, a “house of prayer for all people” (Isaiah 56: 7), the prophet's closing vision is “from new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the LORD.” The hope that all people would worship together is a vision that would encompass the end of human enmity, resulting in a humanity united only by its humble desire to worship God. While the prophetic vision may remain a distant hope, when we share dialogue as people of faith, when we share a meal, when we share service, and especially when we are able to share in worship, we may feel that we are participating in a sign of the hope to come, even though that sign may be periodic, momentary, and fragile.

The kindling of hope and the need to give witness to human solidarity and cooperation is one reason for planning interreligious worship among Christians and Jews. Jews and Christians can come to worship together, in certain circumstances, for the purposes of giving witness, praying for one another and God's creation, or mourning a natural disaster or international tragedy. Jews and Christians can come to worship together, in certain circumstances, for the purpose of expressing confession and hearing forgiveness, in order to take steps toward reconciliation. Jews and Christians can come to worship together for the purpose of joining in celebration, especially in marking one another's life cycle events such as bar and bat mitzvah, confirmation, and marriage. Jews and Christians can come to worship together for the purpose of celebration of congregational achievements or community events.

Yet they also noted the following about their experiences:

The common social and theological orientation of our denominations, combined with the shared economic and educational demographics of our congregations might tempt us to overlook the real and fundamental differences that need to honored among us and taken into consideration when planning shared worship. Indeed, in our years at planning periodic worship and interfaith dialogue together, we often found that our congregants quickly wanted to focus on theological and social similarities and treaded slowly into examining particularistic beliefs and practices. Congregants tended to react favorably to shared worship experiences that emphasized common, universal values, but feared that worship experiences that honored religious differences might somehow exclude those of the opposite religious tradition. Our work together has helped us test and challenge the assumptions of theological modernism, and has perhaps helped our congregants affirm what is valuable and unique about their own liturgical traditions.

How might such conversation and shared experiences help your congregation not only what they share with other religious traditions but also what is valuable and unique about their own?